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Tyrannical   Listen
adjective
Tyrannical, Tyrannic  adj.  Of or pertaining to a tyrant; suiting a tyrant; unjustly severe in government; absolute; imperious; despotic; cruel; arbitrary; as, a tyrannical prince; a tyrannical master; tyrannical government. "A power tyrannical." "Our sects a more tyrannic power assume." "The oppressor ruled tyrannic where he durst."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tyrannical" Quotes from Famous Books



... in quest of useful and benevolent godmothers. The sisters made but little change in their style of living; they now owned handsome furs, a separate wardrobe, and not a few rich silks; they still continued to occupy the cottage, and retained in their service a certain tyrannical treasure, widely known and feared as "the Tebbs's Eliza." Although an admirable and trustworthy servant, Eliza ruled the household, permitted no late hours, no breakfasts in bed, no unnecessary fires, no unnecessary, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... the rediscovery of the beauty of twilight. Both schools of poetry (if it is permissible to call them schools) found in the stillness of the evening a natural refuge for the individual soul from the tyrannical prose of common day. There have been critics, including Matthew Arnold, who have denied that the Elegy is the greatest of Gray's poems. This, I think, can only be because they have been unable to see the poetry for the quotations. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... search into that period of Italian history, he will find many facts to cool the romance of his imagination respecting all the Colonna family. They were, in plain truth, an oppressive aristocratic family. The portion of Italy which they and their tyrannical rivals possessed was infamously governed. The highways were rendered impassable by banditti, who were in the pay of contesting feudal lords; and life and ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... the Lord Keeper, and acknowledged the advantages which it derived from their patronage in a public letter which bears date just a month after the admission of Francis Bacon. The master was Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, a narrow minded, mean, and tyrannical priest, who gained power by servility and adulation, and employed it in persecuting both those who agreed with Calvin about church-government, and those who differed from Calvin touching the doctrine ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... finished a pleasant dream to the simmering of the kitchen pot, the landlady showed herself in the distance, feeling for her keys with one hand, and rubbing her eyes with the other. This was the head-woman of the village, but seldom tyrannical, unless ill-treated, Widow Precious, tall and square, and of no ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the publick expectations, which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight solicitude. Not a single ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... don't remember. All I know is, that two years ago my old Clown was my tyrannical manager; and being in that capacity, and this world being made for Caesar, which is a shame, sir, he said to me, with a sneer, 'Old Gentleman Waife, whom you used to bully, and his Juliet Araminta, are in clover!' And the mocking varlet went on to unfold a tale to the effect, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... race is numerous as the sands of the sea, neither are they altogether unhappy in discharging the duties which their fate has allotted them. Those who are of worse character suffer even in this life the penance due to their guilt; they become the slaves of the cruel and tyrannical, are beaten, starved, and mutilated. To those whose moral characters are better, better masters are provided, who share with their slaves, as with their children, food and raiment, and the other good things which they themselves enjoy. To some, Heaven allots the favour of kings and of conquerors, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... control them: be agonized she must. She was only eighteen, and the long day's labour, her weariness, her excitement, had completely unnerved her, and worn her out: she was bent hither and thither by this tyrannical working upon her imagination, as a young rush in the wind. She wept bitterly. 'And now think how much I like you,' resumed Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea grew calmer. 'I shall never forget you for anybody else, as men do—never. I will be exactly as a mother to you. Now ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... of scholars, wild lads from every part of Germany and Switzerland, some wan and pinched with hardship and privation, others sturdy, selfish rogues, evidently well able to take care of themselves. There were many rude, tyrannical-looking lads among the older lads; and, though here and there a studious, earnest face might be remarked, the prospect of Germany's future priests and teachers was not encouraging. And what a searching ordeal ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... studying the sexual relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general, to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental, and, to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been determined by ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... that time only about five hundred inhabitants on these islands, it would appear from Captain Smith's History that Tucker hanged a good percentage of them. Many were the complaints that were forwarded to England concerning the tyrannical government of Tucker, and he, fearing to be recalled, at last returned to England of his own accord, having appointed a person named Kendall as ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... all-seeing God? If the warm young heart, beating behind many a convent grate, yearns to burst asunder the iron bands which enthrall her, and, mingling again upon the stage of life to perform the duties for which she was created, oh! where in holy writ is sanction found for the tyrannical decree which binds her ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... me; but as my name is known but to a small part of mankind, there are few who come within the sphere of this passion, or excite, on its account, either my affection or disgust. But if you represent a tyrannical, insolent, or barbarous behaviour, in any country or in any age of the world, I soon carry my eye to the pernicious tendency of such a conduct, and feel the sentiment of repugnance and displeasure towards it. No character can be so remote as to be, in this light, wholly indifferent to me. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... warranted in drawing from these observations is, that a mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... potent, most tyrannical, and most gentle of the passions which sway the human mind, thou art the invisible agency which rules mens' souls, which governs mens' kingdoms, which controls the universe. By thy mighty will do the silent, eternal hosts of ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... him, and taking his hand he turned to those present and said: "That your worships may see how important it is to have knights-errant to redress the wrongs and injuries done by tyrannical and wicked men in this world, I may tell you that some days ago passing through a wood, I heard cries and piteous complaints as of a person in pain and distress; I immediately hastened, impelled by my bounden duty, to the quarter whence the plaintive accents seemed to me to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... age, I could exclaim with my whole heart, "What progression—infinite progression—in manners and humanity!" But, alas! our modern laws, with their womanish feebleness, and sentimental whimperings, sin quite as much against a lofty and noble justice as those of earlier times by their tyrannical and cannibal ferocity. And yet now, as then, conscience is appealed to as the excuse for all. O conscience, conscience! how wilt thou answer for all that is laid upon thee! To-day, for example, it is a triumphal denial of God and thy Saviour Jesus Christ: a crime at which a Ludecke would have ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... us, fabulously, that he succeeded Arthur as King of the British. He is chiefly remembered in literature by the abuse that Gildas heaped upon him, in those letters, written about 546, that are notable for imperfect accuracy, fervent religion, and virulent bad temper. Gildas calls Constantine the "tyrannical whelp of the unclean lioness of Damnonia"; and further asks, "Why standest thou astonished, O thou butcher of thine own soul? Why dost thou wilfully kindle against thyself the eternal fires of hell?" It ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... Aegisthus tyrannical, who killed Agamemnon and lorded over Mycenae. And when he was killed he says he would have had no sepulchre if Menelaus had been there. For this was the custom with ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... condition had supervened in the American colonies which reacted upon his passionate and Patriotic nature so powerfully as to bring into full play all of his faculties and to direct the whole force of his nature against the tyrannical method of the ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... man's devotion to one absorbing object. The opening chapters were written amid the bright dreams of youth, and in the happiest circumstances; the closing ones were composed amid the dark clouds of a morbid melancholy, and during an imprisonment tyrannical in all its features. Placed side by side with Homer and Virgil, it may be said with Voltaire that Tasso was more fortunate than either of these immortals in the choice of his subject. It was based, not upon tradition, but upon true history. It appealed not merely to the passions ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... the little gray town, goaded by the irritating pricks of resentment. He would bear it no longer, so he told himself. Mellony could take him or leave him. He would be a laughing-stock not another week, not another day. If Mellony would not assert herself against her tyrannical old mother, he would go away and leave her! And then he paused, as he had paused so often in the flood of his anger, faced by the realization that this was just what Mrs. Pember wanted, just what would satisfy her, what ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... slaves there is a general impression that their most tyrannical "overseers" are from the New England States, or "Yankees," as they are called in the South. This term, which foreigners apply contemptuously to all Americans, in the United States has a restricted meaning; and when used reproachfully it is only applied to natives of New England. At other times ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... objectionable: they were at once inquisitive and careless; they asked questions with the sharp perspicacity of controversy; they received his grave replies with the frank indifference of utter worldliness. Powerful enough to have been tyrannical oppressors, they were singularly tolerant and gentle, contenting themselves with a playful, good-natured irreverence, which tormented the good father more than opposition. They were felt ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... and others for assault and imprisonment, there would be an amazing change in the behavior of schoolmasters, the quality of school books, and the amenities of school life. That Consciousness of Consent which, even in its present delusive form, has enabled Democracy to oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its vulgarities and stupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and ignorances, would operate as powerfully among children as it does now among grown-ups. No doubt the pedagogue would promptly turn demagogue, and woo his scholars ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... honestly, that pure and capable administration under a modern system would soon produce order, industry, prosperity, and peace, and that a grateful nation would before long acclaim its preservers, and enroll itself as a devoted ally against the "perfidious and tyrannical" supremacy of Great Britain. It is useless to speculate how far this dream would have been realized but for the utter rottenness of the instruments with which the reformers worked. The King's senility, the Queen's lust, Godoy's greed, Escoiquiz's ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... terror prevails in Manila; and the governor is in close alliance with the archbishop, so that there "is no recourse, except to God." The writer mentions several things in condemnation of the governor's personal character, and regards him as unscrupulous and tyrannical. Finally, the Dominican account of this controversy is related by Vicente de Salazar, one of the official historians of that order, in his biography of Pardo. In 1677 that prelate enters upon the vacant see ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... avoid the pain of living wel Tis not the number of men, but the number of good men Tis there she talks plain French To be, not to seem To keep me from dying is not in your power Two opinions alike, no more than two hairs Tyrannical authority physicians usurp over poor creatures Venture it upon his neighbour, if he will let him Venture the making ourselves better without any danger We confess our ignorance in many things We do not easily accept the medicine we understand What are become of all our ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... too tyrannical. How can I downright like a thing I don't like? I yield my will to yours; there's a certain satisfaction in that. I ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... to injure those under their authority by tyrannical or capricious conduct or by abusive language. While maintaining discipline and the thorough and prompt performance of military duty, all officers, in dealing with enlisted men, will bear in mind the absolute necessity of so treating them as to preserve their self-respect. Officers ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... Silesia, it has been before observed, was always a topic by means of which the weak side of Maria Theresa could be attacked with success. There is generally some peculiar frailty in the ambitious, through which the artful can throw them off their guard. The weak and tyrannical Philip II., whenever the recovery of Holland and the Low Countries was proposed to him, was always ready to rush headlong into any scheme for its accomplishment; the bloody Queen Mary, his wife, declared that at her death the loss of Calais would ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... every congregation. The presbyters aspired to the episcopal office, which every day became an object more worthy of their ambition. The bishops, who contended with each other for ecclesiastical preeminence, appeared by their conduct to claim a secular and tyrannical power in the church; and the lively faith which still distinguished the Christians from the Gentiles, was shown much less in their lives, than in their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... States—"a true family compact"—which "would conduce rapidly to freeing Spanish America, to opening the navigation of the Mississippi to the inhabitants of Kentucky, to delivering our ancient brothers of Louisiana from the tyrannical yoke of Spain, and perhaps to uniting the fair star of Canada to the American constellation." But without waiting for the cooperation of the United States, Genet was to arouse the people of Kentucky and Louisiana by sending among them agents who should ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... given—which is an abundance of this world's goods—we agree to take from the one, and give to the other; and that the wealthy, or the enemies of this society, shall be the ones we will strive to harass, by disapprobation of their tyrannical course; and no respect will we pay to persons, either politically or religiously, but swear to prove true to all the bearings which we have laid down in ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... observed, parenthetically, that the charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man by the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe the tyrannical acts by which the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest acquaintance with his exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... perfect satisfaction with the measures which he had already adopted. Marie de Medicis was, however, less placable; and much as she deprecated the idea of hostilities with England, she nevertheless openly applauded the resistance of her daughter to what she designated as the tyrannical presumption of Buckingham, and the blind weakness of Charles, who sacrificed the domestic happiness of a young and lovely bride to the arrogant intrigues of an overbearing favourite. The English Duke himself was peculiarly ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... Earl in his policy of investigation, and retaining his respect for him as a sea-officer, he was utterly dissatisfied with the general conduct of the Admiralty and with its attitude towards himself in particular. "I attribute none of the tyrannical conduct of the late Board to Lord St. Vincent," he wrote two years later. "For the Earl I have a sincere regard, but he was dreadfully ill-advised, and I fear the Service has suffered much from their conduct." ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... he, clasping his hands together with intensity of fervour, 'when all is rotten to the core, venal, unjust, tyrannical, how endure without an endeavour at a remedy? Yet it may be that an imposing attitude will prevail! ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not, I beseech you, deceive ourselves longer. We have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves at the foot of the throne, and implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical bands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... to its loftiest flights upon the wings of Buncombe, denounces with withering scorn the effete and tyrannical monarchies of Europe, and proclaims the glorious fact that this is a Free Country, Fellow Citizens! it hardly does us justice. We are not only free, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, we are Free and Easy, sir. Breathes ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... have believed on any other evidence that the classical people had a gloomy Calvinism of their own time. True, as early as Homer, we hear of the shadowy existence of the souls, and of the torments endured by the notably wicked; by impious ghosts, or tyrannical, like Sisyphus and Tantalus. But when we read the opening books of the "Republic," we find the educated friends of Socrates treating these terrors as old-wives' fables. They have heard, they say, that such notions circulate among the people, but they seem never for ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... "A tyrannical King who respects not the laws, and is only directed by his passions and caprice, is the scourge of his people. If it is not lawful to make any attempt upon his life, it is still less so to grant him such assistance ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... powerful motives, is, however, repugnant to the natural and moral order of things. Orestes, as a prince, was, it is true, called upon to exercise justice, even on the members of his own family; but we behold him here under the necessity of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to work like an assassin. The memory of his father pleads his excuse; but however much Clytemnestra may have deserved her death, the voice of blood cries from within. This conflict of natural duties is represented in the Eumenides ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... seldom in command, the master was proportionally tyrannical and abusive—he swore at the men, made them do the duty twice and thrice over on the pretence that it was not smartly done, and found fault with every ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... checked and supervised by the chief officers of the State. Such was the system adopted in France by Napoleon III. But cohesion without the enforcement of a hard and rigid connection, a general supervision without severe tyrannical jurisdiction, are the best methods of securing ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... Representatives and two Southern Senators had voted against the Nebraska bill, and many individual voters condemned it as an act of bad faith—as the abandonment of the accepted "finality," and as the provocation of a dangerous antislavery reaction. But public opinion in that part of the Union was fearfully tyrannical and intolerant; and opposition dared only to manifest itself to Democratic party organization—not to these Democratic party measures. The Whigs of the South were therefore driven precipitately to division. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... property is at her own disposal, and she instructs her own agent or attorney. It is only necessary that she should guard the honour of her husband. So long as he trusts her he will not interfere. It is only a very tyrannical spouse who will insist that her litter or sedan-chair shall have the curtains drawn when in the streets. We will assume that Marcia is a lady of the true Roman self-respect and dignity, and that Silius and she live ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... continued surreptitiously to read and to study whenever and whatever she could; and not even the extreme conscientiousness of a New Mennonite faltered at this filial disobedience. She obeyed her father implicitly, however tyrannical he was, to the point where he bade her suppress and kill all the best that God had given her of mind and heart. Then she revolted; and she never for an instant doubted her entire justification in eluding or defying ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... arouse the indignation of any man born in a country where human beings have an equal right to justice before the tribunals of the land. Yet, if I am not mistaken, there is a growing impression, supported by this same political power in the south, that the officers in this State are tyrannical, meddlesome, and disposed to thwart the faithful efforts of the noble white people to reorganize ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... flight been discovered at home, and was her tyrannical step-father coming to force her back into wearisome servitude? or, worse yet, to sell her to another man equally brutal ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... the tyrannical conduct of the Bolsheviki. Our Commissars have been driven from their posts. Our only organ, Znamia Truda (Banner of Labour), was forbidden to ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters; not an unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to do—no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earthworm has his digging; the bee her gathering and building; the spider her cunning network; the ant her treasury and accounts. All these are comparatively slaves, or people of ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... little town, and is kept clean and in good order. The governor, Lopez, was a common soldier at the time of the revolution; but has now been seventeen years in power. This stability of government is owing to his tyrannical habits; for tyranny seems as yet better adapted to these countries than republicanism. The governor's favourite occupation is hunting Indians: a short time since he slaughtered forty-eight, and sold the children at the rate of three or ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... deep and unexpressed thought; the lip, to which love, joy, and hope alone had once seemed natural, now often compressed, and his eye flashed, till his whole countenance seemed stern, not with the sternness of a tyrannical, changed and chafing mood—no, 'twas the sternness most fearful to behold in youth, of thought, deep, bitter, whelming thought; and sterner even than it had been yet was the expression on his features as he spoke this day ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... Walloon workmen. They hated him to a man for his overbearing, tyrannical ways. We are all ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... be most happy,' said Mrs. Archer—'to escape from the tyrannical power of that bad man. He has used me brutally of late, and I have often suffered for the common necessaries of life. Oh, how gladly would I abandon the dreadful trade of prostitution and ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... is free from all doubt when the problem is, how to gain certain ends—how to be fed, how to get from one place to another, how to cure disease. A new case is presented by the choice of ends. The tyrannical French minister, when appealed to by a starving peasantry in the terms, "We must live," replied, "I do not see the necessity". There was here no question of true and false, no problem for science to solve. It was a ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... miles in circumference, round his favourite park of Woodstock, near Oxford; and if any one wanted a favour from King John, a grant of privileges, or a new charter, he would have to pay for it in horses, hawks, or hounds. The Norman lords were as tyrannical in preserving their game as their king, and the people suffered greatly through the selfishness of their rulers. There is a curious MS. in the British Museum, called The Craft of Hunting, written by two followers of Edward II., which gives instructions with regard to the game ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... "But don't you think it was probably some absurd or tyrannical action of her mother's ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... was a thorough sailor, and strict disciplinarian; fearless and arbitrary, he had but little sympathy with the crew; his main object being to get the greatest quantity of work in the shortest possible time. Stories were afloat that he was unfeeling and tyrannical; that fighting and flogging were too frequent to be agreeable in ships where he was vested with authority. There were even vague rumors in circulation that he indulged occasionally in the unique and exciting amusement of shooting at men ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... free from any taxation, but that which was self-imposed, for local purposes. So far, however, from paying any heed to the remonstrances of the colonists, the Imperial Parliament became more exacting and tyrannical. Not only were the necessaries of life taxed in America, for the benefit of the red-tapists and other place-holders of the Imperial government, but a stamp Act was passed through the Imperial Parliament, ordaining that instruments of writing—bonds, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... the cement of that unhallowed structure with which this nineteenth century is to be outraged, if treason has its way? Where is Dickens, the hater of the lesser wrongs of Chancery Courts, the scourge of tyrannical beadles and heartless schoolmasters? Has he no word for those who are striving, bleeding, dying, to keep from spreading itself over a continent a system which legalizes outrages almost too fearful to be told even to those who know all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... organizing a strike, that will cost me so dear, and rob me of a whole trade that was worth L300 a year? Why not charge me for the gunpowder you blew up Little with, and spoiled my forge? No, Bayne, no; this is too unjust and too tyrannical. Flesh and blood won't bear it. I'll shut up the works, and go back to my grindstone. Better live on bread and water ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... she was much respected and admired. M. Mounier had heard that she was a spy of the Pasha's, but the people on board the boat here say that the truth was that she went before Said Pasha herself to complain of some tyrannical Moodir who ground and imprisoned the fellaheen—a bold thing for a girl to do. To me she seems, anyhow, far the most curious thing ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... of a very popular history of France. The dauphin soon became greatly interested in the narrative. He declared that he, when he grew up, would be a Charlemagne, a St. Louis, a Francis First, and expressed great abhorrence of the tyrannical and slothful kings. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... creep into our Guild, and which, unchecked, may be liable to lead to very serious results. You will remember that this Guild was founded in consequence of the very unjust and unfair treatment of the Lower School by the Seniors. This tyrannical attitude of the monitresses had been long resented by the Juniors, and though one new girl happened to seize upon the matter and voice the discontent, it was felt in many quarters that her action had been given undue prominence, ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... throughout the bounds of the Inca Empire from which its dusky inhabitants never afterwards fully recovered. There was now no powerful claimant to the Inca throne. The wrongs suffered by the race at the hands of the Spaniards need not cover the fact that the Indians themselves frequently proved capable of tyrannical and sanguinary acts. Thus on the news of Atahualpa's capture his enraged adherents had slain Huasca, who by that time had become a prisoner in ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... was Mourad's love for me—he was now just as gentle and considerate as he had been tyrannical and overbearing. My sister-in-law was married on the same day that I was, and went away to Salonica, and so I lost ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... this question has been argued only by tyrannical or very silly men, who found it difficult to get rid of the absurd prejudices which retain the finest half of human