"Robespierre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... committee. The star-chamber, tyrannical and odious as it was, never proceeded in such a manner. For centuries there has been nothing like it in any civilized country, except the revolutionary tribunal of France in the days of Robespierre. Now I undertake to state and to prove that should the proceedings of the committee be sanctioned by the House and become a precedent for future times the balance of the Constitution will be entirely upset, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... my child," he said, "let me remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to give an advantage to the Liberals, to those Jesuits of Robespierre's that are doing all they can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do without failing in duty to his house. You would not ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... called Per Duchesne as editor of a journal of that name, a violent revolutionary organ; took part in the September Massacres; brutally insulted the queen at her trial, to the disgust of Robespierre; was arrested by his colleagues, whom he dared to oppose, and guillotined, his widow found weeping, following ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Revolution had taken place; and Paul Jones occupied the position, unusual for him, of a passive spectator of great events. Acquainted with men of all parties, with Bertrand Barere, Carnot, Robespierre, and Danton, as well as with the more conservative men with whom his own past had led him to sympathize,—Lafayette, Mirabeau, and Malesherbes,—Jones's last days were not lacking in picturesque ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... of the paradox of Rousseau and Robespierre (he was giving a course on the French Revolution), the strange and yet inevitable fact that the softest, most sentimental, rose-scented religion ever invented, should have produced, through its ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... beautiful old man, with very courtly manners and snow-white hair, which he wore in a queue. He gave away the whole of a large fortune to the poor. Also an old Mr. Crozier, who had been in France through all the French Revolution, and had known Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier Tinville, &c. I wish that I had betimes noted down all the anecdotes I ever heard from them. There were also two old ladies, own nieces of Benjamin Franklin, who for many years continually took tea with us. One of them, Mrs. Kinsman, presented me with the cotton quilt under ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... any mortal man who has played a part in history: two republics and one monarchy does the world owe to you; and especially grateful should your country be to you. Did you not, in '90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it has ever possessed the greatest hearts, the purest spirits, as well as the most brilliant intellects of the time,—why, it is nothing less than high treason for a Frenchman to turn round and begin to show up the weakness or wickedness of, say, Robespierre. This sort of thing is pardonable only when the exposure of some historical character is offensive to the reigning government, as was the case with the early volumes of Lanfrey's Napoleon. About probably knows the truth about the men of '92 and '93 as well as anybody, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... vast issue of fiat money was the Maximum. As far back as November, 1792, the Terrorist associate of Robespierre, St. Just, in view of the steady rise in prices of the necessaries of life, had proposed a scheme by which these prices should be established by law, at a rate proportionate to the wages of the working classes. This ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... despotism of the Directory and the Consulship could not turn it, until Napoleon united all France under him and all England against him. As late as 1793, such men as James Watt, Jr., and the poet Wordsworth were in Paris, on intimate terms with Robespierre and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... to answer the question, "true" or "not true," according to the dictates of his own conscience: integrity on this point would work his instant downfall. The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions into a fanatic—Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon—these types stand in opposition to the strong, emancipated spirit. But the grandiose attitudes of these sick intellects, these intellectual epileptics, are of influence upon the great masses—fanatics ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... a double hornpipe with Pauline Bonaparte and Madame de Stael; Marshal Soult went down a couple of sets with Madame Recamier; and Robespierre's widow—an excellent, gentle creature, quite unlike her husband—stood up with the Austrian ambassador. Besides, the famous artists Baron Gros, David and Nicholas Poussin, and Canova, who was in town making ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Tories, but that it was forever rid of Republicans and Imperialists. At the accession of Charles X. the word Republican, become a synonym of Jacobin, awoke only memories of the guillotine and the "Terror." A moderate republic seemed but a chimera; only that of Robespierre and Marat was thought of. The eagle was no longer mentioned; and as to the eaglet, he was a prisoner at Vienna. What chance of reigning had the Duke of Reichstadt, that child of thirteen, condemned by all the Powers ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Robespierre, cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit tout ce qu'il dit, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity to family life, to the ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... however, with materials for another libel on the Prussian Monarch, and on the House of Brandenburgh, which he printed in 1796. Ruined by the Revolution which he had so much admired, he was imprisoned under Robespierre, and was near starving under the Directory, having nothing but his literary productions to subsist on. In 1799, Bonaparte made him a legislator, and in 1803, a Counsellor of State,—a place which he resigned last year for that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that he would have his revenge. I saw him again five or six years afterwards at Warsaw, and then I did him a kindness. I heard afterwards that his name was Varnier, but I do not know whether he was identical with the president of the National Convention under the infamous Robespierre. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... tamer. One time, having starved the lions For more than a day, I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus And Leo and Gypsy. Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, And killed me. On entering these regions I met a shadow who cursed me, And said it served me right. . . . It was Robespierre! ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Henri was stabbed by Danton's ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston fought and died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs were broiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate the land. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre's cowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by the mob. Etienne alone is left. But for him and for the honour of my house I too would find a place beside the King and die with him. Etienne is with de la Rochejaquelein ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... solemnity, which distinguished the cause of the American Revolution! Clouds and darkness would not then rest upon the issue as they now do. I own I do not like the comparison. When I contemplate the horrid and systematic massacres of the 2nd and 3rd of September, when I observe that a Marat and a Robespierre, the notorious prompters of those bloody scenes, sit triumphantly in the convention, and take a conspicuous part in its measures—that an attempt to bring the assassins to justice has been obliged to be abandoned—when I see an unfortunate prince, whose reign was a continued demonstration ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... to represent either the revolutionary tyrant or the woman he betrayed. As the staging had been excellent, I enlarged on that side of the subject, but when pressed into a corner by the author, had to acknowledge that in the scene where Robespierre, alone at midnight in the Conciergerie, sees the phantoms of his victims advance from the surrounding shadows and form a menacing circle around him, Irving had used his poor voice with so little skill that there was ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Bastile.) On this date, 110 years ago, the captors of the Bastile marched into this noted hall. Three days later Louis XVI came here in procession from Versailles, followed by a dense mob." Here Robespierre attempted suicide to avoid arrest, when five battalions under Barras forced entrance to assault the Commune party, of which Robespierre was head. Here, in 1848, Louis Blanc proclaimed the institution of the Republic of France. This was ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... Mr. Satan, and turning over several leaves of his notebook, he rattled out the following names: "Alcibiades, kind of statesman; Beau Brummel, fop; Cagliostro, conjurer; Robespierre, politician; Charles Stuart, Pretender; Warwick, King-maker; Borgia, A., Pope; Ditto, C., toxicologist; Wallenstein, mercenary; Bacon, Roger, man of science; Ditto, F., dishonest official; Tell, W., patriot; Jones, Paul, pirate; Lucullus, glutton; Simon Stylites, eccentric; Casanova, loose ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... the French Revolution as I did then, I can't understand how the French nation can be proud of it when one remembers how they butchered their own great men, the leaders of the movement—Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre and the others. My man is Camille Desmoulins. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... of a busy man. If this portrait serves to depict his character, a sketch of this man's dress will bring it still further into relief. Rabourdin wore habitually a blue surcoat, a white cravat, a waistcoat crossed a la Robespierre, black trousers without straps, gray silk stockings and low shoes. Well-shaved, and with his stomach warmed by a cup of coffee, he left home at eight in the morning with the regularity of clock-work, always passing along ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... became the bloody theatre of treacheries and massacres which time will never efface from the memory of mankind, and which, till the merciless reign of Robespierre, were unexampled in the history of this country. I mean the horrors of St. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in the Bible, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Ben, in France; by the English Government in the East Indies; or by any other assassin in modern times. Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done? Are we sure ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... impossible. It is because the State checks the manifestation of his will that a man very seldom sees the whole abomination of his nature in the mirror of his deeds. Or does the reader actually suppose there are no people in the world as bad as Robespierre, Napoleon, or other murderers? Does he fail to see that there are many who would act like ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... no sympathy with the Romantic school will not excite surprise. Lamennais and Victor Hugo she stigmatizes as decousus of the worst kind, and places them in the same rank as Robespierre. The genius of Victor Hugo, so vast, so elevated, and so profound, she could not understand; she could see only its irregularities, like a certain "aesthete" who, when contemplating the water-floods of Niagara, directed his ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... escaped the honor of a Democratic martyr in Connecticut, denounced slave-holding, in common with other forms of oppression. Barlow, fresh from communion with Gregoire, Brissot, and Robespierre, devoted to negro slavery some of the most vigorous and truthful lines of his great poem. Eaton, returning from his romantic achievements in Tunis for the deliverance of white slaves, improved the occasion ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in purple rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch in his hand,'" Madigan began again, all the ardor gone from his voice. "'This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the Robespierre of the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... that a great portion of this upper town is supported upon catacombs or caves from which the white stone of the belfry and town-hall was quarried. It is a curious feeling to be shown the house in which Robespierre was born, which, for the benefit of the curious it may be stated, is to be found in the Rue des Rapporteurs, close to the theatre. Arras was a famous Jacobin centre, and from the balcony of this theatre, Lebon, one of the Jacobins, directed the executions, which took place abundantly ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... it at present. The Assembly was thrown into violent agitation by a speech from M. Dufraisse, one of the most able and earnest of the Montagnards, who delivered a speech which would not have been misplaced in the mouth of Robespierre or Danton. "The pale head, compressed lips, and intense expression of the young lawyer of the Mountain," says an eyewitness, "reminded the auditors, not without a shudder, of such a thoroughbred Jacobin as St. Just." He declared that the laws ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to a "supernal influence" as requisite to constitute any one a minister—a knowledge of Christianity, and endowment, and a parish;' and as for the rest of the gentlemen named, they are just preparing to do, in an 'ecclesiastical way in Edinburgh, what Robespierre, Marat, and others did in a corporal way in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which their commanding officer, after an unavailing attempt to look serious—I should rather write fierce joined, and there he was, the bloody Davoust—Duke of Auerstad Prince of Eckmuhl—the Hamburgh Robespierre—the terrible Davoust—dancing all around the room, in a regular guffaw, like to split his sides. The heated stove had made his sword, which rested on it, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... age of 34, was member for the Manche. The writers in the journal are Louis Jourdan, formerly a St. Simonian; Pierre Bernard, who was secretary to Armand Carrel; Hippolite Lamarche, an ex-cavalry captain; Auguste Jullien (son of Jullien de Paris, one of the commissaries of Robespierre); and others whom ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... he wrote, "unnecessary for me to look out for motives to justify my refusal. I have an aversion to political popular societies in general. To destroy an established power, they are undoubtedly an efficacious instrument, but in their nature they are fit for nothing else. The reign of Robespierre has shown what use they make of power when they ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... always said to me: "I am sure that he was one of the Terrorists. I sometimes fancy that I remember seeing him in 1793. Besides, he has all the ways and ideas of M——, who terrorised Lannion and kept the guillotine in constant play there during the time that Robespierre had the upper hand." Fifteen or twenty years ago, I read the following paragraph ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... New Idea. Revolution defined. Revolutions the Results of Printing. Bossuet's Warnings. Rousseau. Fenelon. Voltaire. The Philosophers of France. Louis XVI. The King's Ministers. The Queen. Her Conduct and Plans. The National Assembly. Maury. Cazales. Barnave and the Lameths. Rival Champions. Robespierre. His Personal Appearance. Revolutionary Leaders. State of the Kingdom. Jacobin Club. Effects of the Clubs. Club of the Cordeliers. La Fayette. His Popularity. Characters of the Leaders. What the Revolution might ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... immediately threw herself into the whirlwind of popular enthusiasm. Her house became the centre of an advanced political group, which met there four times a week to discuss state questions. There Danton, Robespierre, Petion, Condorcet, Buzot, and others were seen. She ably aided her husband in all his work as commissioner to the National Assembly. She was indefatigable in penning stirring letters and petitions to the Jacobin societies in the different departments. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... filial partiality from early associations (always excepting, however, the three lead-mines of the Eton grammar, 'Propria quae maribus,' &c. of which it is not extravagant to say, that the author, though possibly a good sort of a man in his way, has undoubtedly caused more human suffering than Nero, Robespierre, or any other enemy of the human race). Our opposition is to the general principle, which lies at the root of such treatises as the three we have been considering: it will be observed that, making a proper allowance for the smallness of the print, these three bodies of absurd anticipations ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of Diogenes Teufelsdroch is readily annotated by history. There are garments that have earned an immortality of fame. Such an one is the sky-blue coat which Robespierre wore at the height of his power when he celebrated the festival of the Supreme Being, and in the depths of his degradation when a few days later he was carried to his death. Such an one is the gala coat of flowered Manchester ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... for even in what appeared to be the most rationalistic epoch—that of the Revolution—the "Cult of Reason" was founded, to be succeeded by the "Religion of the Supreme Being" introduced by Robespierre. And what numbers of new sects and religions can be recorded ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... words gave tiny comfort to the elder girl as he bade his adieux in the parlor of the respectable lodging house he had found for her—the same caravansary (had they but known it) that housed the then obscure Maximilien Robespierre. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... contrasts—laughter amid mourning, rioting and wantonness amid judgments and executions; dancing and music at the hour of death. Such was the frivolity of the days of Nero; such was the mirth of the "death-dance" in the days of Robespierre. Nothing like this sickly and appalling joy could be seen in the times of Elizabeth. There were masques and balls and tournaments at the court, and gay revels as the stately Queen went from castle to castle, and palace to palace, in her visits to her princely subjects. But such ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Robespierre had come into power by undoing Danton. Danton had helped lug in the Revolution, but when he touched a match to the hay he did not really mean to start a conflagration, only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... the other sex, well-dressed, elderly, and sedate persons. Their discourse turned upon political topics, with which, as you know, I have but slight acquaintance. They talked of fleets and armies, of Robespierre and Pitt, of whom I had ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... off hall. Therefore he must pay eighteen pence for dinner, even though he had not eaten it. Also there lay somewhat heavily on his mind the fact that at ten the next morning he must read to his tutor an essay on "Danton and Robespierre," an essay as yet unwritten. That would mean a very early rising and an uncomfortable chilly session in the college library, a dismal place in the forenoon. Never mind, first came a jolly evening with the Scorpions. The meetings were always fun, and this one, coming after the separation of a ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... and amidst the plaudits for the good King's condescension, how was my heart lacerated to hear Robespierre denounce three of the most distinguished of the members, who had requested my attendance, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... at the Hotel de Ville, The mob pelted the National Guard. The National Guard, too much exasperated and alarmed to obey La Fayette's order to fire over the people's heads, at one volley shot down a hundred of the rioters. The Jacobin leaders fled in alarm. Robespierre, who had been one of the chief organizers of the tumult, being also one of the basest of cowards, was the most terrified of all, and fled for shelter to his admirer, of congenial spirit, Madame Roland, whose protection ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... published April 11, 1821—an undivine comedy, in which the apotheosis of George III., the beatification of the virtuous, and the bale and damnation of such egregious spirits as Robespierre, Wilkes, and Junius, are "thrown upon the screen" of the showman or lecturer. Southey said that the "Vision" ought to be read aloud, and, if the subject could be forgotten and ignored, the hexameters might not sound amiss, but the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... measure would not answer their purpose—Mobs never talk of any authority except that of the sovereign people—To the sovereign people they go, and to the sovereign people they appeal till a sovereign people are cruelly insulted, cajoled and enslaved. Marat, Robespierre and Bonaparte told the sovereign people that they were all in all till they had robbed them of their dearest interests, and enchained them in despotism, and they now mock them with such declarations as these,* "The perfectability of human nature, the worst disease of man"-"the ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... Revolution onwards has always been directed against literature, art, and science, and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers over the intelligentsia? "Writers must be proscribed as the most dangerous enemies of the people," said Robespierre; his colleague Dumas said all clever men should be guillotined. "The system of persecution against men of talents was organized.... They cried out in the sections of Paris, 'Beware of that man for he has written ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... fact, comment and illumination. St. Luc was one of the few French noblemen to foresee the great Revolution in his country, and, while he mourned its excesses, he knew that much of it was justified. His patriotism and courage were so high and so obvious that neither Danton, Marat nor Robespierre dared to attack him. As an old man he supported Napoleon ardently until the empire and the ambitions of the emperor became too swollen, and, while he mourned Waterloo, he told his son, General Robert Lennox de St. Luc, ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... you of sand fiercely blown against the window panes, the President and the Senate chanted the immortal Yankee Doodle, whilst the House delivered itself of the Marseillaise, in a style which even the wildest Jacobins in Robespierre's day ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... belongs to lawyers who know the hidden places of the law. His sly little head was well-brushed, his chin well-shaved, which gave him a mincing though frigid look, that made him seem agreeable in the style of Robespierre. Certainly he would make a fine attorney-general, endowed with elastic, mischievous, and even murderous eloquence, or an orator of the shrewd type of Benjamin Constant. The bitterness and the hatred which formerly actuated him ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... the making of you. Even a prophet needs relaxation. She is yours, body and soul. One can tell it with every sentence she speaks. And she is for the cause," he concluded with a graver note in his tone. "She has found the fire somewhere. There were women like her who held Robespierre's hand." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from the Gracchi to him were as those which had to be made from the Girondists to Napoleon. Catiline, no doubt, was one of the steps, as were Danton and Robespierre steps. The continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few men in power. But as Robespierre was vile and low, whereas Vergniaud was honest and Napoleon great, so was it with Catiline between the Gracchi and Caesar. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... greatest intellects of the day are all in a state of inner ferment. Every individual of significance is just as divided against himself as humanity on the whole. I refer, of course, only to the leading European races. I embody the Pope and Luther, William II and Robespierre, Bismarck and Bebel, the spirit of the American millionaire and the enthusiasm for poverty that was the glory of St. Francis of Assisi. I am the maddest progressive of my time and the maddest reactionary. I despise Americanism, and yet I see in the great American ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Dumas' play Catiline is presented merely as a demagogue; he is the red Flag personified, and the political situation in France is discussed under a slight veil of Roman history. Catiline is simply a sort of Robespierre brought up to date. There is no trace of all this ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the phenomenon that the bourgeoisie is most pious wherever the power of the State is laxest. Next to the United States, come England, Belgium and Switzerland in this matter. Even the revolutionary Robespierre, who played with the heads of aristocrats and priests as with nine-pin balls, was, as is known, very religious, whence he ceremoniously introduced the "Supreme Being," which shortly before had, with equal bad taste, been dethroned by the Convention. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... at Arras looks, I should say, precisely as it did in Robespierre's time. The furniture certainly belongs to that epoch, sanitary arrangements have made little advance, and the bare staircases and floors do not appear as if they had been well swept, much less scoured, since ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the spirit of prophecy compared the French revolution to Saturn, since it was about to devour successively all its children, and finally to establish despotism with its attendant calamities. The rivalship of the Mountain in the Convention, the unsuccessful attack on Robespierre, the trial and condemnation of Louis XVI., the defection of Dumourier and its consequences, had doubtless roused the mind of the fervent but unsuccessful orator to the highest efforts which the decline of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... formless mob of human beings, wearing red caps and seemingly insane, who all blindly follow ruffians who are also rhetoricians; some of whom die repentant and others unrepentant towards the end of the fourth act. The leaders of this boiling mass of all men melted into one are called Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and so on. And it is conceded that their united frenzy may have been forced on them by the evils of the ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... taking his degree; and presently we find him with the youthful Southey,—a kindred spirit, who had been fired to wild enthusiasm by the French Revolution,—founding his famous Pantisocracy for the regeneration of human society. "The Fall of Robespierre," a poem composed by the two enthusiasts, is full of the new revolutionary spirit. The Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna, was to be an ideal community, in which the citizens combined farming and literature; and work was to be limited to two hours ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Junction, I had the pleasure of waiting at a small country inn until midnight for a freight train. This was indeed dreary, but, having Mrs. Child's sketches of Mmes. De Stael and Roland at hand, I read of Napoleon's persecutions of the one and Robespierre's of the other, until, by comparison, my condition was tolerable, and the little meagerly furnished room, with its dull fire and dim lamp, seemed a paradise compared with years of exile from one's native land or the prison cell and guillotine. How small our ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... reviews, mainly to his "Invasion of the Crimea." In the "Edinburgh" I think he never wrote, cordially disliking its then editor. A fine notice in "Blackwood" of Madame de Lafayette's life was from his pen. Surveying the Revolutionary Terror, he points out that Robespierre's opponents were in numbers overwhelmingly strong, but lacked cohesion and leaders; while the Mountain, dominated by a single will, was legally armed with power to kill, and went on killing. The Church played into ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... was an appeal to the people to overturn the laws. It was like assembling the citizens of London to override the Parliament. It was like the French revolution, when the Assembly was dictated to by the clubs. Robespierre may have been sincere and patriotic, but he was a fanatic, fierce and uncompromising. So was Gracchus. In setting aside his colleagues, to accomplish what he deemed a good end, he did evil. When this rich patrician collected ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... homage, where homage most is due— Now glory be to DANTON, and to his valiant crew— And glory to those mighty shades, who never stoop'd to spare, The virtuous regicides of France, and the hero, ROBESPIERRE. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... only where man has left his trace," which makes property dependent upon the solidity of the elements; Rousseau, the apostle of liberty and equality, but who, according to M. Wolowski, attacked property only AS A JOKE, and in order to point a paradox; Robespierre, who prohibited a division of the land, because he regarded such a measure as a rejuvenescence of property, and who, while awaiting the definitive organization of the republic, placed all property in the care?? of the people,—that is, transferred the right of eminent domain ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... to carry out this order was a man such as those whom Louis XI. had employed fifty years earlier to destroy the feudal system, and Robespierre one hundred and fifty years later to destroy the aristocracy. Every woodman needs an axe, every reaper a sickle, and Richelieu found the instrument he required in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... has recently published a careful and interesting volume on the famous events which ended in the overthrow of Robespierre and the close of the Reign of Terror.[1] These events are known in the historic calendar as the Revolution of Thermidor in the Year II. After the fall of the monarchy, the Convention decided that the year should begin with the autumnal equinox, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... so witty, rough, kind, and upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, natural civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no district visitor—no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all refinement whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. Readers who have approached the "Vicomte," not across country, but by the legitimate, five-volumed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 1791-92, written in defense of the French Revolution. He {378} was one of the two foreigners who sat in the Convention; but falling under suspicion during the days of the terror, he was committed to the prison of the Luxembourg and only released upon the fall of Robespierre July 27, 1794. While in prison he wrote a portion of his best known work, the Age of Reason. This appeared in two parts in 1794 and 1795, the manuscript of the first part having been intrusted to ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... unbelievable garments, who began to appear in the garden of the Tuileries with knives in their sleeves and cudgels in their hands, about April, 1794, and whose dash and recklessness in many matters were the first intimations that the Citizen Tallien was about to cause the Citizen Robespierre to ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... not of death but of immortality, originates and preserves religions. In the midst of the delirium of destruction, Robespierre induced the Convention to declare the existence of the Supreme Being and "the consolatory principle of the immortality of the soul," the Incorruptible being dismayed at the idea of having himself one day ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... efforts. The bonds of society in France were, in truth, loosened, and no human skill could restore them: the bridle had been taken from the mouth of the fiery steed, and no human arm could arrest his headlong course. Marat, Danton, and Robespierre-men of blood—with others of the same stamp, had already made their execrable names known in the clubs of the Cordeliers and Jacobins, which finally united, and these were the men who were, for a brief period, to rule ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Charlemagne or something before that. So it was annoying for them to have had their heads chopped off and to be obliged to live in Dublin on nothing a year. The grandmother of grandmamma, Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt, after whom I am called, was a famous character. She was so good-looking that Robespierre offered to let her retain her head if she would give him a kiss, but she preferred to drive to the guillotine in the cart with her friends, only she took a rose to keep off the smell of the common people, and, they say, ran up the steps smiling. Grandmamma has her miniature, ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... and intemperance of individuals! Who will assert that, had the populace of Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table of vegetable nature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to the proscription-list of Robespierre? Could a set of men, whose passions were not perverted by unnatural stimuli, look with coolness on an auto da fe? Is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from his meal of roots, would take delight ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of the people. In 1793, while famine ravaged France and crippled the Revolution; whilst the people were reduced to the depths of misery, although the Champs Elysees were lined with luxurious carriages where women displayed their jewels and splendour, Robespierre was urging the Jacobins to discuss his treatise on the English Constitution. While the worker was suffering in 1848 from the general stoppage of trade, the Provisional Government and the National Assembly were wrangling over military pensions and ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... is over. You think so? Robespierre thought the Revolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... perils of the Brandywine and Monmouth, the long winter encampment, and the wearisome summer march; the man whom Napoleon had tried all the fascinations of his art upon, and failed to lure him from his devotion to the cause of freedom; whom Marat and Robespierre had marked out for destruction, and kings and emperors leagued against in hatred and fear. It was more like a dream than a reality, and for the first twenty minutes I was almost afraid to stir for fear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... know what you mean. There is a kind of pity for the people now in vogue which is most effeminate. It is a sugared sort of Robespierre talk about "The poor but virtuous People." To address such stuff to the people is not to give them anything, but to take away what they have. Suppose you could give them oceans of tea and mountains of sugar, and abundance of any luxury that you ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... gourmands, in the fatherland of Very, of Vefour, and of Careme? This latter would certainly have thrown himself, like Vatel, on his sword, as a Brutus of cookery and as the last gastronome. Indeed, had Robespierre only introduced Spartan cookery, the guillotine would have been quite superfluous, for then the last aristocrats would have died of terror, or emigrated as soon as possible. Poor Robespierre! you would introduce stern republicanism to Paris—to a city in which one hundred ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... were closed, but the Catholic and Protestant worship entirely forbidden; and, after the constitution of 1795, it was at the hazard of one's life that either the mass was heard, or any religious duty performed. It is evident that Robespierre, who unquestionably had a design which is now generally understood, was desirous, on the day of the fete of the Supreme Being, to bring back public opinion to the worship of the Deity. Eight months before, we had seen the Bishop of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... leaders were impregnated with the metaphysical ideas of rights which had come to them from the rising revolutionary school in France. Burke no more adopted the doctrines of Jefferson in 1776 than he adopted the doctrines of Robespierre in 1793. He says nothing about men being born free and equal, and on the other hand he never denies the position of the court and the country at large, that the home legislature, being sovereign, had the right to tax the colonies. What he does say is that the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the mouth? For the corners ARE cruel. Some day, I will show you them. Cut off the long hair, shave the grizzled moustache—and what then will remain?" She drew a profile hastily. "Just that," and she showed it me. 'Twas a face like Robespierre's, grown harder and older and lined with observation. I recognised that it was in fact the essence ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the course of this National Assembly in steadily gathering unexpected power to itself has reminded me of the old States-General in France in the days just before the Revolution, and I could not help looking for Danton and Robespierre among the fiery orators in gown and queue on this occasion. Significantly, too, I now hear on the authority of an eminent scholar that Carlyle's great masterpiece is the most popular work of historical literature ever translated into ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification, must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand, and a recklessness of people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... gait and a sidelong glance which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss of Vermissa felt towards him something of the repulsion and fear which the huge Danton may have felt for the puny but dangerous Robespierre. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Chevalier de Faublas, a romance of a loose character by Jean Baptiste Louvet de Couvray, b. 1760, d. 1797, famous for his bold oration denouncing Robespierre, Marat and Danton.] ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... person who has hitherto written about him; and the writer who makes this remark, himself describes the affair incorrectly and vaguely. Others have attributed Bonaparte's misfortune to a military discussion on war, and his connection with Robespierre the younger. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... liberty there is none. The counter-revolution was involuntarily liberal, in the same manner as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary. On the 18th of June, 1815, the mounted Robespierre was hurled ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people. If Miss Minchin knew everything on earth and was like what she is now, she'd still be a detestable thing, and everybody would hate her. Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked. Look at Robespierre—" ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ROBESPIERRE, a French politician who had the opportunity of doing to his enemies what most politicians would like to do to theirs. Was finally voted out ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... and its sequel; nay, almost as good as two of Mr. Farley's pantomime scenes at Christmas. "The Miller's Daughter," a tale of the French Revolution, which follows, is hardly so fit: even the mention of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror chills one's blood. "The Sights of London," is a string of "City Scenes" in verse; and "May Maxwell," and "The Broken Pitcher," are pretty ballads, by the Howitts. We are not half through the book, and can only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... crowded with French exiles, escaped from the devouring sword of Robespierre and his helpers in the work of government by the guillotine, almost all of whom claimed to be members of, or closely connected with, the ancient nobility of France. Among these was an elderly gentleman of the name of De Tourville, who, with his daughter Eugenie, had for a considerable time occupied ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... reflected the black mahogany furniture. In answer to Owen, who lamented that Evelyn was sacrificing everything for an idea, Harding spoke, and with his usual conscious exaltation, of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish Inquisition, and then Robespierre seemed to him the most striking example of what men will do for an idea. He mentioned a portrait by Greuze in which Robespierre appears as a beautiful young man. "Such a face," he said, "as we might imagine for a lover or a poet, a sort of Lucien de Rubempre, but in ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... it was earnestly to be hoped that the 'old assassin' M. Thiers would soon be disposed of; that all men of heart were earnestly demanding more blood, and that blood must be given them. I also learned that the Commune would erect a statue to Robespierre out of the statues of kings, which were to be melted down for that purpose. In the Rue Saint-Honore I met a lady whom I knew, returning from the flower-market with flowers in her hands. 'Then no one,' I ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Liberty lends itself to strange hypocrisies when the torrent of his imaginative passion breaks upon the jagged rocks of reality. That is why—from Robespierre down to very modern persons—the eloquent use of such vague generalisations as Justice, Virtue, Simplicity, Nature, Humanity, Reason, excites profound suspicion in the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of the man decides the style of his penmanship. Lord Byron's autograph was as reckless as its author. George Washington's signature was a reflection of his dignity. The handwriting of Samuel Rogers was as smooth as his own nature. Robespierre's fierce-looking autograph seems to have been written with the dagger of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... account of their treacherous and unprincipled conduct. It was from here that "La Cour de Coblentz," as it was called, intrigued by turns with the Jacobins and the Brissotins and, by betraying the latter to the former, were in part the cause of the sanguinary measures adopted by Robespierre.[27] The object of this atrocious policy was that the French people would, by witnessing so many executions, become disgusted at the sanguinary tyranny of Robespierre and recall the Bourbons unconditionally; which, fortunately for France ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest interests, social, national, international. The blood wherewith she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune, was exposed in the public sight ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... Cap Francais on the 30th of June, and the tidings presently spread. At first, no one believed them but the mulattoes. When it was no longer possible to doubt—when the words of Robespierre passed from mouth to mouth, till even the nuns told them to one another in the convent garden—"Perish the colonies, rather than sacrifice one iota of our principles!" the whites trampled the national cockade under their feet in the streets, countermanded their orders ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Robespierre and Danton both had commended Bibot for his zeal and Bibot was proud of the fact that he on his own initiative had sent at least fifty ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... said Silverbridge, "but where should we have been if there had been no Liberals? Robespierre and his pals cut off a lot of heads, but Louis XIV and Louis XV locked up more in prison." And so he had the last ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... long, dry, unsympathetic, but sound and, I think, in its dry way, interesting. Next I shall finish the story, and then perhaps Thoreau. Meredith has been staying with Morley, has been cracking me up, he writes, to that literary Robespierre; and he (the L. R.) is about, it is believed, to write to me on a literary scheme. Is it Keats, hope you? My heart leaps at the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made the Revolution and changed conditions in France? It was not poverty. Not a single poor man was a leader in that Revolution. Every one of them was well fed, had a well- nourished brain—Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins, Mirabeau—every one a well-fed brain in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... massacre, of the dominance of those wild-beast passions which civilization seeks to subdue in man, that we may well be spared the telling. As with the fall of the Bastille began the long dominion of the populace, so with the fall of Robespierre it ended, and civil order returned to unhappy France. We have told the story of the one; we shall conclude with ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... religion was to incur the suspicion of disaffection. It was not without imminent danger that the priest baptized the infant, joined the hands of lovers, or listened to the confession of the dying. The absurd worship of the Goddess of Reason was, indeed, of short duration; but the deism of Robespierre and Lepaux was not less hostile to the Catholic faith than the atheism ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... right. In such subjects I certainly was not interested. Since I had entered the university, I had become as much of a republican as Baburin himself. Of Mirabeau, of Robespierre, I would have talked with zest. Robespierre, indeed ... why, I had hanging over my writing-table the lithographed portraits of Fouquier-Tinville and Chalier! But ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... an accomplice in inaugurating a reign of terror. The connection which under any form of Home Rule would bind together the parts of the present United Kingdom would be, it may be suggested, a guarantee against the supremacy of an Irish Robespierre or Danton. Granted: but if so, Home Rule would restrain an Irish revolution. The strongest, in other words the most reckless leaders, would be prevented from coming to the front. Ireland would not follow ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... atheist,—a very polished atheist, too, with a most charming reliance on his own infallibility. His wife writes novels which have a SLIGHT leaning toward Zolaism,—she is an extremely witty woman sarcastic, and cold-blooded enough to be a female Robespierre, yet, on the whole, amusing as a study of what curious nondescript forms the feminine nature can adopt unto itself, if it chooses. She has an immense respect for GENIUS,—mind, I say genius advisedly, because she really is one of those rare few who cannot endure mediocrity. Everything at her house ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 1813? No; for photography was not then invented. But possibly it's a photograph copied from an engraving? Here are Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette reproduced in the same way: that doesn't prove that Robespierre had them resuscitated. Anyhow, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... avenues, and the outer walls by which the chateau itself is sheltered measuring seven hundred by four hundred feet. Though parts of it are habitable and inhabited, Kerjaen is partly ruinous, but its ruin was not due to violence. It was due to an accidental fire which took place when Robespierre was still in his cradle and even in his dreams was "guiltless of his country's blood." Coming, as I did, fresh from the New World, there was for me in Brittany something ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock |
