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Subvert   Listen
verb
Subvert  v. t.  (past & past part. subverted; pres. part. subverting)  
1.
To overturn from the foundation; to overthrow; to ruin utterly. "These are his substance, sinews, arms, and strength, With which he yoketh your rebellious necks, Razeth your cities, and subverts your towns." "This would subvert the principles of all knowledge."
2.
To pervert, as the mind, and turn it from the truth; to corrupt; to confound.
Synonyms: To overturn; overthrow; destroy; invert; reverse; extinguish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subvert" Quotes from Famous Books



... slavery in Kansas; the frequent murders and mobbings, in the south, of northern citizens; the present turbulence and violence of southern society; the manifest fear of the freedom of speech and of the press; the danger of insurrection; and now the attempt to subvert the government rather than submit to a constitutional election—these events, disguise it as you may, have aroused a counter irritation in the north that will not allow its representatives to yield merely for peace, more than is prescribed by the letter and spirit of the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... such a substitution. On the contrary, Christ had the power to lay down his life; and he did so, in perfect accordance with the appointment of God. In submitting to the death of the cross, he did not subvert, he fulfilled the end ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports," adds, "In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them." "And let us," he further adds, "with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett

... that they may be sound in the faith; there must be wisdom to rebuke some within long-suffering, and there must be courage to suppress and stop the mouths of others. The apostle tells Titus of some whose mouths must be stopped, or else they would subvert whole houses, Titus i. 11. Where this courage hath been wanting, not only whole houses, but whole churches have been subverted. And Paul tells the Galatians, that when he saw some endeavour to bring the churches into bondage, that he did not give place to them, no not ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan

... immediately recognised the features of that goblin, who from the hour of his birth, had declared himself his adversary. He had been repeatedly used to the visits of this malicious spirit, who delighted to subvert all his schemes, and to baffle his deepest projects. This was the only misfortune, the sovereign of the hills had ever known; this was the only instance in which he had at any time been taught what it was to have his power controled and his nod unobeyed. He ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... Indians.... Dissatisfaction of Carolina with the proprietors.... Rupture with Spain.... Combination to subvert the proprietary government.... Revolution completed.... Expedition from the Havanna against Charleston.... Peace with Spain.... The proprietors surrender their interest to the crown.... The province divided.... Georgia settled.... Impolicy of the first regulations.... ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... brown beard and deep-set, dark-brown eyes. His hair was not cut quite to the conventional shortness, perhaps: there was a lock that would fall in an unruly manner across the broad brow with an obstinacy no hairdresser could subvert. But, in all other respects, he was very much as other men: he dressed well, if rather carelessly, and presented to the world a somewhat imposing personality. He did not wear gloves, and he had no flower at his button-hole; but ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... tumults and wars of his reign, Charles V in 1555 resigned all his crowns to his son, Philip II of Spain, and his brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary. Pope Paul IV, wishing to subvert the Spanish power, entered into a league with Henry II of France against Philip. Guise, who had warred successfully with Charles V, against whom he defended Metz when it was won for France (1553), ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... by themselves or their families had brought an odium on the throne by the prodigal dispensation of its bounties towards them, who afterwards joined in the rebellions arising from the discontents of which they were themselves the cause: men who helped to subvert that throne to which they owed, some of them, their existence, others all that power which they employed to ruin their benefactor. If any bounds are set to the rapacious demands of that sort of people, or that others are permitted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... used to cheat them out of it; if, by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions—in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it. Again, a people may be unwilling or unable to fulfill the duties which a particular form ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... uprising which broke out in Wittenberg in the closing days of the month of February, 1522, finally decided Luther, at the risk of his life, to quit his exile and to fight the devil, who was trying to subvert his good doctrine by such wicked practises. The world knows that it was Luther who quelled the riot in his town. Luther's face was ever sternly set against those who wanted to wage the Lord's wars with the devil's weapons. No murder or sacrilege that ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... 1775 came, and the Provincial Congress met at Concord, Massachusetts, and took upon itself the power to make and carry out laws. Immediately General Gage issued a proclamation stating that the Congress was "an unlawful assembly, tending to subvert government and to lead directly to sedition, treason, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... implacable resentment. These members of the council were removed from it for their disobedience; nevertheless they had such influence among the people, as to occasion great trouble to the governor, and totally to subvert his authority; in consequence of which, Joseph West appeared again at the head of the colony, and gave his assent to several laws made in it. During which time the people followed their former practice, of inveigling ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... member of the collective group will continuously strive to get for himself to the utmost limit regardless, if it could be discovered, of what is rightfully due. And a plan of Society which each member of Society is striving to subvert is doomed ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... great reverses, had "neither learned nor forgotten anything." Polignac, his incapable and imperious minister, the tool of the Jesuits, had, since 1829, impugned every national right, and, at length, ventured by the ordinances of the 25th July, 1830, to subvert the constitution. During three days, from the 27th to the 30th of July, the greatest confusion reigned in Paris; the people rose in thousands; murderous conflicts took place in the streets between them and ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... I have more largely entered into the history of the party who attempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, than had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and those personages are of some importance and curiosity; but were imperfectly ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... first place I have to say, that if two could be found who were willing to go together and live in this way, if they were not in some way severely punished, they might thank their good stars for it. In the next place I have to say that such cohabitation would wholly subvert the order of society by giving loose reins to lust which would break in upon the legal relationships of the social compact to an extent that would place us on a social level with ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp to themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... took it.—"Within," said he, "is the life of a land; And behold! I breathe on the coal, I breathe on the dales of the east, And silence falls on forest and shore; the voice of the feast Is quenched, and the smoke of cooking; the rooftree decays and falls On the empty lodge, and the winds subvert deserted walls." ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... now of using the librarian's money. All doubt had been chased away. He was perfectly clear and saw in broad outlines a world- wide, peaceful revolution which was to subvert all existing values. Pelle knew that poverty is not confined to any country. He had once before brought forward an invincible idea. His system of profit-sharing must be the starting-point for a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... subjugated a nation by winning the loyalties of the oppressed and downtrodden. The communists first win the support of liberal-intellectuals, and then use them to subvert and pervert all established mores and ideals and social and ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... rightly holding that trade was to some extent the natural foe to war, appear to me to have pushed the consequences to be derived from that argument much too far. They allowed too little for other causes which tend to subvert peace, such as racial and religious differences, dynastic considerations, the wish to acquire national unity, which tends to the agglomeration of small States, and the ambition which excites the desire ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... against continental foes, she also must do all that can be done to encourage intercourse. To develop traffic between Great Britain and Ireland is the policy which both experience and theory point to as advantageous to both countries; to subvert this policy and make Ireland's commerce local and self-sufficing, seems to be the narrow and mistaken ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... of whatever kind, must always be administered with strict regard for the interests of the governed; and it is the endeavor to subvert and overcome this legitimate principle of government, through the mistaken selfishness of ruling powers, which attempt to administer in behalf of their own lusts and in violation of universal ends, which has kept and is keeping up now the convulsions that shake ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... of these two older children is yours as you ponder what you can do to subvert the growing evil in your home. You indulge much in vain regrets—vain, indeed, so far as you are concerned. But listen, mother—you who would lay down your life to spare Mary from disgrace and ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... propose to arbitrate between the affirmations of the Conservatives, on the one hand, that the animus of the opposition was a spirit of disloyalty toward the Government, an unprincipled and unconstitutional striving to subvert the foundations of royalty, and introduce a substantially democratic form of government, and the complaints of the opposition, on the other hand, that the ministry was trying to domineer over the House of Delegates, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... abide with him. In Bromage v. Genning, a prohibition was sought in the Kings' Bench against a suit in the marches of Wales for the specific performance of a covenant to grant a lease, and Coke said that it would subvert the intention of the covenantor, since he intends it to be at his election either to lose the damages or to make the lease. Sergeant Harra for the plaintiff confessed that he moved the matter against his conscience, and a prohibition was granted. This goes further ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... the basis of the commonwealth. Destroy family confidence and family government, and you destroy society, subvert civil government, and bring destruction on the human race. Mankind are so generally agreed on this subject, that adultery, even among heathens, is regarded and punished as a crime. The whole school of Infidel writers and anti-Bible ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... reply to Descartes, it is not a warrantable deduction, that because we have an idea of a thing, we must therefore conclude it exists; to give validity to such a mode of reasoning would be productive of the greatest mischief; would, in fact, tend to subvert all human institutions. Our imagination presents us with the idea of a sphinx, or of an hippogriff, besides a thousand other fantastical beings; are we, on that authority, to insist that these things really exist? ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... Tholosanum, and will produce no better effects. [2050]"Let them lay it up safe, and make their conveyances never so close, lock and shut door," saith Chrysostom, "yet fraud and covetousness, two most violent thieves are still included, and a little gain evil gotten will subvert the rest of their goods." The eagle in Aesop, seeing a piece of flesh now ready to be sacrificed, swept it away with her claws, and carried it to her nest; but there was a burning coal stuck to it by chance, which unawares consumed her young ones, nest, and all ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... of 14th January, No. 1. The accused are between fifty and sixty in number, and are mostly members of the Reform Committee. They have been arrested on charge of treason, and of seeking to subvert the State by inviting the co-operation and entrance into it of an armed force. The proceedings are based, I understand, on sworn information, and the trials will take place before High Court. The accused are being well treated, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... it, the king sent a message to them to say that in his opinion the earl had not been guilty of treason, or of any attempt to subvert the laws; and that several things which had been alleged in the trial, and on which the bill of attainder chiefly rested, were not true. He was willing, however, if it would satisfy the enemies of the earl, to have him convicted of a misdemeanor, and made incapable of ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Morgan could not hear—their voices, too, were too low to be recognized—but he had no doubt at all regarding their identity. Seven weeks of their fellowship had blessed (or cursed) him with a familiarity with their style and proportions such as no manner of wraps and tricksy half-lights could subvert. With a full heart and twitching lips, Mr. Morgan dwelt blasphemously upon the several destinies for which, to his mind, their untimely appearance ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. Yet a contemporary historian has observed that fire could scarcely consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the strength of man was insufficient to subvert the foundations of ancient structures. Some truth may possibly be concealed in his devout assertion that the wrath of Heaven supplied the imperfections of hostile rage, and that the proud Forum of Rome, decorated with the statues ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... minutes, so the moon goes round three times, while Mars does once, hence it rises in the west and sets in the east, making one day of Mars equal three of its months. This moon changes every two hours, passing all phases in a single martial night; is anomalous in the solar system, and tends to subvert that theory of cosmic evolution wherein a rotating gaseous sun cast off concentric rings, afterward becoming planets. Astronomers were not satisfied with the telescope; true, they beheld the phenomena of the solar system; planets rotating on axes, and satellites revolving ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... uncompromisingly pungent in tone and severe in its method of dealing with President Johnson. "The world," said General Logan, "in after times will read the history of the depth to which political and official perfidy can descend. His great aim and purpose has been to subvert law, usurp authority, insult and outrage Congress, reconstruct the rebel States in the interest of treason, and insult the memories and resting-places ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... enemies collected all its venom. This circumstance seems to prove that his abilities must have been great indeed, to have kept such crowds silent. Several Catholic writers lament that his book was burnt, and regret the loss of Pletho's work; which, they say, was not designed to subvert the Christian religion, but only to unfold the system of Plato, and to collect what he and other philosophers had written ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... whether he had forfeited the throne or had abdicated. The latter designation was agreed on, for in a full assembly of the Lords and Commons, met in convention, it was resolved, in spite of James's protest, "that King James II. having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... vain for any stable authority, we now look in vain for any trace of constitutional freedom. And we, Gentlemen, in the meantime, have been exempt from both those calamities which have wrought ruin all around us. The madness of 1848 did not subvert the British throne. The reaction which followed has not destroyed ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... pradhana, as well as the individual souls, is of infinite duration. Now, the omniscient Lord either defines the measure of the pradhana, the souls, and himself, or does not define it. Both alternatives subvert the doctrine under discussion. For, on the former alternative, the pradhana, the souls, and the Lord, being all of them of definite measure, must necessarily be of finite duration; since ordinary experience teaches that all things of definite ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... of '76 fought for Magna Charta. These principles had been prominent in our Constitution until a Republican majority attempted destruction and civil war. Kings had made efforts to destroy its power and subvert its influence. Not a single noble family existed in England but which had lost a member in its defense. Society was organized to protect it, and all good and true men are required to maintain its teachings. "The assassins of liberty are now in power, but a reaction ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... declared my love and received the assurance of its return. By means of this exercise my resolution daily grew stronger, until at last I had piled together such a mass of obstinacy as it would have taken a cataclysm of nature to subvert. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... little of his time at home, and, during the months he passes in London or elsewhere, I have a chance of recovering the ground I had lost, and overcoming with good the evil he has wrought by his wilful mismanagement. But then it is a bitter trial to behold him, on his return, doing his utmost to subvert my labours and transform my innocent, affectionate, tractable darling into a selfish, disobedient, and mischievous boy; thereby preparing the soil for those vices he has so successfully cultivated in ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... the first court exhibit a Charge against him, containing the highest Treasons that ever was wrought upon the theatre of England; That a king of England trusted to keep the law, that had taken an oath so to do, that had tribute paid him for that end, should be guilty of a wicked Design to subvert and destroy our Laws, and introduce an Arbitrary and Tyrannical Government, in defiance of the Parliament and their Authority, set up his standard for War against his Parliament and People: And I did humbly pray, in the behalf of the people of England, that ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... throwing themselves on their knees in his path, implored him not to leave them to the inroads of a ravager; not to abandon them to the tyranny of their own lords; who, unrestrained by a king, or a regent like himself, would soon subvert his good laws, and reign despots over every district in the country. Wallace answered their entreaties with the language of encouragement; adding, that he was not their prince, to lawfully maintain a disputed power over the legitimate chiefs ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... on you to come, to furnish us assistance in men, provisions, and munitions, that we may drive out the army of the North, who would subvert our government and expel us from ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... representation or to procure relief by an amendment of the Constitution. But the measures of the Government are to be recognized as valid, and consequently supreme, until these remedies shall have been effectually tried, and any attempt to subvert those measures or to render the laws subordinate to State authority, and afterwards to resort to constitutional redress, is worse than evasive. It would not be a proper resistance to "a government of unlimited powers," as has been sometimes ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... farce to extremes. So I am a prisoner in my own house! Can it be that they will carry out their diabolical threats and have me tried as a suspect? Nonsense! I will subvert their plans and turn the tables ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... what he said; for he told us the people of a State where the constitution gives the same weight to a smaller as to a greater number, might take the remedy into their own hands; meaning, as I understood him, that a mere majority might at their pleasure subvert the constitution and government of a State,—which he seemed to think was the essence of democracy. Our little State has a constitution that could not stand a day against such doctrines, and yet we glory in it as the best in the Union. It is ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empires, and strike a blow in the world that should resound ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... deprive the king of his crown; to murder the king, the queen, and the prince; to stir up rebellion and sedition in the kingdom; to bring a miserable destruction upon the subjects; to change, alter, and subvert the religion here established; to ruinate the state of the commonwealth, and to bring in strangers to invade it." That such were their objects there can be ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury

... representatives of official Russia, who made it clear to him that he was expected to play the part of a roi faineant; on the other he was compelled to make terms with the Bulgarian politicians, who, intoxicated with newly won liberty, prosecuted their quarrels with a crude violence which threatened to subvert his authority and to plunge the nation in anarchy. After attempting to govern under these conditions for nearly two years, the prince, with the consent of the tsar Alexander III., assumed absolute power (May 9, 1881), and a suspension of the ultra-democratic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... with a kind of grief one recognizes its limitations, a kind of surprise at its shortcomings, which, nevertheless, are not shortcomings that impair its supreme effect. This, I take it, is the intimation of a mystical authority in marriage against which divorce sins in vain, which no recreancy can subvert, and by virtue of which it claims eternally its own the lovers united in it; though they seem to become haters, it cannot release them to happiness in a new ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... dreadful Effects, Spirituous Liquors have on our Country and our Bodies. They are really a sort of Liquid Flames, which corrode the Coats of the Stomach, thicken the Juices, and enflame the Blood, and in a Word, absolutely subvert the whole Animal Oeconomy. The frequent use of them, has had as bad Effects on our poor Natives, as Gin in Great Britain; and besides driving many Wretches into Thefts, Quarrels, Murders and Robberies, it kills as many ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... of maintaining the solidarity of the family—a necessity (as the late John Fiske luminously pointed out) due to the long period of infancy in man—has forced mankind to adopt certain social laws to regulate the interrelations of men and women. Any strong attempt to subvert these laws is dangerous not only to that tissue of convention called society but also to the development of the human race. And here we find our dramatists forced—first by the spirit of the times, which gives them their theme, and second by the nature of the dramatic art, ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find—'D' you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... of the celebrated Mirza Abdul Cossim, the first mushtehed (divine) of Persia; a man who, if he were to give himself sufficient stir, would make the people believe any doctrine that he might choose to promulgate. Such is his influence, that many believe he could even subvert the authority of the Shah himself, and make his subjects look upon his firmans as worthless, as so much waste paper. But the truth is, he is a good man; and, except stoning his sufi, and holding us wandering dervishes as the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... themselves a variation from former professions. She did so, when she cut off three articles from her original forty-two, and reduced them to the present thirty-nine; and she certainly would not lose her corporate identity, nor subvert her fundamental principles, though she were to leave ten of the thirty-nine which remain out of any future confession of her faith. She would limit her corporate powers, on the contrary, and she would oppose her fundamental principles, if she ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... insidious danger which belittles freedom itself in the interest of curtailing some special desire. "In order to prove that the Americans have no right to their liberties," he said in the famous Speech on Conciliation with America (1775), "we are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own." The way for the later despotism of the younger Pitt, was, as Burke saw, prepared by those who persuaded Englishmen of the paltry character of the American contest. His own receipt was sounder. In the Speech ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... people of the loyal States did not religiously obey. "The South has no right to demand any other compromise. The Constitution was the bond of union; and it was the South that sought to change it by amendments, or to subvert it by force. The Disunionists of the Southern States are traitors to their country, and must be, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... pretended negative would be in effect a positive;—as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself, whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... nature. It is the error of every man who denies the possibility of any mystery beyond the limits of his reason, of every one who, discarding revelation in defence of the pretended rights of Reason, Equality, and Liberty, seeks to subvert the whole fabric of the Christian religion." B. 4.] to detect in the writings of Voltaire and of the leading Encyclopedists, a conspiracy not only against the Altar but also against the Throne. He severely denounces the "Last Will of Jean Meslier,—that famous ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... avidities of his people, were to make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency, were to depreciate their most radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, make their minds narrow, and their tastes 'national'—what! a statesman who should do all this, which his people would have to do penance for throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a statesman would be GREAT, would he?"—"Undoubtedly!" replied the other old ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... religion, and will aid in the destruction of that Republic." "I have conversed with many of the sovereigns and princes of Europe, and they have unanimously expressed these opinions relative to the government of the United States, and their determination to subvert it." ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... rule to water with their blood the moors, where they rendered homage to the King of Zion; while, in the sunshine of courtly favour, ecclesiastics moved, who without fear bartered, for their own sordid gain, the blood-bought liberties of the Church of God, and showed themselves as willing to subvert the civil rights of their countrymen as they had been to destroy their religious ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... beginning to ridicule the nation-wide precautions against what were coming to be considered merely a gang of super-criminals. It was even whispered that President Hargreaves had not been kidnapped at all. The Freemen's Party accused the Government of a plot to subvert popular liberties. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... there is not any other medicine whatsoever so effectual to restore a crazy constitution and cheer a dreary mind, or so likely to subvert that gloomy empire of the spleen which tyrannizeth over the better sort (as they are called) of these free nations, and maketh them, in spite of their liberty and property, more wretched slaves than even the subjects of absolute power who breathe clear ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... consumed with terrors." The progressive tendency of vice and virtue to reap each its appropriate harvest is finally illustrated by Bishop Butler, best of all perhaps in his picture of an imaginary kingdom of the good, which would peacefully subvert all others, and fill the earth. Indeed, as soon as we leave what is immediately before our eyes, and glance at the annals of the world, we behold so many manifestations of God, that we may adduce as a sixth proof of Providence the facts of history. The ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... of commerce and its gains led naturally to the possession of wealth. This, from the quasi-omnipotence with which it invests men—enabling them not only to command the best energies, but also, in many cases, to subvert the very principles of their fellows—has, in the vast majority of cases, an overpowering sway on human opinion: a sway that will endure till the Millennium shall have secured for the righteous alone the sovereignty of the world. Likewise, as cities were founded and constitutions established, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... object unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the least scrupulous, and the most consistent of those who battle against slavery recognize the same fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdom and human efforts cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the Constitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into distracted fragments that common country which Providence brought into one nation, through a continued miracle of almost two ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... thieves. I urged that he should either allow me to purchase rations, or else feed them from the palace as Rumanika did; but he always turned a deaf ear, or said that what Sunna his father had introduced it ill became him to subvert; and unless my men helped themselves they would ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... is almost a religion with the celestials, to subvert which requires great caution, persistency and strength. If anything can be justified by old custom, or even precedent, it is considered to be unassailable, no matter how harmful ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... consecrated by her great apostle; clanship even penetrated into the monasteries, and gave rise later on to some abuses. But, perhaps, the saint thought it better to allow the existence of things which might lead to abuse than violently and at once to subvert customs, rooted by age in the very nature of the people, some of which it cost England, later on, centuries ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... shared by the most pious ministers of religion. Those who in their morning and evening prayers acknowledged the one true God, and praised him for the blessings of the seed-time and the harvest, were convinced that frail humanity could enter into a compact with the spirits of hell to subvert his laws and thwart all his merciful intentions. Successive popes, from Innocent VIII. downwards, promulgated this degrading doctrine, which spread so rapidly, that society seemed to be divided into two great factions, the bewitching and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... been desired by his ministers to connect himself—and the object was nothing less than a coalition of Northern Europe. He recapitulated the injuries which he had received from the pope, who at length was studying "to subvert the rest and peace of the realm;" "yea, and so much as in him was, utterly to destroy the same." The nobles and council, he said, for their own sake as well as for the sake of the kingdom, had entreated him ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... some Customs are particular; and tho' the Church of England be the established Church there, and handsom Provision be made for the Clergy, yet they have many Papists, and several Dissenters; which last may be supposed to be encouraged thro' Jesuitical Views to distract and subvert ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... greatness and his glory, depend on essential qualities. Brains every day become more precious than blood. You must give men new ideas, you must teach them new words, you must modify their manners, you must change their laws, you must root out prejudices, subvert convictions, if you wish to be great. Greatness no longer depends on rentals, the world is too rich; nor on pedigrees, the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... feel it in vain to resist. Of consequence, a belief in astrology has the most unfavourable tendency as to the morality of man; and, were it not that the sense of the liberty of our actions is so strong that all the reasonings in the world cannot subvert it, there would be a fatal close to all human dignity and all ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... Thy intention, I know, is to subvert the institutions it has been the labour of my lifetime to establish. Thou hast never rejoiced ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... longer doubted that there was a formed party deliberately bent upon the subversion of measures, which in its consequences would subvert the government; when I saw that the undoing of the funding system in particular (which, whatever may be the original merits of that system, would prostrate the credit and honor of the nation, and bring the government into contempt with that description of men who are in every society ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or degrading greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very little care what ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... gentlemen, and at each side men with papers before them. 'May it please your lordship and Bailie McSweem, the prisoner being present we will now proceed.' He went on to explain that the prisoner was a member of one of those political associations that were plotting to subvert the government of the country, even thinking they could organize a revolution and drive his majesty from the throne. He need not dwell on the danger State and Church were in from the plottings of those desperate men, and the need of all upholders of the Crown ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... streets through all our sleepy quarters; and we may forget the stories and the play-grounds of our boyhood. But we have some possessions that not even the infuriate zeal of builders can utterly abolish and destroy. Nothing can abolish the hills, unless it be a cataclysm of nature, which shall subvert Edinburgh Castle itself and lay all her florid structures in the dust. And as long as we have the hills and the Firth, we have a famous heritage to leave our children. Our windows, at no expense to us, are mostly artfully stained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of his acquaintances. "When I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," he says, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to subvert both Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; and Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and Lynn, of excellent parts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... ever-flowing stream of slander and incitement to outrage are now upon us. What was dimly foreseen a few years ago has actually come to pass. We are at the present moment confronted with a murderous conspiracy, whose aim it is to subvert the Government of the country and to make British rule impossible by establishing general terrorism. Their organization is effective and far-reaching; their numbers are believed to be considerable; the leaders work in secret and are blindly obeyed ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... Potentates, and Kings, yea gods Of many a pleasant Realm and Province wide. So to the Coast of Jordan he directs His easie steps; girded with snaky wiles, 120 Where he might likeliest find this new-declar'd, This man of men, attested Son of God, Temptation and all guile on him to try; So to subvert whom he suspected rais'd To end his Raign on Earth so long enjoy'd: But contrary unweeting he fulfill'd The purpos'd Counsel pre-ordain'd and fixt Of the most High, who in full frequence bright Of Angels, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... substantive science, and as adequate to constitute a true, perfect, and philosophical system of universal religion. It was ruled by the Vice Chancellor that this bequest was void, on account of the evident tendency which the essay so described would have to demoralize society and subvert the church. Another decision, arising out of the same trial, is yet more curious. Mr. Hartley had left L200 for the best essay on Emigration, and appointed the American Minister trustee of the fund. This bequest was also declared void, on the ground that such ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... 255; and in an admirable letter of that great politician, Sir Francis Walsingham, who, with many others of the ministers of Elizabeth, was a favourer of the Puritans, till he detected their secret object to subvert the government. This letter is preserved in "Collier's Eccl. Hist." vol. ii. 607. They had begun to divide the whole country into classes, provincial synods, &c. They kept registers, which recorded all the heads of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Republic, and measures were sought for preserving it. But necessity, and indeed, it must be confessed, the general feeling of the people, consigned the execution of those measures to him who was to subvert the Republic. On his return to Paris Bonaparte spoke and acted like a man who felt his own power; he cared neither for flattery, dinners, nor balls,—his mind ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... thing here said should favour the attempt to defeat justice by technical objections; but there is, at the same time, much vulgar error on that subject, grounded on reasons which would tend to subvert all rules of law and legal procedure whatever. In the case above mentioned, the legislature had thought fit to impose on applicants for redress under the statute in question, a duty, which through haste or negligence had been overlooked, and which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... of them: the rulers promised that as time and the race went forward they would not make their rule more arbitrary; and the subjects said that, if the rulers observed these conditions, they would never subvert or permit others to subvert those kingdoms; the kings were to assist kings and peoples when injured, and the peoples were to assist peoples and kings in like manner. ...
— Laws • Plato

... admitted as a reason for receiving money privately, would constitute a precedent of the most dangerous nature to the Company's service. That, in attempting to justify the receipt and application of the said money, he has endeavored to establish principles of conduct in a Governor which tend to subvert all order and regularity in the conduct of public business, to encourage and facilitate fraud and corruption in all offices of pecuniary trust, and to defeat all inquiry into the misconduct of any person in whom pecuniary trust is reposed.—That the said ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the pictures of Ingres were treated as bad jokes. Ingres was accused of distortion, ugliness, and even of incompetence! His work was called "mad" and "puerile." He was derided as a pseudo-primitive, and hated as one who would subvert the great tradition by trying to put back the clock four hundred years. The same authorities discovered in 1824 that Constable's Hay Wain was the outcome of a sponge full of colour having been thrown at a canvas. Nous avons change ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... liberty—the result of living under the law. It is the great desire of Massachusetts to continue such legislation of progress and humanity. Those who are attempting to wrench the scepter of authority from the representatives of the people, to subvert the jurisdiction of her laws, are the enemies not only of progress, but of all present achievement, not only of what we hope for, but ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... absolutely hostile feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity of any kind causes to falter and faint amid the rude jostle of our selfish existence. The education of Christianity, it is true, the sympathy of a like experience and the example of women, may soften and, possibly, subvert this ugly characteristic of our sex; but it is originally there, and has likewise its analogy in the practice of our brute brethren, who hunt the sick or disabled member of the herd from among them, as an enemy. It is ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... misrepresent the North upon this very point. By systematic lying, they have induced thousands South to believe that the election of Lincoln was designed as an act of war upon slave institutions, and to subvert the Constitution that protects them in all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... than benefited by experience; and the French, being taught by the revolutionists to look for that relief from changes of government which such changes cannot afford, now expect that the restoration of the monarchy will produce plenty, as they were before persuaded that the first efforts to subvert it would ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... society. This is their golden age; for though such men would in any age have taken to some villainy or other, never could they have found a course at once so gainful and so safe. Long impunity has taught them to despise the laws which they defy, and the institutions which they are labouring to subvert; any further responsibility enters not into their creed, if that may be called a creed, in which all the articles are negative. I? we turn from politics to what should be humaner literature, and look at the self-constituted censors of whatever ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... imaginations differ. That of Berlioz, for example, was quite a new phenomenon; and as for the working principles of musical composition, they are as much subject to modification as any other form of human experimentation. Berlioz, himself, says that he never intended to subvert the laws of music, only to make a new and individual use of them. As he was no abstract maker of music, his autobiography—one of the most fascinating in the history of art, only to be compared with that ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... an earthly crime," said Mrs. Calvert, "for the due punishment of which the Almighty may be supposed to subvert the order of nature, it is fratricide. But tell me, dear friend, did you remark to what the subtile and hellish villain was endeavouring to ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... bearing the salutary yoke of laws and civil government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different object of glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger who employed the sword of the Goths not to subvert but to restore and maintain the prosperity of the ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... Strafford was the first, and perhaps the greatest blow. The whole conduct of that celebrated man proved that he had formed a deliberate scheme to subvert the fundamental laws of England. Those parts of his correspondence which have been brought to light since his death, place the matter beyond a doubt. One of his admirers has, indeed, offered to show "that the passages which Mr. Hallam has invidiously extracted ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... own money to purchase the necessaries of life for him. Distracted at the sudden death of her master, and in the hope of saving him from damnation, she assisted Madame Felicite Rougon to destroy his great work on heredity, which in her narrow-minded bigotry she believed was intended to subvert true religion. The work of destruction completed, she went away to live by herself at Sainte-Marthe, as she refused to serve any other master than the one she had been with so many ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... to a small part of the Roman world; and the provinces had been long since accustomed to endure the same sacrilegious rapine, from the tyranny of princes and proconsuls, who could not be suspected of any design to subvert the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... death of James II at St. Germains (5 Sept., 1701) Louis broke his vow (made at Ryswick) not to do anything to disturb or subvert the government of England, and forthwith proclaimed the late king's son to be heir to his father's throne. The whole English nation was stirred against the French king for having dared to acknowledge as their sovereign the boy who had been held ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... men who did these things—the midnight masqueraders—were rebels still in their hearts. She called them so in hers at least—enemies of the country, striving dishonorably to subvert its laws. She did not keep in mind that to every Southern man and woman, save those whom the national act brought forth to civil life, the Nation is a thing remote and secondary. To them the State is first, and always so far first as to make the country a dim, distant ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... is a vulture vile, That feedeth on the heart of pride, And finds no rest, when all is tried, For worlds cannot confine the one Th' other lists and bounds hath none And both subvert the mind, the state, Procure destruction, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... for glory, If you sigh to live in story, If you burn with patriot zeal; Seize this bright, auspicious hour, Chase those venal tools of power, Who subvert the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Roman emperors claimed divine honors, there was an element of treason in their propagandism. The terrible persecutions which so long devastated the early Church found their supposed justification in the plea of self-defence against a system which threatened to subvert cherished and time-honored institutions. Candid writers, like Archdeacon Farrar, admit that Christianity did hasten the overthrow of the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... that all who should be appointed to the prelatic dignity, should enjoy the privilege of sitting and voting in Parliament. The pretence was, that these persons would attend better to the interests of the Church than could be done by laymen; the intention was, to introduce the prelatic order and subvert the Presbyterian Church. And, that this might be done quietly and imperceptibly, the question respecting the influence which these parliamentary representatives of the Church should have in the government of the Church itself, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... commissioned to supersede the apostolic discipline. When the African father attacked infant baptism he obviously acted under this conviction; and whilst seeking to set aside the arrangements of the Church of his own age, he felt no scruple in venturing at the same time to subvert ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... "Trying to subvert the United States," Malone went on. "Reducing everything to chaos. And that brings in everything else, Tom. That brings in the unions and the gang ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... might yet be termed. But impiety was never the result of Transcendentalism. Its advocates endeavored rather to prove the adaptability of a generous and catholic spirit of Philosophy to religion than to subvert it. They never advanced to a love of Strauss and Feuerbach, and men of the second generation, of whom G.H. Lewes may be taken as a type, have generally been regarded by them as the Girondists regarded the Jacobins. Both urge reform, the Vergniaud and the Robespierre, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... pour etud. l'Hist., iii. 8., a Paris, 1735.) That it was published previously to the famous Mentz Bible of this date is altogether impossible; and was the figure 6 a misprint for 8? or should we attempt to subvert it into 9? The editio princeps of the Latin version by Angelus is in Roman letter, and is a very handsome specimen of Vicenza typography in 1475, when it was set forth "ab Hermano Leuilapide," alias ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... implicit reliance upon the power of God, she requested Abraham to take Hagar, her Egyptian handmaid, in order that she might obtain children by her. It is scarcely possible to imagine a proposal more calculated to subvert the comfort of her family, or more illustrative of an unbelieving spirit. She could not rely upon the slow but certain operations of a superintending Providence to fulfil those promises which had been given; although a humble faith ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... discountenanced and loathed; that a Frenchman was considered as a man always to be suspected; that young men were forbidden by their parents, in many instances, to associate with them, they considering their company and habits as tending to subvert their morals, and to render them frivolous and insincere. I added that in America as well as everywhere else there were bad men, men of no principles, whose consciences never stand in the way of their ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... professor of church history at St. Andrews, was processed before the judicatories of this church, for maintaining a scheme of dangerous and most pernicious principles, which he published to the world, having a manifest tendency to subvert revealed religion, and expose the exercise of serious godliness, under the notion of enthusiasm; to advance self-love, as the leading, principle and motive in all human actions whatever, and to destroy the self-sufficiency of God, making him a debtor to his creatures: yet though ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... Cicero and Cato for a while saved the commonwealth, and checked the future Dictator in his first efforts to subvert the liberties of Rome, happy for him and for his country if it had been ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... Cowes to Eaglehurst; as if there were not already conventicles enough on shore for those who are disposed to separate themselves from the established church, without the aid of a floating chapel, furnished by the government agent to subvert the present order of things. On this point, you know, I was always a liberal thinker, but a firm friend to the church, as being essential to the best interests of the state. An old college chum of ours, who has been unusually fortunate in obtaining ecclesiastical preferment, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... spells on me. Let him come, and once for all Wave in vain his conjuring rod! We shall see who is this God, Whom their God the Christians call. By my hand must Patrick fall, Were it but to see if he Can escape his destiny, Or my will subvert and master, He this Bishop, he this Pastor, He Pope's Legate, ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... Islands were threatened by a French expedition. It was then stated, as reiterated by President Tyler to Congress, that, in view of the preponderant intercourse of the United States with those islands, the American government would insist that no European nation should colonize or possess them, nor subvert the native governments. After a settlement of these international questions, Daniel Webster was permitted to resign his secretaryship to join the Whig opposition on the floor of the House. His resignation was the more readily accepted since he ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... deaths the followers of Jesus. The superstitious priests of heathen idols, were constantly active with all possible inventions calculated to excite jealousies and sharpen the edge of persecution against a doctrine that was calculated to subvert their order and demolish their temples. It was not until A. D. 311, that Maximin Galerius, who had been the author of the heaviest calamities on the christians, published a solemn edict, ordering the persecution to cease, which his indescribable horrors and painful sickness compelled him to ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... the dust," continued Mr. Chipperton,—"I would ask them, I say, how they could think of all this, and then deliberately subvert, at the behest of a young and giddy colored hireling, the structure we had upraised. And what could they have said to that, I would like to know?" he asked, looking around from one ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... of Mirabeau was at one and the same time to support the monarchy and to subvert the influences by which the throne was environed. He was solicitous of securing popular freedom, but regarded the monarchy as the only form of rule suitable for France in that age, and was led to adopt that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... adopted a worse measure than that of throwing disrespect on the nobility. It had it in its power to flatter the prejudices and feelings of the aristocracy, and thus artfully and imperceptibly win them over to its plans, and through them subvert the edifice of national liberty. Now it admonished them, most inopportunely, of their duties, their dignity, and their power; calling upon them even to be patriots, and to devote to the cause of true greatness an ambition which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... toleration: Nay, in the very year of Galileo's first persecution, Paul Anthony Foscarinus, a learned Carmelite monk, wrote a pamphlet, in which he illustrates and defends the mobility of the earth, and endeavours to reconcile to this new doctrine the passages of Scripture which had been employed to subvert it. This very singular production was dated from the Carmelite convent at Naples; was dedicated to the very reverend Sebastian Fantoni, general of the Carmelite order; and, sanctioned by the ecclesiastical authorities, it was published at Naples in 1615, the very year ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... thou labour'd to subvert in vain, What one poor Smile of ours calls home again? Can any see that glorious Sight ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... him? Alas! that last vestige of hope must leave him. The paper was a warrant for his own arrest on a charge of treason. It had been issued at the court of the high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the trained bands of the rebel army of the "late usurper." It was signed and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson, King's agent. It was dated too; yes, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who would labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the destinies of men and citizens. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion, reason ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... foundation in the nature of things. It is purely a creature of the imagination of theorists; one of the phantoms of that manifold, monstrous, phantom deity called Liberty, which has been so often invoked by the pseudo philanthropists and reckless reformers of the present day to subvert not only the law of capital punishment, but also other institutions and laws which have received the sanction of both God ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... whose office it was to superintend affairs of local interest, were elected by the Comitia Tributa. All the magistrates, however great their power, could, at the expiration of their office, be punished for transcending their trust. No person was above the authority of the laws. No one class could subvert the liberties and prerogatives of another. The Senate had the most power, but it could not ride over the Constitution. The consuls were not the creatures of the Senate; they were elected by the centuries, and presided over the Senate, as well as the assembly ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... victories. For had not California and New Mexico been won by the bravery and blood of the South as of the North, and how then was the North to deprive the South of its joint ownership of them without destroying the federal equality of the two halves of the Union? What was it but to subvert the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... Moreover, they allied themselves with Alcibiades, expecting through him to receive Persian support; and, happily for Athens, he succeeded in restraining the fleet—which was still more than a match for all adversaries—from sailing back to the Piraeus to subvert the rule of the Four Hundred. The more patriotic of the oligarchs saw, in fact, that the best hopes for the state lay in the establishment of a limited democracy; with the result that the extreme oligarchs, who would have joined hands with the enemy, were overthrown, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... was conducted by Rev. Dr. Bunting, in a manner the most impressive and affecting I ever witnessed. There were but few dry eyes in the chapel. He spoke of the primary design of Methodism as not to oppose anything but sin—not to subvert existing forms of faith, but to infuse the vital spirit of primitive Christianity into them. Dr. Bunting said that the renewal of the covenant was a service peculiar to Methodism, and expatiated on the importance of its being entered upon advisedly, and in humble ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... by that he would stand or fall; and he demanded that he might have the right of explaining and defending his doctrines in public court. This liberty was scornfully denied him. He was condemned for being guilty of desiring to subvert the Government and religion of the country, and thrown into prison. He would at once have been transported to Siberia, but the Government hoped by keeping him to discover others who held the same tenets. They little knew how far the true faith had spread, that thousands already held it, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... with this great anxiety to preserve the Federal Union? For the Federal Union can only be preserved by subduing the armed rebellion that menaces it. Anything short of the absolute and thorough defeat of the Southern armies must lower the dignity of the nation, and weaken and subvert the foundations of the Union. Thus far, by the grace of God and our right arm, the Constitution and Union are preserved, and so long as they 'still stand strong,' the basis of settlement remains; and whenever the rebels are tired of trying their strength against ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and Oliver——-and others of less importance, the originals of which have been laid before the house of representatives.1 The house have already resolved, by a majority of 101 out of 106 members, that the design and tendency of them is to subvert the constitution and introduce arbitrary power into the province. They are now in the hands of a committee to consider them farther, and report what is still ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... to place every possible restraint in your power over the members of your church, to prevent them from committing acts of aggression or retaliation on any citizens of the state, as a contrary course may, and most probably will, bring about a collision which will subvert all efforts to maintain the peace in this county; and we propose making a similar request of your opponents in this and the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... Miller, in his "Footprints of the Creator," and Professor Sedgwick, in the invaluable notes to his "Discourse on the Studies of Cambridge" - have wielded in defence of Christianity the very science which was faithlessly and cowardly expected to subvert it. ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... ere thou art that thus dost strive With fierce assault my groundwork to subvert, And boldly dost into Gods secrets dive, Base fear my manly face note make m' avert. In that odde question which thou first didst stert, I'll plainly prove thine incapacitie, And force thy feeble feet back to revert, ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... liberty and equality are dear to her heart. She would die before she would imperil the well-being of her home. She has no design to subvert church government, nor is she organized to tear up the social fabric of polite society. But she has now come squarely up to a crisis, a new epoch in her history here in the South, and asks for a womanly right to participate by vote in this ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... they both apply. Those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution and see only the law. This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions. It would declare that an act, which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare that, if the legislature shall do what is expressly ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood

... that these money transactions were likely to subvert that empire which was first established upon them, did, in the year 1765, send out a body of the strongest and most solemn covenants to their servants, that they should take no presents from the country powers, under any name ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... ante-bellum days it was not only the chief repository of culture, but possessed a fair proportion of the nation's wealth. The South has ever been chiefly an agricultural country, and will so remain despite the frantic efforts of enthusiasts to subvert natural laws. Not until the resources of our soil are in great measure exhausted, or increase of population forces people from the fields, can the South become a great manufacturing country. Such is the lesson ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... changes it has already undergone. We may, therefore, very fairly infer, that an indefinite allowance must be granted to exterior interference of some sort or other, the agency of which may altogether subvert whatever is now known to exist.—See Cuvier's Essay, lately published ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... body, by pulling the hair, striking the breast or loins, or by throwing one's self on the ground. So also plangere denotes the physical expression of pain. [164] A law de vi enacted in the year B.C. 89, and aimed at those who might attempt by violence to subvert the existing constitution of the state. On the ground of this law Catiline had already been summoned before a court of law, though no formal charge had yet been brought against him. [165] Sicuti is here used ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... whenever it acquires sufficient boldness to inaugurate revolution, it then alike forgets the counsels of prudence, and stifles the instincts of patriotism, and becomes a suitor to foreign courts for aid and assistance to subvert and destroy the most cherished and indispensable institutions ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... power of poetry over the heart and impulses of man has been recognised by all writers from Aristotle down to Serjeant Talfourd. In dexterous hands it has been known to subvert a severe chastity by the insinuations of a holy flame, to clothe impurity in vestments 'bright with something of an angel light,' to exalt spleen into elevation of soul, and selfishness into a noble scorn of the world, and, with the ringing cadences of an enthusiastic style, to ennoble ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... to establish him in the answering conduct, truth, justice, and loyal obedience to the hereditary revered laws of the nation, equally instilled, qualifying him to uphold them, and to defend their freedom from all offensive operations at home or abroad, intended to subvert the purity of their code or the integrity of their administration. Such was the import of the implied vow on ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... to confess what their real object was in marching to Moscow. After enduring their tortures as long as human nature could bear them, they confessed that the movement was a concerted one, made in connection with a conspiracy within the city, and that the object was to subvert the present government, and to liberate the Princess Sophia and place her upon the throne. They also gave the names of a number of prominent persons in Moscow who, they said, were the leaders ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... by the Constitution and in defiance of its guarantees; that the defendants, acting under orders of the President, were about to set in motion a portion of the army to take military possession of the State, subvert her government, and subject her people to military rule. The presentation of this bill and the argument on the motion of the Attorney-General to dismiss it produced a good deal of hostile comment against the Judges, which did not end when the motion was granted. It was held that the bill ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... not therefore deny him the right of directing his partner; and they maintain, that in the smaller association of husband and wife, as well as in the great social community, the object of democracy is to regulate and legalize the powers which are necessary, not to subvert all power. This opinion is not peculiar to one sex, and contested by the other: I never observed that the women of America consider conjugal authority as a fortunate usurpation of their rights, nor that they thought themselves degraded by submitting to it. It appeared to me, on the contrary, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... laws operate as practical principles of moral action; and, like all the rules of morality, derive their force and efficacy, as even the name imports, from the customary repetition of habitual acts, and the slow operation of time. Every alteration of the laws, therefore, tends to subvert that authority on which the persuasive agency of all laws is founded, and to abridge, weaken, and destroy the power of the law itself."—Aristotle's "Politics.") The reply of Burke to this burst of Jacobinism, with all its consequences in the political history ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... that teaches the son that he can be happy, with his mother in perdition; the husband that he can be happy in heaven while his wife suffers the agonies of hell. This doctrine is infinite injustice, and tends to subvert all ideas of justice in the human heart. I think it would be impossible to conceive of a doctrine better calculated to make wild beasts of men than that; in fact, that doctrine was born of all the wild beast there is in man. It was born ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... intercourse now ceased to be by letter, and the subtle and laborious argumentations which he had formerly produced against religion, and which were contained in a permanent form, were combated in transient conversation. He was not only eager to subvert those opinions which he had contributed to instil into me, but was anxious that the letters and manuscripts which had been employed in their support should be destroyed. He did not fear wholly or chiefly on my own account. He believed that the influence ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... ages have proceeded from men of truth and genuine courage. The man who is always true is both virtuous and wise; and thus possesses the greatest guards of safety: for the law has not power to strike the virtuous; nor can fortune subvert the wise. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Lenin must have done, could he help but dream of the day, when he could become head of a state, head of a foreign service, of a secret police force and hence be able to subvert the entire world including the religious organizations, the political parties, diplomatic services not to speak of international organizations in New ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... over which the Holy Ghost has placed you as Bishops, but in particular to watch over children and young men. They ought to be the special object of your paternal love, of your vigilant solicitude, of your zeal, of all your care. They who have tried to subvert society and families, to destroy authority, divine and human, have spared no pains to infect and corrupt youth, hoping thus the more easily to execute their infamous projects. They know that the mind and heart ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... he was very liberal on this subject and in speaking of Jesus Christ he said: "Jesus Christ was a Jew and a real philosopher and was therefore persecuted, for his philosophy interfered too much with, and tended to shake the political fabric of the Jewish constitution and to subvert our old customs and usages: for this reason he was put to death. I seek not to defend or palliate the injustice of the act or the barbarity with which he was treated; but our nation did surely no more than any other nation ancient or modern has done ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye



Words linked to "Subvert" :   weaken, overthrow, revolutionize, corrupt, derail, sensualise, ruin, undermine, carnalise, disobey, bring down, poison, sensualize, debase, sabotage, demoralise, force out, demoralize, suborn, bastardize, change



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