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Robespierre

noun
1.
French revolutionary; leader of the Jacobins and architect of the Reign of Terror; was himself executed in a coup d'etat (1758-1794).  Synonym: Maxmillien Marie Isidore de Robespierre.






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"Robespierre" Quotes from Famous Books



... genius, a satanic Corsican, a sort of Antichrist. The few Frenchmen whom she saw at the Austrian court were emigres, who saw in Napoleon nothing but the selfish revolutionist, the friend of the young Robespierre, the creature of Barras, the defender of the members of the Convention, the man of the 13th of Vendemiaire, the murderer of the Duke of Enghien, the enemy of all the thrones of Europe, the author of the treachery of Bayonne, the persecutor ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... independence. The American leaders were impregnated with the metaphysical ideas of rights which had come to them from the rising revolutionary school in France. Burke no more adopted the doctrines of Jefferson in 1776 than he adopted the doctrines of Robespierre in 1793. He says nothing about men being born free and equal, and on the other hand he never denies the position of the court and the country at large, that the home legislature, being sovereign, had the right to tax the colonies. What he does say is that the exercise of such ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... is obvious. Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after me—a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me, and you may—ma foi! I only suggest that you may escape ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... without scruple or difficulty. There were two females in her company, and one of the other sex, well-dressed, elderly, and sedate persons. Their discourse turned upon political topics, with which, as you know, I have but slight acquaintance. They talked of fleets and armies, of Robespierre and Pitt, of whom I ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... guillotine, un officier gascon de l'armee francaise exprima ainsi l'effroi que lui avait inspire ce tyran: "Toutes les fois que j'entendais proferer le nom de Robespierre, je portais la main a ma tete pour m'assurer qu'elle etait encore sur mes epaules." Ce que c'est ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann

... of the jails under mock forms of justice to which reference has been made. It was really a massacre, and lasted, as has been said, for five days. Versailles, Lyons, Meaux, Rheims, and Orleans were similarly "purified." Amid these scenes the immaculate Robespierre, whose hands were not soiled with the blood spilled on August tenth, appeared as the calm statesman controlling the wild vagaries of the rough and impulsive but unselfish and uncalculating Danton. These two, with Philip Egalite ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... to abolish the punishment of death, and it is with infinite satisfaction that I recollect the humane and excellent oration pronounced by Robespierre on that subject in the Constituent Assembly. This cause must find its advocates in every corner where enlightened politicians and lovers of humanity exist, and it ought above all to find them in ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... said little, and soon went away. They were, however, sufficiently impressed with what they saw to take some measures for Louis's relief. They had been sent by the Convention, on the downfall and death of the great revolutionary leader, Robespierre, to see what was the state of things at the Temple; and in consequence of their report, a person named Laurent was appointed to visit ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... I. has been sold in Paris for five thousand five hundred francs. It was written by Napoleon at Ajaccio in 1790, and the language and orthography are said to be those of an uneducated person. In this manuscript he speaks with enthusiasm of Robespierre." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various

... laughter, in which their commanding officer, after an unavailing attempt to look serious—I should rather write fierce joined, and there he was, the bloody Davoust—Duke of Auerstad Prince of Eckmuhl—the Hamburgh Robespierre—the terrible Davoust—dancing all around the room, in a regular guffaw, like to split his sides. The heated stove had made his sword, which ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... writer has recently published a careful and interesting volume on the famous events which ended in the overthrow of Robespierre and the close of the Reign of Terror.[1] These events are known in the historic calendar as the Revolution of Thermidor in the Year II. After the fall of the monarchy, the Convention decided that the year should begin ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... found, sent aboard in our behalf two pieces of rare antiquity,—rare anywhere, but especially rare in the lockers of the Betsey,—in the agreeable form of two bottles of semi-fossil Madeira,—Madeira that had actually existed in the grape exactly half a century before, at the time when Robespierre was startling Paris from its propriety, by mutilating at the neck the busts of other people, and multiplying casts and medals of his own; and we found it, explored in moderation, no bad study for geologists, especially in coarse weather, when they had got wet ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... does not always assume the same type; for, while in Germany it was a general disbelief in the authenticity of the Scriptures, in France it was the rejection of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul. Even Robespierre testified before the French National Convention of 1794, that "the idea of a supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul, was a continual call to justice, and that no nation could succeed without the recognition of these truths." A revolution in Christendom, which ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... the execution of the King, the despotism of the Directory and the Consulship could not turn it, until Napoleon united all France under him and all England against him. As late as 1793, such men as James Watt, Jr., and the poet Wordsworth were in Paris, on intimate terms with Robespierre and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... historians, who have a firm belief in the so-called "Foreign Conspiracy," ascribe every important event of the Great Revolution—be that event the downfall of the Girondins, the escape of the Dauphin from the Temple, or the death of Robespierre—to the intrigues of Baron de Batz. He it was, so they say, who egged the Jacobins on against the Mountain, Robespierre against Danton, Hebert against Robespierre. He it was who instigated the massacres of September, the atrocities of Nantes, the horrors of Thermidor, ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... passes over. In the hour of danger, too, some friend who keeps a quiet eye upon its safety may interpose at the critical moment. The treasures of the French libraries were certainly in terrible danger when Robespierre had before him the draft of a decree, that "the books of the public libraries of Paris and the departments should no longer be permitted to offend the eyes of the republic by shameful marks of servitude." The word would have gone forth, and a good deal beyond the mere marks of servitude would ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... Bossuet's Warnings. Rousseau. Fenelon. Voltaire. The Philosophers of France. Louis XVI. The King's Ministers. The Queen. Her Conduct and Plans. The National Assembly. Maury. Cazales. Barnave and the Lameths. Rival Champions. Robespierre. His Personal Appearance. Revolutionary Leaders. State of the Kingdom. Jacobin Club. Effects of the Clubs. Club of the Cordeliers. La Fayette. His Popularity. Characters of the Leaders. What the Revolution might have ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... a new prisoner whispered to me that the great Robespierre, at whose nod any head in Paris might drop into the dreadful basket, had been blown upon within the walls of the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... 1793, they were obscurely buried on this spot. A friend, M. Descloseaux, at once cared for their remains, else they would have been lost amid other victims of the bloody revolution. It is a singular fact, that Danton, Herbert, and Robespierre were also buried in this same place, together with ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... looks with a keener eye; and, making due allowance for their prejudices in particular cases, their opinions and remonstrances, with regard to matters of this sort, ought not to be set at naught without great deliberation. LOUVET, one of the Brissotins, who fled for their lives in the time of ROBESPIERRE; this LOUVET, in his narrative, entitled 'Mes Perils' and which I read, for the first time, to divert my mind from the perils of the yellow-fever, in Philadelphia, but with which I was so captivated as to have read it many times since; this writer, giving an account of his wonderful ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... were closed, but the Catholic and Protestant worship entirely forbidden; and, after the constitution of 1795, it was at the hazard of one's life that either the mass was heard, or any religious duty performed. It is evident that Robespierre, who unquestionably had a design which is now generally understood, was desirous, on the day of the fete of the Supreme Being, to bring back public opinion to the worship of the Deity. Eight months before, we had seen the Bishop of Paris, accompanied by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various

... assert that, had the populace of Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table of vegetable nature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to the proscription-list of Robespierre? Could a set of men, whose passions were not perverted by unnatural stimuli, look with coolness on an auto da fe? Is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from his meal of roots, would take delight ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... Tallien. I wanted you to enquire likewise whether, as a member declared in the convention, Robespierre really maintained a number of mistresses.—Should it prove so, I suspect that they rather flattered his ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... the Legislative Assembly formed the actual basis of subsequent plans for education, were among the first additions to its membership. Other prominent members who came in later were Sieyes, Petion, Gregoire, Robespierre, and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Mirabeau issued the early publications of the society as supplements to his journal; at a later time Brissot's journal, the "Patriote francaise," became the organ ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... subsequent to his leaving Cambridge, and a retrospect of the progress his mind had then made; and three to a residence in France, chiefly in the Loire, but partly in Paris, during the stormy period of Louis the Sixteenth's flight and capture, and the fierce contest between the Girondins and Robespierre. Five books are then occupied with an analysis of the internal struggle occasioned by the contradictory influences of rural and secluded nature in boyhood, and of society when the young man first mingles with the world. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... you consider how generously she was permitted political death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest interests, social, national, international. The blood wherewith she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune, was exposed in the public ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... of Bristol. He was at this time a Unitarian as well as a Radical, and officiated frequently as a Unitarian minister. His sermons were extremely eloquent. He had already published some juvenile poems, and a drama on the fall of Robespierre, and had endeavored to establish a periodical called The Watchman. He was always erratic, and dependent upon the patronage of his friends; in short, he always presented the sad spectacle of a man who could not take ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... would have its Whigs and its Tories, but that it was forever rid of Republicans and Imperialists. At the accession of Charles X. the word Republican, become a synonym of Jacobin, awoke only memories of the guillotine and the "Terror." A moderate republic seemed but a chimera; only that of Robespierre and Marat was thought of. The eagle was no longer mentioned; and as to the eaglet, he was a prisoner at Vienna. What chance of reigning had the Duke of Reichstadt, that child of thirteen, condemned by all the Powers of ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... "In the evening, M. Robespierre, a slim, dark-skinned, studious young attorney from Arras, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, came for information regarding lightning rods, he having doubts of their legality. While they were talking, M. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, another physician, arrived. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... three things additional to a "supernal influence" as requisite to constitute any one a minister—a knowledge of Christianity, and endowment, and a parish;' and as for the rest of the gentlemen named, they are just preparing to do, in an 'ecclesiastical way in Edinburgh, what Robespierre, Marat, and others did in a corporal way in the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... three lead-mines of the Eton grammar, 'Propria quae maribus,' &c. of which it is not extravagant to say, that the author, though possibly a good sort of a man in his way, has undoubtedly caused more human suffering than Nero, Robespierre, or any other enemy of the human race). Our opposition is to the general principle, which lies at the root of such treatises as the three we have been considering: it will be observed that, making a proper allowance for the smallness of the print, these three bodies of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... such as are to be met with in many large tenements where, at the end of four years, you unexpectedly learn that up on the fourth floor there is an old man lodging who knew Voltaire, Pilatre de Rozier, Beaujon, Marcel, Mole, Sophie Arnould, Franklin, and Robespierre. What Monsieur and Madame Marneffe had just said concerning Lisbeth Fischer they had come to know, in consequence, partly, of the loneliness of the neighborhood, and of the alliance, to which their necessities had led, between them ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... the workroom, encountered Miss Ella Sweeney, of Klein & Company, Des Moines, Iowa, stepping out of the elevator. A very skittish Miss Sweeney, rustling, preening, conscious of her dangling black earrings and her Robespierre collar and her beauty-patch. Emma McChesney met this apparition with outstretched, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... for more than any mortal man who has played a part in history: two republics and one monarchy does the world owe to you; and especially grateful should your country be to you. Did you not, in '90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and in '30, prepare ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Pol at Arras looks, I should say, precisely as it did in Robespierre's time. The furniture certainly belongs to that epoch, sanitary arrangements have made little advance, and the bare staircases and floors do not appear as if they had been well swept, much less scoured, since the fall of the Bastille. It is a rambling, I should say ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... the people. In 1793, while famine ravaged France and crippled the Revolution; whilst the people were reduced to the depths of misery, although the Champs Elysees were lined with luxurious carriages where women displayed their jewels and splendour, Robespierre was urging the Jacobins to discuss his treatise on the English Constitution. While the worker was suffering in 1848 from the general stoppage of trade, the Provisional Government and the National Assembly were wrangling over military ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... ROBESPIERRE, MAXIMILIEN, leader of the Jacobins in the French Revolution, born in Arras, of Irish origin; bred to the bar; became an advocate and a judge; he resigned because he could not brook to sentence a man to death; inspired by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... been quite as incapable of such imaginative independence as Keats and Coleridge would have been incapable of winning the battle of Wattignies. In Paris the tree of liberty was a garden tree, clipped very correctly; and Robespierre used the razor more regularly than the guillotine. Danton, who knew and admired English literature, would have cursed freely over Kubla Khan; and if the Committee of Public Safety had not already executed Shelley as an aristocrat, they would certainly have locked him up for ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... reflected the black mahogany furniture. In answer to Owen, who lamented that Evelyn was sacrificing everything for an idea, Harding spoke, and with his usual conscious exaltation, of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish Inquisition, and then Robespierre seemed to him the most striking example of what men will do for an idea. He mentioned a portrait by Greuze in which Robespierre appears as a beautiful young man. "Such a face," he said, "as we might imagine for a lover ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... amidst the plaudits for the good King's condescension, how was my heart lacerated to hear Robespierre denounce three of the most distinguished of the members, who had requested my attendance, as traitors ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... naval officers. Dr. Caldwell employed as assistant editor the famous and versatile THOMAS COOPER. Cooper was an Englishman, who was born in London in 1759, and had been a member of the National Assembly of France. He quarrelled with Robespierre, and challenged him to a duel. Robespierre swore revenge, and Cooper, knowing that flight alone could save him from the Jacobin Club, returned to England. He was censured by Burke, and replied in a bitter and abusive pamphlet. He followed his ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... from which misgovernment proceeds existed both in the despotism of Rome and in the democracy of France. What, then, is that which, being found in Denmark and in the United States, and not being found in the Roman Empire or under the administration of Robespierre, renders governments, widely differing in their external form, practically good? Be it what it may, it certainly is not that which Mr Mill proves a priori that it must be,—a democratic representative assembly. For the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... your children moral and religious instruction unless you are quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the mother of Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw

... the social fabric. Beyond these limits they did not go. The notion had been widespread in most countries, and deep-rooted in Russia, that a political upheaval would effect a root-reaching and lasting alteration in the forces of social development. It was adopted by Lenin, a fanatic of the Robespierre type, but far superior to Robespierre in will-power, insight, resourcefulness, and sincerity, who, having seized the reins ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... and Virginia," was written at Paris, amidst the horrors of Robespierre's tyranny. During that gloomy epocha it was difficult to find occupations which might cheat the days of calamity of their weary length. Society had vanished; and amidst the minute vexations of Jacobinical despotism, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... both Chouans!" cried the man of the thousand francs, whose ample goatskin, covering trousers of good cloth and a clean waistcoat, bespoke a rich farmer. "By the soul of Saint Robespierre! I swear you ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... which issued in making Paris France, and subjecting the whole of a vast country to the arbitrary dictates of a knot of despots in the capital, was not the fruit of the Revolution, but of the Ancien Regime which preceded it; and that Robespierre and his "Comite de Salut Public," and commissioners sent forth to the four winds of heaven in bonnet rouge and carmagnole complete, to build up and pull down, according to their wicked will, were only handling, somewhat more roughly, the same wires which had ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley

... against the Neglect and Abuse of the Nursery. Its Natural Elements. Its Definition and Nature. The Ancients. Baptista Porta. Plato. Middle Ages. It is Passive and Active. Its Disease. Good Samaritan. Rousseau. Robespierre. Its Relation to Natural Affection. Its Relation to Woman. Its Religious Elements. Christ. Ruth. Joseph. Mother of Samuel. Peter. Esther. Paul. Family of Lazarus. Its True Pattern. Its Attractive Power. Unfaithfulness to ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... feet of men and horses, and the wheel of a tumbril was over her neck. And Napoleon, under compulsion of the mob, ascended the tumbril; and Abbe Sieyes and Bishop Talleyrand rode at his side, administering spiritual consolation. Thus they came within sight of the guillotine, whereon stood M. de Robespierre in his sky-blue coat, and his jaw bound up in a bloody cloth, bowing and smiling, nevertheless, and beckoning Napoleon to ascend to him. Napoleon had never feared the face of man; but when he saw M. de Robespierre great dread ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... of these people practiced, what unjust confiscations of property, what cruel imprisonments and wicked murders? None of all these; the people of this land were not starving or dying under the iron heel of an Alva or a Robespierre, but their civil liberties had been denied, their political freedom refused, and rather than endure the loss of these precious things, they were willing to encounter danger and to brave death. The men and women who suffered at Concord and at Lexington 100 years ago ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... proofs of his existence. The people at large sided with their preachers, and Martha was taken to Paris, where various exorcisms were tried, and the Parisian mob became as devoted to her as they had been twenty years before to the murderers of the Huguenots, as they became two centuries later to Robespierre, and as they more recently ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... 1793, to M. Gabriel de Berny, almost nine years her senior, who was of the oldest nobility. Madame de Berny, her husband, her mother and her stepfather were imprisoned for nine months, and were not released until after the fall of Robespierre. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... visit, which refreshed our spirits a little, we called on Madame D'Aublay, sister-in-law to Brissot, who was executed in the time of Robespierre. She is a Roman Catholic, and thinks the groundwork of true religion to be in their church, but that their customs and the mass are nothing worth. We left her some tracts, and amongst them one of Judge Hale's, which struck her so forcibly ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to suffocation." Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout. In the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... virtue! Now the whole species is dying out, and none too soon. Graft abstract principles of conduct upon natures devoid of sympathy and you produce a monster; a sanctimonious fish; the coldest beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affinities were with Robespierre and Torquemada—both of them actuated by the purest intentions and without a grain of self-interest: pillars of integrity. What floods of tears would have been spared to mankind, had they only been a little corrupt! How corrupt a person of principles? He lacks the vulgar yet divine ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... my child," he said, "let me remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to give an advantage to the Liberals, to those Jesuits of Robespierre's that are doing all they can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do without failing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... saw the Salle du Tribunat and the Consul's apartments at the Tuileries: on the dressing-table there were the busts of Fox and Nelson. At our return home we saw the good Francois Delessert and another man, who was the man who took Robespierre prisoner, and who has since made a clock which is wound up by the action of the air on mercury, like that which Mr. Edgeworth invented for the King of Spain. He told us many things that made us stare, and many that made us shiver, and many more that made us ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... French Constitution struck and perplexed Maltravers. This people so pervaded by the republican sentiment; this people, who had sacrificed so much for Freedom; this people, who, in the name of Freedom, had perpetrated so much crime with Robespierre, and achieved so much glory with Napoleon,—this people were, as a people, contented to be utterly excluded from all power and voice in the State! Out of thirty-three millions of subjects, less than ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I have sent in my resignation to Punch. There appears in next Punch an article so wicked, I think, by poor —— [? Jerrold] that upon my word I don't think I ought to pull any longer in the same boat with such a savage little Robespierre. The appearance of this incendiary article put me in such a rage that I could only cool myself with a ride in the park." Writing a long while afterwards for the public eye, he said, "Another member of Punch's Cabinet, the biographer of Jeames, the author of the 'Snob papers,' resigned his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... Conscious. Life's end is then manifest. The ideal unsuspected hitherto, or dimly discerned, now becomes the fixed law of existence. Such moments inevitably are difficult to localize. Bonaparte in 1793 fascinates the younger Robespierre—"He has so much of the future in his mind." But it is neither Toulon, nor Vendemiaire, nor Lodi, but the marshes of Arcola, two years after Robespierre has fallen on the scaffold, that reveal Napoleon to himself. So Diderot ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... took the place of deity, and received adoration from the audience. The services of religion were abandoned; the churches were closed; the sabbath was abolished; and the calendar altered. On all the public cemeteries the inscription was placed, "Death is an eternal sleep." Robespierre himself saw the necessity for the public recognition of the being of a God; and after the fall of the Girondists, obtained an edict for that purpose shortly before his death, in 1794; which event ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... He ordered the reconstruction of the fortress which had been destroyed during the Revolution; but when the townsfolk heard the news, they protested so vehemently that the work was stopped and an order was issued for Buonaparte's arrest. From this difficulty the friendship of the younger Robespierre and of Salicetti, the Commissioners of the Convention, availed to rescue him; but the incident proves that his services at Toulon were not so brilliant as to have raised him above the general level of meritorious officers, who were applauded while they prospered, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... "highbrow," the degree of dislike felt for him becomes almost inexplicable in the case of a President who, from all the evidence, was willing to sacrifice everything for what he considered to be the benefit of the common man. He might almost repeat Robespierre's final bitter and puzzled phrase: "To die for the people and to be abhorred by them." So keen was the irritation aroused by Wilson's methods and personality that many a citizen stated frankly that he preferred ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... formless mob of human beings, wearing red caps and seemingly insane, who all blindly follow ruffians who are also rhetoricians; some of whom die repentant and others unrepentant towards the end of the fourth act. The leaders of this boiling mass of all men melted into one are called Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and so on. And it is conceded that their united frenzy may have been forced on them by the evils of ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... know what you mean. There is a kind of pity for the people now in vogue which is most effeminate. It is a sugared sort of Robespierre talk about "The poor but virtuous People." To address such stuff to the people is not to give them anything, but to take away what they have. Suppose you could give them oceans of tea and mountains of sugar, and abundance of any luxury that you choose to imagine, but at the same ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... Paris I resumed my studies, and, at the request of Mr. Randall, the biographer of Jefferson, made some search in the French archives for correspondence between Jefferson and Robespierre,—search made rather to put an end to calumny ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... in presence of whom the inhabitants remained mute with fear. Such are, Gentlemen, the formidable influences which for a moment deprived Fourier of the suffrages of his countrymen; and caricatured, as a partisan of Robespierre, the individual whom St. Just, making allusion to his sweet and persuasive eloquence, styled a patriot in music; who was so often thrown into prison by the decemvirs; who, at the very height of the Reign of Terror, offered before the Revolutionary Tribunal the assistance of his admirable ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... was favorable to the principle of the bill, but was opposed to pressing it at present. The Assembly was thrown into violent agitation by a speech from M. Dufraisse, one of the most able and earnest of the Montagnards, who delivered a speech which would not have been misplaced in the mouth of Robespierre or Danton. "The pale head, compressed lips, and intense expression of the young lawyer of the Mountain," says an eyewitness, "reminded the auditors, not without a shudder, of such a thoroughbred Jacobin as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... axe. Of my four sons but one remains. Henri was stabbed by Danton's ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston fought and died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs were broiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate the land. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre's cowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by the mob. Etienne alone is left. But for him and for the honour of my house I too would find a place beside the King and die with him. Etienne is with de la Rochejaquelein in Brittany. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... with England, and engaged in maintaining the cause of order, and the other is only a band of conspirators, who have established their power through the institution of a system of terror, much after the fashion of Monsieur Robespierre and his associates, whose conduct was so offensive to all Britons seven-and-sixty years ago. But Montgomery is much farther from England than Paris, and the French had no cotton to tempt the British statesmen of 1793-4 to strike an account between manufacturing and morality. Distance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... politicians. The governments of Alexander and Charlemagne were infinitely preferable to those of the petty civil tyrants who preceded and followed them; and there is no one so blinded by prejudice as to say that the reign of Napoleon was no better than that of Robespierre, Danton, and the other "lawyers" who preceded him, or of the Bourbons, for whom he ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... God to prove my good-will towards a multitude of sects, whose opinions I do not share, but whose malice I fear:— theists; I know one who, in the cause of God, would be ready to draw sword, and, like Robespierre, use the guillotine until the last atheist should be destroyed, not dreaming that that atheist would be himself;— mystics, whose party, largely made up of students and women marching under the banner of MM. Lamennais, Quinet, Leroux, and others, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... proceed from the soul of crowds. The most absolute power of the most despotic monarch can scarcely do more than hasten or retard the moment of their apparition. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew or the religious wars were no more the work of kings than the Reign of Terror was the work of Robespierre, Danton, or Saint Just. At the bottom of such events is always to be found the working of the soul of the masses, and never ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... of waiting at a small country inn until midnight for a freight train. This was indeed dreary, but, having Mrs. Child's sketches of Mmes. De Stael and Roland at hand, I read of Napoleon's persecutions of the one and Robespierre's of the other, until, by comparison, my condition was tolerable, and the little meagerly furnished room, with its dull fire and dim lamp, seemed a paradise compared with years of exile from one's native land or the prison cell and guillotine. How small our ordinary, petty ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... headstrong young men who pushed the French Revolution of 1789 into the excesses of the Reign of Terror were well-intentioned reformers, driven into crime by the fanaticism of mental conceit. This is especially true of Robespierre and St. Just. Their hearts were hardened through their heads. The abstract notions of freedom and philanthropy were imbedded in their brains as truths, without being rooted in their characters as sentiments; and into the form of these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... sigh of content, and reflected that he had not crossed his name off hall. Therefore he must pay eighteen pence for dinner, even though he had not eaten it. Also there lay somewhat heavily on his mind the fact that at ten the next morning he must read to his tutor an essay on "Danton and Robespierre," an essay as yet unwritten. That would mean a very early rising and an uncomfortable chilly session in the college library, a dismal place in the forenoon. Never mind, first came a jolly evening with the Scorpions. The meetings were always fun, and this one, coming after ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley

... the rabble-writers of these days, had we not witnessed in the present time a parallel to their compositions. "The Moderate!" was a title assumed on the principle on which Marat denominated himself "l'Ami du Peuple." It is curious that the most ferocious politicians usually assert their moderation. Robespierre, in his justification, declares that Marat "m'a souvent accuse de Moderantisme." The same actors, playing the same parts, may be always paralleled in their language and their deeds. This "Moderate" steadily pursued one great principle—the overthrow of all property. Assuming that property ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... is possible? You are surely not of those who weave dreams about Orleans? He has a sort of party, a following largely recruited by the popular hatred of the Queen and the known fact that she hates him. There are some who have thought of making him regent, some even more; Robespierre is ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... chosen—really in a decisive spirit. Some two hundred of our best Legislators may be re-elected, the Mountain bodily. Robespierre, with Mayor Petion, Buzot, Curate Gregoire and some threescore Old Constituents; though we men had only thirty voices. All these and along with them friends long known to the Revolutionary fame: Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... French Revolution, whatever might be the name of its chief rulers. "When was it discovered that the dangers of Jacobinism cease to exist?" he cried. "When was it discovered that the Jacobinism of Robespierre, of Barere, of the five directors, of the triumvirate, has all of a sudden disappeared because it is concentrated in a single man, raised and nurtured in its bosom, covered with glory under its auspices, and who has ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... mean was the real religion of the eighteenth century. Its religion, in the more defined sense, was generally Deism, as in Robespierre or Jefferson. In the more general way of morals and atmosphere it was rather Stoicism, as in the suicide of Wolfe Tone. It had certain very noble and, as some would say, impossible ideals; as that ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... Robespierre and Danton both had commended Bibot for his zeal and Bibot was proud of the fact that he on his own initiative had sent at least fifty aristos ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... Senate Chamber, and from the Senate Chamber to the Presidential chair. Why should anyone want to kill him? He was not a despot who had been treading on the rights of the people. There was nothing of the Nero or the Robespierre in him. He had wronged no man. He was free and happy himself, and wanted all the world free and happy. Why should anyone want to kill him? He had a family to shepherd and educate, a noble wife and a group of little children leaning on his arm and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... the grain to put that rag on," Martin said; "but your idea is a good one, and I would dress up as a general of the Blues, or as Robespierre himself, on such an errand as we are ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... tiny comfort to the elder girl as he bade his adieux in the parlor of the respectable lodging house he had found for her—the same caravansary (had they but known it) that housed the then obscure Maximilien Robespierre. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... contradict such an insinuation are innumerable. In the first place, the evidence of dates; in the second place, the admission of all the different parties in France; of the friends of Brissot charging on Robespierre the war with this country, and of the friends of Robespierre charging it on Brissot; but both acquitting England; the testimonies of the French Government during the whole interval, since the declaration of Pilnitz, and the date assigned to the pretended treaty of Pavia; ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... Terror, a man, whose age might be somewhat under thirty, sat before a table covered with papers, arranged and labelled with the methodical precision of a mind fond of order and habituated to business. Behind him rose a tall bookcase surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves were filled chiefly with works of a scientific character, amongst which the greater number were on chemistry and medicine. There were to be seen also many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian historians, some English philosophical treatises, and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Bible, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Ben, in France; by the English Government in the East Indies; or by any other assassin in modern times. Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by His authority? To ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... my time pass agreeably. To M. de Chazal I was indebted for sending out my baggage, and in the sequel for many acts of civility and service; this gentleman had passed two years in England, during the tyranny of Robespierre, and consequently my want of knowledge in the French language, at first an obstacle to communication with others, was none to reaping ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... when persons did occasionally marry for that reason. His wife was a daughter of the famous harpsichordist Valentin Mirouet, a celebrated musician, frail and delicate, whom the Revolution slew. Minoret knew Robespierre intimately, for he had once been instrumental in awarding him a gold medal for a dissertation on the following subject: "What is the origin of the opinion that covers a whole family with the shame attaching to the public punishment of a guilty member of it? Is that opinion ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... opinion. All are agreed that intellectually he towered far above every one about him. But whether he was the incarnation of good or of evil, the world is still in doubt;-and also whether he could have guided the forces he had invoked, if a premature death had not swept him off from the scene, leaving Robespierre, a man concerning whom there is no disagreement of opinion, to ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... was aware that his host ran a certain risk in sheltering him. The supremacy which Robespierre had won at this time, and the desperate lengths to which he had gone, exposed all who were not of his immediate following to a jealousy that had already hurried to the guillotine the chiefs of half a dozen sections ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... purpose—Mobs never talk of any authority except that of the sovereign people—To the sovereign people they go, and to the sovereign people they appeal till a sovereign people are cruelly insulted, cajoled and enslaved. Marat, Robespierre and Bonaparte told the sovereign people that they were all in all till they had robbed them of their dearest interests, and enchained them in despotism, and they now mock them with such declarations as these,* "The perfectability ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... were obliged to pass on. You, I believe, staid some time there, but, alas! how different now! The Army of rescue was encamped for some time in its neighbourhood, and the many respectable families who lived in or near it rendered it a sad prey to the hand of Robespierre. Its Churches and Convents are in a deplorable state, even as those of this still more unfortunate Town. The best Houses are shut up, and its finest Buildings are occupied by the Military. We left on the morning of the 11th, travelled safely (except a slight breakdown ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... You think so? Robespierre thought the Revolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... bottom, so that one could read the whole history of the Revolution pictorially. The Oath in the ball-room on June 20, 1789, with Mirabeau's portrait; the burning of the Bastille, and the head of the commandant; the Jacobite Club, with Marat, Saint-Just, Couthon, Robespierre; the Feast of Brotherhood on the Champ du Mars; the King's Flight to Varennes; Lafayette; the Girondists; the execution of the King and Queen; the Committee of Public Welfare, with Danton and the newly hatched ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... spirit was abroad, a spirit as destructive as ever animated the Councils of Sylla or Marius in Old Rome, or prompted the decrees of Robespierre or Marat in France, that the genius and courage of one man redeemed the lost reputation of the law, and upheld against all odds the sacred claims of personal liberty. This man was John Philpot Curran, the most ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... voices reminding you of sand fiercely blown against the window panes, the President and the Senate chanted the immortal Yankee Doodle, whilst the House delivered itself of the Marseillaise, in a style which even the wildest Jacobins in Robespierre's day could ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... hunger. Finally Madame DuBarry was supplanted as "public benefactress" by one with an even sharper tang to her tongue, namely, la Belle Guillotine, who blithely led the quadrille d'honneur, with a Robespierre for consort, to music furnished gratis by the raucous throats of ragged sans- culottes. Instead of lords and ladies treading the stately minuet in Versailles saloons adorned with beauty roses, the bare feet of hungry men beat time to the fierce ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the story and its sequel; nay, almost as good as two of Mr. Farley's pantomime scenes at Christmas. "The Miller's Daughter," a tale of the French Revolution, which follows, is hardly so fit: even the mention of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror chills one's blood. "The Sights of London," is a string of "City Scenes" in verse; and "May Maxwell," and "The Broken Pitcher," are pretty ballads, by the Howitts. We are not half through the book, and can only mention "the Young Governess," a school ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various

... made their ill-starred flight to Varennes; to be brought back to Paris as prisoners. The constitutional party in the Legislative Assembly, at first dominant, soon became subordinate to the more violent Girondists, with their extreme wing of Jacobins under Robespierre and of Cordeliers under Danton, Marat, Camille Desmoulins, and Fabre d'Eglantine. The Proscription of all emigrants quickly followed—and the name of Vigee Le Brun was written upon the lists. The queen's enmity to Lafayette baulked, and completed the ruin of, the Royalist ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall

... favoured by perusing a remark, that when the times and necessities of the world call for a Man, that individual is found. Thus at the French Revolution (which the reader will be pleased to have introduced so early), when it was requisite to administer a corrective dose to the nation, Robespierre was found; a most foul and nauseous dose indeed, and swallowed eagerly by the patient, greatly to the latter's ultimate advantage: thus, when it became necessary to kick John Bull out of America, Mr. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... himself in favour attacking the Hotel de Ville; and, as every person at that period took some model for imitation, one copied Saint-Just, another Danton, another Marat; as for him, he tried to be like Blanqui, who imitated Robespierre. His black gloves, and his hair brushed back, gave him a rigid ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... exists only where man has left his trace," which makes property dependent upon the solidity of the elements; Rousseau, the apostle of liberty and equality, but who, according to M. Wolowski, attacked property only AS A JOKE, and in order to point a paradox; Robespierre, who prohibited a division of the land, because he regarded such a measure as a rejuvenescence of property, and who, while awaiting the definitive organization of the republic, placed all property ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss of Vermissa felt towards him something of the repulsion and fear which the huge Danton may have felt for the puny but dangerous Robespierre. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... written in defense of the French Revolution. He was one of the two foreigners who sat in the Convention; but falling under suspicion during the days of the Terror, he was committed to the prison of the Luxembourg and only released upon the fall of Robespierre July 27, 1794. While in prison he wrote a portion of his best-known work, the Age of Reason. This appeared in two parts in 1794 and 1795, the manuscript of the first part having been intrusted to Joel Barlow, the American ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... too, with a most charming reliance on his own infallibility. His wife writes novels which have a SLIGHT leaning toward Zolaism,—she is an extremely witty woman sarcastic, and cold-blooded enough to be a female Robespierre, yet, on the whole, amusing as a study of what curious nondescript forms the feminine nature can adopt unto itself, if it chooses. She has an immense respect for GENIUS,—mind, I say genius advisedly, because she really is ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such, they would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support; there would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of tyranny,—whither does their path tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my protector? To what faction do I belong? ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... the first time. The gigantic figure of Danton stands forth to-day in its true light, as the saviour of France from the fate of Poland, and as a founder of the democratic idea. He succumbed less because he was a rival of Robespierre than because he ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... that his Queen was Marie Antoinette, that they tried to escape and got as far as Varennes (wherever that may be), but were brought back and executed; that there were various politicians named Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, Desmoulins, and a curious party called the Girondins, et cetera. As to the causes which led up to the Revolution, the condition of the country and people, the ministry of Turgot, the characters of the King and Queen, Necker's policy, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... he was as aggressively cheerful as Whitman and Browning rolled into one. But he has left all that behind him. The insistent vision of a world in full retreat from the world of Alfred and Charlemagne and the saints and the fight for Jerusalem—from this and the allied world of Danton and Robespierre, and the rush to the Bastille—has driven him back upon a partly well-founded and partly ill-founded Christian pessimism. To him it now seems as if Jerusalem had captured the Christians rather ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... of the day was Sir Lumley Skeffington, who used to paint his face, so that he looked like a French toy; he dressed a la Robespierre, and practised other follies, although the consummate old fop was a man of literary attainments, and a great admirer and patron of the drama. Skeffington was remarkable for his politeness and courtly manners; ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... de Ville?" "Yes." "What was going on?" "I looked neither right nor left; I don't know." "Well, what did you hear?" "I heard a cry of Vive Tallien! with strange noises, and shouts, and yells; and somebody said that the National Guards were disbanding, and had forsaken Robespierre; and the people were surrounding the Hotel de Ville." "Then, Dieu merci, there is hope. You are in the nick of time; let us out. If Robespierre falls, you may rescue the comte. He is in the Rue St. Martin; in the same ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... Estralada, The lion tamer. One time, having starved the lions For more than a day, I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus And Leo and Gypsy. Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, And killed me. On entering these regions I met a shadow who cursed me, And said it served me right. . . . It was Robespierre! ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch in his hand,'" Madigan began again, all the ardor gone from his voice. "'This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the Robespierre of the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... to Saturn, since it was about to devour successively all its children, and finally to establish despotism with its attendant calamities. The rivalship of the Mountain in the Convention, the unsuccessful attack on Robespierre, the trial and condemnation of Louis XVI., the defection of Dumourier and its consequences, had doubtless roused the mind of the fervent but unsuccessful orator to the highest efforts which the decline of power, and the consciousness of wavering fortunes, and the menace of utter ruin, patriotism, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... giving annoyance, a formula should be drawn up and accepted, after the manner of Robespierre: the liberty of annoying another begins where his liberty of annoying you ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... of the vast issue of fiat money was the Maximum. As far back as November, 1792, the Terrorist associate of Robespierre, St. Just, in view of the steady rise in prices of the necessaries of life, had proposed a scheme by which these prices should be established by law, at a rate proportionate to the wages of the working classes. This plan lingered ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... little sympathy with the philosophy which a leisurely oligarchy had framed in England; it is one of the tragedies of the Revolution that he desired to the last an alliance, or at least peace, with this country. Where Robespierre was a maniac in foreign policy, Danton was more than a sane—he was a just, and even a diplomatic man. He was fond of wide reading, and his reading was of the philosophers; it ranged from Rabelais to ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... corroborative of the hypothesis of Natural Selection. "For no account is given of any hostile opinions. The fact is very significant. This historical sketch thus resembles the histories of the reign of Louis XVIII., published after the Restoration, from which the Republic and the Empire, Robespierre and Buonaparte were omitted." ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... and arms of FitzGerald. In 1816 Mr. Purcell went to France, and for a time settled with his family at St. Germains. FitzGerald in later life would often speak of the royal hunting parties which he remembered seeing in the forest. They afterwards removed to Paris, occupying the house in which Robespierre had once lived, and here FitzGerald had for his drillmaster one of Napoleon's Old Guard. Even at this early period the vivacious humour which afterwards characterized him appears to have shewn itself, for his father writing to some friends in England speaks of little Edward ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... When Robespierre and Danton disenthralled France, we learn that the guillotine bathed in blood was the emblem of their transition state, from serfs to freemen. With the Negro were the antithesis of anger, revenge, or despair, that of joy, gratitude, and hope, has ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... 'a great risk. I don't like saying so to the doctor, but I should not like having my daughter, if I was him, so cheek-by-jowl with a girl as was brought up in the country where Robespierre and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Convention—that remarkable assembly which seems to have made up its mind to prove for all time that, in democracies, the scum comes to the top?—that assembly in which Fabre d'Eglantine stood for poetry, Marat for humanitarianism, Robespierre for justice, Hebert and Chaumette for decency, Sieyes and Chabot for different forms of religion, the composers of the Republican Calendar[120] for common sense? where the only suggestion of a great man was Danton, and the only ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification, must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand, and a recklessness of people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... on the 2nd of March 1760. His father was lieutenant-general of the bailliage of Guise, and through the efforts of a friend obtained a bourse for his son, who at the age of fourteen left home for Paris, and entered the college of Louis le Grand. In this school, in which Robespierre was also a bursar and a distinguished student, Camille Desmoulins laid the solid foundation of his learning. Destined by his father for the law, at the completion of his legal studies he was admitted an advocate of the parlement of Paris in 1785. His professional ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... in thought are the shameless and selfish infidels and deists, Voltaire, Rosseau, Robespierre and others like them. Paris admires her deistical authors and makes them the objects of hero-worship. They are called "Philosophs," and Bible readers must not stand in their way. Philosophism sits joyful in glittering saloons, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... Francais on the 30th of June, and the tidings presently spread. At first, no one believed them but the mulattoes. When it was no longer possible to doubt—when the words of Robespierre passed from mouth to mouth, till even the nuns told them to one another in the convent garden—"Perish the colonies, rather than sacrifice one iota of our principles!" the whites trampled the national cockade under ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... was said of Robespierre, cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit tout ce qu'il dit, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity to family ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... refusal. I have an aversion to political popular societies in general. To destroy an established power, they are undoubtedly an efficacious instrument, but in their nature they are fit for nothing else. The reign of Robespierre has shown what use they make of power ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy



Words linked to "Robespierre" :   subversive, revolutionist, revolutionary, subverter, Maxmillien Marie Isidore de Robespierre



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