"Overruling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terrified at the spectacle. Creusa, however, endeavored to calm and quiet him by soothing words. "My dearest husband," said she, "do not give way thus to anxiety and grief. The events which have befallen us, have not come by chance. They are all ordered by an overruling providence that is omnipotent and divine. It was predetermined by the decrees of heaven that you were not to take me with you in your flight. I have learned what your future destiny is to be. There is a long period of weary wandering before ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... mission of pure humanity, and the other in calm pursuance of the objects he had proposed to himself to accomplish; and with "three companions," place himself at the mercy of such circumstances, regardless of the danger, and relying on the overruling Providence in which he trusted, to bring him safely through all his difficulties ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Philistines, nor Marcus Aurelius when fighting barbarians on the frozen Danube. The perils and vicissitudes of war, with the momentous interests involved, made Lincoln shine, amid all his jokes, a firm believer in the overruling power that Napoleon failed to see. And so of Washington: he was a better man and firmer Christian from the responsibilities that were thrust upon him. Not so with Frederic the Great, and the marshals of Louis XIV., with the exception ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... between you; I cannot omitt my earnest prayers vnto God to deliver you from such a temptation. Hee that goes to warre must patiently submitt vnto the various accidents thereof. To bee made prisoner by an vnequall and overruling power, after a due resistance, is no disparagement; butt upon a carelesse surprizall or faynt opposition; and you have so good a memorie that you cannot forgett many examples thereof, even of the worthiest commanders in your beloved Plutark. God hath given you a stout, butt a generous ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... heavenly Father, and how sensibly do I realize his benevolence, kindness, and mercy in the whole moral and blessed economy of his equitable and infinitely wise government! On no object do I cast my eyes without observing an affecting instance of a benevolent and overruling power; and, while in mental contemplations my mind is absorbed, my admiration rises still higher to the exalted purposes and designs of Almighty God. I behold in the soul noble faculties, superior powers of imagination, and capacious desires, unfilled by anything terrestrial, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... such as a stranger would certainly overlook? I cannot entertain a proposition of any kind looking to its ultimate purchase until I know that this has been done, anxious as I am to have this matter definitely concluded. I had thought to die here. But it has been otherwise ordered by an overruling and all-wise Providence." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... stop the flow of blood. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, brooding over the singular and mournful lot to which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole scale or circle of belief and unbelief, from faith in the overruling providence of God, to the blackest atheism, I again took up my journey toward St. Michael's, more weary and sad than in the morning when I left Thomas Auld's for the home of Mr. Covey. I was bare-footed and bare-headed, and in{177} my shirt sleeves. The ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... of an overruling Providence Horace had expressly rejected in the Satires (Sat. iv, 101), holding that the gods are too happy and too careless in their superior aloof security to plague themselves with the affairs of mortals. But he felt sometimes, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... is in man a primordial and overruling phenomenon which defies analysis. Man may be dissected completely; the elements of Will and Mind may perhaps be found; but there still will remain beyond apprehension the x against which I once used to struggle. That x is the Word, the Logos, whose communication ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... which seemed to be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But the Queen had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possible way; she had simply traded her identity for another one, and had rationalized a single, overruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth I of England, still alive and wrongfully deprived of ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... over-rash individuals, his marvelous gift of keeping in touch with the people, form a group of qualities which, united in the President of the United States at that mortal juncture, are as strong evidence as anything which this generation has seen to corroborate a faith in an overruling Providence. Conceive what might have happened if it had been some other of our presidents who had happened to have his term begin in 1861! Yet, after all the study that can be made of him, there are unexplainable elements ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... influence, by which all may profit if they will do so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by man and the works of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... days—during which time Joan attended Kells as faithfully as if she were indeed his wife—he thought that he had gained sufficiently to undertake the journey to the main camp, Cabin Gulch. He was eager to get back there and imperious in his overruling of any opposition. The men could take turns at propping him in a saddle. So on the morning of the fourth day ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... this call as you have done in days that are past, and, with the blessing of a kind and overruling Providence, the enemy shall be driven from your soil. The security of your wives and daughters from the insults and outrages of a brutal foe shall be established soon, and be followed by a permanent and honorable peace. The claims of home and country, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of African descent, and his ancestors were sold as slaves, and as these facts are not inconsistent with his citizenship of the United States, and his residence in the State of Missouri, the plea to the jurisdiction was bad, and the judgment of the Circuit Court overruling it was correct. ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... and devastation in its path, is no less a proof of a wise and overruling Providence than the gentler phenomena of nature, which, with such constant and unvarying regularity, refresh and bless the earth. It cleanses the atmosphere, and sweeps away the poisonous miasmata, which have been engendered during a period of quiescence, and which must, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... must have degraded the gods, (and have made them instruments of degradation for man,) that they were, one and all, incarnations; not, as even the Christian God is, for a transitory moment and for an eternal purpose; but essentially and by overruling necessity. The Greeks could not conceive of spirituality. Neither can we, metaphysically, assign the conditions of the spiritual; but, practically, we all feel and represent to our own minds the agencies of God, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... against all Roman Catholics and Nonconformists, and dispensed with oaths and tests established by the law. This was a stretch of the king's prerogative that produced results immediately welcome to the Nonconformists, who sent up addresses of thanks. Defoe saw clearly that a king who is thanked for overruling an unwelcome law has the whole point conceded to him of right to overrule the law. In that sense he wrote, "A Letter containing some Reflections on His Majesty's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience," to warn the Nonconformists of the great mistake into which some were falling. "Was ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... and laws which govern in the realm of matter. Physical analogies are not a literal image of what takes place in the sphere of intelligence and freedom. Moral evil, wherever it is a factor in history, has its origin in the will of man. In respect to it, the agency of God is permissive and overruling. Through his providence, order is made to emerge, a worthy goal is at last reached, despite the elements of disorder introduced ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... chokes him. Air is the native element of the bird. Away from air it gasps and dies. Water is the native element of the fish. Out of water it chokes and gasps and dies. Trust is the native element of friendship—friendship with God. A constant feeling of confidence in GOD that believes in His overruling power, and in His unfailing love, and rests in Him in the darkness when the thing you prize most is lying ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... With the strict observance of this rule and the other injunctions of the Constitution, with a sedulous inculcation of that respect and love for the Union of the States which our fathers cherished and enjoined upon their children, and with the aid of that overruling Providence which has so long and so kindly guarded our liberties and institutions, we may reasonably expect to transmit them, with their innumerable blessings, to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... at heart an anti-slavery man. He wished in his heavy but wholly patriotic way as heartily as Lincoln wished that all men might enjoy the blessings of freedom. Jefferson was almost radical on the question. Though he did not heartily believe in an overruling Providence, he felt the need of one when he considered the afflictive system of slavery with which his State and country were encumbered. He said that considering it he trembled when he remembered ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... heavy heart, yet with that confidence in an overruling Providence which never forsakes a good and brave man, Peveril betook himself to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... quite as necessary to have some inkling of the line likely to be taken by supernatural agencies able, and possibly willing, to suspend or reverse that course. Indeed, logically developed, the dualistic theory must needs end in almost exclusive attention to Supernature, and in trust that its overruling strength will be exerted in favour of those who stand well with its denizens. On the other hand, the lessons of the great schoolmaster, experience, have hardly seemed to accord with this conclusion. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... some members of the minority were persecuted to death, in dying for the truth they would have left behind them their doctrine, sanctified by the blood of their martyrdom. Peace, then, to all who seek peace, and may overruling love be the imperishable heritage of every soul who obeys willingly ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... however familiar nominally, and however much derived from material suggestions, are yet in all their motions obedient to an alien centre as opposite as is possible to the ordinary centre about which the mere mechanism of life revolves. We should therefore expect beforehand in De Quincey an overruling tendency towards this remote architecture of dreams. The careful reader of his "Autobiographic Sketches" will remember, that, at the early age of seven, and before he knew of even the existence of opium, the least material hint which bordered on the shadowy was sufficient ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... faith in an overruling Power and in a life beyond the grave. They offered human sacrifices to that Power, and when they buried one of their warriors, they buried his spear with him so that he might fight as good a battle in the next world as he had fought ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... by an overruling Prov- idence; and finally decided to stay contentedly through her period of service, which would ex- pire when she was eighteen years ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... the midst of perplexity, a way of relief is suddenly opened. A lucky suggestion, sent, perhaps, by an overruling Providence, provides a path of escape from some menacing evil. This happened in ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... from the world and the flesh and the miseries which appertained to them, as one suffocating might thirst for air. He realized suddenly himself, stifling and agonizing, behind a window which he had no need to wait for an overruling Providence to open, which was not too heavy for his own mortal strength, which he could open himself. He realized that whatever lay outside was outside; it was air outside this air, misery outside this particular phase which was driving him mad. His imagination dwelling upon the different ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her, else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance. It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling plenitude of its power. She is never to intrude into the place of the others while they are equal to the common ends of their institution. But in order to enable Parliament to answer all these ends of provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... a dream—almost too good to be true. Every man with the heart of a farmer within him was at the plough-handles, and making the most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old horse would desist from twisting his head backward ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... human figure of the image sets forth all these kingdoms as being purely the work of men. Not that the overruling divine providence is ignored, but that the play of human passions, the lust of conquest and the like, and the use of human means, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a great purpose in our coming here, Mammy. He says he believes that the Lord is overruling our defeat, and that the driving us out from our homes and scattering us abroad will be the means of extending King George's sway, and raising up a great ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... for his misconduct in the East, but soon Master of the cattle-ship FALCON on her Virginia voyage; whom we greet next—and best—as Admiral of the Pilgrim fleet, commander of the destiny freighted MAY-FLOWER, and though a conspirator with nobles against the devoted band he steered, under the overruling hand of their Lord God, their unwitting pilot to "imperial labors" and mighty honors, to the founding of empire, and to eternal Peace; whom we next meet—fallen, "like Lucifer, never to hope again" —as Captain of the little buccaneer,—the DISCOVERY, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... source of strength. He was valiant by nature, and he had implicit faith in God's overruling providence. He felt specially under the divine care now, and resolutely putting away all thoughts of personal danger, addressed himself, mind and body, to the one thing—the relief of Johnston from his ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... him. His action was exasperating, but later I realized that he had done me a great favor when he interposed his judgment between my red-hot mentality and the cool minds of the workaday world. Yet this interference with what I deemed my rights proved to be the first step in the general overruling of them by tactless attendants and, in particular, by a certain ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... indispensable to the unimpeded fulfilment of its functions, as a coordinate branch of the supreme power and controlling authority of the State. In its very danger and extravagance consisted its supremacy; for it showed that it was only admitted from its overruling and overmastering necessity. And as the Parliament was recognised in Ireland in all things else we thought it would be absurd to deny it functions indispensable ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... angry, to be in love, to be cynical, or to be furiously indignant. The end, therefore, of his life exhibits a series of short impetuous fits of passionate endeavour, rather than devotion to a single overruling purpose; and all his writings are brief outbursts of eloquent feeling, where neither the separate fragments nor the works considered as a whole obey any law of logical development. And yet, in some ways, Hazlitt boasted, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... her head in silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in lordly brevities. The boy climbed up ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... all mankind a sailor has experienced most signal proofs of the omnipotence of God. Throughout the daily dangers they are exposed to is the underlying, as well as the overruling, sense of the Almighty Power that holds the heavens in ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... possibly exist. I never have intentionally sought to influence her, even by a glance, since I knew of her relation to Mr. Hearn. I'm under no obligation to this prosperous banker; I'm only bound by honor in the abstract. They are not married. Mrs. Yocomb would say that I had been brought hither by an overruling Providence—it certainly was not a conscious choice of mine—and since I met this woman everything has conspired to bring me to my present position. I know I'm not to blame for it—no more than I was for the storm or the lightning bolt. What a clod I should be were I indifferent ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the action of reason on religion, is explained to be one form of the principle of progress by antagonism, the conservation or discovery of truth by means of inquiry and controversy; a merciful Providence leaving men responsible for their errors, but ultimately overruling ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... proceed to an interesting epoch in my life: the commencement of my literary labors in the Lord's cause. It marks very strongly the overruling hand of Him who was working all things after the counsel of his own will; and I will give it you without curtailment, together with my introduction, through it to the Christian community ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... and South upon our continent, there would still be room for the development of both, and we might even look forward to such a peace with some degree of complacency, and with hope for a future of happiness and prosperity. But it will not stop here. As surely as that an overruling Providence directs the affairs of men, the movement will go on until there are as many separate and hostile republics as there are States in our Union. The mutterings of separation—which have already been heard in the West, are but the precursors of the storm which can only be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... She attended the usual round of dinners, teas and tennis parties, that are part of the system by which the English keep alive their courage, and growing after a while a little tired of trivialty, she tried to scandalize Sialpore by inviting Tom Tripe to her own garden party, successfully overruling Tripe's objections. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... hope was dead, And wild Ambition's dreams were fled; Though o'er my blighted heart, Despair Desponded, love still nestled there; Love! how the pale-faced scorner's lip Would sneer, to hear me name that name; Yet was it deep within my soul A secret but consuming flame; Whose overruling mastership, Defied slow Reason's dull control! And felt for one of that vile race, To whom my tribe had given place; Was nursed in silence and in shame! Shame, for the weakness of a heart, Yet bleeding ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason, and my more composed judgment, to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open. Certainly, nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery attending, and which it was impossible for me to escape, could have pushed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... continued to shape into images of Agnes forms without end, that upon nearer approach presented the most grotesque contrasts to her impressive appearance. But I had ceased even to comprehend the ludicrous; my agitation was now so overruling and engrossing that I lost even my intellectual sense of it; and now first I understood practically and feelingly the anguish of hope alternating with disappointment, as it may be supposed to act upon the poor shipwrecked seaman, alone and upon a desolate coast, straining his sight ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... for my own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, in the last years of his life, I asked him if he believed there was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... equivalents will be to decide, in cases of doubt, what is the true chemical equivalent, or definite proportional, or atomic number of a body; for I have such conviction that the power which governs electro-decomposition and ordinary chemical attractions is the same; and such confidence in the overruling influence of those natural laws which render the former definite, as to feel no hesitation in believing that the latter must submit to them also. Such being the case, I can have, no doubt that, assuming hydrogen as 1, and dismissing small fractions ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... found his own violence of spirit die away and lose itself in fear and wonder. So true it is, that as greater lights swallow up and extinguish the display of those which are less, so men of great, capacious, and overruling minds, bear aside and subdue, in their climax of passion, the more feeble wills and passions of others; as, when a river joins a brook, the fiercer torrent shoulders aside ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... communion with God through the medium of His prophets, and obtained divine laws to regulate their ways and keep them in mind of Him who made them, the Africans were excluded from this dispensation, and consequently have no idea of an overruling Providence or a future state; they therefore trust to luck and to charms, and think only of self-preservation in this world. Whatever, then, may be said against them for being too avaricious or too destitute of fellow-feeling, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not, strictly speaking, a working part of it. A time was coming, as we now know, when a flood of people was suddenly to overflow our city, sweeping onward to and over the mainland like a tidal wave from the great ocean of life; but whether it was by some fortunate chance decree of an overruling Providence, it did not come till the city was better than of old and prepared to deal ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... terrible ending of that government: how the vile rabble-army of Cardinal Ruffo assaulted Naples; how the city capitulated to the Cardinal on the express condition that all life and property should be spared; and how Lord Nelson, refusing to recognise the terms that Ruffo himself had agreed to, and overruling the Cardinal's protests, treated the unhappy prisoners. The Bishop of Vico Equense was one of this band of martyrs, for he suffered death under circumstances of exceptional brutality on the morning of August 20th 1799, in the piazza in front of the church of the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Mr Henry Melville, pointed out in strong language the suspicion of unfairness; the dependence of the jury; the presence of the governor at Launceston during the trial; the infamous character of certain of the witnesses; and the overruling a challenge of a juror by the prisoner. The remarks of Melville were carried beyond the tolerated bounds of public criticism; the attorney-general, Stephen, induced the court to issue an attachment. The defendant was required to admit the authorship: this being done, the judge whose conduct ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... looked thin and older. An anxious wrinkle had deepened between his eyes. It was June, and the days were getting warm. He was anxious about Ida's health also. Ida was not at all anxious. She was perfectly placid. It did not seem to her that an overruling Providence could possibly treat her unkindly. She was rather annoyed at times, but still never anxious, and utterly satisfied with herself to that extent that it precluded any doubt as to the ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... talked just as her own sweet mother did. And she bent down with one of her pretty foreign ways and kissed my hand. Dear little thing, I didn't spoze my talk had done her much good, but then I considered it couldn't do her any hurt 'tennyrate. And so I left the event to the overruling Power, just as we poor weak mortals ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... in the public deliberations. It will not be sufficient that the rash counsels of human passion are rejected. It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... I begin with establishing as a fundamental principle upon which all my subsequent pursuits and regulations are to be established, that the acquisition, at least, of a respectable reputation is (subject to the overruling power and wisdom of Providence,) within my own power; and that on my part nothing is wanting, but a constant and persevering determination to tread in the steps which naturally lead to honor. And, at the same time, I am equally convinced, that I never shall attain that credit ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... painful and so delightful, has not devolved upon us as a public journalist. The elevation of the Right Rev., Father in God,, Phineas Lucre to the See of ———, is a dispensation to our Irish Establishment which argues the beneficent hand of a wise and overruling Providence. In him we may well say, that another bright and lustrous star is added to that dark, but beautiful galaxy, in the nether heavens above us, which is composed of our blessed Bishops. The diocese over which he has been called by the Holy Spirit to preside, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... historians, while fully adopting the theory of an overruling Providence, were disposed to give due weight to secondary, natural causes. Foxe, while maintaining that the overthrow of the papacy was a great miracle and an everlasting mercy, yet recognized that it was rendered possible by ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... all, both members and Masters, to guard against the influence of party spirit, either political or religious, as termed by a certain class of people, who, from their weak and shattered principles, have been led to suppose that the great and overruling Bible, among certain classes, is the Divine inspiration of the Deity, and was hewn from a solid rock, for the purpose of satisfying all men of the power of God, whom this band hold sacred, as a being of unchangeable character, who will, in the immortal ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... sight and sound, its hours of golden youth, and the interminable revolution of ages hurrying after ages, and one generation treading upon the flying footsteps of another; whilst all the while the overruling music attempers the mind to the spectacle, the subject to the object, the beholder to the vision. And, although this is known to be but one phasis of life,—of life culminating and in ascent,—yet the other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the hidden or averted side of the golden arras, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... adopted sister, had done much to correct the native thoughtlessness of his character, and no doubt her love and care would henceforth make the happiness of his life. So they said to one another with smiles, and not without grateful tears, in view of the overruling love and care visible in all they had to remember of one ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... the lives of either of them were worth. And if Providence had in its wisdom decreed that they should mutually counteract and abolish each other—why it would behove them to see in it a signal instance of the overruling ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... possession. Phoebe would have given the world that the sets had been appropriated, so that Mervyn and Mr. Crabbe should not have had to make her miserable by fighting her battles, insisting on her choosing, and then overruling her choice as not of sufficiently valuable articles, while Bertha profited by the lesson in harpy-hood, and regarded all claimed by the others as so much taken from herself; and poor Maria clasped on every ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of religion. In the dark days of slavery, it was faith in God that sustained the Negro, that inspired his songs, and that made him strong to endure and patient to wait. And it was by the power of God that he was at last set free. Never did the colored man need that faith in God, and in an overruling and guiding Providence, more than now, when the goal of liberty and equality is so nearly attained, and yet strangely delayed. Nobly do the leaders of the race realize that faith, and seek to lead their ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must wait with patience the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full—when their tears shall have involved heaven itself in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing a light ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... assurance that these were but the prelude to a glorious vindication and deliverance. This hopefulness was not merely the result of their natural optimism, but of the belief, formed by their experiences in many a national crisis, that a God of justice was overruling the events of history, and that he was working not for man's destruction but for his highest happiness and well-being. It was their insight into the divine purpose that led the Hebrew prophets to break ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... the courtesies of life are impossible, the inherent dignity of the person is denied, and they are reduced below the level of the most uncomfortable nations of the Old World. The philosopher accustomed to draw consolation from the sufferings of his richer fellow-men, and to infer an overruling Providence from their disgraces, might well bless Heaven for the spectacle of such degradation, if his thanksgiving were not prevented by his knowledge that this is quite voluntary. And now consider that on every car leaving the city at this time the ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... influential friends for the Church, and proceeded through part of the College curriculum, but some changes occurring, he ultimately devoted himself to the study of law. Probably his ambition was for the Bar; but overruling circumstances led him, about twelve years ago, to enter on the profession of parliamentary solicitor in London, in which he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of the drama; and a spectator must be sadly deficient in spiritual insight if he does not perceive the hand of God overruling the strife of nations and the blunders ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... but firmly, he induced Mr. Ledbetter to sling the dressing bag over his back by a string across his chest, to shoulder the trunk, and, overruling a gasping protest, to take the Gladstone bag in his disengaged hand. So encumbered, Mr. Ledbetter struggled perilously downstairs. The stout gentleman followed with an overcoat, the hatbox, and the revolver, making derogatory remarks about Mr. Ledbetter's strength, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... a celebrated instance, those who asserted this power in Parliament vindicated its exercise only in a case in which it could be shown, 1st. That the charter in question was a charter of political power; 2d. That there was a great and overruling state necessity, justifying the violation of the charter; 3d. That the charter had been abused and justly forfeited.[2] The bill affecting this charter did not pass. Its history is well known. The ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... its distant offshoots, may be surely crushed, and by which unity and peace may be permanently secured. They know well that the action of Congress may be with the co-operation of the slave-masters, or even without the co-operation, under the overruling law of military necessity, or the commanding precept of the Constitution "to guarantee to every State a Republican form of government." Above all, they know well that to save the country from peril, especially to save the national life, there is no power, in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... most casual circumstance that the soldier plunged the spear into the side of Jesus, to make sure that He was dead; yet an ancient oracle, of which he knew nothing, had said, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced." Thus, by the overruling providence of God, the soldiers, going with rude unconcern about their work, were unconsciously fulfilling the Scriptures; and those who both saw what they had done and knew the Scriptures recognised the Divine finger pointing out Jesus as ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... governs and is antecedent to law, which must bend and adapt itself to cast, as the overruling, intrinsic, unalterable condition of Hinduism, of Hindu life. There is one law, one phase of obligation for the twice-born, another for the Sudra. In Manu, cast is not so fully and severely developed: Manu permits to the Brahmana four wives, of whom one may ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... action, some on the surface, some in the mid-heart of the ocean, which drive it in ceaseless course from the equator to the poles, from the poles to the equator; so that the Supreme Intelligence, in His overruling providence, has ordained the same law to set in movement the immensity of ocean, and to effect circulation in the cockchafer's few drops of blood. In the latter we find the moving agent to be a long tube, which runs the whole length of the back, and is called the dorsal vessel (from the Latin ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... of all their toil and struggle, they have gone not whither they willed, but whither God willed? Have they not found out that for one circumstance of their lives which they could alter, there have been twenty which they could not, some born with them, some forced on them by an overruling Providence, irresistible indeed—but, as I hold, most loving and most fatherly, though often severe—even to agony—but irresistible still— till what they have really gained by fighting circumstance, however valiantly, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... deepened beyond any other experience her faith in an overruling Providence. His return to health was to her a return from death: it was an answer to her prayers: it was a resurrection. Henceforth his life was a gift for the second time to himself, to her, to the world for which he must work with all his powers and work aright. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... grinning. He was dead, too—struck by the lightning in the act of stealing those mules and that Cape cart. Don't let any fellow waste hot air after that trying to persuade me that there isn't such a thing as an overruling Providence!" ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 'She knows her business, she hopes!' And if it be her edict, as it was of one of her class whom I knew, that each of her babies shall eat four baked beans the day it is four days old, eat them it must; and if the baby die in convulsions four days after, it is set down as the mysterious will of an overruling Providence. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... repair their fortune. Thus Gui de Lusignan, after flying from France for murder, was ultimately raised to the throne of Jerusalem. To the more vulgar class were held out inducements which, though absorbed in the more overruling fanaticism of the first crusade, might be exceedingly efficacious when it began rather to flag. During the time that a crusader bore the cross, he was free from suit for his debts, and the interest of them was entirely abolished; he was exempted, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... contrary, Truth and Error lie over against each other with a valley between them, and David goes forward in the sight of all men, and from his own camp, to engage with the Philistine. Such is the providential overruling of that principle of toleration, which was conceived in the spirit of unbelief, in order to the destruction of Catholicity. The sway of the Church is contracted; but she gains in intensity what she loses in extent. She has now a direct command and a reliable influence ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... being too virtuous himself, most stainless likeness of Athene, but in trying to make others so. He forgot one half of Juvenal's great dictum about "Panem and Circenses," as the absolute and overruling necessities of rulers. He tried to give the people the bread without the games.... And what thanks he received for his enormous munificence, let himself and the good folks of Antioch tell—you just ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the reflection of the green flame in the polished mahogany surface. There was that in her manner and conversation which deprived her act of the tone of personal service. She watched him sip his whiskey with a judicial expression, overruling the protest his principles suggested. She poured for herself a glass of wine and sat opposite him, the tall wax candles between them, and asked him for the first time how he found his duties as mayor. The question seemed to occur to her as one which ordinary ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the tutelary deities, many of them, of their country: but as men and women like themselves, only more vast; with mightier wills, mightier virtues, mightier sorrows, and often mightier crimes; their inward free-will battling, as Schlegel has well seen, against outward circumstance and overruling fate, as every man should battle, unless he sink to be a brute. "In tragedy," says Schlegel—uttering thus a deep and momentous truth—"the gods themselves either come forward as the servants of destiny and mediate ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... self-possessed courage that leaves to one the full use of his faculties in the midst of danger, and allows him to act wisely, even when meeting death face to face. The only sure foundation for this form of courage is unshrinking trust in the overruling power of God,—a trust that shall make us feel his providence ever clasping its arms about us in all the circumstances of life, causing us ever to bear in mind, that he who watches the fall of the sparrow cannot permit us to perish or to suffer by chance. This trust ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... given as authorities in justification of thus doing. One respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his congregation, and himself into believing that there was some truth and decency in ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... me, and of my reply, are inclosed. He not unnaturally complains of having been now seized, after he had on the previous occasion been recognised as a ship of war. But this is manifestly nothing more than the inevitable result of the overruling by Her Majesty's Government of the conclusion arrived at on the previous occasion by its ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... Doctor Lee! If an overruling Providence could smile, wouldn't He smile now? David and Eva never wanted to marry each other, I'm sure of it, and the last thing they desired was a child. Now there are two of them. Their father is away, their mother won't look at them! What ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... might be more against Bunyan than the "mittimus" expressed, he was afraid of compromising himself by letting him go at large. His refusal, though it sent him back to prison, was received by Bunyan with his usual calm trust in God's overruling providence. "I was not at all daunted, but rather glad, and saw evidently that the Lord had heard me." Before he set out for the justice's house, he tells us he had committed the whole event to God's ordering, with the ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... sides, that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers. It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... knew, and this they thought might portend something as bad, or it might only foreshadow the death of some great chief. On this subject of comets I knew little more than they did themselves, but I had that confidence in a kind, overruling Providence, which makes such a difference between Christians and both the ancient ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... regard for religion was produced among the inhabitants of St. John by the visit of the pestilence; it was scarcely possible for the most sceptical not to recognise the overruling providence of God: and I have seldom seen more external respect for the Sabbath and the ordinances of religion than ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... position has no doubt been one of very peculiar difficulty, and no one will grudge him the warm tribute paid to him by Mr. Montagu. Whatever the merits of the great controversy between Lord Curzon and Lord Kitchener, the overruling of the Government of India by the Home Government on a question of such magnitude and the circumstances in which Lord Curzon was compelled to resign had dealt a very heavy blow to the authority and prestige of the Viceregal ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... plaintiff, they had scarcely left the bar, when they returned with a verdict of one penny damages. A motion was made for a new trial; but the court, too, had now lost the equipoise of their judgment, and overruled the motion by an unanimous vote. The verdict and judgment overruling the motion were followed by redoubled acclamations, from within and without the house. The people, who had with difficulty kept their hands off their champion from the moment of closing his harangue, no sooner saw the fate of the cause ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... way, in the Pigotts' opinion, being invariably a foolish one—"between you and me, sir, they hadn't a sound business head among them." As for Ted and Katherine, before the day when he had washed his hands of Ted in the office lavatory, uncle James had tried to play the part of an overruling Providence in their affairs, and the young infidels had signified their utter disbelief in him. Since then he had ceased to interfere with his creatures; and latterly his finger was only to be seen at times of marked crisis or disturbance, as in the arrangements for a marriage ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... you," said Athos; "nothing can be more agreeable to me, my dear friend, than to return to my solitude beneath my noble trees, on the banks of the Loire. If Heaven be the overruling physician of the evils of the mind, nature is a sovereign remedy. And so, monsieur," continued Athos, turning again toward Baisemeaux, "I ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... common people, where not intimidated by the clergy, almost everywhere heard the Word with gladness; and it was so with many of the parochial priests, when not dreading the wrath of their superiors. In all this we should gratefully acknowledge an overruling Providence in the ordering of events, and the divine agency of the Holy Spirit, making it apparent that the "fullness of time" had come for the entering ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... those circumstances. Nevertheless, where the man commits the crime, the natural disposition was only towards the object, not formally towards the doing it upon wrong motives; and generally the very essence of the crime consists in the liberty of the will forcibly overruling the actual disposition towards being influenced by right motives, and not at all (as you suppose) in the man's having any natural disposition to be influenced by wrong ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... of the idea of political unity, have looked upon the proposed object of the Government as a low and unworthy one; but have, nevertheless, rejoiced that the hand of Providence is in the work, and overruling it to bring out of these meaner aims ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unconquerable prejudices which had passed from the brain into the very blood of his race. He would probably say at the end: "I admit all that you tell me, Gabriella, but my sentiment is against it;" and this sentiment, overruling sense, would insist, with sublime obstinacy, that Gabriella must not work in a shop. It would ignore, after the exalted habit of sentiment, such merely sordid facts as poverty and starvation (who ever heard of a woman of good family starving in Virginia?), and, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... simple and overruling knowledge of God as the supreme fact in a practical world with that vague and ineffective subject for sentiment who had been the "God" of his Anglican days. Some theologian once spoke of God as "the friend behind phenomena"; that Anglican deity had been rather a vague flummery behind ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... and I have sometimes wondered if you cared anything about your religion. You have never obeyed the celestial covenant, and you have kept yourself aloof from the duties of the priesthood, but it may have been a providential overruling. I have talked with some of the brethren, and we feel that if relief does not soon appear, our community will be scattered and the great work crushed. The Lord can rescue us, but we must put forth our own efforts. Can you ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... miles, labouring incessantly as well as walking, what time we were with the sled, with nothing to eat—it was too cold to stop for eating—and, in addition to this, one of us had been in water to the waist, yet none of us took any harm. It was a providential overruling of blundering foolhardiness for which ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... dead reptiles start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... COURT. The decision of the court or judge on the verdict, or the overruling of the court ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... concerning the forms of government to be instituted over the whole and over the parts of this extensive country. Relying, however, on the purity of their intentions, the justice of their cause, and the integrity and intelligence of the people, under an overruling Providence which had so signally protected this country from the first, the representatives of this nation, then consisting of little more than half its present number, not only broke to pieces the chains which were forging ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... broken our domestic peace, but wise statesmanship has found a timely remedy. We need not, if we learn the lessons of the past aright, fear greatly to confront the future. Not to us the glory or the praise, but to a merciful overruling Providence, ever raising up amongst us noble hearts in time, that we are ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... of five to four of the Supreme Court. A previous income- tax had been declared constitutional during the Civil War, and I am very strongly of the opinion that if the case is again presented to the Court the decision will be in harmony with the first decision, overruling the decision of 1895. An income-tax is the fairest of all taxes. It is resorted to by every other nation. It falls most heavily on those who can best afford it. The sentiment in the Republican party has changed, and I believe ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... for your husband; may he watch over you as I would have done!—love you as I do he cannot! Yes, I repeat it," continued Clifford, vehemently,—"he cannot! None amidst the gay, happy, silken crowd of your equals and followers can feel for you that single and overruling passion which makes you to me what all combined—country, power, wealth, reputation, an honest name, peace, common safety, the quiet of the common air, alike the least blessing and the greatest-are to all others! Once more, may God in heaven watch over you ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the consecutiveness of thought necessary for a long poem; his more ambitious compositions too often resemble the scattered fragments of a mirror; colours brilliant as life, single images without end, but no picture. It is only when under the overruling influence of some one state of feeling, either actually experienced, or summoned up in the vividness of reality by a fervid imagination, that he writes as a great poet; unity of feeling being to him the harmonizing ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Overruling General Vidaurri, he deserted his imperial master in his extremity. He used the extraordinary powers given him to establish himself in the capital, where, for his own ends, he subjected the wretched ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... An overruling Providence has saved you and your friends from many a pitfall. Shall we proceed to History? Be so good as to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Mordecai, who, from her beauty, was chosen into the royal harem and raised to be consort to the king. It is read through in the Jewish synagogues at the feast of PURIM (q. v.). It is observed that the name of God does not occur once in the book, but the story implies the presence of an overruling Providence, responding to the cry of His oppressed ones ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... powerless. At last, the mind, which, at first, had bravely nerved itself for the contest, gives way, under the mysterious influences which govern its union with the body. Then he begins to doubt the existence of an overruling Providence; he hates his fellow-men, and glares upon them with the longings of a cannibal, and it ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick |
