"Usurp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... true Peter Craigmile, Jr., dead? Then he can never arise to take the place this young man is now daring to usurp. Can Richard Kildene be proved to be living? Then is he, posing as Peter Craigmile, Jr., free from the charge of murder even if he makes confession thereto. He returns and makes this plea because he would live the life of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... a conflagration. What, he asked, did the jury think? They were men of the world. Candidly, had they ever seen such a chauffeur and footman before? Did they look like servants? Of course they had Mr. Bumble's—their master's—confidence. But had they the jury's? He did not wish to usurp the functions of the cinema or the stage, but it was his duty to remind them that sometimes Truth was stranger than Fiction.... Here were two servants, who were obviously not servants at all, giving such overwhelming ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... that a mother-state should trust large bodies of mercenary troops in her colonies, at so great a distance from her; lest, in process of time, when the spirits of the people shall be depressed by the military power, another Caesar should arise and usurp ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in America will too much supersede and usurp the place of books, and lead to a superficial knowledge of things. Gleaning the papers in search of that which is really useful, candid, and fair seems too much like hunting for grains of wheat in ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... ignorant men are so preposterous that they can scarcely be credited. The merchant no longer owns his business or directs it. The laborer tells him what to pay, how to pay it, when and how long the hours shall be—in fact, undertakes to usurp entire control. If the owner protests, the laborers all stop work, strike, appoint guards, who attack, kill, or intimidate any one who attempts to take their place. In this way it is said that one billion dollars have been ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... once. Let her make her ultimatum, and there are enough generous minds in Europe that will counteract her in the balance. Of course her motive is to cripple a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that threatens even to usurp her history. In twenty more years of prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the Continent of America or the Isle of Britain. Therefore, finding us in a death-struggle for existence, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... we to account for the fact that this young lady who came but the other day among us a stranger, even her name being scarcely known, and who still refrains from those 'bold advertisements,' which in the case of so many other managers and performers usurp the functions of the trumpet of fame, has made her way in a few short months only to the very highest place in the estimation of our play going public? We can see no possible explanation save the simple one that her acting ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... is within the range of probability; whereas, that is not at all adhered to in many novels—witness the drinking-scene in ——, and others equally outrees, in which the author, having turned probability out of doors, ends by throwing possibility out of the window—leaving folly and madness to usurp their place—and play a thousand antics for the admiration of the public, who, pleased with novelty, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Foppington that his Lordship is mistaken in supposing that his shoe pinches. "It does not pinch; it cannot pinch; I know my business; and I never made a better shoe." This is the way in which Mr. Southey would have a government treat a people who usurp the privilege of thinking. Nay, the shoemaker of Vanbrugh has the advantage in the comparison. He contented himself with regulating his customer's shoes, about which he had peculiar means of information, and did not presume to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... general peace was Lodovico Maria Sforza, surnamed Il Moro,(1) who sat as regent for his nephew, Duke Gian Galeazzo, upon the throne of Milan. That regency he had usurped from Gian Galeazzo's mother, and he was now in a fair way to usurp the throne itself. He kept his nephew virtually a prisoner in the Castle of Pavia, together with his young bride, Isabella of Aragon, who had been sent thither by her father, the Duke of Calabria, heir ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... intervention the work to which the Prussian nation had now committed itself beyond power of recall. It was the fortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the French in Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emancipate its army, and a citizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. Frederick William forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven by the timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to arm ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... not know, any more than we know the origin of the Greek gods; indeed, in this respect and others there are parallels between the Greek and the Northern mythology. Wotan goes in fear lest the powers of the nether world usurp his domination, which he wants to make absolute. He makes a pact with the giants—the Titan forces of the earth—that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill with slain warriors ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... manifestly desirous of this change; but underhand he did all he could to discredit and thwart the project, and to prejudice the chief magistrates against him, and on all occasions craftily insinuated, that it was as the price of letting him usurp arbitrary power, that Agis thus proposed to divide the property of the rich among the poor, and that the object of these measures for canceling debts, and dividing the lands, was, not to furnish Sparta with citizens, but purchase him ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... pride, from business, and from care, His greatest sorrows flow; When these usurp the heart of man, That ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... extent than the original thirteen States; and these interests, corporate or otherwise, have been cherished and consolidated by a benign policy, without any one supposing the law-making power had united with the Judiciary, under the universal sanction of the whole country, to usurp a jurisdiction which did not belong to them. Such a discovery at this late date is more extraordinary than anything which has occurred in the judicial history of this or any other country. Texas, under a previous organization, was admitted as a State; but no State can be admitted ...
— 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
... with whom you may happen to be dancing when supper is announced to the supper-table, unless she has come with a gentleman, in which case you must not usurp his privilege. If she is disengaged, escort her to a seat in the supper-room, if possible, and see that she is served with the dishes she selects. Do not take your own supper at the same time; wait till the ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... magazines should not be allowed to usurp the place of conversation. If the art of talking is rapidly dying out, as some assert, we should do our share to revive it. We may not again have the wit and repartee, the brilliant intellectual combats ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... upon athletics and sport which now so largely occupy the attention of the youth of our land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance of bodily fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing pursuit, and instead of being merely a means to an end, may usurp the place in life ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... wildering, sinking pale with fear! Not he more bless'd by Cynthia's light allur'd, Onward his course with happier thoughts doth steer, Than I, O Hope! blest cheerer of the soul! Who, long in Sorrow's darkening clouds involv'd, When black despair usurp'd mild Joy's control, Saw thee, bright angel, fram'd of heavenly mould, Dip thy gay pallet in the rainbow's hue, And call each scene of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying, afterward, the very engine which had lifted them to ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... who flourished by the liberty of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and adorned the dignity of human kind. The acquiescence of the provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinction of rank, and to disregard ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... given the ten commandments, each of us learnt them directly from Mount Sinai; there were only the ten commandments and we heard no orders about 'offering cake' or 'gifts to priests' or 'tassels.' It was only in order to usurp the dominion for himself and to impart honor to his brother Aaron, that Moses ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Reformers did in this matter, they did without exaggeration; even as they had shown the same wise moderation in still higher matters. They gave to the Latin side of the language its rights, though they would not suffer it to encroach upon and usurp those of the Teutonic part of the language. It would be difficult not to believe, even if many outward signs said not the same, that great things are in store for the one language of Europe which thus serves as connecting link between the North and the South, between the languages spoken by the ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... few weeks glide away, and the nose again recalls the savory old times when streets were never swept, and filth once more reigns paramount. The town relapses into its former state, again the false weights usurp the place of honest measures, and the only permanent and visible sign of the new ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... determine what is the seal, and who are the officers, of a community unknown as an organized body to the Congress of the United States? Can the right be admitted in that community to usurp the sovereignty over territory which belongs to the States of the Union? All these questions must be answered before I can consent to any such irregular proceeding as that which is now presented in ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... or ballet dancing, by representations of historical incidents with graceful motion. In his "History of Pantomimes" the author is careful to distinguish between those entertainments where "Grin and grimace usurp the passions and affections of the mind," and those where "A nice address and management of the passions take up the thoughts of the performer." "Spectators," says Weaver, in 1730, or thereabouts, "are now so pandering away their applause on interpolations of pseudo-players, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... to look upon it! Examine it with a pocket glass and see how wonderfully beautiful and exquisite are its tiny blossoms. It loves the human foot, and when the path or the place is long disused, other plants usurp the ground. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... his sword. Not his to usurp the prerogative of Him who had that night given so signal deliverance to ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged; and among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the fault? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost its honor; nor did childhood ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... his consort." The New Testament says, "Man is the head of the woman, but the head of the man is God;" "Man is the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man." The Apostle likewise declares, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." This position of the Apostle was based on the Hebrew account of the creation of the first woman from the rib of the first ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... (it is Mr Humphry Ward, I think, who is our sufficient authority for it) poetry was but occasional amusement and solace to him, prose his regular avocation from task-work; and there is abundant evidence that, willingly or unwillingly, he never allowed either to usurp the place of the vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear men boast of getting through their work somehow or other, that they may devote themselves to parerga which they like, and which ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... they be all equally true, it is absolutely the same as if they were all false; no one sensation can have any privilege over the others, none can be truer than the others, none can be capable of explaining the others, none can usurp to itself the sole right of representing the essence of matter; and we thus find ourselves, in this case, as in the preceding, in presence of the insurmountable difficulty of creating ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... pains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal nature. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... there's Tim," I protested, for I did not care to usurp to myself the sum of all the virtues ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... should be one of 'drift,' although I admit that there are many most excellent persons who by their attitude seem to resent any attempt to steer the ship of State along a definite course as being an impious attempt to usurp the functions of Providence, whose special business they conceive this ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... harbour. The people streamed down with the wildest jubilation and all the church bells were rung. The same evening the Pinta also sailed in, but was very differently received, for it was already known that Pinzon wished to usurp the honour of the discovery, being convinced that Columbus's vessel had been lost in the storm. No one took any notice of him, and he died a few days later, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the church, represented as it might be by the monstrous brutality of a Borgia, or the military madness of a Julius, was, in his view, sufficient to authorize any hasty Luther to make a profane bonfire of a papal bull; any hot Henry to usurp the trade of manufacturing creeds; so no "sacred right of insurrection," no unflinching patriotic opposition, no claim of rights, (by petitioners having swords in their hands,) are admissible in his system of a Christian state. And as for the British constitution, and "the glorious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... by your father or mother Was furnish'd you but with that view; If so, you were only the steward of another, And the praise you usurp is ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... subtly implied. As to this, it is well to remember that criticism changes its canons with the years and that Hawthorne simply adapted himself (unconsciously, as a spokesman of his day) to contemporaneous standards. His audience was less averse from the principle that the artist should on no account usurp the pulpit's function. If the artist-preacher had a golden mouth, it was enough. This has perhaps always been the attitude of the mass ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... thou, that usurp'st this time of night,[11] Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? By heaven I ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... uzo. Use (custom) kutimo. Use, to be of utili. Use up (wear out) eluzi. Useful utila. Useless senutila. Uselessness senutileco. Usher (school) submajstro. Usher (beadle) pedelo. Usual ordinara, kutima. Usually kutime. Usufruct gxuado. Usurer procentegisto. Usurp uzurpi. Usurpation uzurpo—ado. Usurper uzurpulo. Usury procentego. Utensil uzajxo, ilo, ujo. Utilise utiligi. Utility utilo—eco. Utmost ekstrema. Utopia utopio. Utopian utopia. Utter ekparoli. Utterance ekparolo. Utterly ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... would show the proud how great is the virtue of humility. For the law of our King and Founder is this: "God is against the proud but gives grace to the humble"; but the swollen and insolent soul loves herein to usurp the divine Majesty, and itself "to spare the subject and subdue the proud." Wherefore I may not pass over in silence that earthly city also, enslaved by its ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... her way,' put in Agatha; 'she does not realize what a sting her words have. She told me last Sunday, when I unfortunately gave an order to some of my Sunday class in front of her, that however much I might try to slight her and usurp her place in the vicarage and parish I would not be successful, for the vicar was proof ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... contained one hundred and fifty-two temples, and one hundred and eighty smaller chapels or shrines, still sacred to their tutelary God, and used for public worship. Christianity had neither ventured to usurp those few buildings which might be converted to her use, still less had she the power to destroy them. The religious edifices were under the protection of the praefect of the city, and the praefect was usually a Pagan; at all events he would not permit any breach of the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the popes, like the press in our times, to a participation in the government of the world, but because they disputed her claims as one of the powers of the age. The Jesuits were scandalized that such a woman should usurp the reins of state, especially when they perceived that she mocked and defied them; and they therefore refused to pay her court, and even conspired to effect her overthrow. But they had not sufficiently considered the potency of her wrath, or the desperate ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Constitution, had no power to decide the result of the elections in the States, but that power was committed to State tribunals, how was it possible that any member of either House of Congress, who had sworn to support the Constitution, could usurp that power without being forsworn? Beside, it must be conceded by everybody to be utterly impossible that the power of investigating disputed questions, as to the choice of presidential electors by the States, should be exercised by Congress. There is no time for ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... glorious were wanting in the second could it be said (Hag. ii. 9), "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former"? It is a question which it is natural to ask, and it should be ingenuously answered. Is it that these were tending to usurp the place of the spiritual, of which they were but the assurance and the symbol, and darken rather than reveal the eternal ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Tories must be responsible for it. We care not what are the principles now avowed by them. If they are not Reformers, they cannot govern this country, and are not to be tolerated at the head of affairs. If they are, it is not to be endured that they should usurp our places, and then in defiance of all their principles, and in opposition to all their previous conduct, carry into effect the measures which we should, with perfect consistency, have brought forward. We will listen therefore to nothing. Out they shall go, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Mordaunt. It appears to me that, under the pretext of acting as guardian to my father, you oppose a reconciliation between us, without even consulting his wishes; and it is strange that a niece, a granddaughter only, should usurp the position of the eldest son, and refuse to listen to the ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... sensation and of memory. It is the continually recurring sensation of the touch of the mother which forms the basis of the first conception of the mother. After that, the gradually discriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. Till gradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three senses, as medium of correspondence and ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though that chief had revived the military spirit of his country, and roused a nation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructers and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... was very pleasant; there was no question. He did not at all usurp her office, nor interfere with it. But when he saw her getting weary of a parliamentary discussion, or a long discourse on politics or parties, his hand would gently draw away the paper from hers and his voice ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... was not Brutus (I mean that Brutus, who in open senate Stabb'd the first Caesar that usurp'd the world), A ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... it most unjust and unfair of Baraka to call him to account in that way, but he was not surprised at it, as Baraka, from the beginning of the journey to the present moment, had always been backbiting him, to try and usurp his position. Baraka, at this, somewhat taken aback, said there were no such things as perquisites on a journey like this; for whatever could be saved from the chiefs was for the common good of all, and all alike ought to share in it—repeating ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Dianga likewise, sent his son with several small vessels thither on an embassy to the king of Aracan, to endeavour to procure a grant of that port. Some Portuguese who then resided at the court of Aracan, persuaded the king that the object of Nicote in this demand; was to enable him to usurp the kingdom; upon which insinuation the son of Nicote; and all his attendants were slain, after which the same was done with the crews of his vessels, and all the Portuguese inhabitants at Dianga, to the number of about 600 were put to death, except ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... we parted: what a bitter sorrow Clings to the memory of our last embrace! No joy to-day, no promise of to-morrow, No idol image, shall usurp thy place: For thee my holiest hope is upward given— My love for thee is with my love for Heav'n, A dedication of my heart to thine, With God to smile on both, and ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... often happens that, in proportion as he has refined and elevated his theory of all the social affections, he has unfitted himself for the practice of them.[52] Hence so frequently it arises that, in persons of this temperament, we see some bright but artificial idol of the brain usurp the place of all real and natural objects of tenderness. The poet Dante, a wanderer away from wife and children, passed the whole of a restless and detached life in nursing his immortal dream of Beatrice; while Petrarch, who would not suffer his only ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... directory and against the councils. On the night of the insurrection, they were to fix up two placards; one, containing the words, "The Constitution of 1793! liberty! equality! common happiness!" the other, containing the following declaration, "Those who usurp the sovereignty, ought to be put to death by free men." All was ready; the proclamations printed, the day appointed, when they were betrayed by Grisel, as ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... led the way, followed close by old Betsy, Billy following her close and next in order. The young claybank horse, which made Moise so much trouble, now undertook to usurp a place just back of Betsy instead of falling to the rear of the train where he belonged. But as he approached meek-looking old Billy, the latter laid back his ears and kicked violently at the claybank, hitting him in ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... Roman history is a kind of common good which the Latin races ought to defend with all their might, having care that no other history usurp its place in contemporary culture; that it remain the typical outline, the ideal model of universal history in the education of coming generations. The Latin civilised world has need that every now and then an historian ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... more of Flames in Love, That common dull pretence, Fools in Romances use to move Soft Hearts of little Sense: No, Strephon, I'm not such a Slave, Love's banish'd Power to own; Since Interest and Convenience have So long usurp'd ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... believe in its existence or from the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy. History, ancient and modern, is full of such examples. Caesar became the master of the Roman ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... rather Zoraida Castelmar who sought to usurp destiny's prerogatives here, ruled otherwise. There came a quiet rap at the door, then the voice of one of ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Ye most illustrious band! Who, scorning Reason's tame, pedantic rules, And Order's vulgar bondage, never meant 200 For souls sublime as yours, with generous zeal Pay Vice the reverence Virtue long usurp'd, And yield Deformity the fond applause Which Beauty wont to claim, forgive my song, That for the blushing diffidence of youth, It shuns the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... whether light or grave, God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou With courtesy receive him; rise and bow; And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave; Then lay before him all thou hast; allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow, Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate The soul's marmoreal calmness: Grief shall be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... own master any more than he can be his own father; and that, not owning himself, he may not destroy himself. But, leaving this metaphysical argument for what it is worth, we observe that man has a Master, Owner, Proprietor, and Sovereign Lord, God Almighty. To take your own life is to usurp the dominion of God. It is wronging the Lord of life and death. But none is wronged against his will: God is willing that murderers should be hung, may He not also be willing that men in misery should hang themselves? To this query ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... are a peculiar possession of the present age; we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books: for strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day: whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... will do well to rely on his or her own good judgment and intuition. As a writer has well said: "The medium must keep a level head and proceed cautiously. He should never allow any spirit, in or out of the body, to usurp his right of private judgment or exercise any undue authority over him. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; you must use your own discretion and try the spirits before ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... altered; trade's unfeeling train Usurp the land and dispossess the swain; Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, 65 Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose, And every want to opulence allied, And every pang that folly pays to pride. These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... Mildred but esteem and gratitude—I appeal to the best, the most virtuous and moral of my readers—cannot put out the fire that nature kindles in the adoring heart of woman. Her error was not that she loved Michael more, but that she had loved Mildred less. Ambition, if it usurp the rights of love, must look for all the punishment that love inflicts. Sooner or later it must come. "Who are you?" enquires the little god of the greater god, ambition, "that you should march into my realms, and create rebellion there? Wait but a little." Short was the interval between ambition's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... behold in him a papal nepot-prince in whom the Pope endeavored to embody all mundane power and honor; he made him his condottiere, his warder, his body-guard, and, finally, his worldly heir. Calixtus allowed him to usurp every position of authority in the Church domain and, like a destroying angel, to overrun and devastate the republics and the tyrannies, for the purpose of founding a family dynasty, the Papacy being of only momentary tenure, and not ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... For proof that I acknowledge you the Author Of giving me my Birth, I have discharg'd A part of my Obedience. But if now You should (as cruel fathers do) proclaim Your right, and Tyrant-like usurp the glory Of my peculiar honours, not deriv'd From successary, but purchas'd with my bloud, Then I must stand first Champion for my self ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... his own image, with his own desires and passions, stand in constant need of being recreated. They change as the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter; they are ever bound to do something fresh, lest man should forget them, and new divinities usurp their place. Hence came endless avatars in Hindoo mythology, reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that passive Indian mind. Hence came Jove's adventures, tinged with all the lust and guile which the wickedness of the natural man planted on a hot-bed of iniquity is ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... of immense value. Its object, according to the king, was that every man might know and be satisfied with his rightful possessions, and not with impunity usurp the property of others. But it was also of great service to the king, so that he might know who were his vassals, the amount of taxation which he could draw from them, and the actual strength of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... canonical interdictions; he consulted neither his ministers nor his doctors; it was a personal reply he addressed to the emperor. "It is out of our power." said he, "to pronounce the judgment of nullity; if we were to usurp such an authority that we have not, we should render ourselves culpable of an abominable abuse before the tribunal of God; and your Majesty yourself, in your justice, would blame us for pronouncing a sentence contrary to the testimony of our conscience and to the invariable ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... of it, requires the utmost caution, and the constant control of sober reason: woe will be sure to betide the unfortunate wight, who, in such a situation, gives the reins to fancy, and suffers imagination to usurp the place of judgment, without reflecting, as has been observed by the poet on a somewhat similar ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... and his beard is an Aristarchus. He speaks all cream skimmed, and more affected than a dozen waiting-women. He is his own promoter in every place. The wife of the ordinary gives him his diet to maintain her table in discourse; which, indeed, is a mere tyranny over her other guests, for he will usurp all the talk; ten constables are not so tedious. He is no great shifter; once a year his apparel is ready to revolt. He doth use much to arbitrate quarrels, and fights himself, exceeding well, out at a window. He will lie cheaper than any beggar, and louder than most clocks; for which he is right ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... compare 'em with Thomaso, to whom I recommend the great Entertainment of reading it, tho' had this succeeded ill, I shou'd have had no need of imploring that Justice from the Critics, who are naturally so kind to any that pretend to usurp their Dominion, they wou'd doubtless have given me the whole Honour on't. Therefore I will only say in English what the famous Virgil does in Latin: I make Verses and others ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... she could do little more than cry with gladness at the thought of her father's wish being fulfilled, and of Tom's getting the Mill again in reward for all his hard striving. The details of preparation for the bazaar had then come to usurp Lucy's attention for the next few days, and nothing had been said by the cousins on subjects that were likely to rouse deeper feelings. Philip had been to the house more than once, but Maggie had had no private conversation with him, and thus she had been left to fight ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... nor the lessons of her own experience, were proofs against the terrors which threats so desperate inspired: and though more than once she determined to fly at all events from a tyranny he had so little right to usurp, the mere remembrance of the words if you stay not till night I will not live, robbed her of all courage; and however long she had prepared herself for this very attack, when the moment arrived, its power over her mind was ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... said, "Francisco Alvarez, you are guilty of attempting to usurp to yourself the powers that belong only to his Majesty, the King of Spain. I can conceive of a man of your knowledge and craft writing such a letter as this upon only one possibility, and that possibility has passed. The galleon, ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... established had been in past years vague and indefinite enough on several points of importance, it was truly said. But in the pulpit and out of it, on one point it had been full, clear, and definite. A man must rule (well) his own household. "The husband is the head of the wife," who is not suffered "to usurp authority over the man," but who is to listen in silence, being "the weaker ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... not discourteous or contemptuous indifference, the statements of our esteemed, though hasty contemporary, the Mackay Planters' Friend, that Bowen may yet find that the newly-founded hamlet of Townsville on the shores of Cleveland Bay will ere long usurp the claim of beautiful Bowen to be the natural entrepot for all that vast extent of territory to the northward and the westward of Port Denison, and which, ere many decades have passed, will, through its marvellous agricultural, pastoral, and auriferous ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... "Oh, there are exceptions, I hope," he said. "Love, like everything else that is great, is very, very rare. We call the disposition to usurp and absorb another person by that name, but woe betide him or her who is the object of such a sentiment. Yet happily, the real thing is to be found now and again. And from that ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and the love of the whole family encompassed her. One of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she was yet very little, and she had grown up among them as their youngest sister; but the doctor, from a tender scruple against seeming to usurp the place of his brother in her childish thought, would not let her call him father, and in obedience to the rule which she soon began to give their love, they all turned and called him Uncle Jack with her. Yet the Ellisons, though they loved their little cousin, did not spoil her,—neither ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Person, Place, and Time, And what was Merit turns to Crime. Wisdom, which men with so much pain, With so much weariness attain, May in a little moment quit, And abdicate the throne of Wit, And leave, a vacant seat, the brain, For Folly to usurp and reign. Should you but discompose the tide, On which Ideas wont to ride, Ferment it with a yeasty Storm, Or with high Floods of Wine deform; Altho' Sir Oracle is he, Who is as wise, as wise can be, In one short minute we shall ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... is just, it could not be. Yet, oh, my love, be happy in the days I may not share, with her whose present lips Usurp the rights of my lost sovranty. I would not have thee think—save now and then As in a dream that is not all a dream— On her whose love was sunshine for an hour, Then died or e'er its beams could ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fellow-creature be in any respect justifiable. And although this rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of our rights of property, and the freedom of our laws and of our conscience, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... always been: man, the highest of God's creatures, apart from all the rest, is still a creature, and he never has been able to usurp the power which ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... which white papers drink, 140 Even as thy beauties did the foul black seas; I must describe the hell of thy decease, That heaven did merit: yet I needs must see Our painted fools and cockhorse peasantry Still, still usurp, with long lives, loves, and lust, The seats of Virtue, cutting short as dust Her dear-bought issue: ill to worse converts, And tramples in the blood of all deserts. Night close and silent now goes fast before The captains and the ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... he, I would have you banish all Fear; you are not fallen into the Hands of barbarous Christians, whose Practice and Profession are as distant as the Country they came from, is from this Island, which they have usurp'd from the original Natives. Capt. Cuffey's returning the Service you once did him, by saving your Life, which we shall not, after the Example of your Country, take in cold Blood, may give you a Specimen of our Morals. We believe in, and fear a God, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... this view, are inclined to take the opposite view. At Athens there was a great tribunal composed of men learned in, and competent to interpret, the law. The people could not tolerate such an institution, so laboured to destroy it and to usurp its functions. The crowd reasoned thus. "We can interpret and carry out laws, because we make them." The conclusion was right, but the minor premise was disputable. The retort can be made: "True, you can interpret ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... upon the ration of honey. A most unexpected discovery, made a few hundred yards from my door, has warned me once again how dangerous it is to generalize. To take it for granted, as the mass of data hitherto collected seemed to justify us in doing, that all the Meloidae of our country usurp the stores of honey accumulated by the Bees, was surely a most judicious and natural generalization. Many have accepted it without hesitation; and I for my part was one of them. For on what are we to base our conviction when we imagine that we are stating a law? We think ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... do not even know by what name it will be known to future generations—would be to usurp the duties of the historian, and I shall only attempt, therefore, to tell you of that portion of it which I saw with my own eyes. On the morning of September 13 four Belgian divisions moved southward from Malines, their objective being the town of Weerde, on the Antwerp- Brussels railway. It was ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... is not a nest-builder, but will usurp the nest of the crow or some other large bird. If a deserted nest can be found, the sparrow-hawk will immediately take possession; but if no such presents itself, this bad-hearted, quarrelsome bird does not hesitate to depose the rightful owner, and ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... men about them younger than themselves—it makes them appear younger, or at least they think so; and besides, such youths are more easily managed and more subservient. But, still worse, the more these boys usurp the place of men in society, the more boyish and retrograde will the few men become who continue to divide the honors of society with them. When Plato enumerated among the signs of a republic in the last stage of decadence, that the youth imitate and rival old men, and the old men let themselves ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... their books. It was bed-time. They always waited for family prayers. When the Doctor was absent Mrs Morgan or Charles read them, but as he was momentarily expected, his wife and son were unwilling to usurp his office. At length the hall-door bell rang. It was the Doctor. He appeared unusually sad and serious. The family assembled. His voice, generally so firm, ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... in Ili. After the death of Galdan II., son of Arabtan, an attempt was made by one, Amursana, to usurp the principality. He was, however, driven out, and fled to Peking, where he was favourably received by Ch'ien Lung, and an army was sent to reinstate him. With the subsequent settlement, under which he was to have only one quarter of Ili, Amursana was profoundly dissatisfied, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... was delivered into the hands of his adversaries and admirers, who vied with each other in doing him harm. He was too disgusted to reply. When he read the pronunciamentos directed against him in the pages of an important newspaper by one of those presumptuous critics who usurp the sovereignty of art with all the insolence of ignorance and impunity, he would shrug his shoulders ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... thing I would desire would be to usurp in any way the functions of grave Mr. Murray or well-informed Herr Baedeker, but there are certain points to which I will draw attention, and which it seems to me very necessary to keep ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... son, a fact which may explain his subsequent assassination by two of his other sons, who took advantage of their brother's absence in Armenia at the head of the army, to murder their father and usurp the throne. In the document in question Sennacherib makes a written statement of his desire to leave to Esar-haddon certain personal effects, which are enumerated by name. "Gold rings, quantities of ivory, gold cups, dishes, and ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... yore; nor was his hair less red; but the round face appeared rounder than ever by reason of a thick fringe of whiskers. His body had filled out, and he moved with a rolling gait that caused him to usurp more than one man's share of the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... For though success did not confer Just title on the conqueror; 1005 Though dispensations were not strong Conclusions, whether right or wrong, Although out-goings did confirm, And owning were but a mere term; Yet as the wicked have no right 1010 To th' creature, though usurp'd by might, The property is in the Saint, From whom th' injuriously detain 't; Of him they hold their luxuries, Their dogs, their horses, whores, and dice, 1015 Their riots, revels, masks, delights, Pimps, buffoons, fiddlers, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... author. A sentence in which we are told of a house that it is "larger, at first sight, than it in reality is," strikes a blow at the very essence of things, and those much-abused words will and would usurp the place of their relatives, shall and should, with a uniformity that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... speaking. No one ever thought of asking how much of it he understood. I think it one of the happiest circumstances of his training, that nothing was ever explained to him, and that there was no professedly intellectual person in the family to usurp the place of Providence and supplement its shortcomings, in order to make him what he was never intended to be. His mind developed itself; intentional cultivation might have spoiled it.... He used to invent long stories, wild and fanciful, and tell where ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Philip ventured upon a master-stroke of policy. He sought the hand of Mary, the newly crowned Queen of England, and married her. By this step lie hoped and expected to extinguish dissent in England as he had done in his own dominions, to gradually usurp the government, and to make English naval supremacy subserve ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... English Puritans especially resented in Prince Rupert was his insistence on regimental prayers. They could pardon his raids, his breathless charges, his bewildering habit of appearing where he was least expected or desired; but that he should usurp their own especial prerogative of piety was more than they could bear. It is probable that Rupert's own private petitions resembled the memorable prayer offered by Sir Jacob Astley (a hardy old Cavalier who was both devout and ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier |
