"Frederick the Great" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kind, everything produced by other nations, and to accommodate itself to foreign peculiarities. This, with the great flexibility of our language, makes German translations thoroughly faithful and complete. And it is not to be denied that, in general, you get on very far with a good translation. Frederick the Great did not know Latin, but he read Cicero in the French translation with as much profit as we who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... new era in agriculture. Moreover, from this time the policy of Brandenburg was changed: the hostility to the emperor and the house of Austria gave way. An antagonism to France arose: "a process begun by the Great Elector, carried on by Frederick the Great, and brought to a triumphant close in our own days, dates from the revocation of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... for that," retorted Doctor Johnson, with a smile, "I've heard of you; you are the man who wrote the life of Frederick the Great in nine hundred ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... was fully engaged in that famous war with France which was to end in driving her hereditary rival from the eastern and western hemispheres, and in the establishment of the German Empire by the military genius of Frederick the Great. For a while, however, the conflict in America was chiefly remarkable for the incapacity of English commanders on land and sea. Earl Loudoun, the sluggish commander-in-chief, of whom it was said, "he is like St. George on the signs; always on horseback, but never rides on," arranged ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... heads of Barbe-Marbois, Boissy d'Anglas, Morellet, Helvetius, or Frederick the Great, you will see the exact image of Doctor Minoret, whose green old age resembled that of those celebrated personages. Their heads coined in the same mint (for each had the characteristics of a medal) showed a stern and quasi-puritan ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... devastation of Germany by the religious dissensions of the early part of the seventeenth century and the Thirty Years War, it fell to Frederick the Great, not only to lay a firm foundation for the Prussian State but to elevate it definitely as a rival to Austria in the leadership of Germany. Thenceforth Prussia grew in power and influence, and became the ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... The Germans expected to encounter raw and sluggish troops under intriguing time-servers and military Hamlets whose "native hue of resolution" had been "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Instead of that they were confronted with soldiers of the same type as those whom Frederick the Great and Napoleon admired, led at last by chiefs worthy of their men. And behind these soldiers they discovered a nation. Do they realize now what a force they have awakened? Do they understand that a steadfast, indomitable resolution, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... by which England won her Asiatic dominions, a new war had broken out. In the fifth year, 1756, of the New Style[2] of reckoning time, the aggressive designs of Frederick the Great of Prussia caused such alarm that a grand alliance was formed by France, Russia, Austria, and Poland to check his further advance. Great Britain, however, gave her support to Frederick, in hope of humbling her old enemy France, who, in addition ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... gruel with avidity and thanks Heaven if nobody beats him. And so we have left off beating the eighteenth century. It was not so, however, in our lusty prime. Carlyle, historian though he was of Frederick the Great and the French Revolution, revenged himself for the trouble it gave him by loading it with all vile epithets. If it had been a cock or a cook he could not have called it harder names. It was century spendthrift, fraudulent, bankrupt, a swindler century, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... art: the perusal of the Greek tragedians had given rise to some late translations;[29] the perusal of Homer seems now to have suggested the idea of an epic poem. The hero whom he first contemplated was Gustavus Adolphus; he afterwards changed to Frederick the Great ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Jerome's sweetness and simplicity of character, though quoted, in the place where we find it, with no such favouring intention,—namely, in the pretty letter of Queen Sophie Charlotte, (father's mother of Frederick the Great,) to the Jesuit Vota, given in part by Carlyle in his first ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... Frederick the Great calls finance the pulse of the state, and Richelieu, the point of support which Archimedes was in search of, to move the world. In all modern nations, the history of the debates on the raising of revenue and ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... of Frederick the Great of Prussia, the pendulum swung back again distinctly toward absolutism. The Riksdag, according to its custom, sought at the opening of the reign to impose upon the new sovereign a renunciatory coronation oath. Gustavus, however, raised objection, and the contest became so keen that the king ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... rest till he is utterly overthrown—an idea in which Cromwell had anticipated Napoleon by a century and a half. Scarcely distinguishable from this is a third idea—that of taking the offensive, in which there was really nothing new at all, since its advantages had always been understood, and Frederick the Great had pressed it to extremity with little less daring than Napoleon himself—nay even to culpable rashness, as the highest exponents of the Napoleonic idea admit. Finally, there is the notion of making the armed ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... Americans compare it with Chicago, because it is so new and busy. It is indeed the city of the modern German spirit, and what it has of old tradition and old social life lies beneath the surface, hidden from the eye of the stranger. There is Sans-Souci, to be sure, and Frederick the Great, and the Grosser Kurfuerst. There is the double line of princes on either side of the Sieges-Allee. But modern Berlin dates from 1870, and so do all good Berliners, whatever their age may be. They are proud of their young empire and of their big city, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Bernard's death, her daughter passed six months in retirement, but, her grief affecting her health, she was induced by Madame de Stael to visit her at Coppet. Here she met the exiled Prince Augustus of Prussia, nephew of Frederick the Great. We find in the "Seaforth Papers," lately published in England, an allusion to this Prince, who visited London in the train of the allied sovereigns in 1814. A lady writes, "All the ladies are desperately ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ALARIC COTTIN. Frederick the Great of Prussia was so called by Voltaire. "Alaric" because, like Alaric, he was a great warrior, and "Cottin" because, like Cottin, satirized by Boileau, he ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... case we know that, not so many years after the Thirty Years' War, Frederick the Great, who combined supreme military gifts with freedom from scruple in policy, and was at the same time a great representative German, declared that the ordinary citizen ought never to be aware that his country is at war.