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More "Servility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 be only a ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... how often have I heard him say: "He is no good; he is a toady." Such people never found favour with him, as he always mistrusted them at the outset. He was protected more than others in such high spheres from the poison of servility that attacks all monarchs. ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... his work Mr. Weber has followed the last edition of Massinger, with a servility which appears, in his mind, to have obviated all necessity of acknowledging the obligation: we will not stop to enquire whether he might not have found a better model; but proceed to the body of the work. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... she has reared. Upon these monumental walls are inscribed, in letters more legible than the hieroglyphics of Egypt, and as ineffaceable, the long and dreary story of kingly vice, voluptuousness and pride, and of popular servility and oppression. The unthinking tourist saunters through these magnificent saloons, upon which have been lavished the wealth of princes and the toil of ages, and admires their gorgeous grandeur. In marbled ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... 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 scope ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... you make of him?' she panted. I was too taken aback for the moment to reply. Her voice broke as she stooped to the dog at her knees. 'O Harvey, Harvey! You utterly worthless old devil!' she cried, and the dog cringed and abased himself in servility that one could scarcely bear to look upon. I ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... than the choice of a foreign subject did the pretense of foreign authorship prove the servility of feeling prevailing at that time among the educated classes. This was in the first place, to be sure, the result of the freak that led Cooper originally to begin writing a novel; but it was a freak that would never have been carried out, after ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... opposition to such a woman. He warns them that she and her children will never forgive those who blame him to them. Further on in his lengthy epistle, he gives instructions in deportment, and tells his relations that in their intercourse with Madame Hanska they must not show servility, haughtiness, sensitiveness, or obsequiousness; but must be natural, simple, and affectionate. It was no wonder that the Balzac family disliked Madame Hanska! And the poor woman cannot be considered ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... truths in every place beneath the sky unless I make myself ignoble, nay, ignominious to the people and the state of Florence? Nor truly will bread fail.' These words, if Tasso had remembered them, might have made his cheek blush for his own servility and for the servile age in which he lived. But the truth is that the fleshpots of Egyptian bondage enticed him; and moreover he knew, as half-insane people always know, that he required treatment for his mental infirmities. In his heart of hearts he acknowledged ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the work before us, and are certainly most characteristic. The worst vices of the writer had not yet shown themselves; but the weakness which was the parent of those vices appears in every line. His levity, his inconsistency, his servility, were already what they were to the last. All his opinions, all his feelings, spin round and round like a weathercock in a whirlwind. Nay, the very impressions which he receives through his senses are not the same two days together. He sees Louis the Sixteenth, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... peasants' horses. This stoical mode of life he sought to apply also to his family, so far as the sympathetic respect which he conceived to be his mother's due would allow of; so that, although, in the drawing-room, he would show her only stuttering servility, and fulfil all her wishes, and blame any one who did not do precisely as she bid them, in his study or his office he would overhaul the cook if she had served up so much as a duck without his orders, or any one responsible ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 to make blacksmiths, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... his life to destroy the reign of the priest. Having lived for a time in England, he appreciated the vast difference between the English and French forms of government. With a keen and unsparing pen he exposed the scholasticism, despotism, dogmatism, superstition, hypocrisy, servility, and deep injustice of his age, and poured out the vials of his scorn upon the grubbing pedantry of the Academicians who doted upon the past because ignorant of the present. In particular he stood for the abolition of that relic of feudalism—serfdom—which ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... historic "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, or the developments in India, Canada, Egypt, would ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... comes one who is not glad to be at rest. He is a workman on the ranch, an old man, an immigrant Italian. He takes his hat off to me in all servility, because, forsooth, I am to him a lord of life. I am food to him, and shelter, and existence. He has toiled like a beast all his days, and lived less comfortably than my horses in their deep-strawed stalls. He is labour-crippled. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... different from its own, and entertaining no expectation of ever ranking with its chiefs, received benefits from them without discussing their rights. It grew attached to them when they were clement and just, but it submitted without resistance or servility to their exactions, as to the inevitable visitations of the arm of God. Custom, and the manners of the time, had moreover created a species of law in the midst of violence, and established certain limits ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... but very composedly drew from his pocket a handful of silver and gold; at the sight of the money, the landlady's eyes and mouth opened in astonishment—and her manner, from being most insufferably insolent, changed to the most abject servility. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... value, as well on every particular occasion, as a mere scene for the exercise of the mind, and the engagements of the heart. "I will try and attempt every thing," says Brutus; "I will never cease to recal my country from this state of servility. If the event be favourable, it will prove matter of joy to us all; if not, yet I, notwithstanding, shall rejoice." Why rejoice in a disappointment? Why not be dejected, when his country was overwhelmed? Because sorrow, perhaps, and dejection, can do no good. Nay, but they must be endured when ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... same 'pestilent amusements,' the mere approach of which had made her flee to this supposed asylum. Though she is composing her Autobiography under the sharp eyes of her confessors, and while she is writing with a submissiveness and, indeed, a servility that is her only weakness, Teresa at the same time is bold enough and honest enough to tell us her own experiences of monastic life in language of startling strength and outspokenness. 'A short-cut to hell. If parents would take my advice, they would rather marry ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... open for the convenience of the artisan who was screwing at the brass-plate. He moved aside, with the servility that always characterizes the worker in a city of idlers, and the party passed into a long narrow hall, whose walls were papered to imitate impossible blocks of mustard-coloured marble. The ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... manners was a mere incident on the surface of social life. The national life was more profoundly tainted by the discouragement of all good men, which penetrated every shire and every parish, than by the distant reports of the loose behaviour of Charles II. Servility, meanness, venality, time-serving, and a disbelief in virtue diffused themselves over the nation like a pestilential miasma, the depressing influence of which was heavy, even upon those souls which individually ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... understand, if you have eyes, that they are Republicans; while in the quarters tenanted or frequented only by the Artisan and the Laborer you meet none but devotees of "the Republic Democratic and Social." The contrast between the abject servility of the Poor in London and their manner here cannot be realized without actual observation. A hundred Princes or illustrious Dukes in Paris would not attract as much attention as any one of them would in London. Democracy triumphed in the drawing-rooms of Paris before it had ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... picture of the crowd of office-hunters who, he says, "like a cloud of locusts, have descended upon the city to devour every plant and herb and every green thing." He was sick with a cold, and stifled in rooms heated by stoves, and was utterly disgusted, as he says, "by the servility and duplicity and rascality I have witnessed among the swarms of scrub politicians who crawl about the great metropolis of our State like so many vermin about the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... nothing very remarkable in this pair, for servility waiting on a handsome suit of clothes and a cane—not to speak of gold and silver sticks, or wands of office—is common enough. But there was that about the well-dressed man, yes, and about the other likewise, which struck Mr Haredale with no pleasant feeling. He hesitated, stopped, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... 