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Subservient   Listen
adjective
Subservient  adj.  Fitted or disposed to subserve; useful in an inferior capacity; serving to promote some end; subordinate; hence, servile, truckling. "Scarce ever reading anything which he did not make subservient in one kind or other." "These ranks of creatures are subservient one to another." "Their temporal ambition was wholly subservient to their proselytizing spirit."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subservient" Quotes from Famous Books



... was right, Elinor," said Marianne, "to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has always been your ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... Rome in America. But, however that may have been, there was small chance for any successful opposition to the charter, since Parliament had been dissolved by the King, not to be summoned again for eleven years. The Privy Council was subservient, and, as the Sovereign was his friend, Baltimore saw the signing of the charter assured and began to gather together his first colonists. Then, somewhat suddenly, in April, 1632, he sickened, and died at ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... would have your rooms interesting as well as beautiful, make them say something, give them a spinal column by keeping all ornamentation subservient ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... Timon of Athens; and in 1789 he concluded his character studies with his essay on Falstaff. As the titles show, Richardson's work has a moral purpose. His intention, as he tells us, was to make poetry subservient to philosophy, and to employ it in tracing the principles of human conduct. Accordingly, he has prejudiced his claims as a literary critic. He is not interested in Shakespeare's art for its own sake; ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... Catholics, who must have danced with delight, under the privileges of such a Constitution, were deprived of the right to occupy and possess all civil offices—their enterprise was crushed—their industry made subservient to the rapacity of their enemies, and not to their own prosperity. But this is far from being all. The sources of knowledge—of knowledge which only can enlighten and civilize the mind, prevent crime, and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... and division of the Lawes, has been made in divers manners, according to the different methods, of those men that have written of them. For it is a thing that dependeth not on Nature, but on the scope of the Writer; and is subservient to every mans proper method. In the Institutions of Justinian, we find seven sorts of ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... was more inflexibly true to slavery, as his subsequent career amply demonstrated. If he had been chosen Speaker he would doubtless have placed some of the Free Soil members on the Committees specified, but the whole power of his office would have been studiously subservient to the behests of the slave oligarchy; and nothing could excuse the conduct of Mr. Wilmot and his associates but their entire ignorance of his political character and antecedents. I regretted this affair most sincerely, for I knew Mr. Brown well, and ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants. Bacon had pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the Jesuit colleges to be the best yet known in the world, and had warmly expressed his regret that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should be subservient to the interests of a corrupt religion. [105] It was not improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great foundations of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Cassiodorus himself, in his later years, when, after the death of his master, he republished his "Various Letters", somewhat modified their diction so as to make them more Roman, more diplomatic, more slavishly subservient to the Emperor, than Theodoric ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... intellectual manipulation. We weep, but know not why. Its specifically artistic emotion, the power it shares with all other arts of raising our state of consciousness to something more complete, more vast, and more permanent—the specific musical emotion of music can become subservient to the mere awakening of our latent emotional possibilities, to the stimulating of emotions often undesirable in themselves, and always unable, at the moment, to find their legitimate channel, whence enervation and perhaps degradation of the soul. There are kinds of music ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... the present status of the Panama Canal. A grave question presents itself at this time, which demands to be disposed of by Congress, and to which all others are subservient. Shall the waterway be a sea-level or a lock canal? It is a question of tremendous importance—a question of choice equally as important as the one of the route itself. A choice must be made, and ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... ought to be subservient to public uses, when necessity requires it; nevertheless, whenever any particular man's property is taken for the use of the public, the owner ought to receive an ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... multiplicity of spirits, or man/id[-o]s, which inhabit all space and every conspicuous object in nature. These man/id[-o]s, in turn, are subservient to superior ones, either of a charitable and benevolent character or those which are malignant and aggressive. The chief or superior man/id[-o] is termed Ki/tshi Man/id[-o]—Great Spirit—approaching to a great extent the idea of ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... a singular chance, was transplanted, if I may use the expression, from ancient to modern times; he was born for action, and his destiny only permitted him to write; this constraint appears in the style of his tragedies. He wished to make literature subservient to a political purpose; undoubtedly his object was noble, but nothing perverts the labours of the imagination so much as having a purpose. In this nation, where certainly, some erudite scholars and very enlightened men are to be met with, Alfieri ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... a preliminary step to the violent suppression of his work. Jesus knew the hearts of these men; he knew that while, in virtue of their office, they affected to expound and apply the divine law, and to rule the people in accordance with it, they were at once ignorant of God's word and tamely subservient to the passions of the people. To tear off, or rather to compel them with their own hands to tear off their cloak of hypocrisy, he addressed to them that question of wonderful simplicity but wonderful ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... pupils, few have yet sufficiently studied the art by which the practice of jokes becomes subservient to the science of swindlers. The heart of an inferior is always fascinated by a jest. Men know this in the knavery of elections. Know it now, my pupils, in the knavery of life! When you slap yon cobbler so affectionately on the back, it is your own fault if you do not slap ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that young Jones was a veritable autocrat in his island, as well as aboard his ship. Everyone of the Sangoans seemed to accept his dictation, however imperative it might be, as a matter of course, and the gray old captain—who had seen much of the world—was not the least subservient to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people who had traditions and laws of their ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the mere exertion of the actors' power, when it is not uniformly directed to the expression of one general character. It is also worthy of consideration, whether the very important purposes to which the drama may be rendered subservient, may not be more easily accomplished, when the whole tendency of the composition, and the influence of acting, are employed in one general and consistent design. No such principle seems to have been kept in view in the composition of the greater part of the English ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... pervaded and sustained; and reform must be inaugurated and consummated in those other influences which tend to mould the moral man, and which must be so guided as to destroy all these low and grovelling tastes, by lifting the man into a higher plane of being, in which the animal shall be wholly subservient to the spiritual. Hence the province of the true philanthropist lies in those other paths which we have pointed out, rather than in this, since in them lies the prospect of success whose fruits will ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... class of girls in the Sunday School, and she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force of nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar spoke to Mr. Houghton—nay, the very way she addressed herself to him—"What do you think, Mr. Houghton?"—then ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... with the words "Love one another." Or if bayonet-drill and high-explosive force were to be the rule of life in preparation for another struggle such as this, then at least let men put hypocrisy away and return to the primitive law of the survival of the fittest in a jungle world subservient to the king of beasts. The devotion of military chaplains to the wounded, their valor, their decorations for gallantry under fire, their human comradeship and spiritual sincerity, would not bridge the gulf in the minds of many soldiers between ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... that all adults should be forced to attend the Protestant service and to receive Communion at stated times, but the latter portion was dropped probably at the request of the Catholic lords. However subservient Parliament might be in regard to the Catholics it was not inclined to strengthen the hands of the bishops against the Puritans. Notwithstanding Elizabeth's refusal to allow discussion of the Thirty Nine Articles, or to permit them to be published under ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... circumstances, had slowly grown with his military training; mind and body had learned automatically to obey; mind and body now definitely recognised the importance of obedience, were learning to desire it, had begun to take an obscure sort of pride in it. Mind and body were already subservient to discipline. How was it ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... man of strong will, of violent passions, of unlimited ambition, with capacity to employ and use timid men, adhesive, subservient men, and corrupt men, as the instruments of his designs. It is the truth of history that he has injured every person with whom he has had confidential relations, and many have escaped ruin only by withdrawing from his society altogether. He has one rule of his life: he attempts to use every man ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... favored inflation could not yet bring themselves to the point of supporting the Greenback party. On the other hand there were undoubtedly many farmers and others who felt that the old parties were hopelessly subservient to capitalistic interests, who were ready to join in radical movements for reform and for the advancement of the welfare of the industrial classes, but who were not convinced that the structure of permanent prosperity for farmer and workingman ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... retrospect! Romance displays only the amiable side of the picture; it shews the pleasing features, and throws a veil over the blemishes: Mankind are naturally pleased with what gratifies their vanity; and vanity, like all other passions of the human heart, may be rendered subservient to ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... predecessors in that trade by doubling the size of his army, on the theory, coolly avowed by him, that a large army would subsist by its command of the country, where a small army would starve. But all was subservient to his towering ambition, and to a pride which has been called theatrical, and which often wore an eccentric garb, but which his death scene proves to have been the native grand infirmity of the man. He walked in dark ways and was unscrupulous and ruthless when on the path of his ambition; ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... the difficult discussion by observing that it was time to dress, and Sophy followed her from the room burning with indignant sympathy. 'It would be meanly subservient to ask pardon for defending a father whom he thought maligned,' said Albinia, and Sophy took exception at ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... two forces that aspire to substitute themselves for British rule, or at least to make the continuance of British rule subservient to their own ascendency. One is the ancient and reactionary force of Brahmanism, which, having its roots in the social and religious system we call Hinduism, operates upon a very large section—but still only a section—of the population who are Hindus. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... the master touch of Faith and Pain. And now his face, that perfect seemed before, Chiselled by these two careful artists, wore A look exalted, which the spirit gives When soul has conquered, and the body lives Subservient to ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... supposed to enter into a promise, and to cause its obligation. It is evident, that the will alone is never supposed to cause the obligation, but must be expressed by words or signs, in order to impose a tye upon any man. The expression being once brought in as subservient to the will, soon becomes the principal part of the promise; nor will a man be less bound by his word, though he secretly give a different direction to his intention, and with-hold himself both from a resolution, and from willing ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... the man of science. Upon a deserted island of the Pacific he established his dockyard, and there a submarine vessel was constructed from his designs. By methods which will at some future day be revealed he had rendered subservient the illimitable forces of electricity, which, extracted from inexhaustible sources, was employed for all the requirements of his floating equipage, as a moving, lighting, and heating agent. The sea, with its countless treasures, its ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... returned to his regular toil until the people were called together at Mizpah and proclaimed him king. Samuel supported him with his influence and the people gave him allegiance. He was for a while subservient to the will of God and greatly prospered. But later he became self-willed and failed to see that the nation was God's and not his. He developed a spirit of disobedience, perverseness and evil conduct that mark ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... of the picture may not at all depend upon form—nay, it is possible that the painter may wish to draw away the mind altogether from the beauty, and even correctness of form, his subject being effect and colour, that shall be predominant, and to which form shall be quite subservient, and little more of it than such as chiaro-scuro shall give; and in such a case colour is the more important truth, because in it lies the sentiment of the picture. The mystery of Rembrandt would vanish were beauty of form ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were subordinated and made subservient, and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks, but its edge must be sharp and single: if it be double the wedge ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... their dogs with us, for want of a valuable commodity on our side; so that it is wonderful we did not give ourselves up to despondency, and lay aside all farther attempts; but we were supported by that invisible Power, who can make the most untoward circumstances subservient to his gracious purposes. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... constant communication was kept up between all parts of the empire, and armies could be transported to quell a rising rebellion in some outlying province with the smallest expenditure of time and strength. In this way the genius of this wonderful people was providentially made subservient to the interests of Christianity. At the very time that our Lord commissioned, with His parting breath, the apostles to preach the gospel to every creature, the way was prepared for the fulfilment of that commission. The crooked places had been made ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... of Paul. The English ships were seized in all the ports, and, at the pressing instance of the Czar, a Prussian army menaced Hanover. Bonaparte lost no time, and, profiting by the friendship manifested towards him by the inheritor of Catherine's power, determined to make that friendship subservient to the execution of the vast plan which he had long conceived: he meant to undertake an expedition by land against the English ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... habit of yielding to trifles is detrimental to the development of strong character. Therefore," at this Miss Wilson drew herself up as tall as possible, and assuming Miss Morgan's best manner continued, "trifles must be made subservient to us. We must conquer ourselves even in these." Here Miss Wilson laughed merrily. "Being late; not having your necktie straight; letting your shoes run down at the heel; missing lectures—these, all these, and hundreds more, ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... fine arts, is seldom subservient to the promotion of either religion or virtue. Elegance is often indecency; ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets. It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely ...
— The Federalist Papers

... man, much smaller than his wife, with a certain air of defunct style about him. He had quite a fierce bristle of moustache, and a nervous briskness of carriage, yet there was something that was unmistakably conciliatory and subservient in his bearing toward Mrs. Jameson. He stood aside for her to enter the pew, with the attitude of vassalage; he seemed to respond with an echo of deference to every rustle of her silken skirts and every heave of her wide shoulders. Mrs. Jameson was an Episcopalian, and our church ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of the Indians was made subservient to the favorite purpose of Oglethorpe, by rousing attention to the improvement of the race in knowledge and religion. At their earliest interviews with him, they had expressed a wish that their children ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... indignant fury to a power which he was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people, which, in some remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in numerous swarms from the neighborhood of the Polar circle, to chastise the oppressors ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... "separate intelligences" among the philosophers. By this means the soul rises gradually to its perfection. With the practical reason it attends to noble and worthy conduct. All the other powers of the soul must be obedient to the behests of the practical reason. This in turn is subservient to the theoretical, putting its good qualities at the disposition of the speculative reason, and thus helping it to come into closer communion with the simple substances, the angels and God. This is the highest power there is in ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... of a politician than a doctor of diseases, and in important cases only is he called to treat in a healing ceremony. It requires a particularly capable Indian to attain the position of head medicine-man, for to do so he must not only make the people subservient to his will, but must wrest the leadership from some other and usually older medicine-man who is himself an influential character. Unfortunately it is apt to be the most crafty, scheming man who gains such power over ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... for payment in copper bracelets, and that he should accompany me with one hundred men to Kamrasi's country (Unyoro), on condition that he would restrain his people from all misdemeanours, and that they should be entirely subservient to me. It was the month of December, and during the nine months that I had been in correspondence with his party I had succeeded in acquiring an extraordinary influence. Although my camp was nearly three-quarters of a mile from their zareeba, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... are the principal causes of variation which are known to be in any marked degree under the control of man; and the effect of these is, doubtless, in some measure indirect and subservient to other laws, of reproduction, growth and inheritance, of which we have at present very imperfect knowledge. This is shown by the fact that the young of the same litter sometimes differ considerably from each other, though both the young and their parents have apparently ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... of the country, instead of laboring to foment sectional prejudices, to be made subservient to party warfare, were in good faith applied to the eradication of causes of local discontent, by the improvement of our institutions and by facilitating their adaptation to the condition of the times, this task would ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... men in whom some day a woman might awaken a really fine affection; but who, until that time, would maintain the perfectly male attitude to the entire sex, and, after it, to all the sex but one. Women were, like Life itself, creatures to be watched, carefully used, and kept duly subservient. The only allusion therefore that he made to Miltoun's trouble ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... aim at, as a combination of several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole, having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar end of each of the component arts, taken separately, is made subordinate and subservient,—that, namely, of imitating reality—whether external things, actions, or passions—-under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude imitates a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture; while a forest-scene is not presented to the spectators as a picture, but as a forest; and though, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... when it was most dreaded by the Northern Government. Nor was it to the disadvantage of the Southerners that the real head of the Federal army was the President, and that his strategical conceptions were necessarily subservient to the attitude of the Northern people. These were circumstances purely fortuitous, and it might seem, therefore, that Jackson merely blundered into success. But he must be given full credit for recognizing that a blow at Banks might be fraught ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... testified. Yet, in spite of all this, an occurrence so out of the course of events must have had some message for him, and it must have been his fault that he could not divine it. A sense of culpability grew upon him with the sense of his ignominy in cheapening it by making it subservient to what he knew was, in the last analysis, a wretched vanity. At least he could refuse himself that miserable gratification hereafter, and he got back some measure of self-respect in forbidding himself the pleasure he might ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... large-hearted toleration he had no hesitation in speaking out against the tendency of Romanism which unduly exaggerates the position of the priests, and puts the laity into a subservient position with regard to them. Writing from Khartoum with regard to the Abyssinians, ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... controlling principles of a democratic State is that its military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... neither was he so utterly alone as he might have been. For he was a cotton buyer. In 1855 there was no business like the cotton business. Everything else was subservient to that. The cotton buyer's part, in particular, was a "pretty business." The cotton factor was harassingly responsible to a whole swarm of planter patrons, of whose feelings he had to be all the more careful when they were in his debt. The cotton ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... misled from the consideration of qualities on which it ought to rely. Magnanimity, courage, and the love of mankind, are sacrificed to avarice and vanity; or suppressed under a sense of dependence. The individual considers his community so far only as it can be rendered subservient to his personal advancement or profit: he states himself in competition with his fellow creatures; and, urged by the passions of emulation, of fear and jealousy, of envy and malice, he follows the maxims of an animal destined to preserve ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... premature death. This is the moral which it is, we contend, the duty of the profession to draw from the daily events of life. The natural secretions of the human stomach are acid, and the acidity is subservient to the digestive functions. It cannot be superseded by artificial alkalinity without serious disturbance of nutrition; and the aim of treatment, in the case of all digestive derangements, should be to cure them by changing the conditions under which they arise, not to palliate ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... Ptolemaic system might still have been true. They might still be mere dots in a vast crystalline sphere, all set at about one distance, and subservient to the uses of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... over to the home of his betrothed, which was the home of her mother, where he could not fail to gradually succumb to the influence which that mother of Mitsha, a sensual, cunning, sly woman utterly subservient to her husband, would undoubtedly exert upon him. It was not maternal jealousy that beset her now and filled her with flaming passion, it was fear for her own personal safety. Under the influence of sudden displeasure human thought runs sometimes ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... and keep it, when regularly applied to the surface, for all time to come at the highest point of productiveness. Of all resources for wealth this is the most durable; and, on account of the industry to which it is subservient—the agricultural—is best calculated to promote the happiness ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... individual independence. He is shackled in slavery to the Minister to whom his importunities are addressed. He is simply a patriot on the make, despised by himself and despised by those to whom he addresses his subservient appeals. There was no place for such a one in Parnell's Irish Party, which embodied as nearly as possible that perfect political cohesion which is the dream of all great leaders. There were men of varying ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... been forced upon us by observation. Frequently have we lamented its application, and grieved that its holy mission were made to serve the vilest purposes in a land of liberty, of Christian love. Religion a means of degrading the masses-a subservient agent! It is so, nevertheless; and men use it whose only desire it is to make it serve a property interest-the interest of making men, women, and children, more valuable in the market. God ordained it for a higher ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... Michelangelo, while he was yet a youth, devoted himself not only to sculpture and painting, but also to all those other arts which to them are allied or subservient, and this he did with such absorbing energy that for a time he almost entirely cut himself off from human society, conversing with but very few intimate friends. On this account some folk thought him proud, others eccentric and capricious, although he was tainted with none of these defects; but, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... them the mysteries of science, and lead them upward to the God who made them, was a task for which she was well adapted. Being an ardent lover of the beautiful and grand in nature, she made the green fields, the blooming vineyards, the high, towering mountain all subservient to the purposes of instruction. Her residence among the Mohegans prepared her for her duties in Syria, and gave her the advantage of an experience which she could have acquired nowhere else. In the Sabbath school she was also most happily employed in instructing ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... on sight, when quick with dews, Like music of the very Muse. Great artists pass our single sense; We hear in seeing, strung to tense; Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, To think such beauty means a trap. But Nature's genius, even man's At best, is practical in plans; Subservient to the needy thought, However rare the weapon wrought. As long as Nature holds it good To urge her creatures' quest for food Will beauty stamp the just intent Of weapons upon service bent. For beauty is a flower of roots Embedded lower than our boots; Out of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... method in constant exercise. It was chiefly for the lack of ability and lack of disposition to put paper to proper use that the earlier European knowledge of paper- making was so barren of results. The art of book- making as it was then practised was made subservient to the spirit of luxury more than to the desire for knowledge. Vellum was regarded by the copyist as the only substance fit for writing on, even when it was so scarce that it could be used only for the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... darkening sky and thinking of Arthur Fenton. She had heard him talk too often about Mr. Peter Calvin not to know what was implied by this new friendship. Mr. Peter Calvin had been for years the head and front of Boston Philistinism in art. He had been the patron of subservient artists; the chairman of committees for the purchase of public statues; an elegant writer upon such live and timely topics as Plaster Casting among the Egyptians, Notes upon Abyssinian Statues, while his monograph ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... naval officers accustomed to use the ordnance material could know the dangers that might arise from faulty inspection, and that the producer had temptations in his path, especially under war conditions, to make inspection subservient to rapidity of production. Sir Eric Geddes finally waived his objections. He informed me that he based his arguments largely on his experience at the Ministry of Munitions, with which he had been associated earlier in the war. The contention of the naval officers at the Admiralty ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... by Tickell, that he employed wit on the side of virtue and religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others; and from his time it has been generally subservient to the cause of reason and of truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that had long connected gaiety with vice, and easiness of manners with laxity of principles. He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence not to be ashamed. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... to show why many of our foreign-born population look upon a government as "something from above." They are wont to be more subservient to it, or to look upon it as responsible for the welfare of its citizens. Therefore Socialism, which stands essentially for the dependence of the individual upon the State as well as for the governmental ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers

... was altered. Under the old law the Noblesse had about 42 per cent., and the peasantry about 38 per cent, of the seats; by the new electoral arrangements the former have 57 per cent, and the latter about 30. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the Assemblies are more conservative or more subservient on that account. Liberalism and insubordination are much more likely to be found among the nobles than ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... Franciscans, who were at the same time the most popular and the most papal of all preachers. In the following out of this policy, first several notable friars were imprisoned, and next a couple of subservient Religious, a Dominican and an Augustinian, were appointed grand ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... character. The lad was not compromised openly; and though the police had their suspicions, they had nothing to go upon, and the matter ended in a domiciliary visit which put Mrs. Rooney in a fine rage, for she had a curious subservient ambition to stand well with ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... economico-political boards. In the United States the people who prided themselves on their aloofness are already fighting over European interests. In Europe every nation's hand is raised against its neighbors, and every people's hand against its ruling class. Every government is making its policy subservient to the needs of the future war which is universally looked upon as an unavoidable outcome of the Versailles peace. Imperialism and militarism are striking roots in soil where they were hitherto unknown. In a word, Prussianism, instead of being destroyed, has been openly adopted by ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... past, and indulge their quiet hopes for the future. Very soon, indeed, the dream was dispelled; the tyranny proved to some unbearable; and some it vanquished in their highest part—their inward conscience—making them subservient when they might have shunned the danger altogether. But while the quiet interval lasted, it was like an Indian summer, prolonging the intellectual and tasteful beauty which was soon to be overwhelmed by the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various

... acquiring ascendency by the virtues of humanity and good faith. When it came to blows, they acquitted themselves like men conscious that they were the pioneers of History, that their footsteps were in the van of the onward march, that they were moulding the future, and making the world subservient to civilisation. They were Crusaders, coming the other way, and robbing the Moslem of their resources. The shipbuilding of the Moors depended on the teak forests of Calicut; the Eastern trade enriched both Turk and Mameluke, and ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... nature change to pity! I did require but him in this wide world; My beauty valued, but to gain his love! My wealth rejoiced in, but to share with him! He was my all! and every other 'vantage Was but of value as subservient to him. As is the gold of costly workmanship Round the fair gem imbedded in the centre. Oh! Gaspar, were I sure I could o'ertake Thy spirit, soaring up in its young flight, This little steel should free my anxious soul, To join thine in the high empyrean, And, fondly link'd, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... condemned to become an outcast inhabitant of the upper world. Their song was at length broken off, by observing one of their enemies viewing, with shivering limbs and looks of comfortless despair, the wild waves that dashed over the stack. Gioga immediately conceived the idea of rendering subservient to the advantage of the son the perilous situation of the man. She addressed him with mildness, proposing to carry him safe on her back across the sea to Papa Stour, on condition of receiving the seal- skin of Ollavitinus. A bargain was struck, and Gioga ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... system'd worlds, thou bears't a sacred charm, Grav'd on thy heart, to shelter thee from harm: And thus it speaks:—"Thou art my trust, O GOD! And thou canst bid the jarring powers be still, Each ponderous orb, like me, subservient to ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... says—"that these are the places where suspicious characters are wont to hatch their secret plans under the influence of alcohol." He complains at length of the anti-Austrian activities of the Serbo-Croatian Coalition, and this proves that the party was not, as its critics have said, too subservient ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... the judge, he has a great deal at stake; he may awaken so strong a prejudice that the judge knowing the rules of the game better than he does, may beat him on a technicality. On the other hand it is a mistake for the lawyer to be subservient and too cringing. Being a bully, the judge is apt to take advantage of his position. The best policy is to appeal to his human instincts as a man. He may be decent in spite of critics of the courts to the contrary notwithstanding. If he is ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... drive them away in wet weather; for, if one drop of water from a dog should fall on their raiment, their devotion would be interrupted and useless. They who are fond of hunting make their religion subservient to their pleasure, and say that greyhounds and setters are excepted from the general rule, because when not running these dogs are tied up where nothing unclean can reach them, and they are never suffered to eat any thing unclean. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... adopted by scientific men, and does not seem liable to any valid objection. The astonishment it may excite, is quite analogous to what is experienced on any discovery of the important ends to which the instinctive labours of other creatures are subservient, and is great, merely because of the conceived magnitude of the object to which it relates. But this affords no presumption against the truth of the theory; rather indeed, if the doctrine of final causes be allowed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... experiences in the supersensible world, and which could still be controlled in certain lower forms; these forces were used in the sanctuaries to direct the phenomena of nature in such a way as to make them subservient to man's personal interests. This ancient people still had a great mastery over those forces of nature which subsequently withdrew from the influence of the human will. The guardians of the oracles mastered ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... meal of the circle that belonged to the Museum; but the senseless revelry of Rome had found its way into the houses of the rich, and even the noblest achievements of the human mind had been made, unawares, subservient to mere enjoyment. A man was a philosopher only that he might be prompt to discuss and always ready to take his share in the talk; and at a banquet a well-told anecdote was more heartily welcome than some profound idea that gave rise to a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... father, a tyrannical brother, a friend of himself alone, wicked by nature—taking pleasure in insulting, outraging, and overwhelming others, and never in his life having lost an occasion to do so. His wit was great, but was always subservient to his wickedness. He was small, vigorous, and thin, with a lozenge-shaped face, a long aquiline nose—fine, speaking, keen eyes, that usually looked furtively at you, but which, if fixed on a client or a magistrate, were fit to make him sink into the earth. He wore ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of the earth, and made idols thereof a thousand parasangs high. What was worse, by means of the magic arts taught them by the angels Uzza and Azzael, they set themselves as masters over the heavenly spheres, and forced the sun, the moon, and the stars to be subservient to themselves instead of the Lord. This impelled the angels to ask God: "'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?' Why didst Thou abandon the highest of the heavens, the seat of Thy glory and Thy exalted Throne in 'Arabot, and descend to men, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... pastilles, he at last attracted some notice. If it requires time for genius to emerge from obscurity, no sooner is it known than recompense is made for slow injustice. It is sought after not for itself, but for the sake of vanity. Envy often avails itself of it as a fit instrument subservient to its own purposes. Soon, in fact, the works of Osmyn only were spoken of, and after languishing a long time unnoticed, he saw himself at once raised to the pinnacle, without having passed the steps which lead from misery to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various

... the place, Lady Bassett requested her people to open the carriage door, and she was in the act of getting out when Mr. Coyne appeared, a little oily, bustling man, with a good-humored, vulgar face, liable to a subservient pucker; he wore it directly at sight of a fine woman, fine clothes, fine ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... such good intention. I also considered myself perfectly capable of it, and again swore to myself an oath - no less sincerely meant and also no less fragile - that I would be a faithful and exemplary husband to her, and would at all times make my own happiness subservient ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... it is more than a turquoise, Mr. Warner. Jewellers have delved in it. It has become subservient to man's necessities. It ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... next day to have a long talk with Hadria about her work and her methods. He was absolutely confident of what he had said, but he was emphatic regarding the necessity for work; steady, uninterrupted work. Everything must be subservient to the one aim. If she contemplated anything short of complete dedication to her art—well (he shrugged his shoulders), it would be better to amuse herself. There could be no half-measures with art. True, there ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... operations herself, fills them with disgust and contempt. There is like to be trouble, I fear, with some of these. There is bold De Gamache, for example, who declares he would sooner fold up his banner and serve as a simple soldier in the ranks, than hold a command subservient to that of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... our guide, and our own ingenuity, fermentation has been made subservient to the various products we now obtain from saccharine and fermentable matters, such as sugar, molasses, grain, with which we have made wine, spirits, bread, beer, malt, &c.; which last has much facilitated ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... may be said that to employ is to devote to one's purpose, to use is to render subservient to one's purpose; what is used is viewed as more absolutely an instrument than what is employed; a merchant employs a clerk; he uses pen and paper; as a rule, use is not said of persons, except in a degrading sense; as, the conspirators used him as a go-between. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... because they represent most nearly the great national ideas and interests, which the people will require shall absorb legislation rather than any sectional institution whatever; and not because, primarily, they are the subservient idols of this or that party. It must be that, hereafter, party will be less and the nation more. Of course, parties will exist, necessarily; but if this great American people, having carried on to perfect success this war against a stupendous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... involuntary; resulting from no tyrannical disposition in himself, but from the instigations of his son. For in him paternal affection had too clearly become a mania; his son was all in all to him; he did his bidding, committed every crime at his pleasure, dealt out punishment at his command, was subservient to him in all things; the minister of a tyrant's caprice, and that tyrant his son. The young man left him in possession of the name and semblance of rule; so much he conceded to his years: but in all essentials he was the real tyrant. By him ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... that there is no warrior equal to thee. Knowing all this, I retain thy kingdom yet! A man never winneth success in consequence of the attributes of lineage. It is the Supreme Ordainer alone who by his fiat of will maketh things (hostile) friendly subservient. For these thirteen years, I have enjoyed sovereignty while ye were weeping. I shall continue to rule in the same way, slaying thee with thy kinsmen. Where was thy Gandiva then, when thou wert made slave won at stake? Where, O Falguni, was Bhima's might then? Your deliverance then came neither ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... ranks with the names of the first painters of any time or country, though his work as a painter was, as in the case of William Hogarth, subservient to his work as an engraver. With the knowledge of a later generation to that of the earliest Italian and Flemish painters, Albrecht Duerer had much of their singleness of purpose, assiduity of application, and profound feeling. He had to labour ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... uniformly (from our intercepted information) that all these city negotiators—Mr. Wentworths, Bourdeaux, &c.—insinuate themselves into these sort of affairs merely for private advantages, and make their trust principally subservient to stock-jobbing views, on which subject there appears to be a surprising communication with Paris. Mr. Oswald's officiousness in bringing over your despatch and other things I have been told since by those who know him, lead me to form this kind of opinion of him; but you will judge ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... divine energy of the Gospel. It was the general opinion, that education in all its parts should bear a fixed proportion to the frequency, spirituality, and power of the more formal preaching. Nor was it less clear, that the press should be kept strictly subservient to the pulpit. ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... villain. Knowing that it would be impossible for him to relinquish his reason into what he now denominated the partial hands of his aunt and cousin, he persisted in his opinion to both the ladies, that their unsuspicious natures had been rendered subservient ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... down their fertilizing rain, For Man the ripen'd harvest bending Waves with soft murmur o'er the plenteous plain. He spreads the sail on high, The rude gale wafts him o'er the main; For him the winds of Heaven subservient blow, Earth teems for him, for him the waters flow, He thinks, and wills, and ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... revolution. The evils of a lax society have been rebuked in various ways. Intemperance and disorder have been made to stand out as such, and already a spirit of rendering the use, or rather misuse of time, subservient to the general purposes of social dissipation, has been shown to be unwise and immoral in every view. More than all, the Sabbath-day has been vindicated as a part of time set apart as holy. The claims and obligations of the decalogue have been enforced; and the great ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... Government is beneficial, although the individuals who conduct it are frequently unskilful and sometimes contemptible. There is indeed a secret tendency in democratic institutions to render the exertions of the citizens subservient to the prosperity of the community, notwithstanding their private vices and mistakes; whilst in aristocratic institutions there is a secret propensity which, notwithstanding the talents and the virtues of those who conduct the government, leads them to contribute to the evils ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... architecture should arise again accidentally, it will no longer be mistress. It will be subservient to the law of literature, which formerly received the law from it. The respective positions of the two arts will be inverted. It is certain that in architectural epochs, the poems, rare it is true, resemble the monuments. In India, Vyasa ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... great rewards. With her as with the cave woman, the man's favor was the thing! If the cave woman won his approval with base service, she, the aspiring creature of modern times, was no less the slave of her own subservient instincts! And she had failed as the cave woman failed—as all women seemed eventually to fail. The ever-repeated tragedy of woman had merely been enacted once more, with ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... the great object of all these politics, the end at which they aimed, as well as the instrument by which they were to operate. But, before Parliament could be made subservient to a system, by which it was to be degraded from the dignity of a national council, into a mere member of the Court, it must be greatly changed from ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... (which is, in fact, an hereditary school of metaphysics) requires men set apart for the purpose, whose leisure tempts them to invention, whose interest prompts them to imposture. A symbolical religion is a proof of a certain refinement in civilization—the refinement of sages in the midst of a subservient people; and it absorbs to itself those meditative and imaginative minds which, did it not exist, would be devoted to philosophy. Now, even allowing full belief to the legends which bring the Egyptian colonists into Greece, it is probable that few among them were acquainted with the secrets of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... markedly in habits of growth from the American species so that it would not be expected that pruning which applies to the one would apply to the other types. The fundamentals, to be sure, are much the same and the different species of grapes are about equally subservient to the shears of the pruner, but while pruning to regulate fruit-bearing finds many similarities in Old and New World grapes, the training of the vines is ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... As all Beasts are Subservient to Man, and he a Liberty and Power to Use them, and make them his Instruments, for the Procurement of his Profit, or Pleasure; so is there not a Creature more Serviceable to man in either of these, as the Horse. A Beast Valiant, Strong, Nimble and Hardy, the Vivacity of ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... the humane doctrines of the immortal Monroe, Franklin, and Washington; unless the race of noble citizens, glorious founders of the present greatness of the North American Republic, have so degenerated that their benevolent influence has become subservient to the grasping ambition of the Expansionists, in which latter unfortunate circumstance would not ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy

... more easily govern the empire through a native ruler subservient to himself, Pizarro placed Manco, the true heir, on the Peruvian throne. In the meantime, however, parts of the empire rebelled against the new ruler and the Spanish usurpers. Then, when the rebellious tribes had been brought ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... the moral and intellectual qualities which render him fit for his post. Therefore, the higher his position, the greater must be the degree of honor paid to him, expressed, as it is, in titles, orders and the generally subservient behavior of others towards him. As a rule, a man's official rank implies the particular degree of honor which ought to be paid to him, however much this degree may be modified by the capacity of the masses to form any notion of its importance. Still, as a matter of fact, greater ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... crimes which she had never committed, and implicating in them her own brother and certain gentlemen in her service: among whom one Norris, and Mark Smeaton a musician, are best remembered. As the lords and councillors were as afraid of the King and as subservient to him as the meanest peasant in England was, they brought in Anne Boleyn guilty, and the other unfortunate persons accused with her, guilty too. Those gentlemen died like men, with the exception of Smeaton, who had been tempted by the King into telling lies, which he called confessions, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... and its adjustment to mental control owes its greatest stimulus to games. When physical strength, speed, or nimble adjustability is the pivot upon which the game depends, special muscles are made subservient to will: behind the game there is the stimulus of strong emotion, and here is the greatest factor in establishing permanent associations between body and mind; psychologists see in many of these games of physical activity the evolution of ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... also command, over his family; the slaves feared him; the children respected him; all held him dear; there prevailed in that house the manners and good discipline of our fathers. For on this condition is old age honored if it maintains itself, if it keeps up its own right, if it is subservient to no one, if even to its last breath it exercises control over its dependents. For, as I like a young man in whom there is something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something of the young; and he who follows this maxim, in body will possibly be an old man, but he will never ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... no natural affection for the country. The king generally bestowed the governorships of the American colonies upon needy noblemen, or hangers-on at court, or disbanded officers. The people knew that such persons would be very likely to make the good of the country subservient to the wishes of the king. The Legislature, therefore, endeavored to keep as much power as possible in their own hands, by refusing to settle a fixed salary upon the governors. It was thought better to pay them ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Syria, and we travelled through the country together; but by this time I did not choose to be the mere tool of my brother's will, for I had grown prouder, and it seemed to me that the father of my child ought not to be subservient, even to his own brother. We often quarrelled, and had a bad time together, and life became quite unendurable, when—about eight weeks since—Paaker came back from Thebes, and the king gave him to understand that he approved more of my reports than of his. From my childhood I have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... intriguers about the person of the old bigotted King George the Third, who immediately took the alarm, or rather took this opportunity of getting rid of a ministry that he never liked, and with whom he had never acted cordially, although they had, in the most subservient manner, complied with all his whims and prejudices. Now was the time then for the remains of the Pitt faction to make an effort to dislodge their enemies from their strong hold of place and power! Alas! alas!! the despicable Whigs ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... Wherever one went one was reminded in glaring letters that, after all, man was little better than a worm, that eyeless, earless thing that burrows and lives uncomplainingly amidst nutritious dirt, "an alimentary canal with the subservient appendages thereto." But in addition to such boards there were also the big black and white boards of various grandiloquently named "estates." The individualistic enterprise of that time had led to the plotting out of nearly all the country round the seaside towns into roads and building-plots—all ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... over us to make us morally better or worse. I am not speaking then of belief in the great objects of faith, when I speak of Catholicism, but I am contemplating Catholicism chiefly as a system of pastoral instruction and moral duty; and I have to do with its doctrines mainly as they are subservient to its direction of the conscience and the conduct. I speak of it, for instance, as teaching the ruined state of man; his utter inability to gain Heaven by any thing he can do himself; the moral certainty of his losing his soul if left to himself; the simple absence ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... change—a very great change indeed. It was inevitable. A life so narrow, so circumscribed, so barren of beauty, lived so solitarily, away from every softening influence, was bound to work a subtle and relentless change. The man of one idea is apt to starve his soul in his effort to make it subservient to the furtherance of his solitary aim. To be a successful man, to win by his own unaided effort a position which would entitle him to meet Gladys Graham on equal ground, such was his ambition, and it never did occur to him that this ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... so difficult, hitherto so imperfect, that we ought, I think, to consider well the circumstances before we stigmatize Cicero as specially false. To my reading he seems to have been specially true. When Caesar won his way up to power, Cicero was courteous to him, flattered him, and, though, never subservient, yet was anxious to comply when compliance was possible. Nevertheless, we know well that the whole scheme of Caesar's political life was opposed to the scheme entertained by Cicero. It was Cicero's desire to maintain as much as he could of the old form of oligarchical rule under ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... justice and right should guide men in their reforms; that robbery and injustice in the name of liberty and progress are still robbery and injustice, to be visited with righteous retribution; and that those rulers and legislators who cannot make passions and interests subservient to reason, are not fit for the work assigned to them. It is miserable hypocrisy and cant to talk of a revolutionary necessity for violating the first principles of human society. Ah! it is Reason, Intelligence, and Duty, calm as ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... Stripped of these particulars, the elements of the tale are identical in all versions, Eastern and Western: a talisman, by means of which its possessor can command unlimited wealth, &c.; its loss and the consequent disappearance of the magnificent palace erected by supernatural agents who are subservient to the owner of the talisman, and finally its recovery together with the restoration of the palace to its original situation. The Arabian tale is singular in the circumstance of the talisman (the Lamp) being recovered by human means—by the devices of the hero himself, in fact, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... an inn on New-market road to be lett, they disguised themselves in proper habits for the persons they were to assume, and jointly took this inn, in which each in his turn officiated as master; but they soon made this subservient ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... slippers, and thrust them on her passive feet. She lay back and closed her eyes. From the movements that she heard, she gathered that Walter was getting into his clothes. Once, as he struggled with an insufficiently subservient shirt, he laughed, from mere miserable nervousness. Anne, not recognising the utterance of his helpless humanity, put that laugh down to the account of the devil that had insulted her. Her heart ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... the conversation she was talking to his son, and the Squire, frowning, turned to the Hon. Mrs. Winlow. Her attention was automatic, complete, monosyllabic; she did not appear to fatigue herself by an over-sympathetic comprehension, nor was she subservient. Mr. Pendyce found ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... to magnify his own imprudence, in raising him to that office against the advice of his more sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and profuse, the avarice and ambition of Apocaucus were by turns subservient to each other; and his talents were applied to the ruin of his country. His arrogance was heightened by the command of a naval force and an impregnable castle, and under the mask of oaths and flattery he secretly conspired against his benefactor. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... wife, with a sister, with your best friend's sister, you know just what to do! It's a definite relation! Prescribed by a definite emotion! But a daughter? Oh, ye gods! Your whole sexual angle of vision changed! A creature neither fish, flesh, nor fowl! Non-superior, non-contemporaneous, non-subservient! Just a lady! A strange lady! Yes, that's exactly it, Eve—a strange lady—growing eternally just a little bit more strange—just a little bit more remote—every minute of her life! Yet it's so—damned intimate all the time!" ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... a mere succession of interests and activities, each gone into for its own sake, will not suffice. They could comprehend, that the multiplicity of interests and activities in detail, instead of constituting of themselves the purpose of life, were to be regarded as things subordinate and subservient to a general scope, and judged of, selected, and regulated, in reference and amenableness to it.—By the presiding comprehensive purpose, we do not specifically and exclusively mean a direction of the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... importance men who have never enjoyed the public confidence. The language of these revolutionists is, respecting the men in power in Connecticut, "We will not have these men to rule over us"—We will fill their places with men of our choice—the creatures of our hands, and who will be subservient to our views. But, my countrymen, before you join in this project, pause and enquire, who are these men who thus assert their claim to rule over you? Who are these men who place themselves in the corners of the streets ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... only from those individuals which vary most in a desirable direction, man leads the course of variation as he leads a streamlet—apparently at will, but never against the force of gravitation—to a long distance from its source, and makes it more subservient to his use or fancy. He unconsciously strengthens those variations which he prizes when he plants the seed of a favorite fruit, preserves a favorite domestic animal, drowns the uglier kittens of a litter, and allows only the handsomest or the best mousers ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... the defile, which was now unguarded, and rescues his army out of a snare in which, had Fabius been but a little more vigorous, it would either have been destroyed, or at least very much weakened. It is glorious for a man to turn his very errors to his advantage, and make them subservient to ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... in thought and life. Our female schools are but poor apologies for the purposes of mind-culture and soul-development. The idea of life they inspire is but a skeleton of custom-service and fashion-worship. It is altogether subservient to what is, not what should be. Society does little else than to teach its girls to be dolls and drudges. The prevailing current of instruction and influence is deplorably low. I feel confident that the best part of society is longing for something ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... are the every-day business of one of these manufactories, all of which I saw going on at the same instant, without bustle or effort. Iron, the most universal, the most durable, and most economical of the metals, is thus made subservient to the wants of man, at a time when his improvidence in the use of timber has rendered some substitute necessary. New applications are daily made of it, and a new face is, by its means, promised to society. ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... derive it rather from the act of shutting the eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly." Of such is the counsel of St. Luis de Granada, "Imitate the sportsman who hoods the falcon that it be made subservient to his rule;" and of another Spanish mystic, Pedro de Alcantara: "In meditation, let the person rouse himself from things temporal, and let him collect himself within himself ....Here let him hearken to the voice of God...as though there were no other in the world save God and himself." ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... which a general action would entail. I must obtain my recall forthwith, and lay my plans before the Admiralty. They must listen to me; they can scarcely refuse to consider my plans. They won't do it for love; they never do love a man who has got brains in his head, unless those brains are subservient to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... the flush of blitheness and whirl of activity, Albinia failed to perceive the relative importance of objects, and he had taught her to believe herself so little necessary to him that she had not learnt to make her pursuits and occupations subservient to his convenience. As long as the drive took place regularly, all was well, but he caught a severe cold, which lasted even to the setting in of the east winds, the yearly misery of a man who hardly granted that India was over-hot. Though Albinia had removed much listing, and opened ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Yanni, the only native Protestant in Tripoli, who had been two years connected with the mission church, and had suffered much for the cause of Christ. He had refused the honorable and highly lucrative post of vice-consul for Russia, because its acceptance would necessarily have made him subservient to the corrupt Greek Church, and an ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... equal to his ruler, and allows no royalties or prerogatives to abridge his birthright of liberty. [49] Yet I have observed, that with all their passion for independence, the Somal, when subject to strict rule as at Zayla and Harar, are both apt to discipline and subservient to command. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... dress than the picturesque mediaeval costume) were points of paramount importance. My mother, though undoubtedly very anxious that I should look well, was of course far more desirous that I should act well, and judged that whatever rendered my dress most entirely subservient to my acting, and least an object of preoccupation and strange embarrassment to myself, was, under the circumstances of my total inexperience and brief period of preparation, the thing to be chosen, and I am sure that in the main she judged wisely. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble



Words linked to "Subservient" :   subservience, servile, helpful, implemental, submissive, instrumental



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