[2] Nothing could show more clearly ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... was the preferred of her heart; loving everybody sincerely and affectionately, she "lacked altogether the sentimental equilibrium." Especially pathetic was her love for two men—the Count de Mora, a Spanish nobleman, and a Colonel Guibert, who was celebrated for his relations with Frederick the Great; although this wore terribly on her, consuming her physical force, she always received her friends with the same good grace, but often, after their departure, she would fall into a frightful nervous fit from which she could find relief ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... discipline; they become fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own army, and their king, or chief head of government, is always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandalo, or Frederick the Great,—Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, Venetian,—that is inviolable law for them all; their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, after their great military period, comes the domestic period; in which, without betraying ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... all sorts of interesting pictures and engravings scattered about the house in the numberless corridors and anterooms. One most interesting and very rare print represents a review at Potsdam held by Frederick the Great. Two conspicuous figures are the young Marquis de Lafayette in powdered wig and black silk ribbon, and the English General Lord Cornwallis, destined to meet as adversaries many years later during the American Revolution. There are many family pictures on the great stone staircase, both French ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... that the blue colour of the vase came off in one spot, where he had been rubbing it. I looked, and saw that part of the inscription at the bottom of the vase had been covered over with blue paint. At first sight, I read the words, 'On the character of Frederick the Great;' the blue paint had concealed the next word, which is now, madam, sufficiently legible." The word to which the king pointed was—tyrant. "Those flattering lines, madam, you comprehend, were written—'On the character of ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... of Austria, when assailed by a descendant of the then insignificant Elector of Brandenburg. Yet the prophet would have been right, for Saxony suffered so much from her connection with the Austrians in Frederick the Great's time that she never recovered therefrom; and in the late contest she was lost before a shot was fired, and her troops, after fighting valiantly in Bohemia, shared the disasters of the power upon which she had relied for protection. Bavaria was another German country that seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... great-grandson of Washington's brother, lived on the lordly plantation of Bellair, four miles in the country. Brown had learned that the sword which Frederick the Great had given to Washington, and the pistols which Lafayette had given him hung on the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... distinct impression that the complexion of Robespierre was green; nevertheless, every one who studies the French Revolution reads Carlyle, and he is read because the reading is profitable. The battle descriptions in Carlyle's "Frederick the Great" are well worth reading. How refreshing they are after technical descriptions! Carlyle said once, "Battles since Homer's time, when they were nothing but fighting mobs, have ceased to be worth reading about," but he made the modern ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... talents," which was the key-note of his whole policy, as it is logically to all war-lords. It was by no accident that similar indifference toward the creed of their soldiers, or civil servants, was shown by William the Silent, Wallenstein, Cromwell, William III, and Frederick the Great. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... having subjected it to a most exact and sharp analysis; next, consulting the best authorities, the pasts, experience, and obtaining information about bygone jurisprudence, the laws of Louis XIV. and of Frederick the Great.... Never did the council adjourn without its members knowing more than the day before; if not through knowledge derived from him, at least through the researches he obliged them to make. Never did the members of the Senate and the Legislative Corps, or of the tribunals, pay ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... later! Soon we shall meet you in Paris!" And the marine band, the very same band that three days before had astonished Desnoyers with its unexpected Marseillaise, burst forth into a military march of the time of Frederick the Great—a march of grenadiers with ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... remember one other man who was brought in off this first train. He was a young giant. For certain the old father of Frederick the Great would have had him in his regiment of Grenadier Guards. Well, for that matter, he was a grenadier in the employ of the same family now. He hobbled in under his own motive power and leaned against the wall until the first flurry was over. Then, at a nod from one of the shirt-sleeved surgeons, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... mentioned, and which were generally of his own selection, he at the same time endeavoured to strengthen her impression of how important it was to her schemes to insure the daughter's co-operation. Conscious of the eagerness of Maria Theresa for the recovery of the rich province which Frederick the Great of Prussia had wrested from her ancient dominions, he pressed upon her credulity the assurance that the influence of which the Dauphine was capable over Louis XV., by the youthful beauty's charms acting upon the dotard's admiration, would ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... years considered himself a Charlemagne, Frederick the Great and Napoleon the First rolled into one. Results are developing which put him in the class of Napoleon the Third, or even ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... in the Transactions of the Society, but is thus stated by M. Thiebault in his "Recollections of Frederick the Great and the Court of Berlin." It is necessary to premise that M. Gleditsch, to whom the circumstance happened, was a botanist of eminence, holding the professorship of natural philosophy at Berlin, and respected as a man of an habitually ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... did many believe in this satellite of Venus that Frederick the Great, who for some reason imagined that he was entitled to dispose as he pleased of the newly discovered body, proposed to assign it away to the mathematician D'Alembert, who excused himself from accepting the questionable honour in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... of its tedium, the long winter had its mitigations, for after the first few weeks I was able to read with a luxurious consciousness of leisure, and I remember opening the first volume of Carlyle's "Frederick the Great" with a lively sense of gratitude that it was not Gray's "Anatomy," having found, like many another, that general culture is a much easier undertaking than professional study. The long illness inevitably put aside the immediate prosecution of a medical course, and although I had passed my ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the sovereignty of human reason this is a most dangerous premiss. Do we not owe to the full and free use of that reason everything great which mankind has created? History speaks of a thousand heroes (only think of Alexander, of Julius Caesar, of Frederick the Great!) whose doings convince us that a strong power of thought and action can go hand in hand, nay, that the latter cannot ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... cultivate your studies and your friendships in quiet. But this is of no consequence: bring all your friends with you, and I promise you that both you and they shall have every accommodation in my power." With equal firmness the illustrious mathematician resisted the manifold attractions with which Frederick the Great sought to induce him, to take up his residence at Berlin. In reading of these invitations we cannot but be struck at the extraordinary respect which was then paid to scientific distinction. It must be remembered that the discoveries of such a man as D'Alembert were utterly ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... might negotiate after taking possession. That was the military way of doing business. It was the way in which Frederick II. of Prussia had negotiated with the Emperor of Austria for Silesia. [Here Mr A. gave an account of the interview of Frederick the Great with the Austrian minister, and of the fact of Frederick having sent his troops to take possession of that province the very day that he had sent his minister to Vienna to negotiate for it.] Then we should have our elbows clear, and could do as we pleased. It did not follow ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... done. Few people read Carlyle to-day—and it may be supposed that as they read they hold his volumes with a Hidden Hand—and fewer still love him, for at heart he was a Prussian. He was, indeed, slain in our affections by Frederick the Great. His shrine at Chelsea is no longer visited. It is all for the best, because in any case he wrote only a gnarled and involved bastard stuff of partly Teutonic origin. While this appeal was being made to me, I watched the face ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... this country than it need be in one where there are no such guaranties in favor of those against whom the aid of a court is invoked. The plaintiff, too, has corresponding rights. It was found not so easy by Frederick the Great to enforce his famous decree that every lawsuit in his dominions must be finished in a year. In a freer land ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... ice; and a part of the sea open, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from Fuenen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice; and takes Zealand itself—to the wonder of mankind." Such, in Mr. Carlyle's summary (History of Frederick the Great, i. 223, edit. 