"Potentate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them carefully. Together with the influential Pundit Gobaria they made strong representations to the Jong Pen of Taklakot. By threatening him that an army would be sent to my rescue if I were not set at liberty, they at last obtained from the reluctant Tibetan potentate permission that I should be brought into Taklakot. The permission was afterward withdrawn, but was at last allowed to be carried into execution. It was entirely due to the good offices and energy of these three men that ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... create an impression of treachery, scheming, and false reasoning; especially if the person addressed be a judge, who is master of the situation, and still more in the case of a despot, a king, a military potentate, or any of those who sit in high places.[1] If a man feels that this artful speaker is treating him like a silly boy and trying to throw dust in his eyes, he at once grows irritated, and thinking that such false reasoning implies a contempt of his understanding, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... member of 'the old school of bill-sticking.' He likewise gave me to understand that there was a Lord Mayor of the Bill-Stickers, whose genius was chiefly exercised within the limits of the city. He made some allusion, also, to an inferior potentate, called 'Turkey-legs;' but I did not understand that this gentleman was invested with much power. I rather inferred that he derived his title from some peculiarity of gait, and that it ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... of which I tell he was in command of a force of something like five hundred lances, that were very well fed, well kept, well equipped, and ready to serve the quarrel of any potentate of Italy that was willing to pay for them. He had just captained his rascals very gallantly and satisfactorily in the service of Padua, and having made a very considerable amount of money by the transaction, was now resting pleasantly on his laurels, and in no immediate ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... complete that (as the unhappy girl said afterward) he seemed more like a younger brother than a father. There were no chairs: they were forced to stand. In a small mirror fastened to the edge of his desk the sneering potentate could note the dial-reading of the instrument without turning. He watched the reflected needle flicker ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... aristocrat that Sydney Smith wrote so happily in one of his letters from Brighton: "A gentleman attired point device, walking down the Parade, like Agag, 'delicately.' He pointed out his toes like a dancing-master; but carried his head like a potentate. As he passed the stand of flys, he nodded approval, as if he owned them all. As he approached the little goat carriages, he looked askance over the edge of his starched neckcloth and blandly smiled encouragement. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Continent. If they were refractory, he must relinquish all thought of arbitrating between contending nations, must again implore French assistance, must again submit to French dictation, must sink into a potentate of the third or fourth class, and must indemnify himself for the contempt with which he would be regarded abroad by triumphs over law and public ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... This Asiatic potentate had encouraged the insurgents in Italy, and was also at war with the Romans. Marius viewed with envy and hatred the preference shown to Sulla in the conduct of the Mithridatic War, and succeeded, by his intrigues and influence with the people, in causing Sulla to be superseded, and himself to be ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... effort to keep the peace between Balzac and her husband, the potentate of the Presse. Balzac had known Emile de Girardin since 1829, having been introduced to him by Levavasseur, who had just published his Physiologie du Mariage. Later Balzac took his Verdugo to M. de Girardin which appeared in La Mode in which Madame de Girardin and her mother were ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... monarque, with a label from his mouth worthy the speaker and worthy observation, "You take a my fine ships; you be de pirate; you be de teef: me send my grand armies, and hang you all." The action is suited to the word, for with his left hand this most Christian potentate grasps his sword, and in his right poises a gibbet. The figure and motto united produce a roar of approbation from the soldier and sailor, who are criticising the work. It is so natural that the Helen and Briseis of the camp contemplate ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... representative of your august body, I ought now to have been in an atmosphere of royalty—Imperial royalty, which counts at A No. 1, as kings are put down. The young potentate of all the Russias, with all his ships and things, ought to have been on hand a week ago; but he still lingers on the "rolling sea and briny deep," a prey, it is dreadfully to be feared, to sea-sickness—which, they tell me, is heart-rending—and storms ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... The half-mythical Eastern potentate, who is now supposed to have been, not a Christian monarch of Abyssinia, but the head of the Indian empire ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... looking him sadly though firmly in the face. "There was a man—long years since, in your childhood—whose plotting brain proved the ruin of himself and many another; a man whose great designs made him a sort of potentate, whose schemes became of national importance, and produced results even upon the history of the country in which he acted. That man was my father; a man who sought to do great things, and, like many who ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bold words to use of the potentate whose command all Christendom obeyed. The youthful monarch, it was already clear, intended to rule his country with an iron hand. When only three months on the throne, he chanced upon some letters in which the bishop of Vesteras alluded to him in arrogant and contumelious terms. This bishop, who ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... personal integrity and energy, more than on any President or Cabinet, the hopes of all that multitude appeared to rest,—who commanded then among his subjects, and still commands, an allegiance more absolute than any European potentate can claim,—whose name will be forever illustrious as having first made a practical reality out of that Proclamation which then was to the President only an autograph, and to the Cabinet only a dream,—who, when the whole fate of the slaves and of the Government hung trembling in the balance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... army that was a match for that of Cyrus was the Lydian host under King Croesus. A conflict took place between the two, ending in the defeat of the most powerful potentate of Asia Minor. But Cyrus treated Croesus with consideration, and the Lydian king is said to have become the friend of the mighty Persian. From that day neither Egypt nor Chaldaea had any chance of victory on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... countrymen swear by the saints nowadays: no oaths but allegorical ones, Sir, at the high table; as thus,—'By the sleeve of beauty, Madam;' or again, 'By Love his martyrdoms, Sir Count;' or to a potentate, 'As Jove's imperial mercy shall hear ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... inches of him, too, for although he was not very tall, he was a remarkable size round, and the inches that he wanted in height, he made up in circumference. If any degenerate monarch of modern times could be in any way compared with him, I should say the venerable King Cole would be that illustrious potentate. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... his moments of solitude, in the privacy of the potentate's toilet-chamber, must it not be dreadful for him to reflect that his silver helmet rests on ears that suppurate, that his voice comes from a mouth afflicted with fistula of the bone, and that there are days when his sceptre is at the ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... arms and not less illustrious in letters. A female sovereign supplied to Columbus the means of discovering this country. He wandered foot-sore and weary from court to court, from convent to convent, from one potentate to another, but no man on a throne listened to him, until a female sovereign pledged her jewels to fit out the expedition which "gave a new world to the kingdoms of Castile and Leon." Nor need we cite Anne of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her in the Peloponnesian war, by Brasidas. Amyntas, the king of Macedonia, seeking aid against Jason of Pherae, whose Thessalian dominion and personal talents and ambition combined to make him a powerful potentate, consented to the right of Athens to this city. But Amyntas died not long after the assassination of Jason, and both Thessaly and Macedonia were ruled by new kings, and new complications took place. Many Thessalian ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... please bring them to me. There," he said, as Gervaise brought a bulky parcel which the grand master opened, "this letter is from the Holy Father himself. That, as you may see from the arms on the seal, is from Florence. The others are from Pisa, Leghorn, and Naples. Rarely, Sir Gervaise, has any potentate or knight earned the thanks of so many great cities. These caskets accompanied them. Sit down and read your letters. They must be copied ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... that when father went to feed the chickens in the barn yard, a beautiful bird with silky wings of blue fluttered down among them to be fed. How impressible my artless brain! As great an event was this to me, as the inauguration of our highest potentate to ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... over the community of the faithful, nay, over the fate of departed souls. Here Luther saw an invasion of the rights reserved by God to Himself, and a perversion of the true conditions of salvation, as established by Christ and testified in Scripture. Here he saw a human potentate and tyrant, setting himself up in the place of Christ and God. He shuddered, so he wrote to his friends, when, in reading the Papal decretals, he looked further into the doings of the Popes, with their demands and edicts, into this smithy of human laws, this fresh crucifixion of Christ, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... reoccupy Pisa and to assure themselves of Vitelli; but, when he pressed that Florence should give him a condotta, Macchiavelli—following his instructions not to commit the Republic in any way—had answered "that his Excellency must not be considered as other lords, but as a new potentate in Italy, with whom it is more seemly to make an alliance or a friendship than to grant him a condotta; and, as alliances are maintained by arms, and that is the only power to compel their observance, the Signory could not perceive what security ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... passed from guest to guest, questioned about his journey, praised for his good colour and stout looks, complimented on his high prospects, and laughingly entreated not to forget his old friends when fortune should advance him to the duchy, he began to feel himself a reigning potentate already. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... at the back filled the place with eastern light. He never tired of that room, the library where his chief dispatched those matters of more urgent business that pursued him even to his home. It was a room that might have served a potentate as a council-chamber with its treasury of almost priceless art, yet it reflected everywhere the quiet of faultless taste and the elegance born of a restrained and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... with all the delicacies of the East, and a host of servants to attend to our slightest wish. So it was at Bostam, the residence of one of Persia's most influential hakims, or governors, literally, "pillars of state," who was also a cousin to the Shah himself. This potentate we visited in company with an English engineer whom we met in transit at Sharoud. It was on the evening before, when at supper with this gentleman in his tent, that a special messenger arrived from the governor, requesting us, as the invitation ran, "to take our brightness into his presence." As ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... Rohillas was advantageous to the British rule; but though the council at Calcutta thought the bargain highly profitable to the company, the hiring out of British troops to serve as subsidiaries to an Asiatic potentate was a deplorable mistake. Another charge brought against Hastings concerned the execution of Nanda-Kumar (Nuncomar), a rascally Brahman, who, after Hastings was appointed governor-general, helped his ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... their uprising against British rule found "The Man" in PAUL STEPHANUS KRUGER. To all South Africa a veritable "man of Destiny" has he proved to be; and for eighteen successive years, as their honoured President he has ruled his people with an absoluteness no European potentate could possibly approach. By birth a British subject, and for a brief while after the annexation a paid official of the British Government, he yet seems all his life to have been a consistent hater of all things British. ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... a man consistently be subject to any civil ruler when he already has pledged his allegiance, both in soul and in body, to another potentate?" ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... seem to see disappointment in their faces. They are looking for crowns and scepters and a shower of gold coin. Really, Monty, you don't play the game as you should. Why, I could give you points on the potentate act myself. A milk-white steed, a few clattering attendants in gorgeous uniforms, a lofty nod here and there, and little me distributing ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... elder daughters are betrothed, while the youngest does not wish to contract a loveless union with any of the neighboring suitors whom Leir proposes to her, and he is afraid that she may marry some distant potentate. ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... manor and there was the cabin. Each head of the house was a potentate in his own domain—an absolute ruler of a principality as marked as in feudal times, without the ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... fancied himself a "mighty potentate." He was well known in the east of London, and died in Whitechapel workhouse. Some of his sayings were really witty, and some of his attitudes ...
— 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.
... indispensable, and some may think far more dignified, but Business is King. The statesman and the scholar, the nobleman and the prince, equally with the manufacturer, the mechanic, and the laborer, pursue their several objects only by leave granted and means furnished by this potentate." ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... also watch them as they cross the room and go to the table that is assigned to them by the head waiter. Now, in Europe, you would find a very polite head waiter, who invites you to go in, and asks you where you will sit; but in America the head waiter is a most magnificent potentate who lies in wait for you at the door, and bids you to follow him sometimes in the following respectful manner, beckoning, "There." And you have got to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... retiring when he heard the sentries challenge; this was immediately followed by a rush of horsemen, headed by a most gorgeously dressed officer. Reining up almost at Smith's feet he informed him that his master, a neighbouring potentate, friendly to the English, had sent him and his men to assist in the repulse of the bloodthirsty Dthanbari tribe, who might be expected to attempt to rush the camp that night. Although not anticipating anything of the kind, Major Smith was far ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... ever assumed by prince or potentate, the proudest is that of the Roman pontiffs: "Servus servorum Dei"—"Servant of the ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... 'That's it! Mr Wegg, I'm thirty-two, and a bachelor. Mr Wegg, I love her. Mr Wegg, she is worthy of being loved by a Potentate!' Here Silas is rather alarmed by Mr Venus's springing to his feet in the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with his hand on his coat collar; but Mr Venus, begging pardon, sits ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... France, was a most singular one; as there was as little independence in the one, as dignity in the other, their absurdities harmonised perfectly together; each of them in their own way formed a group round the parti-coloured potentate, who at the same time employed the forcible means ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... protest And buy the books That they like best; But what of that? He knows where he is at, And they don't. And why Shouldn't he be high Above them as the clouds Are high above the brooks, For God, He made the Critic, And man, he makes the books. See? Gee whiz, What a puissant potentate the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... Exercising a potentate's prerogative, Prince Robin left the scene of festivity somewhat earlier than was expected. As a matter of fact, he departed shortly after one. Moreover, being a prince, it did not occur to him ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... excusable. Such misconceptions were common enough before barbarous societies had been much studied; and many a dusky warrior, without a tithe of the pomp and splendour about him that surrounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages of history as a mighty potentate girt with many of the trappings of feudalism.[100] Initial misconceptions that were natural enough, indeed unavoidable, found expression in an absurdly inappropriate nomenclature; and then the use of wrong names and titles bore fruit ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... if he did, the Grand Turk's feelings were by no means to be envied, but he said it was famous, and he had no doubt he felt very like that Potentate. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... well, the inhabitants bustled out to do them service in return for stale scraps of news from the outer world; and Iskender told them of the greatness and the power of his Emir, till they esteemed it a rich reward merely to peep through the hangings of the tent at such a potentate. Even supposing that they never found the Valley of the Kings, this ramble together through delightful solitudes was worth the money spent, it seemed to him. The valley full of gold was a pretext only, giving the taste of purpose to their doings and clothing them ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... town sweep from base to pointed apex with a symmetry so perfect, their houses are so light and airy of architecture, so brilliant and varied of colour, that they suggest having been called into being by the stroke of a magician's wand to gratify the whim of an Eastern potentate. Surely, they are a vast seraglio, a triple collection of pleasure houses where captive maidens are content and nautch girls dance with feet like larks. Business, commerce, one cannot associate with this enchanting vista; nor cockroaches as long as one's foot, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Ursula Drew, who, though supreme in her government of Maude, was in reality only a vice-queen. Over Ursula ruled a man-cook, by name Warine de la Misericorde, concerning whom his subordinate's standing joke was that "Misericorde was rarely [extremely] merciless." But this potentate in his turn owed submission to the master of the household, a very great gentleman with gold embroidery on his coat, concerning whom Maude's only definite notion was that he must be courtesied ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... metal and jewels of the gorgeous ornaments of the men and women, duplicated in the trappings of the zitidars and thoats, and interspersed with the flashing colors of magnificent silks and furs and feathers, lent a barbaric splendor to the caravan which would have turned an East Indian potentate green with envy. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the story rather freely. It appears to have been originally an example of a well-known class of folk-tales dealing with the subject of the Rescue of Fairyland. The same motive occurs in the famous tale called The Sickbed of Cuchulain. The idea is that some fairy potentate, whose realm is invaded and oppressed, entices a mortal champion to come to his aid and rewards him with magical gifts. But the eighteenth century narrator whose MS. was edited by Mr S.H. O'Grady, apparently had not the clue to the real meaning of his material, and after going ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... bold seafarer made an exceptionally good capture: a French vessel on a voyage from Marseilles to Naples, with a rich cargo and the servants and luggage of a real potentate,—the Prince of Campo Florida. ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... happy holiday-season, and could not help stealing out of the drawing-room on hearing one of their peals of laughter. I found them at the game of blind-man's buff. Master Simon, who was the leader of their revels, and seemed on all occasions to fulfil the office of that ancient potentate, the Lord of Misrule,[N] was blinded in the midst of the hall. The little beings were as busy about him as the mock fairies about Falstaff; pinching him, plucking at the skirts of his coat, and tickling him with straws. One fine blue-eyed girl of about thirteen, with her flaxen hair all in beautiful ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... many savage tribes who, as we shall show, possess, but neglect, an Eternal Creator. He would do what, in the secular sphere, was done by the Mikado of Japan. The Mikado was a political Dendid or Ndengei—an awful, withdrawn, impotent potentate. Power was wielded by the Tycoon. A Mikado of genius asserted himself; hence arose modern Japan. In the same way, a religious reformer like Khuen Ahten in Egypt would preach down minor gods, ghosts and sacred ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the son of Letsie and grandson of Moshesh, and now ranks with Khama as the most important native potentate south of the Zambesi. He is a strong, thickset man, who looks about fifty years of age, and is not wanting either in intelligence or in firmness. He was dressed in a grey shooting-coat and trousers of grey cloth, with a neat new black, low-crowned hat, and received ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... authority Latin comedies are to be exhibited in the hall at Christmas. This "imperator" must be a master of arts, and the society was to be governed by a set of laws framed in Latin verse. The authority of this potentate lasted from Christmas to Candlemas, during which time six spectacles were to be represented. Dr. John Dee, a prodigy of that century, who might have been illustrious like Bacon almost, but who wasted his later years in astrological ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... arrogant Dons. The talk turned on "El Dorado" and the fabulous treasures he had heaped up. The Johnsons were eager with inquiries, but had no information to offer. The strangers pretended to know a great deal about the mysterious Indian potentate and his golden land, but they winked at one another and kept their counsel. Ned Johnson made a plunge. Did the strangers know that a ship was actually fitting in Plymouth harbour for an unnamed port on the Orinoco? They did, and thought of trying for a berth ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... without food. Again taken by the colonists, he was tied to a post, hacked to pieces and burned. The story, simple in itself, becomes striking in the hands of Mrs. Behn. The hut of the old negro king is given the brilliancy of an Eastern court, and his harem is copied after that of a Turkish potentate. When Oroonoko is induced to board the English slaver, it is in no common style, but "the Captain in his Boat richly adorned with Carpets and velvet Cushions went to the Shore to receive the Prince, with another Long Boat where was placed ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Testament, and that Sunday was the first of the six working days, according to the fourth commandment, their hatred to the Jews for refusing to accept their Christ as the Saviour induced them to have it placed on the first day of the week. Hence that obliging potentate, in the year 321, promulgated the memorable edict, which, found in that Digest of Roman law known as the Justinian Code, Book III., Title 12, Sec. 2 and 3, reads as follows, viz.: "Let all judges and all people of the towns ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... into the rotunda, where the King graciously but speedily dismissed the civic gentlemen and the proprietor, and vanished into the elevator. She was destined to see him so often afterwards that she scarcely took the trouble to time her dining and supping by that of the simple potentate, who had his meals in one of the public rooms, with three gentlemen of his suite, in sack-coats like himself, after the informal ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Who can wonder at the attractiveness of Parliament, or of Congress, or the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator? He has his audience at his devotion. All other fames must hush before his. He is the true potentate; for they are not kings who sit on thrones, but they who know how to govern. The definitions of eloquence describe its attraction for young men. Antiphon the Rhamnusian, one of Plutarch's ten orators, advertised in Athens, "that he would cure distempers of the mind with words." No man has a prosperity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... similar idea indeed pervades some addresses to the Virgin of the present day, representing the great and only potentate as her heavenly husband, in himself full of rage, but softened into tenderness towards her votaries by her influence. See a hymn, in the Paris collection already referred to, p. 353, &c. of this work (Nouveau ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... its numerous little balconies and galleries, and the flat surfaces of the roof: the whole effect being that of an Eastern palace with hanging gardens, a vast pleasure house, designed for some extravagant and voluptuous potentate. Anything less like an hotel had never been erected; and the interior, with its lofty pillared rooms, its costly mahogany furniture, its panels and hangings of rich brocades, the thick rugs on the polished floors, if more European than Oriental, equally resembled a palace; ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... aristocracy was causing the assemblage to regard him as an individual of social importance. He gave the emir's address upon Clark Street and after dwelling some time upon his graces of person and mind, related how it was that this Eastern potentate was resident in the city of Chicago in a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... had its foundation: all Sprung forth from thee—of light, joy, harmony, Sole origin: all life, all beauty thine. Thy word created all, and doth create; Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine; Thou art and wert, and shalt be glorious, great; Life-giving, life-sustaining Potentate, Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround— Upheld by thee, by thee ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... subordinated to those of his ancestral master, man. This animal, in many ways so superior, has accepted a position of inferiority, shares the domestic life, and humours the caprices of the tyrant. But the potentate, like the British in India, pays small regard to the character of his willing client, judges him with listless glances, and condemns him in a byword. Listless have been the looks of his admirers, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... question to be decided was that which we have already mentioned, namely, the disposal of spoil from prospective captures, and with this end in view the corsairs approached the Sultan of Tunis. This potentate made a gracious response to their overtures, and wished them all success in their enterprises. He promised them succour and support on the same terms which Curtogali had obtained, namely, one-fifth of all the spoil ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... and most dreadful oath of vengeance upon their offenders, and pledged themselves, under fearful penalties of death, "ever to take up arms in the cause of the oppressed in their own country, first of all, against any monarch, prince, potentate, power or government usurped, and found in arms and waging war against a people or peoples, who had of their own free choice, inaugurated a government for themselves, in accordance with and founded upon the eternal principles ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... and coffins of brass must be ranked amongst the curiosities of our later trades. Two of the latter kind polished, lacquered, and decorated in a variety of ways, with massive handles and emblazoned shields, were made here some few years back for King Egbo Jack and another dark-skinned potentate of South Africa. "By particular request" each of these coffins were provided with four padlocks, two outside and two inside, though how to use the latter must have been a puzzle even for a dead king. The Patent Metallic Air-tight Coffin Co., whose name pretty ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Unreason in Scotland, was a similar character to the Lord of Misrule in England. "This pageant potentate," as Stowe calls him, "was annually elected, and his rule extended through the greater part of the holydays conected with the festival days of Christmas." But these "fine and subtle disguisings, masks, and mummeries," ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of Polycrates the Tyrant (tyrant, be it remembered, meant only usurper, not oppressor) considered the happiness of that potentate secure because he had a powerful navy and such a friend as Anacreon—the word navy naturally suggesting cold water, and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... be made, and all this need not occupy more than two hours. The Archbishop of Mayence already controls the city gates, which since the disbanding of the imperial troops have been unguarded, and none can get in or out of the city without that potentate's permission. The men of Mayence are quartered in the centre of the town, the Count Palatine's troops are near the gate. Treves and Cologne will doubtless command other positions, and thus between them ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... decorated, and contained all the emblems and symbols of witchcraft. If sickness was to be frightened away, or even coaxed to dethrone itself from the afflicted, there was sufficient in this temple of the Indian gods, seemingly, to have answered either purpose. Some potentate of the magnitude of a great chief had, evidently, but a few hours since, been its occupant; for, in his hurry to desert the premises, on hearing the music of the white man's rifle, he had forgotten his beautiful ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... thing, he thought grimly, the next geek who picks up the idea of soaking a Terran in thermoconcentrate and setting fire to him will drop it again like a hot potato. And the next geek potentate who tries to organize an anti-Terran conspiracy, or the next crazy caravan-driver who preaches znidd suddabit, will be lynched on the spot. But this must be the last nuclear bomb ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... met the last down trader from Unyamuezi, well known to all my men as the great Mamba or Crocodile. Mamba, dressed in a dirty Arab gown, with coronet of lion's nails decorating a thread-bare cutch cap, greeted us with all the dignity of a savage potentate surrounded by his staff of half-naked officials. As usual, he had been the last to leave the Unyamuezi, and so purchased all his stock of ivory at a cheap rate, there being no competitors left to raise the value of that commodity; but his journey had been a very trying one. With a party, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... married, and his two wives were cousins, the first, Elizabeth, being the daughter of one Sir Charles Skrymsher, the second, Hester, as I have said, of Gerald Skrymsher, Dr. Johnson's uncle. Hence Johnson had a cousin by marriage who was a potentate in his day, for it is told of Thomas Boothby of Tooley Park, grand-nephew of a powerful and wealthy baronet, that he was one of the fathers of English sport. An issue of The Field newspaper for 1875 contains an engraving of a hunting horn then ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... as you are this day solemnly invested in the government of this earthly kingdom, so may you be sealed with that spirit of promise, which is the earnest of an heavenly inheritance, and reign with Him who is the blessed and only Potentate, to whom be glory for ever ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... but slightly less civilised Benjamin, high potentate of the tribe of Mangeroma cannibals, is the second to whom I wish to express my extreme gratitude, although my obligations to him are of a slightly different character: in the first place, because he did not order me to be killed and ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... can visit Delhi and Agra without being impressed by the rulers of the golden period of the Mogul Empire, the great Akbar standing forth prominently as a wise potentate and the strongest personality in Indian history, certainly in Central India. His son, Jahangir, was not his equal, but his mantle of power seems to have descended to his grandson, Shah Jahan, who, like ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... remembered the vindictive feeling with which she now regarded his sex, he thought that she, if anyone, was capable of executing the commission. He was not, of course, as yet aware of the moral resolution lately arrived at by the young potentate of Scalastro. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... pseudo-realism, the epigrammatic hysteria, that has of late been so rife in certain British circles. Moreover, it is impossible to believe that any really strong talent could have been stifled by the frown of the magazine editor. Walt Whitman made his mark without that potentate's assistance; and if America had produced a Zola, he would certainly have come to the front, even if his genius had been hampered with a burden of more than ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the morning, but then he walks so fast up those hills that unless you are mounted on one of my ablest hunters you will not keep pace with him.' It was not long before I obtained an audience extraordinary of this literary potentate, whom I found like Jupiter involved in clouds of his own raising. He was entrenched behind a battery of ten or twelve guns, charged with a stinking combustible called tobacco. Two or three of these he had fired off, and replaced them in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes; Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue Than sceptered king or laurelled conqueror knows, Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true, Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea, Wafting your Charge to ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... so far, Rome by an augury of wicked gods stretched to a period of 1,200 years. Yet how open to doubt in one sense! Not, I am sure, in any sense understood by man, but I doubt not in the ominous sense intended. Changed in all things essential, she was yet a mighty sceptered potentate for the world until her dependency on Attila's good-will and forbearance. 444 after Christ added to 752 B. C. complete the period. But period for what? For whom? For a great idea that could not be lost. The conception could not perish if the execution perished. But, next think of the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and petticoats not much; Morals and Minuets, Virtue and her stays, And tell-tale powder—all have had their days. The Ball begins—the honours of the house First duly done by daughter or by spouse, Some Potentate—or royal or serene— With Kent's gay grace, or sapient Gloster's mien, [ix] Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush Might once have been mistaken for a blush. From where the garb just leaves the bosom free, 190 That spot where hearts [22] were once supposed to be; Round all the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... authority, prerogative and jurisdiction, to render and yield justice and final determination to all manner of folk resident or subject within this his realm, without restraint or provocation to any foreign prince or potentate of the world: the body spiritual whereof having power when any cause of the law divine happened to come in question, or of spiritual learning, [such cause being] declared, interpret, and shewed by that part of the body politic called the spiritualty, now usually called the English church; ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the English cruisers of those seas. A few minutes later Griffin came off, chopfallen and disappointed. His first glance at the countenance of his superior announced a coming storm; for the commander of a vessel of war is no more apt to be reasonable under disappointment than any other potentate. Captain Cuffe had not seen fit to wait for his subordinate on deck; but as soon as it was ascertained that he was coming off in a shore-boat, he retired to his cabin, leaving orders with the first lieutenant, whose name ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Sicilies, Austria and the Low Countries, who then assumed them both at the age of twenty-nine, was not only the last who wielded the Imperial insignia with imperial authority, but was also a far more formidable potentate in Italy than any of his predecessors since ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... possible a religious change, whether reformation-like or otherwise, may follow in its steps, but that time is not come. There is no wish in the Italian people, unless I err much, to alter the national faith, or to dispense with the Pope, as a spiritual potentate. Before long Pius IX., having caused as much misery as one man can well cause in one lifetime, must depart from this world; and then, if not sooner, some arrangement must be come to between the Pope and the Italian people, if the Papacy is to last ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... books, or coins, or pictures, were freely laid open to the public; and the enterprising student, and experienced antiquary, alike found amusement and a courteous reception. He was known to all foreigners of intellectual distinction, and corresponded both with the artisan and the potentate. The great patron of literature, and the leader of his profession (which he practised with a success unknown before), it was hardly possible for unbefriended merit, if properly introduced to him, to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... write, thank Mr. Kingsley for thinking of letting me see the sound sense of an Eastern potentate. (154/1. Kingsley's letter to Huxley, dated December 20th, 1862, contains a story or parable of a heathen Khan in Tartary who was visited by a pair of proselytising Moollahs. The first Moollah said: "Oh! Khan, worship my God. He is so wise that he made ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... which was the object of their expedition. What certainly did not contribute to render their progress less difficult and dangerous was the circumstance that war at this moment was waged between the Queen of the Ansarey and the Pasha of Aleppo. The Turkish potentate had levied tribute on some villages which owned her sway, and which, as he maintained, were not included in the ancient composition paid by the Ansarey to the Porte in full of all demands. The consequence was, that parties of the Ansarey occasionally issued from their ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Afghanistan, encouraging an attack by 30,000 Persians, led by Russian officers, upon Herat. Instead of acceding to the request of Dost Mohammed, the British Governor-General—Lord Auckland— declared war against that potentate, alleging in a proclamation that "the welfare of the English possessions in the East rendered it necessary to have an ally on their western frontier who would be in favor of peace, and opposed to all ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... vermilion, a hat of felt and a sash of many colours for Quamenoka, and lesser glories for his four headmen. These presented with due formality, and actually donned by the recipients without loss of time, the ceremony of the opening council was over, save for the triumphal march of the potentate, accompanied by McElroy and Ridgar, back to the camp ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... on an unexpected mission, differing from his ordinary trips. You may remember seeing in the papers some weeks ago that an agent of the Van Vreck firm was robbed on shipboard of a lot of pearls and things he was bringing to show an important client in England—some Indian potentate. James tells us that he procured the finest of the collection for the Van Vrecks, and as he is a great expert, and can recognize jewels he has once seen, even when disguised or cut up, or in different settings, he was ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... little lady declined. The fine dignity of her bearing, and the charm of her bow when she said "good-day" to him, covered the parochial potentate with shame for having received and treated her as a commonplace captain's wife. Mr Hobkirk conveyed to his friends at their evening sitting at the inn all that had passed between himself and his distinguished visitor. He was smartly censured for being shortsighted ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... rich withal; for after the battle of Poitiers, Harry Picard, wine-merchant and Lord Mayor, entertained in the city four kings,—to wit, Edward, king of England, John, king of France, David, king of Scotland, and the king of Cyprus; and the last-named potentate, slightly heated with Harry's wine, engaged him at dice, and being nearly ruined thereby, the honest wine-merchant returned the poor king his money, which was received with all thankfulness. There is great stir on a summer's morning ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... rapidly as possible, in this matter, and that the President will soon make it the subject of a Message as significant and as noble as that wherein this country first stood committed by its chief officer to Emancipation, the noblest document which ever passed from president or potentate to the people; a paper which, in the eyes of future ages, will cast Magna Charta itself into the shade, and rank with the glorious manumission ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Those in the company who have never played the game go out of the room. One of the inside players, who is to represent the potentate, then mounts a chair and is covered with a sheet which reaches to the ground. At the point where it touches a shoe is placed, the toe of which is just visible. In the potentate's hand is a sponge full of water. One of the players outside is then invited in; he is ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... others I have detailed, in narrating a raid by supernatural beings on the dwelling of a human potentate—a raid in which a human creature joined and brought away a substantial trophy. In the seventeenth century there was in the possession of Lord Duffus an old silver cup, called the Fairy Cup, concerning which the following ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... trembling in Greece. "The Great King," as the Greeks called the chief potentate of the East, whose domains stretched from the Indian Caucasus to the Aegaeus, from the Caspian to the Red Sea, was marshaling his forces against the little free states that nestled amid the rocks and gulfs of the Eastern Mediterranean. Already had his might devoured the cherished colonies of the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... scorn with which Troubridge would have received the potentate's reply had he given the same advice as Nelson. It is highly probable that had it been given on the quarterdeck of his ship, the King would have been treated to a vocabulary that would have impressed him with the necessity of scrambling quickly over the side. Nelson, it is stated, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... wearing it, and as to the signification of the enamelled figure, there has been the greatest diversity of opinion. Sir Francis Palgrave suggested that the figure was older than the setting. Perhaps it was a sacred object, and perhaps one of the presents of Pope Marinus, or some other potentate; and that the mounting was intended to adapt it for fixture in the rim of a helmet or crown over the centre of the royal brow. By its side, in the same glass case, there lies a gold ornament of far simpler design, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... chiefs of Roman society. Nominally, indeed, they were subject to the exarch of Ravenna, as vicegerent of the Emperor at Constantinople, but in reality the inhabitants of Western Europe were more disposed to look to the spiritual potentate in the Imperial city as representing the traditions of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... rest, he learned that these people were of Zulu stock, and having opposed the accession of Tshaka, when that potentate usurped the royal seat of Dingiswayo, had deemed it advisable to flee. They had migrated northward, even as Umzilikazi and his followers had done, though some years prior to the flight of that chieftain. But they were nothing if not conservative, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... by the President of the British Association was wont to excite at least a mild interest in the breasts of the reading public. It was a kind of Encyclical from the reigning pontiff of science, and since that potentate changed every year there was some uncertainty as to his subject and its treatment, and there was this further piquant attraction, wanting in other and better-known Encyclicals, that the address of one year might not merely contradict but might even exhibit a lofty ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... avoided by half a dozen strapping natives seizing Billy and making him sit down on the sand, while the wrathful Ludwig was hustled by Donald MacBride and Mrs Ludwig and threatened with a hammering if he insulted the gathering by his ill-timed and injudicious remarks about a foreign potentate. (Ludwig, I regret to say, had begun his ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... however, was still prevented by the theories of statesmen and theologians. Columbus had won the queen to his cause during the famous audience at the summer court at Salamanca, when he was presented to the sovereigns by Cardinal de Mendoza, at which interview, we are told, he "had no eyes for any potentate but Isabella." But after years of disappointment to Columbus, the queen was again the great power to further his project: she offered to pledge her crown jewels to defray the cost of the expedition. Thus a speedy issue was obtained, and to Isabella's determination Spain owes ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... greater state, than those who have come under my notice. The King of Appollonia, adjoining Axim Territory, is said to be very rich and powerful. If the report of his nearest civilized neighbor, the Governor of Axim, is to be credited, this potentate's house is furnished most sumptuously in the European style. Gold cups, pitchers, and plates, are used at his table, with furniture of corresponding magnificence in all the departments of his household. He possesses ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... the Naya of Mo," my companion answered, folding his arms resolutely, and regarding the potentate with supreme disdain. "Princes do not make obeisance to any ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... preparations produced a perfect fever of excitement in England; for we must bear in mind that the Spanish king was at this time the most powerful potentate in Europe, commanding the resources of a large part of two worlds. Never did Roman citizens rise more splendidly to avert some terrible peril threatening the republic than the English people now arose as a single ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... When the New York potentate, accompanied by the governor and a number of the assemblymen, and by the members of his staff, reached the place, they found the valiant captain walking up and down before his men, busily engaged in putting them through ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the ladies were, and that he had received instructions how to treat them. From that day, two French grenadiers began to guard the baroness's door, day and night, just exactly as if they were standing guard over a potentate." ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai |
