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Politician   Listen
noun
Politician  n.  
1.
One versed or experienced in the science of government; one devoted to politics; a statesman. "While empiric politicians use deceit."
2.
One primarily devoted to his own advancement in public office, or to the success of a political party; used in a depreciatory sense; one addicted or attached to politics as managed by parties (see Politics, 2); a schemer; an intriguer; as, a mere politician. "Like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not." "The politician... ready to do anything that he apprehends for his advantage."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Politician" Quotes from Famous Books



... with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a pencil from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report relating to the present complication. The complication was of this nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a politician, that special individual qualification that every rising functionary possesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition, his reserve, his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made his career, was ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... Imagine, with these peculiarities, a free, bold, rather swaggering gait, a swarthy complexion, and comformable features and tones of voice, and, excepting his costume, you have before your fancy a complete picture of the early western politician. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... trusted; and with each success his reputation increased. It seemed to Cromwell that his man was more whole-hearted than he had been at first; and when he was told abruptly by Ralph that his relations with Mistress Atherton had come to an end, the politician was not slow to connect cause and effect. He had always regretted the friendship; it seemed to him that his servant's character was sure to be weakened by his alliance with a friend of Master More; and though he had said nothing—for Ralph's manner did not encourage questions—he ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... planned escape to the Kinai or Chugoku (central Japan), there to organize armed resistance to the Hojo designs. But it is very doubtful whether these pages of history, especially the latter, should not be regarded in the main as fiction. Sanetomo was too much of a litterateur to be an astute politician, and what eluded the observation of his lynx-eyed mother ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Mr Beauclerk,' said Mr Jones, who was the leading member of a very wealthy firm of builders in the borough, who had become a Conservative politician, who had thoughts of the House for himself, but who never forgot his own position. 'He is making ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Leander Babbitt was the son of Phineas Babbitt, Orham's dealer in hardware and lumber and a leading political boss. Between Babbitt, Senior, and Captain Sam Hunniwell, the latter President of the Orham National Bank and also a vigorous politician, the dislike had always been strong. Since the affair of the postmastership it had become, on Babbitt's part, an intense hatred. During the week just past young Babbitt's name had been drawn as one of Orham's quota for the new National Army. The village ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and says to an old negress, "Aunty, I would like for you to do a little washing for me." The old creature was glad to get it, as I agreed to pay her what it was worth. Her name was Aunt Daphne, and if she had been a politician, she would have been a success. I do not remember of a more fluent "conversationalist" in my life. Her tongue seemed to be on a balance, and both ends were trying to out-talk the other—but she was a good woman. Her husband was named Uncle Zack, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... of Aureataland. No doubt the reader's eye has before now detected the joint in that great man's armor at which we directed our missile. As a lover, I grudged the employment of the signorina in this service; as a politician, I was proud of the device; as a human being, I recognized, what we are very ready to recognize, that it did not become me to refuse to work with such instruments as appeared to be put into ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... hear of the "drum ecclesiastic" beating up for recruits in worldly warfare in our country. It has since been called into frequent use. A cunning politician often lurks under the clerical robe; things spiritual and things temporal are strangely jumbled together, like drugs on an apothecary's shelf; and instead of a peaceful sermon, the simple seeker after righteousness has often a political ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... said, "there are some causes which make strange demands upon the best of us. A man may lie to save a woman's honour, or, if he be a politician, for the good of his country. I cannot discuss this matter any further with you. My sole regret is that we ever discussed it at all. My friend and I must ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a just, kindly, and reasonable basis for Society. The General Confession has become the national prayer of Englishmen. Modern Civilisation is thoroughly healthy and every day it gets better and better. It is so. It must be so. What's that? You have known a politician. . . . Your friend is married and. . . . Brother, it is impossible. You must not say so anyway: the whole fabric of Society will be shaken. You must not think so ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... instructions that he declined to hold the management of Indian affairs unless it was made independent of his rival. The dispute became mingled with the teapot-tempest of New York provincial politics. The Lieutenant-Governor, Delancey, a politician of restless ambition and consummate dexterity, had taken umbrage at Shirley, of whose rising honors, not borne with remarkable humility, he appears to have been jealous. Delancey had hitherto favored the Dutch faction in the Assembly, hostile to Johnson; but he now changed attitude, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... political situation was edging towards a specific point of instability. As a result, an Earth ship which was not one of the regular freighters had put down at Fort Roye some days before. Among its passengers were Commissioner Sanford of the Territorial Office, a well-known politician, and a Mr. Ronald Black, the popular and enterprising owner of Earth's second largest news outlet system. They were on a joint fact-finding tour of the thinly scattered colonies in this remote section of the Territories, and had wound up eventually at the most ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz

... place of satisfying the very private curiosity of a well-known and munificent politician, had described another party that had made a wide ripple of comment and envious criticism among the shades. It had been planned by a swell of old Rome, faithful in every detail to the best traditions of orgies; and Stepan's companion, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the Devils, That had not thrust this trick into my pate— 298] A Politician fool? destruction plague Candy ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... out a Cracker. He was something of a politician, and had always taken a prominent part in the local elections, so he knew the ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde

... the revolution the representatives of the overthrown House and of the Old Royalty sought assiduously to obtain from Louis Philippe a recognition of the young Count de Chambord, under the title of Henry V. But the Duke of Orleans was too wily a politician to be caught in such a snare. He at first suppressed that part of the letter of abdication signed by Charles and Angouleme in which reference was made to the succession of the Duke of Berry's son; but a knowledge of that clause was presently disseminated in the city, ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... question in the tangle of my other problems. 'They will think me mad,' I thought. 'And suppose I vanish now!—Amazing disappearance of a prominent politician!' That weighed with me. A thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the Spanish Minister at Washington, Senor de Lome, was intercepted and published, holding President McKinley up as a time-serving politician. De Lome forestalled recall by resigning; yet his successor, Polo y Bernabe, could not fail to note on arriving in ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... train of a Roman cardinal, he took service with Richelieu, who, remarking in him all the qualities of a supple, insinuating, artificial nature,—that is to say, the nature of a good politician,—appointed him his private secretary, and entrusted him with all his secrets, as if he had singled him out ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... advocacy of the fetter and the whip for the coloured population of that country. The Nation newspaper, week after week, informed its readers that Lamartine was an idle dreamer, a mere theoretical politician; that his mind was only constituted for the regions of romance; and that his opinion on the affairs of Ireland, England, France, or Europe was worthless. A week or two before the same paper held him up as the very Achilles of freedom, and the hope of Ireland—for it was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... himself, the monk had to turn politician after the French army had gone southward. He was said to have saved the State, and was implored to assume control now that the tyranny was at an end. There was a vision before him of Florence as a free Republic in the truest ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... one is not harmed. But your brother! In him lived yet the whole murmuring, singing palm-forest.... As regards you, it remains to be seen whether you can get all humanity in you completely killed.... But who would at that price be a politician?... That one must be hardened is the watchword of all nowadays. Not only army officers but physicians, merchants, officials are to be hardened or dried up; ... hardened for the battle of life, as they say. But what does that mean? We are to expel and evaporate the warmth of the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... voted sixty thousand. With a portion of this money about him, and with authority to draw for the rest on proper vouchers, Mr. Pullwool, his tongue in his cheek, bade farewell to his new allies. As a further proof of the ready wit and solid impudence of this sublime politician and model of American statesmen, let me here introduce a brief anecdote. Leaving Slowburg by the cars, he encountered a gentleman from Fastburg, who saluted him with tokens of amazement, and said, "What are ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... no purpose for Mr. Hastings to spend time in idle objections to the character of Nundcomar. Let him be as bad as Mr. Hastings represents him. I suppose he was a caballing, bribing, intriguing politician, like others in that country, both black and white. We know associates in dark and evil actions are not generally the best of men; but be that as it will, it generally happens that they are the best of all discoverers. If Mr. Hastings ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... statistical questions, and in some parts of his life has written pamphlets and essays upon public topics with great ingenuity and success; but after my acquaintance with him, which commenced in Congress in 1775, his excellence as a legislator, a politician, or a negotiator most certainly never appeared. No sentiment more weak and superficial was ever avowed by the most absurd philosopher than some of his, particularly one that he procured to be inserted ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... about a hundred and sixty men under the joint command of Colonel Travis[142-3] and Colonel Bowie[142-4] was in the Alamo in February of 1836. About this time there came to the Alamo David Crockett[142-5] of Tennessee, a famous hunter, warrior and politician, who had already represented his district in Congress, where he distinguished himself by his rough and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... A philosophic politician once remarked that the best possible form of government is an absolute monarchy tempered by street ballads. Without at all agreeing with this aphorism we still cannot but regret that the new democracy does not use poetry ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... ROUGON, born in 1811, married in 1857 to Veronique Beulin d'Orcheres, by whom he has no children. A fusion of characteristics. Prepotency and ambition of his mother. Physical likeness to his father. A politician, at one time Cabinet Minister. Still alive in Paris, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... came at last to power. This Cosimo was a boy of eighteen, fond of field-sports, and unused to party intrigues. When Francesco Guicciardini offered him a privy purse of one hundred and twenty thousand ducats annually, together with the presidency of Florence, this wily politician hoped that he would rule the State through Cosimo, and realise at last that