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between the two Powers, called The Peace of Roeskilde, by which Sweden acquired certain territories from ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... King William IV. at Berlin celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Prussian monarchy on January 18. A colossal statue of Frederick the Great was made for this occasion by the sculptor Christian Rauch. At the same time a further humiliation upon Prussia was inflicted by the military occupation of Schleswig-Holstein by Austria. The Austrian troops, who came to put a definite stop to hostilities in those provinces, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... an old poem I learnt at school—which told how Frederick the Great coveted a mill that adjoined a favourite estate of his; but the miller refused to sell. Frederick could have turned him out, of course—there was not very much public opinion in those days—but he respected the miller's firmness, and left ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... Russia, Poland, Spain, Holland, Turkey; he met Voltaire at Ferney, Rousseau at Montmorency, Fontenelle, d'Alembert and Crebillon at Paris, George III. in London, Louis XV. at Fontainebleau, Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg, Benedict XII. at Rome, Joseph II. at Vienna, Frederick the Great at Sans-Souci. Imprisoned by the Inquisitors of State in the Piombi at Venice, he made, in 1755, the most famous escape in history. His Memoirs, as we have them, break off abruptly at the moment when he is expecting a safe conduct, and the permission to return ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... penetrate through Austria to Vienna, which he gave of) in consequence of the lukewarmness of his Saxon and the absence of his French allies. It is curious now, when the mist of contemporary prejudices has passed away, to hear Frederick the Great accused of cowardice.-D. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... "Gott sei Dank"! Prince Joachim is wounded, and he has sent a telegram worded after the manner of his dear Papa, thanking God who in His goodness permitted him to be wounded for his beloved Fatherland. I wonder what Frederick the Great would have thought of these boastful warriors. We English are looked upon with horror as the brutal barbarians who use dum dum bullets, and Sir Edward Grey's dignified disclaimer is reported under the polite ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... person in the room, so that you may always know where the Emperor is by seeing the young officer's towering helmet above the crowd. The other is General Scholl, a dear, kind old gentleman, who is dressed in the costume of Frederick the Great's time, with a white wig, the pigtail of which is tied with black ribbon, a huge jabot of lace with a diamond pin ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... and the substitution of German for French predominance, we are still—in all connected with Germany,—in presence of the Prussia of the past, of the Prussia whose social conditions were fixed by Frederick the Great. Men are simply pawns upon the board; their fate has no influence on others—the fate of kings, queens, and high chivalric orders, is alone of any import to the constituted realm. Nations obey and question not. They are represented by mouldy, defunct formulae, and as yet ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... flute that retained its antique form; the only difference between the modern instrument and the ancient one being that the former is blown crosswise, instead of perpendicularly. Quantz, the celebrated court flute player to Frederick the Great of Prussia, was the first to publish, in 1750, a so-called "method" of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... gentleman talking about?" says old goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like a old parrot — you know they live to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is comparatively young (ho! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to an immense old age. Some which Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue mould on their old backs; and they could tell all sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak — but they are very silent, carps are — of their nature peu communicatives. Oh! what has ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... of Europe has been in most of her manvantara. In Kienlung's reign, for example (1735-1795) there were higher standards of life, more security, law, and order, than in the Europe of Catherine of Russia, Frederick the Great, Louis XV and the Revolution, and the English Georges. There was far less ferment of the Spirit, true; less possibility of progress;—but that is merely to say that China was in pralaya, Europe in high manvantara. The explanation is that a stability ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Frederick the Great, contempt of, for the German mercenaries, ii. 10; his opinion of Washington's achievements in the Jerseys (note), ii. 394; his appreciation of Washington ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... us long to reach the famous palace of Frederick the Great, which the growth of Berlin has almost turned into ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... this matter of faithfulness to duty has always been deemed of the first importance. Previous to the battle of Lutzen, in which eighty thousand Austrians were defeated by an army of thirty-six thousand Prussians, commanded by Frederick the Great, this monarch ordered all his officers to attend him, and thus addressed them: "To-morrow I intend giving the enemy battle; and, as it will decide who are to be the future masters of Silesia, I expect ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... of placid mutual assurance. No great writer had given that tone of good-breeding to the language which would gain it entrance to the society of European literature. No man of genius had made it a necessity of polite culture. It was still as rudely provincial as the Scotch of Allan Ramsay. Frederick the Great was to be forgiven if, with his practical turn, he gave himself wholly to French, which had replaced Latin as a cosmopolitan tongue. It had lightness, ease, fluency, elegance,—in short, all the good qualities that German lacked. The study of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... phalanx which penetrated India, but Alexander. It was not the French army which reached the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne. It was not the Prussian soldiers who defended their country for seven years against the three most formidable powers in Europe; it was Frederick the Great." ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... these arts of royal policy, and all these displays of royal magnificence? How can I prevent the successor of Frederick the Great from aspiring to a new, and, in this age, unexampled kind of glory? Is it in my power to say that he shall not make his confessions in the style of St. Austin or of Rousseau? that he shall not assume the character of the penitent ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Harlan's reference to Dr. Burchard's alliteration. Discussions with the German ambassador and others. Change of the American legation into an embassy; its advantages and disadvantages. First interview with Emperor William II; subjects discussed. His reference to Frederick the Great's musical powers. The Empress; happy change in the attitude of the people toward her. The Chancellor of the Empire; Prince Hohenlohe; his peculiarities; his references to Bismarck; his opinion of Germans. Count von Bulow, Minister of Foreign Affairs, resemblances between him and his father; ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... retiring disposition is illustrated by the following little incident. Carl Philip Emmanuel, his third son, was cembalist in the royal orchestra of Frederick the Great. His Majesty was very fond of music and played the flute to some extent. He had several times sent messages to Bach by Philip Emmanuel, that he would like to see him. But Bach, intent on his work, ignored the royal favor, until he finally received an imperative command, which ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... supply material for two of the finest literary fragments of modern times. I take it that the most stirring and profoundly wise piece of modern history is Carlyle's brief account of William Pitt, given in the "Life of Frederick the Great." Once we have read it we feel as though the great commoner had stood before us for a while under a searching light; his figure is imprinted on the very nerves, and no man who has read carefully can ever shake off an impression that seems burnt into the fibre of the mind. This superlatively ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... History of Frederick the Great. It is a marvelous piece of historical work, and as volume after volume appeared ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... works are those that lose the honest simplicity of its style in a forced turgidity and affected roughness. His Heroes and Hero Worship or his French Revolution shows his distinctive style, and yet shows the influence of this simpler style, while his Frederick the Great is almost impossible because he has given full play to his broken and disconnected sentences. On the other hand, Macaulay fails us most in his striving for effect, making nice balance of sentences, straining ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... I have been under the influence of five men—Alexander, Julius Caesar, Theodoric II, Napoleon and Frederick the Great. These five men dreamed their dream of a world empire; they failed. I am dreaming my dream of a world empire, but ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... as a physician, went from Hanover to attend Frederick the Great in his last illness. One day the king said to him, "You have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into another world?" This was rather a bitter pill for the doctor; but the dose he gave the king in return was a judicious mixture ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... another epoch or for another nation. In other words, sound discipline depends upon the existing state of civilization and education, the political institutions of the country, the national trait and the national military system. For example, the system of discipline that existed in the days of Frederick the Great, and which, in modified form, exists today in certain European armies, whereby the soldier was so inured to a habit of subjection that he became a sort of machine—a kind of automaton. Such a system of discipline, while answering ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which translate every revolution merely into blood and crime!" (see also "Beyond Good and Evil", pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great's power and distinguished gifts should have been able to say: "Ich bin der erste Diener des Staates" (I am the first servant of the State.) To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers. "Cowardice" and "Mediocrity," ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to another no less difficult test with L'Etoile du Nord. When Meyerbeer was the conductor at the Berlin Opera, he wrote on command Le Camp de Silesie with Frederick the Great as the hero and Jenny Lind as the musical star. As we know, Frederick was a musician, for he both composed music and played the flute, while Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale, was a great singer. A contest between the nightingale and the flute was sure to follow or theatrical instinct is ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... resembled the weak old man of to-day; how little in common the young King Frederick had with "Alten Fritz." And now in this feeble body dwelt the same courageous spirit. In the course of these years King Frederick II had become Frederick the Great! And great he was to-day, this little old man—great in his intentions and achievements, never heeding his own debility and need of repose. All his thoughts and endeavors concentrated on the welfare of his people and his country—on the greatness and glory of Germany. Those eyes which now glanced ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... high-water mark of his vanity when he speaks of the German nature (incidentally it is also the height of his imprudence); for, if Frederick the Great's justice, Goethe's nobility and freedom from envy, Beethoven's sublime resignation, Bach's delicately transfigured spiritual life,—if steady work performed without any thought of glory and success, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... years after, Cornwallis, a generous foe, told Washington was one of the most surprising and brilliant in the history of war. There was another "old fox" in Europe, Frederick the Great, of Prussia, who knew war if ever man knew it, and he, too, from this movement ranked Washington among the great generals. The maneuver was simple enough. Instead of taking the obvious course of again retreating across the Delaware Washington decided ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... his letter of credence from the President of the United States to the ruler of the German Empire, has one advantage in the fact that he has an admirable topic ready to his hand, such as perhaps no other minister has. This boon was given us by Frederick the Great. He, among the first of Continental rulers, recognized the American States as an independent power; and therefore every American minister since, including myself, has found it convenient, on presenting the President's autograph letter to the King or Emperor, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... spirit of France, and it roused the spirit of France as perhaps nothing has raised the spirit of this people since Valmy, where other Frenchmen met and checked another German invasion, brought to a halt the army of Frederick the Great, which still preserved the prestige of its great captain who was dead, turned it back along the road that was presently ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... whom Browning has written, a "person of some importance in his day," and his writings on physics are still mentioned with respect in works devoted to the history of science. But he is perhaps chiefly remembered as the savant whom Frederick the Great attracted to his court during a period of aloofness from the scintillating Voltaire, and who consequently became a writhing target for the jealous ridicule of that waspish wit. Poor Maupertuis, unhappy in his exit from life, would appear to have been restless after it, for his ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... "half-way between Rome and Geneva;" a compromise, and yet a Church of great vitality, and endeared to the hearts of the English people. Northern Germany—the scene of the stupendous triumphs of Luther—is and has been, since the time of Frederick the Great, the hot-bed of rationalistic inquiries; and the Genevan as well as the French and Swiss churches which Calvin controlled have become cold, with a dreary and formal Protestantism, without poetry or life. But the Church of England ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky, whose stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which presages heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in a ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... interest connected with it was the refutation Frederick the Great published under the title Examen de l'Essai sur les prejuges, Londres, Nourse, 1770 (16 mo). The King of Prussia writing from the point of view of a practical, enlightened despot, took special exception to Holbach's remarks ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... literary essays the best are those on Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Byron, Dryden, Leigh Hunt, Bunyan, Bacon, and Johnson. Among the best known of the historical essays are those on Lord Clive, Chatham, Warren Hastings, Hallam's Constitutional History, Von Ranke's History of the Papacy, Frederick the Great, Horace Walpole, William Pitt, Sir William Temple, Machiavelli, and Mirabeau. Most of these were produced in the vigor of young manhood, between 1825 and 1845, while the writer was busy with practical affairs of state. They are often one-sided and inaccurate, but always interesting, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... praises; and who, in short, seems to have been a very good effervescent creature, at last rather wealthy too, and able to effervesce with some comfort;—Oberamtmann Fromme, I say, was this Gleim's Nephew; and stood as a kind of Royal Land-Bailiff under Frederick the Great, in a tract of country called the RHYN-LUCH (a dreadfully moory country of sands and quagmires, all green and fertile now, some twenty or thirty miles northwest of Berlin); busy there in 1779, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of an hour's conversation," says our traveller, "which his Majesty was pleased to put at once upon a footing of familiar chat, I became convinced that I was speaking with the most philosophical king who had ever existed, not excepting Frederick the Great." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... figures readily found places upon altars in the churches of Europe. All might have gone well with this great porcelain plant had not the Seven Years' War arisen just at this time, lasting from 1756 to 1763. During this period Frederick the Great, the grandfather of the present Emperor of Germany, went into Saxony, stopped the royal factories at Meissen, and took the ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... most either in mocking imaginations of destruction, or in sentimental, fine marionette-shows of the past. It was a sentimental delight to reconstruct the world of Goethe at Weimar, or of Schiller and poverty and faithful love, or to see again Jean Jacques in his quakings, or Voltaire at Ferney, or Frederick the Great reading ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... be remembered in this connection that Prussia had a novel tradition of her own in such matters. The phrase "The Frederickian tradition" is an accurate phrase. Frederick the Great did start the open and avowed doctrine that a breach of international convention and of international morals is always tolerable in the aggrandizement ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... remember, too, that the German monarchy is a cross between the Napoleonic ambition and its inheritance from Frederick the Great and Bismarck. I suppose the three damnedest liars that were ever born are these three—old Frederick, Napoleon, and Bismarck—not, I take it, because they naturally loved lying, but because the game they played constantly ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... expiring feudalism, was made reluctantly. Schiller felt, and had reason to feel, that the modernity of his drama was its very life-blood;[32] for the squeamish Dalberg, however, the robbers in the age of Frederick the Great were a painful anachronism. So they were put back three centuries and costumed in the style of the 'Ritterstueck'. Other less dubious changes were also made. Thus the long soliloquies of Franz and the ribald garrulities ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of Amiens. After the loss of the battle of the Marne a "German Peace" was out of the question. The possibility of such a peace has never recurred. It was therefore necessary for the German policy to strive for a peace by understanding on the basis of the status quo. Just as Frederick the Great defended Prussia's newly won position as a great Power against overwhelming odds, so we were fighting under similar conditions for the maintenance of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... not unaware that the relations of England to Europe have undergone a vast change during the century that has just elapsed. The relations of England to Europe are not the same as they were in the days of Lord Chatham or Frederick the Great. The Queen of England has become the sovereign of the most powerful of Oriental States. On the other side of the globe there are now establishments belonging to her, teeming with wealth and population, which will, in due time, exercise their influence over the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... vindicate their political rights! How gladly everyone shouts with the largest crowd! Consider how many noble actions men leave undone through fear of being hurt or killed. "Dogs! would you live for ever?" cried Frederick the Great to his soldiers, in defeat; and most of us would certainly answer: "Yes, we would, if you please!" Only through war, or the training for war, says the argument, can this loathly cowardice be kept in check. Only by war can the spirit be maintained that redeems the world ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Zinzendorfs had been among the earliest converts to Lutheranism, and became a voluntary exile for the faith. The count's father was one of the Pietists, a sect protected by the first king of Prussia, the father of Frederick the Great. The founder of the Pietists laid special stress on the doctrine of conversion by a sudden transformation of the heart and will. It was a young Moravian missionary to Georgia who first induced Wesley to embrace the vital doctrine of justification by faith. For a long time there was a close kinsmanship ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... concessions given to the nobles during the minority of Louis XIII had not been revoked or diminished. On his accession to office Mazarin found that the revenues of the next three years had been spent. Moreover, on Richelieu's death few men of marked capacity were to be found in France. Like Frederick the Great in the next century, Richelieu was jealous of any initiative on the part of his colleagues. He gradually concentrated in his own hands all the threads of the administration and controlled the generals in the field. His system ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... amiable canoness, who (to speak rather Hibernically) ought to have been her mother but wasn't, because the actual mother was so much richer. She bears no malice, however, even to the father who, well preserved in looks, manners, and selfishness, is Great Chamberlain to Frederick the Great. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the Capitol itself, if not to a successful finish to a very creditable draw; returned South, unmolested, with its prisoners and untold booty; fought the great battle of Fredericksburg, with the results just enumerated. Could Napoleon, Frederick the Great, or the "Madman of the North" have done better with the forces at hand and against an enemy with odds of two and three to one? So Lee's Army had nothing of which to complain, only the loss of so many great and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... both plans she had been successful: her fleets were ubiquitous, the Chouan and Vendean uprisings were perennial, and the emigrant aristocrats menaced every frontier. Austria, on the other hand, had once been soundly thrashed. Since Frederick the Great had wrested Silesia from her, and thereby set Protestant Prussia among the great powers, she had felt that the balance of power was disturbed, and had sought everywhere for some territorial acquisition to restore her importance. The present emperor, Francis II, and his adroit minister, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... vitality and the secret of its grandeur. The teachers of war have all placed this truth as a preface to their triumphs and we find the most illustrious teachers to be the most severe. Listen to this critique of Frederick the Great on the maneuvers ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... Frederick the Great did more than this. He codified and gave expression, as it were, to the Prussian spirit, and the manifestation of that spirit in international affairs is ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... Victories of Henry V., The" Fauconbridge, Philip Faust Ferdinand First Gentleman First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster Fitton, Mistress Mary Flavius Fleance Fleet prison Fletcher (the poet) Ford, Mrs. Forman's Diary Fortinbras France Frederick the Great Fuller Furnival, Mr. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... portraits of celebrated men, and well remember that on no occasion did I ever so thoroughly enjoy the stage as when I saw for the first time the charming piece of The Two Pages. Fleury in the role of Frederick the Great reproduced so perfectly the slow walk, the dry tones, the sudden movements, and even the short-sightedness of this monarch, that as soon as he appeared on the stage the whole house burst into applause. It was, in the opinion of persons sufficiently well informed to judge, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... between their two houses, "discuss Roman Catholicism, Supremacy, Papal v. Protestant Persecutions. Your Humble Servant arrives at 11 Warwick Gardens to meet Mr. Mawer Cowtan, Master Sidney Wells and Master William Wells. Conversation about Frederick the Great, Voltaire and Macaulay. Cheerful and enlivening discourse on Germs, Dr. Koch, Consumption ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... there was a king of Prussia, whose name was Frederick; and because he was very wise and very brave, people called him Frederick the Great. Like other kings, he lived in a beautiful palace and had many officers and servants ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... noticeable," says The Daily Mail, "that the Kaiser's speeches no longer include references to God, only Frederick the Great." This confirms ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... brothers, Walter and Louis. Felix Bauer had never seen anyone like Randall, and he sat the whole evening absorbed, listening to the recital of as marvellous a story of conquest as any to be found in the chapters of Caesar, Frederick the Great or Napoleon. And what a conquest! Not war and pillage and pitiful man's ambition for power, but conquest of that great territory ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... at Kottbus, became a reality to me here; and what a powerful influence a visit to the ancient cloister exerted on our young souls! The nearest relatives of mighty sovereigns had dwelt as abbesses within its walls. But two generations ago Anna Amalie, the hapless sister of Frederick the Great, died ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any single feature—not in pediment, column, or capital, not in frieze, architrave, or tympanum—that its glorious beauty lay, but in the simple strength and the harmonious symmetry of the whole, in the general plan. Webster planned his orations, Newman planned his essays, Carlyle planned his Frederick the Great. Their works are not a momentary inspiration; they are the result of forethought, long and painstaking. The absolute essential in the structure of an essay, that without which it will fail to arrive anywhere, that compared to which all ornament, all fine writing, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Audernach. Query, isn't there a song about this? If so, put it in. Coblentz and Ehrenbreitstein. Great fortresses. Call them "the Frowning Sentinels of the State." Make reflections on the German army, also on war generally. Chat about Frederick the Great. (Read Carlyle's history of him, and pick out the interesting bits.) The Drachenfels. Quote Byron. Moralise about ruined castles generally, and describe the middle ages, with your ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... in which the Regent slept when in Ireland, and a room which was tenanted by Lord Normanby, when Lord Lieutenant. There is, moreover, a satin counterpane, which was made by the lord's aunt, and a snuff-box which was given to the lord's grandfather by Frederick the Great. These are the lions of the place, and the gratification experienced by those who see them is, no doubt, great; but I doubt if it equals the annoyance and misery to which they are subjected in being obliged to pass one unopened door—that of the private room of Lady Selina, the ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the miller three times the value of the property. The miller would not take it, because it was the old homestead, and he felt about as Naboth felt about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. Frederick the Great was a rough and terrible man, and he ordered the miller into his presence; and the king, with a stick, in his hand—a stick with which he sometimes struck his officers of state—said to this miller: "Now, I have offered you three times the value of that property, and if you ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... robbed the Prince's hoard of gold. But the Sergeant More had nothing to do, as has been fancied, with the murder of Glenure. The state of the country was ticklish; Prince Charles expected to invade with Swedish forces, under the famous Marshal Keith, by the connivance of Frederick the Great, and he had sent Lochgarry, with Dr. Archibald Cameron and others, to feel the pulse of the western clans. As Government knew all about these intrigues from Pickle the Spy, they were evicting Jacobite tenants from Ardshiel's lands, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Pyoter Vyeliki (Peter the Great), while in London, saw the archiepiscopal library, he declared that "he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes in the world." See also Carlyle, History of Frederick the Great, iv. 7.] ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... jealousy and sensuality and fraud having full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William is the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be set forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you not remember how the Bible speaks of "a chosen generation," of "the generation of the righteous," of "the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... ruffians was probably never before seen; and whilst the Prussian military eye of old Lane glanced down our wide-spread and irregular line, I could see a curl of contempt on his grey mustaches, though his weather-beaten countenance maintained all the gravity of Frederick the Great. The troop appeared to be divided into two distinct parties—one Arab, the other Turkish; and, on directing the two chiefs to call the 'roll' of their respective forces, I found that many were absent without leave, and the party ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the close of the war most of the European nations had seemed ready to enter into commercial arrangements with the United States, but all save Holland speedily lost interest in the subject. John Adams had succeeded in making a treaty with Holland in 1782. Frederick the Great treated us more civilly than other sovereigns. One of the last acts of his life was to conclude a treaty for ten years with the United States; asserting the principle that free ships make free goods, taking arms and military stores out of the class ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... not maintain, with Frederick the Great, that all our systems of education are wrong, because they aim to make men students or clerks, whereas the mere shape of the body shows (so thought King Frederick) that we are primarily designed for postilions, and should spend most of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... been able to recognize more fully the independent genius of those who carried out his purposes. The heroism of Wolfe would have been irrepressible, Clive would have proved himself "a heaven-born general," and Frederick the Great would have written his name in history as one of the most skilful strategists the world has known, whoever had held the seals of office in England. But Pitt's relation to all three was such as to entitle him to a large share in the credit of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... precise As was his habit, criticised more than he praised Borrowing, which uses up the resources of the future Death is only asleep without dreams Excessive desire to oblige Fear of being suspected of cowardice was beneath them For a retreating enemy it is necessary to make a bridge of gold Frederick the Great: "No man is a hero to his valet" Hair, arranged with charming negligence His Majesty did not converse: he spoke. Like all great amateurs was hard to please Little gifts preserve friendship Living ever in the future Make a bridge ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... Embryo opera of Cavalieri. Peri's "Eurydice." Euterpe. Marthe le Rochois and Lully's operas. Rival queens in London. Steele, in "Tattler." Second pair of rivals, Cuzzoni and Faustina. Master Handel. Germany's earliest queen of song. Frederick the Great and German singers. Mrs. Billington. Haydn and Sir Joshua Reynold's St. Cecilia. Mozart's operas introduced into England. Catalani. Pasta. Sontag. Schroeder-Devrient and Goethe's "Erl King." Malibran a dazzling Meteor. Another daughter of Manuel del Popolo Garcia. Marchesi, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... all noble and beautiful persons, who were distinguished by their attainments in literature, science, or art; but he rarely leaves his home now for such a purpose. He is at present engaged in his "Life of Frederick the Great," whom he will hardly make a hero of, and with whom, we learn, he is already very heartily disgusted. The first volume ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... marriage of near kin, and probably with greater frequency than from non-related marriages. But it is likewise true that many of the world's greatest men have been the products of close inbreeding, sometimes continued through several generations. Frederick the Great of Prussia was the product of three successive cousin marriages between descendants of William the Silent,[42] and among his seven brothers and sisters at least three others ranked among the ablest men and women of the ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... shock of a fact. If by sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... surface it seemed mere madness for the least and latest of the great empires to challenge all the rest, just as it had once seemed madness for Frederick the Great, with his little state, to stand up against all but one of the great European powers. But Germany had calculated her chances, and knew that there were many things in her favour. She knew that in the last resort the strength of the world-states rested upon their European foundations, ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... in solemn gravity, but not returning his salute as he was led along, for the sufficient if not immediately perceptible reason that they sat upon thorns, each upon one thorn a foot or so long, of iron. We may suppose the father of Frederick the Great to have had in mind this passage of Oriental life when he forced the prince to witness the execution of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... so pathetic an ass as a university professor of history that very few of the genuinely first-rate men of the race have been, wholly civilized, in the sense that the term is employed in newspapers and in the pulpit. Think of Caesar, Bonaparte, Luther, Frederick the Great, Cromwell, Barbarossa, Innocent III, Bolivar, Hannibal, Alexander, and to come down to our own time, Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Bismarck, Wagner, Garibaldi ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... On his death-bed Philip II. was compelled to see how little his son Philip, who succeeded him, cared for his feelings and wishes. Peter the Great put to death his son Alexis; and Frederick William I. of Prussia came very near taking the life of that son of his who afterward became Frederick the Great. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... lean, unnatural face is written the real history of the Hohenzollerns, the kind of history not often touched on in our comfortable English humour, but common to the realism of Continental art: the madness of Frederick William, the perversion of Frederick the Great, the hint, mingled with subtler talents, of the mere idiocy that seems to have flowered again in the last heir of that inhuman house. The Hohenzollerns have varied from generation to generation in many things and ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... block of masonry, the story of which is quite unknown, a round chapel dating from the days when Christianity was young among the Slavs and still found ready martyrs in its cause even among princes, and an enceinte of brick fortifications, stone-faced and in Vauban's best style, battered by Frederick the Great's guns, are all that Vy[vs]ehrad has to show by way of relics of a ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... he could not. But what if he had? There have been and are heroes who begun With something not much better, or as bad: Frederick the Great from Molwitz[423] deigned to run, For the first and last time; for, like a pad, Or hawk, or bride, most mortals after one Warm bout are broken in to their new tricks, And fight like fiends for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... they now first fully realized that they were artists. A negotiation for permanent settlement at the grand-ducal court failed, owing to the opposition of the courtiers. Wagner had demanded a court-carriage! Frederick the Great has said, it is true, that geniuses rank with sovereigns; but then this was too much, too much! Then too, he had, O horror! spent the beautiful ducats which the grand-duke had presented him, in entertaining of an evening the musicians who had executed ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... talents and qualities at Budapest, where during many years he fulfilled the duties of conductor to the theater, and shone by his virtuosity (very celebrated in Europe) as a flute player—an instrument which Frederick the Great condescended to use. Doppler's Operas "Beniowszky" and "Ilka" were favorably received; and up to the present time "Ilka" is the only Hungarian opera admitted to the repertoire of several theaters in Germany. Besides this Doppler has also ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to Berlin an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies, but he safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now very aged, no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter from Mirabeau and fixed a day for seeing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... perpetually circulating in the newspapers, especially in such as pretend to a didactic tone, wherein all persons are exhorted to early rising, to resolute abridgment of the hours of sleep, and the like. That Sir Walter Raleigh slept but five hours in twenty-four; that John Hunter, Frederick the Great, and Alexander von Humboldt slept but four; that the Duke of Wellington made it an invariable rule to "turn out" whenever he felt inclined to turn over, and John Wesley to arise upon his first awaking: instances such as these appear on parade with the regularity of militia troops ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... their own government, and the little they knew about what it was doing. There was a general disposition to accept, as a definition of duty which must not be questioned, whatever they were told to do by the Vorstand. It is this habit of mind, dating back to the days of Frederick the Great, with only occasional and brief interruptions, which has led many people to think that the German people at large have in them "a double dose of original sin." Even when their soldiers have been exceptionally brutal in methods of warfare, I do not think that this is so. The ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... brought France a great accession of naval power. Sir James Harris, the British ambassador at the Hague, laboured to counteract their designs by encouraging the party in the republic opposed to the policy of Holland. The stadholder's wife, a princess of high spirit, was a niece of Frederick the Great, and Harris was anxious for an alliance between England and Prussia as a means of overthrowing the French party. Ewart, the ambassador at Berlin, shared his views, but the ambassadors were held back by Carmarthen. The cabinet, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... thee, and it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." It would have been well for those who indulged in this style of writing, if all the victims of their pens had been of the same mind as Frederick the Great, who said that time and experience had taught him to be a good post-horse, going through his appointed daily stage, and caring nothing for the curs that barked ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Rumania merely as a sop to her own pride, and to make an end of all that was enacted by the Treaty of Paris, 1856, Russia made a serious political blunder. By insisting that Austria should share in the partition of Poland, Frederick the Great had skilfully prevented her from remaining the one country towards which the Poles would naturally have turned for deliverance. Such an opportunity was lost by Russia through her short-sighted policy in Bessarabia—that of remaining the natural ally of Rumania ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... be the Waterloo of Austria. It was the climax of the Seven Weeks' War. Already the Germans, under the leadership of Prussia, were making haste toward empire. The activity and energy displayed by the Prussian Government at this juncture were prodigious. It was like the days of Frederick the Great come again. The trouble with Austria had arisen about the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg to the government of Holstein. Bismarck desired that that duchy should be disposed of in one manner, while Austria was determined ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... him wherever he turned. George, tenth Earl Marischal, and brother of Frederick the Great's general, Marshal Keith, had joined the Earl of Mar in the rising of 1715, and had made an ineffectual descent in 1719 on Glenshiel with the Spaniards. But in the '45 he had taken no part, and he revealed to the British ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... the other hand, that the Germans should imitate Frederick the Great, which is not so preposterous as appears on the face of it, because of comparatively easy means of transportation, and should be able to make successive victorious dashes, first in the east and then in the west, backward and forward; leadership would be hers, and France would be ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... one discovers no victories. She is an unusual and pliant State to survive so many defeats. One finds her the easy prey of Frederick the Great, the pet victim of Louis XIV., the foe against whom Napoleon made his first youthful efforts and the vanquished of his prime, the defeated foe of Napoleon III., the vanquished tyrant of Italy united, the loser in Prussia's Thirty Days' War of 1867, and now the gradual loser against Russia's wild, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... the rarest occasions, and the complete counterpart to whom has, probably, never existed; for there are broad shades of difference between Napoleon and Alexander, Caesar, and Charlemagne; neither will modern history furnish more exact parallels, since Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great, Cromwell, Washington, or Bolivar bear but a small resemblance to Bonaparte either in character, fortune, or extent of enterprise. For fourteen years, to say nothing of his projects in the East, the history of Bonaparte was the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... is a strange reality: If you look at the general outlines of the German map in 1815, you will see that the frontiers trace in a startling way the scowling outlines of Frederick the Great, "Old Fritz," who first dreamed this German ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... to bear fruit after their kind. In the place of friendliness on the part of the English,—a friendliness uninterrupted by war, and based on the blood of their royal family and the comradeship in arms against France in the days of Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon—there developed a growing hostility. In vain missions were sent by the British Government to promote a better understanding, for the Germans declined to accept either a "naval holiday" ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... present)—the Lord Lieutenant was there with his blue waistcoated courtiers. Wilde was dressed in snuffy brown; and as he had the sort of skin that never looks clean, he produced a dramatic effect beside Lady Wilde (in full fig) of being, like Frederick the Great, Beyond Soap and Water, as his Nietzschean son was beyond Good and Evil. He was currently reported to have a family in every farmhouse; and the wonder was that Lady Wilde didn't mind—evidently a tradition from the Travers case, which I did not know about until I read your account, as I was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... was at Ferney, I repeated this to Voltaire, in order to reconcile him somewhat to Johnson, whom he, in affecting the English mode of expression, had previously characterised as 'a superstitious dog;' but after hearing such a criticism on Frederick the Great, with whom he was then on bad terms, he exclaimed, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of an epic poem brought Schiller back to his art; he first thought of Gustavus Adolphus, then of Frederick the Great of Prussia, for his hero, and intended to adopt the ottave rime, and in general construction to follow the model of the "Iliad." He did not even begin to execute this work, but devoted himself instead to the tragedy of "Wallenstein," which occupied him for several years. Among other engagements ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... eighteenth centuries, armies were often commanded by men born to princely rank. That this did not necessarily mean that they were ill commanded may be shown by the names of Turenne and Conde, Maurice de Saxe and Eugene of Savoy, Prince Henry of Prussia I and Frederick the Great. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... my wife's father's farm. 3. France's and England's interest differs widely. 4. Frederick the Great was the son of the daughter of George I. of England. 5. My brother's wife's sister's drawings have been much admired. 6. The drawings of the sister of the wife of my ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... same Elizabeth, born for a throne, that Frederick the Great said: "The pride of a Spartan, the obstinacy of a Briton, added to Italian finesse and French vivacity, formed the character of this singular woman. She advanced audaciously to the accomplishment of her designs; ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... states of various grades and the Reichland of Alsace-Lorraine under the leadership of Prussia, by far the most important state of the Empire. The foundation of Prussia's greatness was laid by Frederick the Great in 1763 when he tore Silesia from Austria in an entirely unprovoked war. He wished to enlarge the bounds of Prussia, he coveted Silesia, so he took it. In that deed of spoliation we see manifested the spirit that has animated ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... nor Junius ever dealt in more furious words than Macaulay, who had not the excuse of controversy or passion. Frederick William of Prussia was "the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch and Puck"; "his palace was hell"; compared with the Prince, afterwards Frederick the Great, "Oliver Twist in the workhouse, and Smike at Dotheboys Hall were petted children." It would be difficult for Mark Twain to beat that. "The follies and vices of King John were the salvation of England." Cranmer was peculiarly fitted ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... from abroad. A change had taken place in the attitude of the German mind which corresponds quite closely to that whose successive steps we have been following. In Germany, French classicism had got an even firmer hold than in England. It is well-known that Frederick the Great (1740-86) regarded his mother-tongue as a barbarous dialect, hardly fit for literary use. In his own writings, prose and verse, he invariably employed French; and he boasted to Gottsched that from his youth up he had not ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... answered, as though gifted with second sight: "At this spot and at this moment a new epoch in the world's history will begin, and you will all be able to say that you were present." And in imagination I could see the red glow of the bivouac fires and the officers of Frederick the Great's famous army, who could not understand how anyone could have fled before the ragged recruits of the Revolution. And near them I saw a man of higher caliber standing on tiptoe to look through the dark curtain ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... Talfourd, as "the type of dandified, melodramatic seamanship." The cycles of kingly sway is abruptly broken by the meteoric episode of Bonaparte: first he appears dispersing the Assembly, and then in his early victories, wounded at Ratisbon, at the tomb of Frederick the Great, distributing the Legion of Honor at the Invalides, quelling an insurrection at Cairo, engaged in his unparalleled succession of battles, and at the altar with Maria Louisa. The divorce from Josephine and the murder of the Duc D'Enghien, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various |
