"Preferment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exalted by her preferment, and took to teasing every one in the house to hear her spelling and her tables, that she might not fulfil Edgar's prediction by going down to the bottom of the baby-class; and up and down the stairs she ran, chanting ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through in the Highlands, was no improper Foundation for the course Method of living I have been since engag'd in for above Twenty Seven Years; during which Time, I have run through all those Hardships which are incident to one who seeks a Preferment in Fire ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... the world. The greatest merit in a state of poverty would only serve to make the possessor ridiculous—may distress, but cannot relieve him. Frugality, and even avarice, in the lower orders' of mankind, are true ambition. These afford the only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment. Teach then, my dear sir, to your son, thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering uncle's example be placed before his eyes. I had learned from books to be disinterested and generous before I was taught from experience the necessity of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... death to the disgrace of turning a renegado; but the wily Caliph, who had taken a deep and sudden interest in the fortunes of the youth, knew well the spring, by the touch of which his heart was most likely to be affected. He pointed out to Demetrius prospects of preferment and grandeur, while he assured him that, in a few days, Damascus must to a certainty surrender, in which case his mistress must fall into the power of a fierce soldiery, and be left to a fate full of dishonour, and worse than death itself; but, if he assumed the turban, he pledged ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... of Marquis de Chillon, handled a sword skilfully and dreamed of glory won upon battle-fields. He was dismayed when he first heard that his widowed mother had changed her plans for his career. A brother, who was to have been consecrated Bishop of Lucon, had decided to turn monk, and as the preferment to the See was in the hands of the family, it had been decided that Armand Jean ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... that without such party service as Bassett was rendering, with its resulting antagonisms, the virulent newspaper attacks, the social estrangements that she had not escaped in Fraserville, a man could not hope for party preferment. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... you of Crawfurd's(13) preferment in my letter of last Friday sevennight. I shall return to London the end of this week, and go in search of further news for your entertainment. The journal which you suppose me to keep is no other than minutes I make of what I hear. When ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... first used in the sense given below by Dr. Paley. "He [Paley] held, indeed, all those little arts of underhand address, by which patronage and preferment are so frequently pursued, in supreme contempt. He was not of a nature to root; for that was his own expressive term, afterwards much used in the University to denote the sort of practice alluded to. He one day humorously proposed, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... accordingly, on the subsequent morning, to Martindale Castle, and gave the lady the welcome assurances of her husband's safety, and of his hopes of preferment. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it; but I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see, and may be justly said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me ashamed, and beg you'll conceal it; yet, Neddy, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... his father—a holiday preferment highly valued in the days when Dr. May used only to assume the reins, when his spirited horses showed too much consciousness that they had a young hand over them, or when the old hack took a fit of laziness. Now, Norman needed Richard's assurance that the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... you see adopted, hold aloof from those that are risky, and carefully follow the others; you will then seldom have occasion for regret. Thus, being seldom mistaken in your utterances, and having few occasions for regret in the line you take, you are on the high road to your preferment." ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... man whose proficiency in all the vices of antiquity, together with his service to the realm in determining the normal radius of curvature in cats' claws, had elevated him to the highest plane of political preferment. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... more and more be chosen, not alone for ideas, experience, or for party affiliations: the President shall be chosen because he is a moral hero! Something has stirred in the heart of the American people, which shall not soon be stilled: a spiritual outlook upon political preferment. In the White House we long to have the great spiritual exemplars of our race. Not alone in church shall we offer up a "Prayer before Election." The time is coming when each true ballot-slip shall be ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... friendship. Having nothing more to say, I made ready, without delay, for the journey. There travelled in company with me several small trees, which had been educated with me in the seminary, and were now destined to the capital for preferment. ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... Where is the Marquis de Lafayette? We have impatiently expected him these four months. Present my compliments to him, General Du Portail, and Viscount de Noailles. Tell the last I congratulate him on his preferment, though it is with difficulty I rejoice at it, since it is to deprive us of the pleasure ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... friend Morland, therefore, from the first overrated, had ever since his introduction to Isabella been gradually increasing; and by merely adding twice as much for the grandeur of the moment, by doubling what he chose to think the amount of Mr. Morland's preferment, trebling his private fortune, bestowing a rich aunt, and sinking half the children, he was able to represent the whole family to the general in a most respectable light. For Catherine, however, the peculiar object of the general's curiosity, and his own ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... fortune. Half was his, she thought; But he, she knew, would not be brought To take his rights at second hand. Yet something might, she hoped, be plann'd. What did I think of putting John To school and college? Mr. Vaughan, When John was old enough, could give Preferment to her relative; And she should be so pleased.