"Despot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very force of will endangered her constancy. He had begged humbly to be allowed to stay, but Mrs. Mel could not trust him. She ought to have told him so, perhaps. Explanations were not approved of by this well-intended despot, and however beneficial her resolves might turn out for all parties, it was natural that in the interim the children of her rule should revolt, and Dandy, picturing his Sally flaunting on the arm of some accursed low marine, haply, kicked against Mrs. Mel's sovereignty, though all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vanity to have an Englishman in his employ; but Tom Tripe never knew from one day to another what his next reception would be. On occasion it would suit the despot's sense of humor to snub and slight the veteran soldier of a said-to-be superior race; and he would choose to do that when there was least excuse for it. On the other hand, he recognized Tom as almost indispensable; he could put a lick and polish on the maharajah's ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... an avaricious hound! How was it possible I should think he suspected any such thing, when he spoke not out like a man, but, for sheer coldness of heart, or base self-interest, suffered me to run the risk of being poisoned by the wily despot?" ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... thundered out by a red-faced young man of desperate aspect, the word MARCH coming each time with a punch that hit you over the heart. This red-faced young man was the very incarnation of the military despot as Jimmie had pictured him; watching with hawk-like eye, scolding, pounding, driving, with no slightest regard for the feelings of the slaves he commanded, or for any of the decencies ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... be well for us not to forget is, that the first-recorded judicial murder of a scientific thinker [Socrates] was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought about by eloquent demagogues.... Clear knowledge of what one does not know just as important as knowing what one ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... put, soon elicited from the savage the information that the travellers were now in the country belonging to M'Bongwele, a fierce, cruel, and jealous despot, so suspicious of foreigners that the most stringent orders were in force to allow none such to cross his borders upon any pretence whatever. This king had been duly apprised, through the medium of the curious voice-telegraphic mode of communication already described, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... silent streets I wander now, Venice, once queen, aye, empress of the sea! Fairest in art as clime, yet sunk so low Beneath the despot Teuton's rule, I see Thy halls deserted, fallen, yet in thee Much splendour to admire there still exists. Well could I quit my native land, and flee The rugged northern clime, the vapid mists, With thee to dwell, did I that ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... audience, those traits of which he had previously shown the merest traces had rapidly developed in Commodus into fixed characteristics. He had become what he remained until his end, an odd mingling of loutish, peevish school-boy, easy-going, self-indulgent athlete and superstitious, suspicious despot. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... unlimited, Nothing kept back. For when a man is blind To starlight, will he see the rose is red? A bondsman shivering at a Jesuit's foot— "Vae! mea culpa!"—is not like to stand A freedman at a despot's and dispute His titles by the balance in his hand, Weighing them "suo jure." Tend the root If careful of the branches, and expand The inner souls of men before you strive For ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the great Jesuit order, and by reforming bishops like Ghiberti of Verona, and Carlo Borromeo of Milan. Devout and self-denying as a saint, fierce and inflexible against abuses as a puritan, resolute and uncompromising as a Jacobin idealist or an Asiatic despot, ruthless and inexorable as an executioner, his soul was bent on re-establishing, not only by preaching and martyrdom, but by the sword and by the stake, the unity of Christendom and of its belief. Eastwards and westwards, he beheld two formidable foes and two serious dangers; ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... a war audaciously declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote is that though the natural man may not be inclined to despotism, the social man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit, maintains Mirabeau, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... life, writing after his name on the polling register the statement that he could not vote for such a measure till public freedom was sufficiently guaranteed. This insured the continued displeasure of the military despot, who revenged himself by refusing to Lafayette's only son, George Washington, the promotion that he had earned by his brilliant exploits in the army. President Jefferson's offer in 1803, of the governorship of the province of Louisiana, just after its purchase ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... and glorious person, a towering beneficent despot when he did appear.... As for me I adored him with whole-hearted hero-worship. He was the "protector of the poor," who kept the rest of us in order. He was a magnificent person who revolutionized the art of war by the introduction of explosives. ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... political bigwigs, and the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of personal advantages, that they united in forming a little court round the overbearing Emilie. This treaty between interest and pride was not, however, so firmly cemented but that the young despot was, not unfrequently, the cause of revolts in her little realm. Scenes, which the highest circles would not have disowned, kept up a sarcastic temper among all the members of this powerful family; and this, ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... and as, having been careful to disarm in turn, he advanced, Laurence could not repress a tightening thrill of the pulses as he wondered what fate it was, as regarded himself, that should now fall from the lips of this despot, whose very name meant a terror ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... rally, rally To the banners of the North! Through the shattered door of bondage pour Your swarthy legions forth! Kentuckians! ye of Tennessee Who scorned the despot's sway! To all, to all, the bugle-call ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the time of his friends, nor harrow their feelings, by a narrative of the injuries their colony had sustained at the hands of the French National Assembly. Those around him knew too well, that in return for their sympathy in the humbling of a despot, for their zeal in behalf of the eternal principles of freedom, the mother-country had, through the instrumentality of its National Council, endeavoured to strip its faithful whites in this colony of the power which they had always ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... dictatorship founded on the proletariat—who can doubt that if both these clever writers had been real Frenchmen they would have been irascible anti-Bonapartists, and have been sent to Cayenne long ere now? The wish of these writers is very natural. They want to 'organise society,' to erect a despot who will do what they like, and work out their ideas; but any despot will do what he himself likes, and will root out new ideas ninety-nine times for once that he introduces them. Again, side by side with these ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... call 'im a beneffercent despot. I don't. You may 'ave a tiste for aristocrercy, plootocrercy, ortocrercy. I 'aven't. You may prefer to 'ave a iron-shod 'eel ground on ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... lives of men. There is nothing incredible to us in the doctrine of a particular Providence. But where, we ask, is the proof of it? We would fain believe, but the facts of experience seem too strong for us. A hundred thousand Armenians butchered at the will of an inhuman despot, a whole city buried under a volcano's fiery hail, countless multitudes suffering the slow torture of death by famine—can such things be and God really care? Nor is it only great world tragedies like these which challenge our faith. The question is pressed upon us, often with sickening ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... long employed the non-violent methods of resistance which Gandhi has encouraged in our own day. In 1830, the population of the State of Mysore carried on a great movement of non-cooperation against the exploitation by the native despot, during which they refused to work or pay taxes, and retired into the forests. There was no disorder or use of arms. The official report of the British ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... of Cyprus, however, an insolent and haughty despot, sent back a message of defiance. King Richard at once ordered the anchors to be raised, and all to ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... liked caged birds, the captives of a despot will; Still wond'ring How and When and Why, and Whence and Whither, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... a year after Calvert's arrival in England, King Charles the Second was gathered to his fathers, and his brother, the Duke of York, a worse man, a greater hypocrite, and a more crafty despot, reigned ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... James intended to follow in England was shown indeed by the course he was following in the sister kingdoms. In Scotland he acted as a pure despot. At the close of Charles's reign the extreme Covenanters or "wild Whigs" of the Western shires had formally renounced their allegiance to a "prelatical" king. A smouldering revolt spread over the country that was only held in check ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... effective strength in war; for at this time the head chief of the Minnetaree villages was a man who, given opportunity, would have made the river run red with the blood of his enemies. This was Le Borgne, a one-eyed old despot, of surpassing cruelty and bloodthirstiness, whose very name, even in his present position, would compel a shiver of apprehension. A chief such as he, at the head of forces matched to his ferocious desires, would have ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... the poor fellow; but it may be that we shall still be in time to punish his murderer and the murderer of those fourteen unhappy white people who died to gratify the ferocious instincts of a savage despot. Let us be going. Come," he added, laying his hand upon Lobelalatutu's naked shoulder, "we shall need you while doing the work that lies before us. After we have finished you can send out men to do what ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... misunderstood and misgoverned by some prig who has no brotherly respect for him at all. But irrational despotism is always democratic, because it is the ordinary man enthroned. The worst form of slavery is that which is called Caesarism, or the choice of some bold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable. For that means that men choose a representative, not because he represents them, but because he does not. Men trust an ordinary man like George III or William IV. because they are themselves ordinary men and understand him. Men trust an ordinary man because they trust ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... with placing a guard in our very bedchamber, the oily-tongued despot over the way had fastened a padlock over the key-hole of our outside-door! What would happen, if he should hear that I had picked the padlock, and prowled about Richmond for an hour after midnight! The very thought gave my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... hate it—I hate it as Lincoln hated it when he asked whether the dollar or the man should be put first. And I hate it because it is brainless, spiritless. It cares for nothing but itself. It is a snake that swallows and sleeps and wakes to eat again. It is a despot; it is without love, genius, morality. It is against people, against God, against the country. It is as wicked as Nero, as gluttonous as a cormorant; and it makes cowards, slaves, lick-spittles of some of the best of men. In this country, intended to be of free men, where ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... his oppressed countrymen from the crushing yoke of Spanish thraldom, Liberty was the watchword. Success crowned his efforts—sovereign power lay before him. He grasped it, and made himself a despot. Ambition hurled him from the throne of the Montezumas, and laid his proud head low. A new star rose on the stormy horizon of the west; pure and softly fell the rays on the troubled thousands round. The voice of the new-comer ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... therefore, consists today of an aggregation of kingdoms, principalities, and republics which are kept together only by habit and the communion of the Koran. And if a despot is a ruler whose words are law, then the Sultan in Constantinople is very far ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... and children in a village of the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, of which he spoke with heart-moving affection, though he seldom went there. It was only after much insistence that he allowed us to conduct him thither on one memorable occasion, when I could not but admire his perfect manners as a despot. When first I met him he had been a gentleman at large, and it was as that, and a familiar friend, that he repaired to me whenever he had nothing else to do. Judging from his gifts of conversation, which we all admired, and his unbounded knowledge of the country, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... act is perfectly like David. It is David's self. It is what David would naturally do when he had left hold of God. Had he left hold of God in the wilderness he would have become a mere robber-chieftain. He does leave hold of God in his palace on Zion, and he becomes a mere Eastern despot. ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... legal authority, and the people would not allow them to accept new commissions from a usurper. The Church, too, detesting Napoleon as the heir of a revolution that had undermined the Catholic faith and regarding him as a godless despot who had made the Pope a captive, refused to recognize the French pretender. Until Ferdinand VII could be restored to his throne, therefore, the colonists had to choose whether they would carry on the administration under the guidance of the self-constituted authorities in Spain, or should themselves ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... wrought by these little despots, minions of the great despot, in the simple abode of the poor old French couple, was eloquent ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Ralieuse shall wear the livery of a despot—one of those hateful things, a King. Bah!" The Captain and his second in command, having thus vented their rage and spite, ordered the men to carry off their prisoners. The Captain and the young officers were therefore again unceremoniously dragged out of the cabin and forced down below into ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... vested in the Committee of Public Safety—a committee consisting of twelve persons, members of the Convention, all of course ultra-democrats, over the majority of whom Robespierre exercised a direct control. No despot ever endured ruled with so absolute and stringent a dominion as that under which this body of men held the French nation. The revolutionary tribunal was now established in all its horror and all its force. A law was passed by the Convention, in September, which decreed that all suspected people ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Duke of Lucca, a fanatic, a prodigal, and a despot, after attempting in vain to cudgel his people into submission, fled in terror from their aroused wrath, and consented to the annexation of his dominions to Tuscany, whereby they shared in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... epoch; as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues and vices. Mark him well. The National Assembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say with old Despot,—The National Assembly? ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... aspiration, after the pure and noble life, the aspiration which stamps every line he wrote, verse or prose, with a dignity as of an heroic age. This gives consistency to all his utterances. The doctrinaire republican of to-day cannot understand how the man who approved the execution of the would-be despot Charles Stuart, should have been the hearty supporter of the real autocrat Oliver Cromwell. Milton was not the slave of a name. He cared not for the word republic, so as it was well with the commonwealth. Parliaments or single rulers, he knew, are "but means to an end; if that ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... else had lost all sense of proportion, the courtiers and the people of Alexandria generally fled from their doomed Lord and Master. As if by magic his palace was utterly deserted. No Monarch falls so utterly as an Oriental Despot. Hekekyan Bey described the scene of which he was a witness in words ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... But at least the fear of God, which was to him a thing so real and awful, had nothing in it of the attitude, so common in all ages and all religions of the world, which attempts to delude or defeat or buy off the hostility of a capricious despot by means of money, or magical arts, or a well devised system of celestial alliances. In Johnson it came simply from the sense of sin and issued in the desire to live better. He was as ethically minded as any one in that moralizing century: only that he added to ethics the faith ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... monarch, president, king, potentate, dynast, lord, satrap, rajah, emir, caliph, burgrave, procurator, Pharaoh, interregent, despot, regent, dominator, arbiter, viceroy, vicegerent, autocrat, oligarch, liege lord, protector, kaiser, czar, dey, doge, mogul, pasha, bey, tetrarch, khedive, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... fellow-men. As these are the very people who can open the door of happiness and fortune to their confederates, so was he soon distinguished and raised, step by step, to the rank of prime-minister of the kingdom; whilst I, neglected, despised, and unknown, remained stationary. The proud despot exerted his utmost to bring me over to his party by bribery and promise of place; but I saw that he only wished to make me thereby more deeply feel his power, and that he felt nothing more was wanting to complete ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... peculiarly Jewish examination touching their Christian perfection;" Salvi was a mountain of conceit, who believed himself to be the Louis Quatorze of the lyric drama, and compelled his manager to imagine him exclaiming "L'opra c'est moi!" Toward his manager Salvi was a despot, who rewarded favors bestowed upon himself by compelling the manager to engage persons who had served the tenor. Maretzek cites a ukase touching a ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the mother could say no more. And thus it was, that this boy of powerful character and strong passions had, from motives the most amiable, been pampered from the darling into the despot. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Germany, published his Prolegomena, or prefatory essay to the Iliad, in which he advanced the hypothesis that both the Iliad and the Odyssey were a collection of separate lays by different authors, for the first time reduced to writing and formed into the two great poems by the despot Pisis'tratus, of Athens, and his friends. [Footnote: Nearly all the modern German writers follow the views of Wolf against the Homeric authorship of this poem, but among the English critics there is more diversity ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... that imperial tyrant, State Necessity, is yet a generous despot,—bold is his demeanor, rapid his decisions, and terrible his grasp. But what he does, my Lords, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification, than the great motives that placed the iron sceptre in his hand. But a quibbling, pilfering, prevaricating State-Necessity, that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... to Italy, he was engaged by Napoleon as chapel-master; for that despot ruled the art and literature of his times as autocratically as their politics. Though Paisiello did not wish to obey the mandate, to refuse was ruin. The French ruler had already shown his favor by giving ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... chance to be!" Then, we would ask: "Sirs, did you ever hear of that great saying: 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you!'" For it is but fair presumption that the Dramatists, whom our Legislators have placed in bondage to a despot, are, no less than those Legislators, proud of their calling, conscious of their duty, and jealous of their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said Frank, looking rather disgusted. "What makes you stick your chin up and look in that way?" Frank had hitherto been rather a despot among his sisters, and forgot that the eldest of them was now passing altogether from under his sway to that of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Touraine by the softer breezes of the Midi, and this ancient city of the Turones he wished to make the capital of the France that he had strengthened and unified. However we may abhor the despicable characteristics of this wily old politician and despot, we cannot afford to underestimate his constructive ability and his zeal ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... to such an extremity that many of the early years of his reign present a succession of timid and vacillating movements, that more nearly resemble the subterfuges of a coward than the crafty artifices of a despot. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Maitland, to whom he was executor, which proves the marriage of your father. Very strange—very strange indeed, that you should have hit upon it as you did—almost supernatural. However, all right now, my dear boy, and I congratulate you. Your father is a very strange person: he has lived like a despot among slaves all his life, and will not be thwarted, I can tell you. If you say a word in contradiction he'll disinherit you:—terrible old tiger, I must say. If it had not been for your sake, I should have done with him long ago. He seems to ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... tutor said, and vexed her with a towering complacency under provocation that went some way further to melt the woman she was, while her knowledge of the softness warned her still more of the duty of playing dragon round such a young man in her house. The despot is alert at every issue, to every chance; and she was one, the wakefuller for being benevolent; her mind had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Emperor towards his cousin had always been somewhat dubious, almost hostile, and now, after the latter's victories, envy and fear had taken possession of the mind of the Byzantine despot. The letter contained a command for Julian to send back the legions at once, as the war was at an end. Julian saw the danger if he stripped the newly recovered land bare of defence, but his sense of duty and conscientiousness bade him obey, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... that the Inspector-General became a sort of comedy-epic in the land of the Czars, the land where each petty town-governor is almost an absolute despot, regulating his persecutions and extortions according to the sage saying of the town-governor in the play, "That's the way God made the world, and the Voltairean free-thinkers can talk against it all they like, it won't do any good." Every subordinate in the town administration, ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... fur companies stationed at Fort Laramie ruled with an absolute authority. They were as potent in their sway as the veriest despot, for they had no one to dispute their right to lord it over all. The nearest army outposts were seven hundred miles to the east, and, like the viceroys of Spain after the conquest of Mexico, they were ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... might make me vain. But it could scarcely unfit me more for living in a republic. How I wish we were governed by a despot!—don't you?" ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Hungarians and the Poles, whom a fortunate alliance had now united under the sovereignty of Uladislaus, who, incited by the pious eloquence of the cardinal of St. Angelo, the legate of the Pope, and, yielding to the tears and supplications of the despot of Servia, had, at the time our story opens, quitted Buda, at the head of an immense army, crossed the Danube, and, joining his valiant viceroy, the famous John Hunniades, vaivode of Transylvania, defeated the ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... was, in all respects, well fitted for his post; but, unfortunately for him, when he entered Abyssinia he had to deal with a fascinating, vainglorious, shrewd man, hiding his cunning under an appearance of modesty: in a word, with Theodore who had become an over-bearing despot. On his first arrival, Cameron was received with great honours, and treated by the Emperor with marked respect, and when he left in October, 1862, he was loaded with presents, escorted by the Emperor's servants, and almost acknowledged as a consul. Like so many others—I can ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... of demons above African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it were all flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot; a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its fruits. The transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain, and diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the limits of pleasure ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... "The despot's heel is on thy shore; His torch is at thy temple door. Avenge the patriotic gore That flecks the streets of Baltimore And be the battle queen of ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... But the cruel despot, to whom life and death were of no account whatsoever, was not likely to deal tenderly long with the woman he desired did she prove anything but amenable. Now her words stung him as they were meant to ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and the foreman of one of the leading London houses is deputed to apprize aspiring rhymesters, that "his firm considers poetry a mild species of insanity"—Anglice, that it does not suit the appetite of the circulating library! For behold! this despot of bookmakers must have length, breadth, and thickness, to fill the book boxes dispatched to its subscribers in the country, as well as satisfy in town the demands of its charming subscriber, Lady Sylvester ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... that subject to sit on their throne? It is nonsense to talk of Wallace having refused a coronation. He laughs at the name; but see you not that he openly affects supreme power; that he rules the nobles of the land like a despot? His word, his nod is sufficient!—Go here! go there!—as if he were absolute, and there was no voice in Scotland but his own! Look at the brave Mack Callan-more, the lord of the west of Scotland from sea to sea; he stands unbonneted before ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... far as bad habits and want of time would allow. But I soon saw that the public received impressions slowly and with difficulty, and was unable to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, trivial pedantry from sterling worth, while the orchestra—out of regard for its real master and despot Costa, who can dismiss and appoint the musicians according to his will—always limited its applause to the smallest and least compromising measure. This time, at the leavetaking, it broke through all restraint. The musicians rose solemnly, and together with the whole ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... youth is called upon to look up, he can adore devoutly and ardently; but when it is his chance to look down on a fair head, he is, if not worse, a sentimental despot. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brother had always enjoyed a certain immunity from such edicts. His sense of justice, however, kindled none the less at this final piece of tyranny. He blazed and fumed indignantly on behalf of his sisters, in the sanctuary of that little study,—a spot where the despot seldom set foot; and out of this comparatively trivial cause had sprung a mighty resolution, which he and she whom he proudly honoured as "sister and friend" had, after some girding of the loins, repaired to the front ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... exact. The reader was finally allowed to resume. "You mean to send an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis. Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... we continued our journey. No wonder that the Khania hated such a mad despot. And this woman was in love with Leo, and this lunatic Khan, her husband, was a victim to jealousy, which he avenged after the very unpleasant fashion that we had witnessed. Truly an agreeable prospect for all of us! Yet, I could not help reflecting, as an object lesson that horrid ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... his hearers that the despot who had brought Russia to the brink of ruin would either abdicate of his free will, or be deposed. He added that the Grand Duke ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... was it that most of the girls had no vacancies on their programmes. But Jeannette Willard was both a diplomat and a bit of a despot, socially, and several of the young eligibles relinquished, with surprisingly good grace, so Hal felt, their partners, in favor of the newcomer. He did not then know the tradition of Worthington's best set, that hospitality to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... any more than a hereditary hooliganism. We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives. Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... as these she mounted to a much higher plane than Anne Tresslyn could ever hope to attain, despite her position on the opposite side of the line. He had never seen George's wife in anything but a blithe, confident mood; she was an unbeaten little warrior who kept her colours flying in the face of a despot called Fate. In fact, she was worthy of a better man than young Tresslyn, worthy of the steel of a ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... uncertain, but there is strong internal evidence of its having been written soon after the battle of Salamis, after which, as is well known, the [Greek: aristeia] or first honours for valour, were awarded to Aigina. The insolence of the barbarian despot seems to be symbolized by that of the giants Typhon ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... of a God sitting above the clouds among the cherubim, who blow their loud uplifted angel trumpets before Him, and humour [sic] Him as though He were some despot in an Oriental tale; but we enthrone Him upon the wings of birds, on the petals of flowers, on the faces of our friends, and upon whatever we most delight in of all that lives upon the earth. We then ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... "shape" still pursued him, instead of getting angry with it or growing weary of it, he opened his heart and took it in, and made it at home, and set it upon a throne, where it reigned supreme, diffusing delight over all his nature. But soon, too soon, this bosom's sovereign became the despot, and stung, goaded and urged him to see again this living, breathing, glowing, most beautiful original. To seek her? For what? He did not even try ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... under a wrinkled brow; his ill-shaped head was partly bald, partly covered with dyed-hair; his neck covered with bristles, his legs thin, and his feet mis-shapen." Woe to the nation that lies under the heel of a brutal despotism; treble woe to the nation that can tolerate a despot so brutal as this! Yet this was the nation in the midst of which Seneca lived, and this was the despot under whom ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... executed because they said he was dishonorable and a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive—live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that our business is to live it, and to live it in our own way; and here we may thankfully rejoice that there is less and less tendency in the world for people to dictate modes of life to us; the tyrant and the despot are not only out of date—they are out of fashion, which is a far more disabling thing! There is of course a type of person in the world who loves to call himself robust and even virile—heaven help us to break down that bestial ideal of manhood!—who ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... time, grew to be very proud of her master, the despot of Power-house Gully. She revealed her pride every time she fell in with acquaintances on the way to church. In reply to an oft-repeated question as to why Mr. Fry did not go to church with her any longer, she invariably gave the supercilious ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... article on the case, two photographs of Dumont side by side—one taken when he first came to New York, clear-cut, handsome, courageous, apparently a type of progressive young manhood; the other, taken within the year, gross, lowering, tyrannical, obviously a type of indulged, self-indulgent despot. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... be? If the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? Is the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? Shall we step backward a thousand years because ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... did not matter if he went a little farther. He would lecture the doctor, throwing in his face his stupidity in scorning such happiness,—he said this with all his heart, his voice trembling with envy. What else did his fair despot want? She might ask without fear. If it was necessary he would challenge the count, with all his decorations, to single combat and would kill him so that she might be free to ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... stupidity of tchinovnik and spies, awaken from thy long sleep of ignorance and apathy! We have been kept in bondage long enough by the successors of the Tartar khans. Arise! and stand erect and calm before the throne of the despot; demand of him a reckoning for the national misfortunes. Tell him boldly that his throne is not the altar of God, and that God has not condemned us to ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... repress Envy into unutterable praise. Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, For who would lift a hand except to bless? Were it not easy, sir, and is't not sweet To make thyself beloved? and to be Omnipotent by mercy's means? for thus Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete: A despot thou, and yet thy people free, And by the heart, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... mountain and vale; Man with the cosmic fortunes and starry vicissitudes tangled, Chained to the wheel of the world, blind with the dust of its speed, Even as thou, O giant, whom trailed in the wake of her conquests Night's sweet despot draws, bound to her ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... himself. Although the disorders assumed such dimensions that foreign intervention was narrowly escaped, the upshot was that the Nanking Delegates were completely cowed and willing to forget all about forcing the despot of Peking to proceed to the Southern capital. Yuan Shih-kai as the man of the hour was enabled on the 10th March, 1912, to take his oath in Peking as he had wished thus securing full freedom of action during the succeeding years. [Footnote: ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... world, simply because he was Lord Talgarth and owned practically the whole parish and two-thirds of the next. He regarded his daughter with the greatest respect, and left in her hands everything that he decently could. And, to do her justice, Jenny was a very benevolent, as well as capable, despot. In short, the Rector plays no great part in this drama beyond that of a discreet, and mostly silent, Greek chorus of unimpeachable character. He disapproved deeply, of course, of Frank's change of religion—but he disapproved with that same part of him that appreciated Lord Talgarth. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... an intense selfishness, but of that liberal and enlightened character which throws a partial veil over the vice itself and leaves the superficial observer unconscious of its existence. He was a devoted husband, a kind and affectionate father, a despot (though it was a beneficent despotism) in his own family, a courteous, cordial, and obliging host; he cared for money only as a means of enjoyment, but it formed no part of his scheme of happiness to employ it in promoting the pleasures, or relieving the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Marathon ten years before, was fleeing back to Persia, leaving his innumerable hosts of slaves and mercenaries to be destroyed piecemeal, by land at Platea, by sea at Mycale. The bold hope was over, in which the Persian, ever since the days of Cyrus, had indulged—that he, the despot of the East, should be the despot of the West likewise. It seemed to them as possible, though not as easy, to subdue the Aryan Greek, as it had been to subdue the Semite and the Turanian, the Babylonian and the Syrian; to ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the idol, the one thought of the three beings who surrounded him, and he ruled as a despot. A kind of jealousy even arose among his slaves. Jeanne watched with anxiety the great kisses he gave his grandfather after a ride on his knee, and Aunt Lison, neglected by him as she had been by every one else and treated often like a servant by this little tyrant who ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of matchmaking mammas and their guileless maids. Had Emilia made one effort to please him, once concealed a dislike, once affected a preference, the spell might have been broken. Had she been his slave, he might have become a very unyielding or a very heedless despot. Making him her slave, she kept him at the very height of bliss. This king of railways and purchaser of statesmen, this man who made or wrecked the fortunes of others by his whim, was absolutely governed by a reckless, passionate, inexperienced, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Italy; then let him appear in Constantinople, embarked from a galley, habited like a Roman, and with a suitable Italian title. He speaks Italian already, is fixed in his religion, and in knightly honor. Not all the gifts at the despot's disposal, nor the blandishments of society can shake his allegiance—he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... decomposition that even the birds would not approach them! Then I understood that I saw before me that detestable thing of which I had often heard as the most prominent object in the typical African native town or village, the "crucifixion tree," upon which the petty despot who rules over that particular community is wont summarily to put to a cruel and lingering death such of his subjects as may be unfortunate enough to offend him! In some cases, I believe, the monarch is content to cause his victims to ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Canada, to become willing subjects, or slaves, to the Despot who rules the nations of continental Europe with a rod ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... together, when lo! they unite and form a substance blacker than the blackest ink. As the chemical bath brings out the picture that was latent in the photographic plate, so in its higher moods events half-remembered and half-forgotten rise into perfect recollection. History tells us of the Oriental despot who in an hour of revelry commanded his butler to slay a prophet whom he had imprisoned and bring the pale head in upon a charger. Long afterward there came a day when, sitting in the seclusion of his palace, a soldier told those around the banqueting-table the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... nearer to your view in all respects. Really the more we consider this abominable man's conduct (and his accomplice Cavour is quite as bad, though not so foolish), the greater indignation we feel at the unprovoked breach of the peace. The audacity of the pretence from a despot and usurper exceeds precedent. What can be said too of Russia, which keeps her hold of Poland only ten years longer than the settlement of 1815! It really would be important, now that the attempt has been made to represent ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... had struck no blow; but it was only through the delays of the Allies that the Neapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in an attack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged upon the Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first had shown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge over the sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House of Naples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... gradually all regard for, and all sympathy with the rights and welfare of the people. There is a tacit agreement between them and the government, by which they are bound to keep the people in a state of utter and abject submission to the despot's will, while he, on his part, is bound to collect from the people thus subdued the sums of money necessary for their pay. Thus it is the standing army which is that great and terrible sword by means ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... its centre in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the ungrateful. Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the throne of judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the following moment, or with the view to a martyr's crown—indifferent ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... were all agreed that our (American) political institutions were preferable to their own, but they were not very anxious to exchange one despot for another ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... which the tyrant had made his victims endure. Antiochus, glittering on his ivory throne, appeared to be in the prime of health as well as the zenith of power; none guessed how brief was the term of mortal existence remaining to the despot, on the breath of whose lips now hung fortune or ruin, whose angry frown was ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... Virginians, saw parliament as being thoroughly corrupt and the king surrounded by what even the mild-mannered Edmund Pendleton called "a rotten, wicked administration". Not until the eve of independence in 1776 were Virginians to think of George as a tyrant and despot. In fact, he was neither. He was a dedicated man of limited abilities in an age demanding greatness if the separation of the American colonies from the empire was to have been prevented. Perhaps even greatness could not have prevented what some have come to believe was inevitable. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... at his word. When the experimentalists did attempt to govern, we all know, and have too severely felt, the consequences. Yet this unfortunate monarch has been represented to the world as imbecile, and taxed with wanting character, firmness, and fortitude, because he has been vanquished! The despot-conqueror has been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as a bird in the air Despot man doth dare! His humbling cumbersome body at length Light as the lark upsprings, Buoyed by tamed explosive ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... his workpeople, his servants, of this poor lad whom the prosecution had placed in the box as a witness against his brother, that this man's life was a long lie; that, smiling and pleasant as he appeared, he was a tyrant, a petty despot in his family, a hard master to his hands, a cruel master in his house, What wonder that between this lad and such a stepfather as this there was no love lost. There were scores, ay and thousands of boys in England who ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... most grateful to him for this chance to think him an intellect. Who likes to admit that he bows before a mere brute? The compulsory courtiers of a despot may possibly and in part tell the truth about him, after they are safe; but was there ever a voluntary courtier whose opinion of his monarch could be believed? The more distinguished the courtier the greater his necessity to exaggerate ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... signification of the term, they deemed to be sovereign; and they belonged to a numerous class, who view disobedience to the sovereign in a democracy, although it be in his illegal caprices, very much as the subject of a despot views disobedience to ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... pictures—wretched daubs, it is true—of the life of Christ. That their efforts to do good were not all in vain was proved by the gratifying news received some time afterwards that all the natives, including the despot king, were returning to their Christian duties and the big ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... deserved—well deserved if even a part of what has been said about them is true. The Archduke is always said to have taken Philip II. as a model of demeanour, but he had none of the worst faults of the sullen, powerful despot, with that small mind, that 'incredibly small' mind of his, and cold heart, cold alike to human suffering and human love, who had held the Flemings, whom he hated, for so many years in the hollow of his hand. His grave mien and ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... part of an immense and intricate machine, over the movements of which neither he nor any other Pope could have much control. He had every possible disposition to be that ideal ruler, a benevolent despot, but even in that little realm the details of government were impossible of control by the most competent head of a government; they were necessarily left to the incompetent, bigoted, and zealous administrators chosen by the secondary chiefs of the departments, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... explained, in part, by the depletion of ranks and the demoralization of spirit caused among them by the dreadful toll of disease. When other members of the council died, Smith did not replace them and, rid of strong opposition, he ruled as a benevolent despot. ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... pinned up. Her hair was bound in the protecting towel. "You must telephone father. No, let's surprise him. You'll hate the dinner—built around Miz Merz; you know—boiled. Well, you know what a despot she is." ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... same with all the powerful of to-day; it is the same, for instance, with the high-placed and high-paid official. Not only is the judge not judicial, but the arbiter is not even arbitrary. The arbiter decides, not by some gust of justice or injustice in his soul like the old despot dooming men under a tree, but by the permanent climate of the class to which he happens to belong. The ancient wig of the judge is often indistinguishable from the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... consequences of suppressing the effusion of even individual discontent, look to those enslaved countries where the protection of despotism is supposed to be secured by such restraints. Even the person of the despot there is never in safety. Neither the fears of the despot, nor the machinations of the slave, have any slumber—the one anticipating the moment of peril, the other watching the opportunity of aggression. The fatal crisis is equally a surprise upon both; the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... trait of this great man. Moses, could not look on and see the helpless suffer at the hands of another, even though it brought death to himself. Forgetful of his own safety, defying the absolute power and authority of this despot, so far as it lay in his power, against all these odds he redressed the wrong of a fellow creature. God saw in Moses a man whom He could use. From the golden throne he sought a retreat, and for forty years was an humble shepherd, learning the lesson ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Boniface VIII. became Pope. From his accession Hallam dates the decline of the Papacy, which, for "more than two centuries, had been on throne of the earth, and reigned despot of the world."—Dowling. This was 1260 years from the death of Peter,—the earliest time from which they can date. His bull of excommunication against Philip of France, being disregarded by that monarch, who adroitly made the Pope his ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... prestige of her power and greatness, than Ireland. Self-evident as the fact is, that that country has for generations been kept in slavery at the point of the bayonet, and plundered and starved by an accursed despot and her own deadly enemy, too, she can with the greatest possible ease move in the direction of breaking those galling bonds, and wreathing the poor, fleshless limbs, so long lacerated by them, with the flowery links which so bind her own glorious children in one ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... been suppressed; for to those who may be in sympathy with the course of these Poems, it will be superfluous; and will, I fear, be thrown away upon that other class, whose besotted admiration of the intoxicated despot hereafter placed [A] in contrast with him, is the most melancholy evidence of degradation in British feeling and intellect which the times ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... answered, "she thinks me cruel, and you also think me cruel—a despot who delights in the death of his enemies. Yet it is not so, for I desire peace and to save life, not to destroy it. It is you Christians who for hard upon a hundred years have drenched these sands with blood, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... since the alienation of John to my wife, is mine empire. Within it, I am despot. From its lady mistress, the Greek, to the meanest slave, I have homage and subjection. Even thou wilt be submissive to me—for having lost one wife through indulgence, I shall be most tyrannical to the ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... seem by the following note that this hourly account of himself was in consequence of the connubial mandate of his fair despot:— ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... maintained in the midst of liberty; and as the rulers have a great deal to lose, order is to them a first-rate consideration. In like manner an aristocracy protects the people from the excesses of despotism, because it always possesses an organized power ready to resist a despot. But a democracy without provincial institutions has no security against these evils. How can a populace, unaccustomed to freedom in small concerns, learn to use it temperately in great affairs? What resistance ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... us only remember the late King THEBAW of Burma as a bloodthirsty and dissipated despot. It has been reserved for Sir JOHN REES to find a redeeming feature in his character. Among all his crimes, he never, it seems, prohibited the consumption of drink in his realm, though I fancy that his own ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various |
