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Subversion   Listen
noun
Subversion  n.  The act of overturning, or the state of being overturned; entire overthrow; an overthrow from the foundation; utter ruin; destruction; as, the subversion of a government; the subversion of despotic power; the subversion of the constitution. "The subversion (by a storm) of woods and timber... through my whole estate." "Laws have been often abused to the oppression and subversion of that order they were intended to preserve."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subversion" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Peru," the action, so far as it is founded on the subversion of the Incas, terminates long before the close of the narrative. The remaining portion is taken up with the fierce feuds of the Conquerors, which would seem, from their very nature, to be incapable of being gathered round a central point of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... led into the temptation of partisan pride or party predilection; besought them to remember that their own just powers were loaned to them by the people at the polls, and that they must decide the people's will and not their own political preference; implored them not to hazard the subversion of that supreme law of the land; and finally begged them to receive, and neither despise nor spurn, their earnest petition, remonstrance, but preserve and promote the safety and welfare and, above all, the honor of the commonwealth committed ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... will be seen by the remarks already made, I have many things to say that the community cannot yet bear, it need not escape the observation of the most careless reader, that I aim at nothing less than an entire ultimate subversion of the present system of cookery, believing it to be utterly at war with the laws of God, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... Athenais, under Brotteaux's very roof, he is the accomplice of the said girl and the said ci-devant nobleman. During his imprisonment at the Conciergerie he has never ceased for one single day writing pamphlets aimed at the subversion of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... But in this pretended Assembly there were no free voicing; for the voicers were threatned to voice affirmative, under no lesse pain nor the wrath of authoritie, imprisonment, banishemnt, deprivation of ministers, and utter subversion of the state: Yea, it was plainly professed, that neither reasoning nor the number of voices should carie the matter away: Which is qualified by the declaration of many honest old reverend Brethren of the ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... party embraces the remnants of the anti-Revolutionary Aristocracy, most of the influential Priesthood, and a small section of the rural Peasantry; all these combined may number Four Millions, leaving Thirty Millions for the Nation. Such is France in 1851; and, being such, the subversion of the Republic, whether by foreign assault or domestic treason, is hardly possible. An open attack by the Autocrat and his minions would certainly consolidate it; a prolongation of Louis Napoleon's power ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... answer—misgovernment by white men and black men who were lifted into a "little brief authority" by a mighty but unwieldy voting force. That black man who connived at and shared in the corruption in the South which resulted in the subversion of the majority rule, is a traitor to his race and his country, wherever he may now be eking out a precarious and inglorious existence, and I have nothing to heap upon his head but the curses, the execrations of an injured people. Like Benedict Arnold he ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... High God, and cast contempt on His holy religion, by pretending to receive revelations direct from heaven, by pretending to speak unknown tongues by direct inspirations, and by divers pretences derogatory of God and religion, and to the utter subversion ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... had read letters addressed to Philip, and letters written by him and by his confidential friends; and he was able to say, as a thing heard with his own ears, and seen with his own eyes, that the "Spaniards minded nothing less than the subversion of the English commonwealth." In fact, he repeated the rumours of the summer, only more circumstantially, and with fuller details. Under pretence of improving the fortifications, Philip intended to obtain ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions, but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... into a complete 'fetisch' worship, divorced from philosophy, and made up of a faith without thought, and a credulity directed by passion. Afterwards, indeed, philosophy revived under condition of defending this very superstition; and, in so doing, it necessarily led the way to its subversion, and that in exact proportion to the influence of the philosophic schools. Hence it did its work most completely in Germany, then in England, next in France, then in Spain, least of all in Italy. We must, therefore, take the poetry of Dante as christianized, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... to be disputed, where any one of them is already established; but the present ought alwaies to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best; because it is against both the Law of Nature, and the Divine positive Law, to doe any thing tending to the subversion thereof. Besides, it maketh nothing to the Power of any Pastor, (unlesse he have the Civill Soveraignty,) what kind of Government is the best; because their Calling is not to govern men by Commandement, but to teach them, and perswade them by Arguments, and leave it to ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... in course of publication, under the editorship of D'Alembert and Diderot, to which Voltaire, Rousseau, and others contributed, entitled "The Encyclopaedia." It was a description of the entire circle of human knowledge; but the dominant idea which pervaded it was the utter subversion ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... Man's descent from Apes. It was felt, and is felt by many to this day, that the advancement of that theory grossly and dangerously violated every canon of decency. What pain, then, might have been averted, what far-reaching consequences and incalculable subversion of primitive faiths checked, if some judicious Censor of scientific thought had existed in those days to demand, in accordance with his private estimate of the will and temper of the majority, the suppression of the doctrine ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... periods may be traced from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, when the Roman monarchy, having attained its full strength and maturity, began to verge towards its decline; and will extend to the subversion of the Western Empire, by the barbarians of Germany and Scythia, the rude ancestors of the most polished nations of modern Europe. This extraordinary revolution, which subjected Rome to the power ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... the common people into endless mistakes, and the Woman would gain whatever the Circles lost, in the deference of the passers by. As for the scandal that would befall the Circular Class if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the Women were imputed to them, and as to the consequent subversion of the Constitution, the Female Sex could not be expected to give a thought to these considerations. Even in the households of the Circles, the Women were all in favour of the Universal ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... lewd to work, and ready for any kind of mischief. Owing to these co-operating causes, a huge population of outcasts was produced, numerous enough seriously to infest society, yet not so large as to threaten its subversion. ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... accumulated, there the will—uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative—waits threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not say this as ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... manifesto. In this document he announced to the people of France that he entered the country as the ally of their sovereign, and with the purpose of visiting on Paris an "exemplary and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance . . . military execution and total subversion," and of bringing "the guilty rebels to the death they have deserved." Copies of the manifesto reached Paris on the 3rd of August, with immediate effect. To Louis the Prussian general's utterances appeared so incredible that they were promptly disavowed ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... pollution of the sacred element water, when he diverted the course of the river Gyndanes in order to recover the body of a horse which had been drowned in it, and that Darius I. invokes in his inscriptions Ormazd or Ahura Mazda, the deity of the Avesta. [350] On the subversion of the Persian empire by Alexander, and the subsequent conquest of Persia by the Arsacid Parthian dynasty, the religion of the fire-worshippers fell into neglect, but was revived on the establishment of the Sassanian dynasty of Ardeshir Babegan or Artaxerxes ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... full of instruction on the subject of colonization. The establishment of colonies, in all ages, with scarcely an exception, has resulted either in their subversion by the vices or physical strength of the natives, or by a fatal amalgamation with them; or else in the rapid destruction of the natives by the superior knowledge and greedy avarice of the new settlers. It is presumption ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... Sir, the Act which changes the charter of Massachusetts is in many particulars so exceptionable that if I did not wish absolutely to repeal, I would by all means desire to alter it, as several of its provisions tend to the subversion of all public and private justice. Such, among others, is the power in the Governor to change the sheriff at his pleasure, and to make a new returning officer for every special cause. It is shameful to behold such a regulation standing ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... the Mother of Chastity on the part of a churchman openly unchaste in flagrant subversion of his vows is a strange and incongruous spectacle. But the incongruity of it is illumining. It reveals Alexander's simple attitude towards the sins of the flesh, and shows how, in common with most churchmen of his day, he found no conscientious difficulty in combining fervid devotion with perfervid ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... self to the family, from the family to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some utterly insignificant ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... primogeniture. He soon arrogated to himself the whole power. The project he had formed, when he favoured the revolution of the 18th Fructidor, was now about to be realized. It was then an indispensable part of his plan that the Directory should violate the constitution in order to justify a subsequent subversion of the Directory. The expressions which escaped him from time to time plainly showed that his ambition was not yet satisfied, and that the Consulship was only a state of probation preliminary to the complete establishment of monarchy. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden and entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, and even animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so inadequate a cause: and it might well be passed silently, were it not that, under some form or ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... it necessary to afford them the occasion of committing crimes that even you cannot excuse by the facility and assurance of absolution which you offer them? . . . The licence which your teachers have assumed of tampering with the most holy rules of Christian conduct amounts to a total subversion of the Divine law. They violate the great commandment which embraces the law and the prophets; they strike at the very heart of piety; they take away the spirit which giveth life. They say that the love of God is not necessary to ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... we have even seen a patrician magistracy conceded as an offering to the people. The aid of tribunes, right of appeal to the people, the acts of the commons made binding on the patricians under the pretext of equalizing the laws, the subversion of our privileges, we have borne and still bear. What termination is there to be to our dissensions? when shall it be allowed us to have a united city? when to have one common country? When defeated we submit ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... Whether anything less than the utter subversion of those Republics can break the banks of ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... and Austria became as clearly pronounced as it had been in the reign of Francis I.; and at the time of his death that most popular of the Bourbon kings was engaged on a plan having for its object the subversion of the Austrian power. His assassination changed the course of events for a few years; but Richelieu became the ally of the Swedes and Protestant Germans in the Thirty Years' War, though he was a Cardinal, had destroyed the political power of the Huguenots, and might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... destroyed, the service of God withdrawn, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the patrons and curates wronged, the defence of the land against outward enemies feebled and impaired, to the great displeasure of God, the subversion of the policy and good rule of this land, if remedy be not hastily therefor purveyed: Wherefore, the King, our Sovereign Lord, by the assent and advice, etc., etc., ordereth, enacteth, and establisheth that no person, what estate, degree, or condition he be, that hath any house or houses, ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... were provided for the hapless Watson. Welbeck's movements were hurried and tremulous. His countenance betokened a mind engrossed by a single purpose, in some degree foreign to the scene before him. An intensity and fixedness of features were conspicuous, that led me to suspect the subversion of his reason. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... petition, not expected to be granted; to insult a king-with a rude remonstrance, only because there is no punishment for legal insolence, is not courage, for there is no danger; nor patriotism, for it tends to the subversion of order, and lets wickedness loose upon the land, by destroying the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... This subversion, commenced by art and learning in the inner man, was carried out to fulness and finished by the spirit of innovation in government. It was, no doubt, reasonable to expect that the simple organisation of the primitive ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... appropriate—that is, the religious interest—confessed that it was practically successful. From whom, then, came the attempt to change? Why, from those only who had an alien interest, an indirect interest, an interest of ambition in its subversion. As matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron of each benefice, acting under the severest restraints—restraints which (if the church courts did their duty) left no room or possibility for an unfit man to creep in—nominated the incumbent. In a spiritual ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... position, much more when united with that avowed inveteracy of malignant feeling, which was bitter enough to rouse a re-action of bitterness in the mind of Lord Clarendon, would go far to account for the wreck of many memorials relating to Shakspeare, as well as for the subversion of that quiet and security for humble life, in which the traditional memory finds its best nidus. Thus we obtain one solution, and perhaps the main one, of the otherwise mysterious oblivion which had swept ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... The House had clearly given up the policy of the question. They had been determined by the justice of it. Why were they then to be troubled again with arguments of this nature? These, if admitted, would go to the subversion of all public as well as private morality. Nations were as much bound as individuals to a system of morals, though a breach in the former could not be so easily punished. In private life morality took pretty good care of itself. It was a kind of retail article, in which the returns were ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... resorted to this extraordinary expedient. His reply was, (as well as I can remember,) that Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other slaves,—one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave refused to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves, and the ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... single subject; so eventful was the history of the siege, and so great the importance attached to the capture of the place. The fall of Chateau Gaillard was almost immediately followed by the total subversion of the power of the Norman Dukes; but, as to the fortress itself, though its situation was no longer such as to give it importance, Brito expressly states, that Philip bestowed great pains upon the restoring of its damaged works, and upon augmenting its strength by the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... (who would believe it?) a vicar-general of the Inquisition in France, by name Brother Martin.[8] It was one of the most horrible effects of the total subversion of that unfortunate country. Brother Martin claimed the prisoner as smelling of heresy (odorantem haeresim). He called upon the Duke of Burgundy and the Comte de Ligny, "by the right of his office, and of the authority given to him by the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... and climbing without virtue? did he not forbid thee to aim at any action that should not be honorable? and what will be more prejudicial to thy credit, than the careless ruin of thy brothers' welfare? why, shouldst not thou be the pillar of thy brothers' prosperity? and wilt thou become the subversion of their fortunes? is there any sweeter thing than concord, or a more precious jewel than amity? are you not sons of one father, scions of one tree, birds of one nest, and wilt thou become so unnatural as to rob them, whom thou shouldst relieve? No, Saladyne, entreat them with favors, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... virtue. The gospel of rebellion we know to be specious and without justification; but it is essential to us, as human beings, to maintain self-approval for our acts. If we cannot do this socially, by comparative standards, we do it unsocially, by subversion of those standards. Rebels are only prigs turned upside down ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... heartily commending! So often is the Babe of Bethlehem nurtured by those who, seeing him as he is, a fair and beautiful child, welcome and worship him; but who, looking through the mists of prejudice, especially fearing through him some subversion of their power, position, or interest, cry: "Away with him! ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... ordinances of the Prophet disregarded. The Shah, who is a pious prince, and respects the Ullemah, and who holds the ceremony of marriage sacred, complained to the head of the law, the mollah bashi, of this subversion of all morality in his capital, and, with a reprimand for his remissness, ordered him to provide a remedy for the evil. The mollah bashi (between you and me, be it said) is in every degree an ass,—one ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... would never feel himself justified, by the provisions of an Act of Parliament passed under evil auspices, in permitting a Parliament to be elected under conditions which necessarily implied a complete subversion of every constitutional principle. There is such a thing as pedantic reverence for statute law. It is perfectly clear that a statute which provided that electors might proceed themselves to elect ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... the parliament, that all the abuses of government which could justly be imputed to Richard, instead of amounting to tyranny, were merely the result of error, youth, or misguided counsel, and admitted of a remedy more easy and salutary than a total subversion of the constitution. That even had they been much more violent and dangerous than they really were, they had chiefly proceeded from former examples of resistance, which, making the prince sensible of his precarious situation, had obliged ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... and the unhinging of society, instead of that peace and good-will inculcated by our divine Legislator. It is the division of the Protestant church which has occasioned its weakness in this country, and will probably eventually occasion, if not its total subversion, at all events its subversion in the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Americans ever supposed, that one consequence of democratic principles, is, the subversion of marital power, or the confusion of the natural authorities in families. They hold, that every association must have a head, in order to accomplish its object; and that the natural head of the conjugal association is man. They do not, therefore, deny him the ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... system of grammar, received from time immemorial; but to improve upon it, in its present application to our tongue. That which is excellent, may not be perfect; and amendment may be desirable, where subversion would be ruinous. Believing that no theory can better explain the principles of our language, and no contrivance afford greater facilities to the student, the writer has in general adopted those doctrines which are already best known; and has contented himself with attempting little more than ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... shape which, like the magicians of old commanding their familiar spirits, the great magician of our age commanded her to assume. Peace—the rights of man—the mutual ties of nations—the freedom of the serf and the slave—the subversion of all the abuses of the ancient thrones—all the old nominal principles of revolutionary patriotism, were instantly thrown aside, like the rude weapons of a peasant insurrection, the pike and the ox-goad, for the polished and powerful weapons of royal armouries. In all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... It is, therefore, the subversion of an unprincipled (the term is of the strictest accuracy) ruling class, or aristocracy, and the obliteration of their peculiar power, that we have to accomplish. This power consists wholly of certain peculiar interests as masters. To deprive them of these, is the only ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... generally affected those who possessed that class of property, and in numberless instances produced pecuniary embarrassment; while the slave owners who are proprietors of plantations have not alone lost the capital invested in their slaves, but the subversion of the ancient normal order in the colonies, but in addition thereto, they are exposed to the imminent risk of seeing their estates, buildings, and fabrics eventually reduced to no value whatever. Most assuredly the circumstances which precede the emancipation, cannot be brought forward ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... impulses—states almost entirely disassociated from her conscious life—has all but taken possession of her higher self. The restraint of the later-developed, governing, moral self being weakened, the witches and wolves are leaping forth to vex and destroy. Over this fortuitous subversion of her soul's kingdom Clarke now rules like a ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... though teeming with population and imbibing and concentrating the wealth of nations, has vegetated through a succession of drowsy ages; and were it not for its internal revolution, and the subversion of its ancient government by the Tartars, might have presented nothing but a dull detail of monotonous prosperity. Pompeii and Herculaneum might have passed into oblivion, with a herd of their contemporaries, had they not been fortunately overwhelmed by a volcano. The renowned ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... and Raleigh went up and left Lawrency below, where they had secret conference in a gallery; and after, Cobham and Lawrency departed from Raleigh. Your jargon was Peace: what is that? Spanish invasion, Scottish subversion. And again, you are not a fit man to take so much Money for procuring of a lawful Peace, for Peace procured by money is dishonourable. Then Cobham must go to Spain, and return by Jersey, where you were Captain: and then, because Cobham had not so much policy, or at ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... the State for the family is most detrimental in any sphere of life. In matters of education it is nothing short of a disaster. The "State School Teacher" is an anomaly. It is the subversion of true social order for it constitutes "an unwarranted interference of the State in a function preeminently social. Education is a social function and cannot be converted into a governmental charge without violence to it." What Treitsche said of the Judiciary ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... destruction.——Nothing less than this seems to have been meditated for us, by somebody or other in Great Britain. There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot, to enslave all America.—This however must be done by degrees.——The first step that is intended seems to be an entire subversion of the whole system of our Fathers, by the introduction of the canon and feudal law, into America.——The canon and feudal systems though greatly mutilated in England, are not yet destroyed. Like the temples and palaces, in which the great contrivers ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... engaged in an activity of so-called subversion for a positive reason, not merely to avoid insufficient work load. Your reason shows you are still being moved by the values that you despise. We want to cut the work-production load on people. We want them to face the problem ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... Christ reaches its full meaning only through infant baptism. His own infancy, as we have already seen, is a warrant of this. Without it He cannot penetrate and rule in every natural stage of human life. Hence a denial of infant baptism is a subversion of the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. The very constitution of the Christian family, its unity and mission must be overthrown; for infant baptism is incorporated with the nature of christianity itself, with the conception and necessities of the individual Christian life, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... Subversion of the sex urge to ulterior purposes has dragged it to the level of the gutter. Recognition of its true nature and purpose must lift the race to spiritual freedom. Out of our growing knowledge we are evolving ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... make himself despot. The Ostracism was the means devised by Clisthenes for removing quietly from the state a powerful party leader before he could carry into execution any violent schemes for the subversion of the government. Every precaution was taken to guard this institution from abuse. The senate and the ecclesia had first to determine by a special vote whether the safety of the state required such a step to be taken. If they ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... cannot accede to that. Now the North has inaugurated this policy. We of the South say it is a subversion of the Constitution. The gentleman must as freely admit that the party just coming into power must of necessity be a Northern party. It can have no affiliation with any party at the South. Now I ask, can we, as a matter of policy or justice, whose rights ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... working to bring down tribal prejudices against the coming of the schools. He had his work cut out for him in the Dogon, the old men, the tribal elders they called Hogons, instinctively knew that the coming of education meant subversion of their institutions and the ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... Augustine", "Of Evangelical Counsels", "Of Perfection of Heart", and in other places. For this reason the princes and cities should be admonished to strive rather for the reformation of the monasteries by their legitimate superiors than for their subversion—rather for the godly improvement of the monks than that they be abolished; as their most religious ancestors, most Christian princes, have done. But if they will not believe holy and most religious fathers defending monastic vows, let them hear at least His Imperial Highness, the Emperor Justinian, ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous

... defence of the Nicene Fathers is (like every thing else from such men) most worthy of all attention. They contend that no other term but [Greek: homoousia] could secure the Christian faith against both the two contrary errors, Tritheism with subversion of the unity of the Godhead on the one hand, and creature-worship on the other. For, to use Waterland's mode of argument, [4] either Eusebius of Nicomedia with the four other dissenters at Nice were right or wrong in their assertion, that Christ could not be of the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... Indians who inhabit this island, are indeed Mahometans, and therefore have no reason to regret the want of wine; but, as if the prohibition of their law respected only the manner of becoming drunk, and not drunkenness itself, they chew opium, to the total subversion not only of their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... the old government held mercantile pursuits, and the obloquy that attached on merchants and manufacturers, contributed not a little to its embarrassments, and its eventual subversion; and, strange to tell, though the mischiefs arising from this mode of conduct are so obvious, yet an article is proposed for your adoption which has a manifest tendency to restore a ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... a description of the monkey and its antics, and a long account of a chase all over the ship, in which all the ship's company including the captain took part, to the subversion of discipline and navigation. But you see—he switches off at once to Liosha and the trivial records of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... and fast rules could be drawn to distinguish between a casual remark made in another country as to one's preference for one's own country, and an active subversion design to subvert another country to one's own ideology. But nevertheless, the activity of subversion had become an illegal act under the meaning of "security." And individual governments had recalled agents from their neighboring countries—not only agents, but simple tourists as well. For the ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the Roman empire in the West, the bishops of the Imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... and privileges, as their fellow-subjects in Great Britain; that the act lately passed for blockading the port of Boston was contrary to the British constitution; that the act for abolishing the charter of Massachusetts Bay tended to the subversion of American rights; that the Parliament of Great Britain had not, nor ever had, the right to tax his Majesty's American subjects; and that every demand for the support of government should be by requisition made to the several houses of representatives. The resolutions covered all the grievances ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... far. But she would never do it—never. She declared she would write to this Mr. Arnold and thank him, and ask him to pray for her, "and she as much as ordered me to go and do the same," concluded Mrs. Sand with an inflection which made its own comment upon such a subversion of discipline. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... significance to the welfare of civilization is the complete subversion during the world war of nearly all the international laws which had been slowly built up in a thousand years. These principles, as codified by the two Hague Conventions, were immediately swept aside in the fierce struggle for existence, and civilized man, with his ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... upon Mr. Hastings, that, by never taking a single step to defeat or detect the falsehood of any of those charges against him, and by punishing the authors of them, he has been guilty of such a subversion of all the principles of British government as will deserve, and will I dare say meet, your ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Egyptian intrigues with Tyre and Jerusalem would cease, and that he could henceforth devote himself to his projects against Busas without being distracted by the fear of an Ethiopian attack and the subversion of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... slow subversion and sale, that rent in pieces the revenues of the Cathedral, caused the Senor Esteban as much indignation as though the bailiffs had entered his house in the Claverias to remove the family furniture, each piece of which embalmed ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... this subversion of the ancient establishment, Steele, whose pen readily seconded his political passions, endeavoured to alarm the nation by a pamphlet called "The Plebeian." To this an answer was published by Addison, under the title of "The Old Whig," in which ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... the great seal, within four persons (one of them our professed enemy) are impowered to receive and determine all complaints and appeals according to their discretion, subjects us to the arbitrary power of strangers, and will end in the subversion of our all. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... at the sea side in a readiness. If their first appointment to Dublin had been kept, they might have been there; but now they tarry to pass with the deputy. Sir, for the love of God, let some aid be sent to Dublin; for the loss of that city and the castle were the plain subversion of the land."—Allen to Cromwell, Oct. 4: State Papers, Vol. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... passions of the times had passed away, he reiterated his opinion that Adams and Hamilton were at that time seeking the subversion of republican institutions in the United States. "The one [Adams]," he said, "was for two hereditary branches, and an honest elective one; the other [Hamilton] for an hereditary king, with a house ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... of Theobald Wolfe Tone, for the subversion of English Government in Ireland, and the supreme sacrifice he made in the mighty effort to erect in its stead an independent Ireland free from all foreign denomination and control, was fittingly commemorated on Sunday last, when ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... by the simple sentence, "The certainty was not, for both their honours, openly known!"] True, that in his change of party he was not, like Julian of Spain, an apostate to his native land. He did not meditate the subversion of his country by the foreign foe; it was but the substitution of one English monarch for another,—a virtuous prince for a false and a sanguinary king. True, that the change from rose to rose had been so common amongst the greatest ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... advocate assassination or anarchism has been adverted to when we were considering the rights of aliens. In England, it is treason to imagine the death of the king. There is no constitutional reason why it should not be treason to imagine the death of the president, or perhaps even the subversion by force of organized society. Such laws have been passed in ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... punished heretics at home, it was partly to secure on his side the common sentiment of the Roman Catholic world, partly because the enemies of the Reformation had persuaded him that the change of religion necessarily involved the subversion of established order and of royal authority. If he made overtures to the Protestant princes of Germany, the flimsy veil of devotion to their interests was too transparent to conceal the total want of concern for anything beyond his own ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... Is it probable, therefore, that the supreme and irresponsible power, which is now claimed for Congress over boundless territories, the use of which cannot fail to react upon the political system of the States, to its subversion, was ever within the contemplation of the statesmen who conducted the counsels of the people in the formation of this Constitution? When the questions that came to the surface upon the acquisition of Louisiana were presented to the mind of Jefferson, ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... stirring in him and tears moved down his cheeks and he turned, quickly and silently, and went out the back door. He was no child at his mother's knee, he was no mewling kitten—he was a Security Officer and this was subversion. ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault

... taking a young girl on trial makes more serious men think than fools laugh. The manners of Germany, of Switzerland, of England and of the United States give to young ladies such rights as in France would be considered the subversion of all morality; and yet it is certain that in these countries there are fewer ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... as certain she would never have gone had it not been for the unpaid bills haunting her consciousness, a combination of demon and ghost. The misery had all the time been growing upon her, and must have had no small share in the subversion of her microcosm. When that was effected, the evil thing that lay at the root of it all rose and pounced upon her. Wrong is its own avenger. She had been doing wrong, and knowingly for years, and now the plant ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... a pretext to the dignified clergy, irritated at the loss of their estates, for concerting a combined resistance to the new laws, in the hope that this resistance would lead to a subversion which would restore to them their riches. Thence the refusal of the oath "to be faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king, to guide faithfully the flock intrusted to their care, and to maintain with all their power the constitution ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... person named Johnston stood upon what he considered his rights, and would allow no acquaintance to be made between his meal and the iron ladle of the Dumfries hangman. The latter, seeing in this the subversion of every fundamental principle of social order, to say nothing of the loss threatened to his means of subsistence, carried his complaint to the magistrates. Consequently the Dumfries Hampden was forthwith haled to prison. He was not, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... at length against the idea that justice, i.e., the keeping of covenants, is contrary to reason; repelling three different arguments. (1) He demonstrates that it cannot be reasonable to break or keep covenants according to benefit supposed to be gained in each case, because this would be a subversion of the principles whereon society is founded, and must end by depriving the individual of its benefits, whereby he would be left perfectly helpless. (2) He considers it frivolous to talk of securing ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... its two Hebrew occupants, into the road, where they fell, head-foremost, into the mire, growling profanely, like tigers that have learned German imperfectly, and were trying to swear, in choice Teutonic, about the peculiar qualities of Limburger cheese. In their sudden subversion, the Israelites dropped three fine watches out of their pockets, and the mule, with an unprecedented voracity, and determined on having a good time, ate the chronometers without any apparent detriment to digestion. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... Henry earl of Darnly, a proclamation was made in 1565, signifying, That forasmuch as certain rebels who, under the colour of religion, (meaning those who opposed the measures of the court) intended nothing but the subversion of the commonwealth, therefore they charged all manner of men, under pain of life, lands, and goods, to resort and meet their majesties at Linlithgow on the 24th of August. Upon Sabbath the 19th, the king came to the high church of Edinburgh, where Mr. Knox preached ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... the acts which have driven the Parliament to taking up a hostile attitude to him, yet holds it his duty to support him against the violent men who have now assumed power, and who are aiming at the subversion of the constitution and the loss of ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... perceive the Abbey lands have fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge, to ask also those colleges. And, whereas we had a regard only to pull down sin by defacing the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all goodness, by subversion of colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I judge no land in England better bestowed than that which is given to our universities; for by their maintenance our realm shall be well governed when we be dead and rotten. As you love your welfares therefore, follow no more this vein, but content ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... declaring in their most confidential correspondence that the party of confusion made no way with the country, and produced no effect. Horne Tooke was its most conspicuous chief, and nobody pretended to fear the subversion of the realm by Horne Tooke. Yet Burke, in letters where he admits that the democratic party is entirely discountenanced, and that the Jacobin faction in England is under a heavy cloud, was so possessed by the spectre of panic, as ...
— Burke • John Morley

... medicines, so they are done by reason, are the end of health, and not health of them, they, I say, trifle like to those who say, Let us sup, that we may offer sacrifice, that we may bathe. But this rather changes order and custom, and all things which these men say carry with them the total subversion and confusion of affairs. Thus, we do not desire to take a walk in fit time that we may digest our meat; but we digest our meat that we may take a walk in fit time. Has Nature also made health for the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... intensity, and not only involving finally the ruin of the Ashikaga shogunate but also subverting all law, order, and morality. Sons turned their hand against fathers, brothers against brothers, and vassals against chiefs. Nevertheless, amid this subversion of ethics and supremacy of the sword, there remained always some who reverenced the Throne and supported the institutions of the State; a noteworthy feature in the context of the fact that, except during brief intervals, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... back all that had been conquered from her; and when she rejected the negotiation for peace upon these grounds, are we then to be told of the unrelenting hostility of the combined Powers, for which France was to revenge itself upon other countries, and which is to justify the subversion of every established government, and the destruction of property, religion, and domestic comfort, from one end of Italy to the other? Such was the effect of the war against Modena, against Genoa, against Tuscany, against Venice, against Rome, and against Naples; all of which she engaged ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... events were in progress, which led to the subversion of British power in America, an under-current of feeling, if not of incidents, was running in this valley, which threatened to wash away the foundations of the captain's authority. Joel and the miller, if not ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... their arrival in this country, feign themselves, as in Germany, to be pilgrims; or as in France, to be penitents; neither of which impositions would have been well adapted to the temper of the government of Henry VIII; or to his subversion of papal power, and abolition of monastic influence. The character they assumed, was the best adapted to establish their reputation, for the arts and deception they intended to practise in England. The fame of Egypt in astrology, magic, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... in Caius we see the splendid impetuosity of chivalrous devotion. And yet Caius was, without doubt, the greater statesman of the two. The measures, into which his brother was as it were forced, were by him well understood and deliberately planned. They amounted to nothing less than a subversion of the existing state. The senate destroyed meant Gracchus sovereign. Under the guise of restoring to the people their supreme power, he paved the way for the long succession of tyrants that followed. His policy mingled patriotism and revenge. The corruption and oppression that ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... your front and back? Suppose, madam, your son were told, that he could not get out except in lower garments of carnation or amber-colored plush—would you let him? . . . But as you justly say, this is not the question, and besides it is a question fraught with danger, sir; and radicalism, sir; and subversion of the very foundations of the social fabric, sir. . . . Well, John, we won't enter on your great domestic question. Don't let us disport with Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge-tools about his knife-board: but with Betty and Susan ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... officers at the War College in July, 1961, Mr. Barnett denounced "crackpots" who hunt "pinkos" in local colleges. He said the theory that internal subversion is the chief danger to the United States is fallacious—and is harmful, because it has great popular appeal. Belief in this theory, Mr. Barnett said, makes people mistakenly feel that they "don't have to think about ... strengthening NATO, or improving foreign aid management, or volunteering for ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... Lisbon in 1499, and again received the command of a squadron in 1502; he died at Cochin in 1525, after having lived to witness his country sovereign of the Indian seas from Malacca to the Cape of Good Hope. "The consequence of his discovery was the subversion of the Turkish power, which at that time kept all Europe in alarm. The East no longer paid tribute for her precious commodities, which passed through the Turkish provinces; the revenues of that empire were diminished; the Othmans ceased to be a terror to the western world, and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... words was a question which one that was at this time in the company of the disciples put to Jesus Christ; the question was this, "Lord, are there few that be saved?" (verse 23) A serious question, not such as tended to the subversion of the hearers, as too many now-a-days do; but such as in its own nature tended to the awakening of the company to good, and that called for such an answer that might profit the people also. This question also well pleased Jesus Christ, and he prepareth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... to be maintained mainly by the presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and prompter, the selection ought to be made in accordance with other principles. The substitution of the priest or preacher in the place of the husband or guardian, presupposes or foreshows a subversion more or less of the most essential relations of family life. The necessity of resorting to this means of gaining or maintaining power must degrade the clergy who depend on it, by tempting them to arts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... Duke of Brunswick," said Napoleon, sternly. "His name and titles have been buried on the battle-field of Auerstadt. What would he who sent you have to say if I were to inflict on the city of Brunswick that subversion with which, fifteen years ago, he threatened the capital of the great nation which I command?[22] The Duke of Brunswick has disavowed the insensate manifesto of 1792; one would have thought that with age reason had begun to get the better of his passions, and yet he ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... effects and consequences of these proceedings,—namely, the dilapidation of the revenues, and the ruin and desolation of the provinces. And, my Lords, what else could have been expected or designed by this sweeping subversion of the control of the Company's servants over the collections of the revenue, and the vesting of it in a black dewan, but fraud and peculation? What else, I say, was to be expected, in the inextricable turnings and windings of that black mystery of iniquity, but the concealment of every species ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... his abode carried away, and his fields and plantations devastated, to tell him that the agent of this ruin was only a transient mountain torrent. A short prevalence of the overturning force would have sufficed for the subversion of the proudest, longest established state of privilege; and most improbable would it be, that those who lost it in the tumult, would find the new authority, of whatever shape or name it were, that would arise ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... dismissed, and those whom she had displaced were restored to power; De Luynes was formally invested with the confiscated property of Concini; and a new Government was organized which had for its leading object the subversion ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... the Mexican war, its editors have been digging their ditches on the wrong side of their breastworks. To say the least, their position is a very strange one, for men who profess to labor for the subversion of American slavery. It would be as rational to pour oil upon a burning edifice, to extinguish the fire, as to attempt to overthrow that system under the rule of free trade. For, whatever differences of opinion may exist on the question of free trade, as applied to the nations ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations, before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... he was sitting with his highness. On my offering the services due from my office, this worthless minion turned on me, and accused me of having declined joining the army for the sole purpose of executing some plot in London, devised between me and my Scottish partisans for the subversion of the English monarchy. I denied the charge. He enforced it with oaths, and I spurned his allegations. The prince, who believed him, furiously gave me the lie, and commanded me as a traitor to leave his presence. I refused to stir an inch till I made the base heart ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Tilden and General Hayes, and the high degree of tension between the opposing parties and their managers, filled the country with alarm, in the midst of which General Smith was consulted by the friends of Mr. Tilden, with the view of devising measures against the possibility of a subversion of the government by military or arbitrary power, but fortunately the device and action of the Electoral Commission averted all danger of that sort. The timid and vacillating behavior of Mr. Tilden during the emergency and afterwards was, however, a powerful ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson

... Munich address surprised me so much, and none so plainly betrayed the subversion of his most important scientific views, as that which he directed against my observations on psychology and cellular physiology. A mystic dualism in his fundamental views is here revealed, which stands in the sharpest contrast to the mechanical monism ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... these things, charging [men] before the Lord not to debate about words, to no profit, to the subversion of the hearers. [2:15]Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a workman that will not be put to shame, rightly dividing the word of truth. [2:16]But profane and vain words, avoid; for they greatly increase impiety, ...
— The New Testament • Various

... will at the same time determine how far it may be expedient to provide for the event of a subversion of the Spanish authorities within the Territory in question, and an apprehended occupancy thereof by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson

... and dispatch. In this he is not disappointed, as the officers and men under his command have such confidence in his judgment that they work out his plans with enthusiasm. He is fair to all classes, but will not tolerate movements that make for the subversion of the constitution or the wanton disturbance of law and order. Intensely Canadian, he is not insular, for few men in his line have read more extensively in the fields of history. Having made these notes on the men who have guided ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... payment of this kind, therefore, instead of alleviating, aggravates, in most cases, the loss of the creditors of the public; and, without any advantage to the public, extends the calamity to a great number of other innocent people. It occasions a general and most pernicious subversion of the fortunes of private people; enriching, in most cases, the idle and profuse debtor, at the expense of the industrious and frugal creditor; and transporting a great part of the national capital from the hands which were likely to increase and improve it, to those who are likely to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... begins with an entire subversion of every one of the compacts by which the United States became possessed of their Western domain, and treats the subject as if they never had existence and as if the United States were the original and unconditional owners of all the public lands. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... quality of dispenser of justice, with all the power which he as legislator thinks proper to give himself. But, where the legislative and executive authority are in distinct hands, the former will take care not to entrust the latter with so large a power, as may tend to the subversion of it's own independence, and therewith of the liberty of the subject. With us therefore in England this supreme power is divided into two branches; the one legislative, to wit, the parliament, consisting of king, lords, and commons; the other executive, consisting of the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... movement is directed to the immediate subversion of British rule, we need not exaggerate its importance, unless the British Empire were involved in serious complications elsewhere which might encourage the seditious elements in India to break out into open ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, then Rector of Northill, had published in the early part of 1671, a book entitled "The Design of Christianity." A copy having found its way into Bunyan's hands, he was so deeply stirred by what he deemed its subversion of the true foundation of Evangelical religion that he took up his pen and in the space of six weeks composed a long and elaborate examination of the book, chapter by chapter, and a confutation of its teaching. Fowler's doctrines as Bunyan understood them—or ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... that, if they can but gain their ends,—the subversion of the Government, and the return of the negro to his former state ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... foundlings increased to this extraordinary extent by the too easy admission in the asylums of girls who had become mothers, along with their infants; through the passing sojourn of soldiers in their houses; through the subversion of every principle of religion and morality."—Gers, by Balguerie: "Many defenders of the country became fathers before their departure.... The soldiers, on their return, maintained the habits of their conquests.... Many of the girls, besides, for lack of a husband took a lover."—Moselle, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... straightforward. Revolutionaries, he had been told, are found in greatest quantity among a civilization's most depressed elements. Poverty breeds dissatisfaction; the have-nots want to take from those who have. Therefore, the logical place to look for subversion is ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... that art should be moral, we should rather say that all true morality is art—that art is the test of morality. To attempt to make this heavenly Pegasus draw the sordid plough of our selfish moralistic prejudices is a grotesque subversion of true order. Why should the novelist make believe that the wicked are punished and the good are rewarded in this world? Does he not know, on the contrary, that whatsoever is basest in our common life tends irresistibly to the highest places, and that the selfish element in our nature is ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... state of Illinois, by the charter of their legion, but then there are no troops in the States like them in point of discipline and enthusiasm; and led on by ambitious and talented officers, what may not be effected by them? perhaps the subversion of the constitution of the United States; and if this should be considered too great a task, foreign conquest will most certainly be attempted. The northern provinces of Mexico will fall into their hands, even if Texas should first ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... 61. [Subversion of Order; bringing into disorder.] Derangement. — N. derangement &c. v.; disorder &c. 59; evection[obs3], discomposure, disturbance; disorganization, deorganization[obs3]; dislocation; perturbation, interruption; shuffling &c. v.; inversion &c. 218; corrugation &c. (fold) 258; involvement. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Northern subserviency to Southern dictation is the price paid by a Northern administration for Southern support. The people of the North still support by their suffrages the men who have truckled to Southern domination. I believe it impossible that this total subversion of every principle of liberty should be much longer submitted to by the people of the free states of this Union. But their fate is in their own hands. If they choose to be represented by slaves, they will ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... that a grocery clerk—both at twelve a week, or less!! Immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers to pay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in New England), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights (things then unknown in America, of course), loomed in the minds of these conventional Americans as the natural and immediate result of so modest a victory. The old-time politicians and corporations who understood much better what the point was, the significance of this straw, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... having already obtained the Crimea, was intent upon the subversion of the Ottoman empire, that she might acquire Constantinople as her maritime metropolis in the sunny south. Joseph was willing to allow her to proceed unobstructed in the dismemberment of Turkey, if she would not interfere with ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... not over-hasty to carry him away, or despair of him; (nor is it of any ominous concern at all, but the contrary) fausti ominis, as Pliny says; and gives many illustrious instances: And as to other strange and unusual events following the accidental subversion of trees; concerning omens; and that some are portentous, others fortunate, of which see{329:1} Pierius, speaking of a garden of the Duke of Tuscany, belonging to a palace of his at Rome, a little before the death of Pope Leo; and before this, about the time of our ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... called by the revolutionary organizations whose aim was the subversion of the regime under which those monstrosities flourished at last produced an effect on the parliament. One day in July the French Chamber left the Cabinet in a minority by proposing the following resolution: "The Chamber, noting that the cost of living in Belgium ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... contained their designs against religion—a proceeding which, however, appears to have been a strategical manoeuvre for restoring confidence in the Order and enabling him to continue the work of subversion and crime. A veritable Reign of Terror was thus established throughout the East; the Rafiqs and Fadais "spread themselves in troops over the whole of Asia and darkened the face of the earth"; and "in ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... Gospel, should so easily be persuaded by the false apostles to return to the weak and beggarly elements of the Law. I would not be surprised to see my church perverted by some fanatic through one or two sermons. We are no better than the apostles who had to witness the subversion of the churches which they had planted with their own hands. Nevertheless, Christ will reign to the end of the world, and that miraculously, as He did ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... that "the greatest disorders and most of the outbreaks of violence in connection with industrial 'disputes arise from the violation of what are considered to be fundamental rights, and from the perversion or subversion of governmental institutions'' (p. 146). It mentions, among such perversions, the subservience of the judiciary to the mili- tary authorities,[33] the fact that during a labor dispute the life and liberty of every man within ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... which, from their point of view, was the exact truth. Amongst the men concerned in the preliminaries of the 1863 movement my father was no more revolutionary than the others, in the sense of working for the subversion of any social or political scheme of existence. He was simply a patriot in the sense of a man who believing in the spirituality of a national existence could not bear to ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... according to the practice of ordinary justice, the resources of the penal code would all have been placed at the disposal of the political tribunals. But the weapon with which they are intrusted is an imperfect one, and it can never reach the most dangerous offenders, since men who aim at the entire subversion of the laws are not likely to murmur ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... capable of the strongest religions excitement, and very sensitive to disrespect to their persona or infringement of their customs. . . . In the native army alone rests our internal danger, and this danger may involve our complete subversion. . . . ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... commendation of their tale.' Judging from its decline, they have predicted its fall. Half a century ago, the historian of the middle ages expected with an assurance that 'none can deem extravagant,' the approaching subversion of the Ottoman power. Although deprived of some of its richest possessions and defeated in many a well-fought field, the house of Othman still stands—amid crumbling monarchies and subjugated countries; the crescent still glitters on the Bosphorus, and still the 'tottering arch ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... her fleets were no longer to be feared by Carthage as a protection to the Hellenic world; and for two centuries to come, her interventions in Sicily were incessant. Now, the presence of a foreign foe in Sicily gave intriguers for power at Syracuse their opportunity, of which the outcome was the subversion of the democracy and the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... potentates have repeatedly travelled to Rouen, for the purpose of witnessing it. There are not wanting, however, those[55] who treat the whole story as allegorical, and believe it to be nothing more than a symbolical representation of the subversion of idolatry, or of the confining of the Seine to its channel; the winding course of the river being typified by a serpent, and the word Gargouille corrupted from gurges. Other writers differ in minor points of the story, and alledge that ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... memorable outbreak, which acquired additional importance from the fact, that it resulted in the entire subversion of British authority in this, the only section among the Green Mountains where it ever gained a foothold. And not small the praise, which, in view of the circumstances, should be awarded to the hardy spirits by whom this miniature revolution was achieved; for, so great was the power ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... ball-room we found Cousin Jehoiakim already dancing with a red-haired young lady, in a blue gauze dress. Seeing us, and wishing to astonish us, he attempted a quadruple pigeon-wing, which unfortunately entangled his great feet in the blue gauze dress, and ended in his own subversion and the dismemberment of the thin gauze. The young lady was obliged to retire for the night, while Cousin Jehoiakim slowly picked himself up. He was so much abashed I had to console him by asking him to dance ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various



Words linked to "Subversion" :   subversive activity, overthrow, debasement



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