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Preferment

noun
1.
The act of preferring.
2.
The act of making accusations.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Preferment" Quotes from Famous Books



... observe that Geoffrey Barton names his sons Charles and Montague, and his daughter Catherine. Charles afterwards received the rectory of St. Andrew's Holborn from the family of Montague; and Cutts was Dean of Bristol under Bishop Montague. And Montague obtained preferment from Mr. Conduit. Neither the family of Montague, nor that of Barton, seem to have thought the connexion discreditable. Moreover, the births of these children of Geoffrey Barton, a clergyman, occurred at the very period when the name of Catherine should have been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various

... In 1461 the princes appealed against the sale of indulgences. The Gravamina of this year were very bitter, complaining of the practice of usury by priests, of the pomp of the cardinals and of the pope's habit of giving promises of preferment to certain sees and then declaring the places vacant on the plea of having made a "mental reservation" in favor of some one else. The Roman clergy were called in this bill of grievances "public fornicators, keepers of concubines, ruffians, pimps and sinners in various ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Every bishopric was granted by Edward to Norman priests, until Godwin and his sons got the upper hand after their exile. Since then most of them have been given to Germans. It would seem that the king was so set against Englishmen that only by bringing in foreigners can Harold prevent all preferment going to Normans. But what is the consequence? They say now that our church is governed from Rome, whereas before Edward's time we Englishmen did not think of taking our orders ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... peace, and such like, but the more rational sort of men seek after some shadow of wisdom and virtue. Yet the generality of men, both high and low, have extravagant illimited desires towards riches, pleasure, preferment, and all that we have spoken is enclosed within the narrow compass of men's abode here, which is but for a moment. So that, if it were possible that all these forementioned desires and delights of men could attend any man for the space of an hundred years, though he had the concurrence ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Chillon, handled a sword skilfully and dreamed of glory won upon battle-fields. He was dismayed when he first heard that his widowed mother had changed her plans for his career. A brother, who was to have been consecrated Bishop of Lucon, had decided to turn monk, and as the preferment to the See was in the hands of the family, it had been decided that Armand Jean should ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... commenced between the metropolis on the one hand,—the residence, independently of the court and nobles, of the most active and stirring spirits who had not been regularly educated, or who, from mischance or otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of preferment,—and the universities on the other. The latter prided themselves on their closer approximation to the ancient rules and ancient regularity—taking the theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the rhetorical tragedies of the poet ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... metropolis, or probably the country in general, know the character of the brave, ill-fated band of Highlanders, who were now advancing into the very heart of the country. It was the custom, especially among those who wished to gain preferment at Court, or who affected to be fashionable, to speak of the Highlanders as low, ignorant savages; semi-barbarians, to whom the vulgar qualities of personal courage and hardihood might be allowed, but who had neither any urbanity to strangers, nor refined ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... land, and many vessels in sight, the Englishmen desired us to make sail, as they could carry their bark into Falmouth. We did so, and reached London, in due time. On our return to New York, the Washington was sold, and I lost my preferment in that employment, though I went with a character to another vessel, and got ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... him, notwithstanding which the Pope had appointed M'Hale; but on this occasion the Pope made a shrewd observation. His Holiness said that 'he had remarked for a long time past that no piece of preferment of any value ever fell vacant in Ireland that he did not get an application from the British Government asking for the appointment.' Lord Melbourne supposed he was determined to show that he had ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... Guinea cost, in November, 1719, where he was taken by the pirate Davis. He was at first very averse to that mode of life, and would certainly have deserted, had an opportunity occurred. It happened to him, however, as to many upon another element, that preferment calmed his conscience, and reconciled him to that which ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... land and sea, linseed will be dear, also wheat, in Hatour,[FN330] but cheap in Amshir:[FN331] honey will be dear and grapes and melons will rot.' (Q.) 'What if it fall on Saturday?' (A.) 'That is Saturn's day and portends the preferment of slaves and Greeks and those in whom there is no good, neither in their neighbourhood; there will be great drought and scarcity; clouds will abound and death will be rife among mankind and woe to ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... part of The New York Sun, the Hoffman family is thus described: "Few families, for so few a number of persons as compose it, have cut 'a larger swath' or 'bigger figure' in the way of posts and preferment. Talent, and also public service rendered, martial gallantry, poetry, judicial acumen, oratory, all have their lustre mingled with this name." I regard this ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... than there existed in each settlement, a perfect unison of feeling. Similitude of situation and community of danger, operating as a magic charm, stifled in their birth those little bickerings, which are so apt to disturb the quiet of society. Ambition of preferment and the pride of place, too often lets and hindrances to social intercourse, were unknown among them. Equality of condition rendered them strangers alike, to the baneful distinctions created by wealth ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... knaves come to preferment, they rise as gallowses are raised in the Low Countries, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... tendency. The Church was little better than a political force cultivated and manipulated by political leaders for their own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians, or theological polemics collecting trophies of victory over free-thinkers as titles to higher preferment. The inferior clergy as a body were far nearer in character to Trulliber than to Dr. Primrose; coarse, sordid, neglectful of their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, fanatics ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... religion but their dissembling, or a fat benefice, nothing for their wit but their dressing, for their nobility but their title, for their gentility but their sword, for their courage but their huffing, for their preferment but their assurance, for their learning but their degrees, or for their gravity but their wrinkles or dulness. They had better laugh at one another here, as it is the custom of the world. Laughing ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... difference of dress between the two that constituted the distinction: the soldier might be as pious as the priest, the priest was sure to be as worldly as the soldier; the soldier might have ecclesiastical preferment; the priest ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... along roads choked with snow, fighting the bitter north-west wind; aided by miracles, he never fails; he fulfils his sacred office, and thenceforward there is room for neither doubt nor fear. Death is but a glorious preferment, a door that opens to the joys unspeakable of ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... informs you, shall take anything that offers for the subject of my discourse. Thus, new persons, as well as new things, are to come under my consideration; as, when a toast, or a wit, is first pronounced such, you shall have the freshest advice of their preferment from me, with a description of the beauty's manner, and the wit's style; as also, in whose places they are advanced. For this town is never good-natured enough to raise one, without depressing another. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... planets; and the harmonic system of the world. To the literature of Greece he added the use of the Latin tonque; the Roman civilians were deposited in his library and in his mind; and he most assiduously cultivated those arts which opened the road of wealth and preferment. From the bar of the Praetorian praefects, he raised himself to the honors of quaestor, of consul, and of master of the offices: the council of Justinian listened to his eloquence and wisdom; and envy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... of all, in respect of religion, though the minor clergy were very largely Tory and the Dissenters were allied to the Whigs, yet the Anglicanism of the great Whig families, and their appointments when in power to the Episcopal bench and to other places of preferment, saved the Church of England from being identified in toto with either ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... mayest call it what thou likest," he said, "but dreams be dreams; and this one signifieth honor. I waked only long enough to meditate upon it and fell asleep again, and dreamed I climbed once more the big oak of yesterday. And that meaneth great preferment. Canst thou see now how I have no cause to fear king's men? For what honor could it be to be caught by them? or what preferment to be laid by the heels in the king's dungeon? And canst thou see how ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... their luxury, their worldly-mindedness, and their desire for high place and fat livings. Yet these denunciations have no very spiritual origin. His rage is the rage of a disappointed candidate, rather than of a prophet; and, to the last, he seems to have expected preferment in the Church. Not without a certain pathos he writes, when he had become familiar with disappointment, and the sickness ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... anything for me in the future, Mme. La Foy?" I asked, taking my feet off the table, the better to watch her features, "anything that would seem to indicate political preferment, a reward for past services to ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... greatest privilege to be—American citizens. Cast parties to the winds, and uphold the state. Trample under your free-born feet the badges of party bondage, the ignoble chains of party slavery, the wretched hopes of party preferment." ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... lodgings, and frequented the coffee houses in a different region of the town; where I was very quickly distinguished by several young gentlemen of high birth, and large estates, and began again to amuse my imagination with hopes of preferment, though not quite so confidently as when I ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... religion I profest, And found there was no harm in 't; I cogg'd and flatter'd like the rest, Till I had got preferment. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment." In which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... has business in town; to solicit for a benefice which it is expected the incumbent will be obliged to quit for a better preferment: and, when there, he is to inquire privately after your way of life, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... the colony Madam Heathcote, the task is not one of easy bearing. If the King's representative had given the colors to my brother Reuben, and left the Dudley with the halberd in his hand, the preferment would have been ample for one of his qualities, and all the better for the credit of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... been at the prospect of becoming the chief of an embassy, yet when I was offered the inferior appointment, my feelings were very different. I felt that in quitting the situation I now enjoyed, I should leave the high road to preferment, to get into one of its crooked lanes. Besides, I strongly participated in the national antipathy, the horror of leaving one's country, and particularly dreaded the idea of going to sea; and when I came to reflect that the country to which I was likely ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging to officers of ships touching in her harbours." Into the court of this washerwoman-queen, Typee and Long Ghost were exceedingly anxious to penetrate. Vague ideas of favour and preferment haunted their brains. During their Polynesian cruise, they had seen many instances of rapid advancement; vagabond foreigners, of all nations, domesticated in the families of chiefs and kings, and sometimes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... think they have seen the worst. A great mistake. However, you are now in the high road to preferment, so we will not be dull. There are some good fellows enough amongst us. You will like old Neptune.' ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli

... is necessary in a republic, and in monarchy, honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government." The meaning is, that in republics, virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of national prosperity; that under a monarchy, the desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is what quickens men to perform services to the state; that despotism thrives by fear inspired in the breasts of those ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... never was thankless to man or brute,' said King Henry. 'Moreover, his cat, or her grandchildren, must be now in high preferment at the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I told you of Crawfurd's(13) preferment in my letter of last Friday sevennight. I shall return to London the end of this week, and go in search of further news for your entertainment. The journal which you suppose me to keep is no other than minutes I make of what I hear. When you come ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... clause, should at some time or other enable the Presbyterians to work themselves up into the National Church; instead of uniting Protestants, it would sow eternal divisions among them. First, their own sects, which now lie dormant, would be soon at cuffs again with each other about power and preferment; and the dissenting Episcopals, perhaps discontented to such a degree, as upon some fair unhappy occasion, would be able to shake the firmest loyalty, which none can deny ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... in the sense given below by Dr. Paley. "He [Paley] held, indeed, all those little arts of underhand address, by which patronage and preferment are so frequently pursued, in supreme contempt. He was not of a nature to root; for that was his own expressive term, afterwards much used in the University to denote the sort of practice alluded to. He one day humorously ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... gone on, in the regular line of promotion, my dear sir," pithily inquired Captain Truck, "to what preferment would you have risen ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... ran the comments with which the announcement of Arsinoe's preferment to the part of Roxana was received, and hatred and bitter animosity had grown up in the souls of the dealer and his daughter. Praxilla was selected as a companion to Alexander's bride, and she yielded without objecting, but on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to tell all that befell me as a bondman among the Moors of Barbary. My master was a renegade knight who had forsworn the Cross and risen to some preferment among the Almohades. His hate was upon me day and night, and I knew that my lady and my kindred must believe me dead. And in that black horror of loneliness and despair I ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... bairn is happy eno'. He will come to higher preferment than even you or I. Why, mon, an Aga of the Janissaries is as good as the ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... man might manage to support himself." The bishop, however, was not easily abashed, and he was at the epoch which now occupies us, earnestly and successfully soliciting from Philip the lucrative abbey of Saint Armand. Not that he would have accepted this preferment, "could the abbey have been annexed to any of the new bishoprics;" on the contrary, he assured the king that "to carry out so holy a work as the erection of those new sees, he would willingly have contributed even out of his own ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... service, and caring little himself as to whom the honor might fall, so the true end was reached. It was a great mind lowering itself to the level of a little one. But Lee could only see in it a struggle for personal favor and preferment. ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake

... adventurer, he sought only enterprise and command: if a commission in the army failed him, then he would risk his neck upon the road, levying his own tax and imposing his own conditions. To one of his dauntless resolution an opportunity need never have lacked; yet he owed his first preferment to a happy accident. Surprised one evening in a drunken brawl, he was hustled into the Poultry Counter, and there made acquaintance over a fresh bottle with Robert Allen, one of the chief rogues in the Park, and a ruffian, who had mastered every trick in the game of plunder. A dexterous cly-faker, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... impudent a dog as any of them, and far more than a match for the best of them at a tournament of slang, being on his preferment, thought it best to be civil, and replied, with a touch of his hat, that ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... accompanied by symptoms indicative, as he thought, of a decline. "My constitution," writes he to his friend Colonel Stanwix, "is much impaired, and nothing can retrieve it but the greatest care and the most circumspect course of life. This being the case, as I have now no prospect left of preferment in the military way, and despair of rendering that immediate service which my country may require from the person commanding its troops, I have thoughts of quitting my command and retiring from all public business, leaving my post to be filled by some other person more capable of the task, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... revolutionary contest; and, therefore, the major part of the enterprise, ambition, and patriotism, of the country, was given to the training, studies, and pursuits, calculated to fit men for so stern a struggle. But now that other avenues are inviting in themselves, and promise political preferment, we are liable to the criticism that our young men, well educated in the schools and in a knowledge of the world, are not well grounded in political history and constitutional law, without which there can be no thorough and comprehensive ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... Customs and Temper, he modell'd his Behaviour accordingly. This great Man was famous for Military Qualifications, only, if so noble an Excess may be term'd a Fault, he was perhaps too brave. But this Intrepidity, which in any other Country would have hindered his Preferment, promoted it among the Kofirans, and raised his Character with that People, who are all Fire and Spirit. His Name was Vameric. He has been reproached with interrupting the Actions of this Campaign, which was ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... that I really now believe the fit is over. I came to town on Sunday, and can creep about my room even without a stick, which is more felicity to me than if I had got a white one. I do not aim yet at such preferment as walking up stairs; but having moulted my stick, I flatter myself I shall come forth again without being lame. The few I have seen tell me there is nobody else in town. That is no grievance to me, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... migrated from East Anglia through Nottingham to Yorkshire, and was much connected with Cambridge. Thither Laurence, the novelist, after a very roving childhood (his father was a soldier), and a rather irregular education, duly went: and, receiving preferment in the Church from his Yorkshire relations, lived for more than twenty years in that county without a history, till he took the literary world—hardly by storm, but by a sort of fantastic capful of wind—with Tristram Shandy in 1760. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... Catherine's divorce might be settled without reference to the pope. The king set him to write on the subject, and he was rewarded with the Archdeaconry of Taunton. In 1530 he accompanied the Earl of Wiltshire to the papal court, and was there offered preferment by the pope. He married the niece of Osiander, who had himself written on the subject of the divorce. On Warham's death he succeeded him in the primacy, and returned to England. As archbishop, Cranmer pronounced the divorce against Catherine and crowned ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... their neighbour, Carswell, she tells me, is a man of the dourest idolatry, his mother having been a papistical woman, and his father, through all the time of the First King Charles, an eydent ettler for preferment." ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... at least go to Sir Miles Warrington; sure his arms are open to receive you. Her ladyship was here this morning in her chair, and to hear her praises of you! She declares you are in a certain way to preferment. She says his Royal Highness the Duke made much of you at court. When you are a great man will ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... hopes you mean to make him abbot, And he deserves your care of his preferment; For all his prayers are curses on the government, And all his sermons libels on the king; In short, a pious, hearty, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... connected with his design to leave the monastery. He himself afterwards declared that he had but rarely read mass. He got his chance to leave the monastery when offered the post of secretary to the Bishop of Cambray, Henry of Bergen. Erasmus owed this preferment to his fame as a Latinist and a man of letters; for it was with a view to a journey to Rome, where the bishop hoped to obtain a cardinal's hat, that Erasmus entered his service. The authorization of the Bishop of Utrecht had been obtained, and also that of the prior and the general of the order. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... confer first with the British minister at Genoa, and thence to proceed with his squadron to the Austrian headquarters at Vado Bay. The seniority he had now attained made his selection for this detached and responsible service less evidently flattering than Hood's preferment of him to such positions when he was junior in rank; but the duty had the distinction of being not only arduous from the purely naval standpoint, but delicate in the diplomatic management and tact required. Although Great Britain ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... trenchant pen upon 'the social abuses which the first families in the metropolis tolerate at the hands of disreputable exquisites and titled rascals.' Nervous words, but not undeserved. 'How much more rapidly a fashionable foreigner will move in the high road of preferment than one of your thinking, feeling, complex persons, in whom honor, integrity and reason make such a pother that no step can be taken without consulting them!' . . . WE have indulged in one or two sonorous guffaws, and several of Mr. COOPER's 'silent laughs,' over the following 'palpable hit' ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... father of the present Sir Harry Willoughby; after that I owed each step to hard and long service. Your mother's legacies have helped you along, at a faster rate, though I do trust there has been some merit to aid in the preferment." ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... Tideswell was in their eyes extreme, though the hostel was so crowded that Cis had to share a mattress with Mrs. Talbot, and Diccon had to sleep in his cloak on the floor, which he persuaded himself was high preferment. He woke, however, much sooner than was his wont, and finding it useless to try to fall asleep again, he made his way out among the sleeping figures on the floor and hall, and finding the fountain in the midst of the court, produced his soap and comb from his ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... bishopric proved to be true. The new bishop was a very "moderate" Anglican indeed, and his appointment was meant as a sop to the Presbyterians. Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy refused similar preferment. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... voulez-vous? We are what we are. A grisette makes a bad fine lady. A fine lady would make a still worse grisette. The Archbishopric of Paris is a most repectable and desirable preferment; but your humble servant, for instance, would ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... before the Chancellor. Thurlow quite reasonably replied that he could not form any opinion as to Crabbe's present situation—"still less upon the agreeableness of it"; and hinted that a somewhat longer period of probation was advisable before he selected Crabbe for preferment ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... broken wings Full of sick feathers, and with forced things, Imp thy scenes, labour'd and unnatural, And nothing good comes with thy thrice-vex'd call, Comest thou not yet, nor yet? O no, nor yet; Yet are thy learn'd admirers so deep set In thy preferment above all that cite The sun in challenge for the heat and light Of heaven's influences which of you two knew And have most power in them; Great Ben, 'tis you. Examine him, some truly-judging spirit, That pride nor fortune hath to blind ...
— English Satires • Various

... return: How could it be longer suffered in a free nation, that all avenues to preferment should be shut up, except a very few, when one or two stood constant sentry, who docked all favours they handed down; or spread a huge invisible net, between the prince and subject, through which nothing of value could pass? And here ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... by K. Charles I. and his royal consort; but he, finding not that preferment from either which he expected, grew discontented, sided with the Presbyterians, and, upon the {280} turn of the times, became a debauchee ad omnia; entertained ill principles as to religion, spoke often very slightly of the Trinity, kept beastly and atheistical company, of whom Thos. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various

... would certainly break everything to pieces. He was up betimes, careering about the garden with all his sisters after him, imperiously ordering them about, but nevertheless bewitching them all, so that Amoretta was in ecstasies at her own preferment, scarcely realising that it would divide her from the others; while Letty made sure that she should soon follow, and Fidelia gravely said, "I shall always know you are loving me still, Amy, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... land, are all combined to give extension and perpetuity to the Slave Power. Everywhere to do homage to it, to avoid collision with it, to propitiate its favour, is deemed essential—nay, is essential to political preferment and ecclesiastical advancement. Nothing is so unpopular as impartial liberty. The two great parties which absorb nearly the whole voting strength of the Republic are pledged to be deaf, dumb and blind to whatever outrages the Slave Power may attempt to perpetrate. Cotton is ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... the story of a pope, who, (once a poor fisherman,) through every preferment he rose to, even to that of the cardinalate, hung up in view of all his guests his net, as a token of humility. But, when he arrived at the pontificate, he took it down, saying, that there was no need of the net, when ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... profoundest study of Christian conscience given by any dramatist since Christ opened a new chapter for conscience in the soul. Monsieur Madeleine, the mayor, is rich, respected, honored, is a savior of society, sought out by the king for political preferment. One shadow tracks him like a nightmare. Javert is on his track, instinct serving him for reason. At last, Javert himself thinks Jean Valjean has been found; for a man has been arrested, is to be tried, will doubtless be convicted, seeing evidence is damning. Now, Monsieur Madeleine, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... ancient and powerful house; but it was one of those houses that had suffered sorely in the recent strife, and whose members had been scattered and cut off. He had no powerful relatives and friends to turn to now for promotion to rich benefice or high ecclesiastical preferment, and he had certainly never lamented this fact. In heart and soul he was a follower of the rules of poverty laid down by the founder of his order, and would have thought himself untrue to his calling had he suffered himself to be endowed with worldly wealth. Even ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... his interesting chapter on him, succeeds in putting him higher. But he shared, with Chillingworth and Hales, the spirit of liberality and toleration, for which both were nobly conspicuous, though Hales did not show himself a very uncompromising champion of his principles when he accepted preferment from the hands of their arch-enemy, Laud. The learned men and religious philosophers whom Falkland gathered round him at Tew, were among the best and foremost thinkers of their age: the beauty of the group is marred, perhaps, only by the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... religious books, should devote at least one of his sons to the Church; this might tend to bring business, or at any rate to keep it in the firm; besides, Mr Pontifex had more or less interest with bishops and Church dignitaries and might hope that some preferment would be offered to his son through his influence. The boy's future destiny was kept well before his eyes from his earliest childhood and was treated as a matter which he had already virtually settled by his acquiescence. Nevertheless ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... Henry Goldsmith, says the Percy 'Memoir', 1801, p. 3, 'had distinguished himself both at school and at college, but he unfortunately married at the early age of nineteen; which confined him to a Curacy, and prevented his rising to preferment in the church.' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... cheerful and companionable. They spoke much of Bertie. His decision to take orders would have given his sister unqualified satisfaction had he also sought preferment in England. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... of a parish with his labours in the observatory. Nor do we associate a special eminence in any department of religious work with his name. If, however, we are to measure Brinkley's merits as a divine by the ecclesiastical preferment which he received, his services to theology must have rivalled his services to astronomy. Having been raised step by step in the Church, he was at last appointed to the See of Cloyne, in 1826, as the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... her as time went on. Everard always checked all talk of his prospects. He was so repressive on the subject that she could not possibly pursue it, and she came at last to conclude that his hope of preferment had vanished like ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... tit. xvii; the first of these is dated 1629. See also Teatro de la legislacion universal de Espana y Indias (Madrid, 1791-97). The mesada was to be collected on the basis of the receipts from each preferment during the five years preceding the new incumbent's entry ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various

... years had to be devoted to the study of civil law before a student could be admitted as bachelor of canon law. Consequently a man of parts, with a leaning towards theological and philosophical learning, took up the study of civil law, with the hope of more easily winning preferment.[1] "Compared with such [legal] lore," writes Mr. Mullinger, "theological learning became but a sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment; most of the Popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attainments in a subject which so nearly concerned the temporal interests of ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... arranged the guests. The basin was presented by a handsome young foreigner, Simon de Montfort, youngest son of the Count de Montfort, and cousin of the Earl of Chester, to whose good offices in the first instance he probably owed his English preferment. He had not yet become the most powerful man in the kingdom, the darling of the English people, the husband of the King's sister, the man whom, on his own testimony,—much as he feared a thunderstorm,—Henry feared "more than all the thunder ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... attended Zadig proceeded, in a great Measure, from his Preferment; but more from his intrinsic Merit. Every Day he had familiar Converse with the King, his Royal Master, and his august Consort, Astarte. And the Pleasure arising from thence was greatly enhanc'd from an innate Ambition of pleasing, ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... himself as a good patriot and true Protestant in the Parliament of 1686 in defence of the Penal Laws against Popery. This self-denyed man hath taken no less pains to shun places that were in his offer than some others have been at to get into preferment. Witness his refusing to accept a patent in the year 1692 to be the King's Advocate, and the resigning his place as a Lord of Justiciary after the Union, which Her Majesty with reluctancy took off his hand. In short, his lordship is (what I know by experience) as communicative as he is universally ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... the sword wherever a harvest was to be reaped with it.... Lafayette's first act in America gave new evidence of disinterestedness and magnanimity. He found the small patriot army rent asunder by jealous feuds growing out of ambition for preferment. What revolution, however holy, has not suffered by such evils! How many a revolution has been lost by them! Schuyler, the brave, the high-spirited, and wise, now the victim of an intrigue, was hesitating whether to submit to a privation of rank justly due him, or to resign. Putnam's ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... impediments he flew, And strain'd his eyes to keep the prize in view. Religion, virtue, sense, to him were nought; He hated none, yet none employ'd his thought, Save when he glitter'd in their borrowed beam, To gain preferment, or to court esteem. The minister, not tool, of Christiern's will, He serv'd his measures, yet despis'd him still: Scann'd with impartial view th'encircling scene, Glancing o'er all an eye exact and keen, Advantage to descry; and seldom fail'd, When Virtue's cause by Fortune's will prevail'd, On ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... restore the Welsh Church to her old position of independence of the metropolitan authority of Canterbury. He detested the practice of promoting Normans to Welsh sees, and of excluding Welshmen from high positions in their own country. "Because I am a Welshman, am I to be debarred from all preferment in Wales?" he indignantly writes to the Pope. Circumstances at first seemed to favour his ambition. His uncle, David Fitz-Gerald, sat in the seat of St. David's. When the young scholar returned from ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... and altered the number from a one into a two. Then I refolded the note, and handed it to my magician for further preferment to the Prince." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... than I am; but I can only hope it will come in time. The Church holds that there's a grace given in ordination; and really—really, I do hope and wish to do my duty—indeed, one can't help doing it; one is so pushed on by the immense competition for preferment; an idle ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... been called upon to make a personal sacrifice there is none who makes a greater one than he. It is not alone the relinquishment of his position in the world as a patient and industrious worker; his sacrifice of love; the obliteration of his hope for preferment, but the extinction of life itself at an age when all men cherish it ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... found few indeed who make the right use of such gifts and knowledge; who humble themselves to serve others, according to the dictates of love. Each seeks his own honor and advantage, desiring to gain preferment ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... Though for a time he had to be satisfied, even when he was married, with a very small London living, he soon rose in the Church, at a time when clergymen of a liberal way of thinking had not much chance of Crown preferment. But having gone at the head of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, to inform him that Gladstone's next election as member for Oxford was becoming doubtful, owing to all the bishoprics being given to the Low Church party—the party of Lord Shaftesbury—Palmerston ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... lordship's favour we shall hardly be able to subsist any long time. We do not entreat your lordship for any other or more easy price than that your lordship directs the sale of it to others; only we humbly pray for some preferment in the opportunity of the place where the woods lie, and in the quantity, as it may answer in some portion to our wants. Herein, if your lordship will be pleased to favour us, then we humbly pray your lordship to direct us to some such persons as your Lordship resolves to employ in ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls

... are learned enough to know that. Rogue that you be, I am very glad that you are trapped by this marriage. Well I know that you have dangled too much with petticoats, to the great scandal of this my Court. Now you have lost your preferment, and I am glad of it. Another and a better than thou shall be the Queen's Chancellor, for another and a better than thou shall wed this wench. We will get ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... Pownall, of Massachusetts, with regard to the representation of the colonies in the British Parliament, been adopted, no umbrage could have been taken at the imposition of taxes, because the colonies would have been open to civil and military preferment in the state equally with the residents of the United Kingdom. It was, and is, an unfortunate mistake to look upon colonists with contempt. Colonists, more even than the inhabitants of old countries, inhale a spirit of independence. Often, lords of all they survey, they ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... were wishing for a copy of Cinq-Mars in order to follow the young Marquis through his sad and singular experience at Loudun, his meeting with his old friend De Thou, his brilliant exploit at Perpignan, his rapid preferment at court, and—just here Walter called us from our rapid review of the career of Cinq-Mars to show us a head of Benjamin Franklin in terra cotta. This excellent low relief of Franklin is in a case with a ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... of the Rosicrucian language. Ashmole confessed he meant nothing more than a kind of pun on his own name, for the tree was the ash, and the creature was a mole. One pillar tells his love of music and freemasonry, and the other his military preferment and astrological studies! He afterwards regretted that no one added a second volume to his work, from which he himself had been hindered, for the honour of the family of Hermes, and "to show the world ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... conscience, Master Varney," said the Countess, "and your veracity will not, I think, interrupt your preferment in the world, such as it is. But touching Tressilian—I must do him justice, for I have done him wrong, as none knows better than thou. Tressilian's conscience is of other mould—the world thou speakest of has not ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... happened that Proteus' father had just been talking with a friend on this very subject: his friend had said, he wondered his lordship suffered his son to spend his youth at home, while most men were sending their sons to seek preferment abroad; "some," said he, "to the wars, to try their fortunes there, and some to discover islands far away, and some to study in foreign universities; and there is his companion Valentine, he is gone to the Duke of Milan's court. Your son is fit for any of these things, and it will be a great ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... them; but, very soon, he imagined that he had cause to repent of his commendations. Classical learning was, in that age, regarded as a mere solitary accomplishment, and the law was the only road that led to honours and preferment. Petracco was, therefore, desirous to turn into that channel the brilliant qualities of his son; and for this purpose he sent him, at the age of fifteen, to the university of Montpelier. Petrarch remained ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... seriously asked from what motive I published my Calm Address to the American Colonies? I seriously answer, Not to get money; not to get preferment; not to please any man living; least of all to inflame any; just the contrary. I contributed my mite towards putting out the flame that rages. This I have more opportunity to see than any man in England. I see with pain to what a height ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... preferment. As for young Musgrave, he must have talent. I was driving through Brook yesterday, and I called at the manor-house. The mother is a modest person of much natural dignity. The son was out. I left a message that I should be glad to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... estimate rightly my determination, and the sacrifice I am making. However, I have on my side conscience, which applauds me for preferring, to the real, actual joys of a quiet and pleasurable existence, the prospect, even if a remote one, of preferment, which may secure me a distinguished position and a distinction which may be of advantage to my children. The greater have been my sacrifices, the more commendable it is to have made them; and if chance only favors ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... for opportunity had now come—nor is it an unreasonable surmise, that this very extraordinary action of the Senate was forced by outside as well as inside influences for the purpose of testing the Senate, and committing it in advance and in anticipation of the preferment of ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... part of what looks most enigmatical in his conduct. At first sight, it seems altogether unworthy of a man of Swift's genius to waste so much of it and so many of the best years of his life in a sordid struggle after preferment in the church—a career in which such selfish ambitions look most out of place. How much better to have stayed quietly at Laracor and written immortal works! Very good: only that was not Swift's way of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell



Words linked to "Preferment" :   prefer, promotion, accusation, accusal



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