"Slavish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in society, desire to become Christians? This is not the first time that these questions have been asked. They were asked at great length by Mr. Irving in his "Theory and Practice of Caste." Hitherto they have been asked in vain; and owing to the indifference of people in this country, and to the slavish submission of the laity to the opinion of the missionaries, a system of attempting to propagate Christianity has been allowed to exist which has been of incalculable mischief. But I think we may even go further than ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... a higher, holier law of the great Power, who made us what we are, than this one of slavish obedience to a tradition. Why must our feet go in ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Esther's king? 'There is a people whose laws are different from all the peoples that be upon the earth.' That was an offence that could not be tolerated in a despotism that ground everything down to the one level of a slavish uniformity. It will be well for us Christian people if men look at us, and say, 'Ah, that man has another rule of conduct from the one that prevails generally. I wonder what is the underlying principle of his life; it evidently is not the same ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fierce cries of the assailants ceased, and many in the hushed throng knelt or prostrated themselves, while all eyes were turned with eager expectation upon the monarch whom they had been taught to regard with slavish awe. Montezuma saw his advantage, and in the presence of his awestruck people felt once more a king. With his former calm authority and confidence he ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... making them forget this, he tempted them to worship the creature instead of the Creator; to pray to sun and moon and stars, to send them fair weather, good crops, prosperous fortune: to look up to the heaven above them, and down to the earth beneath their feet, in slavish dread and anxiety: and pray to the sun, not to blast them to the seas, not to sweep them away; to the rivers and springs, not to let them perish from drought; to earthquakes, not to swallow them up; ay, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... bow, then to drive on one side of the road, and there stop till they are past: The same homage is required also to their wives, and even their children; and it is commonly paid them by the inhabitants. But some of our captains have thought so slavish a mark of respect beneath the dignity which they derive from the service of his Britannic majesty, and have refused to pay it; yet, if they were in a hired carriage, nothing could deter the coachman from honouring the Dutch grandee at their expence, but the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... stood and looked at her in the silence of the dead, his immense, black Syrian eyes growing wider and wider with childish horror. He had always regarded her with slavish fear. What he was to her he did not know; neither did he know how he had fallen into her hands. He knew only that he was not of her blood or of her country and that he yet seemed to have always belonged to her. In his first memory of his existence, a little deformed creature rolling ...
— The Little Hunchback Zia • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to say, that he had little to offer in the shape of comment on the Report submitted to the meeting. (Groans.) The causes of its unsatisfactory nature were patent to all. Owing to their having been compelled, in what he now fully recognised was a slavish and mistaken obedience to a popular clamour (a Voice, "You're right!"), three years ago, in the height of a sudden scare about invasion—("Oh! oh!")—to let the water in and flood the Tunnel—(groans)—they had been occupied ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... youth shall be taught to go up to the same original and ever-living fountains of all literature, at which the Miltons, and the Barrows, and the Drydens drank in so much of their enthusiasm and inspiration, and to cast off entirely that slavish dependence upon the opinions of others which they must feel, who take their knowledge of what it is either their duty, their interest, or their ambition ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... beautiful scenery, with the perfumed pine trees all around, the woodland solitude, where I c'n study the wild critters, beasts an' birds an' insects; the creek an' the lake, where I c'n paddle an' fish; my time all my own, with no slavish duties, no tasks, no responsibilities. An' it's all selfish, ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... was a sight for sin and wrong And slavish tyranny to see, A sight to make our faith more pure and strong In ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... something to my foes and die, that I may in turn destroy those who betrayed me, and those may groan who also made me unhappy. I am the son of Agamemnon, who ruled over Greece by general consent; no tyrant, but yet he had the power as it were of a God, whom I will not disgrace, suffering a slavish death, but breathe out my soul in freedom, but on Menelaus will I revenge me. For if we could gain this one thing, we should be prosperous, if from any chance safety should come unhoped for on the slayers then, not the slain: this I pray for. For what I wish is sweet to delight the mind without ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... "ugliest woman that ever I saw." As far as we can glean from his own voluminous writings it would seem to be extremely doubtful whether he ever saw Anne of Cleves at all, and we suspect him here of being no more than a slavish echo of the common voice, which attributed Cromwell's downfall to the ugliness of this bride he procured for his Bluebeard master. To the common voice from the brush of Holbein, which permits us to form our own opinions and shows us a lady who is certainly ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... bus'ness there; I have not slavish temperance enough T' attend a favourite's heels, and watch his smiles, Bear an ill office done me to my face, And thank the lord that wrong'd ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... would wish to cherish of the character of the poet, it is obvious that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering. So that it will be the wish of the poet to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes, nay, for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... off me. I do not think I have been unreasonable; I have not found it difficult to obey others that were set over me; but when I found almost her every requirement part of a system for reducing me to a slavish obedience, I began to lay down lines of my own. I resolved to do at once whatever she asked me, whether pleasant to me or not, so long as I saw no reason why it should not be done. Then I was surprised to find how seldom I had to make a stand against ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... lady,' began the old woman, with a slavish obeisance. 'Nay, do not push by so cruelly. I have—see what I have for you!' and she held out with a mysterious air, 'The ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... procured, it is hardly the coveted rest, but a troubled and dreamy slumber, leaving in the morning the body quite unrefreshed, the head aching, the mouth dry, and the stomach utterly devoid of appetite. But far worse than even this condition is the slavish yielding to the habit, which soon becomes a bondage in which life is shorn of its wholesome pleasures, and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... fortunes of society, claims the largest share of attention. Religion was the ruling idea of that day, and the only civiliser capable of taming such wolves as then constituted the flock of the faithful. The clergy were all in all; and though they kept the popular mind in the most slavish subjection with regard to religious matters, they furnished it with the means of defence against all other oppression except their own. In the ecclesiastical ranks were concentrated all the true piety, all the learning, all the wisdom of the time; and, as a natural consequence, a great ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... them in their broad lines. But they are not the methods appropriate to more advanced countries, and our Socialists will be unnecessarily retrograde if they allow the prestige of the Bolsheviks to lead them into slavish imitation. It will be a far less excusable error in our reactionaries if, by their unteachableness, they compel the adoption of violent methods. We have a heritage of civilization and mutual tolerance which is important ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... retainers; and Richard took the field at the head of an army forty thousand strong.[**] It then behoved all the rebels to submit: the charters of enfranchisement and pardon were revoked by parliament; the low people were reduced to the same slavish condition as before; and several of the ringleaders were severely punished for the late disorders. Some were even executed without process or form of law.[***] It was pretended, that the intentions of the mutineers had been to seize the king's person, to carry him through England at their head; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a freeman contending for liberty, on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... so little realized in the way of comfort and satisfaction that wails of doubt, and sorrow are undiminished. Every bit of this "groundswell" of seeking, tortured souls is just the reaction from slavish, blasphemous, orthodox religion. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures, and adorations. Half hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay was a little child from a neighboring cottage, who had crept in after him and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upward ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... captain, and it was delightful to witness the treatment and mutual respect shown to each other. The men were frequently far more jealous of their captain's dignity than he was himself. There were others whose dignity became a slavish occupation to sustain. It sometimes happened if the master and mate differed on some minor matter that their relations became childishly strained, and each asserted his rights until the feeling softened. The captain always claimed the starboard side of the ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control, constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... empty throne, and each time bowing the head until the forehead three times touched the marble flooring. This was done by the Russians and the Dutch, but the Earl of Macartney, who came as English ambassador in 1792, refused to perform the slavish ceremony, and was therefore not permitted to see the emperor, though otherwise ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... indescribable, and which doubtless came to them because of the power and reality of faith. They were the fresh natural originals in which a deep primitive spontaneous adoration that dominated the whole nature of man expressed itself; while the specimens that were executed afterwards were slavish imitations, expressing a worship and a creed which had become ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... me, wretch? Where are Belachof, Bartowsky and Strassof? And Pierre Slutch? All the comrades who swore with me to revenge my brother? Where are they? On what gallows did you have them hung? What mine have you buried them in? And still you follow your slavish task. And my friends, my other friends, the poor comrades of my artist life, the inoffensive young men who have not committed any other crime than to come to see me too often when I was lively, and who believed they could talk freely ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... old soul of the tritical, Noting, translating, high slavish, hot critical, Quarterly-scutcheon'd, great heir to each dunce, Be Tibbald, Cook, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... biographers has claimed that his Phi Beta Kappa Oration was our Declaration of Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson did not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old World scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, he constructed his sentences grammatically. He adhered to the slavish rules of propriety, and observed the reticences which a traditional delicacy has considered inviolable in decent society, European and Oriental alike. When he wrote poetry, he commonly selected subjects which seemed adapted to poetical treatment,—apparently thinking ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... no palsies, On a pair-royal do I wait in death: My sovereign as his liegeman; on my mistress As a devoted servant; and on Ithocles As if no brave, yet no unworthy enemy: Nor did I use an engine to entrap His life out of a slavish fear to combat Youth, strength, or cunning; but for that I durst not Engage the goodness of a cause on fortune By which his name might have outfaced my vengeance. Oh, Tecnicus, inspired with Phoebus' ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... he was proud of the occurrence; what did a miserable thrashing signify as against the feat of throwing the journeyman to the ground and overcoming the slavish respect he had felt for him! Let them dare to get at him again with their lying allusions, or to make sport of Father Lasse! Pelle was not ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... big-brother affectionate tutelage and guardianship, and on Puppy's—for, though we tried many, we never found any other satisfactory name for him but "Puppy"—a reverent admiration and watchful worshipping imitation. No great man was ever more anxiously copied by some slavish flatterer than that old sleepy carelessly-great setter by that eager, ambitious little terrier. The occasions when to bark and when not to bark, for example. One could actually see Puppy studying the old dog's face on doubtful occasions of the kind. Boiling over, as he visibly was, with the desire ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... woman. I grant you they were ugly devils, fit to set in a field to frighten crows; but Catherine loved them. Royal treatment for a Christian Queen from a Christian King! Could the Sophy do worse? And presently the poor lady yielded (as most women will, for at heart they are slavish and love to be beaten), and after holding herself aloof for a long time—a sad, silent, neglected figure where all the rest were loud and merry—she made friends with the lady, and even seemed to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... with the Almighty"? What sanctifying virtue lies in abstaining from beefsteak on Friday? Rome nowhere has improved men by her mechanical piety. What she has accomplished was made possible by the fear of purgatorial torments, by slavish dread of her mysterious powers, by ambition and bigotry. We would not exchange our abused treasures for ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... jewels,—their arms, like those of the men, were bare, and their small, delicate feet were protected by sandals fastened with crossed bands of ribbon coquettishly knotted. The arrangement of their hair was evidently a matter of personal taste, and not the slavish copying of any set fashion,—some allowed it to hang in loosely flowing abundance over their shoulders,—others had it closely braided, or coiled carelessly in a thick soft mass at the top of the head,—but ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was not squeamish, nor did he entertain slavish thoughts of how people would feel over a disregarded custom. He liked simplicity, and moreover he felt the need of exercise now that his work kept him inactive most of the time. He was at an age when ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... was the spirit of religion that Jesus came to reveal—the real Fatherhood of God and the Divine Sonship of man. A better righteousness than that of the scribes and the Pharisees—not a slavish adherence to the Law, with its supposed profits and rewards. Get the motive of life right. Get the heart right and these things become of secondary importance. As his supreme revelation was the personal fatherhood of God, from which follows necessarily the Divine sonship ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... such board as her husband's means permit."[953] "For the sake of bread and shelter she marries and becomes the unpaid cook and housekeeper of a husband and the mother of his children."[954] "Woman has been degraded, the mother has been kept down; so the children have been born with slavish instincts, ready to creep for any favour, and only just awakening to the need for self-assertion and independence of action."[955] Socialism will change all that, for "Socialism means freedom for women, just as ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which ye can not be, oppressive, arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... portion of the British People; and agitate that ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. These two principals of Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications, they ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... thus, through an unjust desire of governing, he in a manner shut himself up in a prison. Besides, he would not trust his throat to a barber, but had his daughters taught to shave; so that these royal virgins were forced to descend to the base and slavish employment of shaving the head and beard of their father. Nor would he trust even them, when they were grown up, with a razor; but contrived how they might burn off the hair of his head and beard with red-hot nut-shells. And as to his two wives, Aristomache his countrywoman, and Doris ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali,[275] "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex![276] The Democrats from New Hampshire! ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... base services, and servile dependencies of the feudal system.——They knew that no such unworthy dependencies took place in the ancient seats of liberty, the republic of Greece and Rome: and they thought all such slavish subordinations were equally inconsistent with the constitution of human nature, and that religious liberty with which Jesus had made them free. This was certainly the opinion they had formed, and they were ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... these poor creatures, and the utterance of many of them is more like what Prospero describes Caliban's to have been, than the speech of men and women in a Christian and civilised land: the children of their owners, brought up among them, acquire their negro mode of talking;—slavish speech surely it is—and it is distinctly perceptible in the utterances of all southerners, particularly of the women, whose avocations, taking them less from home, are less favourable to their throwing off this ignoble trick of pronunciation, than the more varied ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... be worth half a dozen French minxes who would amuse themselves by getting up intrigues with your footmen," was Lady Maria's astute observation. "I would pay an extra ten pounds a year myself for slavish affection, if it was to be obtained at agency offices. Send her to a French hairdresser to take a course of lessons, and she will be worth anything. To turn you out perfectly will be ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... us see if I am. I accuse her of nothing but a slavish devotion to custom and the conventions. What did she say when you read her the chapter before this one: where Fidelia goes down to the dining-room at midnight and finds Fleming breaking into the silver-safe ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... corporations that broke the laws and charged the people prohibitive prices for the necessities of life. Party worshippers like the Hon. Mr. Maxwell besieged the committee room pleading for harmony, meaning by "harmony," a slavish compromise with the greed and influence of money and power that might help the party if they were let alone. Letters flooded him from all parts of the state begging him or threatening him to leave well alone. Some of the very men who had during the election campaign ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... David, warr'd with Israels foes; Unlike to those whom his imperial son Taught truths divine—the Preacher Solomon; Nor war nor wisdom yield our Jews delight; They will not study, and they dare not fight. These are, with us, a slavish, knavish crew, Shame and dishonour to the name of Jew; The poorest masters of the meanest arts, With cunning heads, and cold and cautious hearts; They grope their dirty way to petty gains, While poorly paid ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... There is only one letter in the Slavish Alphabet for V and W. In the personal names of those nations, which use the Cyrillic alphabet, we have written it V, according to the English pronunciation; in those belonging to nations which have adopted the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... and a more reckless oppression set in! What they had taken for larks announcing the breaking of a brighter day turned out to be bats and similar vermin of the night. In the state the exercise of a boundless arbitrary power; in the Church, dark intolerance; and, in its train, slavish submission, favour-seeking, rolling up of the eyes, and hypocrisy as means to unworthy ends, and especially to that of speedy promotion—the deepest corruption of all—that of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dirty designs, his rascally tricks, No stain of abuse on me shall fix. Justice and right, in his despite, Shall aid and attend me, and do me right: With these to friend, I ne'er will bend, Nor descend To a humble tone (Like his own), As a sneaking loon, A knavish, slavish, poor poltroon. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... delighted with the effects he saw in other countries flowing from the diffusion of intelligence and freedom, that he wished to engraft these dangerous exotics upon the rude and unprepared soil of his own slavish community. When he went to Oxford he was so captivated with the venerable grandeur of that University that he declared he would build one when he got home, and it is equally true that he said he 'would have an Opposition.' These follies were engendered in the brain of a very intelligent ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... 362 A. Anaschindyleuo is said to anaskolopizo, which is used both for 'impale' and 'crucify'. The two were alternative forms of the most slavish and cruel capital punishment, impalement being ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... more," vowed his companion; "never more will I mention marriage to a woman unless I feel love. Henceforth credit and commerce may take care of themselves. Bankruptcy may come when it lists. I have done with slavish fear of disaster. I mean to work diligently, wait patiently, bear steadily. Let the worst come, I will take my axe and an emigrant's berth, and go out with Louis to the West; he and I have settled it. No woman shall ever ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... hissed, or seemed to heave deep sighs, and in every sound that came from them could be heard the mocking note of ironical contempt for the gray, dusty shapes of men, crawling about their decks and filling their deep holds with the fruits of their slavish toil. Ludicrous and pitiable were the long strings of dock laborers bearing on their backs thousands of tons of bread, and casting it into the iron bellies of the ships to gain a few pounds of that same bread to fill their own bellies—for their ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... somewhat near the truth had swept through the hotel, for wherever we appeared we found ourselves the object of the deepest attention, not only by the slavish minions of the hotel from the proprietor down, but from the ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... queen on her adorned chair, But she, as down the sun-streaked place they came, Cried out, "Haste! ye, who lead my grief and shame." And when she stood before her trembling, said, "Although within a palace thou wast bred Yet dost thou carry but a slavish heart, And fitting is it thou shouldst learn thy part, And know the state whereunto thou art brought; Now, heed what yesterday thy folly taught, And set thyself to-day my will to do; Ho ye, bring that ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... was consolation, this was inspiration, but he longed for the return of Margaret Green, that she might help him enjoy the realization of her ideas in the equipment of the place; and he held the decorator to the most slavish obedience through the carpenters and painters who created at his bidding a miraculous interior, all white, or just off-white, such as had never been imagined of a bookstore in New York before. It was actually ready by the end of August, though smelling ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... way and manner of the possessing.—Passages such as Is. liv. 1,[1] lxii. 4, compare Job i. 8, where a relation is spoken of, founded on most cordial love, show that the signification "to marry," does not by any means proceed from that of ruling, and is not to be explained from the absolute, slavish dependence of the wife in the East, but rather from the signification "to possess." And this is farther proved by passages such as Deut. xxi. 10-13, xxvi. 1, where the copula carnalis is pointed out as that by which the [Hebrew: ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... told me, baring his slavish soul, As I counted the ribs of my dead cayuse and cursed at the desert sky, The tale of the Upland Rider's fate while I dug in the water hole For a drop, a taste of the bitter seep; but the ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... Sprengel, and the like, are at no time to be regarded merely as subjects of amusement; they have their philosophical value; they have a still greater historical value; and they show how far even upright minds may be warped by imperfect education, and slavish deference to authority. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, I ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the Mahabharata, is full of episodes showing a profound regard for truth and an almost slavish submission to a pledge once given. The death of Bhishma, one of the most important events in the story of the Mahabharata, is due to his vow never to hurt a woman. He is thus killed by Sikhandin, whom he takes to ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... how absurd we may realize if we imagine men developing a passion to imitate the ways and avocations of women. Freedom is only good when it is a freedom to follow the laws of one's own nature; it ceases to be freedom when it becomes a slavish attempt to imitate others, and would be disastrous ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... softly a while; Let us not break in upon him. O change beyond report, thought, or belief! See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused With languished head unpropt, As one past hope, abandoned, And by himself given over, In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O'er-worn and soiled. Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he, That heroic, that renowned, Irresistible Samson? whom unarmed No strength of man or fiercest wild beast could withstand; Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid; Ran on embattled armies clad in ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... was eight years ago; the gift is deliberate, and my lover awaits it with such loyal patience that, if I pleased, I could postpone the marriage for a year. There is no servility in this; love's slave he may be, but the heart is not slavish. Never have I seen a man of nobler feeling, or one whose tenderness was more rich in fancy, whose love bore more the impress of his soul. Alas! my sweet one, the art of love is his by heritage. A few words will tell ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... could not survive the suspicious interference of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created council of ministers, and the senate, endowed for the first time with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the slavish instruments of the tsar and his favourites of the moment. The elaborate system of education, culminating in the reconstituted, or new-founded, universities of Dorpat, Vilna, Kazan and Kharkov, was strangled ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her chief unrest— Red the light on plain and wood Slavish ey'd and still of breast, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... the slave of her passions, and she knew it. It was this now that made a coward of her. With all the power of self in her she had abandoned herself to her love for her husband. And, with slavish submission, she was prepared to accept his words rather than banish herself out of his presence altogether. A mad, wild hope lay somewhere deep down in her heart that some day he could be made to forget. That some day, through what looked ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... appearance of being independent, but the result shows that he is generally governed by others."[479] Clement, however, after his election, tried to assume an attitude more becoming the head of Christendom than slavish dependence on Charles. His love for the Emperor, he told Charles, had not diminished, but his hatred for others had disappeared;[480] and throughout 1524 he was seeking to promote concord between Christian princes. His ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... truth, which the wise and good have hived for the use of the race, is poohed at as old-fogyish. To receive as true anything which the child cannot fathom, and which he has not discovered or demonstrated for himself, is denounced as slavish. All authority in teaching, growing out of the age and the reputed wisdom of the teacher, all faith and reverence in the learner, growing out of a sense of his ignorance and dependence, are discarded, and the frightened stripling is continually ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... listening—it was thrilling to hear, a wonderful tale from foreign parts. He followed Geissler's mouth with slavish eyes. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... loyal volunteers! God will defend the right; That thought will banish slavish fears, That blessed consciousness still cheers The soldier in the fight. The stars for us shall never burn, The stripes may frighten slaves, The Briton's eye will proudly turn Where Britain's standard waves. Beneath its folds, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... France and Spain; she cared much less to keep the west than she did to keep Gibraltar, and an agreement with the United States about the former left her free to insist on the retention of the latter. Congress, in a spirit of slavish subserviency, had instructed the American commissioners to take no steps without the knowledge and advice of France. Franklin was inclined to obey these instructions; but Jay, supported by Adams, boldly insisted on disregarding ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Willbewill should, with Diligence his man, search for, and do his best to apprehend what town Diabolonians were yet left alive in Mansoul. The names of several of them were, Mr. Fooling, Mr. Let-Good-Slip, Mr. Slavish-Fear, Mr. No-Love, Mr. Mistrust, Mr. Flesh, and Mr. Sloth. It was also commanded, that he should apprehend Mr. Evil- Questioning's children, that he left behind him, and that they should demolish his house. The children that he left behind ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... would count obedience to such a command slavish; but Malcolm's idea of liberty differed so far from that of most Britons, that he felt, if now he refused to obey the marquis, he might be a slave for ever; for he had already learned to recognize and abhor that slavery which is not the less the root of all other slaveries ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... love in peace. The Fates consent;—ay me, dissembling Fates! They showed their favours to conceal their hates, And draw Leander on, lest seas too high Should stay his too obsequious destiny: Who[114] like a fleering slavish parasite, In warping profit or a traitorous sleight, 20 Hoops round his rotten body with devotes, And pricks his descant face full of false notes; Praising with open throat, and oaths as foul As his false heart, the beauty of an owl; Kissing his skipping hand with ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Ker, two extreme whigamores of the left wing of the godly, went to raise a western force that would neither acknowledge Charles nor join Cromwell, who now took Edinburgh Castle. Charles was reduced by Argyll to make to him the most slavish promises, including the payment of 40,000 pounds, the part of the price of Charles I. which Argyll had not ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... The poet's health suffered extremely: he tried a fashionable "cure" at Cheltenham, where he saw miracles of healing, but underwent none. In September 1845 Peel was moved by Lord Houghton to recommend the poet for a pension (200 pounds annually). "I have done nothing slavish to get it: I never even solicited for it either by myself or others." Like Dr Johnson, he honourably accepted what was offered in honour. For some reason many persons who write in the press are always maddened when such good fortune, however small, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... but whose minds and hearts are prudently closed to inspection. These are the perfections of lollipop misses who left home for boarding-school, five, six or eight years ago, and come back conceited ninnies, who imagine every good-looking man must be appropriated, whether he will or not, as their slavish adorer. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... advances, labor becomes more honorable. All barbarous nations despise it as slavish. Pigrum et iners videtur sudore adquirere quod possis sanguine parare: has been the motto of all medieval times. In heathen Iceland, the owner of a piece of land might be deprived of it by an adversary ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... appear, as I hear from an excellent classic, that the hands were thus joined during prayer. Mr. Rensleigh Wedgwood has apparently given[27] the true explanation, though this implies that the attitude is one of slavish subjection. "When the suppliant kneels and holds up his hands with the palms joined, he represents a captive who proves the completeness of his submission by offering up his hands to be bound by the victor. It is the pictorial representation of the Latin dare manus, to ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... that view so far as it implies that the artist cannot be content with a slavish reproduction of isolated facts taken from nature; and that he sets his gaze upon "le Beau dans le vrai," which I should like to render, not the "beautiful in the true," but the "Ideal in the true." But I am ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... burden fell yet heavier: necessity compelled us to allot to them the most slavish and laborious employments. Those operations, which in other countries are performed by the brute creation, were here effected by the exertions of men: but this ought not to be considered a grievance; ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... long poem, in which an attempt is made to present in clear terms the leading principles of the philosophy of Epicurus, and it is acknowledged to be one of the greatest of the world's didactic poems. He undertakes to demonstrate that the miseries of men may be traced to a slavish dread of the gods; and in order to remove such apprehensions, he would prove that no divinity ever interposed in the affairs of the earth, either as creator or director. The Romans were not, as ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the voice of the charmer!—struggling against the prejudice and bigoted delusion of the bandaged and fettered herd to whom, in our fond hopes and aspirations, we trusted to give light and freedom; seeing the slavish judgments we would have redeemed from error clashing their chains at us in ire;—made criminal by our very benevolence;—the martyrs whose zeal is rewarded with persecution, whose prophecies are crowned ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "For the reason aforementioned—a slavish timidity." Daisy broke off to carol a few bars of a song. "I've known the Ratcliffe family ever since I became engaged to Will," she said presently. "Jim Ratcliffe, you know, was left his guardian, and he was always very good to him. Will made his home with them and he and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... while they did not care about the people took care that the dukes should show them slavish respect. In 1303, the dukes were convoked, and when they were assembled a letter from the khan was read, in which they were commanded to stop fighting because the great khan desired to see peace established. Whenever such a letter was ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... industry was brutish (though of a kind still belauded), since it left no leisure for humanizing exercises, no room for sweetness and light. They were law-abiding, but that was not a virtue to commend itself to the Victorian diggers at this date, and they were only law-abiding because of their slavish instincts and their lack of courageous attributes. The antipathy bred then survives in the third generation of Australians, but is less demonstrative now that laws have been enacted in ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and for the part which he intends to play in Europe. He therefore endeavors to enter into an agreement with the heir of the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, a man of great energy and wide political views, to the effect to mold out of Austria an exclusive Slavish power and to surrender to Germany the Archduchy of Austria with Vienna and Tyrol, and annex Servia ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... gallops on, puffing and screaming. Does any man pretend to say that he ENJOYS the journey?—he might as well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he IS afraid: nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I am sure Hannibal or Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at this dizzy ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a piece with the iron itself. Nothing could be more imposing, or afford a more correct idea of Cromwell's perseverance and judgment, than his well-trained soldiery. Obedience, inflexible obedience to their commander, seemed the leading, almost the only principle upon which they acted: not that slavish obedience which is the effect of fear, but the obedience which is the result of confidence. "God and the Protector" was their faith, and they knew no other. As the Jew gazed upon those invincible men, he shrouded himself still more closely within his furred ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... should a man live if not for the pleasures of discourse? Surely not for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have previous pain as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly called slavish. ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... Stoicism became the refuge of all noble spirits. But, in spite of its severity, and its apparent triumph over the feelings, it brought no real freedom and peace. "Stoical morality, strictly speaking, is, at bottom, only a slavish morality, excellent in Epictetus; admirable still, but useless to the world, in Marcus Aurelius." Pride takes the place of real disinterestedness. It stands alone in haughty grandeur and solitary isolation, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... a small stationer—a bald-headed sort of business, as someone has called it. Ruled paper for slavish persons, plain sheets for ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... slow-witted and stupid as in his peasant days in the south of France. He knew discipline and fear of authority, and from God down to the sergeant of gendarmes the only difference to him was the measure of slavish obedience which he rendered. In point of fact, the sergeant bulked bigger in his mind than God, except on Sundays when God's mouthpieces had their say. God was usually very remote, while the sergeant was ordinarily very close ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... preparation for life. These busy men, forced to be busy, are a thousand times more self-respecting than if left to lead the listless lives that were theirs before their country called them. I wonder if, after all, Kipling isn't right, and that the hump and hoof and haunch of it all isn't obedience? Not slavish obedience, but obedience founded on a knowledge of one's place and value in ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... Rules of composition I shall certainly spoil the Air, and cross the Strain that Fancy dictated. And indeed this is without dispute, a very just Plea, for I am sure I have often and sensibly felt the disagreeable and slavish Effect of such Restraint as is here pointed out, and so I believe every Composer of Poetry as well as Musick, for I presume there are strict Rules for Poetry, as for Musick. But as I have often heard of a Poetical License I don't see why with ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... most cases, at all events, the rebel did well to be rebellious, and perhaps he was never so entirely in the right as when he protested against the slavish traditions of ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... considerably; as was proved by the increased vigour and frequency of her sarcasms upon Miss Briggs, all which attacks the poor companion bore with meekness, with cowardice, with a resignation that was half generous and half hypocritical—with the slavish submission, in a word, that women of her disposition and station are compelled to show. Who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeated shafts of scorn ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... losses? The Russians can make good theirs by sending more ships out from Europe; but where are we to get more? I need not labour this question, gentlemen; I am sure you will all see what I mean, and therefore understand why I say that, altogether apart from the question of slavish obedience to orders, or otherwise, I think the Admiral is fully justified in his decision not to risk his ships in such ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... the true-born son of Greece, If Greece one true-born patriot can boast: Not such as prate of war but skulk in peace, The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost, Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost, And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword: Ah, Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most - Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record Of hero sires, who shame thy now ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... was sent to study and prepare himself for the battle of life, and it was there he imbibed that contempt for servile obedience to military authority which, in "The Robbers," gave so extraordinary an impetus to revolutionary ideas in his native country, especially in the minds of the young. Slavish discipline was the law in the academy; the scholars wore a military uniform; they were soldiers, and were taught to obey the word of command; the sword and the drum were the symbols of authority; there were stated minutes and hours not only for important ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... uniform seriousness of tone would almost assuredly have been broken by some humorous, or semi-humorous, episodes. While the two plays, with the exception of the Prologue, which is not found in the Dutch, agree speech by speech from beginning to end, the English version is not a slavish translation; indeed, the ease and happiness of the diction, and the freedom with which it moves, give it, until the Dutch text is examined, the tone of an original work, and the translator must have been a man of no small ability to achieve ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... your sounding drums Direct our soldiers to Damascus' walls.— Now, Tamburlaine, the mighty Soldan comes, And leads with him the great Arabian king, To dim thy baseness and [222] obscurity, Famous for nothing but for theft and spoil; To raze and scatter thy inglorious crew Of Scythians and slavish Persians. ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... relation of a slave. "You can shoot me but you can't whip me," said a slave to Rigby Hopkins; and the result was that he was neither whipped nor shot. If the latter had been his fate, it would have been less deplorable than the living and lingering death to which cowardly and slavish souls are subjected. I do not know that Mr. Sevier ever undertook to whip Nelly again. He probably never did, for it was not long after his attempt to subdue her, that he was taken sick, and died. The wretched man died as he had lived, unrepentant; ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... to obey him caused Golah his greatest chagrin. Ever accustomed to prompt and slavish obedience from others, the idea of his own wife—his favorite too—denying his modest ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.' I mark this animated sentence with peculiar pleasure, as a noble instance of that truly dignified spirit of freedom which ever glowed in his heart, though he was charged with slavish tenets by superficial observers; because he was at all times indignant against that false patriotism, that pretended love of freedom, that unruly restlessness, which is inconsistent with the stable authority of any ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... their ability to do them at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit dwelling in them. And further, that the spring and principle motive of true love to God, and acceptable obedience to him, is not self-interest or love to our own felicity, nor yet a slavish fear of punishment; but the glorious perfections and transcendent excellencies of the Deity, manifested in the face of Jesus Christ, who is the brightness of the Father's glory, and express image of his person, are the prime and ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... when the Middle Age was in its youth and prime, glowed in the souls of Tancred, Godfrey, and St. Louis, and which, when its day was long since past, could still find its home in the great heart of Columbus. A darker spirit urged the new crusade,—born not of hope, but of fear, slavish in its nature, the creature and the tool of despotism; for the typical Spaniard of the sixteenth century was not in strictness a fanatic, he was ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... was not long in removing himself from this dangerous vicinity; nor did the commission waste time in giving the royal assent to the work of the slavish Parliament, and appointing the morrow for the beheading of the premier peer of England, the luckless ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... suppress a confession he had resisted. The contact of her form, her large dark eyes now fixed upon him in emotion, the birth of the conscious woman in the virgin and her affection still in the leashes of a slavish sacrifice, tempted ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... subject, we are again forced to appeal to humanists like Paolo Giovio, who excuses the perjury of Giangaleazzo Visconti, through which he was enabled to found an empire, by the example of Julius Caesar. The great Florentine historians and statesmen never stoop to these slavish quotations, and what seems antique in their deeds and their judgements is so because the nature of their political life necessarily fostered in them a mode of thought which has some analogy with that ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... fight with the parson, there will with the wife," replied the other. "Hang the same parson," he added; "many a dreary chase he has sent us upon, with nothing but the fatigue of a dark and slavish journey for our pains. With what bitterness he's giving us 'Lillibullero,' and he scarcely able to sit on his horse! I think I'll advance, and ride beside him, otherwise, he may get an ugly tumble on ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... As long as the war lasted, he looked upon him as his fellow-helper in all emergencies and fed him carefully with hay and corn. But when the war was over, he only allowed him chaff to eat and made him carry heavy loads of wood, subjecting him to much slavish drudgery and ill-treatment. War was again proclaimed, however, and when the trumpet summoned him to his standard, the Soldier put on his charger its military trappings, and mounted, being clad in his heavy coat of mail. The Horse fell down straightway under the weight, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... in establishing a personal standard will of necessity prevent slavish imitation and the striving to reach some other woman's standard which bears again and again such bitter fruit. The erroneous notion fostered by thousands of American women, that if you can only look like the women of some social set to which you aspire you are like them for all social purposes, ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... opportunities for observing the half-wild cattle in S. Africa, says (20. See his extremely interesting paper on 'Gregariousness in Cattle, and in Man,' 'Macmillan's Magazine,' Feb. 1871, p. 353.), that they cannot endure even a momentary separation from the herd. They are essentially slavish, and accept the common determination, seeking no better lot than to be led by any one ox who has enough self-reliance to accept the position. The men who break in these animals for harness, watch assiduously for those who, by grazing apart, shew a self-reliant disposition, and these they train ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the helm; M. de Grammont was a slave to them. The Parliament, being delivered from the tyranny of Richelieu, imagined the golden age was returning, being daily assured by the Prime Minister that the Queen would not take one step without them. The clergy, who are always great examples of slavish servitude themselves, preached it to others under the plausible title of passive obedience. Thus both clergy and laity were, in an instant, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... In the matter of slavish imitation, man is the monkey's superior all the time. The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... no slavish imitator of Apollonius. Some of his incidents are new, such, as the rescue of Hesione (ii. 450 sqq.). Many of the incidents in Apollonius are omitted (e.g. Stymphalian birds, A.R. ii. 1033, and the encounter with the sons of Phrixus, A.R. ii. 1093). Other ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler |
