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Abdicate   Listen
verb
Abdicate  v. i.  To relinquish or renounce a throne, or other high office or dignity. "Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abdicate" Quotes from Famous Books



... return to Spain; or rather to Paris. Don FRANCOIS D'ASSISSI has, it appears, suddenly discovered that his wife is not Queen of Spain so much as she was. Much less so. So, he has found her company rather expensive than agreeable; and proposes to abdicate it. Not so very much of an ass, is he? Bravo for ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various

... probably an inundation of the Yellow river such as has been witnessed by the present generation. Its horrors are described with poetical exaggeration in the Shu-king. When the efforts to stop the floods had proved futile for nine years, Yau wished to abdicate, and he selected a virtuous young man of the name of Shun as his successor. Among the legends told about this second model emperor is the story that he had a board before his palace on which every subject was permitted to note whatever faults he had to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... integrity of the Union, and freedom throughout all its borders, will be treason to our country and to mankind. (Loud cheers.) To acknowledge the absurd and anarchical doctrine of secession, as is demanded of us here, to abdicate the power of self-preservation, and permit the Union to be dissolved, is ruin, disgrace, and suicide. There is but one alternative—we must and will fight it out to the last. (Loud and prolonged applause.) If need be, all who can bear arms must take the field, and leave to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... he felt the burden of government become heavier year by year, till at last he called together his high barons and peers to propose to abdicate the empire and the throne of France in favor of his ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... & gate them into the bote: he onely abode / and by chaunce was safe brought into the hauen / wherupon he chalengeth the vessell for his / where as the party defendant wyll lay against hym that he is abdicate or for- saken of his father / and so can nat by the law haue any parte of ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox

... apprehend: I can have none. The barbarity of thy soldiers is nothing to me: mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is forced to be absent; and his authority goes away with his horse. On this turf lies defaced the semblance of a general; but Marcellus is yet the regulator of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy nation? Or wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole fault, less plenary than ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... having taken you as far as you want to go, you decline to advance any further; even though you fully admit that the very same reasoning forbids you to stop where you are pleased to cry halt! But this is simply forcing your reason to abdicate in favour of your caprice. It is impossible to imagine that Hume, of all men in the world, could have rested satisfied with such an act of high-treason against the sovereignty of philosophy. We may rather conclude that ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... Khalif Abassid Motewekkel in Egypt, praying to be made his deputy in the Sudan in general and in Songhois in particular. The Abassid consented, requiring the king of Songhois to abdicate for three days and to place the power in his hands. On the fourth day Motewekkel solemnly proclaimed Askia Mohammed the representative of the sultan in Sudan. He accompanied this by placing a green fez and white turban upon his head ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... of justice. My plain duty was to win for your child that succession belonging to him by all moral right. When Philip d'Avranche was killed, I set to work to do for your child what had been done by another for Philip d'Avranche. I have made him my heir. When he is of age I shall abdicate from the duchy in his favour. This deed, countersigned by the Powers that dispossessed his father, secures to him the duchy when he is old enough ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of bonds as required by the agreement. More than that, there were open declarations that the daughter of Mr. Blithers would never be permitted to occupy the throne of Graustark. Deeply as his subjects loved the young Prince, they would force him to abdicate rather than submit to the desecration of a throne that had never been dishonoured. They would accept William W. Blithers' money, but they would have none of William W. Blithers' daughter. That was more than could be expected of any self-respecting ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... impressed upon the people a complete system of religious opinion which men of culture have avowedly put away. And, moreover, the very priests must, I should think, be supposed to have put it away also. Else they would hardly be invited deliberately to abdicate their teaching functions in the very seats where teaching is of the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... deepest interest and concern and not a little admiration. But not only did Swallow refuse to abdicate but he seemed to take decided exceptions to the feminine method of appeal. He evidently did not like to be called "doggie," "pet," ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon

... talk a little, could at least smoke, and look friendly; till the King gathered strength for continuing his instructions to his Successor. All else was as if settled with him; this had still remained to do. This once done (finished, Monday night), why not abdicate altogether; and die disengaged, be it in a day or in a month, since that is now the one work left? Friedrich Wilhelm ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself, and will for ever bow, before the myrtle crown and the stainless sceptre of womanhood. But, alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest; and leaving misrule and violence to work their will among men, in defiance of the power which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you betray, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... Polish feof of Courland was, in consequence of the annihilation of Poland, incorporated with the Russian empire, Peter, the last duke, the son of Biron, being compelled to abdicate, A.D. 1795. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... territorial bills, deserves more than a passing allusion. Not only was it his last contribution to territorial legislation, but it suggested a far-reaching change in our colonial policy. It was the logical conclusion of popular sovereignty practically applied.[934] Congress was invited to abdicate all but the most meagre power in organizing new Territories. The task of framing an organic act for the government of a Territory was to be left to a convention chosen by adult male citizens who were in actual residence; but this organic law must be republican in form, and in every way ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... their Sandilands, and their Weirs, and shall it be denied to us even to name a maiden whom we delight to honour? Nay, then, sink state and perish sovereignty! for, like a second Charles V, we will abdicate, and seek in the private shades of life those pleasures which are denied to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... requiring names whereby to draw forth an army for diversion, but no man would answer. Report hereof being made to the Senate, the younger sort of the fathers grew so hot with the Consuls that they desired them to abdicate the magistracy, which they had ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... to question Eliza's prior claim to Simon. She always sat beside him on the original settle against the lean-to. She would not abdicate the seat even when the ground grew hot and pleasant and she saw half her mates lying on the short sparse grass with their heels in the air, conning their books, or falling asleep over them, as the case might be. She felt it her prerogative to sit right there, with her chubby legs sticking out ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... would hear of it until I spoke of the Prince. So when I saw that, I told them he was a fine little chap, healthy and manly and brave, and devoted to his priest, and all that rot, and they began to listen. At first they wanted his Majesty to abdicate, and give the boy a clear road to the crown, but of course I hushed that up. I told them we were acting advisedly, that we had reason to know that the common people of Messina were sick of the Republic, and wanted their King; that Louis loved the common ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... for pity—nothing for love? Will ye leave a foreign Parliament to mitigate—will ye leave a native Parliament, gained in your despite, to redress these miseries—will ye for ever abdicate the duty and the joy of making the poor comfortable, and the peasant attached and happy? Do—if so you prefer; but know that if you do, you are a doomed race. Once more, Aristocracy of Ireland, we warn and entreat you to consider the State of the Peasantry, and to ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... people and holds it for a century is right; there is nothing more to be said, so far as concerns his title to renown. The creative achievement is far more precious and important than any possible criticism of it. This does not mean that in dealing with such a poet the critic is in duty bound to abdicate his lower function and to let his scruples melt away in the warm water of a friendly partisanship; it means only that he will be best occupied, speaking generally, in a conscientious attempt to see the man as he was, to "experience the savor of him", ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... Goethe's—word more literally) the spirit of natural objects, carrying his personifications to that point where the imaginative borders on the grotesque, is perhaps his strongest characteristic. His poetic faculty, putting on its Alemannic costume, seems to abdicate all ambition of moving in a higher sphere of society, but within the bounds it has chosen allows itself the utmost range of capricious enjoyment. In another pastoral, called "The Oatmeal Porridge," he takes the grain which the peasant has sown, makes it a sentient creature, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... part in public affairs, all Europe was surprised by another woman, whose actions were without parallel and whose case seems to be the opposite of the one just cited. Marie de' Medici left Italy to become a queen, and now a queen is seen to abdicate that she may go to Rome to live. Christine, Queen of Sweden, a most enlightened woman and the daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus who had brought about the triumph of the Protestant arms in Germany, relinquished her royal robes in the year 1654, announced ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... sensitive women, take hints and resent rebuffs, and so exile themselves from the world prematurely and haughtily. They abdicate the moment they see that any desire their discrowning. Abdication is grand, no doubt. But possession is more profitable. "A well-bred dog does not wait to be kicked out," says the old see-saw. But the well-bred dog thereby turns himself into the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... questions I have discussed there is another class of questions connected with war which present great difficulty. It is the right of men to abdicate their private judgment by entering into the military profession. In small nations this question is not of much importance, for in them wars are of very rare occurrence and are usually for self-defence. In a great empire it is wholly ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... only slave in its empire? My privacy invaded, my actions censured, my friends insulted? But I will get rid of the whole together.—Be you witnesses," and he took the star, insignia of office, from his breast, and threw it on the table. "I renounce my office, I abdicate my power—assume it ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... on a foreign queen, and in virtue of which, if she transgressed them, she could be punished with death? In fact these doubts were raised at the time.[259] Against them it was alleged that Mary, who had been forced to abdicate by her subjects and deprived of her dignity, could not be regarded any longer as a queen: while a deposed sovereign is bound by the laws of the land in which he resides. If she was still a queen, yet she ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... to you in his library. I wish you to go." The last words not to seem to abdicate as ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... Emperors were made and unmade at the will of these men behind the scenes, most of whom are quite unknown to fame. The creation of infant Emperors, allowed to bear the Imperial name in their infancy and youth, but compelled to abdicate on reaching manhood, was a common device for maintaining nominal ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... breakfast, and Sally was dispensing the tea at the head of the table, Mrs. Kittridge having been prevailed on to abdicate in ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... by an amendment in Committee; and, even if there had not been any such clause in the Bill, it is clear, from what has been said above, that the Imperial Legislature could not, if it would, renounce its supremacy or abdicate its sovereign powers. The executive government in Ireland was continued in the Queen, to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such officers and Council as to her Majesty might from time to time seem fit. Her Majesty was also a constituent part of the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... church. They pronounced a formal exclusion from ecclesiastical functions against all prevaricating priests or married ones, as well as all those who had the cowardice to deliver up their authority for preaching, and abdicate their functions. Some interested persons thought this too severe. Those bishops persisted in their decision, and, by way of answer, they reprinted a translation of the celebrated treatise of St. Cyprian de Lapsis. On all sides, they reanimated ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... of the 9th December. Do not compel the Emperor to abdicate, but do not delay the departure of the troops; bring back all those who will not remain there. Most of the fleet ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... in Prussia, as formerly in England and France, does not lend itself to peaceful transformation into a middle-class monarchy. It does not gracefully abdicate. In addition to personal prejudices, the princes are bound hand and foot by a whole civil, military, and parsonic bureaucracy—constituent parts of absolute monarchy which do not by any means desire to exchange their ruling position for a ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... exist which the people will tolerate, but their right of existence is always revocable and they are always liable to be dissolved and destroyed. Otherwise the national sovereignty would be held to abdicate and it ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... inauspicious, engages the enemy's fleet, and is beaten; drowns the sacred chickens which would not feed: recalled by the senate, and ordered to nominate a dictator; he appoints Claudius Glicia, one of the lowest of the people, who, notwithstanding his being ordered to abdicate the office, yet attends the celebration of the public games in his dictator's robe. [Y. R. 504. B. C. 248.] Atilius Calatinus, the first dictator who marches with an army out of Italy. An exchange of prisoners with the Carthaginians. Two colonies established ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... principle to be true in England, and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in the colonies? Why should you presume, that, in any country, a body duly constituted for any function, will neglect to perform its duty, and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go against all governments in all modes. But, in truth, this dread of penury of supply, from a free assembly, has no foundation in nature. For first observe, that besides the desire which all men have naturally of supporting the honour of their ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... necessaries to the wealthy; habituated to attendance as I had been; and, even amongst the dissipated and idle, notorious for extravagance the most unbounded and indolence the most inveterate; how was I at once to change my habits, to abdicate my rank and power, to encounter the evils of poverty? I was not compelled to make such sacrifices; for though Ellinor's transient passion had prompted her to threaten me with a public discovery, yet I knew that she would as soon cut off her own right hand ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... shall learn how a man who despises the pinchbeck honors of a throne can defeat your petty malice and miserable scheming. Monsieur Nesimir, I proclaim Kosnovia a Republic from this hour! Here and now I abdicate! Summon a meeting of the Assembly to-morrow, and I shall give its members the best of reasons why the State will prosper more under the people's rule than under that of either of the men who are ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... it would be too much to claim that higher thought makes men unselfish, it at least cracks the hard shell in which their selfishness abides. If a man disciplines himself to abdicate his personal point of view in thinking about the world he lives in, it makes easier a similar attitude in ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... a temper to abdicate any affair in which he had embarked, before success appeared absolutely unattainable. Like Caesar, it was enough for him that the thing appeared possible to be done, to engage him to persevere. He therefore ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... "Don't abdicate, dear aunt," replied Theodose. "God keep me from ever taking a step without you! You are the good genius of this family; I think only of the day when Thuillier will take his seat in the Chamber. If you let the house ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... route by which to flee a throne and not to die—abdication. On his return from Varennes, the king should have abdicated. The Revolution would have adopted his son, and have educated it in its own image. He did not abdicate—he consented to accept the pardon of his people; he swore to execute a constitution from which he had fled. He was a king in a state of amnesty. Europe beheld in him but a fugitive from his throne led back to his punishment, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... There were good authorities brought, by which it appeared, that when a person did a thing upon which his leaving any office ought to follow, he was said to abdicate. But this was a critical dispute: And it scarce became the greatness of that assembly, or the importance of the matter.—Swift. It was ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... England, and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in the Colonies? Why should you presume that in any country a body duly constituted for any function will neglect to perform its duty and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go against all Governments in all nations. But in truth this dread of penury of supply, from a free assembly, has no foundation in nature. For first, observe that, besides the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief. When did distress ever oblige a prince to abdicate his authority? And what effect will it have upon those who are made to believe themselves ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... easy to let the people of a country know what is good for them and for it. To retreat now is to show our weakness, to make an enemy again of King Karl, and to gain us nothing, not even safety. As well abdicate, and turn the country over to the Terrorists! And, in this crisis, let me remind you of something you persistently forget. Whatever the views of the solid citizens may be as to this marriage,—and once it is effected, they will accept it without doubt,—the Crown Prince is now and will ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... colleague of his grandfather. The reign of the elder Andronicus was consumed in civil discord and disputes with his family, the young princes having raised the standard of revolt in order to get possession of the throne. He was at length compelled to abdicate; and assuming the monastic habit, he spent the last few years of his life in a cell, blind and wretched, his only consolation being the promise of a more splendid crown in heaven than ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various

... possibly do wrong. So by degrees—and this at an age when young ladies are ordinarily in the schoolroom—Miss Bruce had grown, on all social questions, to be the virtual head of the family. It was a position of which, till the time came to abdicate, she had not sufficiently appreciated the value. It seemed so natural to order carriages and horses at her own hours, to return visits, to receive guests, to do the honours of a comfortable country-house with an adequate establishment, and now, could she bear ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... the general government not to abdicate, by non user, the power vested in them of appropriating public money to great national objects of internal improvements, and declares the final result of the doctrine of abdicating powers arbitrarily designated as doubtful is but the degradation of the nation, the reducing ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... nay, the youth had so far forgotten gratitude as to frankly announce his intention of 'knockin' Keene's lights out' if he were further interfered with. To the journalist his 'lights' were indispensable; in no sense of the word did he possess too many of them; so it was clear that he must abdicate his tutorial functions. Alice implored her brother ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... unknown antecedents. In 474, Glycerius was deposed by Nepos, a Dalmatian, whom the empress Verina, widow of Leo I., had sent with an army from Byzantium to Ravenna. Nepos compelled his predecessor to abdicate, and to become bishop of Salona. He himself was proclaimed emperor at Rome on the 24th June, 474, after which he returned to Ravenna. While he was here treating with Euric, the Visigoth king, at Toulouse, Orestes, whom he had made Patricius ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... same time that she is ennobling by her dignity the objects of marriage, your wife will pretend that she ought to have her opinion and you yours. "In marrying," she will say, "a woman does not vow that she will abdicate the throne of reason. Are women then really slaves? Human laws can fetter the body; but the mind!—ah! God has placed it so near Himself that no human hand can ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... it is for a moment difficult to get rid of our habitual associations, and to feel that we are not a mere partnership, dissolvable whether by mutual consent or on the demand of one or more of its members, but a nation, which can never abdicate its right, and can never surrender it while virtue enough is left in the people to make it worth retaining. It would seem to be the will of God that from time to time the manhood of nations, like that of individuals, should be tried ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... an account. He has not, however, given them light enough or afforded them sufficient ground for a fishing bill in Chancery. Yet he says, "If you call upon me in a Chancery way, or by Common Law, I really will abdicate all forms, and give you some account." In consequence of this the Company did demand from him an account, regularly, and as fully and formally as if they had demanded it in a court of justice. He positively refused to give them any account whatever; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of the Peace of Augsburg, [25] Charles V determined to abdicate his many crowns and seek the repose of a monastery. The plan was duly carried into effect. His brother Ferdinand I succeeded to the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the Austrian territories, while his son, Philip II, [26] received the Spanish possessions in Italy, the Netherlands, and America. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... Why should she abdicate? The human being was obviously susceptible to personality beyond all other things. And beauty moved that absurd creature preposterously. There, at least, the woman who chanced to be born with these superficial attractions, had a royal territory, so long as ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... in her daughter's heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much; nor can there be a wholesomer task for the elders, as our young subjects grow up, naturally demanding liberty and citizen's rights, than for us gracefully to abdicate our sovereign pretensions and claims of absolute control. There's many a family chief who governs wisely and gently, who is loth to give the power up when he should. Ah, be sure, it is not youth alone ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to abdicate the sort of authority in which his knowledge of Dutch had placed him, and when he protested that he had done nothing but act as interpreter, Ellen said, "Yes, but we couldn't have done anything without you," and this was the view that Mrs. Kenton took of the matter in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... By delay and postponement he gained something. Instead of arriving as an assailant, he came as a deliverer. When he remonstrated, his soldiers said that they meant no injury to the king, but that he must obey or abdicate. They would make their general Regent; but if he refused to put himself at their head, they would take his life. They told him that he had commanded long enough, and now he must follow. He did not yield until the tumult had risen ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... sore struggle to Polly to abdicate her royal position, it was harder to do it with befitting dignity. To evade the direct question she was obliged to abandon her defiant attitude. "If you please, Sir," she said, hurriedly, with an increasing colour and no stops, "we're not always pirates, you know, and Wan Lee is only our ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... not this notion of the judgment being delegated to Jesus plainly adopted from the political image of a deputy? The king himself rarely sits on a judicial tribunal: he is generally represented there by an inferior officer. But this arrangement is totally inapplicable to God, who can never abdicate his prerogatives, since they are not legal, but dynamic. The essential nature of God is infinity. Certainly, there can be no substitution of this. It cannot be put off, nor put on, nor multiplied. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... superior energies, my wife has frequently made me propositions to take upon herself all the responsibilities of my affairs. She is desirous that, domestically, I should abdicate; that, renouncing further rule, like the venerable Charles V, I should retire into some sort of monastery. But indeed, the chimney excepted, I have little authority to lay down. By my wife's ingenious application ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... it under certain circumstances with even greater ease than he entered it. He can become as good as dead without the necessity of making way with himself. Theoretically, he can cease to live while still practically existing; for it is always open to the head of a family to abdicate. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... have forsaken, And say the ancient bards were all mistaken. Apollo's lately abdicate and fled, And good king Bacchus reigneth in his stead: He does the chaos of the head refine, And atom thoughts jump into words by wine: The inspiration's of a finer nature, As wine must needs ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe

... the heels of this came a new story, that Queen Victoria was about to abdicate. This story stated that the Prince of Wales would not be crowned King while his mother lived, but would ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... said,'you shall have it all to yourselves. I resign, I abdicate. You shall arrange yourselves as you please, but be quick about it, and let there be as ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... infinitum. The pessimistic conclusion is escaped by remembering that the highest reality is supra-temporal, and that the destiny which God has designed for us has not merely a contingent realisation, but is in a sense already accomplished. There are, in fact, two ways in which we may abdicate our birthright, and surrender the prize of our high calling: we may count ourselves already to have apprehended, which must be a grievous delusion, or we may resign it as unattainable, which ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... The result was that the young King broke his solemn promise, set up the standard of revolt, and was joined by nobles, ecclesiastical as well as lay, and by the restless Saxon rebels. By a trick he got his father into his power and forced him formally to abdicate, while he himself was crowned King by the papal legate. But the Emperor escaped, and with marvellous energy gathered adherents; but a renewal of the struggle was staved off by his own death after a few days' illness ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... or Maeonian town, If there some mortal have thy favour gain'd? Or, for that Menelaus in the field Hath vanquish'd Paris, and is willing yet That I, his bane, should to his home return; Here art thou found, to weave again thy wiles! Go then thyself! thy godship abdicate! Renounce Olympus! lavish here on him Thy pity and thy care! he may perchance Make thee his wife—at least his paramour! But thither go not I! foul shame it were Again to share his bed; the dames of ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... said unto her heart, 'Since thou art cause of all my bitter pain, I bid thee abdicate the throne: let brain Rule now, and do his part - His masterful, ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... it is believed that had the ill-fated English expedition to Walcheren in 1809 succeeded, and the army advanced into the country, he would have declared war against France. After an ineffectual struggle of more than three years, he chose rather to abdicate his throne than retain it under the degrading conditions of proconsulate subserviency. This measure excited considerable regret, and much esteem for the man who preferred the retirement of private life to the meanness of regal slavery. But Louis left a galling memento of misplaced magnificence, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... will is Stoical and pantheistic; it does not, like Indian and Platonic absolutism, seek to suspend the will in view of some supernatural destiny. Pantheism subordinates morally what it finds to be dependent in existence; its religion bids human reason and interest abdicate before cosmic forces, instead of standing out, like Buddhism and Christianity, for salvation, for spiritual extrication, from a world which they regard as delusive and fallen. The world of German absolutism, like the Stoic world, was not fallen. On the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... himself to believe that the words which he had heard had proceeded from the pulpit of Barchester cathedral. Was he again to be disturbed? Was his whole life to be shown up as a useless sham a second time? Would he have to abdicate his precentorship, as he had his wardenship, and to give up chanting, as he had given up his twelve old bedesmen? And what if he did! Some other Jupiter, some other Mr. Slope, would come and turn him out of St. Cuthbert's. Surely he could not have been wrong all ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... that the supernatural has had its day. The church must either change or abdicate. That is to say, it must keep step with the progress of the world or be trampled under foot. The church as a power has ceased to exist. To-day it is a matter of infinite indifference what the pulpit thinks unless there ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... lowered, and if she was not clinging to him for her own sake, she was holding on to her place, her uniqueness, refusing the possibility that another woman could serve him, as she had served him with pain, with suffering. She was like a queen who does not love her throne supremely but will not abdicate, who would rather fail in her appointed place than see another ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... that by no act of mine or of my people of Corsica has that election been annulled, forfeited, or invalidated; that its revenues are to-day rightfully mine to receive and bequeath, as its dignities are to-day rightfully mine to enjoy or abdicate to an heir of my own choosing. I declare further that, failing male issue of my own body, I resign herewith and abdicate both rank and revenue in favour of this boy, Prosper Paleologus, son of Constantine, and heir in descent ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... Living Voice. Believe me, for the works' sake, she too says. "Use your reason to the full to examine my credentials; study prophecy, history, the Fathers—study my claims in any realm in which your intellect is competent—and then see if it is not after all supremely reasonable for Reason to abdicate that particular throne on which she has sat so long and to seat Faith there instead? Certainly follow your Reason and use your private judgment, for at present you have no other guide; and then, please God, aided by Faith, Reason ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... immediately he incurred the resentment of Count Ricimer, one of the chief commanders of the barbarian troops who formed the military defence of Italy. At a distance from his Gothic allies, he was compelled to abdicate (October 16, 456), and Majorian was raised to fill ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... is quite correct, Mr. Senator. I, too, like yourself, was once a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your National Convention is our OEcumenic Council; you abdicate reason, as we do, before its decisions; and you yourself, Mr. Ratcliffe, you are a Cardinal. They are able men, those cardinals; I have known many; they were our best friends, but they were not reformers. Are you a reformer, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... previous history of the country. His Chief Secretary, Forster, however, had not been long in Ireland before he realized that this was the dream of a madman; and that the Government must either act or abdicate in favour of anarchy; but the Cabinet refused to support him. Before the end of the year the Government had practically abdicated, and the rule of the Land League was the only form of Government ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... have a plan for you and me: we shall be old maids, you and I, and live together like the ladies of Llangollen, careless and happy recluses. I'll let Brandon and abdicate. We will make a little tour together, when all this shall have blown over, in a few weeks, and choose our retreat; and with the winter's snow we'll vanish from Brandon, and appear with the early flowers at our cottage ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... in order to make a display of force and independence, denies everything through fear or distrust, and that the tyrannized and enslaved peoples are the only ones whose duty it is never to ask for anything. A people that hates its government ought to ask for nothing but that it abdicate its power." ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... the "array of subjects" taught in a present-day school. School-teachers in America prepare themselves so carefully for their duties, train themselves to such a high order of skill in their performance, it is but just that those of us who are not teachers should abdicate ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... that morning, as she handed Mary her quart of meal and the change for her hard-earned shilling, that she had spoiled her own fortunes, and that she would, ere night, be called upon to abdicate her stool behind the counter in favour of that humble customer; and yet so it was. Mr Benjamin could not forgive her dereliction from honesty; and the more he had trusted her, the greater was the shock to his confidence. Moreover, his short-sighted views of human nature, and his incapacity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... right. Kindness, ay kindness after all. And with age, to become clement. Yes, ambition first; then, the rounded vanity - victory still novel; and last, as you say, the royal mood of the mature man; to abdicate for others . . . Sir, you touched me hard about my dead friend; still harder about my living duty; and I am not so young but I can take a lesson. There is my hand upon it: she shall ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... an end!" he cried. "I will show you the end. If I cannot build empire I can do something else, I can throw this damnable little Kingdom down into the chaos it deserves!... I can abdicate to my cousin, Louis Delgado, who wants the throne I don't want!... I can stamp on this tinseled trumpery.... I can break jail!" He turned with an impassioned out-sweeping of his hands. Coming swiftly from behind the bench, he halted tensely before Benton ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... King, flinging out his arms, "give me a halberd! Give me a halberd, somebody! I desire all men to witness that I, Auberon, King of England, do here and now abdicate, and implore the Provost of Notting Hill to permit me to enlist in his army. Give ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... divest itself of sovereignty, and it is thence inferred or hinted that there is no need for the Imperial Parliament to take measures for the preservation of its supremacy. The dogma is both logically and historically untenable. A sovereign of any kind can abdicate. A Czar can lay down his power, and so also can a Parliament. To argue or imply that because sovereignty is not limitable (which is true) it cannot be surrendered (which is palpably untrue) involves the confusion of two distinct ideas. It is like arguing ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... the contrary, no one laid hands upon him while he was kept a prisoner under strict watch for three days, refusing to touch food; for even if he could have eaten he feared poison. And Colonna tried to force him to abdicate, as Pope Celestin had done before him, but he refused stoutly; and when the three days were over, Colonna went away, driven out, some say, by the people of Anagni who turned against him. But that is absurd, for Anagni is a little place and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... to thy renown, Require what 'tis our wealth to give, And comprehend and wear the crown Of thy despised prerogative! I, who in manhood's name at length With glad songs come to abdicate The gross regality of strength, Must yet in this thy praise abate, That, through thine erring humbleness And disregard of thy degree, Mainly, has man been so much less Than fits his fellowship with thee. High thoughts had shaped the foolish brow, The coward had ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... legal validity, as the first occasion on which a legitimate deduction has been made from admitted principles of the constitution. It had always been allowed that under certain circumstances (chiefly the neglect of the proper formalities of election) a magistrate might be invited to abdicate his office; but the fact of this invitation is itself an evidence for the absence of any legal power of suspension. Tradition, however, often supplemented the defects of historical evidence, and one, perhaps the older, tale of the removal of the first ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... stock of all Europe by going, each one in person, to advocate his side of a family quarrel before a common enemy, the French Emperor, by whom both had thus been caught like mice in a cage, and compelled to abdicate. At this news a feeling of indignation ran through the vice-kingdom, while all Europe laughed at the strange combination of knave and fool exhibited in the characters of the two Spanish kings. The people of New Spain saw in them only the guardians of the Church in the power of the infidels, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... Hampered by her too eager desire to please, her wits and her knowledge vanished in one absorbing feeling. Even her fidelity vexed the unfaithful husband, who seemed to bid her do wrong by stigmatizing her virtue as insensibility. Augustine tried in vain to abdicate her reason, to yield to her husband's caprices and whims, to devote herself to the selfishness of his vanity. Her sacrifices bore no fruit. Perhaps they had both let the moment slip when souls ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... your self-distrust! You—reign? Come, come! You would be pale and wan; One of those timid, introspective kings Who are imprisoned lest they abdicate. ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... and he was killed. Whether Mary was privy to the murder, or not, is a point still in dispute. Certain it is that she gave her hand in marriage to Bothwell, the prime author of the crime. A revolt of her subjects followed. She was compelled to abdicate: Murray was made regent, and her infant son, James VI., was crowned at Stirling (1567). Escaping from confinement at Lochleven, she was defeated at Langside, and obliged to fly to England ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... alienate entirely the love of her people. Her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was murdered. The queen was suspected of having some guilty knowledge of the affair. She was imprisoned and forced to abdicate in favor of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... the previous night, it was with some restraint that he addressed her; and there was wanting, also, something of his cheerful alacrity of manner, when he requested the stranger who had taken the box-seat, to yield it to a lady. The stranger's mood seemed uncongenial, for he declined to abdicate, intimating that there was room for the lady between himself and the driver, if she ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... that painful state of things, and that, finally, he regarded himself as the cause of the continual misunderstanding between the French Empire and Holland. It is curious that Louis thought he could abdicate the crown of Holland in favour of his son, as Napoleon only four years after wished to abdicate his crown in favour of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... are already in April, and nothing decided; the Emperor of Russia is impatient, and the future King of France will never forgive us if we delay his return to Paris. Come, gentlemen, let us for the last time try the way of kindness and persuasion. Let us openly and honestly advise Napoleon to abdicate; he must make up his mind ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... American merchant marine was that of the square-rigged ship, intricate, capricious, and feminine in her beauty, with forty nimble seamen in the forecastle, not that of the metal trough with an engine in the middle and mechanics sweating in her depths. When the Atlantic packet was compelled to abdicate, it was the beginning of the end. After all, her master was the fickle wind, for a slashing outward passage might be followed by weeks of beating home to the westward. Steadily forging ahead to the beat ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... the king agreed, and, as a bishop was present, the marriage was performed immediately. After the marriage ceremony, the king said, "Hear me, counsellors! As I am now too old to rule, and can no longer perform the duty of king, I am going to abdicate in favor of my son-in-law.—Don Juan, on your head I lay the crown with its sceptre. Do whatever you will, for you are ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... arbiters of the Nations; and for my part I have felt the divine responsibility of this sacred office, without undervaluing at the same time the heavy obligation, not unconnected with danger, which it imposes on me. If you, dear Sir and Brother, abdicate these obligations, you have also abdicated that position for Prussia. And should such an example find imitators, then the civilisation of Europe would be delivered up to the play of winds; right will then no longer ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... public should learn, as they inevitably must, that the King hesitates, the Cabinet would lose all moral influence and be unable to accomplish their task." The King seemed still in perplexity, and said he should prefer to abdicate. "You cannot say that, my dear," replied the Queen, who was present at the interview with the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier; "you belong to France, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... German military strength is on the point of acquiring that final superiority which, should the occasion arise, would force us to submit to humiliation or destruction, France suddenly refuses to abdicate, and shows, as Renan said: 'her eternal power of renaissance and resurrection.' The disgust of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... necessary to interfere in an arbitrary manner. On that occasion Khudadad, the late ruling khan, murdered his prime minister in a fit of passion, and upon investigation it was found that he had put to death also without trial a number of innocent subjects. The Viceroy of India permitted him to abdicate and gave him a generous allowance, which was much better treatment than the villain was entitled to. His son, Mir Mahmud, who succeeded him, turns out to be an excellent ruler. He is intelligent, conscientious, and has the welfare of his people ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... deposition, the mournful fiction of being passed by and relegated to the second place. Her place was her own. Her standing ground in the universal order, a freehold, absolute and inalienable. She could not abdicate her throne, neither could any wrest it away from her. She perceived that not self-effacement, but self-development, not dissolution, but evolution, was the service required of her. And, as divinely designed contribution to that end was every joy, every sorrow, laid upon her, since ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... the country as the most unscrupulous and adroit politician the Revolution had thrown up. This person, who is known to have been gravely implicated in many assassinations, and who was the instrument used in 1912 by Yuan Shih-kai to persuade the Manchu Imperial Family to abdicate, had in a brief four years accumulated a vast fortune by the manipulations he had indulged in as Director-General of The Bank of Communications, an institution which, because it disposed of all the railway receipts, was always in funds even ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... from the title giving him final and full authority. Here he overreached himself, for, once out, he was out for good. On July 19th, at six o'clock in the morning, after an all-night conference, the Emperor was persuaded to abdicate. ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... throne of Life. His hosts have trampled the banners of loyal love in the dust. His forces have compelled the rightful rulers of the world to abdicate. But, even as gross materialism has never succeeded in altogether denying Divinity, so, for a few days each year, at Christmas time, childhood asserts its claims and compels mankind to render, at least a ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... possible, the necessity for absolute unanimity in the administration than to diminish it; and on a grave and momentous subject to leave each member of a ministry free to pronounce a separate and different judgment, so that one may resist what his colleague advocates, is to abdicate the functions of government altogether. To permit such liberty was either a proof that the ministry was weak altogether—which it was not—or that its conduct on this question was weak. In either case, it was a mischievous precedent that was thus set;[174] ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... turned pale. He must "lick" Abner Briggs, Junior, or abdicate. So he determined to lick ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... wherewith to bless thy own. These flowers, that round us spring, may be transplanted: and Odo made to bloom with amaranths and myrtles, like this Serenia. Before thy people act the things, thou here hast heard. Let no man weep, that thou may'st laugh; no man toil too hard, that thou may'st idle be. Abdicate thy throne: but still retain the scepter. None need a king; but many need ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... to the world a great example of pride, of abnegation, of heroism, they are again giving to it a deeper lesson, a more valuable, a more efficacious one. They are proving that no misfortune counts, that nothing is lost while the soul does not abdicate. The powers of darkness will never prevail against the forces of light and love that are leading humanity towards the heights which victory is already making clear to us on ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... position to remove one opponent after another. In the middle of the third century B.C. the greater part of the China of that time was already in the hands of Ch'in, and in 256 B.C. the last emperor of the Chou dynasty was compelled, in his complete impotence, to abdicate in favour of ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... we have considered that our nation needs the closest union of all its forces for the attainment of victory. In agreement with the Imperial Duma, we have recognized that for the good of our land we should abdicate the throne of the Russian state and lay down ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... starves her to death, is, in Tacitus, a tender father doing all for his offspring that fortune permits him to do in his excess of adversity (Hist. II. 59), and a respectful, sensitive son seeking to abdicate his empire in order to rescue his parent from impending evils. (Hist. III. 67.) Juvenal shows us Otho carrying into the tumult of the battle-field the effeminacy that disgraces him in time of peace; Tacitus represents Otho as an active warrior (Hist. II. 11); and convinces us that there ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... magnitude of the evil, which his intemperate measures had brought on the church, but which it was, perhaps, not yet too late to rectify; and he concluded by admonishing her, that, if she valued her own fame, or the interests of her soul, she would compel this man of yesterday to abdicate the office, for which he had proved himself so incompetent, and return to ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... marquis succeeded or not, he had promised her a sufficiently liberal reward to compensate for all personal discomfort. So, in the sweetest of voices, and with a feigned humility of manner, she declared this little room to be even much too good for a poor widow whose misfortunes had compelled her to abdicate her ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... I. was no exception. He lost his eldest son, the prince of Wales, Charles I. was beheaded, James II. was forced to abdicate, and the two Pretenders consummated the ill luck of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... personage was usually elected from the house of the Duke of Savoy, Geneva had become little better than a dependency of that state. The first years of the sixteenth century had been turbulent. The bishop, John, had at one time been forced to abdicate his authority, but later had tried to resume it. The Archbishop of Vienne, Geneva's metropolitan, had then excommunicated the city and invited Duke Charles III of Savoy to punish it. The citizens rose under Bonivard, renounced the authority of the pope, expelled ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Ancestors exerted in the Case of Chilperick their 18th King, whom they forced to abdicate the Kingdom, [Footnote: Regno se abdicare coegerunt.] and made him a Monk, judging him unworthy to sit at the Helm of so great an Empire, [Footnote: Propter inertiam.] by reason of his Sloth. Whereof Aimoinus, lib. 4. cap. 61. Sigibertus and Trithemius, ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... Orto, consecrate, And daily worshipped. Fair, in holy state, She listens to the tale each sinner tells. And among them who come to her, who ails The most, on him the most does blessing fall; She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate; Over the curse of blindness she prevails, And heals sick languors in the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka



Words linked to "Abdicate" :   abdicator, renounce, abdication, give up, abdicable



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