dream of the Ottimati, a Governo Stretto or di Pochi. He was notably mistaken in his calculations. The first days of Cosimo's administration showed that he possessed the craft of his family ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... skill and taste, are desirous of obtaining every new musical publication, as it comes out. This desire is produced where there is an aim at perfection in this science. The professed novel reader, we know, waits with impatience for a new novel. The politician discovers anxiety for his morning paper. Just so it is with the musical amateur with respect to a new tune. Now, though many of the new compositions come out for instrumental music only, yet others come out entirely as vocal. These ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced into the heart of February, a great fall of snow had taken place; the roads were blocked up; the mails obstructed; and, while the merchant grumbled audibly for his letters, the politician, no less chagrined, conned over and over again his dingy rumpled old newspaper, compelled "to eat the leek of his disappointment." The wind, which had blown inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however, during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... political map of southeastern Europe in the interest of well-founded quiet, it was he that showed the idealism of rational statesmanship,—the only truly practical statesmanship,—while the defenders of the status quo evinced the crude instincts of the mere time-serving politician. That the latter did not insure quiet, even the quiet of desolation, in those unhappy regions, we have yearly evidence. How far is it now a practicable object, among the nations of the European family, to continue indefinitely the present ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... assemblies of the people. Yet, as the character of a nation is more important in history than the form of its government, it is as much the duty of the historian to examine the institutions of the people, as it is the business of the politician to be acquainted with the action of the government. To illustrate this, we shall describe in general terms the political constitution of the Greeks, and leave our readers to compare it with the share enjoyed by the French, and some other of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... for your character, as a politician, and a man, makes me desirous of connecting my name, in some measure with yours while it is in my power, by means of some publication, to ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... Fillmore, or Fremont?" said she, in a tone of dogmatical interrogatory. B. was a fervid Fremonter— he probably thought she was— so he exclaimed, "Vermont for ever!" I awaited the sequel in silence. "Then you may go round," said the little female politician. "You may go round," and round we went, not a little amused at such an exhibition of enthusiasm. I remember very well the excitement during the campaign of 1840; and I did my share with the New Hampshire boys ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... learning in prose, his mode of celebrating her. Further, he marries; it is said, not happily. The antiquaries, too, have disturbed romance by discovering that Beatrice also was married some years before her death. He appears, as time goes on, as a burgher of Florence, the father of a family, a politician, an envoy, a magistrate, a partisan, taking his full share in the quarrels of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Mr. Wilson's ideas. So he tried for days and weeks to impress officials with the seriousness of the situation. At the critical point in the negotiations various unofficial diplomats began to arrive and they seriously interfered with negotiations. One of these was a politician who through his credentials from Mr. Bryan met many high officials, and informed them that President Wilson was writing his notes for 'home consumption.' Mr. Gerard, however, appealed to Washington ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... introduced me as a substitute sent by him, and represented me as a very promising young lawyer from Fremont, Ohio, the very town where Mr. Hayes had always resided. I could tell them more of his personal characteristics than any politician ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... our kinsmen, and the blood of the Victim stains us as sharers of our brothers' crime. And, further, as we look into the motives of Christ's murderers—devout Pharisee and conservative Sadducee, Roman politician and false friend, bawling rabble and undiscriminating soldiery, the host of indifferent or approving faces of the public behind them—they seem strangely familiar to us. They have been, they are still, alive by turns in us. The ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... rid of a scrivener's table altogether. Among the manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices' courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he insisted was his ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville

... question of the human characters whose names are writ large on this page of religious history, the Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla towers above all others. To his political insight is largely owing the harnessing of the state religion to the chariot of the politician, now and hereafter; and it was he who was the foremost leader of Roman armies to the Orient, and the man who, because of his peculiarly superstitious character, encouraged the worship of the strange deities ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... spontaneity to form illusions to his mind. Blessed, however, with a heart, gifted with a mind such as described, man will surely discover this rara avis: thus constituted, the attentive philosopher, the geometrician, the moralist, the politician, the theologian himself, when he shall sincerely seek truth, will find that the corner-stone which serves for the foundation of all superstitious systems, is evidently rested upon fiction. The philosopher will discover in matter a sufficient cause for its existence; he will ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... been of the oppressed in other lands, he lacked what Dean Swift said Bolingbroke needed—"a small infusion of the alderman." If he thought a man stupid he let him know it. To those who disagreed with him, he was rude and overbearing. All of what is known as the "politician's art" he professed to despise; and while Tammany organised wards into districts, and districts into blocks, Clinton pinned his faith on the supremacy of intellect, and on office-holding friends. The day the news of his nomination for lieutenant-governor ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... Party to vote for Cleveland. He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican policies or performance. He was a personal friend of Thedore Roosevelt's but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the politician rarely found favor in his eyes. With or without justification, most of the President's political acts invited his caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation. Another letter to Twichell of this time affords ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... succor of the English fleet will never even arrive in sight of the place. I will even venture to say that I am certain M. de Buckingham will be prevented from setting out by some great event. His Eminence is the most illustrious politician of times past, of times present, and probably of times to come. He would extinguish the sun if the sun incommoded him. Give these happy tidings to your sister, my dear cousin. I have dreamed that the unlucky Englishman was dead. I ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... original of 'Donovan Pasha' was I shall never say, but he was real. There is, however, in the House of Commons today a young and active politician once in the Egyptian service, and who bears a most striking resemblance to the purely imaginary portrait which Mr. Talbot Kelly, the artist, drew of the Dicky Donovan of the book. This young politician, with his experience in the diplomatic service, is in manner, disposition, capacity, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... there's a whole lot to think about," the lawyer went on seriously. "Why, I don't even know how to get through my interview with her to-day without lying to her like a politician. Now just get a look at the position. Here's a girl, a beautiful, high-spirited girl of sixteen, straight out from college, at the beginning of life, with her, head full of 'whys,' and 'wherefores.' Sixteen's well-nigh grown up these ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... coatless: typically the burly, uncurried, uncouth stock man, whose commonest words were oaths or curses and whose way with obstinate cattle or men was the way of the club or the fist. Gordon was the wily, cautious, unscrupulous politician; he had represented San Mateo in the legislature for years, both during the Territorial period and since New Mexico had become a state, and was not unknown in other parts of the southwest; but he was "Judge" only by courtesy, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... his Conduct in the War. The Hopes of gaining Time to work his Ends upon Spain, will easily account for his forwardness in clapping up a Peace, and giving up more Towns than he had been Master of by the War; for thus like a through pac'd Politician, he humbled himself by little Condescensions to the Feet of the Allies, and sacrifices these Excrescencies of his Glory, in hopes very speedily to make good all such Deficiences by the larger Acquisition of Spain: But nothing ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... expressed the unity of Church and State, God and Man, Peace and War, Life and Death, Good and Bad; it solved the whole problem of the universe. The priest and the soldier were both at home here, in 1215 as in 1115 or in 1058; the politician was not outside of it; the sinner was welcome; the poet was made happy in his own spirit, with a sympathy, almost an affection, that suggests a habit of verse in the Abbot as well as in the architect. God reconciles all. The world is an evident, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... by ambition For a library position, And esteems it a high mission, To aspire to erudition; He will find some politician Of an envious disposition, Getting up a coalition To secure his non-admission, And send him to perdition, Before he's ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... and sat upon the stage with his immense and ponderous cavalry sabre tightly buckled around him. He had the attitude of Wellington or Grant at a council of war. He was introduced to the audience by J. O. Wimbish, a high-toned negro politician (as was) of this city, who bespattered the young warrior with an eulogy such as no school-master would have written for less than $5 C.O.D. It was real slushy in ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... without complying with abuses calculated to damage his reputation with posterity. We have no doubt that Bacon's compliance was connected with considerations which Mr. Dixon entirely ignores. Far from discriminating between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon the politician, we have always thought that they were intimately connected. Bacon's Method, the thing on which, as a philosopher, he especially prided himself, was defective. It left out that power by which all discoveries have since his time been made, namely, scientific genius. Its successful working ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... thrashed others for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others when it was necessary, as a point of honour and stature, that he should so chastise;—or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and were very good friends. I have some of his letters, written to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... would cost me scarcely any—trouble; and the country be vastly the gainer by your husband's talents and probity. Of course he will give up the—I forget what is his business now—and live independent. He is made to shine as a politician: it will be both happiness and honour to myself to have in some way contributed to that end. Mr. Halifax, you ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... the Providence Journal, which is run by an Australian who has been running the spy system for the British Embassy, and has been printing a lot ... about Germany and all the German press. If he can get away with this he is some politician. I see that Teddy has had an understanding with him. Von Meyer was there yesterday to hold a ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... and navy. It is manifestly indispensable that the executive head of a government be clothed with this authority. Yet the President is not, as a rule, a man of military education or experience. The exigencies of party politics also seem to require, in general, that the Secretary of War be a party politician, equally lacking with the President in qualifications for ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... Franklin—gave her the secret principle by which the politics of men are directed. Her house in Whittletown was the half of a double frame building, and the rear-end of the other part was the private office of—but no, I will not mention the name—a lawyer and a politician. He was known as a "wirepuller," and the other wire-pullers of his party used to meet in his office and discuss matters. Mrs. Whiston always asserted that there was a mouse-hole through the partition; but she had energy enough ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... seclusion of his cabinet, a politician takes a view of society, he is struck with the spectacle of inequality which presents itself. He mourns over the sufferings which are the lot of so many of our brethren, sufferings whose aspect is rendered yet more sorrowful by the contrast ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... to some readers, rather wonderful and far-fetched, yet there is nothing occult or mysterious about it. I am perfectly sure that there is no great writer, politician or business man who does not make use of his sub-conscious mind in this way. He probably does so unconsciously, but his procedure is the same. Some employ the whole of their mind naturally. These become men of achievement, who occupy responsible positions, and who bear immense burdens without ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... hardly takes into account the great fund of humanity common to them both. The politics of Cicero, it is true, would be unintelligible to one unversed in the constitution and history of Rome; but the ambition of Cicero, the embarrassment of the politician, the meditated treachery, the boasted independence, the doubt, the fear, the hesitation,—all this will be better studied in a living House of Commons, than in all the manuscripts of the Vatican. Sacrifice nothing of what you know to be the substantial interest of your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... but this time the other way, bowing like one who acknowledges a compliment; and we came to Solomonsville in such peace that he would have been astonished at my private thoughts. For I had met no undisguised vagabond nor out-and-out tramp whom I did not prefer to Luke Jenks, vote-buyer and politician. With his catch-penny plausibility, his thin-spread good-fellowship, and his New York clothes, he mistook himself for a respectable man, and I was glad to be done ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... five councilmen are for sale; two are honest men—and one is an uncertain quantity. The mayor is a politician. I've known them all since boyhood, and if I dared come out in the open, I think that even the crooks have sentiment enough for what the Cardigans stand for in this county to decline to ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... to-day," said Fortescue (naming a very well-known politician) as he looked up from his newspaper. "You'll call and wish him many happy returns, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... would become a Court favourite, and possibly supplant Essex in the Queen's favour, as the Earl of Oxford had for a while threatened to displace Leicester. The ingenuous frankness and independence of the young Earl, however, appeared likely to defeat the plans of the veteran politician. Burghley now resolved that he must broaden his protege's knowledge of the world and adjust his ideals to Court life. He accordingly engaged the sophisticated and world-bitten Florio as his intellectual and moral mentor. I do not find any record of Southampton's departure ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... CHURCHILL, the American novelist, adds the interesting statement, "the author is of course a distant cousin of the Right Hon. Winston Churchill, M.P."; This sounds a little ungracious. Why "of course distant?" But perhaps the gifted novelist shares the opinion held by Lord BERESFORD of the politician who did not write The Crisis, but is always trying to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various

... often elect a president or turn one out. That's generally the work of a New York business firm that wants a concession. If the president in office won't give it a concession the company starts out to find one who will. It hunts up a rival politician or a general of the army who wants to be president, and all of them do, and makes a deal with him. It promises him if he'll start a revolution it will back him with the money and the guns. Of course, the understanding is that if the leader of the fake revolution ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... medical problem specially involved, there is none. If there were, I should not be competent to deal with it, as I am not a technical expert in medicine: I deal with the subject as an economist, a politician, and a citizen exercising my common sense. Everything that I have said applies equally to all the medical techniques, and will hold good whether public hygiene be based on the poetic fancies of Christian Science, the tribal ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... think of the residential aspects of European house-property when they first see it. And I wonder, without blushing, to what miraculous degree of perfected comfort Americans would raise all their urban traffic if only they cared enough to keep the professional politician out of their streets as strictly as they keep him out ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... he was reprieved, and remanded to the Tower, where the next twelve years of his life were spent in confinement. Fortunately, he had never ceased to cultivate literature with a zeal not often found in the soldier and politician, and he now beguiled the tedium of his lot by an entire devotion to those studies which before had only served to diversify his more active and engrossing pursuits. Of his poetical talents we have already made short mention; to the end of life he continued ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... he had given to that general type. There was a shelf of books, and a row of them on the mantel-piece; works of political economy, they appeared to be, statistics and things of that sort; very dry reading, with which, however, Middleton's experience as a politician had made him acquainted. Besides these there were a few works on local antiquities, a county-history borrowed from the Master's library, in which Hammond appeared to have been ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... ofttimes require the patience of a Job and the wisdom of a Solomon. In the labyrinth of domestic entanglement more is needed than the silken clue of Ariadne, and the vexed question of domestic economy requires the unerring skill of the diplomatist, the subtle tact of the politician, and the sure strength of the statesman. The "Poet of Poets" has shown his appreciation of the character and life of woman in the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... children of this world are wise in their generation; and both the politician and the priest are justified by results. The living voice has an influence over human action altogether independent of the intellectual worth of that which it utters. Many years ago, I was a guest at a great ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... gift developed, was not only an expression of senatorial wisdom, but also a witness for the elevation of his moral character. We must now allude to the public conduct of Burke, as a Statesman and Politician, and only regret the limited range of a popular essay confines us to one view, namely, his alleged inconsistency. There WAS a period when charges of apostasy were brought against him with reckless audacity: but Time, the instructor of ignorance, and the subduer ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... with the wind, turning slowly at the end of the safety line: held from the devouring anger of the planet only by the slender umbilical cord from the stars. "General Grisley, now. I think he's sixteen star, in headquarters. He was a politician. He came up fast. In fact, he was my adjutant a few years ago. He was always a man to hold ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville

... Jubber Kh[a]n's name was in great repute amongst the Affgh[a]ns, who, all wild and savage as they are, still have sufficient feeling to admire in others those virtues which are so rarely met with amongst themselves: he is considered an able politician also, as well as the poor man's friend—high and low find him equally easy of access, and he is the general mediator in quarrels between the different chiefs, and the principal counsellor in the ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... Solon stirred up the Athenians to capture Salamis, which they had given up to the Megarians, while Poplicola withdrew the Romans from a country which they had conquered. We must, however, consider the circumstances under which these events took place. A subtle politician deals with every thing so as to turn it to the greatest advantage, and will often lose a part in order to save the whole, and by sacrificing some small advantage gain another more important one, as did Poplicola ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... sympathetic, partly caustic or contemptuous, but presented all through with a vein of persiflage, mockery, and extravaganza. All this was amusing and original; but every one of these things is fatal to sustained and serious art. If an active politician seeks to galvanise a new party by a series of novels, the romances cannot be works of literary art. If a young man wants only to advertise his own smartness, he will not produce a beautiful thing. And if a statesman out of office wishes to amuse himself by alternate ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... wrote bunkum like the common politician of that and many a later age, he was really a brave soldier. What galled him into fury was 'grave Carleton's' quiet refusal to recognize either him or any other rebel commander as the accredited leader of a hostile army. It certainly must have been exasperating ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... a merchant why a bill has not been paid. An instructor patiently explains a problem to a class, and a merchant explains the merits of an article or the operation of a device to his customers. The politician explains why he should be elected. The financier explains the returns from stock and bond purchases. The President explains to the Senate the reason for treaty clauses. The minister explains the teachings of his faith to his congregation. You can ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Catherine rewarded all the foreigners who had assisted her in her plots most magnificently, and shewed herself grateful to the Russians who had helped her to mount the throne; while, like a crafty politician, she sent such nobles as she suspected to be averse to revolution ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... meant nothing, dearie; only I'm a heap surprised. Chuck is a good fellow, I'll admit; but I've been dreaming of your marrying a prince or an ambassador, and Henderson comes like a jolt. Besides, Chuck will never be anything but a first-rate politician. You'll have to get used to cheap cigars and four-ply whisky. When is ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... fortune than his merit. He had found warm and powerful assistants in both philosophers and women; he was a confirmed egotist, yet passed for a man who cared little for self. He was quick at matters of business, and he obtained the character of a deep and profound politician. It must, however, be admitted, that he was witty, gallant, and gifted with manners so elegant and fascinating, that they never failed to remove the first unfavourable impression caused by his excessive plainness. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... this motley crew his nostrils twitched with fastidious disdain. He played, but his interest was not in the wheel. Durand had promised that there would be women and that one of them should be bribed to make a claim upon Clay at the proper moment. He had an unhappy feeling that the gang politician had thrown him down in this. If so, what did that mean? Had Durand some card up his sleeve? Was he using him as a catspaw to ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... thim; an', be hivins, me uncle Mike cud niver get a shot at a redcoat, though he searched high an' low f'r wan. Thin a big rain-storm come, an' they was no tents to protect thim; an' they set aroun', shiverin' an' swearin'. Me uncle Mike was a bit iv a politician; an' he organized a meetin' iv th' lads that had come over with him, an' sint a comity to wait on th' major gin'ral. 'Dorney,' says me uncle Mike, f'r he was chairman iv th' comity, 'Dorney,' he says, 'me an' me associated warriors wants to know,' he says. 'What ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... my observations may hereafter appear to you, assure yourself they will all be the genuine dictates of my mind, and I hope will prove acceptable on that account. Remember that you have laid the foundation of this correspondence; you well know that I am neither a philosopher, politician, divine, nor naturalist, but a simple farmer. I flatter myself, therefore, that you'll receive my letters as conceived, not according to scientific rules to which I am a perfect stranger, but agreeable ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... of his work had by that time reached a portentous size, wherefore it is quite possible that the official readers may have been lenient, or cursory, over their work; but when Pius V., the strenuous ascetic foe of heresy, stepped into the place of the indolent Pius IV., jurist and politician rather than Churchman, it is more than probable that certain amateur inquisitors at Bologna, fully as anxious to work Cardan's ruin as to safeguard the faith, may have busied themselves in hunting through his various works for passages upon ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... but he shot and fished more than he read, and had become, since his residence at the Privets, very fond of the outside of his books. Nevertheless, he went on buying books, and was rather proud of his library. He had travelled a good deal, and was a politician,—somewhat scandalising his own tenants and other Bullhamptonites by voting for the liberal candidates for his division of the county. The Marquis of Trowbridge did not know him, but regarded him as an objectionable person, who did not understand the nature of the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... from the point of view of the party politician, it Is quite different. Each party has its elaborate "machine" for electing state and national officers; and in order to be kept at its maximum of efficiency the machine must be kept at work on all occasions, whether such occasions are properly concerned with differences in ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... Ah, wise politician, ah, clear and rational spirit, who knows and tells others to do the duty which lies nearest them; who sees (as old Greek Hesiod says), how much bigger the half is than the whole; who, in the hour of his country's deepest degradation, had divine courage to say, our deliverance ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... was showing less signs of wear than anyone else. Scott was exulting in his position as supervisor of the city search for Giles, glorying in his position as relayer of the details of the state search for the errant politician. ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire

... for his great kindness, assuring him that he should always feel himself under a heavy debt of gratitude, never dreaming that the scheming politician was luring him into a snare. He put his whole heart and soul into preparation to leave. To him it was the great event of his life; and it would have been, if Sir William Keith had been an honest man instead of a rogue. For an American youth, ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... governor of Georgia resigned his office to enter the smuggling trade on a large scale. The scandal was notorious, and the rapidly growing abolition sentiment demanded that Congress so amend its laws as to make manstealers at least as subject to them as other malefactors. But Congress tried the politician's device of passing laws which would satisfy the abolitionists, the slave trader, and the slave owner as well. To-day the duty of the nation seems to have been so clear that we have scant patience with the paltering policy ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... tells him condescendingly that it is a superfluous task, as instinct and intuition and the naive psychology of the street will be more successful than any measurements with chronoscopes and kymographs. Do we not know how the skilful politician or the efficient manager looks through the mind of a man at the first glance? The life insurance agent has hardly entered the door before he knows how this particular mind must be handled. Every commercial traveller knows more than any psychologist can tell him, and even ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... talk at Babel's Tower This interchange of tedious chat! War can be made in half-an-hour And why should Peace take more than that? All this procrastination, worst of crimes, Annoys the Paris Politician of The Times. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... of Treason damn'd; By Esau's Hands, and Jacobs Voice disclos'd; And timely to th' Abhorring World expos'd. Nay, what's more wondrous, this wast-paper Tool, A nameless, unsubscrib'd, and useless scrowl, Was, by a Politician great in Fame, (His Chains foreseen a Month before they came) Preserv'd on purpose, by his prudent care, To brand his Soul, and ev'n his Life ensnare. But then the Geshuritish Troop, well-Oath'd, And for the sprucer Face, well-fed, and Cloath'd. These to the Bar Obedient Swearers go, With all ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... a self-seeking politician? Give evidence. How could he justify the means that he used to win Brutus? In what respect did he surpass Brutus? What case did he make against Caesar? How far was he right? What weakness and what strength does ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely

... errand-boy in a store, a messenger-boy for a telegraph company, an emergency sweep about a saloon, and finally a bartender. This last was his true beginning, for he was discovered by a keen-minded politician and encouraged to run for the state legislature and to study law. Even as a stripling what things had he not learned—robbery, ballot-box stuffing, the sale of votes, the appointive power of leaders, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... the radical politician's view, my dear," answered the vicar. "Let a man be apprenticed to a skilled trade, and carry a bricklayer's hod, or a carpenter's rule. Let him only wear slops and work in an engine-room, or use a mason's trowel—so long as he does these things and receives his wages weekly, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the decks flooded. 'Tis three years to-day since I parted with my family in Washington, on the day in which Washington's great republic was humiliated by the inauguration as President of a vulgar democratic politician, in whom even the great events in which, by a singular destiny, he has been called to take a part, have not been able to sink the mountebank. These three years of anxiety, vigilance, exposure, and excitement, have made me an old man, and sapped my health, rendering repose ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... was now soon to outrun the accursed greed for more slave territory. The race was unequal. The whole world joined in the race for gold. The hunger for wealth seized all alike, the common laborer, the small farmer, the merchant, the mechanic, the politician, the lawyer and the clergyman, the soldier and the sailor from the army and navy; from all countries and climes came the gold seeker; only the slaveholder with his slaves alone were left behind. There was no place for the latter with freemen who themselves swung the pick and rocked the cradle ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... I traversed on horseback the solitudes of the Peloponnesus. In Italy, I have established relations with people of all faiths and conditions, and whenever the opportunity has occurred, have questioned with equal curiosity the merchant and the savant, the fisherman and the politician. When I appear to be resting myself, I am really making those patient investigations, indispensable to all who would conscientiously study ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... with some coldness, for I shared the dislike which my father used to profess for this unfrocked priest and perjured politician; but his manner was so polished and engaging that it was hard to hold ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... clearly the mental bias of their author, who is described as being peculiar and eccentric. Many of the men of genius who have assisted in making the history of the world have been the victims of epilepsy. Julius Caesar, military leader, statesman, politician, and author, was an epileptic. Twice on the field of battle he was stricken down by this disorder. On one occasion, while seated at the tribune, he was unable to rise when the senators, consuls, and praetors paid him a visit of ceremony and honor. They were offended at his seeming lack of respect, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... no," said the crow, delighted to have won over one important politician to his cause so easily; "we must wait and watch events. Of course this little conversation is ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... religion. Assassination of tyrants, whether in public or private life, may be wickedness, or it may be a laudable outburst of public spirit, who knows? Which of us is sure that all property is not theft? Plato's views on marriage and infanticide may be correct: the Nihilist may be your true politician; and all our religious knowledge dwindles down to the confession of Protagoras: "Concerning Gods, I find no clear evidence whether they are or are not, or what manner of beings they are." These are the sceptical tremors which this denial induces. But ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... published. Torrubia mentions a manuscript called Descubrimiento, conquista, pacificacion y poblacion de ias Islas Philipinas, which was dated 1607, and dedicated to "his Catholic Majesty, King Don Phelipe III, our sovereign." Morga combined the three functions of historian, politician, and soldier, and his character is many sided and complex. He is spoken of in high terms as an historian, and Rizal, as well as Blumentritt, exalts him above all other ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... trace the Stuarts to Henry VII. He treated the Tudors as interlopers. 'You pretend,' he continued, that the money expected from Arenberg was to 'forward the Peace with Spain. Your jargon was peace, which meant Spanish invasion and Scottish subversion.' Cobham, argued Coke, never was a politician, nor a swordsman. Ralegh was both. Ralegh and Cobham both were discontented, and Cobham's discontent grew by Ralegh. Such was Ralegh's machiavellian policy that he would never confer with but one at once. He would talk with none but Cobham; 'because, saith ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... question is how far he is bound to make what he considers the interests of the nation his guiding light, and how far he should subordinate what he believes to be their interests to their prejudices and wishes. One of the first lessons that every active politician has to learn is that he is a trustee bound to act for men whose opinions, aims, desires and ideals are often very different from his own. No man who holds the position of member of Parliament should divest himself of this consideration, though it applies to different classes ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... rates of discount and exchange. He will also probably glance at the 'latest intelligence' and the most recent telegrams, but only with the view of forming an opinion as to how the world of commerce and speculation will be affected thereby. The politician finds matter to his taste in the leading articles, the Parliamentary debates and the letters of foreign correspondents, and, perhaps, after a careful perusal of them, flatters himself that he has at last mastered the intricacies of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... were a politician," said Carnac. "Of course I'm a politician," was the inflammable reply. "What's commerce without politics? It's politics that makes the commerce possible. There's that fellow Barouche—Barode Barouche—he's got no money, but he's a Minister, and he can make you rich or poor by planning ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... some misgivings as to his sufficiency of venom, was allowed to try his hand in this capacity. Next appeared, likewise seeking a service, the mysterious man in Red, who had aided Bonaparte in his ascent to imperial power. He was examined as to his qualifications by an aspiring politician, but finally rejected, as lacking familiarity with the cunning tactics of the ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sister of the young physician who travelled with Lord Byron. Gabriele Rossetti was a native of Yasto, in the district of the Abruzzi, kingdom of Naples. He was a patriotic poet of very considerable distinction; and, as a politician, took a part in extorting from Ferdinand I. the Constitution of 1820. After the failure of the Neapolitan insurrection, owing to the treachery of the King (who asked leave of absence on a pretext of ill-health, and returned with an overwhelming Austrian army), the insurrectionists were compelled ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again. I can give you the memories of my ancient wisdom: mere scraps and leavings; but I no longer really care ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw

... summing up of American literature was S. S. Cox, who made himself known early in the fifties when Ohio was far less heard of than now, by his lively book of travels, "A Buckeye Abroad." He was a journalist and a politician; he was three times elected to Congress from Columbus, and when he went to live in New York, he was three times sent to the House of Representatives from that city, where he is commemorated by a statue. He was a native of Muskingum County, and was ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells



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