"Despot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spring up. For the people becomes a monarch and is many in one; and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals but collectively.... And the people, who is now a monarch, and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer is held in honour; this sort of democracy being relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... And what avails thee that, for CAMERON slain, Wild from his plaided ranks the yell was given - Vengeance and grief gave mountain-range the rein, And, at the bloody spear-point headlong driven, Thy Despot's giant guards fled ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... you like to live? Under neither; but if I had to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... servant of democracy, not its enemy. Well—I'm going to be the autocrat in this case. I am going to sit behind the scenes and as long as my company functions all right I will leave it alone, but if it shows signs of wrecking itself I will assume the role of the benevolent despot and set it to rights again. Oh, Phyllis, don't you see? It's not just MY company I'm thinking about. This is an experiment, in which my company will represent the State. If it succeeds I shall turn the whole machinery over to the State as my contribution to the betterment ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Bess, on that edifying occasion, while Richard grinned and Dorothy rebuked him with a frown, "wedlock results always in the owner and the owned—a slave and a despot. That is by the wife's decree. The husband is slave and she despot, or he the despot and she the slave, as best matches with her strength or weakness. Some women desire slavery; they would be unhappy without a ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... No family or able-bodied unit need starve or lack shelter; the humblest could count on the most open-handed hospitality from his fellows. The tribal territory was the property of all. The tilling, the fishing, the fowling were work which could not be neglected. The chief was not a despot, but the president of a council, and in war would not be given the command unless he was the most capable captain. Every man was a soldier, and, under the perpetual stress of possible war, had to be a trained, self-denying athlete. The pas were, for defensive reasons, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... which kept the States of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions; as they now schismatize every people whose minds and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the terms of whig and tory belong to natural, as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution of mind of different individuals. To come to our own country, and to the times when you and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... provoke My young desire, that I Hoped respite from his harsh and heavy yoke. But, ah! what boots—though changing time sweep by, If from this changeless passion nought can save— A genius proud and high? Or what Heaven's other envied gifts to have, If still I groan the slave Of the fierce despot whom I here accuse, Who turns e'en my sad life to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Die first this hated despot! who, ever, fiend-like, strikes his envious fangs, where Heaven most loves, and man's most bound to guard! I pardon! I give sanctuary! and whilst one spark of ebbing life glows here, whilst one small fragment of these walls remain, that fragment may be stained with dire assassin's ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... from the first he felt an ardent desire to be near his benefactor, his natural modesty prevented his thrusting himself upon me without considerable preliminary skirmishing. His fellow monkeys, keenly sensible of his noble qualities, and happy in having got rid of the odious despot who had so long oppressed them, were only too glad to aid him in any reasonable and honorable project which might benefit the hero who had slain their hated ruler. But by what queer signs and by what sort of jabbering our little monkey had made his wishes known ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... take. Technically he would be a deserter. He had reason to fear that he would not be allowed to make his way in the world by his own merit, unharmed and unhelped, but would be dogged by the malice of a despot and perhaps brought back to undergo the fate of Schubart. Worse still was the possibility that his father might be made to suffer from the duke's anger. Nevertheless he resolved to take the risk. He made known his purpose to a very few friends, one of whom, Frau ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... half deserted, for men and women alike were working in the fields. On the balcony of the best house a branch of palm bound against the ironwork balustrade indicated the dwelling of the priest, and the form of that village despot was dimly discernible in the darkened room behind. Beyond the village Conyngham turned his horse's head towards the mountain, his mind preoccupied with a Macchiavellian scheme of losing his way in this neighbourhood. Through the evergreen oak and ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western origin. Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek. The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries of the Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... which James intended to follow in England was shown indeed by the course he was following in the sister kingdoms. In Scotland he acted as a pure despot. At the close of Charles's reign the extreme Covenanters or "wild Whigs" of the Western shires had formally renounced their allegiance to a "prelatical" king. A smouldering revolt spread over the country that was only held in check by the merciless ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... himself a barbarian, could only accomplish his purpose by means of aid from outside, by the instrumentality of those who had experience of a more advanced order of things. The borrowed forces could only be applied by the powers of a despot. That power, moreover, was already provided. Muscovy had never been governed otherwise than by irresponsible and irresistible authority. That authority had been inactive and not deeply felt. Now the same authority interfered to alter almost everything, except the subjection ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... new-fledged, Arise, strong Glory, at thy voice. Our sword the people's will has edged, Our rule stands on the people's choice. This land would mourn beneath a crown, Where born slaves only could rejoice. How should the Nation keep it down? What would a despot's fortunes be, After his days of strength had flown, Amidst this people, proud and free, Whose histories from such sources run? The thought is its own mockery. I pity the audacious one Who may ascend that thorny throne, And bide a single setting sun. Day dies; my shadow's length has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... salutation, he angrily complained against them to his father. Nicholas, however, blamed the son for his unreasonable exaction. This vicious arrogance of the boy ripened afterwards into the haughtiness of the despot, being but slightly mitigated by a naturally melancholy disposition, which sometimes gave ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... man in New York, and no one who estimates his customers more correctly. He puts a high price on his services, and is said to have accumulated a handsome fortune, popularly estimated at about $300,000. Fat and sleek, and smooth of tongue, he can be a very despot when he chooses. He keeps a list of the fashionable young men of the city, who find it to their interest to be on good terms with him, since they are mainly dependent upon him for their invitations. Report says that, like a certain great statesman, Brown is not averse to receiving ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a despot who arose upon the ruins of the old monarchy,—the product of a revolution, whose ideas he proposed to defend. Most historians, and all moralists, are on the whole unanimous in this verdict. As for his deeds, they rise up before ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... subjects and slaves; and he also excited the common people by telling them that although they were enjoying a fancied freedom they really had been deprived of their ancestral privileges and sacred rites, and made to endure the rule of one foreign despot, instead of that of many good ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... COINAGE BY REFUGEES.—The Persian kings accorded to certain illustrious Greeks who had sought refuge in Asia Minor on Persian territory the right to coin money. To this they joined the privileges inherent in the title of hereditary despot which was granted to them. The principal coinages are those of Themistokles at Magnesia, of Georgion at Gambrium, and of Euripthenes at Pergamon. M. Babelon read a memoir on the subject before the Soc. des Antiquaires, giving genealogical details regarding those families of ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... eminent nobleman. From the "aucht-and-forty daugh" of Strathbogie to the Catholic Braes of Glenlivat where fifty years ago the "sma' stills" reeked in every moorland hollow, across to beautiful Kinrara and down Spey to the fertile Braes of Enzie, his Grace is the benevolent despot of a thriving tenantry who have good cause to regard him with esteem and gratitude. The Duke is a masterful man, whom no factor need attempt to lead by the nose; but on the margin of Spey, from the blush-red crags of Cairntie ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... subject had not been exhausted. Coquetting and posing to himself and the inanimate objects about him, far from any indiscreet, critical eye, tyrannizing and domineering over the little anthill that fate has put in his power are the honey and the salt of his existence. And how different is this despot here at home from the humble, meek, dull-witted little man we are accustomed to see ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... without a tremendous struggle. It is ungenerous to attack Great Britain now, when, as the champion of human liberty, she is engaged in a death-wrestle with the arch despot Napoleon." ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... ground. We went over into Maryland to give the Marylanders a chance to rise for the South. They didn't rise worth a cent. I suppose we didn't get more than five hundred volunteers in that state. 'The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland, my Maryland,' and it can stay on thy shore, Maryland, my Maryland, if that's the way you treat us. I feel a lot more ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... new era. Many English kings had occasionally committed unconstitutional acts; but none had ever systematically attempted to make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March, 1629, to April, 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our history had there been an interval ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... more contracted that power is, the more easily it is destroyed. A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone. Government there cannot be so firm, as when it rests upon a broad basis gradually contracted, as the government of Great Britain, which is founded on the parliament, then is ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... him, The Prophet of the Cherubim; Or those which sad Esaias hurled Against a sin-accursed world! Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling Unceasing from its iron wing, With characters inscribed thereon, As fearful in the despot's ball As to the pomp of Babylon The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... people. Algernon Sydney, on the other hand, would gladly have aided France in all her ambitious schemes, and have seen England reduced to the condition of a province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him to establish his darling republic. The King took the money of France to assist him in the enterprise which he meditated against the liberty of his subjects, with as little scruple as Frederic ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from such edicts. His sense of justice, however, kindled none the less at this final piece of tyranny. He blazed and fumed indignantly on behalf of his sisters, in the sanctuary of that little study,—a spot where the despot seldom set foot; and out of this comparatively trivial cause had sprung a mighty resolution, which he and she whom he proudly honoured as "sister and friend" had, after some girding of the loins, repaired to the front ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Teacher of Lawlessness 18. Luther Repudiates the Ten Commandments 19. Luther's Invisible Church 20. Luther on the God-given Supremacy of the Pope 21. Luther the Translator of the Bible 22. Luther a Preacher of Violence against the Hierarchy 23. Luther, Anarchist and Despot All in One 24. Luther the Destroyer of Liberty of Conscience 25. "The Adam and Eve of the New Gospel of Concubinage" 26. Luther an Advocate of Polygamy 27. Luther Announces His Death 28. ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary issues of reverie. The Machiavelli whom he depicts does not cease to be politically a republican and socially a just man because he holds up an atrocious despot like Caesar Borgia as a mirror for rulers. What Machiavelli beheld round him in Italy was a civic disorder in which there was oppression without statecraft, and revolt without patriotism. When a miscreant like Borgia ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Faubourg Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of personal advantages, that they united in forming a little court round the overbearing Emilie. This treaty between interest and pride was not, however, so firmly cemented but that the young despot was, not unfrequently, the cause of revolts in her little realm. Scenes, which the highest circles would not have disowned, kept up a sarcastic temper among all the members of this powerful family; and ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... of James's iron time, When Law was Murder, Mercy was a crime, Till from his throne by weary millions hurled The Despot roamed in Exile ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... oligarchy is making itself felt to-day, and I should like to fortify the revolutionary spirit of liberty, whose boast it is to detest tyranny in all its forms, whether it is the tyranny of an enlightened despot, or the tyranny of a virtuous oligarchy, or the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... should be reversed. It is impossible to deny, therefore, that what the united Germanics were resolved to destroy was the reform and not even the Revolution. The part which Joseph of Austria played in the matter is symbolic. For he was what is called an enlightened despot, which is the worst kind of despot. He was as irreligious as Frederick the Great, but not so disgusting or amusing. The old and kindly Austrian family, of which Maria Theresa was the affectionate mother, and Marie Antoinette ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... life is action— A formal paction That curbs his reign, Obscures his glory, Despot no more, he Such territory Quits with disdain. Still, still advancing, With banners glancing, His power enhancing, He must move on— Repose but cloys him, Retreat destroys him, Love brooks not a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... abused its power and its success. But something must be attributed to the character and situation of individuals. The man who bore the chief part in effecting this revolution was Philip the Fourth of France, surnamed the Beautiful, a despot by position, a despot by temperament, stern, implacable, and unscrupulous, equally prepared for violence and for chicanery, and surrounded by a devoted band of men of the sword and of men of law. The fiercest and most high minded of the Roman Pontiffs, while bestowing kingdoms ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have described is a specimen of the manner in which the force was sometimes applied. The heartless despot and his clerical coadjutors had still to learn that tyranny has not yet forged the weapon that can separate man from ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... abrupt and wild, Pierced by long toil and hollowed to a fane;— Huge piers and frowning forms of gods sustain The everlasting arches, dark and wide, Like the night-heaven, when clouds are black with rain. But idly skill was tasked, and strength was plied, All was the work of slaves to swell a despot's pride. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... Freedom's champions rally 'Gainst the despot's sway, Then they mourn the friend and ally That has ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... were not to be so easily subdued. The first panic was over, but they were crazed by the fear that had gripped them for days; they believed that the ship was soon to sink beneath their feet; safety lay not more than a hundred yards away,—and it was being denied them by this heartless, unfeeling despot. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Albert Reville says, no one in France regretted the Batavian Republic when it was stricken from the roll of history by the will of a despot; or, rather, the Parisians, in their occasionally exaggerated infatuation, fancied that the Dutch would be overjoyed to have a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... reform, be morally and for a time justifiable. Their adoption is, however, liable to an almost insuperable objection. Democracy in Great Britain does not comport with official autocracy in Ireland. Every government must be true to its principles, and a democracy which played the benevolent despot ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... and the other provinces. The insolent burghers are severely punished for remembering that they had been freemen. The magistrates of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, in black garments, ungirdled, bare-headed, and kneeling, are compelled to implore the despot's forgiveness, and to pay three hundred thousand crowns of gold as its price. After this, for a brief season, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of such a compromise with a political idea are evident enough. The oligarchy will be luxurious and corporately corrupt, and individually somewhat despicable, with a sort of softness about it in morals and in military affairs. The despot or the bureaucracy will be individually corrupt, especially in the lower branches of the system, and ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... benevolent despotism is the best possible form of government. I do not believe that saying, because I believe another one to the effect that hell is paved with benevolence, which most people, the proverb being too deep for them, misinterpret as unfulfilled intentions. As if a benevolent despot might not by any error of judgment destroy his kingdom, and then say, like Romeo when he got his friend killed, 'I thought all for the best!' Excuse my rambling. I meant to say, in short, that though you are benevolent and judicious you are none ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... it? To this point he charged himself lightly—as men will in justifying themselves before the finger of an hoary accusation. Gessner cared neither for God nor man. His only daughter had been at once his divinity and his religion. Let men call him a rogue, despot, or thief, and he would shrug his shoulders and glance aside at his profit and loss account. But let them call him "fool" and the end of his days surely was ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... half-savage independence of the people, described as "always strutting about with slow dignity, though in rags." In October we find him with his companions at Janina, hospitably entertained by order of Ali Pasha, the famous Albanian Turk, bandit, and despot, then besieging Ibrahim at Berat in Illyria. They proceeded on their way by "bleak Pindus," Acherusia's lake, and Zitza, with its monastery door battered by robbers. Before reaching the latter place, they encountered a terrific thunderstorm, in ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the truth, wisdom offends it on the lips of Socrates, and virtue in the life of Phocion. It is well known that the Romans had to exhaust their energies in civil wars, and, corrupted by Oriental luxury, to bow their heads under the yoke of a fortunate despot, before Grecian art triumphed over the stiffness of their character. The same was the case with the Arabs: civilisation only dawned upon them when the vigour of their military spirit became softened under the sceptre of the Abbassides. Art did not appear in modern Italy till the glorious Lombard ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... consented to be honoured by it. Even if the Howes had been uniformly victorious and had finished the war by brilliant exploits, the pageantry was of such a nature as would have been better fitted for some inglorious Eastern despot; how much more then was it misplaced when all the work they had been commissioned to execute was left undone. The enemy had still the sword in their hands, and were daily increasing in courage, in skill, in strength, and in numbers. Such was the state of America when Sir William ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... reconciliations, and by Christmas Mary was convalescent—pale as she had never been since childhood, and wearing a little cap over her shaved head; very humble and gentle, and strangely docile in her attitude towards her captor, who now gave himself all the airs of a husband of his class. He was the benevolent despot of his women-kind—the god of the machine; she was as properly submissive as if born in the ranks. Negatively so, that is to say; positively, her manifestations of duty to him took the form of services and endearments bestowed upon ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... was exact. The reader was finally allowed to resume. "You mean to send an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis. Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... interest of the stronger and that law and morality are mere conventions. The implications of this doctrine are of supreme importance. If Justice is frank despotism, then the Eastern type of civilisation is the best, wherein custom has once for all fixed the right of the despot to grind down the population, while the sole duty of the latter is to pay taxes. The moral reformation of law becomes impossible; no adjustment of an unchanging decree to the changing and advancing standard of public morality can be contemplated; constitutional development, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... may be? If the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? Is the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? Shall we step backward a thousand years because our present ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... dare Ape the great Despot; throw in pompous tone And massy words their true no meaning down! But while their envious eyes on Genius glare, While axioms false assiduously they square In arrogant antithesis, a frown Lours on the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... who can open the door of happiness and fortune to their confederates, so was he soon distinguished and raised, step by step, to the rank of prime-minister of the kingdom; whilst I, neglected, despised, and unknown, remained stationary. The proud despot exerted his utmost to bring me over to his party by bribery and promise of place; but I saw that he only wished to make me thereby more deeply feel his power, and that he felt nothing more was wanting to complete his triumph than ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... unsparing terms. Vallandigham, a Democratic leader of Ohio, afterward banished to the South for his opposition to the war, constantly applied to Lincoln the epithet of "Caesar." Wendell Phillips saw in him "a more unlimited despot than the world knows this side ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... influence of religion have arisen the priesthoods,—sometimes ruling as an aristocratic caste or class, sometimes dividing power with the reigning despot, to whom ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... alone a Despot spurn? Shall she alone, O Freedom, boast thy care? Lo, round thy standard Belgia's heroes burn, Tho' Power's blood-stain'd streamers fire the air, And wider yet thy influence spread, 35 Nor e'er recline thy weary head, Till every land from pole to pole Shall boast ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... do I mean? Mistrust. Keep this, hold to this; preserve this only, and you can never be injured. What do ye desire? Freedom. Then see ye not that Philip's very titles are at variance therewith? Every king and despot is a foe to freedom, an antagonist to laws. Will ye not beware, I said, lest, seeking deliverance from war, you ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... deliver you from the yoke of your oppressor, to protect the weak, and those who turn from the error of their ways with repentance, as well as all those who have risen in revolt against the power of the despot. In the name of the great ruler of men, the emperor of all the Russias, who has delivered all power into my hands to punish the fomenters of strife as they deserve, but who nevertheless desires to throw over their offences the covering of his gracious forgiveness, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... infant who laughs at its mother's funeral, not from wickedness of disposition but absence of the faculty which appreciates woe, and I doubt not that this change goes far to explain the ghastly unfeelingness of many a Turkish and Chinese despot whose ingeniously cruel tortures we shudder to read of scarcely more than the placidity with which he sees them inflicted. If he was originally so sensitive to the boundaries between Meum and Tuum that the least invasion of another's property hurt him more than any loss of his own, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... woman mistress of so much tact, nor with more need of it. He struts like a little despot while the beggars sing in ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... are against any form of popular liberty if it is guaranteed by even the most just and liberal laws, and who are as hostile to the upright exponent of a free people's sober will as to the tyrannical and irresponsible despot. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Mercury, nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... terribly lacerated. This hunter made two other attempts to capture the royal scalp, but neither of them was more successful than the first, and on the last occasion his best horse met its death by a fall; so he gave up the chase in disgust and went back to Texas, leaving Lobo more than ever the despot ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... making mistakes, and though it is easy to laugh about them afterwards, at the time they are very real miseries. At Fernhurst, things are not made easy for the new boy. Gordon found himself placed in the Upper Fourth, under Fleming, a benevolent despot who was a master of sarcasm and was so delighted at making a brilliant attack on some stammering idiot that he quite forgot to punish him. "Young man, young man," he would say, "people who forget their books are a confounded nuisance, and I don't want ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... cold-blooded despot, remembered, but execrated, in Sicily as Charles of Anjou, extinguished the last scintilla of native art, and when the Italian revival of the thirteenth century took place, it was confined entirely to the North, except ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... recently been restored; Alessandro was the first ruler in Florence, who had worn a title; no more reckless, brutal, and insolent tyrant ever lived, and his right, even such as the Medici might have, to play the despot was involved in the doubt of his origin; the heroism of the great siege ought still to have survived in the people who withstood the forces of the whole German Empire for fifteen months; it seems as if the taking off of that single wretch should have ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... cheering could the galleried crowd refrain, For they knew Don Gomersalez and his prowess in the plain; But they feared the grizzly despot and his myrmidons in steel, So their sympathy descended in the fruitage of ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... true one. It is sometimes carelessly said, "Liberty comes from anarchy," but this is a very dangerous doctrine. It would be nearer truth to say from anarchy inevitably comes tyranny. Men receive a despot to quell a mob. But when a people, determined and disciplined, resolve to have neither despotism nor anarchy but freedom, then they act in the light of the Natural Law. It is well put in the doctrine of St. Thomas, as given by Turner in his History ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Sunday, warm, clear, and somnolent—Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot to serve against an enemy then harassing his majesty's equanimity and by him, revilingly, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... people are one great middle-class in their habits and train of mind," replied Vane; "and grandeur belongs to the extremes,—an impoverished population and a wealthy despot." ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flash of light, and black the despot lies. What thunder round the world! 'Tis transport's strain Proclaiming loud: "No righteous prayer is vain No God-imploring tears are lost; they rise Into a cloud, and in the sky remain Till they ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... He was petted and coaxed out of his frequent fits of passion, and beguiled from his obstinate and sulky moods by bribes. He was the eldest child and only son, and his little sisters were taught to yield to him, right or wrong, he lording it over them with the capricious lawlessness of an Eastern despot. Chivalric deference to woman, and a disposition to protect and honor her, is a necessary element of a manly character in our Western civilization; but young Haldane was as truly an Oriental as if he had been permitted to bluster around a Turkish harem; and those whom ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... my admiration,—I was most grateful to him for this chance to think him an intellect. Who likes to admit that he bows before a mere brute? The compulsory courtiers of a despot may possibly and in part tell the truth about him, after they are safe; but was there ever a voluntary courtier whose opinion of his monarch could be believed? The more distinguished the courtier the greater his necessity to exaggerate his royal master—or mistress—to ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... struck me, that he found himself obliged to say something, and said it without feeling sure of the correctness of his own statement. He prescribed, and promised to pay us a second visit later in the day. Mother Barbara, the housekeeper, was already installed as nurse. Always a domestic despot, she made her tyranny felt even in the sick-room. She declared that she would leave the house if any other woman presumed to enter it as nurse. "When my master is ill," said Mother Barbara, "my master is my property." It was plainly impossible that a woman, at her advanced age, could keep watch ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... not Learn her Lessons Questions The Daisies The Touchstone The December Rose The Fire Song A Parting The Gift of Life Incompatibilities The Stolen God—Lazarus to Dives Winter Sea-shells Hope The Prodigal's Return The Skylark Saturday Song The Champion The Garden Refused These Little Ones The Despot The Magic Ring Philosophy The Whirligig of Time Magic Windflowers As it is Before Winter The Vault—after Sedgmoor Surrender Values In the People's Park Wedding Day The Last Defeat May Day Gretna Green The Eternal The Point of View: I The Point of View: II Mary of Magdala ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... had been restored. Poor human kind! is it always to breed serpents from its own bowels? In one country, it chooses its representatives, and they sell it and themselves; in others, it exalts despots; in another, it resists the despot when he consults the good of his people! Can we wonder mankind is wretched, when men are such beings? Parliaments run wild with loyalty, when America is to be enslaved or butchered. They rebel, when their country is to be set free! I am not surprised ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... artists too—to say: "Subject regarded as contrary to republican ideas; the pardon accorded to the people of Calais was given by a tyrant through the tears and supplications of the queen and child of a despot. Rejected. In consequence the tapestry will ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... perfect despot and tyrant, the lives of all his subjects, from the highest to the lowest, being in his power. When the whim seized him, he did not hesitate to kill as ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... suggest that possibly such-and-such a course might be a wise one or that such-and-such a man might be the one to appoint to such-and-such a vacancy, it would be discovered that, with singular insight, she had made a perfect suggestion. Whereas, therefore, it might be said that she was a despot, it was universally agreed that she was a benevolent one and an enlightened one, and many even went so far as to fear that her death might ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Saxons youths whom I now saw gathered near me, there was not a single one of noble ancestry, nor of proud and haughty name; and certainly, so far from having been selected to flatter the pride and add to the pomp of a despot, they had been taken indiscriminately from a mass of ardent aspirants for military glory, and sent on their country's service to a remote and unhealthy colony. Nevertheless, they were such as their country might be proud ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... mountain and vale; Man with the cosmic fortunes and starry vicissitudes tangled, Chained to the wheel of the world, blind with the dust of its speed, Even as thou, O giant, whom trailed in the wake of her conquests Night's sweet despot draws, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... corn by grinding the faces of the poor. But even here the point is undramatic because it is indirect; it is indirect because it is merely sociological. It may be the truth that a young man living on an unexamined income which ultimately covers a great deal of house-property is as dangerous as any despot or thief. But it is a truth that you can no more put into a play than into a triolet. You can make a play out of one man robbing another man, but not out of one man robbing a million men; still less out of ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... is a violent, brutal barbarian, an upstart despot of the most intolerable and dangerous type, ugly, lazy, and disgusting in his personal habits. Yet ambassadors report him the ablest man in Russia, and the one who can do most with the still abler Empress Catherine II, who ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... past this might have been done, and the slave-trade crushed completely. It will be more difficult now, since the despot of France has put the stamp of his licence on the inhuman trade, and the slave-dealer is no longer an outlaw. It would be a very different affair to hang to the yard-arm some French ruffian, bearing his commission ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... nothing here For us to weigh; all has been fully weighed. The proofs demonstrate incontestably. This is not Moscow, sirs! No despot here Keeps our free souls in manacles. Here truth May walk by day or night with brow erect. I will not think, my lords, in Cracow here, Here in the very Diet of the Poles, That Moscow's Czar should have ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... involved in Persian politics certain cities of the Greek motherlands, notably Athens, whose contingent, greatly daring, affronted the Great King by helping to burn the lower town of Sardes; and on the other, it had prompted a despot on the European shore of the Dardanelles, one Miltiades, an Athenian destined to immortal fame, to incense Darius yet more by seizing his ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... docile people, and they soon found out that the young princess was as absolute a despot in character as ever terrorized Rome or ruled the Russias. At the merest suggestion of opposition, the small aquiline nose seemed to quiver, the little head was thrown back, the brown eyes gleamed, the delicate gloved hand either closed upon ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... our country; bright and flowing as our mineral Licks; unspiled by withering conventionalities as air our broad and boundless Perearers! Rough he may be. So air our Barrs. Wild he may be. So air our Buffalers. But he is a child of Natur', and a child of Freedom; and his boastful answer to the Despot and the Tyrant is, that his bright home is ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... dispersed by his strokes, they, the rabble, will trample on him, like the Lilliputians on Gulliver, incapable of estimating his stature, and eternity and history will speedily bury him, not like a despot, in Egyptian porphyry, but like ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... in the savage and barbarous state of all primitive peoples. If the misunderstanding of truth or an imperfect science is injurious, it must not therefore be rejected. Science is the constant and vigilant generator of all social improvement, and the most formidable enemy of the tyranny of a despot, of an oligarchy, or of the multitude, whether it take a religious or secular form. Since sharp instruments are powerful aids to civilization and material prosperity, they are not to be altogether set aside because ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... innocent, upright, or benevolent might be its exercise, he would have been assailed by animosities of the deepest, and approaches of the basest, kind. A hatred and a sycophancy, such as no Priest, Pope, or despot before, had encountered, would have been brought against him. He would have been assailed by the temptation, and aspersed by the imputation, of "Hush money," from all quarters; and, ultimately, the whole country would have risen against what would have been regarded as a universal levy ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... youth is called upon to look up, he can adore devoutly and ardently; but when it is his chance to look down on a fair head, he is, if not worse, a sentimental despot. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in their turn, by younger males, his deadly rivals, who, exiled by sexual jealousy from his own and the other similar hearth-homes, would come, with each returning year, more and more to be feared. An ever-recurring and growing terror would dog each step of the solitary paternal despot, and necessitate an unceasing watchfulness against danger, and even an anticipation of death. For when old age, or sickness decreased his power of holding his own, then the tables would be turned, and the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... funeral-pyre in the streets of Florence, still pleads for civic righteousness; the sound of Martin Luther's hammer nailing his thesis to the door of his Wittenberg church continues to echo around the world; the battle-cry of Cromwell's Ironsides shouting, "The Lord of Hosts!" still causes the tyrant and the despot to tremble upon their thrones; out of the fire and blood of the French Revolution, "Liberty and Equality" survive; Abraham Lincoln comes from the backwoods of Kentucky, and the prairies of Illinois, to receive the approval of all succeeding generations of mankind for his Proclamation ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Mexico. For more than a quarter of a century this man had been the curse of the young Republic—its direst, deadliest bane. For although his rule was not continuous, its evil effects were. Unfortunately, the demoralisation brought about by despotism extends beyond the reign or life of the despot; and Santa Anna had so debased the Mexican people, both socially and politically, as to render them unfitted for almost any form of constitutional government. They had become incapable of distinguishing between ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... wife. "You like our institutions, ma'am?" "Yes, indeed," said my wife, not with all that eagerness of assent which the occasion perhaps required. "Ah," said he, "I never yet met the down-trodden subject of a despot who did not hug his chains." The first gentleman was certainly somewhat ignorant of our customs, and the second was rather abrupt in his condemnation of the political principles of a person whom he only first saw at that moment. It comes to me in the way of my trade to repeat such ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... them. To explain: the use of figures has a peculiar tendency to rouse a suspicion of dishonesty, and to create an impression of treachery, scheming, and false reasoning; especially if the person addressed be a judge, who is master of the situation, and still more in the case of a despot, a king, a military potentate, or any of those who sit in high places.[1] If a man feels that this artful speaker is treating him like a silly boy and trying to throw dust in his eyes, he at once grows irritated, and thinking that ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... recalled from the Philippines to be Secretary of War, determined to build a lock canal. The President tramped over the workings in November, 1906, and sent an illustrated message about them to Congress on his return. In 1907 Major George W. Goethals was detailed from the army to be benevolent despot and engineer of the Canal Zone. Inspired and encouraged by repeated visits from Taft, the work now made rapid progress toward completion. Sir Frederick Treves, the great English surgeon, visited the canal in 1908, and ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... and made to feel the grinding heel of the despot! Verily the suffering race of Adam will claim their rights ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... that imperial tyrant, State Necessity, is yet a generous despot,—bold is his demeanor, rapid his decisions, and terrible his grasp. But what he does, my Lords, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification, than the great motives that placed the iron sceptre in his hand. But a quibbling, pilfering, prevaricating State-Necessity, that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the Chersonese Was Freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades! Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind! Such chains as his were sure ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... corner-stone, and in her first address as president she said: "I have often thought that to the successful teacher the words must be full of hope and promise, which a great writer uses of education: 'It is a companion which no misfortune can distress, no crime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despot enslave; at home a friend, abroad an introduction; in solitude a solace, in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it adds a grace to genius. Without it what is man?'—and I would add with emphasis, Without an education, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... seem by the following note that this hourly account of himself was in consequence of the connubial mandate of his fair despot:— ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... was necessary to curb the prejudices of the nobility, and the revolutionary habits and manners of the jacobins. This great work could not be accomplished, without engaging in a conflict against individual interests and opinions. Napoleon was considered as a despot; this was inevitable. Whenever the existing polity of a state has been totally subverted, he who first raises the edifice of society from its ruins, is necessarily accused of despotism, because apparently he has ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... speedily sink to the ground. It is in vain to say a privileged class have got possession of the power, and they make use of it to perpetuate these abuses. Doubtless, they are always sufficiently inclined to do so; but a privileged class, or a despot, is always a mere handful against the great body of the people; and unless their power is supported by the force of general opinion, founded on experienced utility upon the whole, it could not maintain its ground a single week. And this explains a fact observed by an able and ingenious writer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... working-class and of the middle-class, for, verily, that abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable, but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room causeuses. That shows the incurable fickleness of that terrible despot of "society," middle-class public opinion, and once more justifies the contempt in which we Socialists of a past generation always held that public opinion. At the same time, we have no reason to grumble ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Woe to humanity, should those who are as mighty as they are free, not feel interested to maintain the laws of mankind, because they are rightful laws,—but only in so far as some partial money-interests would desire it. Woe to mankind if every despot of the world may dare to trample down the laws of humanity, and no free nation make these laws respected. People of the United States, humanity expects that your glorious republic will prove to the world, that republics are founded on virtue—it expects to see you the guardians ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... with the creatures of their omnipotence and, in their senseless wrath, destroy the innocent along with the guilty; or if they can show themselves to be as easily placated by presents and gross flattery as any oriental or occidental despot; if, in short, they are only stronger than mortal men and no better, as it must be admitted Hasisadra's deities proved themselves to be—then, surely, it is time for us to look somewhat closely into their credentials, and to accept none but ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... scorn oppression's minions, All the despot's bolts and powers; While Time wreathes his heavy pinions With love's brightest passion-flowers. Rise, then! let us fly together, Now the moon laughs on the sea; East or west, I care not whither, When with ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of HIS people, when Sergius was punished ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... let us not shock them. No, I never loved you, I suppose; I merely liked your way of talking, liked your big green eyes, liked your lithe young body.... He, and I like you still, Amalia. So I shall not play the twopenny despot. God be ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... defended ably the views of those who opposed the ratification of the Constitution were Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Elbridge Gerry, and George Clinton. It was urged that there was no bill of rights,[9] that the President would become a despot, and that equality of representation in the Senate was an injustice to the larger States. "Letters from the Federal Farmer," prepared for the press of the country by Richard Henry Lee, set forth clearly the views ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... the very people over whom this despot tyrannised were devotedly attached to him; and many trading captains had told me that he was "a real good sort when you got to know him." One of these men a few years later conveyed Apinoka and five hundred of his fighting-men to the neighbouring islands ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... employed, in amassing together the different materials that compose this immense aqueduct, could not have been supplied, in any reasonable length of time, except in a country where millions could be set to work at the nod of a despot. The greatest works in China have always been, and still continue to be, performed by the accumulation of manual labour, without the assistance of machinery, except on very particular occasions, where some mechanical power may be absolutely necessary to be brought in aid ...
— 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
... Athalie had bought it in one of her Italian journeys, and while it was in her possession she thought she could defy the world. She imagined herself able to destroy her own life at any moment, and this idea made her feel as a despot to her parents and her lover. If they do not do all she wishes, the box is there; she need only choose the swiftest poison, and in the morning they would find her a corpse. Now a great temptation assailed her; life lay before her as ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... means of intimidation by Yuan Shih-kai himself. Although the disorders assumed such dimensions that foreign intervention was narrowly escaped, the upshot was that the Nanking Delegates were completely cowed and willing to forget all about forcing the despot of Peking to proceed to the Southern capital. Yuan Shih-kai as the man of the hour was enabled on the 10th March, 1912, to take his oath in Peking as he had wished thus securing full freedom of action ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... and welcome; but while you are under my command you must obey my orders or else stand the chances of a court-martial. I don't think that the miners agree with you," the military despot continued, after a moment's consultation with the commissioner; "I desire that you take command of the escort which is about to start for Melbourne with the prisoners. You will lose not a moment, but report yourself ready ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of heart, Mrs. Errol was something of a despot, and when once she had assumed command she was slow ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... despotism, the best government in the world provided "the head man" possesses the attributes of goodness, wisdom, and firmness, and is exempt from the imperfections which seem inseparably attached to human nature. But when a despot can boast of none of those attributes, woe to the people who are obliged to submit to his ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... slight measure to the general disturbance of Italy. The Malatesti were a race of strongly marked character: more, perhaps, than any other house of Italian tyrants, they combined for generations those qualities of the fox and the lion, which Machiavelli thought indispensable to a successful despot. Son after son, brother with brother, they continued to be fierce and valiant soldiers, cruel in peace, hardy in war, but treasonable and suspicious in all transactions that could not be settled by the sword. Want of union, with them as with the Baglioni and many other of the minor noble families ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... whether democratic rule could be so organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and result in the tyranny of absolutism, without saving to the people the power so often found necessary of representing or destroying their enemy, when he was found in the person of a single despot." ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... of pestilence and danger, Told of cottages all empty, And of mansions grim and silent, Of the hearthstones all deserted, All the happy, quiet hearthstones. In this sad and fearful era, In the year of eighteen hundred Three and thirty, came a despot, More oppressive in his power Than the hosts of foreign armies, More insatiate in his passion Than the simoon of the desert. Came a despot whose invasion Struck the heart all dumb with terror, Drove the people, panic-stricken, From ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... said poor Miss Jane afterwards in private to her sister, 'how I hate being told I am very kind! It just means, "You are a not quite intolerable jailor and despot," with ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we must fight this war in hate— In bitter hate of blood in fury spilled; Of children, bending over book and slate, Slaughtered to make a Prussian despot great; In hate of mothers pitilessly killed. In hate of liars plotting wars for gain; In hate of crimes too black for printed page; In hate of wrongs that mark the tyrant's reign— And crush forever all within his train. Such hate shall be the ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... governor; but he did not take away the parchment on which the charter was written. The people of Rhode Island were restive under the petty tyranny of Andros, and when they heard of the imprisonment of the despot at Boston, in 1689, they assembled at Newport, resumed popular government under the old charter, and began a new independent political career. From that time, until the enforced union of the colonies for mutual defence, at the breaking out of the French ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... country—by what means no one seemed to know—of the passion of the young Duc de Nivron for Gabrielle Beauvouloir. People in Rouen spoke of it to the Duc d'Herouville in the midst of a banquet given to celebrate his return to the province; for the guests were glad to deliver a blow to the despot of Normandy. This announcement excited the anger of the governor to the highest pitch. He wrote to the baron to keep his coming to Herouville a close secret, giving him certain orders to avert what he considered ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... transformation occurred, and out of the corpse of their late oppressor a host of minor tyrants arose. Now they continue to relate the old fable; on all sides it is drummed into one's ears ad nauseam—they have thrown off the yoke of the despot and have remained free. And there they are, ensconsed behind their walls and imprisoned in their customs, their laws, the opinion of their neighbours, and their Philistine suburbanism' (Goethe's Werke, Briefe aus der ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... subjects may be governed. Lo! the way A Woman teaches who doth ne'er demean Her office high. Hark! how her people pray For blessings on the head that doth impart So wise a rule. For them no wrongs do smart, No cruelties oppress, no insults sting, Nor does a despot hand exaction wring; Though governed, Britain's subjects still are free. Gaze then—ye unwise rulers wondering— Victoria's children sing ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... was not worth much. His parliament passed an act for establishing liberty of conscience, and ordering every man to pay tithes to his own clergy only, with some other measures of relief. But he began to play the despot very soon. The Commons voted him the large subsidy of 20,000 l. He doubled the amount by his own mere motion. He established a bank, and by his own authority decreed a bank monopoly. He debased the coinage, and fixed the prices of merchandise ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... carried back to the year of our Lord 1400; for this castle and church were built by Stephan, Despot of Servia, the son of Knes Lasar. Stephan, Instead of being "the Czar of all the Servian lands and coasts," became a mere hospodar, who must do as he was bid by his masters, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... tyrant's hand Lay heavy and hard on his native land, And the spirit whose glory from mine he won Blessed the Alpine dwellers with Freedom's sun! The student-boy on the Gmunden-plain Heard my solemn voice, but he fought in vain; I called from the crags of the Passeir-glen, When the despot stood in my realm again, And Hofer sprang at the proud command And roused the men ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... cruel sea Whence they had rescued me, With faint and painful pulses was I lying; Not yet discerning well If I had 'scaped, or were an icicle, Whose thawing is its dying. Like one who sweats before a despot's gate, Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate, And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait; And all so sickened is his countenance, The courtiers buzz, "Lo, doomed!" and look at him askance:- At Fate's dread portal then Even so stood I, I ken, Even so stood I, ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... equally illegitimate usurpers in the neighboring cities. This situation developed a high degree of sagacity, and many of the despots found it to their interest to govern well and even to give dignity to their rule by patronizing artists and men of letters. But the despot usually made many bitter enemies and was almost necessarily suspicious of treason on the part of those about him. He was ever conscious that at any moment he might fall a victim to the dagger or ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson |
