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Ascendant   /əsˈɛndənt/   Listen
Ascendant

noun
1.
Position or state of being dominant or in control.  Synonym: ascendent.
2.
Someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent).  Synonyms: ancestor, antecedent, ascendent, root.






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"Ascendant" Quotes from Famous Books



... object of spoiling his aim and preventing him from getting a shot in. When this latter has been to some extent accomplished, mainly by the agency of artillery, the bayonet and other weapons for use at close quarters will once more be in the ascendant. Thin shields of hard steel will be affixed to the rifles of the attacking party, so as to ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... improves its productions by the ascension of those saline spirituous particles that are thus lodged in the Seed when put into the Ground, and are part of the nourishment the After-Crop enjoys; and for this reason I doubt not, but when time has got the ascendant of prejudice, the whole Nation will come into the practice of the invaluable Receipt published in two Books, entituled, Chiltern and Vale Farming Explained, and, The Practical Farmer; both writ by William Ellis of Little Gaddesden near ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous

... John Norreys and Sir Francis Drake in a bootless but not unprofitable expedition to Lisbon. On his return from the Portugal voyage his court fortunes underwent a change. Essex, who had long scorned "that knave Ralegh," was in the ascendant. Ralegh found the Queen, for some reason or another, and reasons were not hard to find, offended and dangerous. He bent before the storm. In the end of the summer of 1589, he was in Ireland, looking after his large seignories, his law-suits with the old proprietors, his castle ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... his genius, and by intrigue only did he ever seek to arrive at any end he had in view.* He soon obtained a mysterious and pervading power over Gerald and myself. Your temper at once irritated him, and made him despair of obtaining an ascendant over one who, though he testified in childhood none of the talents for which he has since been noted, testified, nevertheless, a shrewd, penetrating, and sarcastic power of observation and detection. You, therefore, he ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... men to get any hold on the fast set who were now in the ascendant. It was not in the nature of things that they should understand each other; in fact, they were hopelessly at war, and the college was getting more and more out of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... race, the creation and re-creation, the weaving and changing and handing down of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner of one ascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another, are wonders dulled for us by repetition. But in the singular unity of look, in the common features and common bearing, of all these painted generations on the walls of the residencia, the miracle started out and looked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... announced the dinner, and they all followed Mr Hall and the curate's bride out of one room into the other. "This young lady," said he, "is supposed to be in the ascendant just at the present moment. She can't be married above two or three times at the most. I say this to excuse myself to Miss Lawrie, who ought perhaps to have the post of honour." To this some joking reply was made, and they all sat down to their dinner. Miss Lawrie was at Mr Hall's left hand, and ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... sensation was created this year by a private fete which was given by a member of the aristocracy at Cremorne Gardens. It occasioned considerable talk at the time, and as Ritualism was then in the ascendant amongst certain female leaders of fashion, Leech gives us (in vol. xxxv.) a powerful picture, entitled Aristocratic Amusements, in which John Thomas asks his mistress (a magnificent specimen of the artist's handsome women) as he puts up the steps of her carriage, whither she ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... repudiation of the platform, could undo the result of such leadership. It was far from certain which ticket would receive the greater vote in November, but it was clear that union against disunion was the issue, and that men would vote according to their hopes and fears. The former were in the ascendant when the polls were opened, for Sherman had gained a decisive victory in his occupation of Atlanta, while Farragut had gained another at Mobile Bay. On the strength of these successes the Union ticket carried every State but Delaware, Kentucky, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... Sun, Lord of the Ascendant (which happeneth the 18 day of May) will encourage our Soldiers to advance with much alacrity and cheerfulness of spirit; to show themselves gallant in the most dangerous attempt.... And now to sum up all: It is most apparent to every impartial and ingenuous judgment; That although ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... juncture, and laid it aside when the necessity to employ it had gradually been removed. But, alas! he gave way little by little to the encroachments of an evil power with which, when once it had gained the ascendant, he fought down to his dying day ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... his stern manner gave way; all his former warm and generous feeling gained the ascendant; he was in turn amusing, communicative, and engaging. Finding that he could please another, he began to be pleased himself. The nature of the business upon which Vivian was his guest rendered confidence necessary; confidence begets kindness. In a few days Vivian necessarily became more ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... children—all sunlight, happiness and peace. It was difficult to realize that they had gone; down through ages of darkness, cruelty, and ignorance, until their hereditary instincts of culture and humanitarianism had risen ascendant once more in the final composite race which ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... in the second half of the Seventeenth Century, when the influence of French classicism was in the ascendant, this study is not concerned. In the period which has just been surveyed three points are noteworthy: the character of the English critics, the slowness with which the classical theories penetrated English thought, and the modifications which they underwent in the process. ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... realm congratulated one another thereanent and the King commanded an assembly of his Olema and philosophers, astrologers and horoscopists, whom he thus addressed, "I desire you to forecast the fortune of my son and to determine his ascendant[FN154] and whatever is shown by his nativity." They replied "'Tis well, in Allah's name, let us do so!" and cast his nativity with all diligence. After ascertaining his ascendant, they pronounced judgement in these words, "We see his lot favourable and his life ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... of Elders, and its Council of Five Hundred, was in operation, he continued to live under the ban of the law. It was in vain that he solicited, even at moments when the politics of the Mountain seemed to be again in the ascendant, a remission of the sentence pronounced by the Convention. Even his fellow-regicides, even the authors of the slaughter of Vendemiaire and of the arrests of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and peace and quiet throughout the Roman world, [1] the reign of the last of the good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.), may be regarded as clearly marking a turning-point in the history of Roman society. Before his reign Rome was ascendant, prosperous, powerful; during his reign the Empire was beset by many difficulties— pestilence, floods, famine, troubles with the Christians, and heavy German inroads—to which it had not before been accustomed; and after his reign the Empire ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... and had then slaughtered him on the spot. This was by degrees modified till a sobered fiction became generally prevalent, that Mr Moffat was lying somewhere, still alive, but with all his bones in a general state of compound fracture. This adventure again brought Frank into the ascendant, and restored to Mary her former position ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... hero of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword for his faith and his lady-love and in the cause of the feeble and the oppressed. The glorification of military courage and self-sacrifice which had been so prominent in antiquity was again in the ascendant, but it was combined with a new kind of honour and with a new vein of courtesy, modesty, and gentleness. When we apply the epithet 'chivalrous' to a modern gentleman, this is no unmeaning term. There is even now an element in that character which may be distinctly ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... reached its crisis at the same moment, threw into prominence the same types of men, moderate and extreme, and produced the same waste of good human material and distortion of human character, both in the ascendant and the subject classes. As Sir John Cockburn tells us in his "Political Annals of Canada" (p. 177), some of the most incendiary speakers and writers (in 1836) were "most able and worthy men, who in the subsequent days of tranquillity occupied most prominent ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... walls of the fortress we saw the sun go down; and then, with Starr in the ascendant again, we strolled through quiet streets, crossing bridges over canals spread with soft green carpets of moss. But we were not going to the hotel; and without a word about dinner, I asked if they would care to see a student's "diggings." ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... time he saw Captain Monk, who had been on the bridge with the officer of the watch for several hours, come aft with weary shoulders sagging, and go below by the saloon companionway. And Lanyard smiled knowingly and assured himself that went well—ca va bien!—his star held still in the ascendant. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... this last voyage he was forced to "make head against a sea of troubles." His evil star was in the ascendant. Twice his vessel nearly foundered. Twice her masts were sprung in successive tempests. His own health was succumbing to the acute attacks of gout which had become more and more frequent for the last few years. And so, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... to fly. They took refuge in the Cevennes. From the beginning of the troubles the Cevennes had been the asylum of those who suffered for the Protestant faith; and still the plains are Papist, and the mountains Protestant. When the Catholic party is in the ascendant at Nimes, the plain seeks the mountain; when the Protestants come into power, the mountain comes down into ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... be made for Master Simon's uneasiness on the subject, for he looks on Lady Lillycraft's house as one of the strongholds where he is lord of the ascendant; and, with all his admiration of the general, I much doubt whether he would like to see him lord of the ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... eighty line of battle ships and four hundred thousand men. The most difficult thing of all in expectant politics is to know when a power that totters will fall; but, my old man, Bonaparte's power is not tottering, it is in the ascendant. Don't you think that Fouche may be sounding you so as to get to the bottom of your mind, and ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... disappearing over the borders to Portugal. A further period of Republican Government was imposed upon the country, equally as inefficient as it had been before. The star of the Carlist Cause seemed to be in the ascendant. Never—up to that date—had Don Carlos's army been so numerous or better equipped. The Carlist factories were turning out their own guns and munitions. They held excellent positions from which to strike southwards towards Madrid, and on which to ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... was not long permitted to be the ascendant spirit among the top and bottom men. Whether it be that Mrs Brandon overrated her powers of affording sustenance, or that I had suffered through the inclemency of the weather in my three journeys on my natal day, or whether ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... colonists into an equal participation of their valued liberty, and they were prepared to rejoice at the extension of the constitution to the emancipated blacks. But the British Government, by a great fault, if not a crime, has, at the moment when all should have been free, torn from the lately ascendant class, the privileges which were their birthright, another class, now the equals of the former, the rights they had long and fortunately struggled for, and from the emancipated blacks the rights which they fondly expected to enjoy with their personal freedom. The boon of earlier freedom ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... doctrines are speedily to be eradicated: The holy teaching of Confucius is now in the ascendant. There is but one most sacred religion: There can be but one Mean. By their great virtue Yao and Shun led the way, Alone able to expound the "fickle" and the "slight;"[*] Confucius' teachings have not passed ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... buffet Sir Hugh hears Kilcarney speaking of Lily as his daughter. Sir Hugh's face clouds suddenly, but he remembers that, after all, Kilcarney is a guardian of his wife's honour. A very ingenious story, no doubt, and if, as the young man's ascendant—the critics of 1915 are pleased to speak of me as ascendant from the author of Muslin—I may be permitted to remark upon it, I would urge the very grave improbability that three people ever lived contemporaneously who were wise enough to prefer, and so consistently, happiness ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... incursions of barbarian tribes from the North and East, and later of Moors and Arabs from the South, familiarized the European peoples with the ideas of bloodshed and violence; gross and material conceptions of life were in the ascendant; and a romantic and aspiring Christianity gave place to a ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... tea was over, however, and the bridge had begun, her spirits rose; or rather, a new and strange excitement took possession of her that was not wholly due to the novel and revolutionary experience of playing, for money—and winning. Her star being in the ascendant, as we may perceive. She had drawn Mrs. Kame for a partner, and the satisfaction and graciousness of that lady visibly grew as the score mounted: even the skill of Trixton Brent could not triumph over the hands which the two ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... time in five-and-twenty years, the Royalists saw themselves in the ascendant. Thoroughly believing that they had obtained a legitimate triumph, they indulged unreservedly in the enjoyment of power, with a mixture of aristocratic arrogance and new-born zeal, as men do when little accustomed to victory, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... gives to all this view of truth the name of 'Humanism,' but, for this doctrine too, the name of pragmatism seems fairly to be in the ascendant, so I will treat it under the name of ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... his desires in conflict with that pride of his, and gloomily he paced the courtyard, Arsenio marvelling what might have come to him. And well was it for him that pride should have detained him; well would it seem as if his luck were indeed in the ascendant and had prompted his pride to save him from a deadly peril. For suddenly some one ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... it will be observed, must have drawn his will while royalty was in the ascendant; it was registered during the Reign of Terror, and one would be curious to know how many weeks, instead of centuries, his 500 livres remained sacred. Money in the most steadily-governed states—in our own, for instance—is subject to continual casualties. The most acute ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... condition of serfdom. The voices of the inhabitants were no longer heard debating questions that affected their interests. They submitted to dictation from their masters, the enfranchised few in the ascendant commonwealth. Thus, as Guicciardini pointed out in his 'Considerations on the Discourses of Machiavelli,' the subjection of Italy by a dominant republic would have meant the extinction of numberless political communities and the sway of a close oligarchy from the Alps to the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... a truism of history. All history teaches us that the welfare and very life of a nation is determined by moral causes; and that it is the pure races that respect their women and guard them jealously from defilement that are the tough, prolific, ascendant races, the noblest in type and the most fruitful in propagating themselves. You will never find a permanently progressive race where the position of women is low, the men libertine, and the state of society corrupt. What ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... was not over. His star was still in the ascendant, for after the morning service, while the congregation were leaving the church, he saw Mrs. Waugh beckon him to her side. He quickly obeyed the summons. And then, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... restore these interesting individuals to favor; and now all attention was turned towards Bodkin, who was detailing the plan of a grand attack upon the polling-booths, to be headed by himself. By this time, all the prudence and guardedness of the party had given way; whiskey was in the ascendant, and every bold stroke of election policy, every cunning artifice, every ingenious device, was detailed and applauded in a manner which proved that self-respect was not the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... poet of the epoch; an estimate which, startling as it will sound at the first, may nevertheless be upheld, on the grounds that Whitman is beyond all his competitors a man of the period, one of audacious personal ascendant, incapable of all compromise, and an initiator in the scheme and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... between darkness and dawn. It must have been in the earlier hours that the change occurred, for Warwick gazed from its windows in the morning to find the ground rimed with hoar-frost, that looked like streaks of crusted salt. The sun was scarcely three hours in the ascendant before the frost disappeared, like the withdrawal of a silvery veil, disclosing the bareness it had beautified so briefly. Even the most casual observer could now see that autumn had made a long forward march in the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... arrived at the factory, in a couple of bark canoes manned by sixteen voyageurs. They had set out from Fort William, on Lake Superior, in the month of July. They brought us Canadian papers, by which we learned that the British arms so far had been in the ascendant. They confirmed also the news that an English frigate was coming to take possession of our quondam establishment; they were even surprised not to see the Isaac Todd ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... by the ills of advancing age, crushed beneath the calumnies of his foes, Columbus felt the end approaching, probably, and perhaps looked upon Vespucci as, in a sense, his successor. At least he perceived that the latter's star was in the ascendant, for he knew him as a friend of King Ferdinand, who, mistrustful ever of the man who had discovered a new empire for him to rule, yet was inclined to favor Vespucci, whose sterling qualities he appreciated. He had always liked the Florentine for his manly, modest bearing, his sturdy good sense, his ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... which had acted on the great classics, whom they were endeavouring to imitate. But the love of the marvellous, the deeper sensibility, the higher reverence for womanhood, the characteristic spirit of sentiment and courtesy,—these were the heir-looms of nature, which still regained the ascendant, whenever the use of the living mother-language enabled the inspired poet to appear instead of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... his very nature urges and must continue to urge the life of mankind. The story of myself and Mary is a mere incident in that gigantic, scarce conscious effort to get clear of toils and confusions and encumbrances, and have our way with life. We are like little figures, dots ascendant upon a vast hillside; I take up our intimacy for an instant and hold it under a lens for you. I become more than myself then, and Mary stands for innumerable women. It happened yesterday, and it is just a part of that same history that made Edmond Stratton of the Hays elope with Charlotte ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... thinks, I fancy; but L600 a year might do better than purchase so many incumbrances. Depend upon it, the late lamented will remain in the ascendant till there are ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... scarcely less important phase of mediaeval thought is imaged in the frescoes of the Cappella degli Spagnuoli in S. Maria Novella.[135] Dogmatic theology is here in the ascendant. While S. Francis bequeathed a legend of singular suavity and beauty, overflowing with the milk of charity and mildness, to the Church, S. Dominic assumed the attitude of the saint militant and orthodox. Dante's words ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... explained that the gambling at the Beargarden had gone on with very little interruption, and that on the whole Sir Felix Carbury kept his luck. There had of course been vicissitudes, but his star had been in the ascendant. For some nights together this had been so continual that Mr Miles Grendall had suggested to his friend Lord Grasslough that there must be foul play. Lord Grasslough, who had not many good gifts, was, at least, not suspicious, and repudiated the idea. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... the receiver to make sure that temptation did not reappear in too luring a guise, and still another Gustave Feller was in the ascendant. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... had pursued his house to the third generation. Manfred had perished on the field of battle, Conradin on the scaffold. Then a turn took place. The secular authority, long unduly depressed, regained the ascendant with startling rapidity. The change is doubtless to be ascribed chiefly to the general disgust excited by the way in which the Church had abused its power and its success. But something must be attributed to the character and situation of individuals. The man who bore the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the court returned to London; and from that time, some malevolent star having gained the ascendant, every thing went cross in the empire of Love: vexation, suspicions, or jealousies, first entered the field, to set all hearts at variance; next, false reports, slander, and disputes, completed the ruin ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... time when the so-called Realistic School is in the ascendant among novelists, it seems strange that little authentic information should have been published in the English language about the great French writer, Honore de Balzac. Almost alone among his contemporaries, he dared to claim the interest of the world for ordinary men and women solely ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... wherever we note the upward trend of the feminine element in Society, we may know that the earth is on its involutionary path; the end of a cycle is at hand, and social unrest and marital upheaval are inevitable, because Love is in the ascendant and ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... mountain peaks, while all beneath is still buried in Cimmerian darkness. The Christian Theist anticipates the time when the true light which now shineth shall cover the whole earth; M. Comte predicts its utter and final extinction, when Positive Science shall have risen into the ascendant. His theory is contradicted by the history of the past; let us hope that the events of the future will equally belie his prediction. For Christianity is the only hope of the world. The prospects of man would be dark indeed on the supposition of its being abolished. ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... always keen to see a joke, and with her vanity now in the ascendant, felt the color rise ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... the Aragos. They were on their way to the Marcets at Geneva when they stopped at Coppet, where Miss Edgeworth was always specially happy in the society of Madame Auguste de Stael and Madame de Broglie. But Switzerland is not one of the places where human beings only are in the ascendant; other influences there are almost stronger than human ones. 'I did not conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... of Florence, fearing the anger of the Pope and his new allies, now that their power was in the ascendant, prepared to endure a siege. Michael Angelo was appointed general over the construction of the walls and defences of the city in 1529. He had many difficulties with the council; often they objected to his plan of fortifying the heights of San Miniato. Michael Angelo went to Pisa and Arezzo ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... of hastily-enriched adventurers, had already done much to beautify and improve the city. Life was more than ever gay in this the chief home of pleasure-seekers. Luxury of the showiest kind everywhere in the ascendant; smart equipages and gaily-dressed crowds, the shop-fronts glittering with artistic treasures, everyone outwardly happy, and ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... people of England to any means, however arbitrary, by which it had been attained. But the calamities, and, at last, the hopelessness of the conflict, inclined them to moralize upon its causes and character. The hour of Lord North's ascendant was now passing rapidly away, and Mr. Sheridan could not have joined the Opposition, at a conjuncture more favorable to the excitement of his powers, or more bright in the views which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... that fortune was playing at shuttlecock with him, and that just for the present, at any rate, his star was in the ascendant. "How long shall I go on in my good fortune?" he asked himself; "how long will it be before I shall again meet with a fierce rebuff in some quarter? Had I planned my own future for the period of time since I landed at Cadiz, I could not have bettered it-indeed I could not ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... it was eventful, and has been duly chronicled wherever facts have been gathered to gratify a curiosity that is not yet weary of dwelling on the point of time which saw the Star of Destiny once more in the ascendant before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... liberty. These, after lying buried in the earth for a time, sprung up vigorously, and bore fruit, when the perfidious race of the Stuarts was driven ignominiously from the throne; and, at the Revolution, some of the fundamental truths for which the martyrs of the covenant contended, became ascendant and triumphant.[3] ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston

... standing in the eight quarters said, 'On the auspicious eighth day of the dark fortnight in the month of Karttika when the constellation Aslesha is in the ascendant, one should make gifts of treacle and rice. Casting aside wrath, and living on regulated diet, one should make these offerings at a Sraddha, uttering these mantras the while—Let Valadeva and other ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... work was progressing, several giraffes had been seen in the neighbourhood, and the hopes of the hunters were once more in the ascendant. All were in high spirits with the prospect that, within two or three days, they might be on their return to Graaf Reinet. To make more sure of success they paid a visit to the second mimosa grove, taking along with them a large party of the ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... piece of boldest realism. Written in an age when classic restraint and classic elegance were in the ascendant, and when English poets were taking only too readily to heart the warning of Boileau against allowing shepherds to speak "comme on parle au village," the author of this rustic dialogue flings to the winds every convention ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... might be found in other considerations, and particularly in the change produced by a compliance with our just demands by one belligerent and a refusal by the other in the relations between the other and the United States. To Great Britain, whose power on the ocean is so ascendant, it was deemed not inconsistent with that condition to state explicitly that on her rescinding her orders in relation to the United States their trade would be opened with her, and remain shut to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... will not," replied the old man. "The ire of princes Is as the wrath of the lion. But mark, and judge for thyself. Here Venus, ascendant in the House of Life, and conjoined with Sol, showers down that flood of silver light, blent with gold, which promises power, wealth, dignity, all that the proud heart of man desires, and in such abundance that never the future Augustus of that old and mighty Rome heard ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... developed. Wells or pits are dug at regular intervals, the exact depth and the character of the upper earth being noted. This often involves a large expenditure of money and labor, and many fortunes have been wasted, by parties whose lucky star was not in the ascendant, in their persistent yet unsuccessful search for ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... of the place he was just through college, and had seemed very proud and fond of his fine estate, and had extended his hospitality freely to his acquaintances, keeping them, however, at a certain distance, for the Crompton pride was always in the ascendant, and he tolerated no familiarities, except such as he chose to allow. This genial social life lasted a few years, and then there came a change, following a part of a winter spent in South Carolina and Georgia with his intimate friend and college chum, Tom Hardy. Communication between the North and ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... shipping interest and the nautical-instrument shops; here shall follow a scarcely perceptible flavouring of groceries and drugs; here shall come a strong infusion of butchers; now, small hosiers shall be in the ascendant; henceforth, everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed price attached. All this as if specially ordered ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... attaching to the controversy which takes its name from the debate between Locke and Filmer, they fill a whole chapter, though not a very profitable one, in English literature. The points which lie on the surface of the history are these:—The eldest male parent—the eldest ascendant—is absolutely supreme in his household. His dominion extends to life and death, and is as unqualified over his children and their houses as over his slaves; indeed the relations of sonship and serfdom appear to ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... Stacy Shunk peering at me through the top of his hat, uttering his ominous warning, rose before my startled eyes. I should have run, but my retreat was barred, the girl blocking the way over the shelving beach. I took a backward step and for an instant the Prophet Pound's star was in the ascendant, for the foot touched the water. So great was my dread of the Professor that had I been in a position to choose my course I should have taken my chances in the stream, but I lost my self-control with my balance and made a desperate clutch at ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... the world, an astronomer second to none, discoverer of the three great laws that explain the solar system, was an astrologer and believed that he could predict the career of a man by finding what star was in the ascendant at his birth. He believed in what is called the music of the spheres, and he ascribed the qualities of the music—alto, bass, tenor and treble—to certain of the planets. Another man kept an idiot, whose words he put down and then put them together in such a manner ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... merely as a partisan reward, the public printing of his State, and retained it until, reaching the ordinary limit of human life, he withdrew from the press. In the just and kindly old commonwealth which he so long served, it would have been hard for any party, no matter how much in the ascendant, to move anything for his injury. For the love and esteem which he had the faculty of attracting from the first deepened, as he advanced in age, into an absolute reverence the most general for his character and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... was brought out at the same time as the Seventh is the shortest by a few bars, of the nine. It was completed in about four months from the date of its inception. Here as in the Seventh, the dance element is in the ascendant, commanding, swaying everything, thus coming back to first principles, almost to the origin of the art, as an art. The dance is the primordial, autochthonic form of music; its foundation so to speak. The ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... the masculine intellect in Chinese studies. But there was a still more effective cause. The position of women in ancient Japan was very different from what it afterwards became when Chinese ideals were in the ascendant. The Japanese of this early period did not share the feeling common to most Eastern countries that women should be kept in subjection and as far as possible in seclusion. Though the morality which the Heian literature reveals is anything but ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... idlers stood or lay about the bar, cursing, swearing, shouting, dancing, and here and there firing their pistols into the air out of pure wantonness. From the interior of the shanty behind there came a similar chorus. Maule, Phillips, and the roughs who followed them were in the ascendant, and all order and ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and for his hour became lord of the ascendant. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the rectory there came a gipsy woman, wanting to tell our fortunes; she accosted us in the garden. Mr. Cust sent her away, and she was angry, and told him his star was not in the ascendant. I think it must be the case at present with ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... up, wondering if his lucky star might not be in the ascendant just then, the opportunity to get in the good graces of the miller seeming ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster

... lamentable spirit displayed by rudimentary natures when feeling the pressure of an ideal they did not share or when brought into contact with a more finished manner of life from which they were excluded. Imogen, too, could not have borne a rival ascendancy; but she was ascendant through right divine, and, while so acutely understanding Mattie Smith's state of mind, she could not recognize a certain sameness of nature. She hoped that Mattie Smith would "grow," but she felt that, essentially, she was not of the sort ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... through it, such a tragedy of confusion, of sordidness, and of futility, that one is driven to take too sweepingly pessimistic a view of the time. I have said a good deal of the anti-national sentiment, because it was undoubtedly in the ascendant then. As history shows us, this sentiment ruled; by it the ship of state was steered; by it the defences of the Empire were cut down and down to the ultimate breaking point. We call the administration of that period criminally unpatriotic. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... were dull; commercial and material interests seemed wholly in the ascendant, and the anti-slavery cause was at a low ebb. But many things had happened in two decades, below the surface current of public events, and, just on the threshold of a new era, we may glance back over these twenty years. All the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... positions or parts of the sky its virtue is dulled, rather than preserved. By means of this instrument at all events you will be relieved from every kind of clock (horologium), for by it you will be able to know the Ascendant at whatever hour you will, and all other dispositions of the ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... revenues he derived from a small business, and by drawing up legal papers for the surrounding peasantry and fishermen. For a wife he had chosen the daughter of a half pay sergeant, and in this case his fortunate star was in the ascendant, for she not only brought him a loving heart, but also the little farm on which he resided at the date of ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... been asked to sit down—would have risen himself, and have stood during the interview, but he did not know how to leave his seat. And when the Jew called him his friend, he felt that the Jew was getting the better of him—was already obtaining the ascendant. "Of course we wish to prevent this marriage," said Ziska, dashing at ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... wit, he was without a rival in his section. The admiration of his constituents over the marvellous attainments of the new member, scarcely exceeded his own. Only the opportunity was wanting when the star of the gentleman from New York should go down and his own be in the ascendant. The opportunity at length came. Mr. Cox was the victim of the hour; the recipient of many compliments much more fervid than kind. The seven vials of wrath were opened upon him. A vast storehouse of wit, ancient and ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... part of the nation, and who were resolved on the utter extirpation of Romanism and the limitation of the regal power. The Lords of the Congregation implored the aid of England, which Elizabeth was ready to grant, both from political and religious motives. The Protestant cause was in the ascendant, when the queen regent died, in 1560. The same year died Francis II., of France; and Mary, now a widow, resolved to return to her own kingdom. She landed at Leith, August, 1561, and was received with the grandest demonstration of joy. For a time, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... and body together by either of these trades; but money and creature comforts were alike matters of indifference to her, and as a rule she preferred the roving life of a hawker, as it brought her more into contact with her fellow creatures. Hawking was in the ascendant now, and she was hurrying out to replenish her basket at St. John's Market when a boy unceremoniously opened her door, and, thrusting a crumpled and dirty piece of paper into her hand, stood staring at ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... of nothing else? Do you know what I suffered when, through George's fault, the engagement was broken off? Was it not martyrdom to me,—that horrid time in which your Crichton from Cambridgeshire was in the ascendant? Did I not suffer the tortures of purgatory while that went on;—and yet, on the whole, did I not bear them with patience? And, now, can you be surprised that I am wild with joy when I begin to see that everything will be as I wish;—for it will be as I wish, Alice. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... forget the emotion that we felt when, but a few years since, the red star of Kolniyatsch swam into our ken. As nobody can prove that I wasn't, I claim now that I was the first to gauge the magnitude of this star and to predict the ascendant course which it has in fact triumphantly taken. That was in the days when Kolniyatsch was still alive. His recent death gives the cue for the boom. Out of that boom I, for one, will not be left. I rush to scrawl my name, large, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... master, from whose leash we should escape if we can by annihilating our powers and faculties, and abdicating our conscious being; that the world and the entire constitution of things are all wrong; that misery is everywhere in the ascendant, and that man and beast can only make common cause against the tyranny of a reckless fate, and cry out with common voice for some sympathizing benefactor who can pity and deliver. There is no hint that sin ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... previously taken place, both with Greeks and barbarians, it never before had happened that Lacedaemonians should be conquered by an inferior force, nor yet even when the numbers on each side were equal. Wherefore they were invincible in their own estimation, and established an ascendant over the minds of their opponents, for they were wont to engage with men who did not themselves think that with equal force they could be a match for the same number of Spartans. But this battle first proved to the rest of Greece that ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... by the sight of the stricken faces, for though at the moment the worst side of her character was in the ascendant, she was by no means hard-hearted, and, moreover, Hereward was her especial friend and companion. She laughed again, and gave an impatient shrug ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... come out strong against the Church. Don't suppose that I complain. For myself I hate to think of the coming severance; but if it must come, why not by your hands as well as by any other? It is hardly possible that you in your heart should love a Protestant ascendant Church. But, as Barrington says, a horse won't get oats unless he works steady between ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... away. For though inclination, which we prettily call love, does sometimes move a little too visibly in the sex, and frailty often follows, yet I think verily custom, which we miscall modesty, has so far the ascendant over the sex that ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... wait here, lest he should return; but he did not appear, and Stanley—though I now believe observed by this strange being—executed his horrible task, replaced the implements, and returned to Rachel, and with her to Redman's Farm; where—his cool cunning once more ascendant—he penned those forgeries, closing them with Mark Wylder's seal, which he compelled his sister—quite unconscious of all but that their despatch by post, at the periods pencilled upon them, was essential to her wretched brother's ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... fatal to the persons who have given it, as the persons thus raised inspire us constantly with jealousies and apprehensions. For when we promote any one ourselves, we take effectual care to preserve such an ascendant over him, that we can at any time reduce him to his former degree, should he dare to act in opposition to our wills; for which reason we never suffer any to come near the prince but such as we are assured it is impossible should be capable of engaging or improving ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... depletion of Bragg by the detachment of Buckner, giving to Grant the very opportunity he desired. The good fortune of the National commander culminated at Missionary Ridge. Soldiers believe in good luck quite as much as in genius, and follow a leader whose star is in the ascendant with a confidence which is the guaranty of victory. Great opportunities, however, come to all. The difference between a great soldier and an inferior one is that the great man uses his opportunities to the full, and so fortune seems to be in league with him. When Grant ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... it was named for Washington and Jefferson, was it not? The lesser star is in the ascendant, and twinkles amazingly now that the greater has set. Don't you think we are ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... found to have been mixed up with the plots to murder Elizabeth; and Elizabeth at last took courage and recognised James. Supplies of money ceased to come from abroad, and gradually the tide turned. The Protestant cause once more grew towards the ascendant. The great families one by one came round again; and, as the backward movement began, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew gave it a fresh and tremendous impulse. Even the avowed Catholics—the Hamiltons, the Gordons, the Scotts, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... with his father and brothers was away in exile," Wulf said rather shortly, for that visit had been a most unpleasant one to Englishmen. It had happened when the Norman influence was altogether in the ascendant. The king was filling the chief places at court and in the church with Normans, had bestowed wide domains upon them, and their castles were everywhere rising to dominate the land. Englishmen then regarded with hostility ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... chronic process of consecutive small losses which may end if the individual is exceptionally fortunate in an impoverished death bed before actual bankruptcy or destitution supervenes. Their chances of ascendant means are less in their shops than in any lottery that was ever planned. The secular development of transit and communications has made the organisation of distributing businesses upon large and economical lines, inevitable; ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... Cannell Bone. 'Susclavier. Vpon the kannell bone; whence Veine susclaviere. The second maine ascendant branch of the ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... else about him, inconsistent with one another. The faithful tender colour of modern life competed with the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained readers of that day. But it no longer entertains us very much, and it is the source of considerable injustice done by modern criticism to the real merits ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... manner, that he has a couple of furious Jacobites in company. The Stuarts were dethroned by a revolution, which is a law of nature, and enacted by God, and which of course overshadows all other laws when it gets into the ascendant, as it clearly has done in this case. I take it, Sir Wycherly, these are your park-gates, and that yonder is ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... was known that the Episcopalians were ready to second such resolutions. These expressions of opinion were of weight as foreshadowing the kind of reception that many of the towns where the dissenters were in the ascendant would accord any constitution sent ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... of their religion [h]; and this steady conquest over human avidity may be regarded as more signal than their prompting men to the most extraordinary and most violent efforts. No idolatrous worship ever attained such an ascendant over mankind as that of the ancient Gauls and Britons; and the Romans, after their conquest, finding it impossible to reconcile those nations to the law and institutions of their masters, while it maintained its authority, were at last obliged to abolish it by penal statutes; a violence which had ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... of December the officers of the flag-ship gave a ball, which was the great event of the season to the gay world of Nice. Americans were naturally in the ascendant on an American frigate; and of all the American girls present, Lilly Page was unquestionably the prettiest. Exquisitely dressed in white lace, with bands of turquoises on her neck and arms and in her hair, she had ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... of Gonzalo de Cordoba's splendid victory at Garigliano—a victory which definitely broke the French and gave the throne of Naples to Spain. Naturally this set Spanish influence once more, and mightily, in the ascendant, and the Spanish cardinals, together with the ambassador of Spain, came to exert with the Pope an influence ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... tried to analyze the popular party: I must now endeavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly at different times; when it is in the ascendant, its vilest elements are sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,—just men, wise men, noble-minded men,—then refuse to take part with it. But when it is humbled, and the opposite side begins to imitate its practices, then again many of the best and noblest spirits return to it, and share ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... may produce a great change in the constitution. In proportion to the progress of reason and philosophy, which have made great advances in this kingdom [**kingfrom in original], superstition loses ground; ancient prejudices give way; a spirit of freedom takes the ascendant. All the learned laity of France, detest the hierarchy as a plan of despotism, founded on imposture and usurpation. The protestants, who are very numerous in the southern parts, abhor it with all the rancour of religious ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... said, "at midnight on December 31st, 1613. Work out his nativity, and see what stars were in the ascendant, and whether there are any affinities ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty



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