"Slavish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Oration was our Declaration of Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson did not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old World scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, he constructed his sentences grammatically. He adhered to the slavish rules of propriety, and observed the reticences which a traditional delicacy has considered inviolable in decent society, European and Oriental alike. When he wrote poetry, he commonly selected subjects which seemed adapted ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... find men willing to cross the sea, to travel to China and back, to endure hardship and slavish toil and to risk their lives for a miserable pittance? How could he find dock labourers willing to load and unload his ships for "starvation wages"? How? Because they are needy and starving. Go to the seaports, visit the cook-shops and taverns on the quays, and look at these men who have come ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... God will defend the right; That thought will banish slavish fears, That blessed consciousness still cheers The soldier in the fight. The stars for us shall never burn, The stripes may frighten slaves, The Briton's eye will proudly turn Where Britain's standard waves. Beneath its folds, if Heaven requires, We'll ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... had not perceptibly brightened his dull mind. He was as slow-witted and stupid as in his peasant days in the south of France. He knew discipline and fear of authority, and from God down to the sergeant of gendarmes the only difference to him was the measure of slavish obedience which he rendered. In point of fact, the sergeant bulked bigger in his mind than God, except on Sundays when God's mouthpieces had their say. God was usually very remote, while the sergeant was ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... no sacrifice. When I remember what this English people once was; the truest, the freest, and the bravest, the best-natured and the best-looking, the happiest and most religious race upon the surface of this globe; and think of them now, with all their crimes and all their slavish sufferings, their soured spirits and their stunted forms; their lives without enjoyment and their deaths without hope; I may well feel for them, even if I were not the daughter of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... cowardly. If you ask me which of the two is the more to be avoided I should say the second, and this because it seems to me to indicate a low tone of mind, human respect, attachment to the creature, and in general a slavish spirit which is quite contrary to the spirit of God, who only dwells there, where there ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... is the small village of Trempeleau, where a moment's halt is made, and the wheels of the great ship splash through the water again, all tremulous with nervous energy and pent-up power as they bend slowly to their slavish labor; and, the only labor that man has any right to make a slave of is that with iron arms and metallic lungs. He may compel these to work and groan and sweat at every pore with honor to himself and the added respect of ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... instruments of saving them from the tyranny meditated against them. Let us, therefore, animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a freeman contending for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... seemed to come That wrath of sympathy: One windy night We watched through squalid panes, forlornly white, — Amid immense machines' incessant hum — Frail figures, gaunt and dumb, Of overlabored girls and children, bowed Above their slavish toil: "O God! — A bomb, A bomb!" he cried, "and with one fiery cloud Expunge the horrible Caesars ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Lovat, gentle, sincere, of promising abilities, and upright in conduct, suffered early and late from the jealousy of his father, who could not comprehend his mild virtues. This unfortunate young man was treated with the utmost harshness by Lord Lovat, who kept him in slavish subjection to his own imperious will, and treated him as if he had been the offspring of some low-born dependant, instead of his heir. Still, those who were well-wishers to the Lovat family, built their hopes upon the virtues of the young Master of Lovat, and they were not deceived. Although ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... thee, Filippo, and the world, Cased in its petty panoply of scorn, With myriad slavish lips in mocking curl'd, Spotless and innocent, though most forlorn, Here stand I, 'gainst ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... personal servants—butlers, waiters, valets, footmen, and other flunkies—in our own day. But similar traits in the slaveholder, or the "gentleman" of to-day, would be regarded as terrible faults. As Mr. Algernon Lee very tersely puts it, "The slave was not a slave because of his slavish ideals and beliefs; the slave was slavish in his ideals and beliefs because he lived the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... and strong beast, might beat them. They sat in silence about a minute, concealing their anger at him, bending over the plates and attempting to hide from him their fright and embarrassment. Foma measured them with a self-satisfied look, and gratified by their slavish submissiveness, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... bit by bit. He had also advertised himself as auctioneer, house and estate agent, etcetera, but no one seemed to require his services in this line. Averse to manual labour, he could not properly cultivate such a small farm without submitting himself to this "slavish work," as he called it. Accordingly, he was, if slowly, surely drifting towards bankruptcy. He saw this, so did his wife, but neither seemed to care much; they were buoyed up by a false hope, always waiting for something ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish—so reptile—are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet, remember, he was a bishop's son, and the duty to God was ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... common with the criminal, go through the ordeal of justification. Men do not heartily bow their heads until they have subjected the aspirant to some personal contest, and find themselves overmatched. The senses, ready to become so slavish in adulation and delight, are at the beginning more exacting than the judgement, more imperious than the will. A figure in amber and pale blue silk was seen, such as the great Venetian might have sketched ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the government inspector. Many co-operated to bring about these results, but the chief advocate of all the beneficent reforms which have reinvigorated the English working-classes, saved the women from slavish toil and given them opportunity to make homes for their families, rescued the children from benumbing toil, and given them time for healthful recreation and mental improvement, is, by the common award of all, this simple-hearted ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... the same argument but to you, whose magnanimous counsels first opened and unbound the age from a double bondage under Prelatical and Regal tyranny, above our own hopes heartening us to look up at last like Men and Christians from the slavish dejection wherein from father to son we were bred up and taught, and thereby deserving of these nations, if they be not barbarously ingrateful, to be acknowledged, next under God, the authors and best patrons of Religious and Civil Liberty that ever these Islands ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... aid of Divine Providence," answered Louisa, "endeavor to break those slavish chains that bind the richest of prizes; though allow me, Major, to entreat you to use no harsh means on this important occasion; take a decided stand, and write freely to Ambulinia upon this subject, and I will see that no intervening cause hinders its ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the lean coyote told me, baring his slavish soul, As I counted the ribs of my dead cayuse and cursed at the desert sky, The tale of the Upland Rider's fate while I dug in the water hole For a drop, a taste of the bitter seep; but the water ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... poems of Claudian, the happy invention, and artificial conduct, of an interesting fable; or the just and lively representation of the characters and situations of real life. For the service of his patron, he published occasional panegyrics and invectives: and the design of these slavish compositions encouraged his propensity to exceed the limits of truth and nature. These imperfections, however, are compensated in some degree by the poetical virtues of Claudian. He was endowed with the rare ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Christianity as doctrine: it, is equally the legacy of Christ and the apostles; and the sole mission of the Church and the clergy is to preserve both intact. This leaning to symbolism saves his scrupulous fidelity to outward forms from degenerating into a slavish superstition. On the other hand, the allegorizing tendency which clings fast to the letter sometimes takes odd liberties with the spirit of ceremonies and texts. It is the peculiarity of the symbolizing temper scrupulously to respect the form while arbitrarily dealing with the spirit. Thus, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... preliminary attack was initiated. It was at first a vague discussion about self-sacrifice. They quoted instances from ancient History, such as Judith and Holophern, then, without any reason Lucretia with Sextus, Cleopatra who admitted to her intimacy all the enemy generals and reduced them to slavish servility. Then a fancy History was propounded, originating in the imagination of those ignorant millionaires, and according to which Roman matrons used to go to Capua and lull Hannibal in their arms, and with ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... figure of a lean and haggard man, with a crown of thorns upon his head; a reed cut from the river's bank was placed in his hands, as his unreal sceptre; and, considering the inhabitants of Judea as the most slavish and mean-spirited race in their knowledge, they placarded this figure with the inscription: "This is the King of the Jews." Thus, to the ancient Egyptians, this sign of the cross was blessed or accursed as it was represented with, or without, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... theory of the earth, its magnitude, and of the world, and in the power of the immortal gods. On the continent of Europe, he says, the Druids grew into such power and ascendency over the minds of the people, that even the kings themselves paid an implicit slavish obedience to their dictates; insomuch, that their armies were brave in battle, or abject enough to decline even the most advantageous prospects of success, according to the arbitrary prognostics of this set of religious ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... conquerors. A scurril or obscene jest, an impudent carriage, a laced cloak, a handful of gold, and the readiness to wager it on a card, or a die, will better advance you at the Court of Charles, than your father's ancient name, and slavish devotion of blood and fortune to the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... myself, after the manner of the Persian ceremonial. She seemed rather like a friend whom I both loved and revered. The majesty of the Queen was gone; there remained only the native dignity of beauty, and goodness, and intellect, which, though it inspires reverence, yet is there nothing slavish in the feeling. It differs in degree only from that sentiment which we entertain toward the gods; it ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... obedience to such a command slavish; but Malcolm's idea of liberty differed so far from that of most Britons, that he felt, if now he refused to obey the marquis, he might be a slave for ever; for he had already learned to recognize and abhor that slavery which is not the less the root of all other slaveries ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... silly flowers bewailed their slavish condition, and longed for release and freedom: and at last they began to be afraid that the Wind had only been jesting with them, and that he would never come to help them, as he had promised. However, they were mistaken; for, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... most cases, at all events, the rebel did well to be rebellious, and perhaps he was never so entirely in the right as when he protested against the slavish traditions of Cambridge educational ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... see if I am. I accuse her of nothing but a slavish devotion to custom and the conventions. What did she say when you read her the chapter before this one: where Fidelia goes down to the dining-room at midnight and finds Fleming breaking into the silver-safe where the money ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... North was becoming rashly impatient Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to his secretaries "impertinently."(5) Members of Congress, either carried away by the excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria of their constituents, thronged to Washington clamoring for action. On purely political grounds, if on no other, they demanded an immediate advance into Virginia. Military men looked with irritation, if not with contempt, on all this intemperate popular ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... I'm half-inclined to think that crallis is a Slavish word. I saw something like it in a lil called Voltaire's Life of Charles. How you should have come by such names and words ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... her bedroom and after half an hour she came out dressed for driving. She was resolved to go herself to Baroudi's house. After all these months of slavish obedience and of fear, something rose up within her, something that had passed for the moment beyond obedience and even beyond fear, that was fiercely determined, that was reckless of consequences. She engaged a victoria and drove to Baroudi's house. It was on the outskirts ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... have no bus'ness there; I have not slavish temperance enough T' attend a favourite's heels, and watch his smiles, Bear an ill office done me to my face, And thank the lord that wrong'd me, for ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... outgrown Puritanism," he returned, "but really she was, in her way, as much of a Puritan as you are. The country is full of people who don't understand that the essence of Puritanism is a slavish adherence to what they call principle, and who think because they have got rid of a certain set of dogmas they are free from their theologic heritage. There never was greater rubbish than ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... things went so far, that his subjects compelled this madman to return, but only, with their slavish Asiatic feelings, to obey him all the more blindly, when they found themselves once more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my confident of a piece of news which troubles me no less than it does you: By losing Ebn Thaher, we have indeed lost much; but let this not hinder you, dear prince, thinking to preserve yourself. If our confident has abandoned us through a slavish fear, let us consider that it is a misfortune which we could not avoid. I confess Ebn Thaher has left us at a time when we need him most; but let us fortify ourselves by patience against this unlooked-for accident, and let us not forbear to love ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... to move at the regular time this need not cause concern if you are feeling "up to the mark," and there are no other symptoms that would indicate possible trouble. I mention this alimentary peculiarity to enable my readers to avoid the slavish idea that it is impossible to be in health unless the bowels move at certain ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... am I born for this, To wear this slavish chain? Deprived of all created bliss, Through hardship, toil, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the river, on the extreme frontier of Missouri. The scene was characteristic, for here were represented at one view the most remarkable features of this wild and enterprising region. On the muddy shore stood some thirty or forty dark slavish-looking Spaniards, gazing stupidly out from beneath their broad hats. They were attached to one of the Santa Fe companies, whose wagons were crowded together on the banks above. In the midst of these, crouching over a smoldering fire, was a group ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and they will look upon it as a religious war. It will be the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. We never will bow down to Popery. And that is what Home Rule means. We see the abject condition of the Papists, and we know their slavish superstitions. The bulk of them are body and soul in the hands of the priests, and that is the secret of their non-success in life. The poorest among them are taxed to death by the Church. A fee must be ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... peculiarity which distinguishes the grammar of all the Slavish languages, consists in the use of the past participle, taken in an active sense, for the purpose of expressing the praeterite. This participle generally ends in l; and much uncertainty prevails both as to its origin and its relations, though the termination has been compared ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... away all your chances for nothing. You think that people are what they pretend to be: that the way you were taught at school and college to think right and proper is the way things really are. But it's not: it's all only a pretence, to keep the cowardly slavish common run of people quiet. Do you want to find that out, like other women, at forty, when you've thrown yourself away and lost your chances; or won't you take it in good time now from your own mother, that loves you and swears to you that it's truth: gospel truth? ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... in her charming society, a change came over Bigot. He received formidable missives from his great patroness at Versailles, the Marquise de Pompadour, who had other matrimonial designs for him. Bigot was too slavish a courtier to resent her interference, nor was he honest enough to explain his position to his betrothed. He deferred his marriage. The exigencies of the war called him away. He had triumphed over a fond, confiding ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... England was far from having sunk to a slavish submission to the monarchy. But galled as Wolsey was by the resistance, his mind was too full of vast schemes of foreign conquest to turn to any resolute conflict with opposition at home. The treason of the Duke of Bourbon stirred a new hope of conquering France. Bourbon was Constable of France, ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... Charles II. of Spain to adorn the Escurial, and in the execution of this work remained at Madrid till 1700, when he again settled in his native city; he was famous in his day for marvellous rapidity of workmanship, but this fluency combined with a too slavish adherence to the methods of the great masters has somewhat robbed his work of individuality; his frescoes in the Escurial at Madrid and others in Florence and Rome are esteemed his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... we ought to learn to row but not to steer, so he who allows all other arts to be learnt, but not virtue, seems to act altogether contrary to the Scythians. For they, as Herodotus tells us,[210] blind their slaves that they may remain with them, but such an one puts the eye of reason into slavish and servile arts, and takes it away from virtue. And the general Iphicrates well answered Callias, the son of Chabrias, who asked him, "What are you? an archer? a targeteer? cavalry, or infantry?" "None of these," said he, "but the commander of them all." Ridiculous therefore is he ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... at heart, tell him reproachfully that he is slavish ... the slave of civilisation, of Europe, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... is, they have slavish fears that do overmaster them; I speak now of the fears that they have of men, for "the fear of man bringeth a snare". [Prov. 29:25] So then, though they seem to be hot for heaven, so long as the flames of hell are about their ears, yet when that terror is a little ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... councillor and an excellency by the Kaiser this very day. And his most intimate friends, the cleverest talkers among his set, two or three who used to hold forth particularly brilliantly in his rooms on Socialism and the slavish stupidity of Germans, have each had an order and an advancement of some sort. Kloster was at the palace this afternoon. He knew about it yesterday when I was having my lesson. Kloster. Of all ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the boys take off their hats when they enter private houses. This is commencing servility young. I have even seen men kneeling on the cold pavements of the churches in the most abject manner, and otherwise betraying the feeling naturally created by slavish institutions." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which ye can not be, oppressive, arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... thriving population. Without these qualities there could be no advance; society must be stationary; and from a stationary to a retrograde condition, the progress is inevitable. The disposition to make improvements and changes may however be too great. If so, it must he checked. On the other hand a slavish attachment to old established practices may prevail. Then the spirit of enterprise and experiment must be awakened and encouraged. Which of these two is to be the duty of a writer at any time, will of course depend ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of grandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the literature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred million adherents holding sway over India, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hard and weary; his face lined with new wrinkles. Ah, well, it was war—and a losing war, he had to admit, that they fought. If a miracle didn't come, America would crumble even as old Europe had, before the overwhelming Slavish troops. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... Scene 2, engages a poet to propagandise on her behalf. His refusal, on the grounds of self-preservation is denounced in striking terms when she accuses poets generally of being 'apt to lash / Almost to death poor wretches not worth striking / but fawn with slavish flattery on damned vices / so great men act them'. The effective conclusion of her involvement as early as the end of 3.2 impoverishes the rest of the play. The Queen's less admirable character is highlighted by the way she ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... and in verse it was pretty well helpless from the beginning. Yet I will not altogether blame it, for it made me know, as nothing else could, the resources of our tongue in that sort; and in the revolt from the slavish bondage I took upon myself I did not go so far as to plunge into any very wild polysyllabic excesses. I still like the little word if it says the thing I want to say as well as the big one, but I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... before me gnashed its teeth, The slavish soul and savage of the Arab; World-nourishing the Nile ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... embarrassment she had ever suffered, for Ginny, who had always, because of her peculiar charm, coming from a sense of humor, a hail-fellow spirit, an invariable geniality and an amazing facility in all athletics, exacted a slavish devotion from her schoolmates, and was accustomed to dispense favors among them, hated now to accept, even from Jerry, a very, very great one! And Jerry sensed the humility that this embarrassment called ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... not that he condescended to paint faces, however, in his most abject condition. There was ever from the beginning a complaint of the little favour bestowed upon artists in general. Was the art considered a slavish practice? Grecia Capta taught it to the Romans, with whom, notwithstanding the force of some few high names, as of Fabius Pictor, it was at no time in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Christians? This is not the first time that these questions have been asked. They were asked at great length by Mr. Irving in his "Theory and Practice of Caste." Hitherto they have been asked in vain; and owing to the indifference of people in this country, and to the slavish submission of the laity to the opinion of the missionaries, a system of attempting to propagate Christianity has been allowed to exist which has been of incalculable mischief. But I think we may even go further than this. I think it may be asserted that the line taken up, as regards ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... dust: While o'er these walls the Christian banner waves From hallowed lips shall flow the truth that saves; While o'er those portals Veritas you read No church shall bind you with its human creed. Take from the past the best its toil has won, But learn betimes its slavish ruts to shun. Pass the old tree whose withered leaves are shed, Quit the old paths that error loved to tread, And a new wreath of living blossoms seek, A narrower pathway up a loftier peak; Lose not ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Liberal opinions, and so delighted with the effects he saw in other countries flowing from the diffusion of intelligence and freedom, that he wished to engraft these dangerous exotics upon the rude and unprepared soil of his own slavish community. When he went to Oxford he was so captivated with the venerable grandeur of that University that he declared he would build one when he got home, and it is equally true that he said he 'would have an Opposition.' These follies were engendered in the brain of a very intelligent ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... spoiled with the cringing attentions of her company. On her husband's first entry into office, she is polite and affable; later, she begins to feel weary of the ordinary provincial intrigues and gossips; she gets accustomed to the slavish attentions she receives, and lays claim to them. At this period she surrounds herself with a parasitical suite; she quarrels with the lady of the vice-governor; she brags of St. Petersburg; speaks with disdain of her provincial circle, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... art, Leonardo intended no slavish reproduction of nature. When he wrote that "the painter strives and competes with nature," he was on the track of a more Aristotelian idea. This he barely developed, using nature only partly in the Stagirite's sense, of inner force outwardly ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... the modern world, there are only two political aggregates in any wise comparable to it: the British Empire, whereof the idea is not as yet quite clearly formulated; and the Russian Empire, whereof the idea, in so far as it belongs to the people at all, is a blind and slavish superstition. Holy Russia is a formidable idea, Greater Britain is a picturesque and pregnant idea; but the United States is a self-conscious, clearly defined and heroically vindicated idea, in whose further vindication the whole world is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... my old soul of the tritical, Noting, translating, high slavish, hot critical, Quarterly-scutcheon'd, great heir to each dunce, Be Tibbald, Cook, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... was all eagerness and zeal. It was his very zeal that was his danger, although it brought him slavish followers. He was contemptuous, ill-tempered, and impatient, but, of limited intelligence himself, he understood for that very reason the mental processes of those he would lead. There was a certain simplicity even in ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as in painting, a copy has never the value of the original. Moreover, slavish imitation in any art has a deleterious influence. But to respect irreproachable examples and fitly observe sound rules, whose very survival often justifies their existence and testifies to their value, is always of benefit to ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Seixas spoke quietly enough, reviewing for his people the causes which had led up to the break between the mother country, England, and her colonies. He spoke of the tyranny of the king and his slavish Parliament, the unjust taxes, the quartering of troops upon a law-abiding and peace-loving people. With quiet bitterness, he repeated the old story of the children of Israel who demanded that their prophet Samuel set a king over them, and of the prophet's warning that only ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... and worship. The press, literature, art, lecturing-room—all preach the same gospel, that the highest product of humanity is the officer, and that "soldierly discipline and smartness"—in other words, slavish submission, self-conceit, arrogance, and the upholding of mere brute force—are the noblest qualities of a man and a patriot. The army is taught to forget that it is the armed population of the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... prevision of the seer He sings of a redemption wrought, Whereby, released from slavish fear, Men ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... indication of his entire defeat. And the superscription of his infamous title, 'THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS,' expressively indicated that Famine, Want, or Poverty, ruled the destinies of the most slavish, beggarly, and mean race of men with whom they had the honour of being acquainted" ("Diegesis," p. 187). While it may very likely be true that the miserable aspect given to Jesus crucified is copied from some such original ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... self-confidence in the future. They destroyed the unhealthy inclination to imitate the West in all things, and taught discrimination, the using only of what was valuable in western thought and culture, instead of a mere slavish copying of everything. Another great force was that of Swami Vivekananda, alike in his passionate love and admiration for India, and his exposure of the evils resulting from Materialism in the ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... shed copious tears. And as a bondmaid steals away from a wealthy house, whom fate has lately severed from her native land, nor yet has she made trial of grievous toil, but still unschooled to misery and shrinking in terror from slavish tasks, goes about beneath the cruel hands of a mistress; even so the lovely maiden rushed forth from her home. But to her the bolts of the doors gave way self-moved, leaping backwards at the swift strains of ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... holier law of the great Power, who made us what we are, than this one of slavish obedience to a tradition. Why must our feet go in ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... vows for the safety and prosperity of the king and royal family. His subjects are extremely faithful, and devoted to his service; the principal persons of his court having to approach him on their knees, every time they have an audience; but in time of war, this slavish custom is dispensed with. Such as commit the slightest fault, are poniarded on the spot by a kriss or dagger; this being almost the only punishment in use among them, as the smallest faults and the greatest crimes are all equally capital. The natives of this country are mostly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a degree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce: The marriages of that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes so rude and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distant acquaintance with a stranger is as capital an offence as the most intimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial, and seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice to make; and when they have broken down the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... [f]Let—live here, for—has learn'd to live. Here let those reign, whom pensions can incite To vote a patriot black, a courtier white; Explain their country's dear-bought rights away, And plead for[B] pirates in the face of day; With slavish tenets taint our poison'd youth, And lend a lie the confidence of truth. [g]Let such raise palaces, and manors buy, Collect a tax, or farm a lottery; With warbling eunuchs fill a [C]licens'd [D]stage, And lull to servitude a thoughtless age. Heroes, proceed! what bounds your pride shall hold, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air! —how I spurned that turnpike earth! —that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records. At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew, and our ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... goodness; neither is there any [other], who rules so many free people, so many true Christians: which thing renders thy government more honourable, thyself more considerable, than the accession of many nations filled with slavish and superstitious ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... tended. There never was a truer saying than that "Blood will tell." But, not only is a mongrel mother's milk rich and strong (if she is a healthy, well-cared for animal), but also her care of her young is slavish and unremitting. Her nerves are never overstrained; she is not unduly sensitive; she knows how to economize vital energy. There is as much difference between her life and temperament and that of a champion-bred aristocrat and winner of prizes at shows as there is between the life ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... serfs, his slaves, even as thy dog is thine; Harried by hunger, pillaged, ravaged, slain, By Viking robbers and the warring Jarls; Oft glad like hunted swine to fill their maws With herbs and acorns. "Progress and Poverty!" The humblest laborer in our mills or mines Is royal Thane beside those slavish churls; The frugal farmer in our land to-day Lives better than ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... clear terms the leading principles of the philosophy of Epicurus, and it is acknowledged to be one of the greatest of the world's didactic poems. He undertakes to demonstrate that the miseries of men may be traced to a slavish dread of the gods; and in order to remove such apprehensions, he would prove that no divinity ever interposed in the affairs of the earth, either as creator or director. The Romans were not, as ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... fashionable "cure" at Cheltenham, where he saw miracles of healing, but underwent none. In September 1845 Peel was moved by Lord Houghton to recommend the poet for a pension (200 pounds annually). "I have done nothing slavish to get it: I never even solicited for it either by myself or others." Like Dr Johnson, he honourably accepted what was offered in honour. For some reason many persons who write in the press are always maddened when such good fortune, however small, however well merited, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... pleases; and therefore hates me so heartily, that she can hardly keep her ladylike hands off me. I do not think I have been unreasonable; I have not found it difficult to obey others that were set over me; but when I found almost her every requirement part of a system for reducing me to a slavish obedience, I began to lay down lines of my own. I resolved to do at once whatever she asked me, whether pleasant to me or not, so long as I saw no reason why it should not be done. Then I was surprised to find how seldom I had to make a stand against her ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... from Scripture certainly. But no slavish adherence to its evident meaning, as seen by its setting, hampered the orator in his thought. Indeed, was it not a kindness to the old Book that still somewhat from its pages was thought worthy to act as a peg upon which ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... only who were worthy of that splendid name, so bandied by the Press and the Academies and doled out to divers windbags greedy of money and flattery—the poets, despising impudent rhetoric and that slavish realism which nibbles at the surface of things without penetrating to reality, had intrenched themselves in the very center of the soul, in a mystic vision into which was drawn the universe of form and idea, like a torrent falling into a lake, there to take on the color of the inward life. The ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... in his store. This was consolation, this was inspiration, but he longed for the return of Margaret Green, that she might help him enjoy the realization of her ideas in the equipment of the place; and he held the decorator to the most slavish obedience through the carpenters and painters who created at his bidding a miraculous interior, all white, or just off-white, such as had never been imagined of a bookstore in New York before. It was actually ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... have goodly "apparel," vile "raiment," and gay "clothing," all translating one Greek word. Our revised versions have sought to correct such inconsistencies. But it was all done in the interest of an accuracy that should yet not be a slavish uniformity. ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Tamburlaine, the mighty Soldan comes, And leads with him the great Arabian king, To dim thy baseness and [222] obscurity, Famous for nothing but for theft and spoil; To raze and scatter thy inglorious crew Of Scythians and slavish Persians. ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... like a hearing, was understood to say, that he had little to offer in the shape of comment on the Report submitted to the meeting. (Groans.) The causes of its unsatisfactory nature were patent to all. Owing to their having been compelled, in what he now fully recognised was a slavish and mistaken obedience to a popular clamour (a Voice, "You're right!"), three years ago, in the height of a sudden scare about invasion—("Oh! oh!")—to let the water in and flood the Tunnel—(groans)—they had been occupied ever since in pumping it out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... zeal. In spite of his friend Dr. Priestley, he was a free agent. I admit, indeed, that my praises of the British government, loaded with all its incumbrances, clogged with its peers and its beef, its parsons and its pudding, its commons and its beer, and its dull slavish liberty of going about just as one pleases, had something to provoke a jockey of Norfolk,[14] who was inspired with the resolute ambition of becoming a citizen of France, to do something which might render him worthy of naturalization in that grand asylum of persecuted merit, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... count we wise, Him also! though the chorus of the throng Be silent: though no pillar rise In slavish adulation of the strong:— But here, from blame of tongues and fame aloof, 'Neath a ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... be too much the organ of make-believe, imaging things which never were on land or under the sea. Nevertheless his claim for the imagination is fortunate in ruling out those theories of art which set up slavish fidelity to fact, under the name of imitation, as the essence of poetry. Bacon was not concerned with formulating a complete theory of poetry, but his pithy obiter dicta were influential in further establishing the sounder ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... advice of all his ablest servants; and the princes of the blood applauded his decision, as they would have applauded any decision which he had announced. Nowhere was he regarded with a more timorous, a more slavish, respect than in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... themselves. In Russia, too, certain reforms were carried out; but they could not survive the suspicious interference of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created council of ministers, and the senate, endowed for the first time with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the slavish instruments of the tsar and his favourites of the moment. The elaborate system of education, culminating in the reconstituted, or new-founded, universities of Dorpat, Vilna, Kazan and Kharkov, was strangled in the supposed interests of "order'' and of orthodox piety; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a sinister tone. "All—Indians, mestizos, Chinese, Spaniards, all who are found to be without courage, without energy. The race must be renewed! Cowardly fathers will only breed slavish sons, and it wouldn't be worth while to destroy and then try to rebuild with rotten materials. What, do you shudder? Do you tremble, do you fear to scatter death? What is death? What does a hecatomb of twenty thousand ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... French language, the human being and the man are designated by the same word, "l'homme"; likewise in the English language,—"man." French law knows the human being only as man; and so was it also until recently in England, where woman found herself in slavish dependence upon man. It was similarly in Rome. There were Roman citizens, and wives of Roman citizens, but ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... like those of the men, were bare, and their small, delicate feet were protected by sandals fastened with crossed bands of ribbon coquettishly knotted. The arrangement of their hair was evidently a matter of personal taste, and not the slavish copying of any set fashion,—some allowed it to hang in loosely flowing abundance over their shoulders,—others had it closely braided, or coiled carelessly in a thick soft mass at the top of the head,—but all without exception wore white veils,—veils, long, transparent, and filmy as gossamer, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... have secured the electoral vote of Saxony; the Elector hoping for protection to his interests in the duchies through that sequestration to which Barneveld had opposed such vigorous resistance. There had been much slavish cringing before these Catholic potentates by the courtiers of Dresden, somewhat amazing to the ruder churls of Saxony, the common people, who really believed in the religion which their prince had selected ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of light and liberty in which he himself moved. He did not doubt his power, when she should once be where he could speak with her freely, without fear of interruption. Hers was a soul too good and pure, he said, to be kept in chains of slavish ignorance any longer. When she ceased singing, he spoke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... towards her ever since the night of her debut had wounded her deeply, though she had been too proud to say anything. Her indictment against him was bitter and severe. The discontinuance of his slavish admiration for her and of his blind belief in her genius was in her eyes an unpardonable sin. As soon as the public had turned against her, she averred, he sheep-like, had followed their example. And ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... of sleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through; and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;" such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over weary mortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do we observe towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No one dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency from being debarred the privilege of contributing ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the people no government can be maintained. If the prince's commands are just and good, let the people obey them, said Confucius, in reply to a question put by a reigning duke; but if subjects render slavish obedience to the unjust commands of a bad ruler, it is not the ruler only, but his sycophantic subjects themselves, who will be answerable for the consequent ruin of the state. So far from counseling perpetual docility ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... way, and being a bright woman she set her wits to work to defy the king, defeat his law and elude the cruel vigilance of the Egyptian spies; and she conceived a plot which for boldness of thought and shrewdness of execution stands unsurpassed. She would not save him to live the toilsome, slavish life of the Jews. She sighed for all the advantages of the Egyptians. She lifted her ambitious eyes to the royal household itself, and in spite of the accident of birth, in spite of king and law and hatred, in spite of the fatal fact that he was a dark-eyed, ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... of the days of chivalry. Her imagination, we have seen, was too lively to be restrained by the more matter-of-fact nature of her husband; and she now felt with great bitterness the difference between presiding at a tournament, or being present at the Vow of the Peacock, and the slavish submission in which she, with the whole household, was held by Mr Pepper. Deeply she now regretted the feelings of superiority she had experienced over her own relations by her marriage into such an ancient race as the Belfronts. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... It answer to his question none return'd, But of our country and our kind of life Demanded. When my courteous guide began, "Mantua," the solitary shadow quick Rose towards us from the place in which it stood, And cry'd, "Mantuan! I am thy countryman Sordello." Each the other then embrac'd. Ah slavish Italy! thou inn of grief, Vessel without a pilot in loud storm, Lady no longer of fair provinces, But brothel-house impure! this gentle spirit, Ev'n from the Pleasant sound of his dear land Was prompt to greet a fellow citizen With such ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... obedience. Fear, where not mixed in its actings with faith and love, is a spirit of bondage, but the Christian ought to walk according to the spirit of adoption which cries "Abba, Father." Yet how many Christians are rather in a servile and slavish manner driven on by terrors and chastisements to their duty than by love! There is a piece of liberty in Christian walking, when there is not a restraint upon the spirit, by this slavish fear. This, I say, is not beseeming those that are in Christ ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Paw. At a poor Herd of feeble Heifers flies, Ere the rough Bear, tusk'd Boar, or spotted Leopard dies. Thus flusht, great Sir, thy strength in Israel try: When their Cow'd Sanedrims shall prostrate lye, And to thy feet their slavish Necks shall yield; Then raign the ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... great ideas, would die rather than yield. Napoleon I learned this at Eylau; Napoleon III learned it at Sebastopol; yet in daily life they were slavish beyond belief. On a certain day, in the year 1855, the most embarrassed man in all Russia was doubtless our excellent American minister. The serf coachman employed at wages was called up to receive his discharge for drunkenness. Coming into the presence of a sound-hearted American democrat, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... different devices. By making them forget this, he tempted them to worship the creature instead of the Creator; to pray to sun and moon and stars, to send them fair weather, good crops, prosperous fortune: to look up to the heaven above them, and down to the earth beneath their feet, in slavish dread and anxiety: and pray to the sun, not to blast them to the seas, not to sweep them away; to the rivers and springs, not to let them perish from drought; to earthquakes, not to swallow them up; ay, even to try to appease those dark fierce powers, with whom they thought the great ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... being prepared for the savage rites of a bloody idolatry. Her terror numbed her. She could not bear to let Davidson out of her sight; it was only when he was with her that she had courage, and she hung upon him with a slavish dependence. She cried a great deal, and she read the Bible, and prayed. Sometimes she was exhausted and apathetic. Then she did indeed look forward to her ordeal, for it seemed to offer an escape, direct and ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... against their own rights. So, in this present struggle with that incarnation of evil, and of the old devilish feudal oppression, the Confederate South, we are still pained to find among its adherents men, who, having been socially trampled on in Europe, seek, by sheer force of slavish habit, masters to lord it over them here. There is but one type of man who is more pitiable—it is he who is recreant to the great cause of freedom ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... as Is. liv. 1,[1] lxii. 4, compare Job i. 8, where a relation is spoken of, founded on most cordial love, show that the signification "to marry," does not by any means proceed from that of ruling, and is not to be explained from the absolute, slavish dependence of the wife in the East, but rather from the signification "to possess." And this is farther proved by passages such as Deut. xxi. 10-13, xxvi. 1, where the copula carnalis is pointed out as that by which the [Hebrew: bel] is completed. And, finally, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... attacks its own gigantic evils, lighted through past deficiencies and immediate temptations by its best ideas, as its human part rallies against its inhuman, and all the kingly attributes of a freeborn individual rise up in final indignation against its slavish attributes, then commences the true and only war of a people, and the only war of which we dare say, though it have the repulsive features that belong to all wars, that it is religious. But that we do say; for it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Giovio, who excuses the perjury of Giangaleazzo Visconti, through which he was enabled to found an empire, by the example of Julius Caesar. The great Florentine historians and statesmen never stoop to these slavish quotations, and what seems antique in their deeds and their judgements is so because the nature of their political life necessarily fostered in them a mode of thought which has some analogy with that ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... so soon as the shallop floated and was loaded Standish embarked, sick at heart as he received the slavish homage of Janno, whom he had liked and trusted so much, and who even while he yielded to the plot for the captain's death and that of all his friends really clung to him in love and reverence. Poor Janno, weak but not wicked, his punishment was both ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... inspiration, while the drudges take his idea, work out its details, modify and conform it to conditions, and, finally, harness it to the commercial wagon. This sounded well and has a great deal of truth in it. Yet the most slavish drudge in the Edison laboratories and factories is Edison himself. The hardest worker in all the Westinghouse plant was Westinghouse. And who but the Wright brothers themselves made a commercial success of the aeroplane? Sometimes, it is true, one man conceives an idea which he is unable to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... perswade themselves a Man is really and truly a Free-thinker in any tolerable Sense, meerly by virtue of his being an Atheist, or an Infidel of any other Distinction. It may be doubted, with good Reason, whether there ever was in Nature a more abject, slavish, and bigotted Generation than the Tribe of Beaux Esprits, at present so prevailing in this Island. Their Pretension to be Free-thinkers, is no other than Rakes have to be Free-livers, and Savages to be Free-men, that is, they can think whatever they have a Mind to, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... as literal as possible, consistent with the comprehension of the author's meaning. This may be considered by some a slavish and dull compliance; but in my humble opinion we ought, in this case, to display the author's own thoughts and ideas; all we are permitted to do, is to change their garb. This course has one superior advantage which may compensate for its seeming dulness; ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... you know the appellation given to certain people—"slavish," (39) or, "little better than ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... birth. It is impossible not to dread coming into contact with these imps, who, when old, are among the ugliest conceivable specimens of the human race. The women, even those who inhabit the towns, live much in the open air: besides being employed in many slavish offices, they sit at their doors or windows pursuing their business, or lounge about, watching passengers to obtain charity. Thus their faces and necks are always of a copper color, and, at an advanced age, more dusky still; so that, for the anatomy and ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... fighting was still to be done. To the great relief of the government Gordon was at length persuaded to resume his command, more from the thought that he might be able to some extent to check the cruelty natural to the Chinese than for any other reason. It is amusing to watch the slavish behaviour of the emperor towards the man whose help he so greatly needed, and whose anger he so deeply feared. Once, when Gordon in leading an attack with his wand in his hand, the only weapon he ever carried, received a bad wound ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... most covet in the shape of personal comfort—a cosy home in beautiful scenery, with the perfumed pine trees all around, the woodland solitude, where I c'n study the wild critters, beasts an' birds an' insects; the creek an' the lake, where I c'n paddle an' fish; my time all my own, with no slavish duties, no tasks, no responsibilities. An' it's all selfish, Gid, real ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton |
