"Servile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... George was, he could not force himself to feel any affection for Ralph Wilson. He treated him with respect for his father's sake, more than from any personal regard, though the old man was servile in his protestations of love and devotion. Some minds are surrounded by a moral and intellectual atmosphere, into which other minds cannot enter without feeling a certain degree of repulsion. Such an ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... solemnity whereof they were put in mind, that their King was God; that having created the world in six days, he rested the seventh day; and by their resting on it from their labour, that that God was their King, which redeemed them from their servile, and painfull labour in Egypt, and gave them a time, after they had rejoyced in God, to take joy also in themselves, by lawfull recreation. So that the first Table of the Commandements, is spent all, in setting ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... christianization and civilization of a barbarous race. My argument for the benevolence of the relation of master and slave, drawn from the four relations ordained of God for the organization of the social system (the fourth being the servile relation, or the relation of master and slave) leads conclusively to the recognition of some great ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... have, then, three orders of ornament, classed according to the degrees of correspondence of the executive and conceptive minds. We have the servile ornament, in which the executive is absolutely subjected to the inventive,—the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more especially Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its submissiveness. Then we have the mediaeval system, in which the mind of the inferior workman ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the laughter from a group of building contractors at a side table, who had not seen a servile eye among their workmen in many moons; for a worthy project had popped into his mind at that instant. How was the moral backbone of our yeomanry to be stiffened save through education? Why not a prize contest to stimulate the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Where health and pleasure ramble hand in hand, Where smiling belles their earliest visit pay, And faded maids their lingering blooms delay. Delightful scenes of elegance and ease! Realms of the gay, where every sport can please." 297Thus sings the Bath poet, Bayly; who, if he is somewhat too servile an imitation of Moore in his style, has certainly more of originality in his matter than generally distinguishes poems of such a local nature. One of the greatest characters in the city of Bath was the worthy host of our hotel, the Castle; at whose door stood the rubicund ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... before her, and she laid her hands on their heads, 'do not forget, when among strangers and exposed to temptation, the lessons of piety and chivalry which you have learned within these walls. Fear God, and He will support you in all dangers. Be frank and courteous, but not servile, to the rich and powerful; kind and helpful to the poor and afflicted. Beware of meriting the reproaches of the brave; and ever bear in mind that evil befalls him who proves false to his promises to his God, his country, and his lady. ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... covering his face, for the sun was strong. "It is himself," Iskender whispered, dashing on into the house; while his mother made wild reverence in the Frank's direction, quite oblivious of the fact that the object of her bows and servile gestures could not, from the circumstances of his ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... man. He says: "It is a mere logical fiction to say that there is in man a neutral and pure volition (medium et purum velle); nor can those prove it who assert it. It was born of ignorance of things and servile regard to words, as if something must straightway be such in substance as we state it to be in words, which sort of figments are numberless among the Sophists [Scholastic theologians]. The truth ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... of invention, one series of pictures is so servile an imitation of another, that design has never improved in Ceylon; one scene is but the facsimile of a previous one, and each may almost be regarded as an exponent of the state of the art ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... his father), "and there is not a line in them that I cannot guarantee on my credit as a man of business. You can look over them at your leisure, or not, as you please. I think you must know that I always had an independent spirit, and would be the last of mankind to degrade myself by any servile attempt to alter your line ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... morality—if he happens to be blessed with any—by substituting for the sentiments of love and duty to our neighbors, a sense of obligation of blind obedience to an infinite, mysterious, revengeful, tyrannical God! The real principle of Christian morality, is servile obedience to a dangerous Power! Dispute the assertions of even your priest as to the requirements, dislikes, desires and wishes of the Almighty, and you might as well count yourself as lost, sulphurically lost! If you are one of God's chosen, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... her mother is quite discernible. She has the same soft, dark eye, with longer lashes, and her curling hair is of a luxuriant brown. She also is dressed with great neatness, and her white, delicate hands betray very little acquaintance with servile toil. These two are to be sold tomorrow, in the same lot with the St. Clare servants; and the gentleman to whom they belong, and to whom the money for their sale is to be transmitted, is a member of a Christian church in New York, who will receive the money, and go ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is getting more and more opposed to the great bulk of the most vigorous elements of the society. The stage is ceasing to be a truly national organ, and begins to suit itself to the tastes of the unprincipled and servile courtiers, who, if they are not more immoral than their predecessors, are without the old heroic touch which ennobled even the audacious and unscrupulous adventurers of the Armada period. That is to say, the change is beginning ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... source. And after all, were not his own criticisms often questionable and his tastes perverse? He was fond of saying pungent things about the men who thought they wrote like Cicero because they ended every sentence with "esse videtur:" but while he was boasting of his freedom from servile imitation, did he not fall into the other extreme, running after strange words and affected phrases? Even in his much-belauded 'Miscellanea' was every point tenable? And Tito, who had just been looking into the 'Miscellanea,' ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... many servile words of apology; at a crisis of this sort the beggar was uppermost in him, and the man of genius hid his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Death Penalty at Athens.—There are also the stocks and whipping posts for meting out summary justice to irresponsible offenders. When the death penalty is imposed (and the matter often lies in the discretion of the dicasts), the criminal, if of servile or Barbarian blood, may be put to death in some hideous manner and his corpse tossed into the Barathron, a vile pit on the northwest side of Athens, there to be dishonored by the kites and crows. The execution of Athenian citizens, however, is extremely humane. The condemned is given a ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... was both dishonourable and wicked for them to endure to see their country enslaved and garrisoned by foreigners, and, caring only to save their own lives, to shelter themselves behind decrees of the Athenians, and to pay servile court to the orators who had influence with the people. Rather was it, he urged, their duty to run the greatest risk, taking pattern by the courage and patriotism of Thrasybulus, so that, as he once, starting from Thebes, drove out the thirty tyrants from Athens, they also in their turn, starting ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... himself at the Shakespeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his hat bearing the inscription of "Corsican Boswell." In his Tour, he proclaimed to all the world that at Edinburgh he was known by the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Always remember that the service on which we are engaged has no soul and a very long arm." Then dropping into the persuasive and servile tone of the maitre d'hotel: "I propose, Mr. Rebener, that you allow me to send you up a nice little lunch, some melon, say, a salmon mayonnaise or a filet du sole au vin blanc and a noisette d'agneau and a nice little sweet, and you must try a bottle ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom, they stand on a different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must have been, lawlessness ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Link Ferris had treated the girl as though he were unworthy to breathe the same air as herself. He had been pathetically eager to concede any and every mooted point to her, with a servile abasement which had roused her contempt, even while it had gratified her ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... medicine which is the true minister of the body, and ought to be the mistress of all the rest, and to use their results according to the knowledge which she has and they have not, of the real good or bad effects of meats and drinks on the body. All other arts which have to do with the body are servile and menial and illiberal; and gymnastic and medicine are, as they ought to be, their mistresses. Now, when I say that all this is equally true of the soul, you seem at first to know and understand and assent to my words, and then ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... investigation thrown upon the views which it has accepted ready-made from doctor and theologian. Again, why? Because, my friends, the human mind is inert, despite its seemingly tremendous material activity. And its inertia is the result of its own self-mesmerism, its own servile submission to beliefs which, as Balfour has shown, have grown up under every kind of influence except that of genuine evidence. Chief of these are the prevalent religious beliefs, which we are asked to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... appeared to think that there was nothing in the world so precious as her hopeful Barnabas. Every thing must give way to his accommodation and advantage; every one must yield the most servile obedience to his commands. He must not be teased or restricted by any forms of instruction; and of consequence his proficiency, even in the arts of writing and reading, was extremely slender. From his birth he was muscular and sturdy; and, confined to the ruelle of his mother, he ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... transfer of ownership, in the same manner as the formal seizing of lands. The passage from sexual service to manual service on the part of women was perfectly natural.... And thus we find that the women of most savage tribes perform the manual and servile labor of ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... the servile proprietor of the house, which for the first time was honoured by the presence of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the One Church, and of the succession of one phase of doctrine to another, while it is ever one and the same. Thus I was brought on to the subject of Antiquity, which was the basis of the doctrine of the Via Media, and by which was not implied a servile imitation of the past, but such a reproduction of it as is really young, while it is old. "We have good hope," I say, "that a system will be rising up, superior to the age, yet harmonising with, and ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... only returning to a better time; our man of business is a creation of our century, and as bad a thing as it has produced. Commerce must be humanised once more. We invented machinery, and it has enslaved us—a rule of iron, the servile belief that money-making is an end in itself, to be attained by ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... to this attitude—those whom Hamilton called "the servile minions of France, who have no sensibility to injury but when it comes from Great Britain, and who are unconscious of any rights to be protected against France," were equally clamorous for forbearance. They asked Adams, in this crisis, to send ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... from father to daughter in the pauses of conversation, watching them as narrowly as a cat might watch a couple of unwary mice. The secretary, Mr. Swinton, was a pale, precise-looking young man with a somewhat servile demeanour, under which he concealed an inordinately good opinion of himself. His ideas were centred in and bounded by the art of stenography,—he was an adept in shorthand and typewriting, could jot down, I forget how many crowds of jostling ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... rich man glory in his riches[72]." "No flesh may glory in his presence;" "he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." The sudden vengeance by which the vain-glorious ostentation of Herod was punished, when, acquiescing in the servile adulation of an admiring multitude, "he gave not God the glory," is a dreadful comment on ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... so delighted that he ran from place to place celebrating its excellence. Thomson obtained likewise the notice of Aaron Hill, whom, being friendless and indigent, and glad of kindness, he courted with every expression of servile adulation. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... the centre of so great and universal a hatred as the Earl of Strafford. Strafford's guilt was more than the guilt of a servile instrument of tyranny, it was the guilt of "that grand apostate to the Commonwealth who," in the terrible words which closed Lord Digby's invective, "must not expect to be pardoned in this world till he be despatched to the other." He was conscious of his danger, but Charles forced him to attend ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Like the feudal sub-tenants these free-holders are, for most purposes, subject to the jurisdiction of their lord; though in the well organised state the royal judges protect them against the grosser forms of violence. But the greater part of the land is divided between servile village-communities, who give up perforce a large proportion of their working-days to the cultivation of the lord's demesne. The tendency of feudal law is to treat these peasants as slaves, to deny them the assistance of the royal law-courts, to regard them as holding their ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... secondary, the greater and the lesser—all equals in her arms. Let us see him in that company where he looks noble amongst the noble; let us not look upon him in the company of the ignoble, where he looks ignobler still, being servile to them; let us look upon him with the lyrical Shakespeare, with Vaughan, Blake, Wordsworth, Patmore, Meredith; not with Baudelaire and Gautier; with the poets of the forest and the sun, and not with those of the alcove. We can make peace with him for love of them; we can imagine them thankful to ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... survive the disasters inevitably consequent upon the general prevalence of a claim to freedom by the slaves, upon any legal basis, suddenly diffused throughout the South. Should the alternative be forced upon the people of that region, of submission, or servile in addition to civil war, their troubles will thicken upon them to a degree calculated to calm their over-excited imaginations, and to subdue their vaulting ambition. Panic will come to their own doors with a new and all-pervading significance, such as the North hardly knows how to conceive. The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... peace with the world, a young fellow content with himself for the moment. No longer a clerk; one of the employed; saying "sir" to persons with no more fingers and toes than he had himself; bound by servile agreement to be in a fixed place at fixed hours! An independent unit, master of his own time and his own movements! In brief, a man! The truth was that he earned now in two days a week slightly more than Mr Duncalf paid him for the labour of five and a ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Norman Conquest. They were still attached to the soil, talliable at the will of the lord, and bound to pay the fines for the marriage of their females, to perform customary labor, and to render the other servile prestations incident to their condition. It is true that in the course of time many had obtained the rights of freemen. Occasionally the king or the lord would liberate at once all the bondmen on some particular domain, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of progress, hatred of the levelling influence of Paris, love of the Provencal speech, belief in the Latin race, in the Roman Catholic Church, unshaken faith in the future, love of the ideal and hatred of what is servile and sordid, an ardent love of Nature, an intense love of life and movement. These things are reflected in every variety of word and figure. He is not the poet of the romantic type, self-centred, filling his verse ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... honours, were powerful advocates. His private happiness William deemed trivial compared to public opinion; and to be under obligations to a peer, his wife's relation, gave greater renown in his servile mind than all the advantages which might accrue from his own ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... brought with them Hens and other necessary Provisions, expecting this coming. He, accepting their Gifts, commended every single Spaniard to make choice of as many of these People, as he had a mind to, that during their stay there, they might use them as Servants, and forced to undergo the most servile Offices they should impose on them. Every one cull'd out a Hundred, or Fifty, according as he thought convenient for his peculiar service, and these wretched Indians did serve the Spaniards with their utmost strength and endeavour; so that ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... says Lecky, "a great part of the independence of the Irish Parliament had indeed been surrendered; but even the servile Parliament which passed it, though extending by its own authority to Ireland laws previously enacted in England, never admitted the right of the English Parliament to make laws for Ireland." ("Hist. Ireland," vol. ii., p. 154; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... she could see enough—she could see the bent and ill-clad figure of Nicky Viner, as she remembered him, an old, gray-bearded man, wringing his hands in groveling misery, while the mumbling voice, now whining and pleading, now servile, now plucking up courage to indulge in abuse, kept on without even, it seemed, a pause for breath. And she could see the Adventurer, quite unmoved, quite debonair, a curiously patient smile on his face, standing there, much nearer to her, his right hand in the side pocket of his coat, a somewhat ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... years back her lord was a god to her; his words her law; his smile her sunshine; his lazy commonplaces listened to eagerly, as if they were words of wisdom—all his wishes and freaks obeyed with a servile devotion. She had been my lord's chief slave and blind worshipper. Some women bear farther than this, and submit not only to neglect but to unfaithfulness too—but here this lady's allegiance had failed her. Her spirit rebelled, and disowned any more obedience. First she had ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... richest of us; nay, indeed, he will not move his hat to the others. I often laugh when I behold him on Sundays strutting along the churchyard like a turkey-cock through rows of his parishioners, who bow to him with as much submission, and are as unregarded, as a set of servile courtiers by the proudest prince in Christendom. But if such temporal pride is ridiculous, surely the spiritual is odious and detestable; if such a puffed—up empty human bladder, strutting in princely robes, justly moves one's derision, surely in the habit ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... at it, my Lord," said the man, with a leer, half servile, half cunning. "There came two young gentlemen of fashion yesterday morning, and almost lost their wits at sight of it. Either would have bought it, but both had had ill luck at basset for a week and so could do no more than look, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... than in old countries. Its terms have been so ill understood and defined that both parties have assumed the defensive; and a common topic of conversation in American female society has often been the general servile war which in one form or another was going on in their different families,—a war as interminable as would be a struggle between aristocracy and common people, undefined by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... who really knew her,—as did Mrs. Finn, and Mr. Warburton, the private secretary. But Sir Orlando and Sir Timothy and Mr. Rattler, who were all within hearing, thought that the Duchess had intended to allude to the servile nature of their position; and Mr. Boffin, who heard it, rejoiced within himself, comforting himself with the reflection that his withers were unwrung, and thinking with what pleasure he might carry the anecdote into the farthest corners of the clubs. Poor Duchess! ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Every where these low and obscure dominators reigned without controul, and so much were the people intimidated, that instead of daring to complain, they treated their new tyrants with the most servile adulation.—I have seen a ci-devant Comtesse coquetting with all her might a Jacobin tailor, and the richest merchants of a town soliciting very humbly the good offices of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Nicasio GALLEGO (1777-1853) rivaled Quintana as a writer of patriotic verses. A liberal in politics like Quintana, Gallego also took the page xxxiii side of his people against the French invaders and against the servile Spanish rulers. He is best known by the ode El dos de mayo, in which he exults over the rising of the Spanish against the French on the second of May, 1808; the ode A la defensa de Buenos Aires against the English; and the elegy A la ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... that, but a few prominent persons and a few active persons who epitomize the times? There is a bribe possible for any finite will; but the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. The world wants saviors and religions; society is servile from want of will; but there is a Destiny by which the human race is guided, the race never dying, the individual never spared; its law is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing to yourself. Referring to the communities ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... she managed to make friends of the servants by making them an occasional small present, and always gossiping with them for a few minutes before going into the drawing-room. This familiarity, by which she uncompromisingly put herself on their level, conciliated their servile good-nature, which is indispensable to a parasite. "She is a good, steady ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... compel—or to assist—courts to apply the law, so just in the general, to promoting injustice in the particular. And whenever he permitted conscience a voice in his internal debates—it was not often—he heard from it its usual servile approbation: How can the reign of justice be more speedily brought about than by making ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... Majesty's command," responded Von Kettler, with a servile smirk that hardly concealed his elation. "Moreover, the American is to witness the forthcoming ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... says, "observed the great seriousness of their behavior. Of their humility they had given a continual proof, by performing those servile offices for the other passengers which none of the English would undertake; for which they desired and would receive no pay, saying it was good for their proud hearts, and their loving Saviour had done more for them. And every day had given them occasion of showing ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... venal populace who were daily put up to sale, and bought by the highest bidder, manifested itself in the increasing disdain for the tastes and ruling sympathies of the lowest vulgar. No mob could be more abjectly servile than was that of Rome to the superstition of portents, prodigies, and omens. Thus far, in common with his order, and in this sense, Julius Csar was naturally a despiser of superstition. Mere strength ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Those idle names of his vain pedigree? Then let him say, if thee he would excel, What lands, what realms his tributaries be: If his forefathers in the graves that dwell, Were honored like thine that live, let see: Oh how dares one so mean aspire so high, Born in that servile ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... no, no! Salaam, salaam, salaam!" shouted the Magbun, with the quickness of a panic-stricken man. "Salaam, salaam," repeated he again, bowing down to the ground, tongue out, and placing his hat at our feet in a disgustingly servile manner. "Let us ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... and woman: though my life Were taken, these thou couldst not take again, The gifts thou gavest me. More am I than wife, Whom, till my tyrant by thy strength were slain And by thy love my servile shame cast out, My naked sorrows clothed and girt about With princelier pride than binds the brows of queens, Thou sawest of all things least and lowest alive. What ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "dying" Poet,—the mob, always fickle and always dazzled by outward show, suddenly set up a deafening roar of cheering. The pallid hue of terror vanished from faces that had but lately looked spectrally thin with speechless dread, and crowds of servile petitioners and place-hunters began to press eagerly round their monarch's chariot, ... when all at once a woman in the throng gave a wild scream and rushed away shrieking "THE ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... face to face with reality, then must the ideal flame that has fed on our noblest desires be content to throw faithful light on the less fragile, less tender beauty of the mighty mass that crushes these desires. Nor does this seem to me to imply a mere drowsy fatalism, or servile acquiescence, or optimism shrinking from action. The sage no doubt must many a time forfeit some measure of the blind, the head-strong, fanatical zeal that has enabled some men, whose reason was fettered and bound, to achieve results that are nigh superhuman; but ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... sum necessary for the needs of old age in their native land. They were simply a changing, ever renewing, foreign element in an American State. They were ready to work at a rate of wages upon which a white man could not subsist and support a family. Theirs was in all its aspects a servile labor,—one which would inevitably degrade every workman subjected to its competition. To encourage or even to permit such an immigration, would be to dedicate the rich Pacific slope to them alone and to their employers—in short, to create a worse ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... been seen among the Indians, the probability is that these were really eunuchs, and probably in slavery, as the result of the fortunes of war, as their great number and servile condition will hardly admit of the belief that they belonged to the same tribe as their masters and oppressors. Pederasty was an old, very old practice, being mentioned before circumcision; it prevailed among many of the Orientals, and among the many peoples by whom the early Jews were ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of that date, valuable works have been preserved, what has been left us from these mendicant orders? Anything save the cry of blood from the earth? Aught else than servile obedience in accomplishing the ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... neighbourhood were now more than merely friendly: they were actively servile. But the case was different with the other native peoples, more especially with the Indians in the Chaco, the wooded and swampy district on the opposite side of the river. These showed themselves fiercely inimical to the new-comers, and it was seldom that the Spaniards were without a feud ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... alone in scenery and architecture that we count England foreign. The constitution of society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. The dull neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast to our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-loving ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman gasping. It seems impossible that within the boundaries of his own island a class should have been thus forgotten. Even ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... ducking at him with a servile air, 'I am a man as gets my living, and as seeks to get my living, by the sweat of my brow. Not to risk being done out of the sweat of my brow, by any chances, I should wish afore going further ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was a travelling preacher. He lived in the same village as William Dawson, and was a member of his class. He was a disciple of Dawson in every respect, but in no respect a servile imitator. He was a man and not a slave. And he had much of Dawson's sense, and much of Dawson's power, though little or nothing of Dawson's natural dramatic manner. He was a fountain pouring forth a perpetual stream of truth and holy ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... unwise In echoing your eyes Whene'er they leave their far-off gaze, and turn To melt and blur my sight; For every other light Is servile to your cloud-grey eyes, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... ask the reader to follow all these references to his future wife; they are essential to the comprehension of Burns's character and fate. In June we find him back at Mauchline, a famous man. There, the Armour family greeted him with a "mean, servile compliance," which increased his former disgust. Jean was not less compliant; a second time the poor girl submitted to the fascination of the man whom she did not love, and whom she had so cruelly insulted little more than a year ago; and, though Burns took advantage of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... liability for accidents to workers; no legislation worthy of mention relating to occupations which have been classified as "dangerous" in most industrial countries; women workers are sadly neglected. Whenever a law of distinct advantage to the workers in their struggle has been passed, a servile judiciary has been ready to render it null and void by declaring it to be unconstitutional. No more powerful blows have ever been directed against the workers than by the judiciary. Injunctions have been issued, robbing the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... room was dark could see a faint aureole about his head. Yet Benvenuto worked as if his own brain was partly the author of what he produced, and, like other contemporary artists, used his mistresses for his models, and was no servile copyist of phantoms seen in visions. There is a truth of the imagination, and there is a truth of fact, religion hovering between them, translating one into the other, turning natural phenomena into the activity of personal beings; or giving ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... whom I delight to converse; and I there reserve both for myself and others an unusual liberty: there is in my house no such thing as ceremony, ushering, or waiting upon people down to the coach, and such other troublesome ceremonies as our courtesy enjoins (O servile and importunate custom!) Every one there governs himself according to his own method; let who will speak his thoughts, I sit mute, meditating and shut up in my closet, without any offense ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... institutions which really have a motive in view—steadfastly adhered to—I saw, then as now, that every provincial museum was nothing if left to its own devices, and, if "inspired," was, at the best, but a sorry and servile imitator of the worst points of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Murat, King of Naples. To speak panegyrically of his prowess, is supererogatory; as his bravery has been the theme of history and of song. But a pathetic paper in Blackwood's Magazine, affectingly describes his fall from splendour and popularity to servile degradation and unmerited military death. He has many claims on our interest and pity; whether we view him as the enthusiastic leader of Napoleon's chosen, against the wily Russians, in the romantic array of "a theatrical king," bearing down all impediment; or the plumeless ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... found in its teachings a musical atmosphere true to the artistic and political proclivities of his native Poland; for Chopin breathed the spirit and tendencies of his people in every fibre of his soul, both as man and artist. Our musician, however, in freeing himself from all servile formulas, sternly repudiated the charlatanism which would replace old abuses with ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... counsel and direction. Their aim is righteous! Thus does the evil one deceive their conscience, which in its turn deceives; their aim is righteous. But they themselves wish to direct these souls, in the character of mediator, and the souls grow weary, timid, servile. Perhaps there are not many such; the worst crimes of the spirit of domination are of a different nature. It has suppressed the ancient and holy Catholic liberty. It seeks to place obedience first among the virtues, even where it is not exacted by the laws. It desires to impose submission ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... Testament is Mount Sinai, the bondwoman, Hagar. The Arabians call Mount Sinai Agar. It may be that the similarity of these two names gave Paul his idea for this allegory. As Hagar bore Abraham a son who was not an heir but a servant, so Sinai, the Law, the allegorical Hagar, bore God a carnal and servile people of the Law without promise. The Law has a promise but it is a conditional promise, depending upon whether ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... (less priest-bound) age, as they represent a spirit freer and less mechanical than that of other hymns. As to the question which hymns, early or late, be due to poetic feeling, and which to ritualistic mechanism or servile imitation, this can indeed be decided by a judgment based only on the literary quality, never on the accident ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... of their own. At the same time the direct action of the people spread to the country districts. In most provinces the oppressed peasants formed bands which stormed and burned the chateaux of the hated nobles, taking particular pains to destroy feudal or servile title-deeds. Monasteries were often ransacked and pillaged. A few of the unlucky lords were murdered, and many others were driven into the towns or across the frontier. Amid the universal confusion, the old system of local government completely collapsed. The intendants and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... whether, under the circumstances which have appeared in evidence, it is made out to your satisfaction, that they were all conspiring to effectuate the same purpose, pursuing similar, and with almost a servile imitation and resemblance, the same means, at the same time, in the ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... and what sort of conduct they expected. And the secret of conquest being always to give people a little more than they expect, he pursued that course. Since they expected in a floorwalker the mechanical and servile gentility of a hired puppet, he exhibited the easy, offhand simplicity of a fellow club-member. With perfect naturalness he went out of his way to assist in their shopping concerns: gave advice in the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... no real appreciation of the subject, and that any sympathetic utterance would be made to please me. How I hate being with a companion who automatically says what will please me! A servile compliance that one knows is false is more irritating to a person ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... the personal character of Mr. BLOOMFIELD) let us now turn our attention to the species of composition of which his Poem is so perfect a specimen. It has been observ'd in my sixteenth number that PASTORAL POETRY in this country, with very few exceptions, has exhibited a tame and servile adherence to classical imagery and costume; at the same time totally overlooking that profusion of picturesque beauty, and that originality of manner and peculiarity of employment, which our climate and our rustics every ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... lit up; and it was only through a cloud that one could see the fearful harpy fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes betraying the servile sentiments, inspired by misfortune, or caused by some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant who brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes had the cold glitter of a caged ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... while our slavery continued, and the Turkes with insulting tyrannie set us still on worke in all base and servile actions, adding stripes and inhumane revilings, even in our greatest labour, whereupon Iohn Rawlins resolved to obtane his libertie, and surprize the ship; providing Ropes with broad spikes of Iron, and all the Iron Crowes, with which hee knew a way, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... a flock of clouds 460 Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner! Our winged castles from their merchant ships! Our myriads before their weak pirate bands! Our arms before their chains! our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear! 465 Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters! They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed, Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Mines? I know very well that he has no dominion in these valleys, and do not therefore wonder at his absence from your court this night; but I see so little of his subjects on earth that I should fear his empire was well nigh at an end, if I did not recognize everywhere the most servile homage paid to a power ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are my daughters, I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription; then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man: But yet I call you servile ministers, That will with two pernicious daughters join Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the dip had not yet lost its dread of motor-cars. About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled roofs the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now the odour of the limes troubled its servile sturdiness. Beyond the dip, again, a square-towered church kept within grey walls the record of the village flock, births, deaths, and marriages—even the births of bastards, even the deaths of suicides—and seemed to stretch a hand invisible above the heads of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... discussion of the whole agrarian question became possible. A commission appointed in 1757 worked zealously for the repeal of many agricultural abuses; and several great landed proprietors introduced hereditary leaseholds, and abolished the servile tenure. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... comet-like; the whole race of mankind has marched around the globe again and again. The leaders—the head—were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the vast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses, the grovelling slaves, but a remove from the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... His entire manner changed. Without becoming servile, it was respectful. He extended his hand. "Sime Weatherby." He and The Barbarian clasped hands. "That your woman down there?" the tribesman asked, nodding ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... scattered at their approach, stark, servile fear smothering their dulled countenances. Cries arose on all sides. "The Magnificents ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... colonies; and Parliament had recognized the right of property in slaves there.[12] Consequently so long as the slaves, Panis or Negro, remained in the colony they were not enfranchised by the law of the conqueror but retained their servile status. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... we were willing to undertake any service, however servile or dangerous, for the sake of forwarding so great ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... those which he professes to have abandoned. The pressure of the whole system of Western education—not to speak of Western civilisation—will be too strong for him. The flat copy, with its demand for mechanical work and servile obedience, fits into that system. Drawing from the object, with its demand for initiative and self-reliance, does not. Hence the attractive force of the former,—a secret attractive force which will neutralise the efforts that the teacher consciously ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... defending and apologizing for slaveholders and slave-holding, with which we have so many years contended in our own country. We find the President's Proclamation of Emancipation spoken of in those papers only as an incitement to servile insurrection. Nay, more,—we find in your papers, from thoughtful men, the admission of the rapid decline of ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... which was preparing against the religious freedom and the political privileges of the country. They were to be the nucleus of a larger army, it was believed, by which the land was to be reduced to a state of servile subjection to Spain. A low, constant, but generally unheeded murmur of dissatisfaction and distrust upon this subject was already perceptible throughout the Netherlands; a warning ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
