"Servility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleased to meet you on the road, sir. I assure you I quite look forward to one of our little conversations." He loved the sound of his own voice inordinately, and though (with something too off-hand to call servility) he would always hasten to agree with anything you said, yet he could never suffer you to say it to an end. By what transition he slid to his favourite subject I have no memory; but we had never been long together on the way before he was dealing, in a very military manner, with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the servility of his manner. To save himself he had the habit of leaving his flattery open to the interpretation of raillery. But Corley had not ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... you do so—and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which you assume as the concomitants of the gift? See Bacon himself; what black ingratitude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling servility! what abject and pitiful spirit! So far from intellectual knowledge, in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... its first establishment, to supply all its own wants, had not the extravagance of English luxury, the pride of a sumptuous table, the increasing growth of intemperance and ingratitude, added to the negligence of its patrons and prelates, reduced it from freedom to servility; and if the step-daughter, no less enviously than odiously, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... she was already alive to that mysterious glance which had built the national house and insured it afterwards—foe to cynicism, pessimism, and anything French or Russian; parent of all the national virtues, and all the national vices; of idealism and muddle-headedness, of independence and servility; fosterer of conduct, murderer of speculation; looking up, and looking down, but never straight at anything; most high, most deep, most queer; and ever bubbling-up from the essential Well ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... America had not destroyed. If we came in for supper whilst the family was still at table he would have the children at once take their plates to the wall, he would have Maria at once set the table for us, though their own meal were never finished. And this was not servility, it was the dignity of a religious conception. Paolo regarded us as belonging to the Signoria, those who are elect, near to God. And this was part of his religious service. His life was a ritual. It was very beautiful, but it made me unhappy, the purity of ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... motto, "Impudence rather than servility," was not discarded. Instead of a dashing style he developed a slow, subtle, scathing quality that was quite lost on all, save those who gave themselves ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... take on, miss!" he said, touching his cap with the unashamed servility at which the American girl never ceased to wonder. "I'll look after her meself, and if the dirt is washed out of the sores at once, she'll come to no harm. Likely as not there'll be nothing for the vet to do by the time he arrives. At the worst it'll ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... when the incendiaries of Louvain, and Malines, and Rheims, the assassins of women and children, and of the wounded, already find it necessary to repudiate their actions, at least in words, and to impose upon the servility of their ninety-three Kulturtraeger such denials as this: "It is not true that we are making war in contempt of the law of nations, nor that our soldiers are committing acts of cruelty, or of insubordination, or indiscipline.... We will carry this conflict through to the end as a civilized people, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hero from disgrace, than in the private commerce of the world, to ward off that littleness of soul which leads, by steps imperceptible, to all the base train of the inferior passions, and by which the too timid mind is betrayed into a servility derogatory to the dignity of human nature! yet is it a virtue of no necessity in a situation such as mine; a situation which removes, even from cowardice itself, the sting of ignominy;-for surely that courage may easily be dispensed with, which would rather excite disgust ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... may be brought forward, attested in the following passage: "Have taken particular care (saith Mr. Harcourt, in his letter to me from Aukenvyke, Sep. 25, 1734) in the copying; well knowing your exactness." Benedict Abbas, vol ii., 870. But this servility of transcription was frequently the cause of multiplying, by propagating, errors. If Hearne had seen the word "faith" thus disjointed—"fay the"—he would have adhered to this error, for "faythe." As indeed he has committed a similar one, in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... designed to hedge the upper classes about with honor, but they necessarily depreciate the lower classes by contrast and neutralize the tie of the common blood. In some countries the self-respect of the lower classes is affronted by degrading forms of legal punishment reserved for them. Forms of servility are exacted from servants and peasants. The practical working of class differences is most clearly seen in the relation of the sexes. Love is a great equalizer; hence it clashes with class pride. The plot of innumerable dramas ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... proud of our Italian campaign. Why should the French be proud that their master's soldiers have been successful in a war as to which they were not consulted; which, in fact, they disapproved, which was not made for their benefit, which was the most glaring proof of their servility and degradation? We knew before that our troops were better than the Austrians. What have we gained by the additional ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... reign of Edward, the Confessor, it ceased to be cultivated; and after the Conqueror, it became more barbarous and vulgar, as it was then the sign of servility, and the badge ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... isn't envy; but is my brother blind? Does she love him as he does her? Is she worthy of him? Why is he so servile in the presence of her and her kin? His servility offends me. Is he inferior to her and her sister? One marries a wife to have a helper; but she sits with folded hands. Brother alone works and dances attendance on them. ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... will not be acquired properly if his mind has taken a vicious and unprincipled bias: it will either indicate his pride or his dastardly humility, his haughty self-sufficiency, or his mean truckling to the opinion of others, his honest independence, or his cringing servility. But he who has been blessed with the full use of his muscular powers, in proportion as he is virtuous, will, with a very little attention, indicate by his bearing, step, and carriage, the ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... create a new one which would soon become as fastidious as the other. It will only appear, to those who will thoroughly understand it, as a precious repertory of notes, and the young generation honours it intelligently by not imitating it with servility. ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... the months between May and October, you may yet meet Bill and his companions. Trotter still wears tights, but he is thinner and much more wholesome to see; but the Signor has added a kind of shiny servility to his courtly ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... "aesthetes"—specially beloved of Mr. du Maurier, whose famous drawing, "Are You Intense?" is perhaps the particular favourite of all his satiric Punch work; Mr. Soapley and Mr. Todeson, who vie with each other in vulgar servility and sycophancy; the Herr Professor, ponderously humorous in smoking-room or boudoir; and Anatole, the bridegroom, happy and dapper in the Bois de Boulogne; Titwillow and the ex-Jew at the Club—what an assemblage of carefully ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... there you are ever with me: how earnestly shall I strive to pass my life with you, and what a life will it be!!! Whereas now!! without you!! and persecuted by the kindness of others, which I neither deserve nor try to deserve! The servility of man towards his fellow-man pains me, and when I regard myself as a component part of the universe, what am I, what is he who is called the greatest?—and yet herein are displayed the godlike feelings of humanity!—I weep in thinking that you will receive ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... them to exercise a short lived tyranny. Love, in their bosoms, taking place of every nobler passion, their sole ambition is to be fair, to raise emotion instead of inspiring respect; and this ignoble desire, like the servility in absolute monarchies, destroys all strength of character. Liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women are, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... servility with which Gov. Shannon served the "Law and Order" party; yet in less than three months he was to see his office as Governor go up in smoke, as these burning buildings had gone up in smoke. Mr. S. became frantic when he saw the carnival of bloodshed and murder, of riot and robbery, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... owed this, in part, to his own profound but hypocritical policy; for he looked upon woman as the natural enemy to man, against whom it was necessary to be always on the guard; whom it was prudent to disarm by every species of fawning servility and abject complaisance. He owed it also, in part, to the compassionate and heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts thus villanously traduced—for women like one whom they can pity without despising; and there was something in Signor Riccabocca's poverty, in his loneliness, in his exile, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Butcher), the surname of Achmed Pasha, pacha of Acre; was born at Bosnia; sold as a slave, and raised himself by his servility to his master to the length of executing his cruellest wishes; in 1799 withstood a long siege of Acre by Bonaparte, and obliged him ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... peers were prepared to convict, and they did so on a few trifling attestations, which gave them a plausible excuse for their verdict. The illustrious Bacon aided the king in his object. He had on other occasions shewn abject servility to James—using towards him such expressions of indecorous flattery as these: 'Your majesty imitateth Christ, by vouchsafing me to touch the hem of your garment.' He was attorney-general, and had in that capacity to conduct the prosecution. Seeing distinctly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... even now, bring myself to a narration of the humiliation which I experienced that night as I stood behind my black master in silent servility, now pouring his wine, now cutting up his meats for him, now fanning him with a large, plumed ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... before. A narrow, quaint little place it was, reminiscent in an exterior sort of way of the motley gentleman who solemnly called it his castle. You climbed a tall stoop flanked on either side by flower boxes, and rattled a heavy knocker that had all the marks of English antiquity,—and English servility,—and then you waited for the trim little housemaid, who betimes was a slavey below stairs and not permitted to answer the knocker until she had donned her cap and apron and rolled down her sleeves—and slipped on her cuffs, for that matter. If you were an unpleasantly long time in gaining ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full ...
— The Republic • Plato
... often been played with success, by Lord Byron amongst a host of others. The readiness with which the Wazir enters into the scheme is characteristic of oriental servility: an honest Moslem should at least put ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... at all events, turn up your nose at the blessings that Providence sets before you; and I must say, that for a young woman deliberately to choose to remain a burden upon her friends, betokens an amount of servility and a lack of the spirit of independence which I should not have supposed ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... know, At first I thought that Liberty and Heaven To heavenly souls had been all one; but now I see that most through sloth had rather serve, Ministring Spirits, trained up in feast and song! Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of Heaven, Servility with freedom to contend, As both their deeds compared this day shall prove. To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied. Apostate! still thou errest, nor end wilt find Of erring, from the path of truth remote: Unjustly thou depravest it with the name Of servitude, to ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... dinner, was desired by the duke to go to another room, for a specimen of curious marble, which his grace wished to shew us. He brought a wrong piece, upon which the duke sent him back again. He could not refuse; but, to avoid any appearance of servility, he whistled as he walked out of the room, to shew his independency. On my mentioning this afterwards to Dr. Johnson, he said, it was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the poorer tenants of the estate, like any laird's wife, in an unpretending, neighborly way; and they, thanks to their good Scotch sense and Highland pride, never take advantage of the uncondescending condescension, to offend her by too great familiarity, or shock her by servility. Taking up her "Journal," I have chanced upon an account given by Her Majesty of a round of visits to the cottages of certain "poor old women," and here is an entry ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... neglected, from the universal belief of miraculous interpositions and judgments; bounty to the Church atoned for every violence against society; and the remorses for cruelty, murder, treachery, assassination, and the more robust vices, were appeased, not by amendment of life, but by penances, servility to the monks, and an abject and illiberal devotion.[74] The reverence for the clergy had been carried to such a height that wherever a person appeared in a sacerdotal habit, though on the highway, the people flocked around him, and, showing him all marks of profound respect, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... of it. It is a question of how long a time and how exacting a discipline would be required so far to displace the current scheme of commonsense values and convictions in force in the Fatherland as to neutralise their current high-wrought principles of servility, loyalty and national animosity; and on the solution of this difficulty appear to depend the chances of success for any proposed peace compact to which the German nation shall be made a party, on terms of what is called ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... which he supplemented later by a speech for the establishment of schools for actors' children; in which he took occasion to declare his belief that there were no institutions in England so socially liberal as its public schools, and that there was nowhere in the country so complete an absence of servility to mere rank, position, or riches. "A boy, there, is always what his abilities or his personal qualities make him. We may differ about the curriculum and other matters, but of the frank, free, manly, independent ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... something in what sounded like Arabic, whereat the Negress displayed the utmost servility, ushering us into an ill-lighted passage with every evidence of respect. Following this passage to its termination, an inner door was opened, and a burst of discordant music greeted us, together with a wave of tobacco ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... bishops, the big-wigged marshals, the shovel- hatted abbes which they have borne in their time—the human mind becomes affected in no ordinary degree. Some human minds heave a sigh for the glories of bygone days; while others, considering rather the lies and humbug, the vice and servility, which went framed and glazed and enshrined, creaking along in those old Juggernaut cars, with fools worshipping under the wheels, console themselves for the decay of institutions that may have been splendid and costly, but were ponderous, clumsy, slow, and unfit for daily wear. The guardian ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hitherto professed to do, the boundless ambition of the house of Bourbon, we became, on a sudden, solicitous for its exaltation, and studious of its interest. We assisted the schemes of France and Spain with our fleets, and endeavoured to make these our friends by servility, whom nothing but power will keep quiet, and who must always be our enemies, while they are endeavouring to grow greater, and we determine ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... of the above fairly represents the attitude of conventional thought,—its servility to fashion, its antagonism to reformative moves. The implied falsehood that fashion represents beauty and art, or is the servant of aestheticism has been reiterated so often that thousands have ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... people and those who put their faith in dictators and tyrants. There have always been those who did not believe in the people, who attempted to block their forward movement across history, to force them back to servility and suffering ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... their weakness? Is not their former slavery the cause of it? Is there anything in their act but the servility in which ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... had recourse to false accusation, and not only charged them with seditious designs, to which their tender years were ill adapted, but with vices of a nature the most scandalous. By a sentence of the senate, which manifested the extreme servility of that assembly, he procured them both to be declared open enemies to their country. Nero he banished to the island of Pontia, where, like his unfortunate mother, he miserably perished by famine; and ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... protection of a new name. I am astonished and pained to see how eager the most of these Americans are to get acquainted with a lord, and how diligent they are in pushing attentions upon him. They lack English servility, it is true—but they could acquire it, with practice. My quality travels ahead of me in the most mysterious way. I write my family name without additions, on the register of this hotel, and imagine that I am going to pass for an obscure and unknown wanderer, but the clerk promptly calls out, 'Front! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ireland, the National Church Church revenues, expedients for increasing Church thermometer Cicero Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, "History of the Great Rebellion" Clendon, John Clergy, the, their ignorance and servility mistaken in not mixing more with the laity care to be taken by them because of the distinct habit they wear better if they appeared dressed like ordinary men unreasonableness of the charge of their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the struggle between their natural and their acquired feelings: the eager opportunity which they seize of revenging their voluntary bondage, by their secret taunts, on their adopted task-masters, and the servility which they habitually mix up even with their scandal. Like veritable Grimalkins, they fawn upon their victims previous to the festival; compliment them upon the length of their whiskers and the delicacy of their limbs prior to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... in Ireland, where, from the lowest servant to the well-dressed dependant of the family, everybody had conspired to wait upon, to fondle, to flatter, to worship, this darling of their lord. Yet he was not spoiled—not rendered selfish. For, in the midst of this flattery and servility, some strokes of genuine generous affection had gone home to his little heart; and, though unqualified submission had increased the natural impetuosity of his temper, and though visions of his future grandeur had touched his infant thought, yet, fortunately, before he acquired ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... prized: for she was very witty; had blood in her veins, to use her own expression; and was the prettiest woman in the world, for her years. For the rest, though no person was more highly bred, she could be very impertinent; but if you treated her with servility, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... to the extreme left of the deserted edge of the room, talking behind his hand to two colleagues in servility, their faces listening ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... his vivacity; and Harry was transferred to the feminine department, where his life was little short of heavenly. He was always dressed with uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could entertain a visitor with tact and pleasantry. He took a pride in servility to a beautiful woman; received Lady Vandeleur's commands as so many marks of favour; and was pleased to exhibit himself before other men, who derided and despised him, in his character of male lady's- maid and man milliner. Nor could ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nevertheless, it is sought by all and applauded by all—and he helps do the applauding himself, having no true delicacy and a plentiful want of tact. He has lowered the tone of all our tribe. Once they were a frank and manly race, now they are measly hypocrites, and sodden with servility. In my heart of hearts I hate all the ways of millionaires! Our tribe was once plain, simple folk, and content with the bone fish-hooks of their fathers; now they are eaten up with avarice and would sacrifice every sentiment ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... desire of wealth becomes the ruling passion of the whole body, and there is no passion so demoralising. The other is, that where the people, or, more properly speaking, the mob govern, they must be conciliated by flattery and servility on the part of those who would become their idols. Now flattery is lying, and a habit equally demoralising to the party who gives and to the party who receives it. Depend upon it, there is no government ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... intellect are of very rare occurrence. "A handful of good life," says George Herbert, "is worth a bushel of learning." Not that learning is to be despised, but that it must be allied to goodness. Intellectual capacity is sometimes found associated with the meanest moral character with abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to those of low estate. A man may be accomplished in art, literature, and science, and yet, in honesty, virtue, truthfulness, and the spirit of duty, be entitled to take rank after many a poor and ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... part the offerings of interested servility, or the effusions of partial zeal; enumerating the virtues of men in whom no virtues can be found, or predicting greatness to those who afterwards pass their days in unambitious indolence, and die ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... served us, which she did, though most willingly, not very expeditiously. A Cumberland man of the same rank would not have had such a notion of what was fit and right in his own house, or if he had, one would have accused him of servility; but in the Highlander it only seemed like politeness, however erroneous and painful to us, naturally growing out of the dependence of the inferiors of the clan upon their laird; he did not, however, refuse to let ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... of Great Britain affected American writers in two ways. Some it stung into violent hatred or sullen antagonism, others it coerced into timid imitation and servility. Upon Dennie and his associates it had the latter effect, and the Port Folio vigorously resisted all "Americanisms" in politics and in letters, and sought to conciliate England and to win the coveted stamp of English approbation by unlimited adulation ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... ... our enterprise!" Golushkin exclaimed, winking at the servant, as much as to say, "One must be careful in the presence of strangers." The proselyte Vasia continued silent, and though he sat on the very edge of his chair and conducted himself generally with a servility quite out of keeping with the convictions to which, according to his master, he was devoted body and soul, yet gulped down the wine with an amazing greediness. The others made up for his silence, however, that is, Golushkin ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... it was fitting for a citizen—who was the equal of anybody—to be thus catechised by these SACRRES ARISTOS, even though they were rich English ones. It was distinctly more fitting to his newborn dignity to be as rude as possible; it was a sure sign of servility to ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... bestow a morsel of tunny upon her." Wolsey made her presents also at times of a more valuable character, as we find her acknowledging in language of exaggerated gratitude;[188] and, perhaps the most painful feature in all her earlier history lies in the contrast between the servility with which she addressed the cardinal so long as he was in power, and the bitterness with which the Bishop of Bayonne (and, in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that she pressed upon his decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title of "the night-crow,"[189] as the person ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... everything, and, if he chooses to do so, plays providence in the community. I may have no personal objection to him—he is sometimes almost if not quite human; what I heartily dislike is the effect of his position (that of a giant among pigmies) on the lowly minds about him, and the servility, hypocrisy, and parasitism which spring up and flourish in his wide shadow whether he likes these moral weeds or not. As a rule he likes them, since the poor devil has this in common with the rest of us, that he likes to stand high in the general regard. But how is he to know ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... there was something about the woman she did not like; and much as she was inclined to pity her, she could not reconcile herself to the idea of making her the companion of her voyage. She could not convince herself that Hannah was worthy of the sympathy manifested on her behalf. A certain fawning, servility of manner, led her to imagine that she was deceitful; and she was reluctant to entail upon herself the trouble and responsibility which must arise from her situation, and the scandal it might involve. But her objections were borne down by Mrs. W——'s earnest entreaties, to save, if possible, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... himself, there was a swift change to lofty disdain—the familiar attitude of workers toward fellow-workers of what they regard as a lower class. Evidently he resented her having beguiled him by the false air of young lady into wasting upon her, mere servility like himself, a display reserved exclusively for patrons. It was Susan's first experience of this snobbishness; it at once humbled her into the dust. She had been put in her place, and that place was not among people worthy of civil treatment. A girl of his own class would have flashed at ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... well-informed, and beautiful; there is a power of social domination. To enter into any struggle whatever with a woman in whom so much influence centers is—I tell you this in confidence—an act of insanity. Let there be neither servility, nor sullen pride, nor susceptibility, nor too much compliance; nothing but good natural affection. This is the line of conduct prescribed by good ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... that these are humble qualities for a citizen to boast the possession of by a President of the United States. As well claim respect for a woman of one's family on the ground that she has preserved her virtue. Yet all whose eyes were not blinded by partisanship, whose manhood was not emasculated by servility, would in these last years have welcomed the least of them as ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... bright, odd, and original, that you might think he had no object in view but the indulgence of his humour and that he was the most reckless, simple creature in the world. How he would have torn your enemies to pieces for you! and made fun of the Opposition! His servility was so boisterous that it looked like independence; he would have done your errands, but with the air of patronizing you, and after fighting your battles, masked, in the street or the press, would have kept on his hat before your wife and daughters in the drawing-room, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation. I do not so much find fault with this when it is done as a punishment and oblique satire on servility and selfishness. It is in that case Diamond cut Diamond—a trial of skill between the legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. The cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for years of obsequious attendance ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... you, sir." Val could be rather exasperating when she chose. She always could be sure of making Manley silently furious when she adopted that tone of respectful servility—as employed by butlers and footmen upon the stage. Her mimicry, be it said, was ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... silk mercer. How long he continued behind the counter, or with what degree of softness and dexterity he received and accommodated the ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it, is not known. The report is that he was soon weary of either the restraint or servility of his occupation, and easily persuaded ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... not the greatest penalty; in some cases it was followed by the death of the offender. The punishments inflicted for nonconformity were accompanied by the most refined and barbarous cruelties. Still many of the learned bowed their necks to this yoke with abject servility: thus, Robert Powell, speaking of the Book of Sports, says, 'Needless is it to argue or dispute for that which authority hath commanded, and most insufferable insolence to speak or write against it.'[55] These Sunday sports, published ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have seen the way she regarded her—the look of pitiful love, of compassionate and waiting helpfulness which her soul would now and then cast upon her. Of all things she would have resented pity; and she took Mary's readiness to help for servility—and naturally, seeing in herself willingness came from nothing else, though she called it prudence and necessity, and knew no shame because of it. Her children justify the heavenly wisdom, but the worldly wisdom justifies her children. Mary could not but feel how Sepia regarded ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... general guarantees which were so profitable to the liberty of the church. They were right, as was but too well shown in the sequel. M. Louis Veuillot and the writers of the Univers opposed their views, and so they accused these gentlemen of servility. But this was too much, as the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... is particularly engaging; it is that which constitutes that character which the French talk of so much, and so justly value, I mean 'l'aimable'. This 'douceur' is not so easily described as felt. It is the compound result of different things; a complaisance, a flexibility, but not a servility of manners; an air of softness in the countenance, gesture, and expression, equally whether you concur or differ with the person you converse with. Observe those carefully who have that 'douceur' that charms you and others; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... alert affability. He looked at her when he spoke, or when she spoke, but casually and without offence. Whatever feelings surged in him were for the moment carefully controlled and put aside. In his manner was neither obtrusiveness nor servility, only a kind of well-schooled ease and directness. In short, he behaved and spoke ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... number; but these, for obvious reasons, I forbear to quote; and in truth they as often pained me as pleased me, by being too deferential. It is a great and very common mistake, in managing prisoners, to be too much gratified by mere obedience and servility: duplicity is much encouraged by this; and, of two opposite errors, it is better rather to overlook a little occasional insubordination. I cannot refuse, however, to cite two traits, whose character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... poise for submissiveness and servility. Don't let people impose on you and take advantage ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... and such an exact and extensive knowledge of the law applicable to them, as not only warranted but required the best attention of those whose duty it was to decide the case. His manner was very respectful to the bench, without a trace of servility; and to those associated with him, or opposed to him, he was uniformly courteous and considerate. When he had to follow his leader, or even two of them, he would frequently give quite another tone to the case, a new direction to the argument, and draw his opponents ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... would cut our throats if it served his purpose," I answered. "He's servile, and servility goes hand in hand with treachery. The more I watch him, the more I see 'scoundrel' written in large type on every bend of the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... warmed to his task, as floods of reminiscences came sweeping through his memory. He grew more important, and let fall the borrowed cloak of servility; his head was perched a little higher and a trifle askew as he surveyed them. The reflected grandeur of past days was on him, and in comparison modernity seemed common-place. All these brilliant, dashing, elegant men and women of his youth were gone. He was the only human echo left of their ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "Emperors," from Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C. down to Francis, King of Germany, who gave up the Empire in A.D. 1806, were Emperors, not of Germany or Austria, but of Rome; or that the Reformed English Church of Tudor times, with all its servility, had never relinquished, but steadily held and holds, its claim to continuous Catholicity. But a query as to the French Revolution, the Napoleonic dynasties, the Vienna Congress, the South African or Franco-Prussian War, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... and shameful trial," says Guizot, "the judges' prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God, who had dictated to her that which she ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... inveteracy of purpose, and sharpened his patriotism. The mixed nature of his motives made him fitter to contend with bad men. The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another. Tyranny and servility are to be dealt with after their own fashion: otherwise, they will triumph over those who spare them, and finally pronounce their funeral panegyric, as Antony did that of Brutus. All the conspirators, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... and surely in the light. In the complexity of our desires we were slaves; but in their simplicity we become free. Complexity strives perpetually after reputation, and is always advancing either in the direction of servility or of arrogance, according as self-esteem or the love of admiration predominate in the mind of the individual; and advancing years find it ever deteriorating in all the best elements of Character. Simplicity, on the contrary, deals with what is, ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... must necessarily be of a very different kind, in quite a different manner. The forger of the Annals had much too acute a discernment not to know this;—he was also well aware that he had a very strong forte. We know the department in which he excelled,—dealing with despotism, servility and bloodshed. But then, if he was to do this, he would do that, which would be a very strong proof that his work was a forgery; for if he was to do this, he could not take up the continuance of history as Tacitus intended to go on ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... same lazy precision towards the two other occupants of the garden. At his approach the sub-prior rose from his seat and stood motionless with clasped hands; there was a faint suggestion of antagonism in his attitude, which was quite devoid of servility. Christian, however, remained seated, raising his keen grey eyes to the Provincial's face with a quiet ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... have but now to lay before the reader the promised verses; those on Buonaparte are characteristic of the writer, who, with his high intellectual powers, possessed to the last, a noble and independent spirit, which despised even the appearance of servility. I shall then add the notices that appeared in the Morning Chronicle, and Gentleman's Magazine, soon after his decease, which clearly show that He, whose death they record, was no common person; as, also, the high estimation he was held in by the profession, to which he was ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... say that I did, father; for although I had much to remark concerning their want of culture, and their servility, and their greed, and the absurdity of many of their customs, and the rottenness of most of their beliefs, and the thousand ways in which they spoiled lives that might have been beautiful and harmonious, I soon discovered that they were ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... such a policy as this brings home to us more than any other of his plans the genius of Cromwell. But its success depended wholly on the absolute servility of Parliament to the will of the Crown, and Cromwell's own action made the continuance of such a servility impossible. The part which the Houses were to play in after years shows the importance of clinging to the forms of constitutional ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... the various questions touching the introduction and the quartering of the troops. Again were the disorders of the eighteenth of March and the tenth of June reviewed and explained; the charge made by the Governor, that the Council refused to provide quarters for the troops out of servility to the populace, was pronounced to be without foundation or coloring of truth; and the Council boldly charged upon Bernard, that his great aim was the destruction of the constitution to which, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... began. It first took the form of a desultory conversation on devotion to a cause. Examples from ancient history were cited: Judith and Holofernes, and then, without any apparent connection, Lucretia and Sextus, Cleopatra admitting to her couch all the hostile generals, and reducing them to the servility of slaves. Then began a fantastic history, which had sprung up in the minds of these ignorant millionaires, in which the women of Rome were seen on their way to Capua, to rock Hannibal to sleep in their arms, and his officers along with him, and the phalanxes ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... general cause for the world's ulcer," the younger one kept on. "You have said it—servility to the past, prejudice which prevents us from doing things differently, according to reason and morality. The spirit of tradition infects humanity, and its two frightful ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... Tighe assented, almost with servility. But the cattleman carried away with him a conviction that the man had yielded too easily, that his restless brain would go on planning destruction for young ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... and salaamed low, then put his hand upon his turban. There was submission, but no cringing or servility in his manner. His blue eyes looked fearlessly before him. His face was not paler than its wont. He waited ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as Cameron learned shortly was applied to all Ids attached to Markovians. It had a connotation somewhere between servant and companion. Sal Karone remained in the background, but there was no servility in his manner. His eyes remained respectfully—almost fondly; that was the right word, Cameron thought ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... near October Mountain, upon Mr. Whitney's extensive game-preserve. He had been hanging about the mountain all summer and had given two belated pedestrians a lively sprint only the night before his Waterloo. Being emboldened by the seeming servility of the neighborhood, bruin finally went to a farmhouse and, forcing the kitchen door, marched boldly into the well-ordered room to see what they were going to have for dinner. While waiting for this meal, he amused himself ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... more than all,—more in one hour than the Legislature in thirty years,—to extend the Slave Power. Indeed, he had solemnly decided all and more than all that President Buchanan, closing his long political life of servility in imbecility, in December, 1860, asked to have adopted as an "explanatory amendment" of the Constitution, to fully satisfy the Slave Power. Well would it have been for that Power, for a while at least, had its members recollected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... than a feudal tradition. A far graver doubt is raised by the susceptibility of the masses to war fever, and the appalling danger of a daily deluge of cheap newspapers written by nameless men and women whose scandalously low payment is a guarantee of their ignorance and their servility to the financial department, controlled by a moneyed class which not only curries favour with the military caste for social reasons, but has large direct interests in war as a method of raising the price of money, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... vogue among gentlemen. And as a consequence of this love of the open air and the open country Borrow found in the gipsies a sense of freedom and independence, and so a self- respect, which he compared unfavourably with the mingled arrogance and servility ...
— George Borrow - A Sermon Preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913 • Henry Charles Beeching
... false and superficial, but cordial and sincere. In the hour of popularity it is not intoxicated, or insolent; in the hour of unpopularity, it is not desponding or morose; unshaken in constancy, unwearied in benevolence, firm without roughness, and assiduous without servility. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... dedicate two books to the earl in later years, and he there showed not merely that he was fully acquainted with the compulsory etiquette, but that his sycophantic temperament rendered him only eager to improve on the conventional formulas of servility. Any further consideration of Thorpe's address to 'Mr. W. H.' belongs to the biographies of Thorpe and his friend; it lies outside the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... ordinary language of conversation, when, in summing up, for example, the qualities of an accomplished courtier, we say he has the vanity of a peacock, the cunning of a fox, the treachery of an hyaena, the cold-heartedness of a cat, and the servility of a jackal. That this is perfectly consentaneous to scientific truth, will appear in the further progress of ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... she had guessed that he was of high origin. A hidalgo such as she had imagined every man from Spain to be, with something Semitic in his face and in his eyes, but more proud, with an air of hauteur that was incapable of supporting humiliations and servility. Perhaps he had a uniform for festive occasions, a suit of bright colors, braided with gold... and a ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to the godly, but to the devil and wicked men. Paul himself regards with pity the sun and other creatures because of their forced service to Satan and to tyrannical beings. The created works no more desire such servility than we desire subjection to the Turk. Nevertheless, they submit and wait—for what? The glorious liberty of the children of God. Then shall they be released from slavery and be no longer bound to serve the wicked and worthless. More than that, in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... officers reappear with a vastly diminished swagger in the biergartens, I believe that the hitherto acquiescent middle classes and skilled artisan class of German will entirely disappoint those people who expect them to behave either with servility or sentimental loyalty. The great revolutionary impulse of the French was passionate and generous. The revolutionary impulse of Germany may be even more deadly; it may be contemptuous. It may be they will not even drag emperor and nobles down; ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... miller's servility more than equalled his insolence. With profuse apologies, he offered me his own bedroom. I preferred a large old-fashioned armchair which stood in a corner of the kitchen. Listening in a state of profound bewilderment—longing ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... precis, I offered Robin the position of my Private Secretary, which he accepted politely but without servility or effusiveness. I handed him a quarter's salary in advance, gave him two days' holiday wherein to "make his arrangements"—Anglice, to replenish his wardrobe—and we sealed the bargain with a glass of sherry and a ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... side—which I had of course then no name for, but which I was so sharply to recognise on coming back years later that it fixed for me the veracity of the great pictorial chronicler. Hogarth's mark is even yet not wholly overlaid; though time has per contra dealt with that stale servility of address which most expressed to our young minds the rich burden of a Past, the consequence of too much history. I liked for my own part a lot of history, but felt in face of certain queer old obsequiosities and appeals, whinings and sidlings and hand-rubbings and curtsey-droppings, the general ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... servility of those magnificent savages was terrifying. How could it be? What was the secret of his rule? More and more I puzzled as the days went by, and though I observed perpetual examples of his undisputed sovereignty, never a clew was there as to ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... supplication in the half-open doorway, imploring me not to report him to his Excellency, and promising never to offend again. Here was a miracle of repentance I had not looked for; but the miracle was sham. Rage, cunning, insolence, servility, and hypocrisy were vilely mixed ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... territory of Hawaii on traditional American lines. That territory has serious commercial and industrial problems to reckon with; but no measure of relief can be considered which looks to legislation admitting Chinese and restricting them by statute to field labor and domestic service. The status of servility can never again be tolerated on American soil. We cannot concede that the proper solution of its problems is special legislation admitting to Hawaii a class of laborers denied admission to the other States and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... away into a crescendo of similar impressions. There are certainly few things to be compared with these castles, or rather country seats, of the English nobility and gentry; nor anything at all to equal the servility of the population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I was but driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have gone abroad, and the women curtseyed and the men louted to me by the wayside. As I came near, I began to appreciate the roots of this widespread respect. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... least, with the fantastic novelty and humor of her opinions; with her generous encouragement of rising merit of any sort, in all ranks, high or low; with her charities, which know no distinction between abroad and at home; with her large indulgence, which no ingratitude can discourage, and no servility pervert? Everybody has heard of the popular old lady—the childless widow of a long-forgotten lord. Everybody knows ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... years before, the State had adopted a "civil code," which was abreast of the world in liberality to women. This code discarded the idea of any servility in the relation of the wife to the husband. This code is still the law, and provides, in effect, that husband and wife contract toward each other obligations of mutual respect, fidelity and support. The husband is the head of the family, and may choose any reasonable place ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Riviera, for the spending money of the American Trusts. What is all this growing love of pageantry, this effusive loyalty, this officious rising and uncovering at a wave from a flag or a blast from a brass band? Imperialism: Not a bit of it. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity roused by the prevailing smell of money. When Mr Carnegie rattled his millions in his pockets all England became one rapacious cringe. Only, when Rhodes (who had probably been reading my Socialism for Millionaires) ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... here several times a week and was probably on the best of terms with Fredrick whose decisions on tables and whose degree of servility had a good deal of influence on a man's status in Greater Washington. Larry said wearily, "We can wait until she ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... American democrat, who had never dreamed of one mortal kneeling to another, Ivan throws himself on his knees, presses his forehead to the Minister's feet, fawns like a tamed beast, and refuses to move until the Minister relieves himself from this nightmare of servility by a full pardon. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... knew its own power. A peremptory order was accordingly sent, and immediate obedience ensued. Thus, while without the shadow of a crime, Mr. Locke lost a situation attended with some emolument and great convenience, was the university deprived of, or rather thus, from the base principles of servility, did she cast away the man, the having produced whom is now her chiefest glory; and thus, to those who are not determined to be blind, did the true nature of absolute power discover itself, against which the middling station is not more secure than the most exalted. ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... "The servility of the shopkeepers is really a little offensive. 'What shall I have the honor of ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... effort. He stopped before one in a dingy row of small houses, uniformly depressing, in a street that ran into the Commercial Road, and rang the bell, which tinkled aggressively. A slatternly woman, with a bandage round her head and an air of drunken servility, responded to his inquiry for "Mrs. Crichton" by ushering him into a small back parlour, in which a pale girl in black sat with her head bent over a typewriter. She rose, as he came in, a little nervously, and stood, her thin hands clasped in ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... one occasion while 'King Johnson' tarried, the courtiers were discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his coming away 'willing to believe the second sight.' Some of them smiled at this, but Bozzy was down on them with more than usual servility. 'He is only willing to believe,' he exclaimed. 'I do believe. The evidence is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief.'—'Are you?' said Colman, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... his jaws. Altogether, it was the face of a man who was practically if not actually dead. But in the eyes, there lay the life of the man. From under jutting brows they peered as witnesses of a brain which had accumulated a rare knowledge of mankind, man's shallowness, servility, hypocrisy, his natural inability to obey the simplest laws of nature; a brain which was set in motion always by calculation, never by impulse. They were grey eyes, bold and fierce and liquid as a lion's. None among the great had ever beaten them down, for they were truthful eyes, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... her deep sorrow and anxiety her broad sweet mouth could not forget its trick of smiling. "Come this ways in, Joy," she said to Elizabeth, at the same moment dropping a courtesy to Phyllis, an old-fashioned token of respect, which had no particle of servility in it. ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... which have too long tyrannised over the world. He acknowledges himself to be not a moralist, but an 'immoralist,' and he bids us break in pieces the ancient tables of the Decalogue. Christianity is the most debasing form of slave-morality. It has made a merit of weakness and servility, and given the name of virtue to such imbecilities as meekness and self-sacrifice. He calls upon the individual to exalt himself. The man of {110} the future is to be the man of self-mastery and virile force, 'the Superman,' who is to crush under his heel the cringing herd ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... without indelicacy, were liberally apportioned to the aid of others,—Mrs. Jameson being, for herself, simple, self-relying, and self-denying;—holding that high view of the duties belonging to pursuits of imagination which rendered meanness, or servility, or dishonourable dealing, or license glossed over with some convenient name, impossible to her.—She was a faithful friend, a devoted relative, a gracefully-cultivated, and honest literary worker, whose mind was set on "the best and ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... admittedly excessive. So, too, he seems to have been really indifferent about his title, except as an adjunct to these possessions, and as something transmissible to, and serving to distinguish, the family he longed to found. Yet no instance of the slightest servility on his part to rank—much less to riches—has been produced. His address, no doubt, both in writing and conversation, was more ceremonious than would now be customary. But it must be remembered that ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... wonders of Newmarket, and the hunting-kennel, and the steeple-chase, of which I had read, with alternate admiration and contempt, in the newspapers. He ushered me in with a good breeding which surprised me;—without insolence to me, or servility to his master; both of which I ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... of impotent rage against a dead emperor, whom the senate had flattered when alive with the most abject servility, betrayed a just but ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... master, or mister as it is now pronounced, from their language, either when they spoke concerning any one, or addressed any one by letter. To have used the word master to a person, who was no master over them, would have been, they considered, to have indicated a needless servility, and to have given a false picture of their own situation, as well as ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the title of Notices of the Press. These, I have been given to understand, are procurable at certain established rates, payment being made either in money or advertising patronage by the publisher, or by an adequate outlay of servility on the part of the author. Considering these things with myself, and also that such notices are neither intended, nor generally believed, to convey any real opinions, being a purely ceremonial accompaniment of literature, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... anything. He took the coin, kissed his master's hand as a final exhibition of servility, and turned back towards the city without another word. Del Ferice shuddered, and drew his heavy cowl over his head as he began to walk quickly towards the Porta Maggiore. Then he took the inside road, skirting the walls through the mud to the Porta San Lorenzo. He was perfectly ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... finally taken into the office, he was not blinded in the slightest by the luxuriousness of the furniture, the rugs, or the oil paintings. He displayed not the remotest shimmer of servility on meeting the illustrious Baron. He sat down on one of the chairs with complete equanimity, took no notice of the French-speaking parrot, and never cast a single glance at the breakfast table covered with appetising ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... end of the seventeenth century the Renaissance, properly speaking, had run its course in Europe. The increasing servility of its imitation of antique models had exhausted its elasticity and originality. Taste rapidly declined before the growth of the industrial and commercial spirit in the eighteenth century. The ferment of democracy and the disquiet ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... hair short; to be truly manly you must never wear it long. To be truly womanly you must dress as daintily as possible, however uncomfortably; to be truly manly you must wear the most hideous gear ever invented by the servility of tailors—a strange succession of cylinders from head to heel; cylinder on head, cylinder round your body, cylinders on arms and cylinders on legs. To be truly womanly you must be shrinking and ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... wood-cutter with all the leisurely badinage and bickering of market-day. At the end of the four minutes, however, they saw that the Colonel was right, for the wood-cutter entered into their plans, not with the vague servility of a tout too-well paid, but with the seriousness of a solicitor who had been paid the proper fee. He told them that the best thing they could do was to make their way down to the little inn on the hills above Lancy, where the innkeeper, an old soldier who had become devout in his ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... effective size of herd; corresponding production of leaders; similarly as regards barbarian tribes and their leaders; power of tyranny vested in chiefs; political and religious persecutions; hence human servility; but society may flourish without servility; its corporate actions would then have statistical constancy; nations who are guided by successive orators, etc., must be inconstant; the romantic side of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... distance, for I have never known one who was not constantly trying to look wise and grave; but when you know him, you find there is nothing remarkable about him except a plug hat, a respectable coat, and a great deal of vanity, induced by the servility of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... power. This base purpose defeats itself; and when Faust finds that learning fails to yield him the domination he craves, he hates and contemns it. Away, henceforth, with all pretence to knowledge! Then follows the compact, the articles to which are absolute servility of the Devil on the one part, and complete possession of the soul of Faust on the other. Faust is little better than a wizard from the first, for if knowledge had given him what he: sought, he had never had recourse to witchcraft! ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... therefore to those who flatter the people, or to those who flatter the monarch: they are equally base, and moved by personal and low interests; and under the mask of liberality or that of servility, seek alike, only to rear their proud and precarious fortunes on the ruins of their country. The times in which we live are full of melancholy warnings. Let us use the catastrophes of ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... meteoric rebel against the degrading servility of what we have come to call the "Nonconformist Conscience" Byron must always have his place in the tragically slow emancipation of the human spirit. The reluctance of an ordinary sensitive modern person, genuinely devoted to poetry, to spend any more time with Byron's verses than what those ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... on Nansal, there had lived a wise and brilliant teacher named Norus. He had developed an ideal, a philosophy of life, a code of ethics. He had taught the principles of nobility without arrogance, pride without stubbornness, and humility without servility. ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... yourself with the minds of other men, but not to adopt them as your own. Be assured that no good can come of our work but as it arises simply out of our own true natures, and the necessities of the time around us, though in many respects an evil one. We live in an age of base conceit and baser servility—an age whose intellect is chiefly formed by pillage, and occupied in desecration; one day mimicking, the next destroying, the works of all the noble persons who made its intellectual or art life possible to it:—an age without honest confidence enough in itself to carve a cherry-stone ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... career of enterprise and wholesome family connections in a society whose institutions are favorable to virtue; and at last the consolation of leaving them efficient members of a flourishing, public-spirited, energetic community; where the insolence of wealth and the servility of pauperism, between which in England there is scarcely an interval remaining, are alike unknown. * * * It has struck me as we have passed along from one poor hut to another, among the rude inhabitants of this ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... the difference between plus and minus in money matters." "People like you, there's no use trying to help," said another, worn-out, when Maimon pleaded for only a few coppers. Yet he never acquired the beggar's servility, nay, was often himself the patron of some poorer hanger-on, for whom he would sacrifice his last glass of beer. Curt in his manners, he refused to lift his hat or embrace his acquaintances in cold blood. Nor would he wear a wig. Pure Reason ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... borders, if not within the bounds of slavery: A subordination, which is so far from conducing "to the welfare and happiness of the whole", that it necessarily involves the idea of that worst of all the evils of this life, a tyranny: An abject servility, which instead of "being essential to our existence as a people," disgraces the human nature, and sinks it to that ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... there was no dishonesty, but it was comparatively rare, invariably petty, and much less formidable than, I believe, it is necessary to guard against in other mints in other countries. There was considerable skill and ready docility. So far from there being any servility, there was extreme frankness, and I should say that where there is confidence without fear, frankness is one of the most universal features in the Indian character. Let the people feel sure of the temper and good-will of their superiors, and there is an end of reserve ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... comrades have been removed from us. United to them in our studies, united, too, in our sentiments, we protest against a punishment so unjust and so partial. When adulation and servility suggested to some amongst us the utterance of a falsehood which insulted the Pontiff, while it did no service to the Sovereign, we all rose in union to denounce those who, without our consent, constituted themselves the interpreters ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... There was occasional servility and deference to this woman from members of the crowd, however they were absorbed in the fight. She was what is called a "chunky" woman, short and thick, with a rosy skin, low but pleasing forehead, coal-black hair, a rolling way of swaying and moving herself, a pair of large black ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... particularly that of the women, shows how far the Swedes are from having a just conception of rational equality. They are not termed slaves; yet a man may strike a man with impunity because he pays him wages, though these wages are so low that necessity must teach them to pilfer, whilst servility renders them false and boorish. Still the men stand up for the dignity of man by oppressing the women. The most menial, and even laborious offices, are therefore left to these poor drudges. Much of this I have seen. In the winter, I am told, they ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... they are now? In spite of the proud, supercilious, and dictatorial bearing of their teachers, in spite of the hampering of unsympathetic, alien oversight, in spite of the spirit of dependence and servility engendered by slavery, not only have individual members of the race entered into all the offices of dignity in [257] Church and State, as subalterns—as hewers of wood and drawers of water—but they have attained to the very highest places. Here in the West ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... a car outside broke up our gathering. Remembering that I was but a humble servant before this great military luminary, I thanked the General with due servility for his hospitality. Then the Count and I went out to the car and presently ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... with stewards on the Atlantic liners at the end of the voyage, I could have sworn he was waiting for his tip. From my fuller knowledge of the creature I now know that the posture was unconscious. An hereditary servility, no ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... a true and enviable equality of rank and property prevail, equally removed from the arrogance of wealth, and the servility and heart-burnings of repining poverty—and what in my mind is still more conducive to tranquillity and harmony among friends, a happy equality of intellect was likewise to be seen. The minds of the good burghers of New Amsterdam seemed all to have been cast in one mould, and to be those ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... rebuke, as he warmed with the subject of Southern delusion, actuated by unprincipled leaders, and few of the Senators who sat on the Democratic side escaped from his truly formidable denunciation. Lane, of Oregon, a compound of conceit, ridiculous ignorance, and servility to Southern masters, was totally annihilated by the sturdy Tennesseean, for his imbecile attempts to excuse his pusillanimous submission to his chivalrous dictators. So successful was he in conjecturing and exposing the designs of the malcontent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... all times and circumstances. The two inevitable conditions that are found in, and are essential to all bondage, are the spirit of oppression, the desire to exercise unlawful dominion on the one side, and ignorance, servility, the willingness, if not the desire to be enslaved on the other. The absence of either is fatal to the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... nothing. But Boris, like many students (and also officers, junkers, and high-school boys) had grown accustomed to the fact that the outside "civilian" people, who accidentally fell into a company of students on a spree, should hold themselves somewhat subordinately and with servility in it, flatter the studying youths, be struck with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire its self-admiration, recall their own student years with a sigh of suppressed envy. But in Platonov there ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... But independence will be ample compensation. Our posterity will thank us for our sacrifices and sufferings. Yet all do not suffer. The Gil Blases, by their servility and cringing to their patrons, the great men in power, and only great because they have patronage to bestow, which is power, are getting rich. Even adroit clerks are becoming wealthy. They procure exemptions, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... there was a fine storm of protest from Northern Negroes to the effect that Booker Washington was endeavoring to limit the Negro to menial service—that is, thrust him back into servility. The first ambition of the Negro was to get an education so that he might become a Baptist preacher. To him, education meant freedom from toil, and of course we do not have to look far to see where he got the idea. Then when Tuskegee came forward and wanted ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... with the passion for overthrow, no Napoleon thundering at the head of vassal Europe against England; no conspiracy of peoples against thrones; no train of crouching sovereignties, half in terror and half in servility, ready to do the wildest will of the wildest despot of the world; no army of five hundred thousand men ready to spring upon our shores, and turning off only to the overthrow of empires. All was on a smaller scale; the passions feebler, the means narrower, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... revolver, which I had forgotten all about. I took it with my left hand, and put it in my pocket. He then apologised for having treated me roughly—the Major had taught him that word—but without the faintest trace of servility in his speech or manner; and after that he ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... her apron over her face and began to cry, while Jake wiped his hands, and hurrying round the house, met the Colonel just as he reached the door. There was not the least servility in Jake's manner, although it was respectful, as he said, "How d'ye, Mas'r Crompton. I'm shoo it's you, an' I'se right glad to see you, though I 'spects you done come for the lill chile, an' I feel fit to bust when ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... Polynesians, spread over the southern seas, are a softer people than those of the continent. However, idleness is not the leading feature of life of the Filipinos, and when they are mixed, especially crossed with Chinese, they are indefatigable. On the Philippine Islands there is far less servility than on the other side of the sea of China, and the people are the more respectable and hopeful for the flavor of manliness that compensates for a moderate but visible admixture of savagery. We of North America may be proud of it that the atmosphere of our continent, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... way they do things at home, may be goaded almost to madness by the gnat-stings of American readjustments—and all the more because he cannot adopt the explanation that they are the natural outcome of an alien blood and a foreign tongue. If he expects the same servility from his "inferiors" that he has been accustomed to at home, his relations with them will be a series of electric shocks; nay, his very expectation of it will exasperate the American and make him show his very worst ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... His servility was less endurable than his insolence. Telling him that he need say no more, Mountjoy bowed to Mrs. Vimpany, and left the room. She returned his bow mechanically, in silence. Mr. Vimpany followed Hugh out—thinking of ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins |
