"Servile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the King's mind the unpleasant impression caused by those parables of Ahab and of Ninias. It had, however, as we shall see, the very opposite result. The preface to the King expresses an almost servile desire to please: 'it would be more dog-like than man-like to bite the stone that struck me, to wit the borrowed authority of my sovereign misinformed.' But Raleigh was curiously misinformed himself regarding the ways and wishes of James. His dialogue takes for its ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... money on chance games, displaying under this delicious sky and in this garden of roses and oranges all base vanities and foolish pretensions and vile lusts, showing up the human mind such as it is, servile, ignorant, arrogant ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... initiatory rites, and the ceremonies ordained by the Vedas. [14] Again it is ordained that silence is to be observed by parties of the three sacrificial classes when a Sudra enters to remove their natural defilements, and thus the servile position of the Sudra is recognised. [15] Here it appears that the Sudra is identified with the sweeper or scavenger, the most debased and impure of modern Hindu castes. [16] In the Dharmashastras or law-books it is laid down that a person taking ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... States; the attempt to produce division among us, and to array one portion of our citizens in deadly hostility to the other; and finally, the recent attempt to excite, at Harper's Ferry, and throughout the South, an insurrection, and a civil and servile war, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... ever so lightly, a spirit of antagonism and obstinacy was instantly aroused, which it sometimes took days to overcome, and was often made worse by servile coaxing and bribing on the part of those who had the care of her, this being considered the easiest way to get along ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... that he would cut our throats if it served his purpose," I answered. "He's servile, and servility goes hand in hand with treachery. The more I watch him, the more I see 'scoundrel' written in large type on every bend of the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... whose presence alone prevents an outbreak of sectarian strife for "sedulously fomenting" religious animosities with a view to arresting the Nationalist movement. Similarly, the constitution of the Universities has been changed with a view to rendering the youth of India "stupid and servile" instead of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... spaniel, if he rouse thine ire, His servile nature may no more aspire— But leave the lion in his lordly lair, Or he thine entrails in his rage will tear. Go, rob the linnet's unprotected nest, And rend her offspring, from her little breast; But leave the Eagle in his eyrie high, Or thy torn flesh shall hush his eaglet's cry. ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... in your pluck and your bravery, Selling for freedom both fortunes and lives, Where was that prophesied outburst of slavery Wreaking revenge on your children and wives? Nowhere! you left all to servile safe keeping, And this was faithful and true to your trust; Master and servant thus mutually reaping Double reward of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... awaited him. In the burlesque of "The Yellow Dwarf," he showed a mastery of the grotesque which approached the terrible. Years before, in Macbeth, he had personated a red-headed, fire-eating, whiskey-drinking Scotchman,—and in Shylock, a servile, fawning, obsequious, yet, when emergency arose, a passionate and vindictive Jew. In the Yellow Dwarf he was the jaundiced embodiment of a spirit of Oriental evil: crafty, malevolent, greedy, insatiate,—full of mockery, mimicry, lubricity, and spite,—an Afrit, a Djinn, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... room were a little roly-poly cherub of a girl, seated in a tiny chair, holding in her arms a rag baby, which she rocked and dangled in servile imitation of her mammy, who, with bumpings peculiar to the nursery chair, was rocking to sleep a still younger babe. A fair little maiden, curled up comfortably upon a cushion, the firelight glistening upon her yellow locks, bent over a book, from which she read, in high-pitched, childish ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... the colony. The honnetes gens, a party which included the great Montcalm, the brave Bougainville, La Corne de St. Luc, M. de Levis, and M. de Saint-Ours, would have nothing to do with him, and he was left in the hands of servile flatterers, ready enough to serve him. Deschenaux, his fidus Achates, was a cobbler's son, whom experience alone had educated and fate and unscrupulousness had advanced. Cadet, his commissary-general, was the gross son of a butcher, and had spent ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... is in my mood; We have so many petty talents, clever To mimic Nature's surface. I name not The servile copyists of the greater masters, Or of th' archangels, Raphael and Michael; But such as paint our cheap and daily marvels. Sometimes I fear lest they degrade our art To a nice craft for plodding artisans— ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... otherwise a diamond of so much lustre might have been publickly produced, although it had been fixed within the collet of matrimony: But that which diminished the value of this inestimable jewel in Swift's eye was the servile state ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... By HILAIRE BELLOC. The Servile State is a study of the tendency of modern legislation in industrial society and particularly in England not towards Socialism but towards the establishment of two legally separate classes, one a small class in possession of the means of production, the other a much larger class ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... from them?—Or are these very differences additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism—of free and rival originality as contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more accurately, a blind copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of the essential principles?—Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius to rules. No! the comparative value of these rules ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... immemorial right belonging to such cases of kissing and being kissed by every woman whom he meets, young and old. You will find yourself here among those who are too simple-minded, and too full of self-respect, to be either servile ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... to the fashionable school, as her father had declared she should, my offer to keep up her lessons in the holidays, and to examine what progress she had made, when she came home regularly every fortnight for the Sunday, was accepted with greedy readiness, and acknowledged with servile gratitude. At this time, Mr. Sherwin's own estimate of me, among his friends, was, that he had got me for half nothing, and that I was worth more to him than ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression—punishment—bang! Pitiless, pitiless. That's the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager...' He noticed my companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha! Danger—agitation.' He vanished. I went on to the riverside, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap of muffs—go to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... of their friends lords so and so, the honourable misters so and so, and Sir Harry and Sir Charles, and be wonderfully saucy to any one who was not a lord, or something of the kind; and this high opinion of themselves received daily augmentation from the servile homage paid them by the generality of the untitled male passengers, especially those on the fore part of the coach, who used to contend for the honour of sitting on the box with the coachman when no sprig ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... she managed to make friends of the servants by making them an occasional small present, and always gossiping with them for a few minutes before going into the drawing-room. This familiarity, by which she uncompromisingly put herself on their level, conciliated their servile good-nature, which is indispensable to a parasite. "She is a good, steady woman," ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... supplied the doctrinal part of the new Bible, in the view that "a man as self-reliant and smart as Rigdon, with a superabundant gift of tongue and every form of utterance, would never have accepted the servile task of mere interpolation; "there could have been no motive to it." This only shows that President Fairchild wrote without knowledge of the whole subject, with ignorance of the motives which did exist for Rigdon's conduct, and without means of acquainting himself with Rigdon's history during ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... this great actor, and these two most justly celebrated actresses, in this place, as they have all formed themselves on the study of nature only, and not on the imitation of their predecessors. Hence they have been able to excel all who have gone before them; a degree of merit which the servile herd of imitators can never possibly ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... man waved a hand. "I am original? Give me leave to assure you that this island contains no more servile tradesman. Why, my lord—for I take it I speak ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and occupations—carpenters, smiths, leather-dressers, leeches, prophets, bards, and fishermen, although the main business was agriculture. Cattle were the great staple of wealth, and the largest part of the land was devoted to pasture. The land was tilled chiefly by slaves, and women of the servile class were doomed to severe labor and privations. They brought the water, and they turned the mills. Spinning and weaving were, however, the occupations of all, and garments for men and women were alike made at home. There was only a limited commerce, which was then monopolized ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... in front that was a dazzle of precious stones such as only a Rajah could own. His attendants were few, but they were gorgeously attired, wore shintyan swung in rich belts from their shoulders, and waited before him speechless and in servile posture. One at his back upheld an umbrella of immense spread. He indulged few words, and they were strictly business. He wanted a full outfit for the Hajj; could the contractor furnish him twenty camels of burden, and four swift dromedaries? ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... of the succession of one phase of doctrine to another, while it is ever one and the same. Thus I was brought on to the subject of Antiquity, which was the basis of the doctrine of the Via Media, and by which was not implied a servile imitation of the past, but such a reproduction of it as is really young, while it is old. "We have good hope," I say, "that a system will be rising up, superior to the age, yet harmonising with, and carrying out its higher points, which will attract to itself those who are willing to ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... and men of genius. The spontaneity of the one is the power of the other. Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and learn nothing new about them. Then comes an independent mind which sees; and it surprises us to find how servile we have been to habit and opinion, how blind to what we also might have seen, had we used our eyes. The link, so long hidden, has now been made visible to us. We hasten to make it visible to others. But the flash of light ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... found in habit, which, according as the will is directed rightly or wrongly, as the case may be, will prove either a benignant ruler, or a cruel despot. We may be its willing subject on the one hand, or its servile slave on the other. It may help us on the road to good, or it may hurry us on the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... hear of it. I'll come up for a day or two in long vacation, my boy, as I've always done hitherto, and take a room in Holywell, and look in upon you a bit, accidentally, so as not to shame you before the scouts (who are a servile set of flunkeys, incapable of understanding the elevated feelings of a journeyman shoemaker); but I wouldn't dream of going to live in the place, any more than I'd dream of asking to be presented at court on the occasion of my receiving ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... possibility of such a barbarism as Jefferson Davis glorifies, on the other. The more strongly the Secessionists state their cause, the more glaringly it is seen to differ from any cause for which any sane person has taken up arms since the Roman servile wars. Their leaders may be exhibiting very sublime qualities; all we can say is, as Richardson said of Fielding's heroes, that their virtues are the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... lie: What claim has here the tyrant of the sky? Far in the distant clouds let him control, And awe the younger brothers of the pole; There to his children his commands be given, The trembling, servile, second ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... fill the mind, Deign now to hear the wailing of a song That lifts to thee its voice, and strives to find Aught that may raise it from the servile throng Who seek on earth but living to prolong. For them no goddess, no fair poets reign, They hear no singing, as the earth along They move to their dull tasks; they live, they wane, They die, and dying, not a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of improvement in manners is observation. In company, where you are in doubt in reference to any rule or form, be quiet and observe what others do, and govern your conduct by theirs; but except in mere external forms, beware of a servile imitation. Seek to understand the principles which underlie the observances you witness, and to become imbued with the spirit of the society (if good) in which you move, rather than to copy particulars in the manners ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... Celtic peoples were conquered by the Romans under Caesar and his successors, and kept in a state of servile thraldom for four hundred and fifty years. There was but little amalgamation between them and their military masters. Britain was a most valuable northern outpost of the Roman Empire, and was occupied by large garrisons, which employed the people in hard labors, and used them ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... labour question as a whole. I said just now there would be a clause with regard to differential legislation as between white persons and others, and to this clause will be added the words: "No law will be assented to which sanctions any condition of service or residence of a servile character." We have been invited to use the word "slavery" or the words "semblance of slavery," but such expressions would be needlessly wounding, and the words we have chosen are much more effective, because much more precise and much more restrained, and they point an accurate forefinger ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... who offered him lands and cattle and money and many other things. Mochuda kept his monks employed in hard labour and in ploughing the ground for he wanted them to be always humble. Others, however, of the Saints of Erin did not force their monks to servile labour ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... said Martin, "as he lies there—a cloth for dirty hands, a mat for dirty feet, a lying, fawning, servile hound! And, mark me, Pinch, the day will come when even you will ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... encountered a man in a scratch wig, with a long nose flattened at the end. He bowed obsequiously—a posturing figure in shirtsleeves with a green cloth waistcoat and black legs. The Italian servant, Howat concluded. He passed noiselessly, leaving a reek of pomatum and the memory of a servile smile. Howat Penny experienced a strong sense of distaste, almost depression, at the other's silent proximity. It followed him to his room, contaminated his sleep with unintelligible whispering, oily and disturbing gestures, and fled only at the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the man for me, Who sells a man for gain, Who bends the pliant servile knee, To Slavery's god of shame! But he whose God-like form erect Proclaims that all alike are free To think, and speak, and vote, and act, O, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... avoid them—they crowded on him—he could never give a reason why he should delight in those studies, more than in others, so prevalent was nature, mixed with a generosity of mind, and a hatred to all that was servile, sneaking, or advantageous ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... through a friend. It was couched in these terms: That, let a man possess what talents or accomplishments he might, it was not possible for him to maintain his proper station, in the public respect, amongst so many servants and people, servile to external impressions, without some regard to the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... if thine own, thy children's life, be dear, Buy not a Cormantee, though healthy, young, Of breed too generous for the servile field: They, born to freedom in their native land, Choose death before dishonorable bonds; Or, fired with vengeance, at the midnight hour Sudden they seize thine unsuspecting watch, And thine own poniard bury ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... him as a meek and holy man of God, I could not forbear looking with utter contempt upon his pompous, self- sufficient demeanor toward the mass of his flock; while to the most opulent and influential members he bowed down, with a servile, fawning sycophancy absolutely disgusting. I attended various churches, listening to sermons, and watching the conduct of the prominent professing Christians of each. Many gave most liberally to so-called religious causes and institutions, and made amends by heavily draining ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... officers held of them; and all ranks and degrees, held their lands, by a variety of duties and services, all tending to bind the chains the faster, on every order of mankind. In this manner, the common people were holden together, in herds and clans, in a state of servile dependance on their Lords; bound, even by the tenure of their lands to follow them, whenever they commanded, to their wars; and in a state of total ignorance of every thing divine and human, excepting the use of arms, and the culture ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... their dominant superstitions, and, by naming herself "Daughter of the Sun," have obtained supreme power. The perfect acting of such an assumed character would not prove difficult to her, while their servile worship of the protesting Puritan, whose red hair alone had elevated him to sainthood, proved how easily these savages might be deceived, and led slaves by subtle magic. Yet who was the woman? Whence came she? Why should she ever ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... from South Wales. Eloquent's bearing, both during the contest and afterwards, was acknowledged to be modest and "suitable." If he was lacking in geniality and address, he was, at all events, neither bumptious nor servile. His lenity towards the youths who had done their best to break up his meeting and wreck his committee rooms had leaked out, and gained for him, if not friends, at least toleration among several leading Conservatives who had ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... have been so weak and servile as to make their characters according to this pattern. One character is labelled Washington, another is labelled Franklin, another is labelled Adams, ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... the spreading notion of the Town; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality.{22} A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord. What woful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starv'd hackney ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... every man thinks the day coming, in which he shall be gratified with all his wishes, in which he shall leave all those competitors behind, who are now rejoicing like himself in the expectation of victory; the day is always coming to the servile in which they shall be powerful, to the obscure in which they shall be eminent, and to the deformed in which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... meaning one who wore the pileus, the cap of a freed slave, and so have regarded the Roman governor by whom Jesus was tried as a man who had been raised from the ranks of slavery. The worst condemnation of slavery is, that it degrades the characters of its victims, developing the servile vices of cowardice, meanness, and cruelty—all of which vices are manifest in Pilate's character. But such a promotion as this theory implies would be most improbable. A more likely explanation connects the name with pilum, a javelin. The earlier name ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... and such the motives. It will fail of its object, though not unworthy the inventive powers of the servile knaves of Edinburgh. It will fail, first because the men from whom alone the Borough-tyrants have anything to dread, will see through the scheme and despise it; and will, besides, well know that the funds are a mere bubble that may ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... Falkland: "He had a full appetite of fame by just and generous actions, so he had an equal contempt for it by base and servile expedients." He never for an instant tolerated that most pernicious and pestilent heresy, that so long as each side believed itself to be in the right there was no difference between the just and the unjust cause. He knew that he was contending for the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... akin to that of their employers; but they spoke without rancour, without scandalmongering. They knew themselves superior to the women who had grudgingly paid them, and often smiled at recollections which would have moved the servile mind to venomous abuse. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... thundered again, "all that have got good fightin' blood in 'em, like you and me. 'Tisn't as if we came of any worn-out, frightened, servile old stock. You and I belong to the free-livin', hard-ridin', straight-shootin' Southerners. The people before us fought bears, and fought Indians, and beat the British, and when there wasn't anything else left to beat, turned ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... says Lecky, "a great part of the independence of the Irish Parliament had indeed been surrendered; but even the servile Parliament which passed it, though extending by its own authority to Ireland laws previously enacted in England, never admitted the right of the English Parliament to make laws for Ireland." ("Hist. Ireland," vol. ii., p. 154; 1892 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... here at the birth of this little iron highway. If our vision was great enough, we might see the mighty things that may happen upon it: servile insurrection, sectional war, great armies riding to great battles, thousands of emigrants drawn to the West. We shall die, but generations after us this road will grow and continue, like a vein of iron, whose length and uses no man ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... will always discern and strive to develop the personality of the pupil, will be on the alert to discover latent features of originality and character. He will respect and encourage individuality, rather than insist upon the servile imitation of some model—even though that model be himself. As the distinguished artist Victor Maurel has justly observed: "Of all the bad forms of teaching singing, that by imitation is ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... they ease others very much, so they afflict themselves, and spend their whole life in hard labour; and yet they do not value themselves upon this, nor lessen other people's credit to raise their own; but by their stooping to such servile employments, they are so far from being despised, that they are so much the more ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... man is free from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands, And, having ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... little to laugh over. For the very rottenness of the service was due to the miserable and servile Ministry and Parliament of his Majesty, by means of which instruments he was forcing the colonies to the wall. Verily, that was a time when the greatness of England hung in the balance! How little I suspected that the young man then seated beside me, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... only grow stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem "An die Demut,"[41] he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance of "Fuerstenlaune" and "Despotenblut" are plainly evident. So too in ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... 'Tis the Custom for Servants to be obliged for four Years to very servile work; after which time they have ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... of, furniture and pictures that are not of your taste at all, so Sally saw for one brief moment the glimpse of a mind that could casually make a jest of death and holy-written things. A great deal of that servile obedience to the religion in which she had been brought up had been driven out of her by hard work. You might not get the priesthood to admit it, but religion is a luxury which few of the hard-workers ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... SE. Believe me, I am rapt with admiration, To think a man of thy exterior presence Should (in the constitution of the mind) Be so degenerate, infirm, and base. Art thou a man? and sham'st thou not to beg? To practise such a servile kind of life? Why, were thy education ne'er so mean, Having thy limbs: a thousand fairer courses Offer themselves to thy election. Nay, there the wars might still supply thy wants, Or service of some virtuous ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... obedience: a glad prompt doing of what our Friend desires because He desires it. Obedience is saying "yes" to God. It is the harmony of the life with the will of God. With some it seems to mean a servile bondage to details. It should rather mean a spirit of intelligent loyalty to God. It aims to learn His will, and then to do it. God's will is revealed in His word. His particular will for my life He will reveal to ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... truth of the individual soul that is made the spring of action, but obedience to an external authority, to a book, to a prophet, to a judge or to a king. In judges, to woman in various ways is given an exalted position; she is not the abject slave or unclean vessel, the drudge, the servile sinner, the nonentity, as depicted in other parts of ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... heard the word "spurty" before, nor indeed have I since. To answer this kind of frontal attack one has to be either saucy or servile; so I said nothing memorable. We sat down to tea and he asked me if I wanted him ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... delicate Elizabeth was driven to the drudgery of kitchen and washroom, and ordered to "be quiet and diligent as a servant," under charge of having proved herself "unworthy of a daughter's place in the family!" To this servile toil Elizabeth submitted without a murmur, and patiently plodded on, her strong constitution and heroic courage and steady faith bearing her up. But the accusation of "ingratitude and disobedience" was so false and severe as to be very depressing ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... this central manse was a considerable amount of land—ploughland, meadows, vineyards, orchards, and almost all the woods or forests on the estate. Clearly a great deal of labour would be needed to cultivate all these lands. Some of that labour was provided by servile workers who were attached to the chief manse and lived in the court. But these household serfs were not nearly enough to do all the work upon the monks' land, and far the greater part of it had to be done by services paid by the other ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... see that it was low through its being false. She knew that most servants, while they spoke with the appearance of respect in presence, altered their tone entirely when beyond the circle of the eye: theirs was eye-service, they were men-pleasers, they were servile. She had overheard her maid speak of her as Lady Clem, and that not without a streak of contempt in the tone. But here was a man who touched no imaginary hat while he stood in the presence of his mistress, neither swore at her in the stable-yard. He looked her straight in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... 28. That I eat not broken victuals. Among the kinds of food proscribed to a Brahmin are, "the food of a servile man and ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... was, he could not force himself to feel any affection for Ralph Wilson. He treated him with respect for his father's sake, more than from any personal regard, though the old man was servile in his protestations of love and devotion. Some minds are surrounded by a moral and intellectual atmosphere, into which other minds cannot enter without feeling a certain degree of repulsion. Such an insensible but powerfully acknowledged antagonism existed between ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... saw that his passion for her was waning. Therefore, her reproaches and threats became at times almost terrific, and again her servile entreaties were even more pitiable and dreadful, in view of what a true wife's position and right ought to be. He, wearying of her fierce and alternating moods, and selfishly thinking of his own ease and comfort, as was ever the case, had resolved to throw her ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... see court minions in disgrace, Stripped of their treasure, stripped of place; What now is all their pride and boast,— The servile slave, the flattering host, The tongues that fed him with applause, The noisy champions of their cause? They press the foremost to accuse His selfish jobs and paltry views. Ah, me! short-sighted were the fools, And false, aye false, the hireling tools. Was it such sycophants to get Corruption swelled ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... cargo of one hundred Testaments. I instantly addressed myself to the principal bookseller of the place, whom from the circumstance of his living in a town so abounding with canons, priests, and ex-friars as Toledo, I expected to find a Carlist, or a servile at least. I was never more mistaken in my life; on entering the shop, which was very large and commodious, I beheld a stout athletic man, dressed in a kind of cavalry uniform, with a helmet on his head, and an immense sabre in his hand: this was the bookseller himself, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... observe the real character of red men, it is necessary to trace the turnings and windings of the Yellow Stone River, or the yet more remote sinuosities of the Upper Missouri. The nearer the United States, the more servile is the Indian character; and the nearer the Rocky Mountains, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... now, now that these things are clearly proved, now, when Germany finds but one servile nation in Europe—Turkey—that the French Government thinks fit to seek to draw closer to Germany! The thing ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... feed them all; without any part being claimed either by a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord.... The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature rewarded by ample ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... heard the laughter from a group of building contractors at a side table, who had not seen a servile eye among their workmen in many moons; for a worthy project had popped into his mind at that instant. How was the moral backbone of our yeomanry to be stiffened save through education? Why not a prize contest to stimulate the interest ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... near the tall mantel, facing the group. There was nothing servile in his attitude: on the contrary, his manner, when addressing the gentleman who had once been his master, suggested easy, not to say affectionate, familiarity. The firelight, shining on his face, revealed a countenance ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... distinction for St. Benet's. But, on the other hand, if she comes to me for advice, it will be impossible for me not to say to her: 'My dear, character ranks higher than intellect. You may win the greatest prizes and yet keep a poor and servile soul. You may never get this great earthly distinction, and yet you may be crowned with honor— the honor which comes of uprightness, of independence, of integrity.' Prissie may never consult me, of course, Maggie; but, if she ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... a farthing if clerks who have never entered upon or trod the paths of chivalry should think me foolish. Knight I am, and knight I will die, if such be the pleasure of the Most High. Some take the broad road of overweening ambition; others that of mean and servile flattery; others that of deceitful hypocrisy, and some that of true religion; but I, led by my star, follow the narrow path of knight-errantry, and in pursuit of that calling I despise wealth, but not honour. I have redressed injuries, righted wrongs, punished ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... free-born people in every age and clime have a contempt for slaves. The sole reason of the persistence of the caste feeling is that the black man belongs to a race which has been enslaved." The inference is, "therefore your character is a servile character." ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various
... circumstances make it impossible, here become inoperative, and are overborne by other and more powerful ones. The close intimacies, beginning with infancy and extending over the whole life, destroying what under other circumstances might seem to be a natural separation; a servile desire to please on the part of the slave, lust and cupidity on the part of the master, all combine to make the blood of the two races flow in the same veins. Slavery is the source of amalgamation. The mulatto and ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... form was stretched near him, that exhibited marks of overgrown infancy; every part was relaxed; all appeared imperfect. Yet, some undulating lines on the puffed-out cheeks, displayed signs of timid, servile good nature; and the skin of the forehead had been so often drawn up by wonder, that the few hairs of the eyebrows were fixed in a sharp arch, whilst an ample chin rested in lobes of flesh on his ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of the aristocratic lady who was to be her chaperon; the Queen, who last evening had catechised her as if she were a child, and whom she distrusted; the servile flatterer, Malfalconnet, in whose mirthful manner that day for the first time she thought she had detected dislike and slight sarcasm; the imperial love messenger, Don Luis Quijada, who with icy, dutiful coldness scarcely vouchsafed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as the mediums of supernatural influence. The question is, did he retain both, or did he reject one and retain the other? It can scarcely be doubted that one such influence running through the play would conduce to harmony and unity of idea; and as Shakspere, not a servile follower of his source in any case, has interwoven in "Macbeth" the totally distinct narrative of the murder of King Duffe,[1] it is hardly to be supposed that he would scruple to blend these two different sets of characters if any advantage were to be gained ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... as they thought, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure conceit of an Imprimatur, but rather, as I hope, for that our English, the language of men ever famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily find servile letters enow to spell such ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... same rule men may, in all other things, put what restrictions they please upon the laws of God. If, by the Mosaical law, though it was rough and severe, as being a yoke laid on an obstinate and servile nation, men were only fined, and not put to death for theft, we cannot imagine, that in this new law of mercy, in which God treats us with the tenderness of a father, He has given us a greater licence to cruelty ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... their souls realising it; great kings and governors, who had made them captive, careering in the sunlight jauntily, and men cheering them on. Even the said great personages dying in bed, making exemplary ends and sounding speeches; and polite history, more servile than their ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a bird of prey, his big moustaches, his chin almost divided into two parts by a mark which looked very much like a sabre-cut, would have made his face that of a brigand, had not the harshness of his features been tempered by the assumed amenity and the servile smile of a speculator who has many dealings with the public. He was dressed in very cleanly fashion in a cinnamon-coloured jacket embroidered with silk of the same colour, gaiters of the same stuff, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... edict. Moses led his people out of only one kind of captivity, and in the wilderness they wandered in bondage still. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free the colored race, because it is the law of God that he who would be free must free himself. A servile people are slaves by habit, and habit is the only fetter. Freedom, like happiness, is a condition of mind. A whining, complaining, pinching, pilfering class that listens for the whistle, watches the clock, that works only when ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... vocabulary is impossible; in the matter of language we lead a parasitical existence, and are always quoting. Quotations, conscious or unconscious, vary in kind according as the mind is active to work upon them and make them its own. In its grossest and most servile form quotation is a lazy folly; a thought has received some signal or notorious expression, and as often as the old sense, or something like it, recurs, the old phrase rises to the lips. This degenerates to simple ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... delineation of the progress made by our artists in a branch so essentially connected with the performance and durability of the Fine Arts. An Exhibition of this kind is well calculated to dispel the vulgar error, that engraving is a servile art in the scale of works of the mind, and mostly consigned to the copyist. An Establishment of this kind has long been wanted, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... device of king Henry the Seventh (whereof I have spoken largely in the History of his Life) was profound and admirable; in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard; that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them, as may breed a subject to live in convenient plenty and no servile condition; and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings. And thus indeed you shall attain to Virgil's character which he ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... inferior value. And there is some radical wrong where the noblest manhood and womanhood are not appreciated and reverenced. Not to recognize genuine worth is the mark of a superficial and vulgar character. The servile spirit has no conception of the heroic nature; and they who measure life by material standards, do not perceive the infinite which is in man and which makes him godlike. A few only in any age or nation love the best, follow after ideal aims; but when these few are wanting, all life becomes ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... of the severity with which the laws on this subject were enforced, it may not be inappropriate to insert the annexed account from the Sketches of Yale College:—"The servile requisition of making obeisance to the officers of College within a prescribed distance was common, not only to Yale, but to all kindred institutions throughout the United States. Some young men were found whose high spirit would not brook the degrading ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... hatred of the levelling influence of Paris, love of the Provencal speech, belief in the Latin race, in the Roman Catholic Church, unshaken faith in the future, love of the ideal and hatred of what is servile and sordid, an ardent love of Nature, an intense love of life and movement. These things are reflected in every variety of word and figure. He is not the poet of the romantic type, self-centred, filling his verse with the echoes of his ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... her gift with profuse, almost servile thanks. She had sent it without a word—saying to herself that pity for his situation made it possible to ignore his baseness. And the days went on as before. She was not conscious of any change, save in the heightened, almost ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of a light frigate. Altogether he made a very fine fellow, carrying to a great extent the elegancies of vice: a bit of a poet, like every one else; a good servant of the state, a good servant to the prince; assiduous at feasts, at galas, at ladies' receptions, at ceremonies, and in battle; servile in a gentlemanlike way; very haughty; with eyesight dull or keen, according to the object examined; inclined to integrity; obsequious or arrogant, as occasion required; frank and sincere on first acquaintance, with the power of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... cassock, surcingle, and vest. 'Receive (he said) these robes, which once were mine, Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.' He ceas'd, and spread the robe; the crowd confess The rev'rend flamen in his lengthen'd dress. Around him wide a sable army stand, A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band, Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn, Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any god, or man. "Through Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known Fleet, Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street, Till show'rs of sermons, characters, essays, In circling fleeces whiten all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... allied fleet had also a hard lot, but not as bad as that of Ali Pasha's galley-slaves, because in the Christian fleet there was a considerable proportion of men hired for the campaign. But there was also a servile element, Turks taken prisoner in previous campaigns and chained to the oar in reprisal for the treatment of Christian captives by Ottoman commanders, and a considerable number of what we should now call convicts sentenced ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... toil, and unlamented die; Groan at the labors of the galling oar, Or the dark caverns of the mine explore. The glittering tyranny of Othman's sons, The pomp of horror which surrounds their thrones, Have awed their servile spirits into fear; Spurned by the foot, they tremble and revere. The day of labor, night's sad, sleepless hour, The inflictive scourge of arbitrary power, The bloody terror of the pointed steel, The murderous stake, the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... nations, and wholly abolished them in the more advanced. Competitive industry introduced intelligence and self-reliance among the people. The doctrine of the equality of men elevated the spirit of the laborer, and dispersed, to a greater or less extent, as the doctrine made itself felt, that servile veneration which the lower classes paid to the higher; the essential dignity of labor is becoming acknowledged. To all these benefits, there have been, nevertheless, corresponding losses. Competitive industry has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... not speak against the President," said the servile wardress, when she discovered we were telling our story to the inmates. "You know you will be thrashed if you say anything more about the President; and don't forget you're on Government property and may be arrested for treason if ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... bow. Not a servile one - these Hands will never do that! Lord bless you, sir, you'll never catch them at that, if they have been with you twenty years! - and, as a complimentary toilet for Mrs. Sparsit, tucked his neckerchief ends ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... but that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he plainly told us. When ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... that she could not bear to add the smallest grain of falsehood or deceit to the weight of her guilt, which was already almost insupportable: and should she tell him of her repentance, with a confession of her knowledge of his engagement with Caelia, it would (as has been before observed) appear both servile and insincere. ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... to dry the tears Guicciardini has it that he shed, and, replacing them by a smile, servile and obsequious, repaired, hat in hand, to protest his friendship ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... as Algiers was the object of the servile dread of Europe. The custom of offering presents, which were really bribes, only died out fifty years ago, and there are people who can still remember the time when consuls-general were made to creep into the Bey's presence under a wooden bar.[78] ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... ancient republics of Greece, was the permission to take an active interest in public affairs; and Aesop, like the philosophers Phaedo, Menippus, and Epictetus, in later times, raised himself from the indignity of a servile condition to a position of high renown. In his desire alike to instruct and to be instructed, he travelled through many countries, and among others came to Sardis, the capital of the famous king of Lydia, the great ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... with the German and his clientele came to an end. The merchants, as they approached nearer and nearer to their native land, began casting off that servile desire of ingratiating themselves which they had assumed in all their trips to the new world. They now had more important things to occupy them. The telegraphic service was working without cessation. The Commandant of the vessel was conferring in his apartment with the Counsellor ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the candidate for initiation.) "When a noble people are crushed by the servile minions of a tyrant, will they submit ...
— The Oaths, Signs, Ceremonies and Objects of the Ku-Klux-Klan. - A Full Expose. By A Late Member • Anonymous
... hed ther power ter fo'ce ye then hit war because I knowed things erbout ye thet ye wouldn't love ter hev told. I knows them things still!" He paused to let that sink in, and Sim Squires stood breathing heavily. Every sense and fibre of his nature was in that revolt out of which servile rebellions are born. Every element of hate centred about his wish to see this arrogant master dead at his feet—but he acknowledged that the collar he wore was locked on ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... tribesman said. His entire manner changed. Without becoming servile, it was respectful. He extended his hand. "Sime Weatherby." He and The Barbarian clasped hands. "That your woman down there?" the tribesman asked, ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... sighed and looked, he was ware of two coming towards him with pick and mattock on their shoulders. Swiftly they came, and soon they were at his side, fawning on him, and speaking in soft, wheedling voices. Their faces were eager and servile, their ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... which pervaded their national character taught the Dorians not only, on the one hand, the firmest allegiance to the rites of religion—and a patriarchal respect for age—but, on the other hand, a blind and superstitious attachment to institutions merely on account of their antiquity—and an almost servile regard for birth, producing rather the feelings of clanship than the sympathy of citizens. We shall see hereafter, that while Athens established republics, Sparta planted oligarchies. The Dorians were proud of independence, but it was the independence ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... simply for the pleasure of wasting more than other people, and eating what they could not procure. The influential critic, though he displayed the ease of a man accustomed to every sort of festivity, really felt astonished at it all, and became servile, promising his support, and pledging himself far more than he really wished to. Moreover, he showed himself very gay, found some witty remarks to repeat, and even some rather ribald jests. But when the champagne appeared after the roast and the grand burgundies, his over-excitement ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... child of a Christian family, we do them great injury; we fasten in them feelings the most disastrous, and draw out propensities unbecoming the child devoted to the Lord, breeding in his soul a peevish repining at his station. Alas! that Christian homes should ever become so servile in their devotions to the rotten sentiments and flimsy interests of misguided and perverted fashion! Her smile in your home is that of a harlot; her touch is the withering blight of corruption; her dominion is the desolation of family hopes and the extermination of those ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... The servile status of the ancient actor is an index to the energy of his performance, if to nothing else. Failure meant a beating, success a drink at least.[56] Augustus humanely abrogated the whipping of actors, but an attempt was made in Tiberius' time to renew the practice.[57] On the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... devote them to the tiresome duties, and laborious functions of government; but he blessed the Lord that henceforward no more homage was to be paid, no more court to be made, but to him alone, to whom they were justly due. Disdaining as he did the servile adoration usually paid to a minister, he could never crouch before the power of the two Cardinals who succeeded each other: he neither worshipped the arbitrary power of the one, nor gave his approbation to the artifices ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... of what avail was it to be Royal by right when Egypt, my heritage, was a slave—a slave to do the pleasure and minister to the luxury of the Macedonian Lagidae—ay, and when she had been so long a serf that, perchance, she had forgotten how to put off the servile smile of Bondage and once more to look across the world with Freedom's ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... which he had fallen. She retained him near the door, and there was a grave conversation on the English constitution. Mme de Stael could not reconcile the idea of political liberty, with the prevalence of servile forms remaining in the individual relationships of a society so jealous of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... hawk-like beak, and the shriveled old mouth, puckered into a sardonic smile, made him an almost comic figure. Trimmer stood at attention by the head of the bed like a sentinel. His humility and deference to both his master and Mrs. Swinton were almost servile; it was always so in the presence of a ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... stationary, the Gallic hordes became a people,—the Galatians,—and the country they occupied was called Galatia. They lived there some fifty years, aloof from the indigenous population of Greeks and Phrygians, whom they kept in an almost servile condition, preserving their warlike and barbarous habits, resuming sometimes their mercenary service, and becoming once more the bulwark or the terror of neighboring states. But at the beginning of the second century before our era, the Romans had entered Asia, in pursuit of their great enemy, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had scarcely been routed when the relations of the dead, of every age and sex, were brought forward in crowds, having been dragged from their humble dwellings. And all their former pride being now gone, they descended to the lowest depths of servile obedience, and after a very short time nothing but barrows of the dead and bands of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... governed Charles Edward. The fearless, lofty, honest character of Lord George Murray alone offered an obstacle to the efforts of the Secretary to obtain, for his own purposes, an entire controul; he cherished towards the General that aversion which a mean and servile nature ever feels to one whose dealings are free from fraud or deceit. He also feared him as a rival, and it became his aim to undermine him, and to lay a plot for the chief stay and prop of the undertaking. It was naturally to be supposed that Lord George Murray's age, his high birth, his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... is a species of hell as regards suffering, it is a species of Paradise as regards charity. The charity which quickens those holy souls is stronger than death, more powerful than hell; its lamps are all of fire and flame. Neither servile fear nor mercenary hope has any part in their pure affection. Purgatory is a happy state, more to be desired than dreaded, for all its flames are flames of love and sweetness. Yet still it is to be dreaded, since it delays the end of all perfection, which ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... scene;—who delight in following Guzman d'Alfarache, through all the mazes of squalid beggary; who with pleasure accompany Don Quixote and his squire, in the lowest paths of fortune; who are diverted with the adventures of Scarron's ragged troop of strollers, and highly entertained with the servile situations of Gil Blas; yet, when a character in humble life occasionally occurs in a performance of our own growth, exclaim, with an air of disgust, "Was ever anything so mean! sure, this writer must have been ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... wont to call the people to a public acknowledgment of the favors of Divine Providence. At the time of which we write, their Excellencies required the citizens to be thankful "according to law," and "all servile labor and vain recreation," on said day, were "by law forbidden," and not, as at present, invited them to assemble in their respective churches, to unite in an expression of gratitude to their Heavenly ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the whole race of mankind has marched around the globe again and again. The leaders—the head—were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the vast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses, the grovelling slaves, but a remove from the beasts ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... of individual freedom. Whatever far-reaching movements the State or great rich men or private corporations may make, the starvation by any complication of employment, the unwilling deportation, the destruction of alternatives to servile submissions, must not ensue. Beyond such qualifications, the object of Modern Utopian statesmanship will be to secure to a man the freedom given by all his legitimate property, that is to say, by all the values his toil or skill or foresight and courage ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... meet and match his opponent, and he had no longer that subtle advantage which presidency at a board of ministers confers. Speaking as man to man the head of the Government did not feel bound to observe that tradition of half-servile approach which in the hearing of others ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... delivered into the hands of the Stuarts, to be punished as a traitor and spy; and of those far off plantations and dismal colonies where people troublesome to their families were said to be sent, to be chained to servile labour with criminals and slaves. She wept bitterly: she clasped her hands—she threw herself at the feet of the conductor of the party—she appealed to them all, telling them to do what they would ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... attended by a frightful "paradise of officialism"—a helpless subordination—in which "the individual if not an officer would only count one!" We cannot appreciate the horror of having more of "a paradise" about officialism than we have in our present corrupt, inconstant, and servile system of political Bossism, even if the individual could only "count one." But Mr. Savage does know, or ought to know, that the very first step of Nationalism is to nationalize our "politics," so as to restore the initiative ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... tongue, Or raping numbers like the Thracian Song, In crowning of her merits he would be Sumptuously poor, low in Hyperbole. To write is easy; but to write on thee, Truth would be thought to forfeit modesty. He'l seem a Poet that shall speak but true; Hyperbole's in others, are thy due. Like a most servile flatterer he will show Though he write truth, and make the Subject, You. Virtue ne'er dies, time will a Poet raise Born under better Stars, shall sing thy praise. Praise her who list, yet he shall be a debtor For Art ne're feigned, nor Nature fram'd a better. Her virtues were so great, that ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... we have Chesterton believing devoutly that that servile state, stricken with plague, and afflicted with death in all its forms, is the dreamland of the saints. His political principles, roughly speaking, are England was decent once—let us apply the same recipe to the England of to-day. His suggestions, therefore, are rather negative ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... person. Even now conscience with its prohibitions is fading out of life, evolving into a more profound consciousness of ourselves and others, with multiplied incitements to wise giving. The old religious asceticism with its hatred of the body is dead; the servile acceptance of conditions of life and even of natural laws is seen to be vicious; it is of the nobility of man to be insatiate in desire and to rebel against limiting conditions; it is the property of his intelligence to constrain even the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... service to us in an investigation of the state of the poor, until we come to the fifteenth or even sixteenth century, when the artists of Germany and the Low Countries began to delineate those scenes in industrial and servile life, which time and ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... Liberal policy would some day be "to temper annexation, if not to abrogate it." Both Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer revealed the aims of their mission with perfect frankness. The former, after alluding to Mr. Chamberlain's luncheon as a display of the "Imperial spirit of the servile senate who decreed ovations and triumphs to Caligula and Domitian, when they had received rebuffs from the ancestors both of ourselves and the heroic Dutch now struggling in South Africa," and characterising Lord Milner's High Commissionership as "a career of unmitigated and hopeless failure," ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... perfection of knowledge, so that a man needed to know nothing else. "Oh," said a beardless youth to a missionary, "if you had only read our Talmud, you would throw all your books into the fire." Salonica was famous for its books, but they were servile imitations of the Talmud. The spoken language was essentially Spanish, but, with a deficient vocabulary, and greatly corrupted with Turkish and Hebrew words, while subject to constant change. Consequently ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... the bearing of God and Lord; and that Christ meets this test in the miraculous signs and life-giving words, as the Gospels contend. He does not rank with the saints who lack the divine essence; he has, in addition to divine form, the divine essence and nature. On the other hand, the servant, or servile, form implies acting toward others, in word and deed, like a servant. Thus Christ did when he served the disciples and gave himself for us. But he served not as the saints, who are servants by nature. Service was, with him, something assumed for our benefit ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... richly stor'd, And plenty smiling on thy board, In grandeur's costly garbs array'd, With servile homage basely paid From summon'd tribes of venal bands, That wanton luxury commands, Let thy untainted mind beware And shun ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... which I was excluded, from the belief that they were unsuitable to my rank and station. I was permitted to acquire others, which, had she been actuated by true discernment, she would, perhaps, have discovered to be far more incompatible with a servile station. In proportion as my views were refined and enlarged by history and science, I was likely to contract a thirst of independence, and an ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... for myself and others an unusual liberty: there is in my house no such thing as ceremony, ushering, or waiting upon people down to the coach, and such other troublesome ceremonies as our courtesy enjoins (O servile and importunate custom!) Every one there governs himself according to his own method; let who will speak his thoughts, I sit mute, meditating and shut up in my closet, without any offense ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... after-years the greatest pulpit orator of England. He was born in 1714, in Gloucester, in the Bell Inn, of which his mother was proprietor, and where upon the decline of her fortunes he was for some time employed in servile functions. He had been a wild, impulsive boy, alternately remarkable for many mischievous pranks and for strange outbursts of religious zeal. He stole money from his mother, and he gave part of it to the poor. He ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... In its course he compared the opinion of those who had opposed the resolution to the saying of an English bishop, that the people had nothing to do with the law but to obey it, and likened their conduct to the servile obedience of a Parliament of Paris under the old order of things. He concluded with the hope that the dangerous doctrine, that the representatives of the people have not the right to consult their discretion when about exercising powers delegated ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... of this class of persons being scarcely more than nominal; and I adhere to the opinion that the just and politic course is, as has been done, to prohibit any extension or renewal of the practice either of slave indebtedness or slavery; to secure good treatment for the servile classes under penalty of enforced manumission; to reduce claims when they come before the magistrates to the minimum which justice to the creditor will permit; to await the increased means of freeing themselves which must develop for the poorer classes upon the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... that there was nothing in the world so precious as her hopeful Barnabas. Every thing must give way to his accommodation and advantage; every one must yield the most servile obedience to his commands. He must not be teased or restricted by any forms of instruction; and of consequence his proficiency, even in the arts of writing and reading, was extremely slender. From his birth he was muscular and sturdy; and, confined to ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... not alone in scenery and architecture that we count England foreign. The constitution of society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. The dull neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast to our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-loving ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman gasping. It seems impossible that within the boundaries of his own island a class should have ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... had no real appreciation of the subject, and that any sympathetic utterance would be made to please me. How I hate being with a companion who automatically says what will please me! A servile compliance that one knows is false is more irritating to a person of intellect ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... countryman of Hannibal. For him the function of history is judgment, not narrative. If we submit ourselves to the event, if we think more of the accomplished deed than of the suggested problem, we become servile accomplices of success and force. History is resurrection. The historian is called to revise trials and to reverse sentences, as the people, who are the subject of all history, awoke to the knowledge of their wrongs and of their power, and rose up to avenge the past. History is ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Worde of God," "the right administration of the Sacraments," and "ecclesiastical discipline uprightlie ministred as Goddis Worde prescribes."[130] "These articles," as Principal Lee has so pithily expressed it, "have been almost as disagreeable to some Episcopalian writers as they were to the most servile adherents of the pope. It is thought a most dangerous omission to make no mention of uninterrupted succession and conveyance of authority from the apostles. This omission has been somewhat incorrectly charged against the reformers of our church. They do certainly ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... provided they were neither parasitic nor servile, and perhaps there was a grain of truth in his theory that the inferior and decadent writer, who is more subjective, though unfinished, distills a more irritating aperient and acid balm than the artist of the same period who is ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of the village khan, and as such are regarded superior beings by the common people about them. It looks rather ridiculous to see grown people bearing themselves in a retiring, servile manner in deference to youngsters glaringly ignorant of how to use a pocket-handkerchief, and who look as if their chief pastime were chewing dried beetroot and rolling about in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... in hall or bower, The Passions own thy power, Love, only Love her forceless numbers mean: For thou hast left her shrine; 40 Nor olive more, nor vine, Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Liang. This produced great native unrest, especially in the provinces by the upper Yangtze. The natives, who were steadily pushed back by the Chinese peasants, were reduced to migrating into the mountain country or to working for the Chinese in semi-servile conditions; and they were ready for revolt and very glad to work with the Toba. The result of this unrest was not decisive, but it greatly reduced the strength of the regions along the upper Yangtze. Thus the main strength of the southern state was more than ever confined ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... for withholding fugitive slaves from the enemy, believing that there could be in it no danger of servile insurrection and that the Confederacy would thereby be weakened.[8] As this opinion soon developed into a conviction that official action was necessary, Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862, provided that slaves be protected against the claims of ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... faithfully served by his dependant and sycophant, Mr. Diao, who is a weak, physically decadent man who can neither offend by word nor deed the man from whom he has had so much. His manner is too servile to allow one to place much confidence in him, but he is a believer, and proves by many actions that he is truly following Christ. If only he could get free from the net of the rich man, and yet—what Church has ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... not, Loyal, and honourable, and even just. My webs of life in reveries were dyed As veils in vats of purple: so there stole Serene and sumptuous and mysterious pride Through the imperial vesture of my soul.— And lo! like any servile fool I crave The dark strange ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... thus relapse rapidly into a state of barbarism; they will resume the habits of their African brethren, but, he thinks, without the ferocity and savageness which distinguish the latter. Of course the germs of civilisation and religion which have been sown among them in their servile state will be speedily obliterated; if not, as man must either rise or fall in the moral scale, they will acquire strength, with it power, and as certainly the desire of using that power for the amelioration of their condition. The island ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... and motionless, compelled to watch the horrid scene, like Niobe when chained to Sipylus. His servile spirit bowed before the ruler's power, instead of arming his right hand with the dagger of revenge, and when the frantic king asked him the same question a second time, he actually answered, pressing his hand on his heart: "A god could not have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mind sensitive to beauty and hating the bare thought of ugliness: for while vanity takes pleasure in lack of harmony between oneself and one's neighbour, aesthetic feeling takes pleasure only in harmonious relations. The thought of the servile lives devoted to make our life more beautiful counterbalances the pleasure of the beauty; 'tis the eternal question of the violet essence and the pork suet. Now the habit of beauty, the aesthetic sense, becomes, as I said, more and more sensitive and vivacious; you cannot hide from it ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... as positive efforts. These signs were, from one point of view, evidences of moral awakening; they indicated slow, steady development of the idea that to steal even Negroes was wrong. From another point of view, these laws showed the fear of servile insurrection and the desire to ward off danger from the State; again, they often indicated a desire to appear well before the civilized world, and to rid the "land of the free" of the paradox of slavery. Representing such ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... prophecy, Behold how all things are made true! Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, Exceeding glad and strong. Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad! No more shall you sit sole and vidual, Searching, in servile pall, Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad! Your children gathered back to your embrace See with a mother's face. Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; In very deed, Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... Tiberius Gracchus was appointed, during the war with Hannibal, to command a body of slaves, whom the Romans in their straits for soldiers had furnished with arms, one of his first acts was to pass an order making it death for any to reproach his men with their servile origin. So mischievous a thing did the Romans esteem it to use insulting words to others, or to taunt them with their shame. Whether this be done in sport or earnest, nothing vexes men more, or rouses them to fiercer indignation; "for the biting jest which flavours too much ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... an entirely new thought when Jesus spoke to His disciples of their Father in heaven. It was a thrilling novelty when Paul bade servile worshippers realise that they were no longer slaves, but sons, and as such, heirs of God. It was the rapture of pointing to a new star flaming out, as it were, that swelled in John's exclamation: 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God!' For even though in the Old Testament there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... beginning show; A seed which, we may hope, will soon conceive A Julius, Alexander, Scipio. Who thee Alcina's bondsman could believe; And (for the world the shameful fact might know) That all should, manifest to sight, perceive Upon thy neck and arms the servile chains, Wherewith she at her ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... till she was of marriageable age, and which then might suffice for a small wedding portion; or if she remained single, for an income that would place her beyond the temptation of want, or the bitterness of a servile dependence. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... A sullen, servile voice answered: "It ain't me's the fool, and as for crazy—her wantin' me to bring home what they ain't in no market. How'm I goin' to git what ain't to be got, I asts you. This here war is stoppin' ev'y kind ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... pacific undisputed sovereignty. He has demonstrated that in such circumstances, it is not the weakness but the strength of the ruling power in the state which is the great danger, and that the many-headed despot, acting by means of a subservient press and servile juries, speedily becomes as formidable to real freedom as ever Eastern sultaun with his despotic power and armed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of the mission of Hughes. Dayton is right. Generally Dayton shows a great deal of good sense, of good comprehension, and a noble and independent character. He is not a flatterer, not servile, and subservient to Mr. Seward, as are others—Mr. Adams, Mr. Sandford, and some few ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski |
