"Frederick the Great" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... year for the boys if Mr. Henty were to fail them with a fresh assortment of his enthralling tales of adventure, for, as the London Academy has said, in this kind of story telling, "he stands in the very first rank." "With Frederick the Great" is a tale of the Seven Years' War, and has twelve full-page illustrations by Wal. Paget; "A March on London" details some stirring scenes of the times when Wat Tyler's motley crew took possession of that city, ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... France a great accession of naval power. Sir James Harris, the British ambassador at the Hague, laboured to counteract their designs by encouraging the party in the republic opposed to the policy of Holland. The stadholder's wife, a princess of high spirit, was a niece of Frederick the Great, and Harris was anxious for an alliance between England and Prussia as a means of overthrowing the French party. Ewart, the ambassador at Berlin, shared his views, but the ambassadors were held back by Carmarthen. The cabinet, Harris declared, was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... is the only one who in any way approaches him. Then, as to his magnanimity, he proved it to M. Jules Simon, by offering him the musical works of the said Frederick the Great, with a letter which, according to Mr. Bigelow, should have made France give up her foolish ideas about Alsace-Lorraine, were it not for the fact that "from the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint Germain to the garrets of Montmartre, all Frenchmen ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... determined to offer his services to Poland, supposed to be on the verge of a war. Recommendations from his old commander, the Count de la Lippe, procured him access to some of the continental courts. He was well received by Frederick the Great, and had several conversations with him, chiefly on American affairs. At Warsaw, his military reputation secured him the favor of Poniatowsky, recently elected king of Poland, with the name of Stanislaus Augustus, who admitted him to his table, and made him one of his ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... ignored by us in our own passage across the historical stage of the world. It is this power of discovering what is really important that distinguishes the true historian from the mere chronicler, in whose eyes everything is important, particularly if he has discovered it himself. I think it was Frederick the Great who, when sighing for a true historian of his reign, complained bitterly that those who wrote the history of Prussia never forgot to describe the buttons on his uniform. And it is probably of such historical works that Carlyle was thinking ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... of such views and aspirations, we seem entirely to have forgotten the teaching which once the old German Empire received with "astonishment and indignation" from Frederick the Great, that "the rights of States can only be asserted by the living power"; that what was won in war can only be kept by war; and that we Germans, cramped as we are by political and geographical conditions, require the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... moral superiority due to successful offensive operations. There are numerous instances of this kind of war, "the defensive-offensive," as it is sometimes called, to be found in history. The last four campaigns of Frederick the Great of Prussia, are examples which may serve as models. Wellington played a similar part in ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... originally from Austria, had been Crusaders and Counts of Zinzendorf. One of the Zinzendorfs had been among the earliest converts to Lutheranism, and became a voluntary exile for the faith. The count's father was one of the Pietists, a sect protected by the first king of Prussia, the father of Frederick the Great. The founder of the Pietists laid special stress on the doctrine of conversion by a sudden transformation of the heart and will. It was a young Moravian missionary to Georgia who first induced Wesley to embrace the vital doctrine of justification by faith. For a long time there was a close ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Frederick the Great calls finance the pulse of the state, and Richelieu, the point of support which Archimedes was in search of, to move the world. In all modern nations, the history of the debates on the raising of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... that day resembled the weak old man of to-day; how little in common the young King Frederick had with "Alten Fritz." And now in this feeble body dwelt the same courageous spirit. In the course of these years King Frederick II had become Frederick the Great! And great he was to-day, this little old man—great in his intentions and achievements, never heeding his own debility and need of repose. All his thoughts and endeavors concentrated on the welfare of his people and his ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... eminent as a physician, went from Hanover to attend Frederick the Great in his last illness. One day the king said to him, "You have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into another world?" This was rather a bitter pill for the doctor; but the dose he gave the king in return was a judicious mixture of truth and flattery: "Not so many as your ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... of Frederick the Great used to go about his realm with a stick, and when he saw a woman in the street he would shake the stick at her and say "Go back into the house. An ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... by which England won her Asiatic dominions, a new war had broken out. In the fifth year, 1756, of the New Style[2] of reckoning time, the aggressive designs of Frederick the Great of Prussia caused such alarm that a grand alliance was formed by France, Russia, Austria, and Poland to check his further advance. Great Britain, however, gave her support to Frederick, in hope of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... never lived. On his death-bed Philip II. was compelled to see how little his son Philip, who succeeded him, cared for his feelings and wishes. Peter the Great put to death his son Alexis; and Frederick William I. of Prussia came very near taking the life of that son of his who afterward became Frederick the Great. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... easily made clear by historical references, and, happily, in the very matter under discussion—educational procedure. In the eighteenth century Prussia, under the two great Hohenzollern kings, Frederick William I and his son, Frederick the Great, the two ruling from 1713 to 1786, made most rapid strides in education. Both were practically absolute rulers, but they were benevolent and far-sighted, and the educational reforms that they inaugurated ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... no victories. She is an unusual and pliant State to survive so many defeats. One finds her the easy prey of Frederick the Great, the pet victim of Louis XIV., the foe against whom Napoleon made his first youthful efforts and the vanquished of his prime, the defeated foe of Napoleon III., the vanquished tyrant of Italy united, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... hear a man revile his own blood." He said to himself, "How strangely his vagrant and unguided fancies have hit upon the truth. By accident, he has described me. I am that contemptible thing. When I left England I thought I knew myself; I thought I was a very Frederick the Great for resolution and staying capacity; whereas in truth I am just a Wobbler, simply a Wobbler. Well—after all, it is at least creditable to have high ideals and give birth to lofty resolutions; I will allow myself that comfort." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... half-clandestine way in a minister's closet or a lady's drawing-room, could come to agreements which would bind down nations and rule political movements. The first real upheaving of any genuine force, national or personal, in European life tore through all their meshes in a moment. Frederick the Great, soon after, is to compel Europe to reconstruct her scheme of political arrangements; later yet, the French Revolution is to clear the ground more thoroughly and violently still. The triple alliance, concocted by the Regent and Stanhope and Dubois, had not the slightest permanent effect ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... events would have moved if the son of Philip of Macedon had been an incompetent? The aggressive action of Prussia which astonished Europe in 1740 determined the subsequent history of Germany; but that action was anything but inevitable; it depended entirely on the personality of Frederick the Great. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... man who was a true son of his ancestors. Never had the laws of heredity better justified themselves. Frederick William, Frederick the Great, William the First—the Hohenzollerns were all there. The glittering eyes, the withered arm, the features that gave signs of frightful periodical pain, the immense energy, the gigantic egotism, the ravenous vanity, the fanaticism amounting to frenzy, the ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... read Carlyle to-day—and it may be supposed that as they read they hold his volumes with a Hidden Hand—and fewer still love him, for at heart he was a Prussian. He was, indeed, slain in our affections by Frederick the Great. His shrine at Chelsea is no longer visited. It is all for the best, because in any case he wrote only a gnarled and involved bastard stuff of partly Teutonic origin. While this appeal was being made to me, I watched the face of a cat, which got up and stretched itself ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... is in every State a sovereign power which can make and unmake the law at its pleasure makes possible the creation of a uniform law for all the subjects of a State, and so far as the State coincides with the nation, makes for the creation of a national unity in law. Thus Frederick the Great gave a code to Prussia, thus Napoleon gave France a code which swept away the diversities of the provincial customs; yet it served more than merely national purposes, for it found its way not only into ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Age of Louis XIV.," was published when its author (see p. 259), long famous, was the companion of Frederick the Great in Prussia—from 1750 to 1753. Voltaire was in his twentieth year when the Grand Monarque died. Louis XIV. had succeeded his father at the age of five years, in 1643; his nominal reign covered seventy-one years, and throughout the fifty-three years which followed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, the first giant of the Hohenzollerns and the fountain head of modern Prussian autocracy, attracted by Lafayette's military reputation, invited him to the royal palace at Potsdam ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... preserved his chair, table, inkstand and bed as sacred relics; and in the Salon are to be seen the portraits of several public characters, his contemporaries, and which were constantly appended there in his life time. Among these portraits I distinguished those of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia, Lekain, Diderot, Alembert, Franklin, Helvetius, Marmontel and Washington, besides many others. There is nothing remarkable either in the Chateau, or in the gardens appertaining to it; but as it stands on an elevation, it ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky, whose stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which presages heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in a great many soldiers ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... and it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." It would have been well for those who indulged in this style of writing, if all the victims of their pens had been of the same mind as Frederick the Great, who said that time and experience had taught him to be a good post-horse, going through his appointed daily stage, and caring nothing for the curs that barked at him along ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... [In Frederick the Great's INSTRUCTIONS TO HIS GENERALS we read: "A defensive war is apt to betray us into too frequent detachment. Those generals who have had but little experience attempt to protect every point, while those who are better acquainted with their profession, having ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Present" Carlyle becomes bitter "Latter-Day Pamphlets" "Life of Oliver Cromwell" Carlyle's confounding right with might Great merits of Carlyle as historian Death of Mrs. Carlyle Success of Carlyle established "Frederick the Great" Decline of the author's popularity Public honors; private sorrow Final illness and death ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... gentleman talking about?" says old goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like a old parrot — you know they live to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is comparatively young (ho! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to an immense old age. Some which Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue mould on their old backs; and they could tell all sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak — but they are very silent, carps are — of their nature peu communicatives. Oh! what has ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... resources of the future Death is only asleep without dreams Excessive desire to oblige Fear of being suspected of cowardice was beneath them For a retreating enemy it is necessary to make a bridge of gold Frederick the Great: "No man is a hero to his valet" Hair, arranged with charming negligence His Majesty did not converse: he spoke. Like all great amateurs was hard to please Little gifts preserve friendship Living ever in the future Make a bridge of gold, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... simplicity, while his artistic aspiration complicates the Puritan with the Cavalier. "From childhood," he is quoted as saying, "I have been under the influence of five men—Alexander, Julius Caesar, Theodoric II, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon." No great man moulds himself thus like others. It is but a theatrical greatness. But anyhow none of these names are Jewish, and not thus were "the Kings of Jerusalem" even "six thousand ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... that tone of good-breeding to the language which would gain it entrance to the society of European literature. No man of genius had made it a necessity of polite culture. It was still as rudely provincial as the Scotch of Allan Ramsay. Frederick the Great was to be forgiven if, with his practical turn, he gave himself wholly to French, which had replaced Latin as a cosmopolitan tongue. It had lightness, ease, fluency, elegance,—in short, all the good qualities that German ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... universal history. His reputation had increased; for it was in these years that he produced his most popular tragedies—Zaire, Merope, Alzire, and Mahomet—while a correspondence carried on in the most affectionate terms with Frederick the Great yet further added to his prestige; but his essential genius still remained quiescent. Then at last Madame du Chatelet died and Voltaire took the great step of his life. At the invitation of Frederick ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... farther, the court of the Medici alone would afford them everything they wanted. But Germany never had any character, and never produced nor had been the resort of illustrious men and interesting persons. What was to be done? The age of Frederick the Great was the only thing; and then that was so recent, and would offend the Austrians: it could ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... nephew of Frederick the Great of Prussia, the pendulum swung back again distinctly toward absolutism. The Riksdag, according to its custom, sought at the opening of the reign to impose upon the new sovereign a renunciatory coronation oath. Gustavus, however, raised objection, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... sovereigns, and yet others from both their positions and their powers of mind. Yet she got the better of them all,[31] and some of them fell miserably because of her enmity to them,—as Wallenstein and Napoleon. Frederick the Great was in some sense an exception, as he accomplished most of his purposes at her expense; and yet it cannot with propriety be said that he conquered her, or that, at the utmost, he was ever more than the equal of Maria Theresa or Joseph II., with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... John Bullish." He described them as "a sturdy, high-hearted race, sound in body and fierce in spirit which, under the stimulus of those great shins of beef, their common diet, were the wonder of the age." Carlyle's advice when he read this passage in proof was characteristic:—"Modify a little: Frederick the Great was brought up on beer-sops; Robert Burns on oatmeal porridge; and Mahomet and the Caliphs conquered the world on barley meal." But the passage stood unmodified, in spite of Froude's regard for ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... figures readily found places upon altars in the churches of Europe. All might have gone well with this great porcelain plant had not the Seven Years' War arisen just at this time, lasting from 1756 to 1763. During this period Frederick the Great, the grandfather of the present Emperor of Germany, went into Saxony, stopped the royal factories at Meissen, and took the workmen as ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... conversation turned on his West Point studies. The little work of Jomini's mentioned above being casually referred to as having been in his course, I asked him if he had continued his reading into the History of the Seven Years' War of Frederick the Great, to which it was the introduction. He said no, and added frankly that he had not read even the Introduction in the French, which he had found unpleasantly hard reading, but in the English translation published under the title of the Art of War. This officer ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... spirit of France, and it roused the spirit of France as perhaps nothing has raised the spirit of this people since Valmy, where other Frenchmen met and checked another German invasion, brought to a halt the army of Frederick the Great, which still preserved the prestige of its great captain who was dead, turned it back along the road that was presently to end ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... voice on the upper deck shouted with a noisy guffaw, "See you later! Soon we shall meet you in Paris!" And the marine band, the very same band that three days before had astonished Desnoyers with its unexpected Marseillaise, burst forth into a military march of the time of Frederick the Great—a march of grenadiers with an ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... vigorous men of his age, though living for his whole life on nothing but vegetables and water, and who at sixty-four had scarcely begun to feel the infirmities of old age, slept but four hours in twenty-four. Frederick the Great of Prussia, and the illustrious British surgeon, John Hunter, slept but five hours a day. Napoleon Bonaparte, for a great part of his life, slept only four hours; and Lord Brougham is said to require no more. Others, in numerous instances, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... is the propagation of an idea, on what ground is the continued existence of Israel as a separate organisation defensible or justified? Israel is indestructible, said Jehuda Halevi in the twelfth century; certainly Israel is undestroyed. When Frederick the Great asked what should make him believe in God, he received in answer, 'the survival of the Jews.' Dr. Guttmann of Breslau not long since put forward a similar plea in vindication of the continued significance of Judaism. In nature all ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... surface it seemed mere madness for the least and latest of the great empires to challenge all the rest, just as it had once seemed madness for Frederick the Great, with his little state, to stand up against all but one of the great European powers. But Germany had calculated her chances, and knew that there were many things in her favour. She knew that in the last resort ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... observed Isabel bitingly. "You're worse than Dean. I saw you kick Frederick the Great all across the veranda yesterday, then lead him around the kitchen and feed ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Frederick the Great, in a letter to Voltaire, says something which suggests he was the first to have thought of the purely mechanical nature of thought. Cabanis had said briefly, that the brain secretes thought as the liver bile. Tyndall expressed this conception more cautiously, and demanded ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... time it is related that the great Johann Sebastian Bach visited Frederick the Great at Potsdam. Stained with travel the wonderful fugue-founder was ushered into the presence of Voltaire. "Gentlemen," cried that monarch to his courtiers, "Old Bach has arrived; let us see what this jay looks like." Frederick was always fond of a joke at the expense of the Boetians. Attired as he was, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the sea open, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from Fuenen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice; and takes Zealand itself—to the wonder of mankind." Such, in Mr. Carlyle's summary (History of Frederick the Great, i. 223, edit. 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between the two Powers, called The Peace of Roeskilde, by which Sweden acquired certain territories ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Demonstration—On the 27th of January, the birthday of the German Emperor, an immense laurel wreath decorated with the German and American flags was placed by Americans at the foot of the monument to Frederick the Great (in Berlin). The American flag was enshrouded in black crape. Frederick the Great was the first to recognise the independence of the young Republic, after it had won its freedom from the yoke of England, at the ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... a king of Prussia, whose name was Frederick; and because he was very wise and very brave, people called him Frederick the Great. Like other kings, he lived in a beautiful palace and had many officers and servants to wait ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... been said that Frederick the Great of Prussia was very fond of a small Italian greyhound, and used to carry it about with him under his cloak. During the seven years' war, he was pursued by a party of Austrian dragoons, and compelled to take shelter, with his favourite, under the dry arch of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Doctor Johnson, with a smile, "I've heard of you; you are the man who wrote the life of Frederick the Great in ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... Rousseau at Montmorency, Fontenelle, d'Alembert and Crebillon at Paris, George III. in London, Louis XV. at Fontainebleau, Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg, Benedict XII. at Rome, Joseph II. at Vienna, Frederick the Great at Sans-Souci. Imprisoned by the Inquisitors of State in the Piombi at Venice, he made, in 1755, the most famous escape in history. His Memoirs, as we have them, break off abruptly at the moment when he is expecting a safe conduct, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... When Frederick the Great of Prussia reviewed his army of sixty thousand men in Pomerania, previous to his invasion of Silesia, he asked the Prince d'Anhalt, who accompanied him, what he most admired ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... my teacher, my companion." Of Ramler, for thirty-five years dictator of the Berlin literary world, who translated and published some of the Odes in 1769 and was called the German Horace, Lessing said that no sovereign had ever been so beautifully addressed as was Frederick the Great in his imitation of the Maecenas ode. The epoch-making Klopstock, 1724-1803, quotes, translates, and imitates Horace, and uses Horatian subjects. Heinse reads him and writes of him enthusiastically, and Platen, 1796-1835, is so ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... as absolute rulers was revolted by a spectacle of unbridled faction and raging anarchy; their envy was soothed by the growing weakness of a power which Chatham had so short a time before left at the highest point of grandeur and strength. Frederick the Great spoke with contempt of the insolence of Opposition and the virulence of parties; and vowed that, petty German prince as he was, he would not change places with the King of England. The Emperor Joseph pronounced positively that Great Britain ...
— Burke • John Morley
... true that he cites Frederick the Great as an exemplary master of war and of Weltpolitik. But his chief praise in this department is reserved for England. It is from our foreign policy, he says, that he has learnt what our journalists denounce as "the doctrine of the bully, of the materialist, of the man with gross ideals: ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... some one quote Carlyle's contempt for invented stories and his saying that facts were better worth writing of, Edward exclaimed: "'Frederick the Great's' a romance; 'Monte Cristo' is real history, and so is 'The Three Musketeers.'" And another time he said: "Ah, the historians are so few. There's Dumas, there's Scott, there's Thackeray, and there's Dickens, and no more—after you have ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... brave Prince William". William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, 1721-65. The 'lamp-black face' would seem to imply that the portrait was a silhouette. In the letter quoted on p. 200 it is 'Prussia's monarch' (i.e. Frederick the Great). ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... contain a grain of truth, but neither of them contains enough truth to be true. One might describe them as sweetmeats of history of small nutritious value. One might say the same of his comment on the alliance between Chatham and Frederick the Great:— ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... that they would have been repudiated with horror by Jesus? Our own notion that the massacre of St. Bartholomew's was an outrage on Christianity, whilst the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus, and even of Frederick the Great, were a defence of it, is as absurd as the opposite notion that Frederick was Antichrist and Torquemada and Ignatius Loyola men after the very heart of Jesus. Neither they nor their exploits had anything ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... 1740 happened two events which led to a general European war breaking in upon that in which Spain and England were already engaged. In May of that year Frederick the Great became king of Prussia, and in October the emperor Charles VI., formerly the Austrian claimant of the Spanish throne, died. He had no son, and left by will the sovereignty of his estates to his eldest daughter, the celebrated Maria Theresa, to secure whose ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... like the arrangement between Maecenas and Horace, or Voltaire and Frederick the Great. The patron is a man who patronizes—he wants something, and the particular thing that Dionysius wanted was to have Plato hold a colored light upon the performances of His Altruistic, Beneficent, Royal Jackanapes. But Plato was a simple, honest ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... quite tolerable essay on any century of the Christian era. Historical characters in whom he was specially interested were Julius Caesar, Octavius, Charlemagne, the Emperor Charles V, Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Louis XIV, the elder Pitt, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; and among the non-political Roger Bacon, Erasmus, Luther, Sir Thomas More, Isaac Newton, Faraday, and Darwin. The Elizabethan age had for him a magnetic attraction, because of the Queen with her enigmatical personality, marvellous statecraft and capacity for inspiring ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... is he who has learned much, and much of that which is good. Bad poetry is not poetry at all except to the man who makes it. For its creator, even the feeblest verse speaks something of inspiration and of aspiration. It is said that Frederick the Great went into battle with a vial of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verse in the other. Whatever we think of the one, we feel more kindly toward him ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... and now peace will be to his Manes, down in this lower sphere. Yet I see well that I should have held to his opinion, in all those conferences where you have so quietly assumed the palms. It is said: here, that you work upon Frederick the Great?? However that be, health, strength, love, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of Barbe-Marbois, Boissy d'Anglas, Morellet, Helvetius, or Frederick the Great, you will see the exact image of Doctor Minoret, whose green old age resembled that of those celebrated personages. Their heads coined in the same mint (for each had the characteristics of a medal) showed a stern and quasi-puritan profile, cold tones, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the Exchequer, nearly half of the British Empire was torn away, and the remainder seemed to be at the mercy of the allied Houses of Bourbon. France, enjoying the alliance of Spain and Austria and the diplomatic wooings of Catharine II and Frederick the Great, gave the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Falstaff "Famous Victories of Henry V., The" Fauconbridge, Philip Faust Ferdinand First Gentleman First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster Fitton, Mistress Mary Flavius Fleance Fleet prison Fletcher (the poet) Ford, Mrs. Forman's Diary Fortinbras France Frederick the Great ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... of a Prussian officer in the army of Frederick the Great, and with the agreeable sensation of being specially well disguised beneath my mask and safe from recognition, I mingled in the gay throng of the dancers and enjoyed to the full the charm of the brilliant and delicious event. An exquisitely graceful little water-nix ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... led in by Cardinal Giovan Francesco Albani, the very gallant and art-loving nephew of Winckelmann's Cardinal Alessandro; the Princess Santacroce escorted by the French Ambassador Cardinal de Bernis, the amiable society rhymester of Mme. de Pompadour, whom Frederick the Great had surnamed Babet la bouquetiere. In the front row sat the wife of the Senator Rezzonico, who, in virtue of being the niece of the late Pope Clement XIII., affected an almost royal pomp, and by her side sat the wittiest and most literary of the Sacred College, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Moralist, and Philosopher. In Spain the author, damned in France for his despotism and popery, was as freshly and freely damned for his civil and religious toleration. In England to the Cavaliers he was an Atheist, to the Roundheads a Jesuit. Christina of Sweden annotated him with enthusiasm. Frederick the Great published his Anti-Machiavel brimming with indignation, though it is impossible not to wonder what would have become of Prussia had not the Prussian king so closely followed in practice the precepts of the Florentine, above all perhaps, as Voltaire observed, in the publication ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... fruit after their kind. In the place of friendliness on the part of the English,—a friendliness uninterrupted by war, and based on the blood of their royal family and the comradeship in arms against France in the days of Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon—there developed a growing hostility. In vain missions were sent by the British Government to promote a better understanding, for the Germans declined to accept either a "naval holiday" or a position of perpetual naval inferiority. In consequence, England abandoned ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... he took from them many of the privileges they had before enjoyed. The work he began was continued by his son, who took the title of King; and by his grandson, who invented the Prussian system of administration, and created the army with which Frederick the Great ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... they had in directing their own government, and the little they knew about what it was doing. There was a general disposition to accept, as a definition of duty which must not be questioned, whatever they were told to do by the Vorstand. It is this habit of mind, dating back to the days of Frederick the Great, with only occasional and brief interruptions, which has led many people to think that the German people at large have in them "a double dose of original sin." Even when their soldiers have been exceptionally brutal in methods of warfare, I do not think that this is so. The habit ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... into which Mozart married. The father of Mozart's wife was the older brother of Franz Anton von Weber, father of Carl Maria. This Franz Anton was a strange mixture of stalwart and shiftless qualities. He gave up his orchestral position to fight against Frederick the Great, and brought home a red badge of courage. It is wonderful, by the way, how many musicians have earned distinction as soldiers—what, indeed, would the soldiers do ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... tympanum—that its glorious beauty lay, but in the simple strength and the harmonious symmetry of the whole, in the general plan. Webster planned his orations, Newman planned his essays, Carlyle planned his Frederick the Great. Their works are not a momentary inspiration; they are the result of forethought, long and painstaking. The absolute essential in the structure of an essay, that without which it will fail to arrive anywhere, that compared to which all ornament, all fine writing, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own army, and their king, or chief head of government, is always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandalo, or Frederick the Great,—Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, Venetian,—that is inviolable law for them all; their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, after their great military period, comes the domestic period; in which, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... that ever appeared on earth. Handel, whose glorious melodies entranced the senses, produced the grand oratorio of the "Messiah," which is still performed in both Protestant and Catholic cathedrals; and Graun, with whom Frederick the Great played the flute, brought private singing into vogue by his musical compositions. Gluck was the first composer who introduced the depth and pathos of more solemn music into the opera. He gained a complete triumph ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... quiet. But this is of no consequence: bring all your friends with you, and I promise you that both you and they shall have every accommodation in my power." With equal firmness the illustrious mathematician resisted the manifold attractions with which Frederick the Great sought to induce him, to take up his residence at Berlin. In reading of these invitations we cannot but be struck at the extraordinary respect which was then paid to scientific distinction. It must be remembered that the discoveries of such a man as D'Alembert were utterly incapable ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... a motto somewhat analogous to the inscription which Frederick the Great's predecessor used to affix to his attempts at portrait-painting when he had the gout: "Fredericus I. in tormentis pinxit."—Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Marshal Hindenburg is now Dictator of Germany we suspect a note of exaggeration . . . Hindenburg never was the dictator of anything and never will be. He is, however the man who keeps the seat warm for a Dictator to come. Hindenburg has led us back to Frederick the Great. . ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... enormously. The assailant, therefore, no longer able to succeed by frontal attack, is compelled to endeavour to work round the enemy's flanks, and thus exercise pressure upon his communications. His endeavour must be, as Frederick the Great would have said, 'to compel his opponent to fight outside of his ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... Clans.' Had Mr. EWALD explored the Stuart Papers and the Memoirs of d'Argenson, Grimm, de Luynes, Barbier, and the Letters of Madame du Deffand (edited by M. DE LESCURE), with the 'Political Correspondence of Frederick the Great,' little would have been left ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Capitol itself, if not to a successful finish to a very creditable draw; returned South, unmolested, with its prisoners and untold booty; fought the great battle of Fredericksburg, with the results just enumerated. Could Napoleon, Frederick the Great, or the "Madman of the North" have done better with the forces at hand and against an enemy with odds of two and three to one? So Lee's Army had nothing of which to complain, only the loss of so ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... spite of its tedium, the long winter had its mitigations, for after the first few weeks I was able to read with a luxurious consciousness of leisure, and I remember opening the first volume of Carlyle's "Frederick the Great" with a lively sense of gratitude that it was not Gray's "Anatomy," having found, like many another, that general culture is a much easier undertaking than professional study. The long illness inevitably put aside the immediate prosecution of a medical ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... remember, too, that the German monarchy is a cross between the Napoleonic ambition and its inheritance from Frederick the Great and Bismarck. I suppose the three damnedest liars that were ever born are these three—old Frederick, Napoleon, and Bismarck—not, I take it, because they naturally loved lying, but because the game they played constantly called for lying. There was no other way to play it: they had to fool ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... purer, nobler man never lived. What successful warrior or ruler, in ancient or modern times, has descended to his grave amid such universal grief and lamentation as our Lee? Caesar fell by the hands of his own beloved Brutus, because, by his tyranny, he would have enslaved Rome. Frederick the Great, the founder of an empire, became so hated of men, and learned so to despise them, that he ordered his 'poor carcass,' as he called it, to be buried with his favorite dogs at Potsdam. Napoleon reached his giddy height by paths which Lee would have scorned ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... private collection in New York, is an autograph letter of George Washington to Frederick the Great, asking that Frederick should use his influence to protect that French friend of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... distinguish him from his father, the great Sebastian Bach of Saxe Weimar, was born in Weimar, March 14, 1714. He early devoted himself to music, and coming to Berlin when twenty-four years old was appointed Chamber musician (Kammer Musicus) in the Royal Chapel, where he often accompanied Frederick the Great (who was an accomplished flutist) on the harpsichord. His most numerous compositions were piano music but he wrote a celebrated "Sanctus," and two oratorios, besides a number of chorals, of which "Weimar" is one. He died in Hamburg, Dec. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... when Americans compare it with Chicago, because it is so new and busy. It is indeed the city of the modern German spirit, and what it has of old tradition and old social life lies beneath the surface, hidden from the eye of the stranger. There is Sans-Souci, to be sure, and Frederick the Great, and the Grosser Kurfuerst. There is the double line of princes on either side of the Sieges-Allee. But modern Berlin dates from 1870, and so do all good Berliners, whatever their age may be. They are proud of their young empire and of their big city, and of doing everything in the best ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... these arts of royal policy, and all these displays of royal magnificence? How can I prevent the successor of Frederick the Great from aspiring to a new, and, in this age, unexampled kind of glory? Is it in my power to say that he shall not make his confessions in the style of St. Austin or of Rousseau? that he shall not assume the character of the penitent and flagellant, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... need less, but few require more. Personal peculiarities, and perhaps habit to a great extent, exert a marked influence. Some of the greatest men, as Napoleon I., have been very sparing sleepers. Throughout his long and active life, Frederick the Great never slept more than five or six hours in the twenty-four. On the other hand, some of the busiest brain-workers who lived to old age, as William Cullen Bryant and Henry Ward Beecher, required and took care to secure at least eight or nine hours ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... The Daily Mail, "that the Kaiser's speeches no longer include references to God, only Frederick the Great." This confirms the rumours of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... or contemporary Chinese commanders, indeed, than any in the whole world, had done; and the revolution which they effected in tactics was not less remarkable in itself, and did not leave a smaller impression upon the age, than the improvements made in military science by Frederick the Great and Napoleon in their day. The Mongol played in a large way in Asia the part which the Normans on a smaller scale played in Europe. Although the landmarks of their triumph have now almost wholly vanished, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... one. He speedily organised and placed in the field a splendid army, and it was fondly expected that a few months with such troops as his would end the war. But M'Clellan, though a brave soldier and an able man, was a disappointment. Like the father of Frederick the Great, he was an ideal drill-master, but an indifferent general. He was afraid to risk his magnificent army, and while he dallied his ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... are those on Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Byron, Dryden, Leigh Hunt, Bunyan, Bacon, and Johnson. Among the best known of the historical essays are those on Lord Clive, Chatham, Warren Hastings, Hallam's Constitutional History, Von Ranke's History of the Papacy, Frederick the Great, Horace Walpole, William Pitt, Sir William Temple, Machiavelli, and Mirabeau. Most of these were produced in the vigor of young manhood, between 1825 and 1845, while the writer was busy with practical affairs of state. They are often one-sided and inaccurate, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... ever knew, better than her father and uncle, better than her husband Sir T. Newcome, better than her sons and successors above mentioned, was the famous Sophia Alethea Hobson, afterwards Newcome—of whom might be said what Frederick the Great said of his sister, that she was sexu foemina, vir ingenio—in sex a woman, and in mind a man. Nor was she, my informant told me, without even manly personal characteristics: she had a very deep and gruff voice, and in her old age a beard which ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... possession. That was the military way of doing business. It was the way in which Frederick II. of Prussia had negotiated with the Emperor of Austria for Silesia. [Here Mr A. gave an account of the interview of Frederick the Great with the Austrian minister, and of the fact of Frederick having sent his troops to take possession of that province the very day that he had sent his minister to Vienna to negotiate for it.] Then we should have our elbows clear, and could ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... modern romantic revival. In 1765 he visited Paris, where he went much into society, and when his celebrated friendship with Mme. du Deffand began. He helped to embitter Rousseau against Hume by the mock letter from Frederick the Great offering him an asylum in Germany. In 1789, nine years after Mme. du Deffand's death, he met the two sisters, Agnes and Mary Berry, who came to live near him at little Strawberry, which he left them at his death. He succeeded his ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... annihilating a prejudice by presenting a vivid vision of its theoretical consequences. Carlyle has an eccentric hatred of the eighteenth century, its manners, morals, politics, religion, and men. He has expressed this in various ways for thirty years; but in his last work, the "Life of Frederick the Great," his prejudice reached its logical climax in the assertion, that the only sensible thing the eighteenth century ever did was blowing out its own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... palace, and belongs to the present Emperor. After that we had a longish drive, through different parks and villages, and finally arrived at Sans Souci, where we dined. After dinner we strolled through the rooms and were shown the different souvenirs of Frederick the Great, and got home at ten-thirty." W. saw a good deal of his cousin, George de Bunsen, a charming man, very cultivated and cosmopolitan. He had a pretty house in the new quarter of Berlin, and was most hospitable. He had an interesting dinner there with some ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... intriguing time-servers and military Hamlets whose "native hue of resolution" had been "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Instead of that they were confronted with soldiers of the same type as those whom Frederick the Great and Napoleon admired, led at last by chiefs worthy of their men. And behind these soldiers they discovered a nation. Do they realize now what a force they have awakened? Do they understand that a steadfast, indomitable resolution, despising all theatrical display, is moving Russia's hosts? ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... 1786 that Frederick the Great died, leaving an army that he had raised to the pinnacle of fame. With this army he had faced and vanquished, standing at bay against almost the whole of continental Europe, his powerful foes. Little Prussia, a straggling strip of territory stretching from the ice-bound Niemen to the vine-clad ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... results, and scattered the mists of the Middle Age. Church and Faith were compelled to disappear in the same proportion; and so in the eighteenth century English and French philosophers were able to take up an attitude of direct hostility; until, finally, under Frederick the Great, Kant appeared, and took away from religious belief the support it had previously enjoyed from philosophy: he emancipated the handmaid of theology, and in attacking the question with German thoroughness and patience, gave it an earnest ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... century the European peasant, like the Negro slave, bound as he was to the soil, lived in the little world of direct and personal relations, under what we may call a domestic regime. It was military necessity that first turned the attention of statesmen like Frederick the Great of Prussia to the welfare of the peasant. It was the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon in 1807 that brought about his final emancipation in that country. In recent years it has been the international struggle for economic efficiency which has contributed most to mobilize the peasant and laboring ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... material for two of the finest literary fragments of modern times. I take it that the most stirring and profoundly wise piece of modern history is Carlyle's brief account of William Pitt, given in the "Life of Frederick the Great." Once we have read it we feel as though the great commoner had stood before us for a while under a searching light; his figure is imprinted on the very nerves, and no man who has read carefully ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... visit. I read Charlotte Bronte for the second time.—Mrs. Story sent a note to my husband to invite him to tea [my mother being housed with my sick sister] with Mr. Browning.—Mr. Horatio Bridge spent the evening.—Read 'Frederick the Great.'—Mr. Motley called, and brought 'Paradise Lost' for Una.—I went to the sunny Corso with my husband, who is far from well. Mrs. Story asks us to dine with Mr. de Vere, Lady William Russell, Mr. Alison, Mr. Browning, and other interesting people.—Lovely turquoise ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... philosophers, rationalists, and men of science had interested the nobles and higher classes of society for two generations, and were a common subject of discussion in the most distinguished salons. Voltaire's intimacy with Frederick the Great, the relations of d'Alembert and Diderot with the Empress Catherine, conferred on these men of letters, and on the ideas for which they stood, a prestige which carried great weight with the bourgeoisie. Humbler people, too, were as amenable as ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... creation; and the finest part of it is there are no dues to be paid. The membership list holds some of the finest names in history—Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Napoleon Bonaparte, Caesar, George Washington, Mozart, Frederick the Great, Marc Antony—Cassius was black-balled on Caesar's ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... helmet surmounted by a silver eagle. This makes him the most conspicuous person in the room, so that you may always know where the Emperor is by seeing the young officer's towering helmet above the crowd. The other is General Scholl, a dear, kind old gentleman, who is dressed in the costume of Frederick the Great's time, with a white wig, the pigtail of which is tied with black ribbon, a huge jabot of lace with a diamond ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... who is best known for his Songs of a Prussian Grenadier, commemorating the victories of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War. His earlier work is mostly in the light anacreontic vein, which was somewhat overworked in the decade preceding the war. The fashion was really set by Gleim, though the spirit ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... the Seven Years War, in which Frederick the Great was defeated with enormous losses by ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... dissensions. At present the greatest confidence is felt in ultimate success. The Parisians cannot realise to themselves the possibility of their city being taken; they are still, in their own estimation, the representative men of "la grande nation," and they still cite the saying of Frederick the Great that, were he King of France, not a sword should be drawn without his permission, as though this were a dictum that a sage had uttered yesterday. They feed every day on the vaunts and falsehoods which their newspapers offer them, and they digest ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... is a strange reality: If you look at the general outlines of the German map in 1815, you will see that the frontiers trace in a startling way the scowling outlines of Frederick the Great, "Old Fritz," who first dreamed this German ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... loving everybody sincerely and affectionately, she "lacked altogether the sentimental equilibrium." Especially pathetic was her love for two men—the Count de Mora, a Spanish nobleman, and a Colonel Guibert, who was celebrated for his relations with Frederick the Great; although this wore terribly on her, consuming her physical force, she always received her friends with the same good grace, but often, after their departure, she would fall into a frightful nervous fit from which she could find relief only by the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... with Frederick the Great, that all our systems of education are wrong, because they aim to make men students or clerks, whereas the mere shape of the body shows (so thought King Frederick) that we are primarily designed for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... seven hundred of the latter's accomplices seated in solemn gravity, but not returning his salute as he was led along, for the sufficient if not immediately perceptible reason that they sat upon thorns, each upon one thorn a foot or so long, of iron. We may suppose the father of Frederick the Great to have had in mind this passage of Oriental life when he forced the prince to witness the execution of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... to carry on the work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making off from the camp. 'What are you about?' asked Frederick. 'Your Majesty, I am deserting,' stammered the soldier. 'Wait till to-morrow,' replied Frederick calmly, 'and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the secret of its grandeur. The teachers of war have all placed this truth as a preface to their triumphs and we find the most illustrious teachers to be the most severe. Listen to this critique of Frederick the Great on the maneuvers which ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... seamanship." The cycles of kingly sway is abruptly broken by the meteoric episode of Bonaparte: first he appears dispersing the Assembly, and then in his early victories, wounded at Ratisbon, at the tomb of Frederick the Great, distributing the Legion of Honor at the Invalides, quelling an insurrection at Cairo, engaged in his unparalleled succession of battles, and at the altar with Maria Louisa. The divorce from Josephine and the murder ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... Niemen, his communications with his base were preserved and his operations were in no respect dependent upon his allies. We may also refer to the fate of the French in Bohemia and Bavaria in 1742, when Frederick the Great abandoned them and made a separate peace. In this case the parties were allies rather than auxiliaries; but in the latter relation the political ties are never woven so closely as to remove all points of dissension which may compromise military operations. ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... and long cues,—when French ballet-dancers gave the tone, and French actors strutted on every stage,—when Boileau was the great canon of criticism, and Racine and Moliere perpetuated in tragedy and comedy a pseudo-classicism. They are far, those times when Frederick the Great wrote French at which Voltaire laughed, and could find no better occupation for his leisure hours at Sans-Souci than the discussion of the materialistic philosophy of the Encyclopedists, while he affected to despise his own tongue, rejecting every effort towards the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Archilei. Embryo opera of Cavalieri. Peri's "Eurydice." Euterpe. Marthe le Rochois and Lully's operas. Rival queens in London. Steele, in "Tattler." Second pair of rivals, Cuzzoni and Faustina. Master Handel. Germany's earliest queen of song. Frederick the Great and German singers. Mrs. Billington. Haydn and Sir Joshua Reynold's St. Cecilia. Mozart's operas introduced into England. Catalani. Pasta. Sontag. Schroeder-Devrient and Goethe's "Erl King." Malibran a dazzling Meteor. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... the lampreys in the lake of Madue, near Stargard, where to this day they are found in as great perfection as in the lakes of Italy and Switzerland. This peculiarity, however, might be accounted for otherwise than by infernal means, for Frederick the Great was equally successful in introducing the sturgeon of the Wolga into Pomeranian waters, where it is still to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... "Christianity its principal work," and not as "mere establishments preparatory to public life, but be pervaded by the religious spirit." [6] The uniform system of public schools ordered established for Prussia by Frederick the Great, in 1763, were after all little more than religious schools (R. 274), conducted for purposes of both Church and State. As Frederick expressed it, "we find it necessary and wholesome to have a good foundation laid in the schools by a rational and a Christian education of the young ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Paris, as a member of the Academy of Sciences, after he had shown his powers in his native country. His great contemporary, Euler, was a Swiss, transplanted first to St. Petersburg, then invited by Frederick the Great to become a member of the Berlin Academy, then again attracted to St. Petersburg. Huyghens was transplanted from his native country to Paris. Agassiz was an exotic, brought among us from Switzerland, whose activity during the generation he passed among us was as great and effective ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... experience. The parliaments or tribunals were nests of faction and of the deepest social incompetence. The very sword of the state broke short in the king's hand. If the king or queen could either have had the political genius of Frederick the Great, or could have had the good fortune to find a minister with that genius, and the good sense and good faith to trust and stand by him against mobs of aristocrats and mobs of democrats; if the army ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... call John- Bullish. The English are not, in fact, stronger, braver, truer, or better than the other Teutonic races: they never fought better than the Dutch, Prussians, Swedes, etc., have done. For the rest, modify a little: Frederick the Great was brought up on beer-sops (bread boiled in beer), Robert Burns on oatmeal porridge; and Mahomet and the Caliphs conquered ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... company, including Macready and Miss Smithson, which acted Shakespeare in Paris. On his return to London he played Romeo to Fanny Kemble's Juliet (1830). Two of Abbot's melodramas, The Youthful Days of Frederick the Great (1817) and Swedish Patriotism (1819), were produced at Covent Garden. He died in poverty at Baltimore, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the key of his library, was restless and miserable the first day, had a bad headache the second, and was so ill by the third day that the bishop, in alarm, returned the key and let his friend read as much as he liked." Writes Frederick the Great, "My latest passion will be for literature." The poet, Milton, while a child, read and studied until midnight. John Ruskin read at four years of age, was a book-worm at five, and wrote numerous poems and dramas before ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... and cross on a bridge of boats. Next morning my first search was for the picture gallery. We set off at random, and after passing the Church of Our Lady, with its lofty dome of solid stone, which withstood the heaviest bombs during the war with Frederick the Great, came to an open square, one side of which was occupied by an old, brown, red-roofed building, which I at once recognized, from pictures, as the object of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... were gained at a time when her regular revenues were inconsiderable, and when she was in a state of absolute bankruptcy. This is considered by some as a proof that force is independent of revenue, and that Frederick the Great was mistaken in saying, that money was the sinews of war; but this case has been misunderstood as ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... German National faith that Frederick the Great so gloriously began; that Louise fostered and sustained; that the poet Arndt set to hymns; that the great von Humboldt in his own peculiar way saw from afar; that the German students apostrophied; that William III figured to himself in his church-building; ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... when old ones have failed, is the most likely to succeed. It was to this cause, more than to any other, that Napoleon at first owed his success. When he was a young man, it was the custom in Europe to imitate blindly the tactics of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and to rely on ponderous heavy squares and a slow stiff method of moving. Napoleon was the first to see that, however suitable such tactics had been during the time of the great Prussian general, before the development of artillery, they were ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... student days, it has been with me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound volume could ever take its ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Americans owed more perhaps to Baron von Steuben than to any other foreigner. Von Steuben was a German, and had fought under Frederick the Great. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... accordingly abandoned by the raw and undisciplined masses of French soldiers that so successfully defended the French Republic from invasion against the veteran armies of Europe; some of which were led by generals who had served under Frederick the Great. Conscious of their military inferiority to the enemy, they instinctively clustered together in close and heavy columns; then rushed down on the enemy's line with the force of an avalanche, often carrying ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... of how he struggled toward the Schloss, but in the jam of humanity got only as far as the monument of Frederick the Great. There a youth threw his hat in the air and cried: "Hock der Krieg, Hock der Krieg!" (Hurrah ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... in the political history of Europe. Divided into a multitude of tribes, with divergent interests, for centuries they had no political standing and were the football of the nations around them. From Louis XIV to the Corsican invader, except during the reign of Frederick the Great, their history was one of political incohesion and ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... Weeks' War. Already the Germans, under the leadership of Prussia, were making haste toward empire. The activity and energy displayed by the Prussian Government at this juncture were prodigious. It was like the days of Frederick the Great come again. The trouble with Austria had arisen about the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg to the government of Holstein. Bismarck desired that that duchy should be disposed of in one manner, while Austria was ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... and profitless were the days. I could not write, for the ink seemed to dry upon the pen. I could not read with any perseverance, and during the whole month I was locked up, I only completed Carlyle's 'History of Frederick the Great' and Mill's 'Essay on Liberty,' neither of which satisfied my peevish expectations. When at last the sun sank behind the fort upon the hill and twilight marked the end of another wretched day, I used to walk up and down the courtyard looking reflectively at the dirty, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... introduce him to Metastasio; but he cared nothing at that time for any Italian author, and, moreover, had taken a great dislike to the poet, from having seen him make a servile genuflexion to the Empress Maria Theresa in the Imperial Gardens at Schoenbrunn. On entering the dominions of Frederick the Great, he was made extremely indignant by the military despotism that reigned there. When presented to the king he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... and length of the neck and limbs are frequently hereditary, as is also the height of the body. The union of two tall persons engenders tall children. The father of Frederick the Great secured for himself a regiment of men of gigantic stature, by permitting the marriage of his guards only with women of similar height. A tendency to obesity often appears in generation after generation of a family. Yet such cases are within the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... 3: The palace at Potsdam, built by Frederick the Great, the usual residence of the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... calling for some attention includes those translated from the French. These are of two kinds. In the first place there are poems written in French by Germans or Swiss, such as the poems of Frederick the Great, and also the Ranz des Vaches. As to the latter, the French verses are given in two instances together with the translation,[25] so that it is certain what the original was. In other instances no mention is made of the source. Since part of ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... the celebrated palace of Sans Souci and found the room of Frederick the Great as it had been in his lifetime, and guarded by one of his old servants. He then went to the Protestant church which contained the hero's tomb. "The door of the monument was open," says General de Segur. "Napoleon paused at the entrance, in a grave and respectful attitude. He gazed into the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Hapsburg tenacity," and from her mother much good sense and capacity for managing affairs, all of which stood her in good stead. She was especially fortunate in three things: that she lived in the time of Frederick the Great of Prussia, for thus she had given to her a chance to know of what stuff she was made; that she did not marry him, as was proposed by the great Eugene; and that she did not live to see the beautiful head of her daughter, Marie Antoinette, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... yoke. Here the great muscular strength of Peter rendered him great service. He did not hesitate to use a stick upon the highest officials any more than Ivan the Terrible had used his iron-tipped staff. Even Menzikoff was chastized in this manner. Frederick the Great of Prussia did the same afterwards. Nor was this method of punishing without its use. One day when Peter was looking over the accounts of one of his nobles, he proved to him that, whereas the boyard had been robbing the government, ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... which the individual and his wishes and aspirations have been entirely absorbed by the interests of the community as a whole this Prussia dates back to the father of Frederick the Great. Frederick William I was a hard working, parsimonious Prussian sergeant, with a great love for bar-room stories and strong Dutch tobacco, an intense dislike of all frills and feathers, (especially ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... derived his name and his title from the French Huguenot ancestry, who had fled on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His Christian name was taken from his godfather, Frederick the Great, of whom his father was a faithful friend, without compromising his religious principles and practice. Friedrich was born at Brandenburg on February 12, 1777, was educated by good parents at home, served in the Prussian army through ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque |
