"Ascendency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... direction, vying with, and even eclipsing the nobility in lavish expenditure—in some instances, driving the aristocracy to spend more money than they could afford, and thereby impoverishing them; in others, forcing admittance into their circles. Wealth and public opinion have latterly gained the ascendency, and the aristocracy are now more looked up to on account of their large possessions than of their high birth. Now this has been nothing more than a demand for greater liberty and more extended rights on the part of the commoners of England, in proportion ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... killed Pompeius, and that, when he tried to bribe a centurion with a signet-ring to spare him, the centurion replied that he was not going to seal a bond but slay a tyrant. But Cinna probably died as he lived, a brave man, and one who could not have held ascendency for so long, and over men like Sertorius, had he not been an able as ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... deadly chill passed over him, as it had done at the Jew's first charge—not doubt; such heresy to his creeds, such shame to his comrade and his corps could not be in him; but a vague dread hushed his impetuous vehemence. The dignity of the old Lyonnesse blood asserted its ascendency. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... a great ascendency over the mind of Theodore himself, and this, of itself, very much increased her importance in the eyes of the courtiers. They all began to think that, if they wished to obtain any favor of the emperor, it was essential that they should stand well with ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... repeatedly approached me with adventurous schemes for the exploitation of my notorious fiasco. I could not on any account consent to adopt any of these, and was glad to find this really capable man safe under the eagle-wing of Liszt's 'ascendency.' Liszt took him everywhere where there was a possibility of a fortune being found. Whether this helped him into anything or not, I never knew. I only heard that he died a short time afterwards, certainly not from ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... wrought upon the land was yet more terrible. A seething tide of Greek and Moslem blood heaved to and fro, as, during the second half of 1821, each party in turn gained temporary ascendency in one district after another. Greeks murdered Turks, and Turks murdered Greeks, with equal ferocity; or perhaps the ferocity of the Greeks, stirred by bad leaders to revenge themselves for all their previous sufferings, even surpassed that of the Turks. Of their cruelty a glaring ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... two races in physical, mental, and moral characteristics will prevent an amalgamation or fusion of them together in one homogeneous mass. If the inferior obtains the ascendency over the other, it will govern with reference only to its own interests for it will recognize no common interest—and create such a tyranny as this continent has never yet witnessed. Already the Negroes are influenced ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... the English Government engages to use all its influence with Shere Ali in order to induce him to maintain a peaceful attitude, as well as to insist on his giving up all measures of aggression or further conquest. This influence is indisputable. It is based, not only on the material and moral ascendency of England, but also on the subsidies for which Shere Ali is indebted to her. Such being the case, we see in this assurance a real guarantee for the maintenance ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... defeat all your efforts to get at emancipation, and to prepare for it. It is on this account, that I wish it settled in your minds, as a fixed and immutable principle, that there is and can be no property of man in man. Adopt this principle, and give it that ascendency over your minds to which it is entitled;—and slavery is swept away.—Speech of Rev. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... as the founder of the classical school of English poetry, in which Dryden and Pope excelled, and which remained in the ascendency for more than a century after his death. "The excellence and dignity of rhyme," says Dryden, "were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it; he first made writing easily an art, first showed us to conclude the sense, most commonly, in distichs, which in the verse of those before him runs on for ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... London. So sure was he of the strength and predominance of this patriotic sentiment in England that he made his appeal almost exclusively to it, in asking in 1880 for a fresh lease of power. The occasion was critical, he said. "The peace of Europe, and the ascendency of England in the councils of Europe" depended upon the verdict the country was now called upon to give. The policy of the party opposed to his own was declared to be a "policy of decomposition." But the concession of self-government in the form demanded by the Irish ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... point. They voted for most of the sanguinary decrees, although in time they strove to mitigate the horrors inflicted by the extreme party; but after a long conflict the latter, supported by the mob of Paris, obtained the ascendency, and the Girondists underwent the same fate that had befallen so many others. For myself, I cannot pity them. They were all men of standing and of intelligence but, without perceiving the terrible results that must follow, they unchained the ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... And then—this announcement! Momentarily it turned his heart to water. Now that he was confronted by an exigency that had once vicariously yet deeply disturbed him in a similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime gained an immediate ascendency—since then he had insisted that this particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him—would she remain desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... while frankly answering your question, to say the most fatal policy for the south would be by such agencies as I have mentioned to secure again political ascendency in this country, for I assure you that the manhood and independence of the north will certainly continue the struggle until every Republican in the south shall have free and unrestricted enjoyment of equal civil and political privileges, including a fair vote, a fair count, free ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... question one is surprised to discover how slow the extension of English has been in the face of apparently far less convenient tongues. English still fails to replace the French language in French Canada, and its ascendency is doubtful to-day in South Africa, after nearly a century of British dominion. It has none of the contagious quality of French, and the small class that monopolizes the direction of British affairs, and probably ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... content with shows and symbols—he gradually gave it the chief place in his regard. He valued wealth as the instrument of authority. It secured him power; a power, however, which he had no care to employ, and which he valued only as tributary to the maintenance of that haughty ascendency over men which was his heart's first passion. He was neither miser nor mercenary; he did not labor to accumulate—perhaps because he was a lucky accumulator without any painstaking of his own: but he was, by nature an aristocrat, and not unwilling ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... and greater knowledge of the world gave her an ascendency over the girlish wife such as age has over youth. There were not ten years between them, and yet Maude felt that for some reason the conversation between them could not quite be upon equal terms. The quiet assurance of her visitor, whatever its cause, made resentment ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... legitimacy," says Mr. Wright, "which dethroned Napoleon," inspired its followers in foreign lands with new zeal, fresh devotion, and increased prospects of ascendency. In England the most servile of that faction had the malignity to invent and publish, by means of the dishonest portion of the daily press, the grossest and most painful calumnies against the Duke of Orleans. The Bourbon faction, expert at calumny and intrigue, employed ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... of ourselves we should not forget that fear plays a large part in the drama of failure. That is the first thing to be dropped. Fear is a mental deficiency susceptible of correction, if taken in hand before it gains an ascendency over us. Fear comes with the thought of failure. Everything we think about should have the possibility of success in it if we are going to build up courage. We should get into the habit of reading inspirational books, looking at inspirational ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... the deserts of Africa, where it was found in constant use among the Booshuanas, a people, till very lately, totally unknown; and it is equally singular, that an herb of so disagreeable a taste should, by habit, obtain an ascendency so far over the appetite, as ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... because others do it, and not because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in its own right, is to resign all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go post-haste to the devil with the greater number. We smile over the ascendency of priests; but I had rather follow a priest than what they call the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepys illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For what can be more untoward ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... throwing to the winds all his habits of prudence and parsimony, was now secretly providing for Mathilde. She had gained an ascendency over him by ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... By public—private. The "public" were the steps taken by Servius to establish his political ascendency, whilst the "private" refer to those intended to ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... the last century were but the inevitable fruits of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman's favourite principles. Christ's religion had been corrupted in the long period before the Reformation, but it had ever retained many of its main truths, and it was easy, when the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep away the corruptions, and restore it in ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... I saw clear enough even at this time. It was the design and hope of Wetter and his friends to break down Hammerfeldt's power and obtain a political influence over me. Hammerfeldt's political dominance seemed to them to be based on a personal ascendency; this they must contrive to match. Their instrument was not far to seek. The Countess was ready to their hand, a beautiful woman, sharpest weapon of all in such a strife. They put her forward against the Prince in the fight whereof I was the prize. All this I saw, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... America and Australia. But this very fact makes them all the more fierce and stubborn when some issue arises which stirs their inmost mind, and it is a fact to be remembered by those who have to govern them. The things they care most about are their religion, their race ascendency over the blacks, and their Dutch-African nationality as represented by their kinsfolk in the two Republics. The first of these has never been tampered with; the two latter have been at the bottom of all the serious difficulties that have arisen between them and the English. That which ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... impenetrable business-like way I can only repeat that I do assuredly feel, even on this short acquaintance, a strange, half-willing, half-unwilling liking for the Count. He seems to have established over me the same sort of ascendency which he has evidently gained over Sir Percival. Free, and even rude, as he may occasionally be in his manner towards his fat friend, Sir Percival is nevertheless afraid, as I can plainly see, of giving any serious offence to the Count. I wonder whether ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... in some leading features and principles of the constitution wrought by the Reform Bill of 1832, exceeds any that were enacted by the Bill of Rights or the Act of Settlement. The only absolutely new principle introduced in 1688 was that establishment of Protestant ascendency which was contained in the clause which disabled any Roman Catholic from wearing the crown. In other respects, those great statutes were not so much the introduction of new principles, as a recognition of privileges of the people which had been long established, but which, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... his father a quasi-royal position, obtained the full possession of the Bactrian throne by the crime of parricide. It is conjectured that he regarded with disapproval his father's tame submission to Parthian ascendency, and desired the recovery of the provinces which Eucratidas had been content to cede for the sake of peace. We are told that he justified his crime on the ground that his father was a public enemy; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take these—say, symbols—down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . 'I don't want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... and it ended in the slow and difficult triumph, the final ascendency of the "Yeas" of Life over the "Nays," which in truth his character secured. He won the difficult fight not as a philosopher, but as a Christian; impelled, chastened, brought into line again, by purely Christian memories and Christian ideas. The thought of Christ healed ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... appears from Mr. Hope-Scott's papers that, in May 1869, he was giving his weight to the opposition against the Scottish Education Bill, as a measure, in its original form, based on the principle of Presbyterian ascendency, and was advocating a denominational system in the ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... Africans at once interpreted to themselves as the manifestation and inherent attributes of beings of a higher order than man. Their skin, too, the difference whereof from their own had been accentuated by many calamitous incidents, was hit upon as the reason of so crushing an ascendency. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... active patriotism is not bounded by sectional limits nor insensible to that spirit of concession and forbearance which gave life to our political compact and still sustains it. Discarding all calculations of political ascendency, the North, the South, the East, and the West should unite in diminishing any burthen of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... power soon became visible in the foreign relations of Athens. Pericles had succeeded to the political principles of Themistocles, and his aim was to render Athens the leading power of Greece. The Confederacy of Delos had already secured her maritime ascendency; Pericles directed his policy to the extension of her influence in continental Greece. She formed an alliance with the Thessalians, Argos, and Megara. The possession of Megara was of great importance, as it enabled the Athenians to arrest the progress of an invading army from Peloponnesus, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... but, this time, there was little hope. The Republican party, which Napoleon annihilated a month later, was in the ascendency. That of the Counter-Revolution was compromised by its odious excesses. The people demanded examples, and matters were arranged accordingly, as is ordinarily the custom in strenuous times; for it is with governments as with men, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... quarters before even his absence had been suspected. His agency in the death of his brother was not suspected even by his accomplice in other crimes, the outlaw called Black Donald, who, thinking to gain an ascendency over one whom he called his patron, actually pretended to have made way with Eugene Le Noir for the sake of ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... was qualified to fill with honor a subordinate station, without aspiring to dispute the commands, or to shade the glories, of his sovereign and benefactor. After an obstinate, though secret struggle, the opposition of the favorite eunuchs submitted to the ascendency of the empress; and it was resolved that Julian, after celebrating his nuptials with Helena, sister of Constantius, should be appointed, with the title of Caesar, to reign over ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... been absurd in so young a people; and for months, and even years, the fierce contests of political parties in the United States made a declaration of war against either aggressor impracticable. Now the Franco-maniacs were in the ascendency, and the country rang with praises of France,—the nation which had cast off aristocrats, and, like America, was devoted to republican principles; the nation which had aided the Colonies in their war for freedom. What though a French privateer did occasionally seize ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the music of the unseen choir of sound seemed to grow deeper and fuller and grander,—and Felix Bonpre, caught up, as it were, out of all earthly surroundings, and only made conscious of the growing ascendency of Spirit over Matter, saw the bare building around him beginning to wondrously change its aspect. Slowly, as though a wind should bend straight trees into an arching round, the plain walls took on themselves a form of perfect architectural beauty,—like swaying ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... uses the Church to extort money, power, and privilege. He is a priest neither by vocation nor ambition, but because the life suits him. He has boundless authority over his flock, and taxes them stiffly enough to be a rich man. The old Protestant ascendency is now too broken to gall him. On the whole, an easygoing, amiable, even modest man as long as his dues are paid and his authority and ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... of organization and competition a comparatively recent discovery. On the contrary the spontaneous relations among men, as we see in the case of children, and as we may infer from the life of the lower animals, are highly competitive, personal prowess and ascendency being everything and little regard being paid to descent simply as such. The regime of inherited status, on the other hand, is a comparatively complex and artificial product, necessarily of later growth, whose very general prevalence among the successful societies of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of the whole of those causes combined is, that the North has acquired a decided ascendency over every department of this Government, and through it a control over all the powers of the system. A single section governed by the will of the numerical majority, has now, in fact, the control of the Government and the entire powers of the system. What was once ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... the whole Riego fortune, and, of course, through Seraphina. I would feel a rage at this—a sort of rage that made my head spin as if the ground had reeled. "He would have found means of getting rid of me if he had not seen I was not long for this world," Carlos would say. He had gained an unlimited ascendency over his uncle's mind; he had made a solitude round this solemn dotage in which ended so much power, a great reputation, a stormy life of romance and passion—so picturesque and excessive even in his old man's love, whose after-effect, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... with the ascendency of the religious element over all forms of art, and this was a characteristic of the Flemings. One was everywhere confronted with a curious union of religion and war, representations peopled exclusively by seraphic beings surrounded or accompanied by armed warriors. ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... of politics who can be at a loss for the fate of the British colonies, when he combines the French and Spanish consolidation with the known critical and dubious dispositions of the United States of America, as they are at present, but which, when a peace is made, when the basis of a Regicide ascendency in Spain is laid, will no longer be so good as dubious and critical? But I go a great deal further; and on much consideration of the condition and circumstances of the West Indies, and of the genius of this new republic, as it has operated and is likely to operate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... persecution for the cause, wealth had a curious charm for him, and he was not quite certain it would be right to deprive Primrose Henry of any chance. She had seemed easily influenced last year. If Faith could gain some ascendency over her! But Faith was more likely to be swayed than to sway, he ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Governor as Ministers of the Crown. At the same time many of the individuals who composed that party were smarting under a sense of injury and injustice inflicted upon them by the Home Government, and by that party in the Home Government by whose policy their own ascendency in the colony had, as they considered, been undermined. Nor was it possible to deny that there was some ground for their complaints. By the Canada Corn Act of 1843 not only the wheat of Canada, but also its flour, which might be made ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of the English poet, the count seemed to have the power of fascination. Albert was constantly expatiating on their good fortune in meeting such a man. Franz was less enthusiastic; but the count exercised over him also the ascendency a strong mind always acquires over a mind less domineering. He thought several times of the project the count had of visiting Paris; and he had no doubt but that, with his eccentric character, his characteristic face, and his colossal fortune, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the merchants of Paris—that is to say, mayor of the municipality, whom eminent historians have called the greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a career of three years his name dominates French history—a brief ascendency, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune through which those designs were destined to advance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... their language by writing down the words that he heard most frequently in the conversation of the French envoys, viz. sacre, Paris, and l'Empereur. That the Persian Court was thoroughly alive to the jealous and interested struggle of the two Powers, England and France, to acquire political ascendency at Tehran, is sufficiently evident from the history of the period, but is admirably illustrated by the diplomatic argument placed in chapter lxxvi in the mouth of Fath Ali Shah. Finally, can a pupil of Party ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... part of his simplicity. His life was a curious union of ceaseless contention and inviolable charity—a true charity, having nothing in common with a lazy spirit of unconcern. He knew men well enough, at least, to have found out that none gains such ascendency over them as he who appeals to what is the nobler part in human nature. Nestors of the whigs used to wonder how so much imagination, invention, courage, knowledge, diligence—all the qualities that seem to make an orator and a statesman—could be neutralised by the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hardly qualified by any superior genius to assume the ascendency in the councils of his own and neighboring nations, which common rumor has for some years attributed to him. He appeared to me, in the short intercourse I had with him, little superior to the common run of continental politicians and courtiers, and clearly inferior to the Emperor ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... accepted a situation as governess in Lord Kingsborough's family, where she was much loved by her pupils; but their mother, who did little to gain their affection herself, becoming jealous of the ascendency of Mary over them, found some pretext for dismissing her. Mary's contact, while in this house, with people of fashion inspired her only with contempt for their small pleasures and utterly unintellectual discourse. These ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... the two is, on the whole, to be preferred to the other. Racine eclipsed Corneille in vogue during the lifetime of the latter. Corneille's old age was, perhaps, seriously saddened by the consciousness, which he could not but have, of being retired from the place of ascendency once accorded to him over all. His case repeated the fortune of AEschylus in relation to Sophocles. The eighteenth century, taught by Voltaire, established the precedence of Racine. But the nineteenth century has restored the crown to the brow of Corneille. To such mutations ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... and patent of nobility.—Once upon a time, King Solomon, while making a royal progress, was much, incommoded by the powerful rays of the sun, and as he had ascendency over the birds, and knew their language, he called upon the vultures to come and fly betwixt the sun and his nobility, but the vultures refused. Then the kindly Hoopoes assembled, and flew in close mass above his head, thus forming a shade under which he proceeded on his ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... And never more, mark what I say, never more will you see from Virginia any intimations of hostility to the Union; she has weighed the alternative of success, and she sees now, every sensible man in the South sees, that the greatest calamity that could have befallen the South would have been the ascendency of this ill-starred Confederacy. [Applause.] Because that Confederacy carried to the utmost extreme, to the reductio ad absurdum, the right of secession, carried in its bosom the seed of its own destruction, and even in the progress of war, welded together as we were under ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... part, it was only of laying at her feet such laurels as he should win, without thinking of asking a reward at her hands, unless it was the reward of being her own true knight, and rescuing her from the power of the Sanghursts, father and son, who appeared to have regained their old ascendency over Sir Hugh and his son, and to be looking forward still to the alliance between ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... circle of bearded faces, on the tangled fleeces of the postheens, on the gold braid of the forage caps, on the sombre hoods of beshliks.... The songs ranged from gay to grave; the former mood in the ascendency. But occasionally there was sung a ditty, the associations with which brought it about that there came something strangely like a tear into the voice of the singer, and that a yearning wistfulness fell upon the faces of the listeners. The bronzed troopers in the background ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... countenanced by the Government. Jealousy had been disarmed by the upright conduct of the Scottish clergy, and their remarkable freedom hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that the temper of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to all intriguing or modes of temporal ascendency in ecclesiastical bodies. The nation, therefore, was in some degree held as a guarantee for the discretion of their clergy. And hence it arose, that much less caution was applied to the first encroachment of the non-intrusionists, than ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... labour of the convicts, died on the 28th of January. This man left England with Governor Phillip, as a servant; but he had employed him in the public service from their first landing, and few men, who may hereafter be placed in his situation, will attain that ascendency which he had over the convicts, or be able to go through so much fatigue. He was replaced by a superintendant who came from ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... lands are their estates, and their inheritance; that, from a long continuance of the lands in their families, it is to be concluded they have riveted an authority in the district, acquired an ascendency over the minds of the ryots, and ingratiated their affections; that, from continuing the lands under the management of those who have a natural and perpetual interest in their prosperity, solid advantages might be expected ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... facts before them, the American people should be prepared for further rebellious action on the part of that faction whose creed it is that rebellion is right when directed against the ascendency of their political opponents. They have done their utmost to assist the Rebels all through the war, and the great riots in New York last year were the legitimate consequences of their doctrine, if not of their labors. We know that organizations hostile to the Union have been formed in the West, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... German language, the "Heliand," i.e. the Saviour, is written in Saxon or Low-German. The Saxon Emperors, however, did little for German literature, while the Swabian Emperors were proud of being the patrons of art and poetry. The language spoken at their court being High-German, the ascendency of that dialect may be said to date from their days, though it was not secured till the time of the Reformation, when the translation of the Bible by Luther put a firm and lasting stamp on what has since become the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... first place, the turbulence thus arising was a serious obstacle to the formation of closely-coherent political aggregates; as we see exemplified in the terrible convulsions of the fifth and sixth centuries, and again in the ascendency acquired by the isolating features of feudalism between the time of Charles the Great and the time of Louis VI. of France. In the second place, this perpetual turbulence was a serious obstacle to the ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... tormenting the poor wretches who are to be found there. Before he was married he felt no, affection for any woman but his mother, who also loved him very tenderly. She is now vexed at having no longer the same ascendency over her son, and is jealous of her daughter-in-law because the Prince loves her alone. This occasions frequent disturbances in the house. The mother has had a house: built at some distance from her son. When they are good friends, she dismisses the workmen; but when they quarrel, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Conference, though momentarily advantageous as regards Shantung, is likely, in the long run, to prove unfortunate, since it will make America less willing to oppose Japan. For reasons which I set forth in Chap. X., unless China becomes strong, either the collapse of Japan or her unquestioned ascendency in the Far East is almost certain to prove disastrous to China; and one or other of these is very likely to come about. All the Great Powers, without exception, have interests which are incompatible, in the long run, with China's welfare and with the best development of Chinese civilization. Therefore ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... of those men who are born to exert a certain influence and ascendency wherever they may be thrown; his vast strength, his redundant health, had a power of themselves—a moral as well as physical power. He naturally possessed high animal spirits, beneath the surface of which, however, at times, there was visible a certain undercurrent of malignity ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to his own unshackled rule in Italy; if the Bourbonists succeeded, a different class of men would hold all the honours of the State. However feeble the Government of the Directory, its continuance secured his own present ascendency, and left him the hope of gaining supreme power when the public could tolerate the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... believe that the better feelings predominate—that the world has made you what you are; and that had you not been ruined by the world, you would have been disinterested and generous; even now, your real nature often gains the ascendency, and I am sure that in all that you have done, which is not defensible, your poverty, and not your will, has consented. Now, blunted by habit and time, the suggestion of conscience do not often give you ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... of the Queen's second son, the Duc de Normandie, who was afterwards Dauphin, the Duke and Duchess of Harcourt, outrageously jealous of the ascendency of the governess of the Dauphin, excited the young Prince's hatred toward Madame de Polignac to such a pitch that he would take nothing from her hands, but often, young as he was at the time, order her out of the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... the condition of Europe has changed greatly for the better in the last eleven years, as a consequence of the triumphs of the French Emperor. From the year 1815 to 1850, national independence was in its true sense unknown to Continental Europe. The ascendency of Napoleon I. had small claim to faultlessness, but the men who led in the work of his overthrow proceeded as if they meant to make the world regret his fall. This is the secret—which secret is none—of the reaction that speedily took ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... conduct in an unfavourable point of view. These were the extravagant and unconcealed joy of the High Tories and of his immediate friends, and his attending at the same time the Pitt dinner and sitting there while Lord Eldon gave his famous 'one cheer more' for Protestant ascendency. That he treated Huskisson with some degree of harshness there is no doubt, but he was angry, and not without reason; the former brought it all upon himself. During the debate upon East Retford, when Huskisson was called upon by Sandon to redeem his pledge, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... left brain is usually more fully developed in the occipital and basilar regions than the right, in right handed people, as may frequently be detected by a careful examination of the head, or an inspection of the interior the skull. The left brain, also, seems to have a general ascendency over the right; so that paralysis of speech is most generally produced by disease in the region of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... plunge back. He had had no business worries; yet his temper was always uncertain. She had not often suffered from it herself, for her ascendency over men extended even to him. But Reuther had shrunk before it more than once—the gentle Reuther, who was the refined, the etherealised picture of himself. And he had loved the child as well as he could love anybody. Great gusts of fondness would ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... change. He, who had hitherto been on the side of government, became in turn an agency of opposition. He did this in the interest of ultimate stability, but the difference between the new position and the old is that he now distinctly associated the idea of a stable republic with the ascendency of his own religious conceptions. How far the ascendency of his own personality was involved, we have no means of judging. The vulgar accusation against him is that he now deliberately aimed at a dictatorship, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... language of the Vril-ya. To those who have not read or have forgotten that historical composition, it may be convenient to state briefly that Koom-Posh with the Vril-ya is the name for the government of the many, or the ascendency of the most ignorant or hollow, and may be loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh. When Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular ferocity which precedes its decease, the name for that state of things is ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slowly perishing of a mad ecstasy for light, covering up a natural Dutch realism with fierce attempts at prismatic relationship, always with the rhythms in a state of ecstatic ascendency; and Seurat had come upon the more satisfying pointillism as developed by himself; somewhere in amid all these extravagances men like Robinson were trying to combine orthodoxy of heritage and radicalist conversion ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... much annoyed. Of late years his easy temper had well-nigh surrendered itself to the ascendency of Mark Gardner; and though dissatisfied, remorseful, and anxious, he had allowed himself to be led farther and farther into extravagance. The sight of his home excited regrets, therefore he shunned it; and though weary and discontented in his chains, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hope of improvement must now have disappeared? Such a step would certainly have been wise; nor could the strictest moralist have found aught to censure therein. But it was now too late. No observer of human affairs has failed to notice how surely a stronger character gains ascendency over a weaker with which it is brought into familiar contact. No law of man can abrogate this great law of Nature. Talk as we may about the power of knowledge or intellect or virtue, the whole ordering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... are deficient. It does not appear upon the scene before the reign of Otho I. Nor does it become supreme till after the Peace of Constance. Its biography is bound up with that of the republics and the despots. Before the date of their ascendency we have to deal with Bishops of Rome, Emperors of the East and West, Exarchs and Kings of Italy, the feudal Lords of the Marches, the Dukes and Counts of Lombard and Frankish rulers. Through that ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the frontier, and of Carson City. The inclination of its citizens in such cases was to act first, and reflect later. The law had but slender hold, being respected only when backed by the strong hand, and primitive instincts were always in the ascendency, requiring merely a leader to break forth into open violence. And in this case would there be any lack of leadership? Like a flash his mind reverted to "Black Bart." There was the man capable of inciting ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... throne of unapproachable glory, His glorious and terrible judgments, are little more to the children than words and phrases—may I not say?—at best but the "trappings" of His person. They solemnise, they inspire, perhaps, with reverent fear; but they do not, they could not, secure that true ascendency over the nature of the child by which alone there can be ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... 1748, inherited his mother's earldom of Ruglen, together with the family's estates in the counties of Edinburgh and Linlithgow. These rich endowments of fortune, and a handsome person, of which he was especially careful, combined to invest the youthful Earl with no ordinary attractions, and the ascendency they acquired he retained for a longer period than any one of his contemporaries; from his first appearance in the fashionable world in the year 1746, to the year he left it forever, in 1810, at the age of eighty-five, he was always ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... cities; and in doing their work have evinced perhaps as much courage, sagacity, and mental power as Romulus displayed. The city of Romulus, however, became in the end the queen and mistress of the world. It rose to so exalted a position of influence and power, and retained its ascendency so long, that now for twenty centuries every civilized nation in the western world have felt a strong interest in every thing pertaining to its history, and have been accustomed to look back with special curiosity to the circumstances of ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of its products, promotes levity, and that in proportion as its increase surpasses that of the general acid; and it is not until the action of the acetous becomes languid, that the putrid process gains the ascendency, when it is then ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... was only eighteen; and consequently was now about twenty-four years of age. There was a blending of firmness and gentleness, of serene gravity and beaming cheerfulness in his character and countenance, which even in early boyhood had given him an ascendency over his young companions. There was a searching power in the glance of his grave, dark eye, from which one might shrink, were it not often softened by an expression of even womanly sweetness harmonizing with the gentle smile of his lips. He very seldom spoke of his feelings, but the rich, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... with which poor "Margaret" contemplates the trinkets presented by her lover; the baleful ascendency acquired over her by her female companion; and her rapid descent in the path of evil when, as is ever the case, the commission of one sin entails so many, render this drama a very ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... of a free government rest, ultimately, not so much on forms of law, on precedents, on the ascendency of this or that party or administration, but on the intelligence, morality, and devotion to freedom of the people. What should woman care to legislate, when she may wield such an engine of power as education puts into her hands; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... indignation to find that during her absence the favourite mistresses had been re-established in their old comfortable quarters, for, while she had been amusing herself at the Capital with balls and parties, they had regained their ascendency over Sir Lexicon, who, not expecting her ladyship's return for several weeks, had consented to their returning to the bungalow until suitable arrangements could be made for them. He ladyship's sudden and unexpected return, together with her order for their immediate expulsion, aroused ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... Confederacy. There had been fighting in Missouri, and the partisans of the South in that State had already been badly worsted. The vast power of the North was making itself felt on land, and on the sea had asserted an ascendency which it never lost. The blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico were patrolled by a fleet with which the Confederates had no means of coping. From the sea-wall of Charleston, the great Atlantic port of the South, the masts of the blockading squadron were ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and more than witness, for beyond any other man in Scotland Knox was its guide. And while the guidance of the great theological leaders of that generation tended naturally—and quite apart from their usurped statutory ascendency—to press too heavily upon the recovered freedom of Scotland, that danger was but little felt in those early days of enthusiasm in the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... to Vernon, and his young brother both observed and resented it. Montagu and others noticed him for Eric's sake; but, being in the same form with Brigson, Vernon was thrown much with him, and feeling, as he did, deserted and lonely, he was easily caught by the ascendency of his physical strength and reckless daring. Before three months were over, he became, to Eric's intolerable disgust, a ringleader in the band of troublesome scapegraces, whose increasing numbers were the despair of all who had the interest ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... genius and daring spirit, had now obtained a great ascendency over all the New England tribes excepting the Mohegans. They, under Uncas, were strongly attached to the English, to whom they were indebted for their very existence. The character of Philip is illustrated by the following incident. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... or to bend her knee before the Lord Primate; while at the same time, relying on her youth and the effect which her extreme beauty had produced upon her royal consort, she endeavoured to obtain an ascendency over him that excited the jealousy and distrust of the English Court; a feeling which was not lessened by the fact that she succeeded in extorting from the King his sanction to erect a chapel for the more solemn ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Post, a few days afterwards, contained an attack on one of the few Tories among the Lords of the Regency, nominated for the management of affairs till the King's arrival. During Bolingbroke's brief term of ascendency, he had despatched the Earl of Anglesey on a mission to Ireland. The Earl had hardly landed at Dublin when news followed him of the Queen's death, and he returned to act as one of the Lords Regent. In the Flying Post Defoe ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... as the word went out through the British Islands that Australia offered great possibilities for emigrants. For twenty years the military and convicts were more numerous than the free settlers; but by the end of thirty years the latter were in the ascendency. In the year 1830, there were twenty-seven thousand convicts in the colony, and ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Notwithstanding this bluster, however, there was no man whom he feared so much; in fact, he dreaded his very appearance, and would go any distance out of his way rather than come in contact with him. He felt Frank's moral ascendency too keenly, and was too bitterly sensible of the neglect with which he had treated his affectionate and friendly admonitions, to meet him with composure. Indeed, we must say, that, independently of his brother Frank, he was not left to his own impulses, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... forgot fashion and pride and caste in their love for the practical work of Christianity; when the power of the gospel had strengthened men's will and had begun to plant in every heart a love for something purer than fleshly appetite; when the spiritual part of our nature began to gain the ascendency and to occupy the place for which it was made; then intemperance loosed its hold and soon disappeared, never to ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... and gorgeous scarlet coat, victorious, energetic, self-possessed, self-confident, self-satisfied, jovial, and proud as Beelzebub (to use his own comparison)—too proud to ask for recognition were homage refused. This portrait helps us to understand the ascendency Handel gained over ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... turning it over; "except it is from that person that seems to have obtained such an ascendency over her it is full of his notes it is a ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... define. By knowledge, do you mean intellectual cultivation?—by the reign of knowledge, the ascendency of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... comprised little more than the present county of Down, to be recognised as Prince of all Ulster. Now the Hy-Nial family, not only had long given monarchs to all Ireland, but had also the lion's share of their own Province, and King Donald as their head could not permit their ascendency to be disputed. The ancestors of the present pretender, Congal, surnamed "the squint-eyed," had twice received and cherished the licentious Bards when under the ban of Tara, and his popularity with that still powerful order was one prop of his ambition. It ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... supposed that the ascendency thus early acquired by what may be called liberal opinions in America was a matter merely of setting some fine phrases in circulation, or of adopting, as was early done in most States, a wide franchise and other external marks of democracy. We may ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... committees of the House of Commons (for committees of the House of Commons had then some weight) were frowning upon them for this collusion with Mr. Hastings, that at last some honest men in the Direction were permitted to have some ascendency, and that a proper letter was prepared, which I shall show your Lordships, demanding from Mr. Hastings an exact account of all the bribes that he had received, and painting to him, in colors as strong at least as those I use, his bribery, his frauds, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... between their last topic of conversation and the sage reflection he was about to launch—"only observe," and, as he raised himself upon his elbow, something very like a sigh escaped from him, "how complete, in our modern system of life, is the ascendency of woman over us! Every art is hers—is devoted to her service. Poetry, music, painting, sculpture—all seem to have no theme but woman. It is her loveliness, her power over us, that is paraded and chanted on every side. Poets have been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... the past, that lent To jewels bright and rare Ascendency at every birth In this our planet's air, Hath to October's children given The opal ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... would straightway have given him into custody and had him dragged before a justice with the stolen property upon him; in which case it was as certain he would have been hung as it was that he had been born. The ascendency which it was the purpose of the man of the world to establish over this savage instrument, was gained from that time. Hugh's submission was complete. He dreaded him beyond description; and felt that accident and artifice had spun a web about him, which at a touch from ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... a scheme so foreign to his faculties; and entreated him, for the love of God, to divert him from his purpose, either by arguments or authority; as, of all mankind, the knight alone had gained such an ascendency over his spirits, that he would listen to his ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... white men who now were in the ascendency were no longer deserving of their friendship, he argued. By treachery and deceit they had overcome those who were their proper leaders, and they were even now about to put them to a cruel death. Tuscarora was grieved that his ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... reads the minor poets who figured, in some cases with much applause, during the years of Pope's ascendency, will be struck by the almost total absence from their works of creative power. These rhymers wrote for the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for all time, and a small volume would suffice to hold ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... administration of the federal tribute had brought together a treasure of more than two million sterling. The instrument of his sway was the art of speaking. He governed by persuasion. Everything was decided by argument in open deliberation, and every influence bowed before the ascendency of mind. The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... stages of the old chaotic competitive system, in which factory warred against factory, and an intense struggle for survival and ascendency enveloped the whole tense sphere of manufacturing, no striking ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... altogether unlovable—arriving at that stage of enlightenment which feels that nothing is worth while, and filling up the spare hours of her existence by idealizing Wildeve for want of a better object. This was the sole reason of his ascendency: she knew it herself. At moments her pride rebelled against her passion for him, and she even had longed to be free. But there was only one circumstance which could dislodge him, and that was the advent of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... about the teaching of Jesus, we could suppose ourselves turning for the first time to the simple record of the Gospels, probably our first feeling would be one of surprise that Jesus the Teacher had won for Himself such an ascendency over the minds and hearts of men. For consider some of the facts which the Gospels reveal to us. To begin with, this Teacher, unlike most other teachers who have influenced mankind, contented Himself ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... of Anglican theology is an illustration of intellectual re-payment. Two centuries ago England gave Deism to Germany, and the latter country is now paying back the debt with compound interest. After the Revolution of 1789, and the brilliant ascendency of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French spirit rapidly lost its hold upon the English mind. But there immediately arose a disposition to consult German theology and philosophy. English students frequented the German universities, and the works of the leading thinkers of Berlin, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... that all the precautions established by our Orders in Council against the plague should be adopted against the cholera. This opinion was given under the authority of Dr. Warren, who, it appears, exercises the same ascendency in this Board that he had previously done in the College of Physicians on the same subject. The fact is that he takes the safe side. They have nothing to do with trade and commerce, which must shift for themselves, and probably the other members will not take upon themselves the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... migrations. There is no political organisation beyond a loose coherence and alliance for defence and offence of the village communities of any one people in neighbouring parts of the country — a coherence which at times is greatly strengthened by the personal ascendency of the chief of some one village over neighbouring chiefs. One of the most notable examples of such personal ascendency exercised in recent times was that of Tama Bulan (Pl. 27), a Kenyah chief whose ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... tete-a-tete may probably prove effective with this gentle, candid and tender spirit. Pius VII., who had never known ill-will, might be won by kindly treatment, by an air of filial respect, by caresses; he may feel the personal ascendency of Napoleon, the prestige of his presence and conversation, the invasion of his genius. Inexhaustible in arguments, matchless in the adaptation of ideas to circumstances, the most amiable and most imperious of interlocutors, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... literature. Philosophy was a sealed study to those who did not know Greek. It was his aim, by putting the best Greek speculation into the most elegant Latin form, to extend the education of his countrymen, and to enrich their literature. He wished at the same time to strike a blow at the ascendency of Epicureanism throughout Italy. The doctrines of Epicurus had alone appeared in Latin in a shape suited to catch the popular taste. There seems to have been a very large Epicurean literature in Latin, of which all but a few ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the use of which had made them an absolute want, the Monk felt this restraint severely. Naturally addicted to the gratification of the senses, in the full vigour of manhood, and heat of blood, He had suffered his temperament to acquire such ascendency that his lust was become madness. Of his fondness for Antonia, none but the grosser particles remained: He longed for the possession of her person; and even the gloom of the vault, the surrounding silence, and the resistance ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... and the Eleusinians;—the last assisted or headed by the Thracian Eumolpus. Erechtheus is said to have fallen a victim in this contest. But a treaty afterward concluded with the Eleusinians confirmed the ascendency of Athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laid the foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries. In this contest is introduced a very doubtful personage, under the appellation of Ion (to whom ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Then had come a sudden turn of fortune, like that in Virgil's foot-race. Fox had stumbled in the mire, and had not only been defeated, but befouled. Pitt had reached the goal, and received the prize. The emoluments of the Pay Office might induce the defeated statesman to submit in silence to the ascendency of his competitor, but could not satisfy a mind conscious of great powers, and sore from great vexations. As soon, therefore, as a party arose adverse to the war and to the supremacy of the great war minister, the hopes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... over and over again: how far are these Confederates mere dreamers? How far—and this was more vital—are they rendering lip-service to social organisations? Is it true they desire war because it confirms the ascendency of their class? How far can Conservatism be induced to plan and construct before it resists the thrust towards change. Is it really in bulk anything more than a mass of prejudice and conceit, cynical indulgence, and a hard ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him. To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... from their safe resting-place. The question of its origin has never been decided. It may have been altogether accidental, or possibly the work of design. But it was followed by a singular succession of other fires, during the period of the British ascendency, that seem to show some settled plan to annoy and discourage the invaders. The newspapers of the time are filled with accounts of the misfortunes of the garrison and ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of opinion, that this ascendency might be attributed to an early mistake, originating in what he called the "Frankford advice." When the first Congress was summoned in Philadelphia, Doctor Rush, and two or three other eminent men of Pennsylvania, met the Massachusetts delegates at Frankford, a few miles from Philadelphia, and conjured ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... expedition was successful in an attack on Nassau; and Jamaica was threatened. Had England not given up the place to the Spaniards, not only would these things have been impossible, but she might have employed it with effect in her own military operations, and have maintained her ascendency in the West-Indian seas. Or, if she had preferred that course, she might have made it the price of Spain's neutrality during the American War, returning it to her on condition that she should not assist the United ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... act. So great was the ascendency of the woman over her lover that from the start he became a mere tool in her hands and ruled the empire in accordance with her views. Her first act was one that showed her merciless strength of purpose. Fearing that the warm love of Kaotsong might in time grow cold, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... The "Protestant Ascendency"—England's jealousy of her Colonists, Act passed prohibiting export of Irish woollen goods, Effects of the Act upon Ireland, Smuggling on an immense scale, Collapse ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... exclusively on Marianna's sewing, she having found employment for her needle in working for the unhappy prostitutes who make this street their hunting ground. Marianna assures me that among those poor creatures she has met with such consideration and generosity as I, for my part, ascribe to the ascendency of virtue so pure that even vice ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... a struggle with herself. It showed plainly on the thin, anxious face. The lips compressed with determination, the eyes set, then wavered, and again the indeterminate lines of acquiescent subjection gained their accustomed ascendency. Back and forth assertion and complaisance fled and followed; only assertion was holding ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... which all must needs conform. Literature was universal within the limits of its language. Where differences of view arose there were violent controversies, polemics, and persecutions, until one or other rendering had won its ascendency. But this new world into which we are passing will, for several generations at least, albeit it will be freely inter-communicating and like a whispering gallery for things outspoken, possess no universal ideals, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... respectively on behalf of their puppets, Muhammud Ali and Chunda Sahib. This stage of the struggle was not a final one; but both by its circumstances, and by the prestige which we acquired in the eyes of the natives, it gave us a moral ascendency which, even when our fortunes were afterwards at their worst, was never ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... other means of binding together the better spirits of the community. With the older men, the attractions of the Eldorado, and kindred inducements, often worked against him; but among the younger hands, and especially the boys, he had gained a personal ascendency that it ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... mutually concerned, of the right of making peace and war in their own behalf. By insidious measures like these he continued to oppress and absorb the once independent city that claimed and kept so towering an ascendency. But not satisfied with such means of accumulating the supreme power, he sowed dissensions between the rich classes and the poor, and after fomenting fictitious grievances, terminating in open quarrel, he succeeded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... there had been no mist at all, we should most likely have got away unhurt all the same. Those fellows would not fight after their leader was down. Again, I like to let Ram Lal feel that I am able to do something for myself, and that I have other friends as powerful. He aims at obtaining too much ascendency over me. ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... arts and crafts of the farm, his physical prowess in sports, his gay, cheery manner, and, it must be said, the reputation he bore for a certain fierce brute courage in rough-and-tumble fighting, gave him a sort of ascendency. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... romantic. The Jew in it no longer wears his gaberdine. If he wears a prayer-shawl at all, it is one made of silk. The Jeremiah of the desert has given way to the young, amorous, dream-filled poet, a poet of the sort that arose among the Jews in Spain during the years of the Moorish ascendency. Yet, a certain intensity, a certain originality, a certain vein of genius, has undergone eclipse in the change. Something a little brilliant, a little facile, a little undistinguished, has introduced itself, even into the best of the newest ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... easily chafed by contradiction than she used to be, and dwelt more upon words, and small points, and trifles which formerly she would have hurried over with indifference; conversation degenerated, I could hardly tell how, into discussion; and notwithstanding the ascendency and elevation of her language and her manner, I could see that there was less real strength behind, and that beneath the calmness which still sat loftily upon her, there was much secret and repressed agitation. Sometimes she presented ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... such ascendency over your heart, Mr. Clancy, that you cannot understand me. In some women the strongest reasons for or against a thing proceed from ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the anti-slavery voters succeed in gaining the political ascendency in these Territories, and bring them as free States triumphantly into the Union; what can they do, but turn in, as all the rest of the Western States have done, and help to feed slaves, or those who manufacture or who sell the products of the labor of slaves. There is no other resource ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... object of arriving at the truth but in order to inflict a defeat on opponents and to establish the ascendency of some particular school of thought. It was often a sense of personal victory and of the victory of the school of thought to which the debater adhered that led him to pursue the debate. Advanced Sanskrit philosophical ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... showed such devotion and disinterestedness, the pious willingly submitted themselves to his authority. The spiritual heads of the communities had as great ascendency [ascendancy sic] over believing Jews as a king had over his subjects; they were sovereigns in the realm of the spirit. And Rashi in his time, because of his learning and piety, exercised the most undisputed ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... discernible how little fitted were natures so strongly concentrated to furnish one of those brilliant developments, which imposes the momentary ascendency of a people on the world; and that, no doubt, is why the part played externally by the Cymric race has always been a secondary one. Destitute of the means of expansion, alien to all idea of aggression ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... so, and as long as war was waged in the name of religion, as long as the Koran and the sword went hand in hand together, the two professions were not incompatible; but when Islamism had gained undisputed ascendency, there arose an obvious discrepancy between the peaceful adoration of Allah and the settlements of disputes between man and man. Priest and jurist, each had distinct and qualified duties to perform. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... will not bear a very close examination for aesthetic purposes. But, as I watch these vessels drifting down through the golden afternoon, or cheerily beating up against the tide on a breezy morning, the man at the wheel is a very model of unconscious grace and almost effortless ascendency; and his shipmates, grouped about him like floating lotos-eaters, have ever a touch of the fine old Ulyssean vagrancy. Now and then there stands out before the breeze and the sunlight a great canvassed ship, like some living thing fluttering and glowing and careering under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... be termed the mind of all England. That Discourse staggered some readers, and roused others,—roused them to contemplate the whole question from a more fundamental and actual, a less traditional and prejudged point of view, than had been in vogue since our own abolition movement gained the ascendency. It became apparent to various thinkers that the humanitarian view of the question was not its be-all and end-all; that some facts and considerations per contra had to be taken into account; and that what one train of thought and feeling denounced as a mere self-condemned wrong might, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... eddying puff of wind, now warm, as the trade-wind got slightly the better of the land-breeze, and anon cool, refreshing, and odoriferous with the perfume of a thousand flowers, as the land-breeze regained the ascendency and pushed forward in its turn on the domain of the trade- wind. Mr Reid availed himself of the opportunity afforded by our passage across this narrow belt of calm to rally the rest of the boats round the launch for a moment, in order ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... undergone decay. The bones are therefore found in greatest number at those places where the sand of the dune has been recently carried away by the spring floods or by the furious winds which prevail here, and which easily gain the ascendency over the dry sand, bound together only by widely scattered Elymus-stalks. The largest crania belonged to a species nearly allied to the Balaena mysticetus. Crania of a species of Rachianectes are also found along with some bones of smaller varieties of the whale. No complete ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... distinguished of her favorites; and it might be no improbable guess, that almost the whole of the encouragement given by her to the addresses of the archduke was prompted by the desire of humbling the pride of Leicester, and showing him that his ascendency over her was not so complete or ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... space, aided by Carlson's cutlass, and fronted them defiantly. Towering above them all, his black apelike face, distorted with rage, I distinguished the giant Cochose, his immense hands grasping a wooden bar ripped from a bunk. Plainly enough he was the leader, the one man whose ascendency I must crush, and I meant to do it, then and there. This was no job I could turn over to others; if I was to rule, this black brute must be conquered at the very start, conquered by my own hands, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the profundity of a veteran statesman on public affairs. In 1704, he received the seals as Secretary-of-War, and was mainly instrumental in gaining Marlborough's victories, by the activity with which he supplied the English General with munitions of war. On the ascendency of the Whigs, St. John resigned his office, and retired into privacy for two years, when the Whig administration was destroyed, and St. John re-appeared as Secretary for Foreign Affairs. His greatest work now was the negotiation of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... feeling, and it would have been better for Comte's later work if she had survived to exert a wholesome restraint on his exaltation. Their friendship had only lasted a year when she died (1846), but the period was long enough to give her memory a supreme ascendency in Comte's mind. Condillac, Joubert, Mill, and other eminent men have shown what the intellectual ascendency of a woman can be. Comte was as inconsolable after Madame de Vaux's death as D'Alembert after the death ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... the lovers, while their pride was bound up in the success of their own tribe. It is possible, too, that the superior personal advantages of Hist rendered her dangerous to some of the younger part of the group, and they were not sorry to find she was no longer in the way of their own ascendency. On the whole, however, the better feeling was most prevalent, for neither the wild condition in which they lived, the clannish prejudices of tribes, nor their hard fortunes as Indian women, could entirely conquer the inextinguishable leaning ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Queen and the lords.' It is natural to suppose that Ralegh's Irish campaigns were concerned with his sudden rise at Court. Thenceforward he was a high authority on Irish policy. His Irish experience continued to be the sheet-anchor of his ascendency with the Queen. Naunton's tale, too, is supported by evidence from the Hatfield and the Irish State papers of Ralegh's disposition to form and push Irish plans of his own, and of Grey's keen jealousy ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Buddhism never afterwards exerted the same influence in India; though it remained widely prevalent until the eighth century A.D., and it was not until four centuries later that it became practically extinct. The Brahmans now regained their former ascendency; declared Gautama to be an "avatar"—or incarnation—of their god Vishnu; proceeded to incorporate into their own creed some of the most popular features of the Buddhist system; and then entered upon ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A. |
