Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Servile   /sˈərvəl/   Listen
Servile

adjective
1.
Submissive or fawning in attitude or behavior.  "The incurably servile housekeeper" , "Servile tasks such as floor scrubbing and barn work"
2.
Relating to or involving slaves or appropriate for slaves or servants.  "The servile wars of Sicily" , "Servile work"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Servile" Quotes from Famous Books



... ordained to such like works of the speculative reason, are, by a kind of comparison, called arts indeed, but "liberal" arts, in order to distinguish them from those arts that are ordained to works done by the body, which arts are, in a fashion, servile, inasmuch as the body is in servile subjection to the soul, and man, as regards his soul, is free (liber). On the other hand, those sciences which are not ordained to any such like work, are called sciences simply, and not arts. Nor, if the liberal arts be more excellent, does it follow that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... on By an inferior eye; or did contemn To wait upon a meaner light than him. When this I meditate, methinks the flowers Have spirits far more generous than ours, And give us fair examples to despise The servile fawnings and idolatries, Wherewith we court these earthly things below, Which merit ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... being plastic to it—after any such fashion. I have no ambition for that character of valet de chambre which is said to disenchant the most heroic figures into mere every-day personages, for it implies a mean soul no less than a servile condition. But we have a right to demand a certain amount of reality, however small, in the emotion of a man who makes it his business to endeavor at exciting our own. We have a privilege of nature to shiver before a painted flame, how cunningly soever the colors be laid on. Yet our love of minute ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... ranks; thus giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause, and supplying the places which must otherwise be filled with so many white men. So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any. No servile insurrection, or tendency to violence or cruelty, has marked the measure of emancipation and arming the blacks. Those measures have been discussed in foreign countries, and contemporary with such discussion ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... crown. Thus disaffection became highly penal: a quarrel with a magistrate, or a friendly intercourse with persons under a ban, exposed the delinquent to serious pecuniary loss. These considerations were avowed.[198] The dread of injury made the timid servile, and corrupted private intercourse. A secret influence pervaded every rank: society was embittered by suspicions and the dread of denunciation; and had not the growth of population decreased the comparative ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... many of the fugitives who sought asylum in the towns were as low as the great numbers of the semi-servile population, but much that was new and of a better character and intelligence, and even a large amount of property, which later gave birth to commercial and other interests, were introduced by members ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... sometimes the name of an organ, sometimes of a disease. As an organ it is spongy and loose in texture, and attracts and retains the superfluities of the black-bile, expelled from the liver for its own cleansing. Hence it is a servile and insensitive organ, and accordingly suffers different diseases, such as obstruction, tumors, hardening, softening, abscess, and sometimes flatulence or repletion. The symptoms and treatment of ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... which neither economists nor legists have ever risen. If our legislators had introduced into their codes the principle of distributive justice which governs printing-offices; if they had observed the popular instincts,—not for the sake of servile imitation, but in order to reform and generalize them,—long ere this liberty and equality would have been established on an immovable basis, and we should not now be disputing about the right of property and the necessity of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... domestic service in America has had less of mutual kindliness than in old countries. Its terms have been so ill understood and defined that both parties have assumed the defensive; and a common topic of conversation in American female society has often been the general servile war which in one form or another was going on in their different families,—a war as interminable as would be a struggle between aristocracy and common people, undefined by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore opening fields for endless disputes. In England, the class who go to service ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... those sad degrees in the downward sliding scale of defending and apologizing for slaveholders and slaveholding with which we have so many years contended in our own country. We find the President's Proclamation of Emancipation spoken of in those papers only as an incitement to servile insurrection. Nay, more,—we find in your papers, from thoughtful men, the admission of the rapid decline of anti-slavery sentiments in England. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... persuaded out of her engagement: she has allowed herself to be talked into the belief that it was her duty to give up a poor man like me." And then, he felt very angry again. "Heavens!" said he to himself—"is it possible she should be so servile and so mean? Fanny Wyndham, who cared so little for the prosy admonitions of her uncle, a few months since, can she have altered her disposition so completely? Can the possession of her brother's money have made ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... wonderful words of poets, of all the marvellous moods of lovers. Once it was a shell that listened tremulously upon Olympus, and caught the accents of the Gods; now it is a phonograph catching every word that falleth from the mouths of the board of guardians. Once a muse, now a servile ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... servile, abject, needy circumstances wherein the Devil keeps the Slaves, that are under his more sensible Vassalage, do suggest unto us, how woful the Devil would render all our Lives. We that live in a Province, which ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... often questionable and his tastes perverse? He was fond of saying pungent things about the men who thought they wrote like Cicero because they ended every sentence with "esse videtur:" but while he was boasting of his freedom from servile imitation, did he not fall into the other extreme, running after strange words and affected phrases? Even in his much-belauded 'Miscellanea' was every point tenable? And Tito, who had just been looking into the 'Miscellanea,' ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... in the traitor's ranks? Now, as I live, I'd rather give my hand To Gessler's self, all despot though he be, Than to the Switzer who forgets his birth, And stoops to be a tyrant's servile tool. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... monarques 425 Tout rvre genoux les glorieuses marques; Lorsque d'un saint respect tous les Persans touchs N'osent lever leurs fronts la terre attachs, Lui, fierement assis, et la tte immobile, Traite tous ces honneurs d'impit servile, 430 Prsente mes regards un front sditieux, Et ne daignerait pas au moins baisser les yeux. Du palais cepeudant il assige la porte: A quelque heure que j'entre, Hydaspe, ou que je sorte, Son visage odieux m'afflige ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... These servile imitators of foreign pen soldiers were destined to see all their pet theories exploded by the grim old mountain puma from California and his brave Fifth Corps. They were to learn, so far as they are capable of learning, ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... success. With all his feeling for religion, he was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or intemperance. His intense patriotism was all for peace; classical learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings servile. As fine a gentleman as Buckingham, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... only can spring spontaneously from filth. True it is that the vices of the government are fatal to it, they cause its death, but they kill also the society in whose bosom they are developed. An immoral government presupposes a demoralized people, a conscienceless administration, greedy and servile citizens in the settled parts, outlaws and brigands in the mountains. Like master, like slave! ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... one. I was afraid, I think, that some horrible thing would happen to me—that I would perhaps go mad if I carried out my intention; and I was driven at last, not by conscience, but by servile fear to make a ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... of improvement in manners is observation. In company, where you are in doubt in reference to any rule or form, be quiet and observe what others do, and govern your conduct by theirs; but except in mere external forms, beware of a servile imitation. Seek to understand the principles which underlie the observances you witness, and to become imbued with the spirit of the society (if good) in which you move, rather than to copy particulars in the ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... not death a theme Of consolation: I would rather live The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread Of some man scantily himself sustained, Than sovereign empire hold o'er all the shades." —Odyssey, by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... upon continuing to exercise sovereign powers, without accepting responsibility as for a trust, the revolt against the existing order must probably continue, and that revolt can only be dealt with, as all servile revolts must be dealt with, by physical force. I doubt, however, if even the most ardent and optimistic of capitalists would care to speculate deeply upon the stability of any government capital might organize, which rested on the fundamental principle that the American people ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... cried bitterly, wishing he was at home again, but ashamed to go back. At last a sea captain came along, and hired him to go on a distant voyage; and as he knew nothing about the rigging of a vessel, he was ordered to do the most servile work on board. He swept the decks and the cabin, and helped the cook, and was the servant of all. He had the poorest food to eat he ever ate in his life. And when night came, and he was so tired that he could hardly stand, he had no soft bed upon which to lie, but could only wrap a blanket ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... anger, he paced up and down his study all the day long. Now, he said to himself, he would go and see her, and forthwith he grew calm—that was what his nature desired. But the man in him refused to be so servile. He had told her that she must write; to that he would hold, whatever it cost him. Again, he broke out in bitter blame ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... for their word for private soldier was 'idiot.' And on account of this strange stupidity of soldiers, things that would be disgraceful in private life become glorious in war. Their one virtue is obedience, unqualified by any of the balancing virtues, and they wear liveries to show that they are servile. And then the foolish things they try to do! You are familiar with the Peace Conference—generals and admirals spending weeks in uniform with swords at their sides to determine how to stop fighting, as if there were anything to do but to stop! ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... slaveholding States is found in a better position than he has ever attained in any other age or country, whether in bondage or freedom. The great body of this race had been slaves in foreign lands and slaves in their native land. In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had always been in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but could not conceal the utter prostration of the race." The best specimens of the race ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... literary contents I am less qualified for judgment, inasmuch as I wrote every line in the paper. It may perhaps be said without immodesty that the new "candidate for popular favor" was not distinguished by servile flattery of the British character and meek subservience to the British Government, as might perhaps be inferred from the following extract from an article on General Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had just received the thanks of his Sovereign and a munificent ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... house- porter, and was very well content with his lot, when suddenly an unexpected incident occurred. . . . One fine summer day the old lady was walking up and down the drawing-room with her dependants. She was in high spirits; she laughed and made jokes. Her servile companions laughed and joked too, but they did not feel particularly mirthful; the household did not much like it, when their mistress was in a lively mood, for, to begin with, she expected from every one prompt and complete participation ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... statement we ask whether it has the appearance of being an exact reproduction or an arrangement. We judge by the form: when we meet with a passage whose style is out of harmony with the main body of the composition, we have before us a fragment of an earlier document; the more servile the reproduction the more valuable is the passage, for it can contain no exact information beyond what was already in ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... the result appeared doubtful, till Serto'rius, being assassinated by his own officers put an end to the war. Spar'tacus, a gladiator, having escaped from confinement, and assembled a number of his followers, commenced what is called the second Servile War. His army gradually increasing, he became a formidable enemy to the Roman state; overthrew the praetors and consuls sent against him; but was at length defeated by Crassus, and the remains of his ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... sister to whom she had done no wrong, and whose only crime was in being that sister's heir. What an illustration of the jealousy of royalty and the bitterness of religious feuds; and what a contrast in this servile speech to that arrogance which Elizabeth afterward assumed towards her Parliament and greatest lords! Ah, to what cringing meanness are most people reduced by adversity! In what pride are we apt to indulge in the hour of triumph! How circumstances ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... censor of morals and arbiter of elegance, like the benevolent employers of the day who take an impertinent interest in the private lives of their workers. Without any doubt socialism has within it the germs of that great bureaucratic tyranny which Chesterton and Belloc have named the Servile State. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Mombasa and open a road to the Victoria Nyanza. Then it would be easier to contend against the slave-trade. He described the condition of the Sudan in forcible letters, and into the Khedive's ears were dinned truths such as he never heard from his servile pashas. He would first establish steam communication with the lakes, and a number of boats which could be taken to pieces were on the way to ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... who criticises with a keener eye than is his wont, the sayings and doings of his commanding officer, solely because he is such. How apt is such an one to misrepresent a word, or create a wrong motive for an action! how slow in giving praise, lest he should be deemed one of the servile train! Pass we over the host of petty intrigues—the myriads of conflicting interests:—show not how the partial report of a favourite, may make the one in authority unjust to him below him; or how the false tale-bearer may induce the one below to be unjust ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... mind, that their King was God; that having created the world in six days, he rested the seventh day; and by their resting on it from their labour, that that God was their King, which redeemed them from their servile, and painfull labour in Egypt, and gave them a time, after they had rejoyced in God, to take joy also in themselves, by lawfull recreation. So that the first Table of the Commandements, is spent all, in setting ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... Colonel thundered again, "all that have got good fightin' blood in 'em, like you and me. 'Tisn't as if we came of any worn-out, frightened, servile old stock. You and I belong to the free-livin', hard-ridin', straight-shootin' Southerners. The people before us fought bears, and fought Indians, and beat the British, and when there wasn't anything else left to beat, turned round and began ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... by their late loyal proprietors. By a slavish act of his convocation of chiefs, he also possessed the reversion of all and singular the immortal spirits, whose first grantees might die intestate in Valapee. Servile, yet audacious senators! thus prospectively to administrate away the inalienable rights of posterity. But while yet unborn, the people of Valapee had been deprived of more than they now sought to wrest from their ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... descried the danger from afar, and has publicly proclaimed it in the senate of the United States, by vehemently deprecating the anti-slavery proceedings, not as intended to provoke the slaves to a servile war, but as a crusade against the character of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... and perhaps most widely spread misconception about us Germans is that we are the serfs of our Princes. (Fuerstenknechte,) servile and dependent in political thought. That false notion has probably been dispelled during the initial weeks of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... feel quite so sure about the first person who inveigled the cat into captivity. Mark that I do not speak of the "slavery" of the cat—for who ever knew a cat to do anything against its will? If you whistle for a dog, he comes with servile gestures, and almost overdoes his obedience; but, if a cat has got into a comfortable place, you may whistle for that cat until you are spent, and it will go on regarding you with a lordly blink of independence. No; decidedly the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... virulent saliva of lies the brave little band and its leader. Anti-slavery publications, calculated to inflame the minds of the slaves against their masters, and intended to instigate the slaves to servile insurrections, had been distributed broadcast through the South by the emissaries of anti-slavery societies. The Abolitionists advocated the emancipation of the slaves in the South by Congress, intermarriages between the two races, the dissolution of the Union, etc. All of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... quite sufficient too; another two hills would mar the composition. At the risk of repeating myself, I maintain that Prague can well afford to be original and forgo any imitation of other cities by insisting on standing on seven hills; a truly great city should not descend to servile flattery. Paris, for example, undoubtedly a great city, is quite content to stand on two hills, Montmartre and Montparnasse, the latter quite worn flat by the levelling ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... he show'd the best of breeding, Which scarce even France, the paragon of nations, E'er saw her most polite of sons exceeding; He bore these sneers against his near relations, His own anxiety, his heart, too, bleeding, The insults, too, of every servile glutton, Who all the time was eating up ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... in his social relations, and, instead of reverencing him as a meek and holy man of God, I could not forbear looking with utter contempt upon his pompous, self- sufficient demeanor toward the mass of his flock; while to the most opulent and influential members he bowed down, with a servile, fawning sycophancy absolutely disgusting. I attended various churches, listening to sermons, and watching the conduct of the prominent professing Christians of each. Many gave most liberally to so-called religious ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... consequently, which he peculiarly preferred. He was lord amongst such characters. They, while submitting implicitly to his influence, never acknowledged, because they never reflected on, his superiority; they were quite tractable, therefore, without running the smallest danger of being servile; and their unthinking, easy, artless insensibility was as acceptable, because as convenient, to Mr. Yorke as that of the chair he sat on, or ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... thoughtful people, you might have supposed them the greatest apostles of ideas in the world; unfortunately, on the days of the sittings they underwent a transformation, sat in hushed silence in their places, laughing in servile fashion at the jests of the clever man who presided over them, or only rising to make ridiculous propositions, the kind of interruption which would tempt one to believe that it is not a type only, but a whole race, that Henri ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... is the nub of the whole situation. Almost since the very day when the Pioneer began to blaze the trail of luxury over the railroads of the land, and the autocrat of the Pullman car created his servile but entirely honorable calling, it has been a mooted point. Recently a great Federal commission has blazed the strong light of publicity on it. Robert T. Lincoln, son of the Emancipator, and, as we have already said, the head and front of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... in good works? None at all. For take away grace and remission of sins for Christ's sake, and you leave men nothing to help them but the terrors of the law and judgment of God, which, at best, can beget but a servile and slavish spirit in that man in whom it dwells; which spirit is so far off from being an help to us in our pursuit of good works, that it makes us we cannot endure that which is commanded, but, Israel-like, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... unjust. If law to-day is more nearly the instrument of justice than it has ever been, it is the great lawyers to whom we chiefly owe the fact. There are Dodsons and Foggs in the law, but there are also Pyms and Pratts who have upheld the liberties of this country in the teeth of tyrant kings and servile Parliaments. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... from their heads, before they enter the room, where the king is. On entering the room, they neither bow nor scrape, nor kneel, and as this ceremony cannot be performed for them by others, they go into the royal presence in a less servile, or more dignified manner, than either the representatives of sovereigns, or those, who have humbled nations by the achievement ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... her, and she laid her hands on their heads, 'do not forget, when among strangers and exposed to temptation, the lessons of piety and chivalry which you have learned within these walls. Fear God, and He will support you in all dangers. Be frank and courteous, but not servile, to the rich and powerful; kind and helpful to the poor and afflicted. Beware of meriting the reproaches of the brave; and ever bear in mind that evil befalls him who proves false to his promises to his God, his country, and his lady. Be brave ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... and Circumstances, we should have better Poems, and juster Criticisms. Nothing casts a greater Cloud on the Judgment than the Inclination (or rather Resolution) to praise or condemn, before we see the Object. The Rich and the Great lay a Trap for Fame, and have always a numerous Crowd of servile Dependants, to clap their Play, ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb

... They are generally of medium stature, the face broad, the forehead low, the eyes black, the cheekbones prominent, the chin retreating, the mouth large, the lips thick, and the beard scanty. In common with most of the Asiatic races, they are apt to be indolent, improvident, greedy, intemperate, servile, cruel, vain, inquisitive, superstitious, and cowardly; but individual variations from the more repulsive types are happily not rare. In public they are scrupulously polite and decorous according to their own notions of good manners, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... Then to the servile task the monarch turns His royal hands: each torch refulgent burns With added day: meanwhile in museful mood, Absorb'd in thought, on vengeance fix'd he stood. And now the martial maid, by deeper wrongs To rouse Ulysses, points the suitors' tongues: ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... independent kind, and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what I hope to prove)—is the idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness, by the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Councils, poverty, obedience, vows, alms, fasting, supererogations, before God's Commandments; their own ordinances instead of his precepts, and keep them in ignorance, blindness, they have brought the common people into such a case by their cunning conveyances, strict discipline, and servile education, that upon pain of damnation they dare not break the least ceremony, tradition, edict; hold it a greater sin to eat a bit of meat in Lent, than kill a man: their consciences are so terrified, that they are ready to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... tradition in Parliament, adopted also in the United States Senate, that silence is quite becoming to a member during his first session. Disraeli had a motto to the effect that it is better to be impudent than servile, and in order to teach Parliament that in the presence of personality all rules are waived, he very shortly indulged him in an exceeding spread-eagle speech. But he had not spoken five minutes before the members began to laugh. Catcalls, hisses and mad tumult reigned. The ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... exercised on the subject. The defenders of the Roundheads could as easily produce instances of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted, from ancient writings, expressions almost as servile as were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgment seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in which Kings had extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Another set cited cases ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Virtue stand! With horror, grief, despair, the Dean Beheld the dire destructive scene: His friends in exile, or the tower, Himself[30] within the frown of power, Pursued by base envenom'd pens, Far to the land of slaves and fens;[31] A servile race in folly nursed, Who truckle most, when treated worst. "By innocence and resolution, He bore continual persecution; While numbers to preferment rose, Whose merits were, to be his foes; When ev'n his own familiar friends, Intent upon ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... The responsible writer's character, his position, antecedents, and probable motives have to be examined into; and this is what, in a different and adapted sense of the word, may be called the higher criticism, in comparison with the servile and often mechanical work of pursuing statements to their root. For a historian has to be treated as a witness, and not believed unless his sincerity is established 61. The maxim that a man must be presumed to be innocent until his guilt ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... hand. It appears that he made his sketch from one model; and the habit he had of drawing exactly from the form before him appears by his making all the figures with the same cap, such as his model then happened to wear; so servile a copyist was this great man, even at a time when he was allowed to be at ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... man to have one whole woman to cook for and wait upon him is a poor education for democracy. The boy with a servile mother, the man with a servile wife, cannot reach the sense of equal rights we need to-day. Too constant consideration of the master's tastes makes the master selfish; and the assault upon his heart direct, or through that proverbial side-avenue, the stomach, which the dependent woman ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... deep philosophy in this, we might say, for surely historians up to Esmond's day had not all been pompous and servile, while something like dignity is desirable. But here we have Thackeray speaking through Esmond his own thoughts about history, and proclaiming the rise of naturalism against the romantic high-heeled school. And in a much later ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... such and bath, particularly compulsory bath, is all the difference between the blue freedom of the sky and the allotted breathing space which is enclosed in a cage. There was something peculiarly humiliating and servile in being forced to soap and water three times a week under penalty of having your name read out before a tittering schoolroom—Absent from Bath! It vaguely recalled medieval days and such abominations as the inspection of ears and ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches[72]." "No flesh may glory in his presence;" "he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." The sudden vengeance by which the vain-glorious ostentation of Herod was punished, when, acquiescing in the servile adulation of an admiring multitude, "he gave not God the glory," is a dreadful comment ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... throughout the land. The people feared the draft for military service—they feared the firing of the cities—the poisoning of their water supplies and a hundred other spectres which in the minds of a degenerate and servile city population the presence of a successful aerial enemy ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings

... inthralled souls She chains in servile bands! Her eye in silence hath a speech Which ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... through its being false. She knew that most servants, while they spoke with the appearance of respect in presence, altered their tone entirely when beyond the circle of the eye: theirs was eye-service, they were men-pleasers, they were servile. She had overheard her maid speak of her as Lady Clem, and that not without a streak of contempt in the tone. But here was a man who touched no imaginary hat while he stood in the presence of his mistress, neither swore at her in the stable-yard. He looked her straight in the face, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... shown but for the sake of lucre; when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and daughters made slaves and concubines? On the other side, I would not be so delicate as those modern critics, who are shocked at the servile offices and mean employments in which we sometimes see the heroes of Homer engaged. There is a pleasure in taking a view of that simplicity, in opposition to the luxury of succeeding ages: in beholding ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... who met together weekly at the "Goose and Gridiron" were certainly open to the insinuation that they copied the practices of another debating society, which held its sittings farther west. In some respects they did so, and were perhaps even servile in their imitation. They divided themselves into parties, of which each had an ostensible leader. But then there was always some ambitious but hardly trustworthy member who endeavoured to gather round him a third party which might become dominant by trimming between the other two; and he again ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... Nebo-nadin-akhi, and Qudasu, the daughter of Akhi-nuri, in matrimony. The case was pleaded before the commissioners, the elders, and the judges of Nabonidos, King of Babylon, and the arguments were heard on both sides. They read the deeds relating to the servile condition of Barachiel, who from the thirty-fifth year of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, to the seventh year of Nabonidos, King of Babylon, had been sold for money, had been given as security for a debt, and had been handed over to Nubt, the daughter of Gag, as her dowry—Nubt, had afterward, ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... that ambition and all that national susceptibility the whole nation was, from the highest to the lowest, pervaded by the most thorough sense of impotence. Every one was constantly listening to learn the sentiments of Rome, the liberal man no less than the servile; they thanked heaven, when the dreaded decree was not issued; they were sulky, when the senate gave them to understand that they would do well to yield voluntarily in order that they might not need to be compelled; they did what they were obliged to do, if possible, in a way ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... which we have just descended, and availing himself of the immemorial right belonging to such cases of kissing and being kissed by every woman whom he meets, young and old. You will find yourself here among those who are too simple-minded, and too full of self-respect, to be either servile ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... sleep, thinking you needed the rest," the judge went on. "But ever since midnight we've been on the verge of riot and possible bloodshed. They've arrested John Murrell—it's claimed he's planned a servile rebellion! A man named Hues, who had wormed his way into his confidence, made the arrest. He carried Murrell into Memphis, but the local magistrate, intimidated, most likely, declined to have anything to do with holding him. In spite of this, Hues managed to get his prisoner lodged in jail, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... numbers like the Thracian Song, In crowning of her merits he would be Sumptuously poor, low in Hyperbole. To write is easy; but to write on thee, Truth would be thought to forfeit modesty. He'l seem a Poet that shall speak but true; Hyperbole's in others, are thy due. Like a most servile flatterer he will show Though he write truth, and make the Subject, You. Virtue ne'er dies, time will a Poet raise Born under better Stars, shall sing thy praise. Praise her who list, yet he shall be ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... delve the gold which enslaves the world, and before whose charms all freedom flies. In short, the object of the white man's rule to-day is not to develop the faculties of the Coloured races so that they may live a full life, but to keep them for ever in a servile position. The spirit that underlies this view of governing Coloured races spread into this Colony with the Union, and is now universal ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... preference to human laws before the divine? And if this is once admitted, by the same rule men may in all other things put what restrictions they please upon the laws of God. If by the Mosaical law, though it was rough and severe, as being a yoke laid on an obstinate and servile nation, men were only fined, and not put to death for theft, we cannot imagine that in this new law of mercy, in which God treats us with the tenderness of a father, He has given us a greater license to cruelty than He did to the Jews. Upon these ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... more pints of beer and swallowed the hot-headed Rhine wines as if thus renewing their blood in that of their fiery ancestors. Meals mounted to seven or eight a day, for it was proper to gorge themselves like the human gods they were. Even the most servile took on a conscious air of being of a ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... then free or is it in servile condition? We do not know. Do you not know that it is the slave of fever, of gout, ophthalmia, dysentery, of a tyrant, of fire, of iron, of everything which is stronger? Yes, it is a slave. How then is it possible that anything which belongs to the body can be ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... in their Hands—Cast their lot with Men of a Despised Race Unproved in War—and Risked Death as Inciters of a Servile Insurrection if Taken Prisoners, Besides Encountering all the Common Perils of Camp, March, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... a long-faced lot. They didn't know how to play at all. They had been brought up in stern repression of frivolities as haunters—no matter how sportive they may have been in life—and in turn they cowed mortals into a servile submission. No doubt they thought of men and women as mere youngsters that must be taught their place, since any living person, however senile, would be thought juvenile compared ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... a drawer of water, in a stagnant little clearing of the forest, our convict toiled continually—continually—like Caliban: all days alike; hewing at the mighty trunk and hacking up the straggling branches; no hope—no help—no respite; and the iron of servile tyranny entered into his very soul. Ay—ay; the culprit convicted, when he hears in open court, with an impudent assurance, the punishment that awaits him on those penal shores, little knows the terrors of that sentence. Months ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... other hand, the redeemable sins of avarice and prodigality are, in Dante's sight, those which are without deliberate or calculated operation. The lust, or lavishness, of riches can be purged, so long as there has been no servile consistency of dispute and competition for them. The sin is spoken of as that of degradation by the love of earth; it is purified by deeper humiliation—the souls crawl on their bellies; their chant is, "my soul cleaveth unto the dust." But the spirits thus condemned are all recognizable, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the mental faculties instead of only cultivating and loading the memory—a system which is solid rather than showy, practical rather than ostentatious, which prompts to independent thinking and action rather than to servile imitation. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... advance of an outlook upon nature, the thirteenth century did not help man very much. Roger Bacon was "a voice crying in the wilderness," and not one of the men I have picked out as specially typical of the period instituted any new departure either in practice or in science. They were servile followers, when not of the Greeks, of the Arabians. This is attested by the barrenness of the century and a half that followed. One would have thought that the stimulus given by Mundinus to the study of anatomy would have borne fruit, but little was done in science during the two ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... self-confessed butcher! She was weak—in yielding to girlish sentiment by permitting this man to shatter the conventionalities,—she who had been accustomed, throughout her twenty years of adulation and awe-inspiring respect, to a servile respect from every man, woman, and child! And, worst of all to an essentially feminine mind, she had allowed this presumptuous, calculating stranger to override her better judgment, to subjugate her resistance, without a visible ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... signs and life-giving words, as the Gospels contend. He does not rank with the saints who lack the divine essence; he has, in addition to divine form, the divine essence and nature. On the other hand, the servant, or servile, form implies acting toward others, in word and deed, like a servant. Thus Christ did when he served the disciples and gave himself for us. But he served not as the saints, who are servants by nature. Service was, with him, something assumed ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... of arts, learning, science, and literature, together with the enfeeblement of political energy and domestic morality; except for the loathsome domination of hypocrites and persecutors and informers; except for the Jesuitical encouragement of every secret vice and every servile superstition which might emasculate the race and render it subservient to authority;—except for these appalling evils, we have no right perhaps to deplore the settlement of Italy by Charles V. in 1530, or the course of subsequent events. For it is ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... Beagle establishment. He saw what kind of customers were typical, and what sort of conduct they expected. And the secret of conquest being always to give people a little more than they expect, he pursued that course. Since they expected in a floorwalker the mechanical and servile gentility of a hired puppet, he exhibited the easy, offhand simplicity of a fellow club-member. With perfect naturalness he went out of his way to assist in their shopping concerns: gave advice in the selection of ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... periodical revolutions; and none is more interesting than that one which occurs in the decline and corruption of arts, when a single mind returning to right principles, amidst the degenerated race who had forsaken them, seems to create a new epoch, and teaches a servile race once more how to invent! These epochs are few, but are easily distinguished. The human mind is never stationary; it advances or it retrogrades: having reached its meridian point, when the hour of perfection has gone ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... almost the same situation in which we left them at the Norman Conquest. They were still attached to the soil, talliable at the will of the lord, and bound to pay the fines for the marriage of their females, to perform customary labor, and to render the other servile prestations incident to their condition. It is true that in the course of time many had obtained the rights of freemen. Occasionally the king or the lord would liberate at once all the bondmen on some particular ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... ambition—"these are the true successors of Diotrephes and not my lord bishops"—on the gradual development of the Puritan theory till it came at last to claim a supremacy as unquestionable and intolerant as that of the Papacy; on the servile affectation of the fashions of Geneva and Strasburg; on the poverty and foolishness of much of the Puritan teaching—its inability to satisfy the great questions which it raised in the soul, its unworthy dealing ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... amount of land—ploughland, meadows, vineyards, orchards, and almost all the woods or forests on the estate. Clearly a great deal of labour would be needed to cultivate all these lands. Some of that labour was provided by servile workers who were attached to the chief manse and lived in the court. But these household serfs were not nearly enough to do all the work upon the monks' land, and far the greater part of it had to be done by services paid by the other ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... delight in following Guzman d'Alfarache, through all the mazes of squalid beggary; who with pleasure accompany Don Quixote and his squire, in the lowest paths of fortune; who are diverted with the adventures of Scarron's ragged troop of strollers, and highly entertained with the servile situations of Gil Blas; yet, when a character in humble life occasionally occurs in a performance of our own growth, exclaim, with an air of disgust, "Was ever anything so mean! sure, this writer must have been very conversant with the lowest scenes of life;"—who, when ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... strange I suffer pain When sacred oaths are thus made vain, And when the king with bloody hands Spreads war and pillage through my lands. One only solace now remains— I soon shall burst these servile chains. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... thought when Jesus spoke to His disciples of their Father in heaven. It was a thrilling novelty when Paul bade servile worshippers realise that they were no longer slaves, but sons, and as such, heirs of God. It was the rapture of pointing to a new star flaming out, as it were, that swelled in John's exclamation: 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God!' For even though ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... licentiousness of the stage in the reign of Charles II was enormous: but it was a licentiousness which the theatre in common with the whole nation derived from the court, and from a most flagitious monarch whose example made vice fashionable. In servile compliance with the reigning taste, the greatest poets of the day abandoned true fame, and discarded much of their literary merit: Otway and Dryden sunk into the most mean and criminal slavery to it—the former with the greatest powers for the pathetic ever possessed by ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... truths. Phraseology—definitions—vary with advancing centuries, but not so the human impulses they express or explain; and friendship in the days of Job was the identical 'Mutual Admiration Society,' which at present converts its consistent servile members into Damon and Pythias, but punishes any violation of its canons with hatred dire and inextinguishable. Were I blessed with the genius of Praxiteles or of Angelo, I would chisel and bequeath to the world a noble statue,—typical ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... rights of pasturage and of forests are to be surrendered. The roads are to be free everywhere, as formerly. All seignorial rents are to be suppressed. Millers are to take only one thirty-second of a bushel. The seigneurs of our department are to give up all servile holidays and ill-acquired property. The cure of Bieze is simply to say mass at nine o'clock in the morning and vespers at two o'clock in the afternoon, in summer and winter; he must marry and bury gratis, it being reserved to us to pay him a salary. He is to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of Surgeons, and such institutions which really have a motive in view—steadfastly adhered to—I saw, then as now, that every provincial museum was nothing if left to its own devices, and, if "inspired," was, at the best, but a sorry and servile imitator of the worst points ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress; but thought is in no way instrumental or servile; it is an experience realised, not a force to be used. That same spontaneity in nature which has suggested a good must be trusted to fulfil it. If we look fairly at the actual resources of our minds we perceive that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... servile and cringing. "Your Lordship is pleased to be pleasant. Indeed, though, I fear that your ears must burn, sir, for I was but now expatiating upon the manifold kindnesses your Lordship has been so generous as to confer upon your unworthy friend. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... peace, the white man's sail Swayed free before the sunrise gale. Cloud-like that island hung afar, Along the bright horizon's verge, O'er which the curse of servile war Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge; And he, the Negro champion, where In the fierce tumult struggled he? Go trace him by the fiery glare Of dwellings in the midnight air, The yells of triumph and despair, The streams that crimson ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... have Chesterton believing devoutly that that servile state, stricken with plague, and afflicted with death in all its forms, is the dreamland of the saints. His political principles, roughly speaking, are England was decent once—let us apply the same recipe to the England of to-day. His suggestions, therefore, are rather negative than positive. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... the two children of his duchy, Mademoiselle de la Valliere assumed the title of Duchess. What a fuss she made at this time! All that was styled disinterestedness, modesty. Not a bit of it. It was pusillanimity and a sense of servile fear. La Valliere would have liked to enjoy her handsome lover in the shade and security of mystery, without exposing herself to the satire of courtiers and of the public, and, above all, to the reproaches of her family and relatives, who nearly all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... day, as often as time and distance allowed, kept a journal in which were recorded the notable events that happened in his work, or person, and as he rode over the rough roads, the broad sky became his study where he read many volumes every year. These were not done through any servile imitation, but because of an admiration and unconscious hero worship which compelled him to follow where he admired. Wesley was to William Black a saint, an ecclesiastical statesman, an acute and learned theologian, a great winner of souls, and above all a personal friend, and when he ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean

... reference to this object and the progress towards it. And as no man is to be excused in having horses or pictures, if his having them hinders his own or others' progress towards perfection and makes them lead a servile and ignoble life, so is no man to be excused for having children if his having them makes him or others lead this. Plain thoughts of this kind are surely the spontaneous product of our consciousness, when it is allowed to play ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... birth[159]. May 4, Monson, writing from Washington, and just returned from a trip through the South, in the course of which he had visited Montgomery, stated "no reconstruction of the Union is possible," and added that there was no danger of a servile insurrection, a matter that now somewhat began to disturb the British Government and public[160]. A few days later on, May 12, Lyons expressed his strong sympathy with the North for reasons of anti-slavery, law, and race, but added ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... House of Representatives, December 10, 1811, said: "I speak from facts when I say that the night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond that the mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom." This was said apropos of the danger of a servile insurrection in the event of a war with England—a war which actually broke out in the year following, but was not attended with the slave rising which Randolph predicted. Randolph was a thorough-going "States rights" man, and though opposed to slavery on principle, he cried hands ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... which I rest this cause. I maintain that the XIV. Amendment opens to every citizen of the United States, male or female, black or white, married or single, the honorable professions as well as the servile employments of life; and that no citizen can be excluded from any one of them. Intelligence, integrity, and honor are the only qualifications that can be prescribed as conditions precedent to an entry upon any honorable pursuit or profitable avocation, and all the privileges and immunities which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... a grave, puzzled expression. The native servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this. They were obsequious and servile and did not presume to talk to their masters as if they were their equals. They made salaams and called them "protector of the poor" and names of that sort. Indian servants were commanded to do things, not asked. It was not the custom ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... him to make his own individual selection of friends and associates. It is only through weakness of purpose that young people, as well as old, become the slaves of their inclinations, or give themselves up to a servile imitation of others. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... interfere with the love she felt for him. To him it did not matter whether she was of the pure blood or of the metis. He had always ignored the Indian in her. She was a precious wildling of beauty and delight. By nature she was of the ruling race. There was in her nothing servile or dependent, none of the inertia that was so marked a mental characteristic of the Blackfoot and the Cree. Her slender body was compact of fire and spirit. She was alive to ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... art is not to copy nature, but to express it. You are not a servile copyist, but a poet!" cried the old man sharply, cutting Porbus short with an imperious gesture. "Otherwise a sculptor might make a plaster cast of a living woman and save himself all further trouble. Well, try to make a cast of your mistress's hand, and set up the thing before you. You will ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac

... servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands, And ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... fly you happiness? Desire you still to lead a servile life? Dare you not buy delights with little pains? Well, for thy father's sake, Arcathius, I will prefer thy triumphs with the rest. Go, take them hence, and when we meet in hell, Then tell me, princes, if I did not well. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... fulness of all the crops, and the joy of all the pleasures. Well, they lied to you: there is no island of souls, there are no happy fields, there is no life of atonement after this. [Loud murmurs] They have set up these gods for your servile adoration; they have counselled you: "Bow down, these gods will avenge you." They have said: "Prostrate yourselves, these gods are just." They have said: "Throw yourselves to earth, these gods are good." They have declared them ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... only do you trust, and the few which you maintain about your person, is rather for state, then fear. Quid enim istis opus est, quum firmissimo sis muro Civici amoris obtectus? Here is then the firm Keeper of our Liberties indeed, whom the Armies love for His own sake, and whom no servile flattery adores; but a simple, and sincere devotion; and verily such a Prince as Your Majesty, deserves to have friends, Prompt, steady and faithful; such as You have, and which Virtue rather then Fortune procures. ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... great BACON, whose sagacious eye Pierc'd through the gloom of dark Philosophy, And to the World unveil'd her awful face, Crouch'd a low, servile Courtier in disgrace. There PULTENEY, who the first stout bulwark stood Of British Freedom 'gainst the torrent flood Of dire Corruption, having stemm'd the wave, Shook off the Patriot, and became the Slave. There PITT, whose great ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe

... never quail Below the servile yoke, Long as our seamen trim the sail, And wake the battle smoke— Long as they stem the stormy gale, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... of any foreigner was of but little account with any Roman, but enslaved foreigners were regarded as on a level with brutes. Many anecdotes are related of the ferocious disregard of all humanity which the world's masters manifested towards the servile classes. There is a story told by Cicero, in one of the Verrine Orations, which peculiarly illustrates this feature of the Roman character. The praetorian edicts forbade slaves to carry arms. There were no exceptions. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... This servile vanity is not less natural or less common than the vanity of dominion. Whoever feels himself incapable of command, at least desires to obey a powerful chief. Serfs have been known to consider themselves dishonored when they became the property of a mere ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... length on the Georgia bill,[51] Senator Revels spoke out fearlessly in the defense of his race. He defended the Negroes against charges of antagonism and servile strife, lauded the conduct of Negro soldiers in the Civil War and the part they played in saving the Union. He called attention to the loyalty of the Negroes in protecting the white women and their homes, with the knowledge that the masters were engaged in the prosecution of a war the success ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... Brahmans the sacerdotal caste. Kshatriyas the royal and military, Vaisyas the mercantile, and Sudras the servile. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... Army which would have been even more appropriate to the Prussian Army. The Prussian Army ruled Prussia; Prussia ruled Germany; Germany ruled the Concert of Europe. She was planting everywhere the appliances of that new servile machinery which was her secret; the absolute identification of national subordination with business employment; so that Krupp could count on Kaiser and Kaiser on Krupp. Every other commercial traveller was pathetically ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... place was a tumult of swarming savages and white men; already the Seneca women, crowding among the men, were raising the death wail. The dancing girls huddled together in a frightened and half-naked group; the Andastes cowered apart; the servile Eries were staggering out of the corn fields laden with ripe ears; and the famished soldiers were shouting and cursing at them and tearing the corn from their arms to gnaw the raw ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... the characteristics of a crowd, will, like a crowd, be extreme in its sentiments. Excessive in its violence, it will be excessive in its cowardice. In general it will be insolent to the weak and servile before ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... been apostrophized as a "dying" Poet,—the mob, always fickle and always dazzled by outward show, suddenly set up a deafening roar of cheering. The pallid hue of terror vanished from faces that had but lately looked spectrally thin with speechless dread, and crowds of servile petitioners and place-hunters began to press eagerly round their monarch's chariot, ... when all at once a woman in the throng gave a wild scream and rushed away shrieking "THE OBELISK! ... ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... be both brave and prudent. Now if you hand over the legions and the offices to such men, there will be danger that both you and your government will be overthrown. It is not possible for a valuable man to be produced without good sense, and he cannot acquire any great good sense from servile practices. But again, if he becomes a man of sense, he cannot fail to desire liberty and to hate all masters. If, on the other hand, you entrust nothing to these men, but put affairs in charge of the worthless ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... on the conference, the Puritans felt that they had lost everything, and the High Church people that they had gained everything. One of the bishops, in a very servile way, and on his knee, gave thanks to God for having given the country such a king, whose like had never been seen since Christ was on earth. Certainly hard times were ahead for the Puritans. The King harried them according to his word. Within sixteen years some of them landed at Plymouth ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... the secretary saw my name, her manner entirely changed, and became as servile as it ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... impossible. A vast number, however, of the inhabitants of the country were carried away, and they remained, for two generations, in a miserable bondage. Some of them were employed as agricultural laborers in the rural districts of Babylon; others remained in the city, and were engaged in servile labors there. The prophet Daniel lived in the palaces of the king. He was summoned, as the reader will recollect, to Belshazzar's feast, on the night when Cyrus forced his way into the city, to interpret the mysterious writing ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... be greater than those of purgatory, and I have well deserved to be in hell. It is not much to spend the rest of my life as if I were in purgatory, and then go straight to Heaven—which was what I desired. I was more influenced by servile fear, I think, than by ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... cries presumptuous, "Here the flood shall stay," [186] 660 May in its progress see thy guiding hand, And cease the acknowledged purpose to withstand; [187] Or, swept in anger from the insulted shore, Sink with his servile bands, to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... was followed by a moment's silence. As is common in many blustering men, there was a deal of timidity deep down in Hobart. The announcement of his lordship's rank had touched those depths. A servile upstart, he stood in awe of titles. And he stood in awe of his colonel. Percy Kirke was ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... there received, now that they had returned home, served only to exasperate them against the pretensions of the superior class, without availing to eradicate their inbred instincts of servility in the presence of the very men they hated. Precisely this self-contemptuous recognition of his own servile feeling, operating on a morose temper, was the key to Hubbard's special bitterness toward the silk stockings. That Perez had none of this peasant's instinct, must, after all, be partly ascribed to the fact that his descent, by his mother's ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... for that very refusal, was again appointed by Mr. Hastings to supersede Mr. Bristow, removed without a pretence of offence; he received, I say, this appointment from Mr. Hastings, as a reward for that servile compliance by which he dissolved every tie between himself ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... that has within itself true vitality must ever be the leader and the creator of the popular taste; only when it falls into decadence does it become the servile follower. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... which professes to lay down the law on artistic matters which it does not in the least understand. It is time (said one speaker) that our so-called Emperor should cease to be persuaded by the plaudits of a decadent and servile entourage into imagining Himself a Second Sarasatius. Absolutism is ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... brought a different answer. Dudley was puzzled. The woman was in her right mind; she was no liar—of this servile vice at least she was free. Surely ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... best support of character will always be found in habit, which, according as the will is directed rightly or wrongly, as the case may be, will prove either a benignant ruler, or a cruel despot. We may be its willing subject on the one hand, or its servile slave on the other. It may help us on the road to good, or it may hurry us ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... It took her back to the few weeks in which she had collected—or rather had received—almost with the air of a domestic, four-fifty per week from a lordly foreman in a shoe factory—a man who, in distributing the envelopes, had the manner of a prince doling out favours to a servile group of petitioners. She knew that out in Chicago this very day the same factory chamber was full of poor homely-clad girls working in long lines at clattering machines; that at noon they would eat a miserable lunch in a half-hour; that Saturday ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... which do not materially differ from those which he professes to have abandoned. The pressure of the whole system of Western education—not to speak of Western civilisation—will be too strong for him. The flat copy, with its demand for mechanical work and servile obedience, fits into that system. Drawing from the object, with its demand for initiative and self-reliance, does not. Hence the attractive force of the former,—a secret attractive force which will ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... day, who were thus able to provide for a number of their needy relatives and dependants—a matter of vastly greater importance in their eyes than the proper administration of the affairs of a distant and newly-acquired colony. The Conquest thus proved a boon to many servile hangers-on of public men in Great Britain, and scores of the waifs and strays of British aristocracy began to turn their eyes towards Canada as a possible resource in the last emergency. It was said to be a cold and comfortless land, but it was surely preferable to the Fleet Prison ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... such a rival, but I wronged him: nothing could exceed his fondness for "baby boy," or the zeal of his Irish devotion to the little gentleman. Knowing that in the event of my removal, Jack must earn his bread by some laborious or servile occupation, I had kept him humble. He ate in the same room with us, because I never suffered him to associate with servants; but at a side-table; and he was expected to do every little household work that befitted his age and strength. A kind ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... sportive as a puppy in the sun, he all at once declared that he would not leave a single village girl on his estate unnoticed, that that was his DROIT DE SEIGNEUR, and that if the peasants dared to protest he would have them all flogged and double the tax on them, the bearded rascals. Our servile rabble applauded, but I attacked him, not from compassion for the girls and their fathers, but simply because they were applauding such an insect. I got the better of him on that occasion, but though Zverkov was stupid he was lively and impudent, and so laughed it off, and in such ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... to expatiate on the merits, or apologise for the defects of my master, or (as it often is) to claim the pity and forbearance of the mobile, and set forth in humble terms the degradations he has submitted, and is still ready to submit to,—I say, reader, though a part so servile has been assigned to me, yet, should my natural claims and intrinsic merits be duly considered, different, far different would be my station. What! am I thus exalted in situation above my [sic] situated, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... with a servile air, 'I am a man as gets my living, and as seeks to get my living, by the sweat of my brow. Not to risk being done out of the sweat of my brow, by any chances, I should wish afore going further ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... loyal admiration for the brilliant qualities of one trained perhaps to despise him, by which the servitor must have become, in his measure, actually a sharer in them. Just here, for once, we see that slavish ethos, the servile range of sentiment, which ought to accompany the condition of slavery, if it be indeed, as Aristotle supposes, one of the [217] natural relationships between man and man, idealised, or aesthetically right, pleasant ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... Strict Laws impos'd, to celebrate his Throne With warbl'd Hymns, and to his Godhead sing Forc't Halleluiah's; while he Lordly sits Our envied Sovran, and his Altar breathes Ambrosial Odours and Ambrosial Flowers, Our servile offerings. This must be our task In Heav'n, this our delight; how wearisom Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue By force impossible, by leave obtain'd 250 Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... court had neglected no means of gaining so active and able a divine. Neither royal blandishments nor promises of valuable preferment had been spared. But Burnet, though infected in early youth by those servile doctrines which were commonly held by the clergy of that age, had become on conviction a Whig; and he firmly adhered through all vicissitudes to his principles. He had, however, no part in that conspiracy which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay



Words linked to "Servile" :   subservient, obsequious, sycophantic, unservile, slavelike, slavish, bootlicking, servility, fawning, toadyish, submissive, unfree



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com