nature in slavery, and condemn it to obscurity under the pretext that it is essentially corrupted. Towards the end of the 15th century a certain demented ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... appear, however, that such measures were ever resorted to. Energy, indeed, in the removal of a nuisance, is scarcely to be expected from Spaniards under any circumstances. All we can say on the subject, with certainty, is, that since the repeal of the tyrannical laws, wandering has considerably decreased ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... will, on the other hand, derive every advantage. But, as far as unfairness and bad faith go, I've run the show with too malicious a hand, and I must turn tail and draw back from my old ways. When I review what I've done, I find that if I still push my tyrannical rule to the bitter end, people will hate me most relentlessly; so much so, that under their smiles they'll harbour daggers, and much though we two may then be able to boast of having four eyes and two heads between us, they'll compass our ruin, when ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... fond of her as ever, but she had grown to feel that with Catherine she lacked opportunity. Sentimentally speaking, therefore, she had (though she had not disinherited her niece) adopted Morris Townsend, who gave her opportunity in abundance. She would have been very happy to have a handsome and tyrannical son, and would have taken an extreme interest in his love affairs. This was the light in which she had come to regard Morris, who had conciliated her at first, and made his impression by his delicate and calculated ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... was, a perfect woman of the world. A very good specimen, for Mrs. Carleton had sense and cultivation, and even feeling enough, to play the part very gracefully; yet her mind was bound in the shackles of "the world's" tyrannical forging, and had never been free; and her heart bowed ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... impressed with the character of real despotism; that is to say, of despotism founded on the mere arbitrary will and pleasure of the prince. On the contrary, they all prove that the interest and aggrandizement of France entered alone into the views of Napoleon, and that instead of being under a tyrannical government, the people never enjoyed the benefits of distributive justice with greater equality, and were never protected more completely against the oppressions of public functionaries, and of the higher ranks. He may, perhaps, be censured for having ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... generations before you, it is true; you miss the jolly spelling-schools, and the good old games that were not half so scientific as base-ball, lawn tennis, or lacrosse, but that had ten times more fun and frolic in them; but all this is made up to you by the fact that you escape the tyrannical old master. Whatever the faults the teachers of this day may have, they do not generally lacerate the backs of their pupils, as did ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston

... Mongol Emperors more and more adopted Chinese ways, and lost their tyrannical vigour. Their dynasty came to an end in 1370, and was succeeded by the pure Chinese Ming dynasty, which lasted until the Manchu conquest of 1644. The Manchus in turn adopted Chinese ways, and were overthrown by a patriotic revolution in 1911, having contributed nothing notable to the native culture ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... impulse to the movement which eventually broke down the strong bulwarks of territorial oligarchy. His it was to wear the political martyr's crown; his to beard a profligate Court, and a despotic, tyrannical, and corrupt Government; his to win, or to help to win, far nobler victories than were ever gained by Marlborough or Wellington: victories of which we reap the benefits now, in liberty of thought and speech, in an unfettered Press, in an incorrupt Parliament, in wiser laws, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... making exception only of those that treated of medicine, agriculture, architecture, and astronomy. The order included the works of the great Confucius, who had edited and condensed the more ancient books of the empire, and of his noble disciple Mencius, and was of the most tyrannical and oppressive character. All books containing historical records, except those relating to the existing reign, were to be burned, and all who dared even to speak together about the Confucian "Book of Odes" and "Book of History" were condemned ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... happens in the case of a fallacy, that the hearers are left to the alternative of supplying either a premise which is not true, or else, one which does not prove the conclusion; e.g., if a man expatiates on the distress of the country, and thence argues that the government is tyrannical, we must suppose him to assume either that 'every distressed country is under a tyranny,' which is a manifest falsehood, or merely that 'every country under a tyranny is distressed,' which, however true, proves nothing, the middle term ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... way, her life long, Jacqueline had sustained existence. Her nourishment was ever the latest "frisson," to use her own word. She craved thrills of emotion, ecstatic thrills. Naturally, then, three weeks of ocean had fretted the restless lass as intolerable, tyrannical. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... trouble among servants arises from impertinent interferences and petty tyrannical exactions on the part of employers. Now the authority of the master and mistress of a house in regard to their domestics extends simply to the things they have contracted to do and the hours during which they have contracted to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... tyrannical, eccentric man at the beginning of the century, it had passed through several families until a Quaker named Cowgill, who afterwards became a Methodist, and who held no slaves and was kind to black people, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... melancholy had fallen over his bold, adventurous spirit. How full of tragedies was this great city, in the last throes of its insane and cruel struggle for an unattainable goal. And yet, despite its guillotine and mock trials, its tyrannical laws and overfilled prisons, its very sorrows paled before the dead, dull misery of this deformed ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... much trouble themselves to think of methods of restraining any exorbitances of those to whom they had given the authority over them, and of balancing the power of government, by placing several parts of it in different hands. They had neither felt the oppression of tyrannical dominion, nor did the fashion of the age, nor their possessions, or way of living, (which afforded little matter for covetousness or ambition) give them any reason to apprehend or provide against it; and therefore it is no wonder they put themselves ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... and liberty. Among the other personages, look at the kneeling figure of a Catholic priest, with cross in one hand and gibbet in the other, assisting King George, as the print again says, in enforcing his tyrannical system of civil and religious liberty: What do you think of that? Does it look like the real fellowship for us which they profess in their proclamations? Liberty and independence are fine words, my friend. I love them. But they may be catch-words as well, and ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... irksome as time passed, with the result that, during the cold and dreary months of February and March, it became every day a more pressing question, particularly for the poor, to know whether the bad times would end at last in the repeal or the admission of the tyrannical act. ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... lived in the tenement districts where the ignorance and the helplessness and the lack of a voice that can make itself heard among the ruling classes make the sway of the police absolute and therefore tyrannical—she had not lived there without getting something of that dread and horror of the police which to people of the upper classes seems childish or evidence of secret criminal hankerings. And this ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... tyrannical decree, Sweet friend, dissevers you and me, Now memory shall vanquish fate, And yield the bliss we ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... burthen upon the parishes.[253] Thus landlords have been more disposed to pull down than to build cottages, and marriage has been checked. On the whole, however, Malthus could see in the poor-laws nothing but a vast agency for demoralising the poor, tempered by a system of petty tyrannical interference. He proposes, therefore, that the poor-law should be abolished. Notice should be given that no children born after a certain day should be entitled to parish help; and, as he quaintly suggests, the clergyman might explain to every ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... are his brethren, and God hears them, inarticulate as the moanings of their misery are. By all proper means, of persuasion and influence, and otherwise, if the occasion and emergency require, he is bound to defend them against oppression, and tyrannical and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... any religion different from his own. "His Majesty," said his Prime Minister Louvois, "will not suffer any person to remain in his kingdom who shall not be of his religion." And Louis XV. continued the delusion. The whole of the tyrannical edicts and ordinances of Louis XIV. continued to ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... be obtained by cringing and servility to the rabble of great towns, and when it shall be established that the member is to be a slave, bound hand and foot by pledges, and responsible for every vote he gives to masters who are equally tyrannical and unreasonable. I know nothing more difficult than to form a satisfactory opinion upon the real state and prospects of the country amidst the conflicting prejudices and impressions of individuals of different parties and persuasions, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... is pleasing to find this supreme hope among our remote ancestors; and clumsily as it was expressed, it implies a belief in a being superior to man, a protecting divinity according to some, but according to some few others a malignant and tyrannical spirit. The proofs so far to hand are not enough to justify us in seriously asserting that ancestors were worshipped by prehistoric man. But the subject is too important for us to refrain from putting before the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... could have been done to avert the storm 25 that is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... The strength of this tyrannical power within the State, and the force of the superstition, may be measured by the fact that people who are prevented from restoring their knightly honor by the superior or inferior rank of their aggressor, or anything else ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... confusion—chairs and music stands being piled about as if a tornado had visited the place. Not a musician was there, and with the missing was Luga, the harp-player. A thousand wild rumors prevailed. The men, tired of tyrannical treatment, brutal rehearsals and continual abuse, had risen in a body and thrashed their leader; then fearing arrest, fled to the suburbs carrying off Luga with them as dangerous witness. But the summer-garden, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... man she had raised to some degree of eminence, and declared that he had {124} shown himself ungrateful. The nobility in general felt his power tyrannical, and the clergy thought that he sacrificed the Church to the interests of the State in politics. Louis XIII was restive sometimes under the heavy hand of the Cardinal, who dared to point out the royal weaknesses and to insist that he ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... monotheist in opposition to their tritheism. Hostile as these sects are, in every other point, to one another, they unite in maintaining their mystical theogony against those who believe there is one God only. The Presbyterian clergy are loudest; the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus, because, he could not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... more in name than anything else, for old David, the missionary, ruled the island with a rod of iron, and was so crotchety and tyrannical that no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no matter if it were in the full of the moon and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... firms knew about the future, and about the consequences of causes and about "the psychology of the markets" astounded the simple Terror of the departments; and it was probably unanswerable. But, being full of riches, Mr. Prohack did not trouble to answer it; he merely swept it away with a tyrannical and impatient gesture, which gesture somehow mysteriously established him at once as a great authority ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... wonder she shuddered at such profanation, and shed her false beard. There you have my theory. And as for Egypt being now the land of Veiled Women, where Suffragettes find no sympathy, I've heard that the prophet's order for veiling has been purposely misconstrued by tyrannical men, with their usual jealousy. Even Mohammed ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... and the boys once more began to enjoy themselves. The Zephyr worked admirably, and Frank deported himself with so much dignity and firmness that the boys rendered the most unqualified obedience to all his orders. But he was not tyrannical nor overbearing. When there was a difference of opinion, he was always ready to yield his own inclination to the ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic

... of the field and forest had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. During his reign he made a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for a universal league, in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... my friend,' replied Mac-Ivor. 'But I would have vengeance to fall on the head, not on the hand, on the tyrannical and oppressive government which designed and directed these premeditated and reiterated insults, not on the tools of office which they employed in the execution of the injuries they ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... where they read the decree and made speeches to the Indians; at San Miguel, Alvarado made a spread-eagle speech from a cart and used all his eloquence to persuade the Indians to adopt the plan of freemen. "Henceforth their trials were to be over. No tyrannical priest could compel them to work. They were to be citizens in a free and glorious republic, with none to molest or make them afraid." Then he called for those who wished to enjoy these blessings of freedom to come to the right, while those ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... Presidential chair, which, it will be remembered, he afterwards obtained. I was told that flogging his negroes was a favourite pastime with this eminently-distinguished general, and that he was by no means liked by his officers or men. His appearance bespoke his tyrannical disposition; and this, coupled with incapacity, there is little doubt, conduced to make it necessary for him to relinquish his command of the army of the south, which he did not long after, being succeeded, I ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... connections, the more innocent they are, afford the less variety in the long run, I was seized with that wicked distemper which seduces us to derive amusement from the torment of a beloved one, and to domineer over a girl's devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice. By unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy I destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself and her. She endured it for a time with incredible patience, which I was cruel enough to try to its utmost. But to my shame and despair, I was at ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... person and pleasing manners, and was a general favourite in the factory. Nevertheless, as this young man was in the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior qualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded, tyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of George's invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what this intelligent chattel had been about. He was received with great enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so valuable a slave. He ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... natural that men brought under terror" (a tyrannical government) "should degenerate into beings of a slavish disposition, and become timid and incapable of any manly and daring enterprise—an assertion which is proved by the conduct of countries which have been long subjected to a despotic government. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... be an advantage to the whole family, when he has a salon presided over by a beautiful, clever woman, imposing as a queen, where he can assemble the elite of Parisian society. He does not wish to be tyrannical or overbearing with his family, but he informs them that it will be of no use to place themselves in opposition to such a woman. He warns them that she and her children will never forgive those ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... You," she went on again, speaking to her flowers, "you look sickly, good-night! Yes, it must have been you. One might think you quite meek, to look at you, whereas, on the contrary, you are very harsh, very tyrannical." ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at which the very sense of shame is lost. The Christian has been like Dickens' doctor in the debtor's prison, who tells the newcomer of its ineffable peace and security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of rates, taxes, and rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties; nothing but the rest and safety of having no further ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... command was not only tyrannical, but treacherous. There had been nothing to warn him of a coming change, for Gourlay was too contemptuous of his wife and children to inform them how his business stood. John had been brought up to go into the business, and now, at the last moment, he was undeceived, and ordered ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... to 1186 Bulgaria had no existence as an independent state; Basil II, although cruel, was far from tyrannical in his general treatment of the Bulgars, and treated the conquered territory more as a protectorate than as a possession. But after his death Greek rule became much more oppressive. The Bulgarian patriarchate (since 972 established at ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... sons to such a very high pitch, and sometimes I wish my mother had let that unlucky name become extinct in the family, or that I might adopt my nickname. One could live up to Backyard easily enough. It seems to suit being grumpy and tyrannical, and seeing no further than one's own nose, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... then, be imagined that the impulse of the British race in the New World can be arrested. The dismemberment of the Union, and the hostilities which might ensue, the abolition of republican institutions, and the tyrannical government which might succeed it, may retard this impulse, but they cannot prevent it from ultimately fulfilling the destinies to which that race is reserved. No power upon earth can close upon the emigrants that fertile wilderness, which offers resources to all industry, and a refuge from all ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... yield the place of honor, in conversation, to thoughts about facts; but if a false note is uttered, down comes the finger on the key and the man of facts asserts his true dignity. I have known three of these men of facts, at least, who were always formidable,—and one of them was tyrannical. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... cindery path were difficult; the sun was tyrannical; his boots were a torment; yet Herr Haase went as in a dream. He had seen reality; the veil of his daily preoccupations had been rent for him; and it needed the impertinence of the ticket-collector at the door ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... shape of their Polish possessions, and both had an interest in the preservation of reactionary institutions. The influence of Prussia upon Russia, and of the efficient, highly-organised, relentless Prussian machine upon the arbitrary, tyrannical, but far less efficient and inhuman bureaucracy of Russia, has been wholly sinister[1], both for Russia and for Europe. Bismarck's object, of course, was not so much to keep down the Russian revolutionaries as to check the aspirations of the Panslavists, whose designs for the liberation ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... this, She darted upon me a look of pride, contempt, and malice, and quitted the apartment. I also retired to mine, and consumed the night in planning the means of rescuing Agnes from the power of her tyrannical Aunt. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... shipwreck, the long passage made in the little Cumberland, and our severe imprisonment, had excited a considerable degree of interest; and I was told that this imprisonment had been mentioned in an anonymous letter to the captain-general, as one of the many tyrannical acts committed in the short time he had held the government of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... most perfect truths, and which he is not permitted to doubt, even for an instant. His ignorance made him credulous; his curiosity made him swallow the wonderful: time confirmed him in his opinions, and he passed his conjectures from race to race for realities; a tyrannical power maintained him in his notions, because by those alone could society be enslaved. It was in vain that some faint glimmerings of Nature occasionally attempted the recall of his reason—that slight corruscations of experience ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... paths of duty by his exhortations. Whereas the furious monks, says the indignant pagan, were men only in form, but swine in manners. Whoever put on a black coat, and was not ashamed to be seen with dirty linen, gained a tyrannical power over the minds of the mob, from their belief in his holiness; and these men attacked the temples of the gods as a propitiation for their own enormous sins. Thus each party reproached the other, and often unjustly. Among other religious frauds and pretended miracles ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... by Europeans due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... a rule, was surprised at nothing, kept quiet, and let Clerambault ruin himself his own way; but even he was alarmed by this explosion of tyrannical stupidity. In history and at a distance it could be laughed at; but close at hand it looked as if the human brain was about to give way. Why is it that in this war men lost their mental balance more than in any other at any previous time? Has the war been really ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... the legality of the pope's rule was so slight, what was its practical effect? According to Valla, it was a "barbarous, overbearing, tyrannical, priestly domination." "What is it to you," he apostrophizes the pontiff, "if our republic is crushed? You have crushed it. If our temples have been pillaged? You have pillaged them. If our virgins and matrons have been violated? You have done it. If the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... took eight of the fugitives, one of whom was recognized, by the Duke of Austria as an Englishman, who had been perpetually banished from England for certain crimes. This man had been sent twice as a messenger and interpreter from the most tyrannical king of the Tartars to the king of Hungary, menacing and fortelling those mischiefs which afterwards happened, unless he would submit himself and his kingdom to the yoke of the Tartars. Being urged by our princes to confess, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... for a noble husband—it is enough to make one wonder if nations are not like dogs—better for beating. If the Queen could cut off a few more heads, and subscribed to a few less charities, if she were a little less virtuous, and a little more tyrannical, if she borrowed her subjects' plate and repudiated her debts, instead of reducing her household expenses, and regulating court mournings by the interests of trade, I am very much afraid we should be a more loyal people! If we had a slender-limbed Stuart who insisted upon travelling ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... Garnet, by mail, still flattered and begged, the poetess, with no notion of relenting, but in her love of dramatic values and the gentle joy of perpetuating a harrowing suspense, had parleyed; and only just now had her tyrannical son forced a conclusion unfavorable to the unfortunate suitor. So here in his office March ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... far acquainted that they agreed to be married, pretty much as they agreed to waltz or to polka together; but it was always with the distinct understanding that they were doing what mammas would approve of, and family solicitors of good conscience could ratify. No tyrannical sentimentality, no uncontrollable gush of sympathy, no irresistible convictions about all future happiness being dependent on one issue, overbore these natures, and made them insensible to title, and rank, and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... 1940 the governing power in the Republic—to remain that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable guess that the Trust (which is already in our day pretty brusque in its ways) will then be the most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical politico-religious master that has dominated a people since the palmy days of the Inquisition. And a stronger master than the strongest of bygone times, because this one will have a financial strength not dreamed of by any predecessor; as effective a concentration of irresponsible ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of Sauveterre was like many others. The husband was brutal, imperious, and tyrannical: he talked loud and positively, and thus made it appear that he was the master. The wife was humble, submissive, apparently resigned, and always ready to obey; but in reality she ruled by intelligence, as he ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... suburb of Berlin is Koepenick, in the chateau of which the youthful Frederick the Great was tried for his life by court-martial, by order of his tyrannical father; and in the same direction, an hour from Berlin by express-train, is Cuestrin, whose strong castle was the scene of his subsequent imprisonment, and where, in sight from his window, his noble friend, Lieutenant von Katte, was beheaded on the ramparts for no other crime than fidelity ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... her as he was, as she knew him to be, in the children's petty disputes he invariably took the part of his first wife's—to the glowing satisfaction of the countess-dowager. No matter how glaringly wrong they might be, how tyrannical, Hartledon screened the elder, and—to use the expression of the nurses—snubbed the younger. Kind and good though Lady Hartledon was, she felt it acutely; and, to say the truth, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... interest ... without any common understanding and agreement," further, of the cruel persecutions encountered at the hands of the Jesuits, "who had expected at least to have control of the articles on theology," and finally of the tyrannical suppression of the great work on account of the anti-Christian tendencies these ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... shown to be under the control of reason. And this had not escaped the notice of Plato,[285] it seems, who had earlier expressed in form and outline the part that fancy and unreason played in sleep in the soul that was by nature tyrannical, "for it attempts incest," he says, "with its mother, and procures for itself unlawful meats, and gives itself up to the most abandoned desires, such as in daytime the law through shame and fear ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... demand of twenty men and women, to be offered as sacrifices to the Mexican idols, to expiate this heavy offence. On Cortes being informed of their barbarous exaction, he proposed to the chiefs to seize these officers, till Montezuma might be informed of their tyrannical conduct to his subjects; but they were terrified at the proposal, and refused their concurrence. But Cortes made them be seized, and ordered them to be fastened by the neck to some large staves and collars, like a pillory, so that they were unable to move, even ordering one of them ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... in secret consultation many times during three or four days and nights. Occasionally Sir George was called into their councils, and that flattering attention so wrought upon the old man's pride that he was a slave to the queen's slightest wish, and was more tyrannical and dictatorial than ever before to all the rest of mankind. There were, however, two persons besides the queen before whom Sir George was gracious: one of these was Mary Stuart, whose powers of fascination had been brought to bear upon the King of the Peak most effectively. The ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major



Words linked to "Tyrannical" :   undemocratic, tyrannous, despotic, dictatorial, domineering



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