—I said I felt quite sure that dearest Fred Would be most thankful. Would we come, And make ourselves, she ask'd, at home, Next month, at High-Hurst? Change of air Both he and I should need, and there At leisure ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... the only coolness which is known to have taken place between him and Charles Montague[573] [Halifax] arose out of his imagining that his friend was not in earnest about getting him into the public service. March 14, 1696, Newton writes thus to Halley: "And if the rumour of preferment for me in the Mint should hereafter, upon the death of Mr. Hoar [the comptroller], or any other occasion, be revived, I pray that you would {312} endeavour to obviate it by acquainting your friends that I neither ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... to bring things into confusion, that they might have the advantage of bettering their fortunes by plunder." Little did they think that it was then known, as it now appears in fact, that those who were assiduously watching for places, preferment and pensions, were in truth the very men of NO PROPERTY, and had no other way of mending thier shattered fortunes, but by being the sharers in ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... was a good deal of my waggish comrade's nonsense about what has been said concerning our expectations of court preferment, we, nevertheless, really thought that something to our advantage might turn up ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... but as nothing is so soon forgot as death, especially when alleviated by the enjoyment of a greater affluence of fortune, his grief wore off by pretty swift degrees, and he was beginning to renew his pursuits after preferment, with the same assiduity and ardency as ever, when his wife died in bringing into the world a son. This second subject of sorrow struck indeed much more to his heart than the former had done, as he now wanted that comforter he had found in her.—All ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... suspended and imprisoned, 1637-1640, on a frivolous charge of having betrayed the king's secrets; Archbishop of York, 1641. Save from this poem and the Carol printed in the Appendix we know nothing of his relations with Herrick. He had probably stood in the way of the poet's obtaining holy orders or preferment. When Herrick was appointed to the cure of Dean Prior in 1629, Williams had already lost ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... in Laverna;[60] Averruncus prevented sudden misfortunes; and Conius was always disposed to give good advice to such as wanted it; Volumnus inspired men with a disposition to do well; and Honorus raised them to preferment and honours. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... annum, and none more than 200 pounds per annum. They appear to be most of them about 150 pounds per annum, besides their several parsonage houses and surplice fees; and most of them have lectureships in town, or livings in the country, or some other spiritual preferment of ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... imagination of such a thing. Mr. Kenyon, indeed, has asked me repeatedly to spend a few hours on a sofa in his house, and, the Regent's Park being so much nearer than you are, I had promised to think of it. But I have not yet found it possible to accomplish even that quarter of a mile's preferment, and my ambition is forced to be patient when I begin to think of St. John's Wood. I am considerably stronger, and increasing in strength, and in time, with a further advance of the summer, I may do 'such things—what ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... address, Nor, past due means, presume of due success, 140 Reason gat Fortune in the end to speed To his best prayers[95]: but strange it seemed, indeed, That Fortune should a chaste affection bless: Preferment seldom graceth bashfulness. Nor grac'd it Hymen yet; but many a dart, And many an amorous thought, enthralled[96] his heart, Ere he obtained her; and he sick became, Forced to abstain her sight; and then the flame Raged in his bosom. O, what grief ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the land, or exiled to foreign shores. The stranger had stolen in on their hearthstone, robbed them of their lands, goods and chattles, usurped their powers of local legislation, and then closed every door to preferment against them, leaving them without a hope or a crust for the future, on their own shores. Under this horrible pressure, thousands of them necessarily gave way and fell victims to those gaunt recruiting sergeants of the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... in a truly estimable light. He found himself a Roman Catholic by accident of birth; so was his mother; but his father was so upon personal conviction and conversion, yet not without extensive study of the questions at issue. It would have laid open the road to preferment, and preferment was otherwise abundantly before him, if Pope would have gone over to the Protestant faith. And in his conscience he found no obstacle to that change; he was a philosophical Christian, intolerant of nothing but intolerance, a bigot only against bigots. But he remained ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... I might remind you that the next step is to a commission, and that merit and courage will take a man to any command in the United States army. It is the only standard of advancement, and there is no other instrument of preferment. I am happy to know that you young men have started so well. You two, and the friend who also was advanced to sergeant with you, ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... he imagined that he had cause to repent of his commendations. Classical learning was, in that age, regarded as a mere solitary accomplishment, and the law was the only road that led to honours and preferment. Petracco was, therefore, desirous to turn into that channel the brilliant qualities of his son; and for this purpose he sent him, at the age of fifteen, to the university of Montpelier. Petrarch remained there for four years, and attended lectures on law from some of the most famous ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... this time he seems to have been steadily applying himself to the practice of his profession, if, indeed, that weary hope deferred which forms the usual probation of legal preferment can properly be so described. As might be anticipated from his Salisbury connections, he travelled the Western Circuit; and, according to Hutchins's Dorset, he assiduously attended the Wiltshire sessions. He had many friends among his brethren of the Bar. His cousin, Henry Gould, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... you the hopes of preferment, entertained by the Chevalier de la Luzerne. They have been baffled by events; none of the vacancies taking place which had been expected. Had I pressed his being ordered back, I have reason to believe the order would have been given. But he would have gone back in ill humor ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... heart as any subject in his dominions. He goes on: "I do think they would give you a Baron's gown as soon as possible," etc. I have written to him in answer, showing I have enough to carry me on, and can dedicate my literary efforts to clear my land. The preferment would suit me well, and the late Duke of Buccleuch gave me his interest for it. I dare say the young duke would do the same, for the unvaried love I have borne his house; and by and by he will have a voice potential. But there ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... was offered by the rebels the command of a party of men to march forward and attack Fort Cumberland, besides which further inducements of preferment and advancement were held out to him. But nothing the rebels could offer was able to shake his allegiance to King George the Third. His former losses, his present situation, the safety of his wife and family, his treatment by the Board of Trade and Plantations, ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... by her elder sister on the piano, tears trickled unbidden down the aquiline nose of the militant Bishop of Archester, the chapter stood hushed to a man, and the surrounding curates were only prevented by a salutary fear of ruining their chances of preferment from laying themselves, their pittances, and their garnered store of slippers at her pretty feet. Then in a fit of charming petulance, she would break off in the middle of the piece, lay down her violin, and, with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... did more; I taught him how to manage Arms, to dare An Enemy; to court both death and dangers; Yet these were but additions to compleat A well accomplish'd Souldier: I did more yet. I made him chief Commander in the field Next to my self, and gave him the full prospeft Of honour, and preferment; train'd him up In all perfections of a Martiallist: But he unmindful of his gratitude, You know with what contempt of my deserts, First kick'd against mine honour, scorned all My services; then got the palm of ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... man can be grateful for friendship, for a sympathetic look, for a brave word spoken in his behalf against odds—he can be your debtor for such things, and keep his manhood uncompromised. But if you give him food, and ease, or preferment, and condescension therewith, look for no thanks from him; esteem yourself fortunate if he do not hold you his enemy. The gifts of the soul are free; but material benefits are captivity. So the Maryland colonists, recognizing that their proprietor meant well, forgave him his generosity, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... student from boyhood; and severe application undermined a system that was never robust, and that soon became hopelessly diseased. Illness, accompanied with sharp pain, clipped the wings of his ambition, obliged him to forego preferment, and deepened the hopelessness that hung over his expectations. His hunger for love could not be satisfied, for his physical infirmity rendered a union undesirable, even if possible, while a craving ideality soon transcended any visible ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... trial. This trial, moving of course under English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to English interests, and hoping, by favor of the English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. Bishop that art, Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be, were the words that sounded continually in his ear; and doubtless, a whisper of visions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to keep ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... he could not endure the privilege of free election by the cathedral and monastic chapters; nor was he less jealous of the influence exerted, under the shelter of that privilege, by the high feudal nobility in the disposal of church preferment. He seems to have expected, moreover, that while ostensibly conceding the right of patronage to the apostolic see, he should be able to retain the real power in his own hands. The event disappointed his calculations. No sooner was the decree of Bourges rescinded than the Pope resumed and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... find other service which would prove of more permanent value to my race. Even then I had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this I felt that they could better afford to strive than for political preferment. As for my individual self, it appeared to me to be reasonably certain that I could succeed in political life, but I had a feeling that it would be a rather selfish kind of success—individual success at the ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... me to believe that no man, who knows me personally or by reputation, will suspect the honesty of my skepticism. If I were politic, and intent only on my own preferment or pecuniary interest, I should swim with the strong tide of public sentiment instead of breasting its powerful influence. The hazard is too great, the labor too burdensome, the remuneration too uncertain, the contest too unequal, to induce a selfish adventurer ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... differs from the modern student, but in his caustic description of the rude and witless society of the place he is modern enough. In his letters to his friend, John Ellis, of the State Paper Office, it is plain that Prideaux wants to get preferment. His taste and his ambition alike made him detest the heavy, beer-drinking doctors, the fast "All Souls gentlemen," and the fossils of stupidity who are always plentifully imbedded in the soil of University life. Fellowships were then sold, at Magdalen and New, when they were ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... but how much was finished we do not know. The next Abbot, after an interval of two years, was Henry of Anjou, a kinsman of King Henry I. He appears to have been a scandalous pluralist, restless and greedy, continually seeking and obtaining additional preferment, and as often being forced to resign. He was not the man to prosecute such a work as was to be done at Burgh; "he lived even as a drone in a hive; as the drone eateth and draggeth forward to himself all that ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... called to him, and asked the reason of this disgraceful restraint, Crabshaw replied, "There's no cake, but there's another of the same make —who never climbed, never fell—after clouds comes clear weather. 'T is all along of your honour, I've met with this preferment; no deservings of my own, but the interest of my master. Sir Knight, if you will slay the justice, hang the constable, release your squire, and burn the town, your name will be famous in story; but, if you are content, I am thankful. Two hours ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... his achievements in it as anything more than aids to social distinction. He was then, as always, greatly influenced by his surroundings. These were unfavorable to literary pursuits. Politics was the attractive field for preferment and distinction; and it is more than probable that, even after the success of the Knickerbocker history, he would have drifted through life; half lawyer and half placeman, if the associations and stimulus of an old civilization, in his second European residence, had not fired his ambition. Like ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... subordinate only to his love of power. To both, his talents made access easy. In the contemplation of a career in his early years he had hesitated long between the Church and the Army; but had finally thrown his lot with the former, as offering not only equal possibilities of worldly preferment and riches, but far greater stability in those periodic revolutions to which his country was so addicted. The Army was frequently overthrown; the Church, never. The Government changed with every successful political revolution; the Church remained immovable. And so ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... often spoke of the journey to Copenhagen, and of undertaking it once more. But then came first your mother, then she had brothers and sisters, and there was a great deal to do; so the journey was put off. And when your grandfather got preferment, and was made dean, all was thankfulness and joy; but we never got to Copenhagen. No, never have I set foot in it again, as often as we thought of it and projected going. Now I am too old, and I could not stand travelling by a railroad; ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... daughter, and to which she had been almost, it may be said, brought up. It is, however, scarcely necessary to add that it was not quite so agreeable to the other leading members of the congregation. I should be very sorry to say that each family wished that preferment for its own favourite daughter; for indeed there can be no doubt, as Mrs. Pigeon asserted vigorously, that a substantial grocer, whose father before him had established an excellent business, and who had paid for his pew in Salem ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... have been at the prospect of becoming the chief of an embassy, yet when I was offered the inferior appointment, my feelings were very different. I felt that in quitting the situation I now enjoyed, I should leave the high road to preferment, to get into one of its crooked lanes. Besides, I strongly participated in the national antipathy, the horror of leaving one's country, and particularly dreaded the idea of going to sea; and when I came to reflect that the country to which I was likely to be sent ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... together, which owed its wholesome force not so much to anything inherent in the pledge itself as to the positive terror of a public opinion in Ireland which would tolerate no tampering with it. Furthermore, a rigid rule obtained against members of the Party seeking office or preferment for themselves or their friends on the sound principle that the Member of Parliament who sought ministerial favours could not possibly be an impeccable ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... commentary; but the only interpretation that we need notice is the first, 'Salt denotes a prelate of the Church; for it is said in the Gospels, Ye are the salt of the earth.' When he composed these lines, Garland must surely have had his eye on ecclesiastical preferment. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Street, the principal character being a merry person who bore that cognomen. Some of the aspirants to royal favour persuaded the King that the play was a satire directed against him and his Court, and the poor poet, condemned by the enemies of the Muses, calumniated and deprived of all hopes of preferment, retired in disgust to a country retreat among the hills of Surrey. The disfavour of the Court was also increased by his Ode to Brutus, wherein he had extolled the genius of his hero, and praised liberty in language too enthusiastic for the Court of Charles II. The ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... age of eleven, when he was on board a heavily battered ship in Lord Howe's battle of June 1, 1794. At thirty, with little influence, and at a period when promotion had become comparatively sluggish, he had fairly fought his way to the modest preferment in which he died. Under the restricted opportunities of the United States Navy, Burrows had seen service, and his qualities received recognition, in the hostilities with Tripoli. The unusual circumstance of both captains falling, and so young,—Burrows was but twenty-eight,—imparted ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... after; whether (as the neighbours say) Signor Aurelio Ardinghi, her brother, looked with too much attention on the young woman, or that she herself (as Diana says) desired to seek a place of more profit, she removed to Bergamo, where she soon found preferment, being strongly recommended by the Ardinghi family. She was advanced to be first waiting-woman to an old countess, who was so well pleased with her service, she desired, on her death bed, Count Jeronimo ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... three years had to be devoted to the study of civil law before a student could be admitted as bachelor of canon law. Consequently a man of parts, with a leaning towards theological and philosophical learning, took up the study of civil law, with the hope of more easily winning preferment.[1] "Compared with such [legal] lore," writes Mr. Mullinger, "theological learning became but a sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment; most of the Popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attainments in a subject which so nearly ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... companionship in danger, this vile and debasing principle—this insatiable desire for personal advancement—is certain to intrude itself; since we feel that over the mangled bodies of our dearest friends and companions, we can alone hope to attain preferment and distinction." ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... may not demur, Fellows are sage reflecting men, And know preferment can occur, But ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... in a little shop. There he studied, his talents and luck pushed him into notice, and he became bishop of Frejus. But he preferred to live on the sunny shores of Naples, and to keep within the circle of the king, where lay chances of higher preferment, and he troubled his diocese little with his presence. He became a cardinal, and in 1316 was elected Pope at the conclave of Lyons. He at once dropped down the Rhone, and fixed the seat of his pontificate at Avignon. Able, learned though he was, he was not above the superstitions ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... referring to his hero's failure to obtain preferment to the Episcopal Bench about the year 1804, says—"His pipe might be deemed in these fantastic days a degradation at the table of the palace or the castle; but his noble hospitality, combined with his habits of sobriety, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... safety. He met his problems as they came to him, took the course which he believed to be right and then stuck to it with indomitable tenacity. Yet, curiously enough, with none of the characteristics of the politician, he longed for political preferment. At the hands of the people this came to him in smallest measure only. Though at one time a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, he was defeated as candidate for the lower house of Congress, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... barge, hoisted English colours on the capitol, and acted for the time as governor of Rome. The prophecy of the Irish poet was thus accomplished, and the friar reaped the fruits; for Nelson, who was struck with the oddity of the circumstance, and not a little pleased with it, obtained preferment for him from the King of Sicily, and recommended him to ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... about Reynolds's bishopric proved to be true. The new bishop was a very "moderate" Anglican indeed, and his appointment was meant as a sop to the Presbyterians. Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy refused similar preferment. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... so extraordinary,' he wrote, 'in natural history as the longevity of all bishops, priests, and deacons in Ireland. During the last five years there has been literally no Church preferment to dispose of, to the ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... education, which is a forcible spur to effort in both parents and children among the whites, is not felt by the Natives who can always find work to do at wages that will satisfy their ordinary wants, and, moreover, the Native's chance of gaining profit and preferment through being well educated are still few in South Africa, so that where there is neither penalty for failure nor reward for success we cannot expect more effort than we find. When education becomes as general in South Africa as it is among the people of Europe then it will ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... have to put a label on your back, 'Second-hand!' or her velvet will be a scandal. I can't wear out that at home like this flagrant, flowery thing, that I saw Miss Curtis looking at as rather a disreputable article. There's preferment for you, Ailie! What do you think of a general's widow with six boys? She is come after you. We had a great invasion—three Curtises and this pretty little widow, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Cambrai, had died, and the King had given that valuable preferment to the Abbe de Fenelon, preceptor of the children of France. Fenelon was a man of quality, without fortune, whom the consciousness of wit—of the insinuating and captivating kind—united with much ability, gracefulness of intellect, and learning, inspired with ambition. He had been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 1457 the clergy refused to be taxed for a crusade. In 1461 the princes appealed against the sale of indulgences. The Gravamina of this year were very bitter, complaining of the practice of usury by priests, of the pomp of the cardinals and of the pope's habit of giving promises of preferment to certain sees and then declaring the places vacant on the plea of having made a "mental reservation" in favor of some one else. The Roman clergy were called in this bill of grievances "public fornicators, keepers of concubines, ruffians, pimps ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... abbeys had been too often given to most unworthy persons. In France the Crown was almost supreme in such matters; the Queen therefore determined to appoint a "Council of Conscience" consisting of five members, whose business it would be to help her with advice as to ecclesiastical preferment. ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... Milan, and afterward became an officer of the emperor's guard at Rome. He remained a true christian in the midst of idolatry; unallured by the splendours of a court, untainted by evil examples, and uncontaminated by the hopes of preferment. Refusing to be a pagan, the emperor ordered him to be taken to a field near the city, termed the Campus Martius, and there to be shot to death with arrows; which sentence was executed accordingly. Some ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... had happened that Proteus' father had just been talking with a friend on this very subject: his friend had said, he wondered his lordship suffered his son to spend his youth at home, while most men were sending their sons to seek preferment abroad; 'some,' said he, 'to the wars, to try their fortunes there, and some to discover islands far away, and some to study in foreign universities; and there is his companion Valentine, he is gone to the duke of Milan's court. Your son is fit for any of these ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... destruction? Most honored father-in-law, The blood you have bequeathed these several hearts To nourish your posterity, stands firm; And, as with joy you led us first to rise, So with like hearts we'll lock preferment's eyes. ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... brutish master ever punished his offending slave with so little mercy as ambition did this Zopirus? and yet how many are there in all nations who imitate him in some degree for a less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a small preferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick not to commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly stigmatised? But you may say, "Though these be the most ordinary and open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... changeful country, and we learn that, follow as we may either the grand old etiquette of England or the more gay and shifting social code of France, we still must make an original etiquette of our own. Our political system alone, where the lowest may rise to the highest preferment, upsets in a measure all that the Old World insists upon in matters of precedence and formality. Certain immutable principles remain common to all elegant people who assume to gather society about ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... he was an elegant poet. Hague was succeeded by Green, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, whose character in the learned world is well known[145]. In the same form with Johnson was Congreve[146], who afterwards became chaplain to Archbishop Boulter, and by that connection obtained good preferment in Ireland. He was a younger son of the ancient family of Congreve, in Staffordshire, of which the poet was a branch. His brother sold the estate. There was also Lowe, afterwards ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Neither they, nor the ministers who treated Church patronage as a means of strengthening their party, were necessarily careless about religion. Newcastle and Hardwicke, for example, were religious men, and the personal piety of some preferment-seeking bishops is unquestioned. It was a matter in which the Church was neither better nor worse than the age. The ecclesiastical system was disorganised by plurality and non-residence; the dignified clergy as a whole were worldly minded, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... subaltern rattling his dice-box... At the sight of a public official rising from nowhere, even the soul of a bootblack will bound with emulation."—He has merely to push himself ahead and elbow his way to secure a ticket "in this immense lottery of popular luck, of preferment without merit, of success without talent, of apotheoses without virtues, of an infinity of places distributed by the people wholesale, and enjoyed by the people in detail."—Political charlatans flock ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... whilst all the while they support themselves by the imagination that they are generals of armies, prophets, kings, and emperors. As to a change of mind in those men, who consider infamy as honor, degradation as preferment, bondage to low tyrants as liberty, and the practical scorn and contumely of their upstart masters as marks of respect and homage, I look upon it as absolutely impracticable. These madmen, to be cured, must first, like other madmen, be subdued. The sound part of the community, which I believe ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... United States is written this law: "No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States." The purpose of this law is to defeat any attempt to elevate one citizen above another in rank of social or political preferment. Ours is a country free from the entanglements of social distinction such as mark one man or family from another by way of title or patent of nobility; and yet, in our country of uncrowned kings and unknighted men, we would not forget the real deeds of valor, the services rendered, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... bade Mr. Carvel dine with him next day at Button's Coffee House, where they drank mulled wine and old sack, for which young Mr. Carvel paid. On which occasion his Reverence endeavoured to persuade the young man to remain in England, and even went so far as to promise his influence to obtain him preferment. But Mr. Carvel chose rather (wisely or not, who can judge?) to come back to Carvel Hall and to the lands of which he was to be master, and to play the country squire and provincial magnate rather than ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in his mind his former experience, as well as what he had seen since he had roamed about with the Devil, and perceived, whichever way he turned, nothing but hard-heartedness, deceit, tyranny, and a willingness to commit crime for the sake of gold, preferment, or luxury. He wished to seek for the cause of all this in man himself; but his own unquiet and doubtful spirit, and his imagination, which always avoided difficulties within its reach, began already in dark dissatisfaction to make the Creator of mankind, if not the author, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... the exiles: we could scarce choose braver or honester men. I say as little of Mademoiselle Murphy,(392) for I conclude you hear nothing but her health drank in whiskey. Don't all the nailed Irish flatter themselves with preferment, and claim relation with her? Miss Chudleigh says, there is some sense in belonging to a king who turns off an old mistress when he has got ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and the Minister such relations that I can at once secure you that first step which is so difficult to obtain. After that, much, if not all, depends on yourself. But I could advance you, provided you were capable. You should, at least, not languish for want of preferment. In an important post, I could throw in your way advantages which would soon permit you to control cabinets. Information commands the world. I doubt not your success, and for such a career, speedy. Let ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Georgia Legislature, seeking political preferment for themselves through the familiar means of anti-Negro agitation, introduced a bill which aimed to discriminate against the Negroes of Georgia by legislative enactment just as the Negroes of Louisiana had ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... cannot call to mind a single instance, during the three years I passed at Hofwyl, in which even a suspicion of an electioneering cabal or other factious proceeding attached to an election among us. It can scarcely be said that there were candidates for any office. Preferment was, indeed, highly valued, as a testimonial of public confidence; but it was not sought, directly or indirectly, and was accepted rather as imposing duty than conferring privilege. The Lacedemonian, who, when he lost his election as one of the Three Hundred, went away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... difference of dress between the two that constituted the distinction: the soldier might be as pious as the priest, the priest was sure to be as worldly as the soldier; the soldier might have ecclesiastical preferment; the priest sometimes turned out ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... considering the various correspondence in which I am from time to time unavoidably engaged.... Be assured, my Lord, that there are very definite limits, beyond which persons like me would never urge another to retain preferment in the English Church, nor would retain it themselves; and that the censure which has been directed against them by so many of its Rulers has a very grave bearing upon those limits." The Bishop replied in a civil letter, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... having fatigued him in the course, he was opposed to seven of the most active soldiers, and overcame them with the greatest ease. 11. These extraordinary exploits caused him to be particularly noticed; he had been taken into the emperor's body guard, and by the usual gradation of preferment came to be chief commander. In this situation he had been equally remarkable for his simplicity, discipline, and virtue; but, upon coming to the empire, he was found to be one of the greatest monsters of cruelty that had ever disgraced power; ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... history has furnished, ought to be a very fine one—Louisa of Savoy; and it must be cut down to the capacity of a second-rate actress. The character would have been the sort of one for Mrs. Siddons; how I wish she was yet in a situation to afford it the high preferment ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... improved upon. Those things I think proper to mention to you, as I know your friendship for Boyd, that you may take an opportunity of mentioning them to him, when you are with him, which I hope will be soon. He is appointed deputy Captain-Lieutenant; but that I look upon as a step to higher preferment. I should like to hear from you; direct to (Crawfurdland) Kilmarnock, and I am, dear sir, your most ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... vows he cannot fawn, Though it would raise him to the lawn: He passed his hours among his books; You find it in his meagre looks: He might, if he were worldly-wise, Preferment get, and spare his eyes: But owned he had a stubborn spirit, That made him trust alone in merit: Would rise by merit to promotion; Alas! ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... people. In every country, even in Russia, the military excellence, the patriotism, the contempt of danger and death of the Jewish soldiers, will be rewarded more or less lavishly and liberally with distinctions and preferment, but experience teaches us that their glorious conduct is forgotten very soon after the war by everybody but themselves and their brethren, and that it certainly does not change in the least the status of the Jewish people ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... and treated fast days as only of political institution. For such reasons the book was burnt by public edict, a censure which the writer took so much to heart that, as Fuller says, being "so much defeated in his expectation to find punishment where he looked for preferment, as if his life were bound up by sympathy in his book, he ended his days soon after." Poor Mocket was only forty when he died, succumbing, like Cowell, to the rough reception accorded ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... to the second degree of Freemasonry, we congratulate you on your preferment. The internal, and not the external, qualifications of a man are what Masonry regards. As you increase in knowledge you will improve ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... surprised and a little hurt when he refused the former. As a member of a religious community he could not hold preferment, and he had ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... in such need, as without your lordship's favour we shall hardly be able to subsist any long time. We do not entreat your lordship for any other or more easy price than that your lordship directs the sale of it to others; only we humbly pray for some preferment in the opportunity of the place where the woods lie, and in the quantity, as it may answer in some portion to our wants. Herein, if your lordship will be pleased to favour us, then we humbly pray your lordship to direct us to some such persons as ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... for his birth and spirit than his wealth, had served the Venetian republic for some years with great valor and fidelity, but had not met with that preferment which he deserved. One day he waited on a nobleman whom he had often solicited in vain, but on whose friendship he had still some reliance. The reception he met with was cool and mortifying; the nobleman turned his back upon the veteran, and left him to find his way to the street through ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... renown and prestige as no other in America, and his name had already been mentioned in connection with the highest office within the gift of the people. Adair was held in high esteem by the people of Kentucky, and bright hopes of political preferment were held out by his party friends. Other considerations added, induced friends on either side to urge a reconciliation, which was happily effected on terms mutually satisfactory. The above account of this meeting on the field of honor was related to the author by General D.L. ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... minister, and writing in Bolingbroke and Pulteney. Now came the hour of gratitude and generosity. His patrons mounted into power—but—they silently dropped the instrument of their ascension. The political prostitute stood shivering at the gate of preferment, which his masters had for ever flung against him. He died broken-hearted, and owed the charity of a grave ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... which insensibly operated to the depression of the nobility, was making official preferment depend less exclusively on rank, and much more on personal merit, than before. "Since the hope of guerdon," says one of the statutes enacted at Toledo, "is the spur to just and honorable actions, when men perceive that offices of trust are not to descend by inheritance, but to be conferred ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... patronage or advowson of the living of St. Ronan's, then held by a very old incumbent, who died shortly afterwards; so that upon arriving in England Cargill found himself named to the vacant living. So indifferent, however, did he feel himself towards this preferment, that he might possibly not have taken the trouble to go through the necessary steps previous to his ordination, had it not been on account of his mother, now a widow, and unprovided for, unless by the support which he afforded ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... understanding, the organization shall be absolutely non-partisan, and shall not be used for the dissemination of partisan principles, or for the promotion of the candidacy of any person seeking public office or preferment. ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... will not be denied to have disinterested passions of another kind. Hatred, indignation, and rage, frequently urge them to act in opposition to their known interest, and even to hazard their lives, without any hopes of compensation in any future returns of preferment ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... years, when he had the valuable rectory of Clive or Cliff, near Dover, and shortly after the deanery of Lichfield, conferred upon him. During the civil wars he was a sufferer for the royal cause, and, losing his preferment, retired to the place of his birth, where he died in the year 1659, and was buried in the chancel of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... consideration to Don Lope. She was rich and of the first rank—greater consideration still; and bearing in mind the influence that her father, the celebrated Aguilar, enjoyed with the queen, a marriage with his daughter would open the road to the highest preferment, and yet our hero felt loath to return to Granada. The blooming Theodora de Monteblanco was then the reigning idol of the moment. She had fixed for a time his errant heart, and it was now that Don Lope perceived the great ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... independence of the metropolitan authority of Canterbury. He detested the practice of promoting Normans to Welsh sees, and of excluding Welshmen from high positions in their own country. "Because I am a Welshman, am I to be debarred from all preferment in Wales?" he indignantly writes to the Pope. Circumstances at first seemed to favour his ambition. His uncle, David Fitz-Gerald, sat in the seat of St. David's. When the young scholar returned from Paris in 1172, he found the path of promotion easy. ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... sons Charles and Montague, and his daughter Catherine. Charles afterwards received the rectory of St. Andrew's Holborn from the family of Montague; and Cutts was Dean of Bristol under Bishop Montague. And Montague obtained preferment from Mr. Conduit. Neither the family of Montague, nor that of Barton, seem to have thought the connexion discreditable. Moreover, the births of these children of Geoffrey Barton, a clergyman, occurred at the very period when the name ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... months; the houses of the planets; and the harmonic system of the world. To the literature of Greece he added the use of the Latin tonque; the Roman civilians were deposited in his library and in his mind; and he most assiduously cultivated those arts which opened the road of wealth and preferment. From the bar of the Praetorian praefects, he raised himself to the honors of quaestor, of consul, and of master of the offices: the council of Justinian listened to his eloquence and wisdom; and envy was mitigated by the gentleness and affability of his manners. The reproaches of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... might manage to support himself." The bishop, however, was not easily abashed, and he was at the epoch which now occupies us, earnestly and successfully soliciting from Philip the lucrative abbey of Saint Armand. Not that he would have accepted this preferment, "could the abbey have been annexed to any of the new bishoprics;" on the contrary, he assured the king that "to carry out so holy a work as the erection of those new sees, he would willingly have contributed even out of his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress is a certain step to high preferment ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... inhabitants of the metropolis, or probably the country in general, know the character of the brave, ill-fated band of Highlanders, who were now advancing into the very heart of the country. It was the custom, especially among those who wished to gain preferment at Court, or who affected to be fashionable, to speak of the Highlanders as low, ignorant savages; semi-barbarians, to whom the vulgar qualities of personal courage and hardihood might be allowed, but who had neither any urbanity to strangers, nor refined notions ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... SILVER SPOON IN HIS MOUTH. Said of a person who, by birth or connection, has all the usual obstacles to advancement cleared away for him. Those who toil unceasingly for preferment, and toil in vain, are said to have been born with a wooden ladle. Again, the silver-spoon gentry are said to come on board through the cabin windows; those less favoured, over the bows, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... caste, to miss preferment, to endanger your chances of gaining money and repute, turn Infidel and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... patronage; yet out of one of these professions the tutors of youth are in general chosen. But, can they be expected to inspire independent sentiments, whose conduct must be regulated by the cautious prudence that is ever on the watch for preferment? ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... a Comedy; this was revived by Mr. Durfey, and by him called The Fool's Preferment, at the Three ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... creating a disturbance and interrupting the performances of the theatre. The grand jury ignored twenty-seven of the bills, left two undecided, and found true bills against twelve. The latter exercised their right of traverse till the ensuing sessions. The preferment of these bills had the effect of re-awakening the subsiding excitement. Another circumstance about the same time gave a still greater impetus to it, and furnished the rioters with a chief, round whom they were eager to rally. Mr. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... The reverses of Napoleon's fortune had been so rapid, that the possessors of great places, and of great preferment, had not had time to retrench their way of living. When the Bourbons were recalled, they were obliged to come to a reckoning with their means, and all these ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the question of Catherine's divorce might be settled without reference to the pope. The king set him to write on the subject, and he was rewarded with the Archdeaconry of Taunton. In 1530 he accompanied the Earl of Wiltshire to the papal court, and was there offered preferment by the pope. He married the niece of Osiander, who had himself written on the subject of the divorce. On Warham's death he succeeded him in the primacy, and returned to England. As archbishop, Cranmer pronounced the divorce ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... His quickness of perception and mastery of details made him in a few years an authority in the office, and a Secretary of the Treasury, who was quite ignorant of details, but who was a good judge of human character, had the sense to appoint Ferrars his private secretary. This happy preferment in time opened the whole official world to one not only singularly qualified for that kind of life, but who possessed the peculiar gifts that were then commencing to be much in demand in those circles. We were then entering that era of commercial ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... also he entreated the lord cardinals to intercede for him with His Holiness, to whom he would freely resign all his churches, abbeys, and benefices, as well as every other ecclesiastical dignity and preferment that had been accorded him. The cardinals, deferring to Caesar's wishes, gave a unanimous vote, and the pope, as we may suppose, like a good father, not wishing to force his son's inclinations, accepted his resignation, and yielded to the petition; thus Caesar put off the ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... accompanied by symptoms indicative, as he thought, of a decline. "My constitution," writes he to his friend Colonel Stanwix, "is much impaired, and nothing can retrieve it but the greatest care and the most circumspect course of life. This being the case, as I have now no prospect left of preferment in the military way, and despair of rendering that immediate service which my country may require from the person commanding its troops, I have thoughts of quitting my command and retiring from all public business, leaving my post to be filled by some other person ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment." In which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... throughout his whole career. The first thing we hear of him in the House of Commons is a protest, a sort of ominous growl, against the promotion of some Arminian or semi-Popish divine. "If these are the steps to church preferment, what are we to expect!" Almost the first glimpse we catch of him when he has taken arms, is as the captain of a troop entering some cathedral church, and bidding the surpliced priest, who was reading the liturgy, "to cease his fooling, and come down!" And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... father and mother, but lose all prospect of the living of Somerset, which Sir Robert was so gracious as to promise should be mine on the demise of the present incumbent. You know, Mr. Somerset, that I have a mother and six sisters in Wales, whose support depends on my success in life; if my preferment be stopped now, they must necessarily be involved in a distress which ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government." The meaning is, that in republics, virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of national prosperity; that under a monarchy, the desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is what quickens men to perform services to the state; that despotism thrives by fear inspired in the breasts of ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... their desire for high place and fat livings. Yet these denunciations have no very spiritual origin. His rage is the rage of a disappointed candidate, rather than of a prophet; and, to the last, he seems to have expected preferment in the Church. Not without a certain pathos he writes, when he had become familiar with disappointment, and the sickness of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opinions which at the time of the accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the best title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simple country gentleman what the Arminians held, answered, with as much truth as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to cover his mouth with paste composed of flour and water. Sometimes, we are told, he would wear a red wafer upon his brow, as a signal that he was enduring the throes of literary composition and expected forbearance and consideration. It is said that he once missed preferment in the church because he absentmindedly interviewed his prospective vicar with his head bristling with quills like a porcupine. He is said to have insisted on his wife's using rouge though she had naturally a high colour, and to have gone fishing in a resplendent blue coat and silk stockings. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... has been accused of an undue ambition for political preferment, and it must be admitted that he would have succeeded better in those positions to which he attained, had he been less solicitous for the future; but it is not yet proved that he ever enlisted unworthy or dishonorable means in the cause of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... rich colour, and in 1861 a feeble attempt was made to restore it, which was, however, not carried out. Bishop Aquablanca, Peter of Savoy, had been steward of the household to his relative, William of Savoy, the Queen's uncle. His preferment was one of the noteworthy instances of Henry III.'s love of foreigners, and as Bishop of Hereford he was especially unpopular. The King made him his treasurer and consulted him on all matters of state. At his death, says the Rev. H. W. Phillott,(2) ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... My wife says she dined the other day with Grattan at the Chancellor's. I am sadly afraid that preferment in Ireland will run too much in favour of those who have not been the most staunch friends of Government; but, pray, for God's sake, take care that the new Lord Lieutenant does not throw the Government ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... came to inquire whether now she saw I really was not wholly immured, there was any chance of a more intimate cultivation of an acquaintance long begun, but stopped in its first progress. I could only make a general answer of acknowledgment to her kindness. Her bishop, whom I had not seen since his preferment from Chester to London, joined us, and most good-naturedly entered into ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... character we ought to call him—in the original irrepresentable term, the imperator, could not delegate his duties, or execute them in any avowed form by proxies or representatives. He was himself the great fountain of law—of honor—of preferment—of civil and political regulations. He was the fountain also of good and evil fame. He was the great chancellor, or supreme dispenser of equity to all climates, nations, languages, of his mighty dominions, which connected the turbaned races of the Orient, and those ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of the correspondence in these volumes is from clerical candidates for personal services; and if singular eagerness in pursuit of preferment, and singular homage to the influence of the queen's bed-chamber-woman, could stamp them with shame, the brand would be at once broad and indelible. But it must be remembered, that there are contemptible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... nor Independents. Be what it is your greatest privilege to be—American citizens. Cast parties to the winds, and uphold the state. Trample under your free-born feet the badges of party bondage, the ignoble chains of party slavery, the wretched hopes of party preferment." ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forth on occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were jobbers and hunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and endowed families out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders, who rode to hounds and shot and danced and farmed, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke |
