"Obsequious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to know who I was, where I came from and what was my business here. Towards the Russians, whether strangers or natives of Siberia, the Yakuts are always on their guard and excessively obsequious. Every Russian, however poorly dressed, is always the 'tojan', the master. Their behaviour towards the Poles, on the other hand, is very friendly. No Yakut ever took the information that I was not a Russian but ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... have been the great object of his policy. He had placed himself above the control of the law. By the grant of a subsidy for life he was relieved from the necessity of meeting his parliament; with the aid of his committee, the members of which proved the obsequious ministers of his will, he could issue what new ordinances he pleased; and a former declaration by the two houses, that he was as free as any of his predecessors, was conveniently interpreted to release him from the obligations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of that bath and the subsequent putting on of a clean, whole suit of clothes placed upon the bed by the so obsequious man servant, who said his master had sent these clothes with his compliments and the hope that they would fit. The clothes I accepted thankfully enough, for I had decided to ask M. Cartier the address of a shop in the city ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... like it ever so much better! I can not endure the public rooms," said Mary Grey, as she took the seat the obsequious waiter placed for her. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... heavy fines those whom he endeavoured to serve. As this took place so frequently that it could not be attributed to chance, but to a systematic purpose, Lysander was forced to warn his partizans that his intervention was an injury and not a benefit to them, and that they must desist from their obsequious attentions to him, and address themselves directly to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... our old friend, who had been so obsequious to Admiral Bell, entered the room, and begged to know what orders ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... you please," she said. This time Dan detected just a trace of the sharpness with which she had dismissed the obsequious Jean. It gave him courage and a sense of protection from the fascination he knew that this strange woman was successfully ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... endeared with all hearts Which I by lacking have supposed dead: And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye As interest of the dead!—which now appear But things removed, that hidden in thee lie. Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who all their parts of me to thee did give; ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... consequence, subsequent, consecutive, execute, prosecute, persecute, sue, ensue, suitor, suitable, pursuit, rescue, second; (2) obsequies, obsequious, sequester, inconsequential, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... put her feet into Cousin Kitty's bandbox, to the demolition of her bonnet; but that both bonnet and cap survived to grace the heads of their respective proprietors. The only mishap that occurred, dear reader, befell your obsequious servitor, who went to bed with a sick headache, caused really by her acute sympathy with the misfortunes of the hero and heroine of our aunt's story, but which Miss Christine grossly attributed to a hearty supper of oysters and soft crabs, eaten at twelve o'clock ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... The obsequious Mr Pecksniff proffered his arm. The old man took it. Turning at the door, he said to Martin, waving him off with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... pomp. Sid Waters, as president, was sitting in the go-cart, his head ornamented with a huge smothering three-cornered hat, made out of a New York daily. Rick Grimes, as governor, was walking behind the go-cart, now and then giving the "chariot" an obsequious push, but impatiently awaiting his turn for a ride. Billy Grimes and Pip Peckham were serving as horses, and soldiers also, pulling along the president and sharing the broom-handle between them. Whether that handle might be a "musket" or a "spear," no ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... jumps by the other riders; but the stones they had kicked down were almost as agitating to Pilot's ruffled nerves as those that still remained in position. She found it the last straw that she should have to wait for the obsequious runners to tear these out of her way, while the galloping backs in front of her grew smaller and smaller, and the adulatory condolences of her assistants became more and more hard to endure. She literally hurled the shilling at ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the smile of beauty, and the array of titled distinction and circumstance, act like a charm upon the feelings and sentiments of many well-meaning parents and children. But it is not all gold that glitters. We must not think that those are happy in their marriage union, because they are obsequious in their attentions to each other, and live together in splendor, overloaded with fashionable congratulations. We cannot determine the character of a marriage from its pomp and pageantry. We rather determine the many unhappy matches from the false principles upon which the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Haste, haste, obsequious minions, bear the tidings to your lord! Go, tell him there are some who dare to disobey his word; Men of the captive, Hebrew race, men high in place and power, Who scorn to bow their haughty necks at his command ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the adepts in the science to visit him at Champtoce. The messengers he despatched on this mission were two of his most needy and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville. The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable pleasures, he had entrusted with the education of his motherless daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission that he might marry her at the proper time to any person he chose, or to himself if he liked it better. This man ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... all-grasping western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships .. before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... face a scene which her heart recoiled from. A single glance showed her Bonthron, sunk in total and drunken insensibility; Ramorny, stripped of his armour, endeavouring in vain to conceal fear, while he spoke with a priest, whose good offices he had solicited; and Dwining, the same humble, obsequious looking, crouching individual she had always known him. He held in his hand a little silver pen, with which he had been writing on a scrap ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... but fawn'd around him. At that sight, And at the sound of feet which now approach'd, Ulysses in wing'd accents thus remark'd. Eumaeus! certain, either friend of thine Is nigh at hand, or one whom well thou know'st; 10 Thy dogs bark not, but fawn on his approach Obsequious, and the sound of feet I hear. Scarce had he ceased, when his own son himself Stood in the vestibule. Upsprang at once Eumaeus wonder-struck, and from his hand Let fall the cups with which he was employ'd Mingling rich wine; to his young Lord he ran, His forehead ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... obsequious wait For the kind dole divided at his gate. Laurus among the meagre crowd appeared, An old, revolted, unbelieving bard, Who thronged, and shoved, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... prison life in general, modify it ever so much by special chambers, obsequious turnkeys, a general tendency to make one as comfortable as possible, a jail is a jail, and there is no getting away from that. Cowperwood, in a room which was not in any way inferior to that of the ordinary boarding-house, was nevertheless ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... had arrived at the Hague, in the spring of 1613. Aubery du Maurier, a son of an obscure country squire, a Protestant, of moderate opinions, of a sincere but rather obsequious character, painstaking, diligent, and honest, had been at an earlier day in the service of the turbulent and intriguing Due de Bouillon. He had also been employed by Sully as an agent in financial affairs between Holland ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "The White Plume of Savoy." But now, in the light of Spencer's open scorn, I saw it was impudently false, childish, sentimental. My head ached, the humidity sapped my strength, at heart I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I was down and out. And seeing this, Temptation, like an obsequious floorwalker, ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... court just beyond the row of palms and oleanders that fringed the rail against which his Herald rested, that he might read as he ran, so to speak. He was the only person having dejeuner on the "terrace," as he named it to the obsequious waiter who always attended him. Charles was the magnet that drew Brock to the Chatham (that excellent French hotel with the excellent English name). It is beside the question to remark that one is obliged to reverse the English when directing ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... It was such a person as Cole of Milton, his correspondent of forty years, who lived at a distance, and obsequious to his wishes, always looking up to him, though never with a parallel glance—with whom he did not quarrel, though if Walpole could have read the private notes Cole made in his MSS. at the time he was often writing the civilest letters of admiration,—even Cole would have been cashiered from ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... deep tragedy of kings led in chains and pining in dungeons; they were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers for the sake of raising at last, out of the ruins, the mausoleum of their own dignity and freedom, in the midst of the monotonous solitude of an obsequious world. To them, it was not given to excite emotion by the tempered accents of mental suffering, and to touch with a light and delicate hand every note in the scale of feeling. They naturally sought also in Tragedy, by overleaping all intervening gradations, to reach at once the extreme, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... be done? The court was obsequious to the Proconsul, afraid of Rome; jealous that the mob should have been more forward than the magistracy. Had the city moved sooner, as soon as the edict came, there would have been no rising, no riot. Already ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... a Protestant without any enthusiasm for the religion she intended to restore in England, and prayed to the Virgin in her own private Chapel, while she was undoing the work of her Catholic sister Mary. The obsequious apologies to the Pope were withdrawn, but the Reformation she was going to espouse, was not the fiery one being fought for in Germany and France. It was mild, moderate, and like her father's, more political than religious. The point she made ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... coincidence that should bring him into the one shop in all New York in which she happened to be sitting, she started up, thinking to surprise him. Then the surprise was hers, for she saw that he was in search of her. With a word to the obsequious salesman who met him, he came directly towards her hiding-place behind the dummy in sealskin. His face lighted with a merry smile that was good to see as he crossed over to her ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... receive at the different tables. In this important branch, she has the assistance of a lady, somewhat younger than herself, who, seated by her side, in stately silence, has every appearance of a maid of honour. A person in waiting near the throne, from his vacant look and obsequious carriage, might, at first sight, be taken for a chamberlain; whereas his real office, by no means an unimportant one, is to distribute into deserts the fruit and other et ceteras, piled up within his reach ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... perplexed history it had been, with many a bitter sorrow, and many a yet bitterer sin. Passionate grief and despairing murmurs he had felt and flung out, while it slowly unfolded itself. When the Pharaoh had asked, 'How old art thou?' he had answered in words which owe their sombreness partly to obsequious assumption of insignificance in such a presence, but have a strong tinge of genuine sadness in them too: 'Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.' But lying dying there, with it all well behind him, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the workmen, common in some mines, was never permitted in "Pingueico." In Pachuca, for example, this was said to be the universal practice; while in the mines of Chihuahua it would have been as dangerous as to do the same thing to a stick of dynamite. Here the peon's manner was little short of obsequious outwardly, yet one had the feeling that in crowds they were capable of making trouble and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the region had despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated and robbed even of their clothing. The charming ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... expenditure forthwith, though, indeed, that would have been difficult to effect. He had already two packs of hounds, with which he hunted on alternate days, and he had even endeavored to do so on the Sunday; but the obsequious "county" had declined to go with him to that extent, and this anomaly of the nineteenth century had been compelled to confine himself on the seventh day to cock-fighting in the library. He kept a bear to bait (as ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... was conducting the proprietor of the chateau, he repented having treated him so cavalierly the day before; he became obsequious, and endeavored to gain the good-will of his fare by showing himself as loquacious as he had before been cross and sulky. But Julien de Buxieres, too much occupied in observing the details of the country, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... came ashore Captain Johannes Maartens was all interest, for here were silks again. One strapping Korean, all in pale-tinted silks of various colours, was surrounded by half a dozen obsequious attendants, also clad in silk. Kwan Yung-jin, as I came to know his name, was a yang-ban, or noble; also he was what might be called magistrate or governor of the district or province. This means that his office was appointive, and that he was a ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... sudden extremes, at one while on a tone of easy but not undignified familiarity with his visitors, as if their equal in position, their superior in years; then abruptly, humble, deprecating, almost obsequious, almost servile; and then again, jerked as it were into pride and stiffness, falling back, as if the effort were impossible, into meek dejection. Still the prevalent character of the man's mood and talk ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two large books with him in his gig, and a considerable roll of papers. As soon as the obsequious Mr. Pugnose saw him at the door, he assisted him to alight, ushered him into the "best room," and desired the constable to attend "the Squire." The crowd immediately entered, and the Constable opened the court in due form, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... room in silence, an occasional vehement gesture alone giving evidence of the agitation or fear that was raging within him. Finally, he stopped and stood before the obsequious Basilivitch. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... certain streets and squares be darkened—or whitened—at the appointed hour by the shower of pasteboard transmitted from dainty kid-gloved hands to the cotton-gloved hands of "John," and destined through him to reach the possibly gloveless hands of some other John, who stands obsequious in the doorway. Now will every lady, after John has slammed the door, drive happily on to some other door, rearranging, as she goes, her display of cards, laid as if for a game on the opposite seat of her carriage, and ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of solid bells; it has a few bits of good brass-work, a chandelier and some candlesticks, and it has a fine eighteenth-century tomb in a corner, with a huge slab of black basalt on the top, and a heraldic shield and a very obsequious inscription, which might apply to anyone, and yet could be true of nobody. Why the particular old gentleman should want to sleep there, or who was willing to spend so much on his lying in state, no one knows, and I fear that no one ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hasn't brought his pony round—or what you will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid, and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing service. My dear, good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask for your newspaper, and Jeames says, "I'm reading it, and jest beg not to be disturbed;" or suppose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the organ. Both had been brought in from the street. Svidrigailov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything about him was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Philip, was by now an old friend and very obsequious. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... might have guessed," replied the farmer, bowing with an aged, obsequious dignity. "You have made an old man very happy; and I may say, indeed, that I have entertained an angel unawares. Sir, the great people of this world—and by that I mean those who are great in station—if they had only hearts like yours, how they would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I said, "that religion was like a noble and generous boy with the lyrical heart of a poet, made by some sad chance into a king, surrounded by obsequious respect and pomp and etiquette, bound by a hundred ceremonious rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught to think that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquire graceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented from obeying natural ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Uniformity, imposing the use of the Prayer-book on the clergy, resulted in resignations which according to the records did not exceed two hundred. To account for so small a number, we must suppose that the regulations were to a considerable extent evaded; if not, the clergy must have been singularly obsequious. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... an echoing colonnade, Sweeping against its pillared balustrade, Adown a porch, and through a portal wide, And I am in my Castle, Lord of all; My faithful groom is standing in the hall To doff my shining robe, while servitors, And cringing chamberlains beside the doors Waving their gilded wands, obsequious wait, And bow me on my way in royal pomp ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... soft peal of laughter—a woman's laughter, which came from the arched entrance to the inn. I looked up quickly. A too familiar figure was standing there watching me,—Lady Delahaye, trim, elegant, a trifle supercilious. By her side stood the innkeeper, white-aproned and obsequious. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... poor bhearer who had never before been taken by a Sahib in the very bosom of his family. There was something at once pitiful and comical in the subdued "fidget" with which, applying his joined palms to his forehead, and lowly louting, he made his most obsequious salaam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... passers by in thickest confluence flow'd: To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear Prick'd up at his least motion; to receive At his kind hand ray customary crums, And common portion in his feast of scraps; Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent With our long ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... satire on servility and selfishness. It is in that case Diamond cut Diamond—a trial of skill between the legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. The cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for years of obsequious attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring; nor can I think that Gil Blas' library was not quite as much as the coxcombry of his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenes in Ben Jonson's Volpone, showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... more humane, and she seemed of a superior race to the inhabitants of the surrounding valleys. My savage treated her with peculiar deference. She had just given him some bread, with which he retired to a respectful distance, bowing to the earth. I caught the mode, and was very obsequious, thinking myself on the point of experiencing a witch's influence, and gaining, perhaps, some insight into the volume of futurity. She smiled at my agitation, and kept beckoning me into ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... course; but a bishop in England was one who could do little good and, fortunately, not much harm. With an irony too subtle to be seen by but very few, Pitt when twenty-seven years of age made his old tutor Bishop of Winchester. Tomline proved an excellent and praiseworthy bishop; and his obsequious loyalty to Pitt led to the promise that if the Primacy should become vacant, Tomline was to be made Archbishop ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a morose solitude after all. "Money," he was fond of saying, "is freedom," but he never learned that self-denial is freedom with the addition of self-respect. With a hearty contempt for the ordinary objects of human ambition, he could yet bring himself for the sake of them to be the obsequious courtier of three royal strumpets. How should he be happy who had defined happiness to be "the perpetual possession of being well deceived," and who could never be deceived himself? It may well be doubted whether ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... arrival. Very soon a jemadar came in and informed us that "if the sahib log, who were the protectors of the poor, would deign to be led by him," we should be shown into the royal presence. So we rose and followed the obsequious official into ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... could not help noticing an increased and even exaggerated respect paid him by the hotel attendants. He was asked if his EXCELLENCY would be served with breakfast in a private room, and his condescension in selecting the public coffee-room struck the obsequious chamberlain, but did not prevent him from preceding Paul backwards to the table, and summoning a waiter to attend specially upon "milor." Surmising that George and the colonel might be in some way connected with this ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... unmarried lady to choose, from among the young gentlemen of her acquaintance, one to be her guardian or gallant; who, in return for the honor of this appointment, presents to her some nosegays, or other trifles, and thereby obliges himself to attend her in the most obsequious manner in all her parties of pleasure, and to all her public amusements, for the space of one year, when he may retire, and the lady may choose another in his place. But in the course of this connection it ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... told her they would go North from Reno and travel eastward by the Canadian Pacific, stopping at points of interest along the road. He imagined his courtship progressing in grandiose suites of rooms wherein were served delicate meals, his generous largesse to obsequious hirelings adding to her dazzled approval. He had to have that money; he couldn't go without it; he had set it aside to deck with fitting ceremonial ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... had pouted sufficiently (and who whenever a stranger appeared began, from infancy almost, to play off little graces to catch his attention), her brother being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the doctor was very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only be crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger. Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. The guides and landlords were obsequious. We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the multitude. At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... required of it, and wishing to make a display of liberalism, accords large concessions in the direction of local autonomy; and when it discovers that the new institutions do not accomplish all that was expected of them, and are not quite so subservient and obsequious as is considered desirable, it returns in a certain measure to the old principles of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was opened by an obsequious colored servant, Craig handed him the scrap of paper signed by the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... complaining of the distance I keep him at; and thinks himself entitled now to call in question my value for him; strengthening his doubts by my former declared readiness to give him up to a reconciliation with my friends; and yet has himself fallen off from that obsequious tenderness, if I may couple the words, which drew from me the concessions ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiter—an obsequious one if possible—and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg's customers on ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... than no Christian at all; but at the best, such a man is a possessor of the truth only by accident: he ought to have, and, if he be a sincere disciple of truth, will seek, some more solid grounds for holding it. But it is but too obvious, we fear, that the disposition to enjoin this obsequious mood of mind is prompted by a strong desire to revive the ancient empire of priestcraft and the pretensions of ecclesiastical despotism; to secure readmission to the human mind of extravagant and preposterous ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... her seat, however, than there was the dog close to the car, timid, obsequious, winning, with his wisp of a head cocked on one side. We drove on, and he followed pertinaciously. Mildly adjured by the Countess to "go home, little dog," he came on the faster. Many adventures he had, such as a fall over a heap of ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... note changed from hand to hand—tipping was still in style. The obsequious steward gave him further directions for finding the games and recreational rooms, and other points ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... new addresses fitted them to conquer the wilderness—qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society—a society shockingly tame—may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman is one who never gives offense." ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... this which one may call the preventing Aspect, and throw their Attention another Way, lest they should confer a Bow or a Curtsie upon a Person who might not appear to deserve that Dignity. Others you shall find so obsequious, and so very courteous, as there is no escaping their Favours of this Kind. Of this Sort may be a Man who is in the fifth or sixth Degree of Favour with a Minister; this good Creature is resolved to shew the World, that great Honours cannot at all change his Manners; he ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... only world to which all else in the firmament were obsequious attendants, but a mere insignificant speck among the host of heaven! Man no longer the centre and cynosure of creation, but, as it were, an insect crawling on the surface of this little speck! All this not set down in crabbed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... with sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written "L'Entree de Sidi Laid," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables, chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various nationalities, black, bronze, and cafe au lait in colour, offer him perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... restoration; and that frightful mother of all mischief, the money maker (U.S. Bank). Every morning (the morning begins here at twelve, meridian) the Senate chamber is thronged with ladies and feathers, and their obsequious satellites, to hear the sparring. Every morning a speech is made upon presentation of some petition representing that the country is overwhelmed with ruin and disasters, and that the fact is notorious and palpable; or, that the country is highly ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Eh! Is it what?" it droned. And a figure with bloodshot eyes, disordered beard, and rich clothes awry, forced its way through the obsequious circle. It was Marshal Tavannes. "Eh, what? You'd beard the King, would you?" he hiccoughed truculently, his eyes on Father Pezelay, his hand on his sword. "Were ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the most tender confidence, and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his Meditations, he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife so faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners. [4] The obsequious senate, at his earnest request, declared her a goddess. She was represented in her temples, with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres; and it was decreed, that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of either sex should pay ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... have grown up and are habituated to it, and do not realize the oppression; because in childhood circumstance and the black art of education alike conspire to make the worker humble in heart and to take the crown and sceptre from his spirit, and his elders are already tamed and obsequious. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... the presence of the two other men in the car. She sensed that it was only their being there that kept Dean from making a scene. There was nothing in his manner toward her now of the obsequious chauffeur. While she admitted to herself that there was no longer the necessity for his continuing in his fictitious character she strongly resented his loverlike jealousy for her welfare and welcomed the chief's return, for she saw from his face, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... the black figures round him stood side-by-side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. Two! In a flash he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and staggered—obsequious hands assisting him—to his feet. There was a ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... insouciance tempered the habitual military smartness of the man who had known several different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young manhood. As he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the Grand Rational, the obsequious head porter ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... woodwork until the gong should gather them; and my aunt is there, very marvelously wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage-like veil, and there are hotel porters and under-porters very alert, and an obsequious manager; and the tall young lady in black from the office is surprised into admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my uncle, making his first appearance in that Esquimaux costume I have already mentioned, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... won from loveless hearts (12) are felt to be devoid of grace, and embraces forcibly procured are sweet no longer, so the obsequious cringings of alarm are hardly honours. Since how shall we assert that people who are forced to rise from their seats do really rise to honour those whom they regard as malefactors? or that these others who step aside to let their betters pass them in the street, desire thus to show ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... remarkable—such moments in especial determined in Kate a perception of the high happiness of her companion's liberty. Milly's range was thus immense; she had to ask nobody for anything, to refer nothing to any one; her freedom, her fortune and her fancy were her law; an obsequious world surrounded her, she could sniff up at every step its fumes. And Kate, in these days, was altogether in the phase of forgiving her so much bliss; in the phase moreover of believing that, should they continue to go on together, she would abide in that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... my account, as I had been on his—who had watched my commands, and (pardon me, Madam) ever changeable motion of your pen, all hours, in all weathers, and with a cheerfulness and ardour, that nothing but the most faithful and obsequious passion could inspire.' ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... passion, I felt it rise up like a snake in my breast when I saw that feeble woman. She was splendidly dressed—wrapped in furs of the most costly kind, trailing behind; her velvets and lace worth a countess's dowry. She was attended by obsequious menials; surrounded by luxuries; her compartment of the carriage was a perfect palace in all the accessories which it was possible to collect in so small a space; and it seemed as though 'Cleopatra's cup' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... stainless portrait which Mr. Forster, at the conclusion of his remarks, would fain have drawn. Mr. Macaulay may have painted his story a little too highly. His faults are less in his verbs and substantives than in his adjectives and his adverbs. Penn never in all probability became such an obsequious and pliant-principled courtier as he is represented in this history, but the simple facts which are authentically recorded of his court-life preclude any notion of the high-souled and spotless character which Mr. Forster would ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... in it except by force and bribery. He must coerce and corrupt. Moreover, to rule without a rival, he must surround himself with men vastly inferior to him both in talent and in virtue: men who, in return for their obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy and of tyranny inevitably supervenes: ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... of Toomey's character had come with his misfortunes. So long as he had money to spend and could ride, arrogant and high-handed, over the obsequious shopkeepers who benefited by his prodigality, and the poor ranchers who had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first seen him. She adored his ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... probable chances of life, in a manner utterly revolting to me. I caught many a glance of disgust bent upon them by the poor fellows who were thus treated as if they were stocks or stones. These women were, while under the eye of the surgeon, obsequious and eager to please, but I thought I saw the "lurking devil in their eyes," and felt sure ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... her arrival at Kingdon, Bettina, having breakfasted in her room, went for a ramble over the house. It seemed solemnly vast and empty, and she would have lost herself many times had she not encountered now and then a courtesying house-maid or an obsequious footman, who answered her inquiries and told her into ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... passed in Roberval's mind. His vigilant eye took notice of the slightest signs which revealed the nobleman's attitude towards him; but no change in his own manner and bearing could have been observed, except that he was, if possible, more servile and obsequious than ever. ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the comfort of their poor neighbours, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that souls of grace Own sweet repulsion, and that 'tis The quality of their embrace To be like the majestic reach Of coupled suns, that, from afar, Mingle their mutual spheres, while each Circles the twin obsequious star; And, in the warmth of hand to hand, Of heart to heart, he'll vow to note And reverently understand How the two spirits shine remote; And ne'er to numb fine honour's nerve, Nor let sweet awe in passion ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... walking where one chooses. When he was magnificently weary of walking down that particular passage he would wheel round and pace back past the office; in the shadow of the arch just beyond he was altered as by a blast of magic, and went hurrying forward again among the Twelve Fishermen, an obsequious attendant. Why should the gentlemen look at a chance waiter? Why should the waiters suspect a first-rate walking gentleman? Once or twice he played the coolest tricks. In the proprietor's private quarters he called out breezily for a syphon of soda ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... casual than was customary. Some of them went so far as to smile encouragingly, and others waved their hands in the most cordial fashion. Three or four very young members looked upon him with admiration and envy, and even the porters seemed more obsequious. There was something strangely oppressive in all ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... wave only obsequious to the wind Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap, Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned By the strong god's breath moving on the deep From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind That shakes the plain ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... had not taken the wife long to persuade the husband. Blangin's heavy steps were heard in the passage; and almost immediately, he entered, cap in hand, looking obsequious ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... and his paper. He was, however, a smart man, quite capable of grasping a situation when it was demonstrated to him. In a few weeks' time the clever division began to read the accounts of their acts of brigandage with fear and trembling; obsequious stewards became more alert, and less timid in dealing with glaring acts of fraud, while threats were openly indulged in, and actions for libel suggested. But Denis Quirk and his paper went on their prescribed course, regardless of threats, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... gathered up by the clerk, Dennis Quigg handed over McGaw's. The ease with which Dan had raised the money on his notes had invested that gentleman with some of the dignity and attributes of a capitalist; the hired buggy and the obsequious Quigg indicated this. His new position was strengthened by the liberal way in which he had portioned out his possessions to the workingman. It was further sustained by the hope that he might perhaps repeat his generosities in ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 'em,—this Grandeur, Cozen, which those o' Quality assume above the Populace, to have obsequious Mechanicks wait our Levee in a Morning, is not disagreeable; then they are as constant as our Menials, and the less Mony one pays 'em, the ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... laughter and kisses. The whole atmosphere of the place suggested romance to the eager American girl. Downstairs were the royal guards; in the halls were attendants; all about were maidservants and obsequious lackeys, crowding the home of the kindly countess. At last, comfortable and free from the dust of travel, the two friends sat down to a ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... evils of our economic system are too plain to be ignored; too many people have harsh personal experience of the wastefulness of its production, the injustice of its distribution; of its sweating, its unemployment and slums. And when the attempt is made to plaster over evils, such as these with obsequious rhetoric about the majesty of economic law, it is not surprising that the spirit of many men should revolt and that they should retort by denying the existence of order in the business world, by declaring that the spectacle which they see is one of discord, confusion and chaos. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... been cultivated in England since 1570. It is a Composite plant, and bears the name Calendula from the Latin calendoe, the first days of each month, because it flowers all the year round. Whittier styles it "the grateful and [327] obsequious Marigold." The leaves are somewhat thick and sapid; when chewed, they communicate straightway a viscid sweetness, which is followed by a sharp, penetrating taste, very persistent in the mouth, and not of the warm, aromatic kind, but of an acrid, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... hidden; but one day he went to the Recogidas and asked to see Sister Chucha. He was obsequious, but impassioned, full of cajolery, but not for a moment did he try to impose upon his countrywoman by any assumption of omniscience. That was reserved for his master, and was indeed a kind of compliment to his needs. Sister Chucha heard ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... halberdiers in the ear of the bigger of the two prisoners. I could hear the command distinctly where I sat, well back in the court, and so no doubt could Gillesbeg Gruamach, but he was used to such obsequious foolishness and he made ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love, and I profess requital to a hair's breadth; not only, Mistress Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement, complement, and ceremony of it. But are you sure 5 ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Rajah rose hastily without replying and went to his office state-room, followed, shadow-like, by the obsequious Jastrow. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... exchanging stolen greetings; silent salutations were passing between wealthy patrons and their hangers-on; lovers, whose mistresses were absent, sighed their woes into the ears of confidants; officers tossed curt nods to their creditors, and high officials were receiving obsequious bows from their subordinates, anxiously hoping for the time when death would give them a chance of promotion. And then—before the young ladies had had time to exhibit their latest Paris gowns in the course of one ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... once the fellow, a dark-skinned, obsequious Lydian, returned looking scared and yet on the verge of laughter. He could barely control his merriment, yet was plainly afraid to utter what he had to say. His ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... of Doctor Todd to which he led me, in the presence of the great man, he did not venture any airy presentation. Boller of '89 inside of the study door was quite a different person from the Boller without it. The bold manner fled. He was suppressed, obsequious; even his clothes seemed to shrink and grow humbly dun. We entered so quietly that the doctor, bending over his desk, did not hear us, and we had to cough apologetically to apprise ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Delaney, seeing me bettered and able to sit up a little, told me this strange story. While I was ill and unconscious, an officer had come to inspect the prison. Cunningham was very obsequious to this gentleman, and on Delaney's seizing the chance to complain, said it was a pack of lies, and how could he help the dysentery and typhus? All jails had them, even in England, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... had sold them some chocolates in the most smiling, obsequious manner; now he sat huddled up on a wooden case, eating something out of a grimy, but gaudy cotton handkerchief. At his feet were two thin, miserable-looking children, both dressed as acrobats. Out of the grimy handkerchief ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... are always civil, or rather obsequious; and in dress they are remarkably neat and clean, to whatever rank of life they belong.[156] I shall not attempt a description either of their persons or habits, for the better kind of China paper, which is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... afterwards came into most of these measures. After endeavouring in vain to unite, these two interests, the Duke of Bedford found, or fancied himself compelled, in order to secure a parliamentary majority, to listen to the overtures of the, obsequious Primate, to restore him to the Council, and to leave him, together with his old enemy, Lord Shannon, in the situation of joint administrators, during his journey to England, in 1758. The Earl of Kildare, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... preference in order of narrative, as well as in memory, to guides who proved competent, willing, and true, who, if they seasoned the intercourse between us with a little encouragement to my self-esteem, had nothing in them obsequious or timeserving, and who set me a wholesome example of clear convictions and firmness in the maintenance of right. But not only are the virtues of the race whom I have chosen for a theme subjects of congratulation; even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... gentleman of the bedchamber, so as to have him constantly about his person. Such was his favour that every one pressed around him to obtain their suits with the King. He received rich presents; the ladies courted his attention; the greatest lords did him the most obsequious and disgusting homage."[61] He afterwards formed that connection with Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, which resulted in her divorce from her husband, and, subsequently, on his marrying Lady Essex, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... With an obsequious bow the Jap withdrew; but if they could have seen his face as he turned into his small pantry, a cubby-hole for dishes and glasses, they would have noticed that it bore a most ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... disagreeably prepared for his august arrival. Obsequious waiters took his dressing-bag and overcoat, the landlord himself welcomed him at the door. Two naval gentlemen came out of the coffee-room to stare at him. "Have you any more luggage, Mr. Devine?" asked the landlord, as he flung open the door of the best drawing-room. It was awkwardly evident ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... is that ass Brogard? La! man," he added as Citizen Brogard, obsequious and fussy, and with pockets stuffed with English gold, came shuffling along, "where do you hide your engaging countenance? Here! another length of rope for the gallant soldiers. Bring them in here, then give them that potion down their throats, as I have prescribed. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Let me send you in a few dozen." He offered Mr. Punch an elaborate price-list as he concluded his self-condemnatory verse with an obsequious bow. ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... Somewhere with her was associated the idea of punishment, vindictiveness, revenge. I remembered again suddenly my odd notion that she sought to keep her present mistress here, a prisoner in this bleak and comfortless house, and that really, in spite of her obsequious silence, she was intensely opposed to the change of thought that had reclaimed Mabel to a happier view ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... for an obsequious Japanese butler entered with a tray of cooling drinks. The tray would be gleaming silver, but he was uncertain about the drinks; something with long straws in them, probably. But as to anything alcoholic, now—While he was trying to determine ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the road through which the Imperial procession was to pass. The terraces of the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the quais were thronged. Numberless spectators covered the slopes of the Champ de Mars. The ever obsequious Moniteur, in its official account of the ceremony, said; "If the spectators were uncomfortable, there was not one who was not consoled by the feeling that held him there, and by the expression of his wishes which the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Jack Lawless[8] called on Arbuthnot to ask him some question about the Deccan prize money, in which a brother of his has an interest. He entered upon politics, was very obsequious in his manner, extravagant in praise of the Duke, quite shocked that he should have fought a duel, and said, 'Sir, we are twelve of us here, and not one but what would fight for him any day in the week.' He said that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... noiselessly after him in the shadow of the gallery, lest you should see me; for I knew you would prevent my going with the man. We descended the stairs, but it was not until we reached the bottom that I saw we had not come down by the way I had ascended. Selim was most obsequious, and seemed ready to do everything for my comfort. As we walked down a narrow street, he presented me with a new fez, and made signs to me to put it on instead of my hat, which he then carefully wrapped in ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a state bordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intense alertness and respect when he understood my desires. He didn't know the price of the objects in question. He brought the proprietor, an obsequious little German who, on learning my name, repeated it in every sentence. For Biddy I chose a doll that was all but human; when held by a young woman for my inspection, it elicited murmurs of admiration from the women shoppers by whom we were surrounded. The proprietor promised to make a special ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of selection as I guessed it. "He forced his way into the F.O. and in an obsequious tone, which you and I, Geraldine, would be ashamed to adopt, begged for the favour of a bag to carry with him. If the KING had known about it he would rather have sent his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the most unkindest ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... sense of equality is noticeable. Shopkeepers and their assistants are not the cringing, obsequious slaves that we know so well in England. There is none of that bowing and smirking, superfluous "sir"-ing and "ma'am"-ing, and elaborate deference to customers that prevails at home. Here we are all freemen and equals; and the Auckland shopman meets his customer with a shake ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... and gets up, Inger sleeping fine and sound after her long tramp, and out he goes to the cowshed. Now it must not be thought that he talked to Cow in any obsequious and disgustful flattery; no, he patted her decently, and looked her over once more in every part, to see if there should, by chance, be any sign, any mark of her belonging to strange owners. No mark, no sign, and Isak steals ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... accordingly to bring forward such laws as were in reality neither honorable nor advantageous for the public; his whole design being to outdo Caius in pleasing and cajoling the populace (as if it had been in some comedy), with obsequious flattery and every kind of gratifications; the senate thus letting it be seen plainly, that they were not angry with Caius's public measures, but only desirous to ruin him utterly, or at least to lessen his reputation. For when Caius proposed the settlement of only two colonies, and mentioned ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... foliage, give character and interest to the city, where the life of the past lingers in a series of street pictures remaining from bygone days of pomp and show. Ministers of State walk beneath many-coloured official umbrellas, held by obsequious attendants; graceful bedayas, in glittering robes, execute intricate dances, and gamelon players discourse weird music on pipe and drum. Court ballet-girls, known as Serimpi, are borne swiftly through the crowd in gilded litters, and masked actors give ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... crowd of rich men who occupy box and pit bestow a thought on the domestic life of these young girls? Do their wives and daughters, lolling on cushioned seats, clothed in purple and fine linen, and waited on by a host of obsequious fops, ever think whether the dancing-girls have a domestic life of any kind or not? They came to the theatre to be amused,—not to meditate; why should they permit their amusement to be clouded by a single thought as to whether any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... answer. And Lord Almeric, an excessively pale, excessively thin young man, handed his hat with a gesture of exhaustion to the obsequious tutor. 'Fan me; that is a good soul. Positively I am suffocated with the smell of those creatures! Worse than horses, I assure you. There, again! What a pother about a common fellow! 'Pon honour, I don't know what ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... excellently. He shook himself free from the obsequious native, who showed very clearly that he would have preferred to have kept on a watchful attendance, and began a languid, indifferent examination of the labyrinth-like passages and deserted halls. But the languidness and indifference were only masks which he chose to assume ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... was a thick-set, healthy peasant, of middle height, with a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising, especially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one side, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was for ever dreaming of improving ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bell-ringer, and the gaoler of Alice Benden. He obeyed the summons of the pompous voice with obsequious celerity, for it belonged to no less a person than the Lord Bishop of Dover. His Lordship, having caught sight of the bell-ringer as he crossed the precincts, had called him, and Perkins came up, his hat in one hand, and pulling ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... indicated, the characters are those with which the author loves to surround himself. A tuft-hunting county baronet's widow, an inane captain of dragoons, a graceless young baronet, a lady with groundless pretensions to feeble health and poesy, an obsequious nonentity her husband, and a flimsy and artificial young lady, are the personages in whom we are expected to find amusement. Two individuals alone form an exception to the above category, and are offered to the respectful admiration ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dirt, their vermin, their beggars, their priests, and their prejudices, how often have I looked at them with contempt! The uncleanliness that results from heat and indolence, the obsequious slavishness of the common people, contrasted with their loquacious impertinence, the sensuality of their hosts of monks, nay the gluttony even of their begging friars, their ignorant adoration of the rags and rotten ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... footman in livery and the major-domo. Your average Carioca servant is either fawning or covertly insolent. These two were obsequious. The footman carried a tray with a bottle, glass, ice, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the drum-beater, drummed in homage to him, and the four Kings were they that were loudest in their revilings of the spouse of Kadza, and most obsequious in praises of the Master. The King of the City was fain to propitiate his people by a voluntary resignation of his throne to Shibli Bagarag, and that King took well to heart the wisdom of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lover's impatience, Barstein had made the mistake of seeking Sir Asher in his counting-house, where the municipal magnate sat among his solidities. The mahogany furniture, the iron safes, the ledgers, the silent obsequious clerks and attendants through whom Barstein had had to penetrate, the factory buildings stretching around, with their sense of throbbing machinery and disciplined workers, all gave the burly Briton a background against ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... even obsequious at first, ready to condescend and accommodate, he is equally prompt when matters require that peculiar turn which southerners frequently find themselves turned into,—no more tick and a turn out of doors. At times, Mr. O'Brodereque's customers have the very unenviable ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... most objectionable, because it is the most demoralizing of all. Where such discrimination obtains, every shipper is in the power of the railroad corporation. It makes of independent citizens of a free country fawning parasites and obsequious sycophants who accept favors from railroad managers and in return do their bidding, however humiliating this may be. The shipper, realizing that the manager's displeasure or good will toward him finds ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee |
