"Despotical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... patriotic aristocracy, she had now a nobility, valiant indeed and capable, but dissolute beyond the reach of man's imagination, boundless in their expenditures, reckless as to the mode of gaining wherewithal to support them, oppressive and despotical to their inferiors, smooth-tongued and hypocritical toward each other, destitute equally of justice and compassion toward men, and of respect and piety toward the Gods! Wealth had become the idol, the god of the whole people! Wealth—and no longer service, eloquence, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the rich and powerful only, now shed its benign influence over the whole people. Whereas, in the early times, learning had caused the downfall of despotic power, it was now considered a principal safeguard of good government, and made compulsory. Wealth was accumulated, luxuries multiplied, and great strides were taken in the material welfare of both nations and individuals. It was an age of intense activity. So ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... their followers by a kind of polity not ill regulated. The chief had the power of life and death over his large family, but it was a power seldom used. A chieftain might be cruel to his enemies, but never to his friends. Nor were those paternal rulers by any means so despotic as they have been represented to be; of all monarchs their power was the most limited, being allowed to take no step without permission of their friends, or the elders of their tribe, including the most distant branches of their family. The kind and conciliatory system adopted ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... own eye; but Mashotlane, fearing that this meant the punishment of death, sent a polite answer, alleging that he was ill and unable to travel. Sekeletu tried again to remove Mashotlane from the Falls, but without success. In theory the chief is absolute and quite despotic; in practice his authority is limited, and he cannot, without occasionally putting refractory headmen to death, force his subordinates ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... migration. The potato blight that fell upon Ireland visited the Rhine Valley and Southern Germany at the same time with results as pitiful, if less extensive. The calamity inflicted by nature was followed shortly by another inflicted by the despotic conduct of German kings and princes. In 1848 there had occurred throughout Europe a popular uprising in behalf of republics and democratic government. For a time it rode on a full tide of success. Kings were overthrown, or compelled to promise constitutional government, and tyrannical ministers ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... years after its settlement, languished under the government of Sir Thomas Smith, Treasurer of the Virginia Company in England. The Colony was ruled during that period by laws written in blood; and its history shows how the narrow selfishness of despotic power could counteract the best efforts of benevolence. The colonists suffered an extremity of distress too horrible to be described. In April, 1619, Sir George Yeardley arrived. Of the emigrants who had been sent ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... capital, founded in 1537, was built without regularity of plan, but the present city, owing to the despotic sway of Francia, is most symmetrical. That South American Nero issued orders for all houses that were out of his lines to be demolished by their owners. "One poor man applied to know what remuneration he was to have, and the dictator's answer was: ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... powerful and influential Protestants of Belfast and Ulster generally to entrust their future to a Legislature elected by the most illiterate electorate in the three kingdoms, and under the thumb of the priests—who wield a despotic power which people in England cannot be made to understand. A short time ago the Dublin Freemasons held a bazaar in aid of a charity whose object was the complete care of orphan children. The Catholic ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... superiority to all the other Melanesians in the advance they had made towards a regular and organised government. While among the other branches of the same race government can hardly be said to exist, the power of chiefs being both slender and precarious, in Fiji the highest chiefs exercised despotic sway and received from Europeans the title of kings. The people had no voice in the state; the will of the king was generally law, and his person was sacred. Whatever he touched or wore became thereby holy and had ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... various other exposed points. He then returned to Boston, where surprising events awaited him. Early in April, news came that the Prince of Orange had landed in England. There was great excitement. The people of the town rose against Andros, whom they detested as the agent of the despotic policy of James II. They captured his two forts with their garrisons of regulars, seized his frigate in the harbor, placed him and his chief adherents in custody, elected a council of safety, and set at its head their former governor, Bradstreet, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... could apply such adjectives to England's comparatively mild attempts to suppress a rebellion, what would he say to-day of her worse than inhuman efforts to destroy two independent nations. Franklin believed that the success of our revolution had destroyed forever the inherent cruelty and despotic brutishness of the English tory. But the tory has gone on developing; and even the English liberal has less of the courage, intelligence and character which were such a brilliant and saving grace to him in the days of Burke, Chatham ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... we were told, the sword of the Czar had been drawn to protect the oppressed, Christian atrocities took the place of Moslem atrocities, and history turned a page backward into the dark annals of violence and crime. And not alone in despotic Russia, but in Germany, the seat of modern philosophic thought and culture, the rage of Anti-Semitism broke out and spread with fatal ease and potency. In Berlin itself tumults and riots were threatened. We in ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... To this despotic epistle the young man answered in a few lines. He said that he intended to marry Sylvia, and that nothing would make him give her up, and that he would not meet his father again until that father remembered that his son was an Englishman ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... p. 222.).—I am informed by a late resident in Russia that the rumour to which MR. CROSFIELD refers has no foundation. I am farther informed, however, that after a twenty-five years' reign the monarch has even more absolute and despotic authority than before the lapse of that time. I hope this subject may be well ventilated, as considerable misapprehension exists ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... a long day the bin-gum tolerated no undergrowth. Despotic over its territory, the shade was clean but for a carpet of ferns, and its branches free from the embraces of orchids, save that which bears the ghostly white flowers which set off its own of bold red. But as it passed its maturity shrubs and saplings ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... nestled amid the rocks and gulfs of the Eastern Mediterranean. Already had his might devoured the cherished colonies of the Greeks on the eastern shore of the Archipelago, and every traitor to home institutions found a ready asylum at that despotic court, and tried to revenge his own wrongs by whispering incitements to invasion. "All people, nations, and languages," was the commencement of the decrees of that monarch's court; and it was scarcely a vain boast, for his satraps ruled over subject kingdoms, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... pillow, and two tears dropped helplessly down the furrows of her face. In that moment she felt the whole crushing misery of being weak, and sick, and old,—so old that you have outlived your claims to everything but the despotic care of charitable ladies, so old that you are a mere hurdy-gurdy, expected each time any one in search of edification chooses to turn your handle to quaver out tunes of immortality. It is a bad thing to be ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... could disengage himself from the royal robes, which event could hardly have raised him in the estimation of the gentlemen eunuchs of the bed-chamber. Those who unwound the mummy of Pharaoh tell us that he had the appearance of a self-willed, despotic, but intelligent, old gentleman; but the above rabbinical relation, from Baring-Gould's "Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets," seems to have had no convincing effect on Pharaoh; so we must not be surprised if even a case like the one from Henoch's clinic would, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... commercial interests; no civilized dependence of one part on another; no natural ties as yet developed to their real significance between the several countries of the Roman Empire: it was held together by the strong and despotic arm of Rome. The Empire of Charlemagne embraced the territory of Middle and Western Europe, inhabited by barbarous peoples, isolated, warlike, and speaking different languages; there were none of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the press and type of the obnoxious journal into the Bay, while they themselves, following the famous Wilkes' precedent, expelled Mackenzie from the legislature, and in defiance of constitutional law, declared him time and again ineligible to sit in the Assembly. The despotic acts of the reigning party, however, had the effect of awakening the masses to the necessity of supporting Mr. Mackenzie, and made him eventually a prominent figure in the politics of those disturbed ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... years 74 they ed back; and in Attica the first place of which they took possession was Marathon. While they were encamping here, their partisans from the city came to them, and also others flowed in from the various demes, to whom despotic rule was more welcome than freedom. So these were gathering themselves together; but the Athenians in the city, so long as Peisistratos was collecting the money, and afterwards when he took possession of Marathon, made no account of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... the curtain in Germany, a despotic will, scientifically guided, is controlling the food, the munitions, the assembling of men and materials for this war. But on this side of the German curtain at the "front" which we knew, a democratic ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Catholic; to swear to the bishops that he was devoutly attached to the English Church, while he knew he had bargained it away to the King of France; and by cheating and deceiving them, and all who were attached to royalty, to become despotic and be powerful enough to confess what a rascal he was. Meantime, the King of France, knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued with the King's opponents in Parliament, as well as with the King ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... as a tireless centaur had helped him powerfully in his task of populating his lands. He was capricious, despotic and with the same paternal instincts as his compatriots who, centuries before when conquering the new world, had clarified its native blood. Like the Castilian conquistadors, he had a fancy for ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... civilized world, and who have since sworn upon the altar of the Holy Alliance to maintain an indissoluble union, for the purpose of extinguishing every spark of freedom, wherever it may arise. Napoleon was the enemy, the successful enemy of these tyrants; and under his sway, despotic as it might apparently be, and governed by the excellent code of laws that bears the name of its author, the people of France enjoyed a tenfold greater portion of liberty than any of the people who lived under the protection, or rather who groaned ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the citadel of the Constitution by adventurers of this character, through the folly and heedless impulses of the masses. Fifty years hence, and a condition of society will probably exist among us that would effectually have carried out the principle of despotic rule which is beginning to show itself in the bud amongst us, and which is nothing more than the shadowing ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... singular thing that the first states-general was freely convoked by the most despotic of the kings of the Middle Ages, and that he had the idea to seek in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of Algiers was, she told them, tributary to the Turkish Sultan, who kept a guard of Janissaries there, from among whom they themselves elected the Dey. He was supposed to govern by the consent of a divan, but was practically as despotic as any Eastern sovereign; and the Aga of the Janissaries was next in authority to him. Piracy on the Mediterranean was, as all knew, the chief occupation of the Turks and Moors of any spirit or enterprise, a Turk being ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nobles, there was another very important power at the imperial court at this time, namely, the army. In all despotic governments, it is necessary for the sovereign to have a powerful military force under his command, to maintain him in his place; and it is necessary for him to keep this force as separate and independent as possible ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... turn owed feudal allegiance which they would or would not render, according to the power and capacity of the supreme lord. There had been no welding of the interest of the conquerors and the conquered such as took place in England after the Conquest. The Muhammadans sat as despotic rulers of an alien people, who obeyed him because they could not resist. There was no thought of attaching those people to the ruling dynasty either by sympathy or by closer union. The conquerors had come as aliens, ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... the most forbearing of men. So long as he meets with no special political opposition, ordinary ill-usage does not even put him out of temper. He is paid for rough work among roughs, and takes his rubs gallantly. But he feels himself to be an instrument for the moment of despotic power as opposed to civil rights, and he won't stand what he calls "jaw." Trip up a policeman in such a scramble, and he will take it in good spirit; but mention the words "Habeas Corpus," and he'll lock you up if he can. As a rule, his ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... northern frontier provinces of the republic this irresponsible power of the soldiery was peculiarly despotic and harassing. There, two causes contributed to establish and keep it in the ascendency. One of these was the revolutionary condition of the country, which, as elsewhere, had become chronic. The contest between the party of the priests ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... without concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon perfectly understood. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... trembled in the presence of a captive to whom he ascribed perhaps an imaginary power of prolonging or preserving his life. The Huns might be provoked to insult the misery of their slaves, over whom they exercised a despotic command; but their manners were not susceptible of a refined system of oppression; and the efforts of courage and diligence were often recompensed by the gift of freedom. The historian Priscus, whose embassy is a source of curious instruction, was accosted in the camp of Attila ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... a negro carrying his gun, and a huge greyhound bounds along by his side. He holds despotic sway over twelve tribes; and should any neighboring people venture to make an incursion on his territory, Bou-Akas seldom condescends to march against them in person, but sends his negro into the principal village. This envoy just ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... much-abused term. To the minds of most laymen it has a rather hazy association with things despotic, oppressive, and mediaeval. The mere mention of the term conjures up those days of the Dark Ages when armour-clad knights found their chief recreation in running lances through one another; when the overworked, underfed labourers of the field cringed and cowered before every lordly whim. ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... some things so much better in America!" protested Baby Van Rensselaer, as yet uncorrupted by any worship of the effete monarchies of despotic Europe. "We make lots of things a great deal nicer than you can get them in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... incessantly checked in their career by the privileges granted to the Comedie Francaise, which company alone enjoyed the right to play first-rate productions: it also possessed that of censorship, and sometimes exercised it in the most despotic manner. Authors, ever in dispute with the comedians, who dictated the law to them, solicited, but in vain, the opening of a second French theatre. The revolution took place, and the unlimited number of theatres was presently decreed. A great ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... their subservience was emphasized in every way. The law of lese-majeste (majestaetsbeleidigung), by which all criticism of the despotic head of the State or his actions is made a heinous criminal offence, to which severe penalties are attached, it is not too much to say is a law which brands the ruler who accepts it as a coward and a ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Carbonari is just the same as that of the Illumines. This degree, in which a man is at the same time prince and bishop, coincides with the Homo Rex of the latter. The initiate vows the ruin of all religion and of all positive government, whether despotic or democratic; murder, poison, perjury, are all at their disposal. Who does not remember that on the suppression of the Illumines was found, amongst other poisons, a tinctura ad abortum faciendum. The summo maestro laughs ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... one of the Tonga Isles, for more of the same valuable growth. Thus far no special incident marked the course of the voyage, which seemed likely to end happily. But the haughty character and stern, despotic manners of the commander had alienated from him the affections of nearly the whole of his crew. A plot was formed against him which was carried out before sunrise on ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... legislature, by the Government, and most of all by the crown. In no country in the world has loyalty existed under greater difficulties, in none has it been so ill requited, in none has so much been done as if of set purpose to starve it to death. In the reign of Elizabeth the capricious will of a despotic sovereign was exerted to crush the national religion, while the greatest military exploits of her ablest viceroys consisted of predatory excursions, in which they slaughtered or carried away the horses and cattle, burned the crops and houses, and laid ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss Hannah More slily hid her face behind a lady's back who sat on the same settee with her. His pride could not bear that any expression of his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it: he therefore resolved to assume and exercise despotic power, glanced sternly around, and called out in a strong tone, 'Where's the merriment?' Then collecting himself, and looking awful, to make us feel how he could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still more ludicrous ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... II, accession of James II., and appointment of Sir Edmund Andros as viceroy over New England, with despotic powers ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... less absolute errors. This is always the case with beliefs induced by a process of suggestion instead of engendered by reasoning. Every one is aware of the intolerance that accompanies religious beliefs, and of the despotic empire they exercise on ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... of Laud, first as Bishop of London, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury, whose letters show that the severities in question were to him and Strafford (to use Hallam's expression) "the feebleness of excessive lenity." To the last Charles was not despotic enough to please Laud, who complains petulantly in his Diary of a prince "who knew not how to ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... me very great pleasure in this tale of a man of politics is that politics really have little, very little place in the novel; it is love that dominates it and in the most despotic and pleasant way possible. This great man of Grenoble who arrives at Paris in order to reform everything, repair everything, elevate everything, falls at once under the sway of a most charming Parisian adventuress. See Sulpice Vaudrey the slave of Marianne. Marianne's gray eyes never ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... great mob, rolling out of Paris in the direction of the Hotel Rambouillet, gave the signal of flight to Charles and those who had adhered to the toppling fortunes of his house. The Chamber of Deputies proceeded quickly to undo the despotic acts of the late king, and then elected Louis Philippe king, not of France, but of the French. The new sovereign received 219 out of 252 votes in the Deputies. His elevation to power was one of the most striking examples ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... north bank of the river, and contains a large population of Makalaka, under Moriantsane, brother-in-law of Sebituane. There are parties of various tribes here, assembled under their respective head men, but a few Makololo rule over all. Their sway, though essentially despotic, is considerably modified by certain customs and laws. One of the Makalaka had speared an ox belonging to one of the Makololo, and, being unable to extract the spear, was thereby discovered to be the perpetrator of the deed. His object had been ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of Justice on the other. During a long course of years every Whig historian was anxious to prove that the old English government was all but republican, every Tory historian to prove that it was all but despotic. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cruel and Mercenery Parents; who had vainly endeavoured with obstinate Perseverance to force them into a Marriage with those whom they had ever abhorred; but with a Heroic Fortitude worthy to be related and admired, they had both, constantly refused to submit to such despotic Power. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... place was deserted, and the stony ground was literally covered with bodies. It was a terrible example of Rao Khan's despotic rule. ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... had once been represented there, and this equally whether summoned or not, if we may credit Capmany, [51] must have gone far to preserve the popular branch from the melancholy state of dilapidation to which it was reduced in Castile by the arts of despotic princes. Indeed, the kings of Aragon, notwithstanding occasional excesses, seem never to have attempted any systematic invasion of the constitutional rights of their subjects. They well knew, that the spirit of liberty was too ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... in his monthly settlements with the ground landlords and the despotic brewery king, Fritz Braun avoided both the failings which had wrecked the golden fortunes ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... poison than the one she had endeavored to persuade the son to administer to his father, the Duke de Champdoce. She knew each chord that vibrated in his heart, and could play on it at will. She felt sure that in a month he would again be her slave, and that she could exercise over him a sway more despotic than she had yet done, and, in addition to this, that he would assist her in executing a cruel scheme of revenge, which she ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... much or turn affairs to his will. One of the most instructive studies a politician could undertake would be a study of the infinite limitations laid upon the power of the Russian Czar, notwithstanding the despotic theory of the Russian constitution—limitations of social habit, of official prejudice, of race jealousies, of religious predilections, of administrative machinery even, and the inconvenience of being himself only one man, and that a very young ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... several days. [408] But this tameness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, caged and starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble menial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great, a boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was already slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by the secretary about ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... authoritative demand, which does not contemplate the possibility of reluctance or refusal. 'The Lord hath need of him.' That is all. There is no explanation or motive alleged to induce surrender to the demand. This is a royal style of speech. It is the way in which, in despotic countries, kings lay their demands upon a poor man's whole plenishing and possession, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... days Henry was a changed man. He became more republican and less despotic as a producer. He left things to other people. As an actor he worked as faithfully as ever. Henley's stoical lines might have been written of him as he was in these ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... taken counsel with Andre d'Isernia, a very learned lawyer of the day, respected as much for his lofty character as for his great learning. The prince, annoyed at being shut out in this way, began to act in a violent and despotic manner. On his own authority he released prisoners; he showered favours upon Hungarians, and gave especial honours and rich gifts to Giovanni Pipino, Count of Altanuera, the enemy of all others most dreaded and detested by the Neapolitan barons. Then the Counts of San Severino, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... comes from his own mouth. The "Tribune" had retracted none of those disunion sentiments, of which examples have been given. Even so late as April 10, 1861, Mr. Seward wrote officially to Mr. C.F. Adams, minister to England: "Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state. This federal, republican country of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is the most unfitted for such a labor." He had been and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... turning devious tricks in his dealings, he gradually won the confidence and respect of the old man, who was always pleased with proofs of guile. Croffut gives a number of instances of William's craft and continues: "From his boyhood he had given instant and willing submission to the despotic will of his father, and had made boundless sacrifices to please him. Most men would have burst defiantly away from the repressive control and imperious requirements; but he doubtless thought that for the chance of becoming heir to $100,000,000 he could afford to remain ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and command. It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, he should be "eo immitior, quia toleraverat," that, though his heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, his demeanour in society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon a delicate mind he had no pity; for it was a kind of suffering which he could scarcely conceive. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the early Oriental civilizations. War existed for conquest and plunder. Religious belief was an important factor in despotic {ix} government. Social organization was incomplete. Economic influences. Records, writing, and paper. The beginnings of science were strong in Egypt, weak in ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... enterprises, he now aimed at the realisation of the large hopes of conquest with which he left Greece, and meditated an attack on Libya. He had a large fleet, but required many rowers to man it, and these he proceeded to obtain from the allied cities, not by gentle means, but by harsh, arbitrary, and despotic commands. Not that he was originally of a tyrannical disposition, but his character, which at first was open, trustful, and sociable, gradually altered for the worse, as he became less dependent upon public opinion and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... In despotic governments, says Montesque, where they are already in a state of political slavery, civil slavery is more tolerable than in other governments; for there the minds of masters and servants are equally degenerate and act in unison.—But in America, this cannot be the case; ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... the countess of Warwick, mother of the heiresses, and who had brought that vast wealth to the house of Nevil, remaining the only sufferer, being reduced to a state of absolute necessity, as appears from Dugdale. In such times, under such despotic dispensations, the greatest crimes were only consequences of the economy of government.—Note, that Sir Richard Baker is so absurd as to make Richard espouse the Lady Anne after his accession, though he had a son by her ten years ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... the crown. Hence all public action flowed from a royal command. The Bourbon theory required that kings should speak and that subjects should obey. One direct consequence of a system so uncompromisingly despotic was the loss of all local initiative. Nothing in the faintest degree resembling the New England town-meeting ever existed in New France. Louis XIV objected to public gatherings of his people, even for the most innocent purposes. The sole limitation to the power of the king was the line ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... convert our displeasure into a very different feeling'. The general argument is that the ancient civilizations were dominated by the idea of the state; they produced excellent Greeks and Romans but not excellent men. The prestige of the despotic states was destroyed by the great migrations, but it was the crusades which first taught the nations to subordinate patriotism to a higher and broader sentiment. It was then that men learned to fight for an idea of the reason,—for ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... from history is that primitive Governments were despotic, and in barbarous societies might makes right; but that liberty under law has been wrung from authority and might by strenuous resistance, physical as well as moral, and not by yielding to injustice and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptered hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. A mind, bold, independent, and decisive,—a will, despotic in its dictates,—an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character,—the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world ever rose, or reigned, or fell. Flung into life in the midst of a revolution ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Juarez, the native-blood President of Mexico acting, I presume, under authority of Congress, decreed that all children born, or that should be born in Mexico, should be legitimate, regardless of all laws of the Church or State. So rigorous, expensive, and despotic had become the control of the clergy that not one in ten of the children of Mexico were born 'legitimate,' the people did not marry. This stroke of the State at the Church was the 'holy terror' that broke its back; but it liberated the people, and settled the differences ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... commencement of hostilities against this Continent by the British troops, in the bloody scene of the 19th of April last, near Boston—the increase of arbitrary imposition from a wicked and despotic ministry—and the dread of insurrections in the Colonies—are causes sufficient to drive an oppressed people to the use of arms. We, therefore, the subscribers, inhabitants of South Carolina, holding ourselves bound by that most sacred of all obligations, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... large for his having taken the liberty of existing in it. He said but little, and had a way of always retracting what he had advanced, as, for example, "I admit this tea is too weak; though, to be sure, strong tea is unwholesome," and so on. Next came Mr. Pix, the despotic wielder of the black pencil, a decided kind of man, who seemed to look upon all social relations as mere business details, respectable but trivial. As a chair was wanting, he sat astride on a small table. Near him was Mr. Specht, who spoke much, and dealt in assertions ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... grave-digger, advertising-agent, Annex-polisher, leader of the choir, President, Director, Treasurer, Clerk, etc. She did not mean that. She already possessed that authority. She meant to clothe herself with power, despotic and unchallengeable, to appoint all Science Readers to their offices, both at home and abroad. The phrase "or to appoint" is another miscarriage of intention; she did not mean ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... subject, for he had taken what he had a right to consider very effectual measures for carrying the orders of the king into faithful execution. But Astyages seems to have been one of those inhuman monsters which the possession and long-continued exercise of despotic power have so often made, who take a calm, quiet, and deliberate satisfaction in torturing to death any wretched victim whom they can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can invent some new means of torment to give a fresh ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... opened it in a laugh, and showed her pearly teeth, so that it became a target for kisses? Who will ever be able to explain that kind of magic and sorcery which some Chosen Women exercise over all men, that despotic authority, against which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... ever man did, the proverbial expression of the iron hand under the velvet glove. Under all his gentle suavities there was a fixed, inflexible will, a calm self-restraint, and a composed philosophical measurement of others, that fitted him to bear despotic rule over an impulsive, unguarded nature. The position, at once accorded to him, of her instructor in the English language and literature, gave him a thousand daily opportunities to touch and stimulate all that class of finer faculties, so restless and so perilous, and which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and trouble had in no way softened the Marquise de Combray's harsh nature. From the very first day, this woman, accustomed to living in a chateau, had accommodated herself to the life of a prisoner without abating anything of her haughty and despotic character. Her very illusions remained intact. She imagined that from her cell she still directed her confederates and agents, whom she considered one and all as servants, never suspecting that the permission ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... Mrs Proudie. This lady is habitually authoritative to all, but to her poor husband she is despotic. Successful as has been his career in the eyes of the world, it would seem that in the eyes of his wife he is never right. All hope of defending himself has long passed from him; indeed he rarely even attempts self-justification; and is aware ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... father, loved his home: and I daresay Caesar loved Rome: but whether he did or no, Caesar when he killed the Republic was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to feel his despotic moustache. Did he know what he was made of? Doubtless, nothing at all. But honest passion has an instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying from the bow. His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not strike him as in any way criminal; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... majority of the Senate now concurs in the claim of the House adds to the gravity of the situation, but does not alter the question at issue. The new doctrine, if maintained, will result in a consolidation of unchecked and despotic power in the House of Representatives. A bare majority of the House will become the Government. The Executive will no longer be what the framers of the Constitution intended—an equal and independent ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... no denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off than a large class of the population of England. You see, you must not infer, from what I have told you, that Alfred is what is called a hard master; for he isn't. He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a sort of pride in having his slaves ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in history and in story; great in the field and the forum; great in the old country and in the new. They had been a brave, fierce, cruel, and despotic race, equally feared and hated at home and abroad, equally loved and trusted as well; for never were such dangerous foes or such devoted friends as were these Berners; no one ever loved as these Berners loved, or hated as they hated. In the intensity of their love ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... as we have never known, not even before '48. For at least every man got his rights in those days, scanty as those rights may have been, and the official was not the enemy of the citizen, but his somewhat despotic guardian and protector. Shall I say all? The most consoling class to me in Germany to-day are the Social Democrats. They have independence of spirit, self-denial, character, and idealism. Their ideals are not ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... plebiscite, taken in the provinces affected, showed an immense majority in favour of annexation. Garibaldi himself was soon afterwards engaged in rendering assistance to the Sicilians in their insurrection against the despotic King Francis II. Assuming the title of "Dictator of Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel," Garibaldi attacked and occupied Palermo, and having established his ascendency in the island, invaded the Neapolitan territory on the mainland. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Father, in the sense of paternal ruler in all things. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the temporal authority of the pope was superior to that of kings and emperors; and the Roman church became the despotic potentate of nations, and an autocrat above all secular states. Yet this church, reeking with the stench of worldly ambition and lust of dominance, audaciously claimed to be the Church established by Him who affirmed: "My kingdom ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... has been derived than was known among those who established the free constitutions of Europe, and than would have been adopted, or patiently borne, in ages of virtuous simplicity. A very numerous part of our countrymen spend their most susceptible age in those countries, where despotic manners remarkably prevail. They are themselves, when invested with office, treated by the natives with an idolatrous degree of reverence, which teaches them to expect a similar submission to their will, on their return to their own country. They have been accustomed to look up to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... indeed knows not how this or any other human nobleness could well be "originated," or brought to pass, by voting or without voting, in this world, except by the grace of God very mainly;—and remembers, with a sigh, that of the Seven Sages themselves no fewer than three were bits of Despotic Kings, [Gr.] Turannoi, "Tyrants" so called (such being greatly wanted there); and that the other four were very far from Red Republicans, if of any political faith whatever! We may quit the Ancient Classical concern, and leave it to College-clubs and speculative debating-societies, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... its own body, and separate set of notions and advantages. Friedrich was at least a unity; his whole strength going one way, and at all moments, under his own sole command. The value of this circumstance is incalculable; this is the saving-clause of Pitt and his England (Pitt also a despotic sovereign, though a temporary one); this, second only to Friedrich's great gifts from Nature, and the noble use he makes of them, is above all others the circumstance that saved him in such a duel with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... generations that dwelt there; and now I'm going to tell you of Waldemar Daa and his daughters. How proud was his bearing, for he was of royal blood, and could boast of more noble deeds than merely hunting the stag and emptying the wine-cup. His rule was despotic: 'It shall be,' he was accustomed to say. His wife, in garments embroidered with gold, stepped proudly over the polished marble floors. The tapestries were gorgeous, and the furniture of costly and artistic taste. She had brought gold and plate with her into the house. The ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... in England, and upon which the noble edifice of English liberty had been raised and consolidated since the grand struggle between king and barons in the thirteenth century. It had passed into a tradition, both in England and in America, that in order to prevent the crown from becoming despotic, it was necessary that it should only wield such revenues as the representatives of the people might be pleased to grant it. In England the body which represented the people was the House of Commons, in each of the American ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... After attaching our spare cable to the other one, the anchor at last grounded. This, however, was a dangerous situation to remain in, as, if the wind blew strong, we would have to run out to sea, and so much cable would take a long time to get in; so I ordered my two men, in a very pompous, despotic way, to heave up the anchor again. But not a bit would it budge. We all heaved at the windlass; still the obstinate anchor held fast. Again we gave another heave, and smashed both ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... was, in fact, the most notable achievement of his career. Beyond that, he had done little but ornament the Boards of companies with his name; manage his estate (through an agent) with a mixture of cross conservatism and despotic benevolence; and shoot, hunt and fish with impeccable "good form." He was typical of that very large class of leisured landowner in whose creed good form ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... hear it. It sounded in his ears as he descended the hill. It came again and again to him as he was seated at his comfortable breakfast. It rang in the chambers of his consciousness for hours, and only a firm and despotic will expelled it at last. He knew the voice, and he never ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... because he did not show himself their friend, and, openly devoted to him and bowing in the dust before him, they had secretly repaired to his bitterest enemy, the Duchess Anna Leopoldowna, to offer her their services against the haughty regent who swayed the iron sceptre of his despotic power over Russia. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... degrees there ripened in the strong soul of this young man the determination to burst these laming fetters of his genius, by flight from despotic Wuertemberg altogether; and, in some friendlier country, gain for himself the freedom without which his spiritual development was impossible. Only to one friend, who clung to him with almost enthusiastic ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... say there are no narrow lives except for narrow natures. But there are many timid and loving women who are forced to lead restricted lives by domestic tyrants,—a despotic father or husband, or even sometimes an imperious mother or sister,—and who yet under other circumstances might expand like a flower. The only help for such women is in cultivating courage. And it is necessary to remember that the self-sacrifice which helps others to be their best is good, while ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... ought to be cherished by every true democrat of these later times, for he announced, in his quality of Protector of the Indian, the principles which protect the rights of all men against oppressive authority. He was eager to convince a despotic court that it had no legal or spiritual right to enslave Indians, or to deprive them of their goods and territory. In framing his argument, he applied doctrines of the universal liberty of men, which are fatal to courts themselves; for they transfer authority to the people, who have the best ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Three kings, to whom the nineteenth-century greatness of Prussia was largely due, ruled the country during nearly the whole of the eighteenth century. They were fully as despotic as the kings of France, but, unlike the French kings, they were keenly alive to the needs of the people, anxious to advance the welfare of the State, tolerant in religion, and in sympathy with the new scientific studies. The first, Frederick William I (1713-40), labored earnestly ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... mighty realm of the powerful Croesus, the friend of the gods, the hitherto unconquered leader? Had a friend hinted at this interpretation of the ambiguous oracle, I should have derided, nay, probably caused him to be punished. For a despotic ruler is like a fiery steed; the latter endeavors to kick him who touches his wounds with intent to heal; the former punishes him who lays a hand on the weak or failing points of his diseased mind. Thus I missed what, if my eyes had not been dazzled, I might easily have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... twenty-six years—such was the dream. The solidarity of the Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its crupper. It is true, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom by the natural reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a constitutional order was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great regret of the conquerors. It is because revolution cannot be really conquered, and that being providential and absolutely ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the despot loses his throne—the oldest form of the recall. Every despotism is thus tempered by revolution, and Anglo-Saxon communities have been ready to exercise such a privilege on the slightest sign that a despotic tendency was creeping into ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... "Not possible!" cried the despotic chief, with vehemence. "Do you not know that I can force my people to do whatever I please?—at least I can ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... Parliament they were confronted with the perils of government, close responsibility might improve them, and make them tolerable. But they would not be left to themselves. A voluntary constituency will nearly always be a despotic constituency." ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... in northern New Mexico. It is a land of rich pastures and teeming flocks and herds, a land of rolling mesas and precious running waters that at length unite in the Currumpaw River, from which the whole region is named. And the king whose despotic power was felt over its entire extent was an ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... beforehand," observed Del Ferice. "That is what happens so often in politics, and in other affairs of life as well. If a man takes money from me without my consent, he steals, but if I agree to his taking it, the transaction becomes a gift or a loan. A despotic government steals, a constitutional one borrows or receives free offerings. The fact that the despot pays interest on a part of what he steals raises him to the position of the magnanimous brigand who leaves his victims just enough money ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... won, they went back to their glens to hoard up their booty, and attend to their cattle and their farms. This privilege of going and coming at pleasure, they would not be deprived of even by their chiefs, whose authority was in most other respects so despotic. It followed as a matter of course, that the new-levied Highland recruits could scarce be made to comprehend the nature of a military engagement, which compelled a man to serve in the army longer than he pleased; and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... "my strength would become sternness. Nature gave me a despotic disposition. I have had, and have still, many times the greatest difficulty to control it; but with God's help I shall succeed! My Elise, we will improve ever. On the children's account, in order to make them happy, we will endeavour ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to that of the public prosperity. Under the despotic successors of Augustus, all the fields of intellect had been turned into arid wastes, still marked out by formal boundaries, still retaining the traces of old cultivation, but yielding neither flowers nor fruit. The deluge of barbarism came. It swept away all the landmarks. It obliterated all ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... something in this which almost frightened Lady Cantrip. She could not bear to hear him say that the girl must be made to yield, with that spirit of despotic power under which women were restrained in years now passed. If she could have spoken her own mind it would have been to this effect: "Let us do what we can to lead her away from this desire of hers; and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... the two races were most widely contrasted. The Gauls were a priest-ridden race. Their Druids were a dominant caste, presiding even over civil affairs, while in religious matters their authority was despotic. What were the principles of their wild Theology will never be thoroughly ascertained, but we know too much of its sanguinary rites. The imagination shudders to penetrate those shaggy forests, ringing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