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 that "no tyranny is so secure, none so remediless, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... clashed with his belief, felt bound to resign the see of Worcester. If the power of deposition was quietly abandoned by Elizabeth, the abandonment was due, not so much to any deference for the religious instincts of the nation as to the fact that the steady servility of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... relations of the Porte with the Christian powers opened a new political career to the Greeks at Constantinople, and gave rise to the formation of a class of officials in the Othoman service called "phanariots," whose venality and illegal exactions made the name a by-word for the basest servility, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... into the department of Public Instruction, where bureaucratic servility is less intolerable. The daily duties are certainly scarcely more onerous and he had as chiefs, or colleagues, Xavier Charmes and Leon Dierx, Henry Roujon and Ren Billotte, but his office looked out on a beautiful melancholy garden with immense plane trees around which black ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... table. It was impossible for a man any longer to use his fellow-men as tools for his own profit. His esteem was the only sort of gain he could thenceforth make out of him. There was no more either arrogance or servility in the relations of human beings to one another. For the first time since the creation every man stood up straight before God. The fear of want and the lust of gain became extinct motives when abundance was assured to all ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... These imputations stung him deeply, driving him to brood within himself. He was never seen in the courtyards or ante-rooms at the palace, nor following in the train of the Prince, as was the custom with the youthful nobles. The servility of the court angered and disgusted him; the eagerness of strong men to carry a cushion or fetch a ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... cause to the tragical event, is set in an orderly series before us. Few are the partisans of departed tyranny; and to be a Whig on the business of a hundred years ago is very consistent with every advantage of present servility. This retrospective wisdom and historical patriotism are things of wonderful convenience, and serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and practice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full feast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... was a third lodger, a young fellow, of whom the inquiries he had made respecting the house had apprised him. Blondel had met Gentilis more than once, and marked him; and the lad's weak chin and shifty eyes, no less than the servility with which he saluted the magistrate had not been lost on the observer. The youth, granted he was not under Basterga's thumb, was unlikely to refuse a request backed ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... bounded by the 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 side. The stately English ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... with Honor over this—as, if you are wise, you will—you may tell her that I am learning gratitude to her. I would ask her pardon if I could without servility.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... money which implied such contempt for its possessor. By nature observant, and by misfortune sarcastic, I looked upon the various colourings of society with a searching and philosophic eye: I unravelled the intricacies which knit servility with arrogance and meanness with ostentation; and I traced to its sources that universal vulgarity of inward sentiment and external manner, which, in all classes, appears to me to constitute the only unvarying characteristic of our countrymen. In proportion as I increased my knowledge ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her entrance and bowed very low, with pretended servility, resuming his usual manner before ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... sufficient proof to the contrary. Therefore, when Mrs. Gaston nosed him out shortly after breakfast and began to talk about the beautiful day in a manner so thoroughly respectful that it savoured of servility, he was taken-aback, flabbergasted. She seemed to be on the point of dropping her knee every time she spoke to him, and there was an unmistakable tremor of excitement in her voice even when she confided to him that she adored the ocean when it was calm. He forbore asking when Miss Guile ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the shuffling of feet as the people assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing at a table when some one knocked at the door. It was the Commendatore Angelelli, in light clothes and silk hat. At that moment the look of servility in his long face prevailed over ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... natives to the admiral, and from that day they came in numbers round the caravels; their king came with them, a strong, vigorous, and somewhat stout young man of twenty years of age; he was naked, like his subjects of both sexes, who showed him much respect, but with no appearance of servility. Columbus ordered royal honours to be rendered to him, and in return, the king, or rather cacique, informed the admiral that the provinces to the east ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... in mocking all that was venerable and sacred. Nor was this reaction by any means occasioned by a burst of German patriotism against the tyranny of France, for the treaty of Basel speedily reconciled the self-same newspaper editors with France. It was mere servility; and the hatred which, it may easily be conceived, was naturally excited against the French as a nation, was vented in this mode upon the patient Germans,[16] who were, unfortunately, ever doomed, whenever their neighbors were visited with some political ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... hinder the soul from rising when it does appear, is oppression. In the first place, the soul is exposed to delusions; in the second, it is subjected to arbitrary human authority. The former opens the door to all sorts of extravagances and heresies; the latter breeds a spirit of servility and bondage." ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... he—Sweater—was pleased. In fact, it was no trouble at all: it was a pleasure. As the work neared completion, Crass began to speculate upon the probable amount of the donation he would receive as the reward of nine weeks of cringing, fawning, abject servility. He thought it quite possible that he might get a quid: it would not be too much, considering all the trouble he had taken. It was well worth it. At any rate, he felt certain that he was sure to get ten bob; ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... natural consequence of that awe for courts and kings that made the last writer tell us, with simple wonder, how Catherine de Medici would "laugh her fill just like another" over the humours of pantaloons and zanies. And such servility was, of all things, what would touch most nearly the republican spirit of Knox. It was not difficult for him to set aside this weak scruple of loyalty. The lantern of his analysis did not always shine with a very serviceable ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other evidences that 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 the Battle of Agincourt, in the appendix to Thomas ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... random, and saw the king passing along, leaning with one arm on the shoulder of M. d'Argenson. "Oh, base servility!" I thought to myself. "How can a man make up his mind thus to bear the yoke, and how can a man believe himself so much above all others as to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... many writers have severely characterized the facility and the severity with which the senate condemned those accused under the Lex de majestate: they consider it an indication of ignoble servility toward the emperor. Yet we know very well that the Roman senate at that time was not composed merely of adulators and hirelings; it still included many men of intelligence and character. We can explain this severity only by admitting that there were many persons ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... sort of uneasiness in his house; the very comfort is distasteful to one, and every evening when a befrizzed valet makes his appearance in a blue livery with heraldic buttons, and begins, with cringing servility, drawing off one's boots, one feels that if his pale, lean figure could suddenly be replaced by the amazingly broad cheeks and incredibly thick nose of a stalwart young labourer fresh from the plough, who has yet had ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... blame of 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
... women look a visitor in the face, and by their smiling countenances seem to welcome you to their country. They lack the broken-spirited look and sullen servility of Indian peoples overlorded by Thomas Atkins. In Jeypore there are grandees and warriors, painted dogs, hunting leopards, bedecked horses, and hulking elephants in every street picture—and these pictures change with the facility of groupings of ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... now was more crowded than ever, and nothing but dissipation was thought of. Among those who upon this plan were courted to it, the foremost was Mr Morrice, who, from a peculiar talent of uniting servility of conduct with gaiety of speech, made himself at once so agreeable and useful in the family, that in a short time they fancied it impossible to live without him. And Morrice, though his first view in obtaining admittance had been the cultivation of his acquaintance with Cecilia, was perfectly ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... garden was a harsh, overbearing man. The workmen with tame servility endured his worst affronts. But Israel, bred among mountains, found it impossible to restrain himself when made the undeserved object of pitiless epithets. Ere two months went by, he quitted the service of the princess, and engaged himself to a farmer in a small village not far ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... throughout the world. The very countries that are trying to resist our arms copy our methods in their universities and admire our theories, even those which do not attain success in Germany. Oftentimes we laugh among ourselves, like the Roman augurs, upon seeing the servility with which they follow us! . . . And yet they will not ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... cousin. He thought it far beneath his dignity ever to honour, or contemplate with awe, any human being in whom he saw numerous failings. Nor would he, to ingratiate himself into the favour of a man above him, stoop to one servility, such as the haughty ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... 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
... of the Pontiac we talked about, boss," returned the Lascar with an uneasy servility in the whites of ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... despise the man that piques himself on his own country, and treats all others with indiscriminate contempt. I wish to see much less jealousy and ill-nature subsisting between the Americans and English. But in avoiding party spirit and resentment on the one hand, we should be very careful of servility on the other. There is a manly pride in true independence which is equally remote from insolence and meanness,—a pride that is characteristic of great minds. Have Americans discovered this pride since the declaration of peace? We boast of independence, and with propriety. But will ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... 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 for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... He ordered the persecution of the Christians without knowing what the Christians were, or what the persecution would be, and this conscientious philosopher let loose at Lyons, against the most conscientious of subjects, the zealous servility of his agents, and the atrocious ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... boy sheltered the creatures intrusted to his care, the world would be all the better. We do not mean to insult the memory of such a genius as Chatterton by saying that he required a PATRON—the very sound is linked with a servility that degrades a noble nature; but we do say he sadly wanted a FRIEND—some one who could have understood and appreciated his wonderful intellectual gifts; and whose strength of mind and position in society would have given power to ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... was a gentle manly deference; his begging showed no trace of servility, but he was always polite. He accepted failure with good grace, and did not resent scorn, abuse, or even violence from intended victims. He was rarely combative. Fighting was not his special gift; he met misfortune with patient passivity Resistance he found a mistake. But for all this ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... from Europe, and exist to a small extent in Auckland society, but there is, withal, a nearer approach to true liberty, equality, and fraternity, at any rate in the manners and customs of colonists. The hotel servants show no symptoms of servility, though in civility they are not lacking. Every one is perfectly independent, and considers himself or herself on an equal footing with every one else, no matter what differences may exist in their present position—new-chums always excepted—while they ever bear in mind that such differences ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... month after month. It does not lampoon anyone who pays it. In each of these papers the editorial room is utterly and thoroughly dominated by the counting room. It gets its order day by day from the business counter and it obeys them with a slavish servility. The merchant with a display advertisement in their columns is safe from attack, no matter what his crime. From end to end it is one man journalism, and each of the papers is run for the benefit of the one man who is its proprietor. The Tribune is owned by Joe Medill, the Times-Herald and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the matter had taken—for the defiance was scarce out of his mouth ere he began to tremble for the consequences—answered with great eagerness and servility of manner,—"Nay, dearest Colonel, say no more of it—an apology is all that is necessary among men of honour—it neither leaves dishonour with him who asks it, nor infers degradation on ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... all these disadvantages, with surprising skill, boldness and presence of mind; and he retorted with becoming spirit the brutal taunts of the crown lawyers and judges, who disgraced themselves on the occasion by all the excesses of an unprincipled servility. Fortunately for Throgmorton, the additional clauses to the treason laws added under Henry VIII. had been abolished under his successor and were not yet re-enacted. Only the clear and equitable statute of Edward III. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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 he think ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ungracious in one who has received a hundred favors from his patron to speak in any but a reverential manner of his elders; but the present writer has had descendants of his own, whom he has brought up with as little as possible of the servility at present exacted by parents from children (under which mask of duty there often lurks indifference, contempt, or rebellion): and as he would have his grandsons believe or represent him to be not an inch taller than ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... designs was now swallowed up in a passing distrust of the designs themselves. For Gondremark, besides, she had conceived an angry horror. In her heart she did not like the Baron. Behind his impudent servility, behind the devotion which, with indelicate delicacy, he still forced on her attention, she divined the grossness of his nature. So a man may be proud of having tamed a bear, and yet sicken at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trolls. Naturally enough Daniel Sands was the high priest at their altar. It was fitting that a devil worship which prostrated itself before coal and oil and gas and lead and zinc should make a spider the symbol of its servility. So the spider's web, all iron and steel in pipes below ground, all steel and iron and copper in wires and rails above ground, spread out over the town, over the country near the town, and all the pipes and tubes and rails and wires led to the dingy ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... distinct natures, the diabolical, the human, and the brute. The rest of his preternatural beings are images of effects only, and cannot subsist but in a surrounding atmosphere of those passions from which they are derived. Caliban is the passion itself, or rather a compound of malice, servility, and lust, substantiated; and therefore best shewn in contrast with the lightness of Ariel and the innocence of Miranda.—Witches are sometimes substantial existences, supposed to be possessed by, or allyed to the unsubstantial: but the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... 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, and riches. 'A boy there'" (Mr. Forster here quotes Dickens's own words) "'is always what his abilities and personal qualities make him. We may differ about the curriculum and other matters, but of the frank, free, manly, independent spirit preserved in our ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... hatred and vengeance but for the deep-rooted and almost idolatrous reverence which the Indians cherish for priestcraft. It is disgusting to see the Peruvian priests, who usually treat the Indians like brutes, behaving with the most degrading servility when they want to get money from them. The love of the Indians for strong drinks is a vice which the priests turn to their own advantage. For the sake of the fees they frequently order religious festivals, which are joyfully hailed by the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... to the extreme left of the deserted edge of the room, talking behind his hand to two colleagues in servility, their faces listening and ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... doctrine, with the perfect, absolute immunity of the Sovereign from consequences. There can be in England no disloyalty more gross, as to its effects, than the superstition which affects to assign to the Sovereign a separate, and so far as separate, transcendental sphere of political action. Anonymous servility has, indeed, in these last days, hinted such a doctrine[13]; but it is no more practicable to make it thrive in England, than to rear the jungles ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... distribution of prizes began. First the horses were led out; and their owners, approaching the king, received from his hands the diplomas, and a flag from an attendant. Most of them were peasants; and they exhibited no servility in receiving their marks of distinction, but bowed to the king as they would to any other man, and his majesty touched his cocked hat in return. Then came the prize-cattle, many of them led by women, who are as interested as their husbands in all farm ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... profession or where situated, so that when I became acquainted with their system of government I was not surprised at the spirited character and noble bearing of the people, in striking contrast to the cringing servility of the ignorant laborer in England and the negroes of the United States of America, for in Eurasia there were no kings, dukes or lords, but every man was addressed as "Mister" and every female as "Madame" or "Miss," and ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... 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 this was ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... introduced him to the acquaintance of Mr. Dryden. But amongst the Men of quality he was most affectionately caressed by William Earl of Kingston, who made him an offer of becoming his chaplain; but he declined an employment, to which servility and dependence are so necessarily connected. The writer of his life observes, that our author in his satire addressed to a friend, who was about to quit the university, and came abroad into the world, lets his friend know, that he was frighted from the thought of such an employment, by the scandalous ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... laziness of lust, gross appetites, These are the ladders, and the grov'ling footstool From whence the tyrant rises— Secure and scepter'd in the soul's servility, He has debauched the genius of our country, And rides triumphant, while her captive sons Await his nod, the silken slaves of pleasure, Or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... neighbours. Before the opening of railroads, such duties were more especially requisite to keep together the scattered members of country society. Good feelings were engendered, good manners promoted, and the attachment then felt for old families had a deeper foundation than servility or even custom. As Lady Georgiana grew up, she displayed a warm impressionable nature, a passion for all that was beautiful in art, strong affections, and an early disposition to coquetry. Her character ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... have bowed down in shame a spirit even less proud and sensitive than Hoelderlin's. The French emissaries conducted themselves like lords of Germany, while the German princes vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant Frenchmen. And it was the apathy of the average German, as Hoelderlin conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused him to put such bitter words of contumely into the ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... her, Marguerite noticed with distress an expression of fear, like that of a child detected in a fault. The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic and terrible expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by toil, with the puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips and countenance of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that greatness to that littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence to restore her father's sense of dignity before the solemn day on which he was to reappear in the bosom of ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... he is dressed in wild Thessalian raiment. He approaches with uncouth gestures, and a mixture of servility and self-consciousness. On receiving a nod from ZEUS, he tunes his ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... 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 show his independency. On my mentioning this afterwards to Dr Johnson, he said, it was a nice ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... inside out, Satan's self would seem less sooty, And his present aspect—Beauty. Mark that (as he masks the bilious Air, so softly supercilious) Chastened bow, and mock humility, Almost sickened to servility; Hear his tone, (which is to talking That which creeping is to walking— Now on all-fours, now on tiptoe), Hear the tales he lends his lip to; Little hints of heavy scandals, Every friend in turn he handles; All which women or which men do, Glides forth in an innuendo, Clothed in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... step the princes of Moscow had copied the system of the khan. This work was finished by Ivan the Great, at once the deliverer and the enslaver of Russia, who freed that country from the yoke of the khan, but laid upon it a heavier burden of servility and shame. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... advantages of those systems which Europe is learning to despise! This system, moreover, is only kept up by a flourish of weapons. We have here what you may call an armed aristocracy. The class over which these instruments of main force are held is chosen for its servility, ignorance, and cowardice; hence, indolence in the ruling class. When a man's social or civil standing is not dependent on his knowing how to read, he is not likely ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... servility, and above all incapacity; these are the pet vices which place it below all the aristocracies in Europe. Should I meet with any exceptions on my road, I shall consider it my duty to ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the kindness of an irresponsible deputy never yields what the law does not extort from him. Between such a master and the people subjected to his domination there can be nothing but enmity; he punishes them if they resist his authority, and if they submit to it he hates them for their servility. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... some of the roughest roads and most dangerous robber-districts in the Peninsula. The people with whom I came in contact were invariably friendly and obliging, and I was dealt with much more honestly than I should have been in Italy. With every disposition to serve you, there is nothing like servility among the Spaniards. The native dignity which characterizes their demeanor prepossesses me very strongly in their favor. There is but one dialect of courtesy, and the muleteers and common peasants address each other with the same grave respect ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... of the means of information. If there had been a little more of gentleness and accommodation in his temper, he would have been still more interesting; but he had been accustomed to give law in the circle of his ordinary acquaintance, and his dread of anything approaching to meanness or servility, rendered his manner somewhat decided and hard. Nothing perhaps was more remarkable among his various attainments, than the fluency and precision and originality of language, when he spoke in company; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... this world wide mixture and display of martial and forensic elements before an audience of all mankind and amidst a convulsed and closing universe, is inherently incredible by any mind not grossly ignorant and undisciplined or drilled to the most slavish servility of traditional thought. Every one really educated in science and philosophy, and familiar with the physiological conditions and literary history of mythology in the other nations of the world, will plainly perceive the intrinsic fancifulness and falsity of the belief, at the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 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
... years the prominent tutor of the young prince, and had obtained a great control over his mind. The instructions of Laharpe, who wished to make a Washington of his pupil, were much counteracted by the despotic lessons he had received from Catharine, and by the luxury, servility and corruption which crowded the Russian court. Naturally amiable, and possessed of by no means a strong character, the young monarch was easily moulded by the influences which surrounded him. He evidently commenced his reign with the best intentions, resolved, in every way, to promote the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... important men, and the different types of such rooms were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the death impended over the people, and menaced the king, discord continued to reign in the councils of the ministers. The minister of war, Servan, was accused by Dumouriez with obeying with servility, which resembled love rather than complaisance, the influence of Madame Roland, and of having wholly defeated the plans for the invasion of Belgium. The friends of Madame Roland, on their side, threatened Dumouriez that they would make the Assembly demand of him an account ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... from the beginning of Book Seventy-two to the end of the work. Here Dio breaks away oftener than before from his servility to the Dignity of History, only to display a far more contemptible servility to his imperial masters. According to his own account he stood by and passively allowed atrocities to be multiplied about him, nor does he venture to express any forceful ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of excellence as enabled ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... prevent the despotism or the servility of a single assembly, it was necessary to place somewhere a power to check or defend it. The division of the legislative body into two councils, which had the same origin, the same duration, and only differed in functions, attained the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... be a general subject of gossip. My friend was inclined to think my conjecture correct, and willingly co-operated with me in a plan to test the matter. We had no considerable sympathy with the snobbish parents, whose servility to a title was so apparent; but the daughter seemed to be an innocent and amiable creature, however silly, and we determined to spare her the shame ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... jacket. With as good blood in his veins as the best of them, and with a sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his country by the government whose abettors they were, he could never bring himself to stoop to the fawning and servility through which the lower grades of rank are attainable, only in the service; and thus, it was that, from first to last, he was viewed with an eye of suspicion by his superiors, who regarded him as an incorrigible young Irishman, who, notwithstanding that he wore the uniform of a British ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... was naturally stared at, a little rudely at times, and addressed in that profoundly respectful manner the poor sometimes use to uninvited visitors of a class higher than themselves, in which the words border on servility while the tone suggests resentment. How inappropriate and even unnatural this seemed to her! For these were her own people—the very poor, and all the privations and sufferings peculiar to their ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... himself in the presence of an upper one who had the appearance of being acquainted with the circumstances, and who received him with dignity, though not with any embarrassing exhibition of respect or servility. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... to keep off the pangs of hunger; who sacrifice pride and affection at its miserable altar. There are others, fewer in number, it is true, but scarcely less to be pitied, who exceed this enforced servility in the most abject fashion of voluntary adulation; who flatter, persuade, and bring rich tribute to this smiling Moloch, only waiting his own time to turn upon and destroy his idolaters. For the pampered stomach, like all other spoiled potentates, is treacherous ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... humiliating to an American citizen to cast his eyes back, even for a moment, to the history of this Kansas plot,—humiliating in many ways; but in none more so than in the revelation it makes of the depth and extent of party-servility in the Northern mind. Throughout the proceedings of the "Democracy" towards the unhappy settlers of Kansas, it is difficult to place the finger on a single act of large, just, or generous policy; every step in it appears to have developed some new outrage or some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... has always been easily dominated so soon as a strong power has opposed it. If its violence is unlimited, so is its servility. All the despotisms have had it for their servant. The Caesars are certain of being acclaimed by it, whether they are named Caligula, Nero, Marat, ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... with a manner of servility in which there was an ironic suggestion, while their eyes examined him shrewdly. They were bearded, aquiline persons, soft-spoken and withal formidable. He had a notion that they found him amusing, but suppressed ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... H.S. Nash: "Yet Rome with all her greatness could not outgrow the tribal principle.... We find something that reveals a fundamental fault in the whole system. It is the apotheosis of the Emperors. The process of apotheosis was something far deeper than servility in the subject conspiring with vanity in the ruler. It was a necessity of the state. There was no means of insuring the existence of the state except religion. In the worship of the Caesars the Empire ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... (August 3) we got up early, as a car from the Adler Garage had been ordered at 9.30, but it did not come. The employees of the hotel were cool in their behaviour. The concierge, of whom one usually expects servility, proved surly, the waiter calmly insolent. The delay seemed interminable, so Kitty and I sat down and wrote letters, but we found it was of no use to post them, as none were going out of the country; so we put them in our handbags. Then Lyra and I went off in a taxi to the garage ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... 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
... observed that the people in most monarchies are abject and low-minded in their deportment. Thus the men take off their hats when they enter churches, although the minister be not present; and even the boys take off their hats when they enter private houses. This is commencing servility young. I have even seen men kneeling on the cold pavements of the churches in the most abject manner, and otherwise betraying the feeling ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... which many of its friends displayed. Under Charles the Second, the best and noblest of ends was disgraced by means the most cruel and sordid. The rage of faction succeeded to the love of liberty. Loyalty died away into servility. We look in vain among the leading politicians of either side for steadiness of principle, or even for that vulgar fidelity to party which, in our time, it is esteemed infamous to violate. The inconsistency, perfidy, and baseness, which the leaders constantly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... joke. Her whole property consisted of twelve hundred paper roubles.[A] She lived at Marfa Timofeevna's expense, but on a footing of perfect equality with her. Marfa Timofeevna could not have endured any thing like servility. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the Lord Keeper had given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldness of the King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed blackened by any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice, selfishness, and servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appeared for the last time in Westminster Hall he took with him a nosegay to hide his face, because, as he afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes of the bar and of the audience. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... crawling 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
... princesses. The historical reader must strike a sort of balance for himself in getting at an estimate of Hervey's character. No man has been more bitterly denounced by his enemies or more warmly praised by his friends. Affectation, insincerity, prodigality, selfishness, servility to the great, contempt for the humble, are among the qualities his opponents ascribe to him. According to his friends, his cynicism was a mere affectation to hide a sensitive and generous nature; his bitterness arose from his disappointment at finding so few ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... up from his seat, advanced most submissively to Yussuf, took the paper and raised it to his head, addressing Yussuf with the most abject servility, "O most excellent, most valiant, and most powerful beeldar, how well doth the caliph select his officers! How favoured am I by Allah with your happy presence! I am your slave—honour me by refreshing ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... feeling akin to revenge, they are often inclined to make their employers in Canada suffer in their turn. This feeling is the effect of certain depressing causes, often remote and beyond the reach of legislation, but no less real on that account; and just in proportion to the degree of poverty and servility which exists among the labouring class in the particular part of the United Kingdom from which they come, will be the reaction here. When emigrants have been some years settled in Canada, they find ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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 ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... started, the narrative must move, move, move furiously, each action and every speech pointing directly toward the unknown climax. A pause is a confession of weakness. This Poe taught for a special kind of story; and this a later generation, with a servility which would have amazed that sturdy fighter, requires of all narrative. Then the climax, which must neatly, quickly, and definitely end the action for all time, either by a solution you have been urged to hope for by the wily author in every preceding paragraph, or ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... what is and what is not disreputable in this conventional world. It is not considered disreputable to cringe to the vices of a court, or to accept a pension wrung from the industry of the nation, in return for base servility. It is not considered disreputable to take tithes, intended for the service of God, and lavish them away at watering-places or elsewhere, seeking pleasure instead of doing God service. It is not considered ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... service, that I will wait upon his lordship in the inside of half an hour," says he when he had read the note; and then had the servility, pointing to his empty bottle, to propose that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... denationalized and demoralized—so despoiled and naked, would be in the position 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 ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... friends, but they are friends like Prudence, women who were once kept and who have still the costly tastes that their age does not allow them to gratify. Then they become our friends, or rather our guests at table. Their friendship is carried to the point of servility, never to that of disinterestedness. Never do they give you advice which is not lucrative. It means little enough to them that we should have ten lovers extra, as long as they get dresses or a bracelet out of them, and that they can drive in our ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... "The servility of the shopkeepers is really a little offensive. 'What shall I have the honor of showing you?' ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Republicans—see more beauty in a queen than in her rivals, though at the bar of an impartial aesthetics the latter would be judged the more beautiful. A certain something, a peculiar witchery, surrounds her—the witchery (excuse the word) of servility; this it is, and not your aesthetic judgment, which cheats you into believing that the diamond lends a higher charm than the rose-wreath. Let the rose become the symbol of authority to be worn only by queens, and you would without any doubt find that roses were the adornment ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... habits are already set, and he makes, as a rule, no systematic attempt to modify them. Therefore, just as the unfamiliarity of French cookery or German beds, which at the beginning of a continental visit is a delightful change, may become after a month or two an intolerable gene, so the servility and untruthfulness, and even the patience and cleverness of those natives with whom he is brought into official contact, get after a few years on the nerves of an Anglo-Indian. Intimate and uninterrupted contact during a long period, after his social habits have been formed, with ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... 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 infant State, that travelers in general who judge ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... elements before an audience of all mankind and amidst a convulsed and closing universe, is inherently incredible by any mind not grossly ignorant and undisciplined or drilled to the most slavish servility of traditional thought. Every one really educated in science and philosophy, and familiar with the physiological conditions and literary history of mythology in the other nations of the world, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to talk their intellectual pacificism, he told them that their new doctrine of non-resistance became them ill, but as even the most advanced were still women, consistency was not to be expected—nor desired. Their pacificism, however, when not mere affectation—servility to the fashion of the moment—was due to an obscure fear of seeing the world depopulated of men, or of repressed religious instinct, or apology for being females and unable to fight. He was ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... their chief of his own bald head. The sacrifice was not always voluntary, adds an informant.[1] Philip forced compliance with this new fashion upon all who seemed reluctant to be unnecessarily shorn of what beauty was theirs by nature's gift. This servility may have consoled Philip for the deprivation of his hair. In his depressed condition any solace ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... absent from its councils. To-day, for reasons none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, and—the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. Vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply mysterious, is the rule of the land—stultified ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... be true to say that 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 and timidity, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... seem ungracious in one who has received a hundred favors from his patron to speak in any but a reverential manner of his elders; but the present writer has had descendants of his own, whom he has brought up with as little as possible of the servility at present exacted by parents from children (under which mask of duty there often lurks indifference, contempt, or rebellion): and as he would have his grandsons believe or represent him to be not an inch taller than ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... into the court ceremonial. He surrounded himself with officials of foreign race, probably kinsmen of his mother, and required from them an open display of submission and servility which Egyptian courts had not witnessed previously. An abject prostration was enforced on all, while the king posed before his courtiers as a benevolent god, who showered down his gifts upon them from a superior ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... sensitive feelings, she should tutor the one to submit, the other to endure, for the sake of those at home. That is the governess's best talisman of patience, it is the best balm for wounded susceptibility. When tried hard she must say, "I will be patient, not out of servility, but because I love my parents, and wish through my perseverance, diligence, and success, to repay their anxieties and tenderness for me." With this aid the least-deserved insult may often be swallowed quite calmly, like a bitter pill with a draught ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... easy to arrive at a just estimate of the character of Aristotle. By some of his successors he has been reproached with ingratitude to his teacher, Plato; with servility to Macedonian power, and with love of costly display. How far these two last charges are due to personal slander it is impossible to say. The only ground for the first charge is, that he criticised adversely some ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... patience to follow this examination of the superstitions attaching to personal names, he will probably agree that the mystery in which the names of royal personages are so often shrouded is no isolated phenomenon, no arbitrary expression of courtly servility and adulation, but merely the particular application of a general law of primitive thought, which includes within its scope common folk and gods as well as ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... limiting to white persons, twenty-one years of age and citizens of the State, the right to sit upon juries, was a discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society, which lessened the security of the right of the colored race, and was a step toward reducing them to a condition of servility." The right of a man of color that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race and no discrimination against them because of color, was asserted in a number of cases, to wit: Virginia v. Rives,[48] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... office. Latimer, when the royal policy clashed with his belief, felt bound to resign the see of Worcester. If the power of deposition was quietly abandoned by Elizabeth, the abandonment was due, not so much to any deference for the religious instincts of the nation as to the fact that the steady servility of the bishops ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... scarcely 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 so absolutely swayed ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... battery with battery, or to command a number of cannons, machine guns, airships, and other mechanical contrivances equal to that of the probable opponent; it is foolish initiative to strain every nerve to be abreast with the enemy in all material domains. This idea leads to a certain spiritual servility and inferiority. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men. A man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... every action of his life. The State of Illinois was by a large majority Democratic, hopelessly attached to the person and policy of Jackson. Nowhere had that despotic leader more violent and unscrupulous partisans than there. They were proud of their very servility, and preferred the name of "whole-hog Jackson men" to that of Democrats. The Whigs embraced in their scanty ranks the leading men of the State, those who have since been most distinguished in its history, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... head and heart as I possess has never wavered. He reminds me of Jowett in the soundness of his nature and his complete absence of vanity, although no two men were ever less alike. The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth, the power to love, although I have put it last, is the rarest. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... 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 Beaudry ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... fully bear me out in, I could demonstrate that the whole of your political conduct has been one continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, futility, negligence, and the most notorious servility, incapacity, and corruption. On reconsideration I must allow you one merit, a strict attention to your own interests—in that view you appear sound statesmen and able politicians. You well know that if the present measure should prevail, that you must ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 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 ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... didn't, for he leads a awful life. Mrs. Sniff couldn't be much harder with him if he was public. Similarly, Miss Whiff and Miss Piff, taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, they shoulder Sniff about when he is let in with a corkscrew, and they whisk things out of his hands when in his servility he is a-going to let the public have 'em, and they snap him up when in the crawling baseness of his spirit he is a-going to answer a public question, and they drore more tears into his eyes than ever the mustard does, which he all day long lays on to the sawdust. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Erling fell—and such a gain To buy with such a loss was vain; For better man than he ne'er died, And the king's gain was small beside. In truth no man I ever knew Was, in all ways, so firm and true; Free from servility and pride, Honoured by all, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... The abject 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 ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... is tethered. The servile soul will always be submissive and docile, greedy and stupid. What else could you expect from the descendant of the solitary beast who once lived for thousands of years in caves? Without servility of the soul, without chains for the spirit of the wild animal against the world, men could never have been driven to live together for twenty-four ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... to my address to my constituents at King's Lynn, and to my speech in answer to Peel's manifesto. Pray read it. At first I thought I could swear to its being * * * *, I now think I can swear to its being * * * *; the servility to Peel, and the official red-tape style would equally do for either; but the no-popery page, I think, fixes it ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... pulse, or had the higher salaries not succeeded in stifling the voices of the lower. Thus wholly and solely occupied in retaining his place, drawing his pay, and securing his pension, the government official thought everything permissible that conduced to these results. This state of things led to servility on the part of the clerks and to endless intrigues within the various departments, where the humbler clerks struggled vainly against degenerate members of the aristocracy, who sought positions in the government bureaus for ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... opinion. Socrates approaches his antagonist warily from a distance, with a sort of irony which touches with a light hand both his personal vices (probably in allusion to some scandal of the day) and his servility to the populace. At the same time, he is in most profound earnest, as Chaerephon remarks. Callicles soon loses his temper, but the more he is irritated, the more provoking and matter of fact does Socrates become. ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... of things, for the symbol represents the object as it appears or is fancied to appear, and not as it is thought. Furthermore, the constant learning by heart infallibly leads to slavish repetition and mental servility. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... which implies a proud obedience without trace of servility, is the essential basis for the development of the qualities of command. It is an old adage that, to know how to command, one must know how to obey. In the profession of arms, every man is at once a leader and a follower; the uncertainties ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... within narrow inclosures whose happiness consisted in unbounded liberty, shocks my nature. There is I confess something so amiable in gentleness, that I could be pleased with seeing a tiger caress its keeper, if the cruel means by which the fiercest of beasts is taught all the servility of a fawning spaniel, did not recur every instant to my mind; and it is not much less abhorrent to my nature, to see a venerable lion jumping over a stick, than it would be to behold a hoary philosopher forced by some cruel tyrant ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... annals. Since then they had remained a degraded and abject class. Certainly, they were externally a very peculiar and unprepossessing people. The physiognomy commonly associated with the name Jew was very evident, though the cast of feature had been brutalized by ages of oppression and servility. A singular distinctive mark was the wearing on both sides of the forehead long curls falling to the shoulders. Cringing and subservient in manner, and as traders, there was yet apparent behind the Uriah Heap exterior ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... mind, you have equalled the learning of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is in itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the Grecian Art, which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have contributed to revive amongst us; in you we behold its three great and long-undetected principles,—simplicity, calm, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... isolated; ideas are transmitted from above downward. In cooperation there is interchange, currents flowing in both directions, contacts of mutual sympathy, rather than of pride-humility, condescension-servility. The purpose of the joint pursuit in organization characterized by dominance may be either the exclusive good of the master or the joint good of the whole organized group, but in any case it is a purpose formed and kept by those few who know. The group may share in its execution and its benefits, ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... magnificent obscurity, most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered, and owed the honours which they once obtained, not to judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the stratagem of intrigue, or the servility of adulation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... they may in this kind also. But thou wilt say perchance, 'In those things the Gods have given me my liberty: and it is in mine own power to do what I will.' But if thou mayst use this liberty, rather to set thy mind at true liberty, than wilfully with baseness and servility of mind to affect those things, which either to compass or to avoid is not in thy power, wert not thou better? And as for the Gods, who hath told thee, that they may not help us up even in those things that ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... shining light in the far heavens. "I see them as the realization of a time, now really close at hand, when this old world of ours shall be, as it never yet has been, in truth civilized, emancipated, free. When the night of ignorance, kingcraft, priestcraft, servility and prejudice, bigotry and superstition shall be forever swept away by the dawn of intelligence and universal education, by scientific truth and light—by understanding and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... courts in ridiculing religion, in mocking all that was venerable and sacred. Nor was this reaction by any means occasioned by a burst of German patriotism against the tyranny of France, for the treaty of Basel speedily reconciled the self-same newspaper editors with France. It was mere servility; and the hatred which, it may easily be conceived, was naturally excited against the French as a nation, was vented in this mode upon the patient Germans,[16] who were, unfortunately, ever doomed, whenever their neighbors were visited with some political ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... calf when approached by lions; the most 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
... ever been servile—at least in some sense—and therefore dishonorable; and because dishonorable, has not, to itself, been successful.' Is not this arguing in a circle? The North is dissimilar to the South. Why? Because labor is honorable in the former, and dishonorable, because of its servility, in the latter. The servility removed, in what are the two dissimilar? One third of the Southern whites are related by marriage to the North; a second third are Northerners, and it is this last third that are most violent in their acts against and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to the old monster world exacting the servility of her, in repayment for its tolerating countenance, was faultless. Emma beheld the introduction to Mrs. Warwick of his bride, by Mr. Percy Dacier. She had watched their approach up the Ball-room, thinking, how differently ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expressing one's admiration, esteem, or affection in a public manner, and in thus contributing to the happiness of another by making him better pleased with himself.' London Mag. for 1782, p. 454. His dedications were dedications of friendship, not of flattery or servility. He dedicated his Tour to Corsica to Paoli, his Tour to the Hebrides to Malone, and his Life of Johnson to Sir Joshua Reynolds. Goldsmith, in like manner, distrest though he so often was, dedicated his Traveller to his brother, the Deserted Village ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a touch of coldness, and strong without a touch of hardness, and noble without a touch of pride, and obedient without a touch of servility." ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... grasped the chains of bondage when he hurled that true cry against the truth. Every man is something of account, but ignorance isolates and resignation scatters. Every poor man carries within him centuries of indifference and servility. He is a defenseless prey for hatred ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and always go to extremes—Their sentiments always excessive. 4. THE INTOLERANCE, DICTATORIALNESS, AND CONSERVATISM OF CROWDS. The reasons of these sentiments—The servility of crowds in the face of a strong authority—The momentary revolutionary instincts of crowds do not prevent them from being extremely conservative—Crowds instinctively hostile to changes and progress. 5. THE MORALITY OF CROWDS. The morality of crowds, according to the suggestions ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... vain attempts to subjugate the unconquerable spirit of freedom, they have meanly assailed the representatives of America with bribes, with deceit, and the servility of adulation. They have made a mock of religion by impious appeals to God, whilst in the violation of His sacred command. They have made a mock even of reason itself, by endeavoring to prove that the liberty and happiness of America could safely be intrusted to those who have ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... 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 Territories. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 this ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... out the words with difficulty: first she must have recourse to her secret specific. When she had done so, she expressed her readiness to see Obada. Her son's swarthy foe was anxious to appear a mild and magnanimous man in her eyes, so it was with flattering servility and many smirking grins that he communicated to her the necessity for her quitting the house in which she had passed the longest and happiest half of her life, and no later than ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 I think of partin' wid her. Walk in, walk ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... captains and conductors, and without murmuring put up with any imposition they please to practise upon them, even unto taking away their lives! As we all pay the same price at hotels, each one hopes by smirks and servility to induce the head-clerk to treat him a little better than his neighbors. There is no despotism more absolute than that of these servants of the public. As Cobbett said, 'In America, public servant means master.' None of us can sing, 'Yankees never will be slaves,' unless we stay at home. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... 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 the diamond pin, and eager to open the house door, ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... circumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set in an orderly series before us. Few are the partisans of departed tyranny; and to be a Whig on the business of a hundred years ago is very consistent with every advantage of present servility. This retrospective wisdom and historical patriotism are things of wonderful convenience, and serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and practice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full feast of admiration of the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... 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
... how the first youngster that came along, with a little hard pegging and servility could work his way up to the priesthood; how the average stood no higher than the common masses; and how, among my people, they were more looked down upon and derided than venerated. And even the very best among them, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of the Court: "About this time a general humour, in opposition to France, had made us throw off their fashion, and put on vests, that we might look more like a distinct people, and not be under the servility of imitation, which ever pays a greater deference to the original than is consistent with the equality all independent nations should pretend to. France did not like this small beginning of ill humours, at least of emulation; and wisely considering, that it ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Bourbons; while Josephine, who was born in a family of Royalists, had remained faithful, even when on the Imperial throne, to her devotion to the old Royalty. Marie Louise indulged in no illusions. She knew that the courtiers, under the appearance of adoration which amounted to servility, were really concealing a depth of malice and ill-will, which was the more dangerous the more it was hidden, and that the very ones who were burning incense before her would be the most delighted to catch her ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... "this odious 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... pray," the speaker was saying. "Yea, hourly for relief. But the cycles of the years roll on in blood and pain while the heel of Rome grinds into brute servility all save a favored few. Even have women by the hand of Rome been stripped naked, their legs painted, their bodies shackled and thrown into caverns where, with pick in hand, they dug stones from the rock to build palaces for brutes. If the gods yet live why do they not ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... head we have Modesty and Reverence, the former running down into Bashfulness and the latter into Humility or Servility. Next to these we find Sublimity, which was correctly suggested by the Edinburgh phrenologists. It lies ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... 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 had ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... paints a familiar picture of the crowd of office-hunters who, he says, "like a cloud of locusts, have descended upon the city to devour every plant and herb and every green thing." He was sick with a cold, and stifled in rooms heated by stoves, and was utterly disgusted, as he says, "by the servility and duplicity and rascality I have witnessed among the swarms of scrub politicians who crawl about the great metropolis of our State like so many vermin about the head of the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... I rolled 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 ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... muscled and gnarled as trunks of oaks. Their thick pouting lips, the gold rings which they wore through the partition of their nostrils, their great teeth sharp as the fangs of wolves, the expression of stupid servility on their faces, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... 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
... evil spells; and these are they who talk of culture, who wear grey beards and philosophic cloaks! When these, who are accounted the best of us, stand thus exposed, when men observe their interested servility, their gross flatteries at table and elsewhere, it is not to be wondered at that we have all fallen under suspicion. Those whom they have cast off, they hate, and seek to make an end of them altogether; arguing, naturally enough, that men who know their ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... capitalist monopoly, maintained by the state; nor would he be limited in the exercise of his will by a fear of punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical entities, which both lead to depression of initiative and servility of mind. He would be guided in his actions by his own understanding, which necessarily would bear the impression of a free action and reaction between his own self and the ethical conceptions of his surroundings. Man would thus be enabled to obtain the full development of all his faculties, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the human mind is, in one stage of its progress, supported and propelled, may, in another stage, be mere hindrances. There is a season in the life both of an individual and of a society, at which submission and faith, such as at a later period would be justly called servility and credulity, are useful qualities. The child who teachably and undoubtingly listens to the instructions of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the man who should receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma uttered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... venture to inscribe to you the following pages, I am fearless of having applied to me Johnson's definition of a dedicator, "one who inscribes his work to a patron with compliment and servility." Adulation, Sir, from any quarter, you would resent as an indignity, and the tenor of my own life and writings will secure me from the imputation of servile deference to others, with whatever reverence I may contemplate their ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... heels had evolved into a sort of stilts. By the same fallacy the Englishman will not only curse the French peasant as a miser, but will also try to tip him as a beggar. That is, he will first complain of the man having the surliness of an independent man, and then accuse him of having the servility of a dependent one. Just as the hypothetical Chinaman cannot believe that we have top-hats but not pig-tails, so the Englishman cannot believe that peasants are not snobs even when they are savages. Or he sees that a ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... order and newspaper editors to servility, the conqueror received news of the triumph of his arms in Southern Italy. There the Bourbons of Naples had mortally offended him. After concluding a convention for the peaceable withdrawal of St. Cyr's corps and the strict observance of neutrality by the kingdom of Naples, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Cloak-makers' Union. My membership in the Manufacturers' Association flattered my vanity inordinately, and I always danced attendance upon the other members, the German Jews, the big men of the trade; now, however, I ran their errands with an alacrity that was not mere servility ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... epithet we affix to modesty, but modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously: you, for example, now. You are angry at the servility of people, and disgusted at their obtuseness and indifference, on matters of most import to their welfare. If they were equal to you, this anger would cease; but the fire would break out somewhere ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... howling, raving, blazing humours, I believe he'd let it out, if it was murder, and never think of himself so long as he could terrify me. Now,' said Brass, picking up his hat again and replacing the shade over his eye, and actually crouching down, in the excess of his servility, 'What does all this lead to?—what should you say it led me to, gentlemen?—could you guess at all near ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... covered with crimson, gold-trimmed velvet, instead of green cloth; but the attributes of all places of judgment, i.e., the mirror of justice, the icon, the emblem of hypocrisy, and the Emperor's portrait, the emblem of servility, were there. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... master had been absent since dawn, but Basil none the less entered, and, in the room where he and his friend were wont to talk, threw himself upon a couch to wait. He lay sunk in the most sombre thoughts, until at the door appeared Sagaris, who with the wonted suave servility, begged ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... meaning the chambermaid, or desired, with a toss of the head, to wait for the "gentleman who is coming," meaning the boots, the heart is sickened, and the English traveler pines for the civility—for the servility, if my American friends choose to call it so—of a well-ordered servant. But the whole scene is easily construed, and turned into English. A man is asked by a stranger some question about his employment, and he replies in a tone which seems ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of these fine native stones. And I, glad to possess the jewels of my country, chose two bracelets and a necklace of them, paying but twenty dollars for fifteen or sixteen cat's-eyes, and resolved to give them a setting worthy of their beauty. The diary continues with moral reflections upon the servility of our taste before anything European, and the handwriting is clear and deliberate. It abruptly becomes hurried, and at length well-nigh illegible. It is best, I think, that you should have this ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... genius.... His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic.... The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked out the historian's outline, so that the vices and passions, the ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisonous atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described in fuller or more ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... possible, to exasperate to desert, to retort, or to commit some other fatal act of insubordination or violence. Yet, for the sake of my dear mother and of Clara, I did violence only to my own natural manhood, and bore it all with the servility of ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... work done, either by a child or an adult, is far preferable to what is called charity. It at once promotes industry, and encourages a spirit of honest independence, which is far removed from unbecoming pride, as it is from mean and sneaking servility. Benevolence is the peculiar glory of woman; and we hope that all our fair readers will ever bear in mind, that real benevolence will seek to enable the objects of its regard to secure their due share of the comforts of life, by the honest employment of those gifts and ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... Postlethwaite, and Mrs. Cimabue Brown, most delightful trio of sickening "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 ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of vileness, become an unspeakable cipher of cowardice and servility—she signed endless lists of crimes which she had never committed. Was she worth the trouble of burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money to a Wizard of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... hated Mary heartily could she 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 ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Better proof of the use of guards is needed than the suggestion of Diaz. It implies a knowledge of military discipline unknown by Indian tribes. It was noticed that Indians went barefooted into the presence of Montezuma, which was interpreted as an act of servility and deference, although bare feet must have been the rule rather than the exception in Tenochtitlan. Diaz further informs us that "his cooks had upwards of thirty different ways of dressing meats, and they had earthen vessels so contrived as to keep them always hot. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... marks the decline of the School, and will not 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
... 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
... (She throws herself on her knees beside her mother and flings her arms passionately round her. They are interrupted by the entry of Louka, a handsome, proud girl in a pretty Bulgarian peasant's dress with double apron, so defiant that her servility to Raina is almost insolent. She is afraid of Catherine, but even with her goes as far as she dares. She is just now excited like the others; but she has no sympathy for Raina's raptures and looks contemptuously ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... Jews of his time, those declamations against idolatry, so familiar to his co-religionists from the time of Alexander, and which fill, for instance, the book of "Wisdom."[2] That which struck him in the pagans was not their idolatry, but their servility.[3] The young Jewish democrat agreeing on this point with Judas the Gaulonite, and admitting no master but God, was hurt at the honors with which they surrounded the persons of sovereigns, and the frequently mendacious titles given to them. With this exception, in the greater number of instances ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... said Luigi, drawing back his hand; 'I render a service, I do not sell it.'—'Well,' replied the traveller, who seemed used to this difference between the servility of a man of the cities and the pride of the mountaineer, 'if you refuse wages, you will, perhaps, accept a gift.'—'Ah, yes, that is another thing.'—'Then,' said the traveller, 'take these two Venetian sequins and give ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... government, over every acre of the French soil, and, worst of all, over the hearts and minds of the French people. Enterprise was deadened; invention crippled. Honesty was nothing; honor everything. Life was of little value. Labor was the badge of servility; laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. The serf-owning spirit was an iron wall between noble and not-noble,—the only unyielding wall between France ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... he did more than any other individual,—more than any President, if not 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 that "no tyranny is so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... variety of smaller ones, of a pyramidal shape. We rode through Taximaroa without stopping, and breakfasted at a rancho, where the whole family were exceedingly handsome. The ranchero himself was a model for a fine-looking farmer, hospitable and well-bred; knowing his place, yet without any servility. The rancherita, who was engaged in the kitchen, was so handsome, that we made every possible excuse for going to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... laity Church of 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 persecuting spirit their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor at the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant's hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... short sentences commendatory of the first, under 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 resembling certificates to the virtues of various morbiferal panaceas, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... should have been in literature, idealists; in politics, abolitionists; in religion, Unitarians. It was the progressive independency of a Puritan ancestry declaring itself. Save, perhaps, in Longfellow, no gloss or glamour of Europe obscures their poetry. No hush of servility rests on it. No patronage summoned it, and no indifference silenced it. Our poetry is the genuine utterance of democracy, and betrays in every syllable the fibre ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the most innocent joke. Her whole property consisted of twelve hundred paper roubles.[A] She lived at Marfa Timofeevna's expense, but on a footing of perfect equality with her. Marfa Timofeevna could not have endured any thing like servility. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... flattery. This son of a Swiss porter is now one of Bonaparte's adjutants-general, a colonel of the Gendarmes d'Elite, a general of brigade in the army, and a commander of the Legion of Honour; all these places he owes, not to valour or merit, but to abjectness, immorality, and servility. When an aide-de-camp with Bonaparte in Egypt, he served him as a spy on his comrades and on the officers of the staff, and was so much detested that, near Aboukir, several shots were fired at him in his tent by his own countrymen. He is supposed still to continue the same ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... seventy years after Peter's death, Russia was governed by empresses. The last of them, Catharine II, was one of the ablest and most successful rulers in modern times. For the machine which Peter created was strong enough to endure. It still exists as he made it, an amalgam of power and servility, never leading, but often supplying the deciding force in the history of the world. It was the empire of Peter the Great that destroyed ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... an ominous prophecy to Charmian. "You shall outlive the lady whom you serve." She has outlived her in every city in Europe; but only for the time of setting straight her crown—the last servility. She could not live but by comparison with ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... girl met this with extreme meekness and servility; the only reply she ever hazarded was an adroit one; she would take this opportunity to say, "How much better master do get ever since I took in hand ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... his many misdeeds. He refused an interview. Mr. Larkin sent word across the border that he would have no trifling and that he must come, upon which the Jong Pen, with his officers and Lamas, crossed the snowy Lippu Pass. Trembling with fear and bending low to the ground, the Tibetans, with abject servility, entered the tent of our British envoy. The account of the interview, which I received in full from a Shoka gentleman who was present as interpreter, is amusing and curious, showing the mutability and hypocrisy of the Tibetans. In the long run, and being well acquainted with ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of Moscow had copied the system of the khan. This work was finished by Ivan the Great, at once the deliverer and the enslaver of Russia, who freed that country from the yoke of the khan, but laid upon it a heavier burden of servility and shame. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... in this street at a certain hour, is one of the essentials to the existence of haut-ton—it is the point of attraction for greetings in splendid equipages, from the haughty bend or familiar nod of arrogance, to the humble bow of servility. Here mimicry without money assumes the consequential air of independence: while modest merit creeps along unheeded through the glittering crowd. Here all the senses are tantalized with profusion, and the eye is dazzled with temptation, for no other reason ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... saying of the parental teacher of Wallace is recorded. It means, "Know of a certainty that virtue, the best of possessions, never can exist under the bond of servility." ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... name of the biblical Ham has become synonymous with servility and moral baseness. Merezhkovsky employs this scornful term to designate those people who are strangers to the higher tendencies of the mind and are entirely taken up with material interests. His "Ham Triumphant" is the Antichrist, whose reign, as predicted by the Apocalypse, will begin with ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
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