"Serf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... enter on a realm where all— Use, custom, morals—are untried and strange, In Poland here reigns freedom absolute; The king himself, although in pomp supreme, Must ofttime be the serf of his noblesse; But there the father's sacred power prevails, And in the subject finds a ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... dogmas of mediaeval Supernaturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to Muenzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being the slave of the Papacy the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible; or, to speak more accurately, of somebody's interpretation of the Bible, which, rapidly shifting its attitude from the humility of a private judgment to the arrogant Caesaro-papistry of a state-enforced creed, had no more hesitation about forcibly extinguishing ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... man bears about with him, and he forgets poor bleeding, groaning, down-trodden, long-suffering Russia. It is the common way of Englishmen. They do not realise Siberia and Poland and the Third Section, and all the rest of it; they think only of Alexander as of the benevolent despot who freed the serf and befriended the Bulgarian. They never remember that they have all the freedom and privileges themselves which you poor Russians ask for in vain; they do not bear in mind that he has only to sign his name to a constitution, a very little constitution, and he might walk abroad as light-hearted ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... him for conduct which at any other season might have been punished with stripes, imprisonment, or death. Nay, more, masters actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table; and not till the serf had done eating and drinking was the board cleared and dinner set for his master. So far was this inversion of ranks carried, that each household became for a time a mimic republic in which the high offices of state were discharged by the slaves, who gave their orders ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
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