|
|
|
More "Obsequious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Democratic gospel pure and undefiled; Janus-faced double; Good Lord, good devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the most ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... soul, ravished with ecstasies, Gone back, and now familiar in the skies, Thy former host, thy body, leaving quite, Which to obey thee always took delight,— Obsequious, ready,—now from motion free, Senseless, and as it were in apathy, Wouldst thou not issue forth for a short space, From that divine, eternal, heavenly place, To see the third part, in this earthy cell, Of the brave acts of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... word obsequious Trollio speeds, And to the secret hall the soldiers leads. The youth, resign'd, bow'd down his thoughtful head, And calmly silent follow'd where they led. "Such be the fate of all," the monarch cried, "Who, born to meanness, swell with worthless pride; Who, glad with nobler men to be preferr'd, Rise, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... so cruel as slavery among the Romans. Great labors and responsibilities were imposed upon the steward. He was the first to rise in the morning, and the last to go to bed at night; but he was not doomed to constant labor, like the slaves whom he superintended. He also had few pleasures, and was obsequious to the landlord, who performed no work, except in the earlier ages. The small farmer worked himself with the slaves and his children. He more frequently cultivated flowers and vegetables for the market of Rome. Pastoral husbandry ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... years of bale, Throned above trembling, puissant, grandiose, calm, Held Asia's richest jewel in her palm; And with unnumbered isles barbaric, she The broad hem of her glistering robe impearl'd; Then, when she wound her arms about the world, And had for vassal the obsequious sea." ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... man serve law through all his life And with his whole heart worship, him all gods Praise; but who loves it only with his lips, And not in heart and deed desiring it Hides a perverse will with obsequious words, Him heaven infatuates and his twin-born fate Tracks, and gains on him, scenting sins far off, And the swift hounds of violent death devour. Be man at one with equal-minded gods, So shall he prosper; not through laws torn up, Violated rule ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... into a fairly wide, well-lighted hall, and an obsequious attendant showed us up a stair, and opening a door, pointed out the place she asked for. Imagine my utter astonishment when we stood together within the gaming room at Bertrand's. What an infernal fool I had been to be tempted back ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... obsequious to the enemies of their master, so that we may regard the respect and consideration shown to the Man in the Mask by the governor Saint-Mars, and the minister Louvois, as a testimony, not only to his high rank, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by Leander and Andreas, rose from prayer, he was led by the obsequious clerics to a hall illumined by several lamps, where two brasiers gave forth a grateful glow in the chill of the autumn morning. Round about the walls, in niches, stood busts carved or cast of the ancestors of him who lay dead. Here, whilst voices of lamentation ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... has answered your end; but do not push the matter too far. To bring on a civil war for No Popery, is a very foolish proceeding in a man who has two courses and a remove! As you value your side-board of plate, your broad riband, your pier-glasses—if obsequious domestics and large rooms are dear to you—if you love ease and flattery, titles and coats of arms—if the labour of the French cook, the dedication of the expecting poet, can move you—if you hope for a long life of side-dishes—if you are not insensible ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... woman," the obsequious attendant said, "and her room the best in the house; she would not remain much longer, and when she was gone the young lady could have it alone, or share it with her companions. It contained two beds, of course, besides a few ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... of all this. He must accept their flattery and become ridiculous, or he must appear to treat with contumely the Senate which offered it. The sinister purpose started occasionally into sight. One obsequious senator proposed that every woman in Rome should be at his disposition, and filthy libels against him were set floating under the surface. The object, he perfectly understood, "was to draw him into a position more and more invidious, that he might the sooner ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the servant became as obsequious as if he had just recognized in his visitor a millionaire that had dropped in to spend a part of his fortune ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... not taken the wife long to persuade the husband. Blangin's heavy steps were heard in the passage; and almost immediately, he entered, cap in hand, looking obsequious and restless. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Heav'ns, and wonder how you made her! Reign, reign, ye monarchs, that divide the world; Busy rebellion ne'er will let you know Tranquillity and happiness like mine; Like gaudy ships, the obsequious billows fall, And rise again, to lift you in your pride; They wait but for a storm, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... editorial staff, remarking on the total disappearance of the man whom they considered they had done their part to elect, "does monsieur think he can treat us scurvily? It is getting too much the habit of these lordly deputies to be very obsequious as long as they are candidates, and throw us away, after they have climbed the tree, like an ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... ancestress Clotilda, boast of France, but weeping turned From legends whispered by her Saxon nurse Of Loke, the Spirit accursed that slanders gods, And Sinna, Queen of Hell. The years went by; The last had brought King Oswy's embassage With suit obsequious, 'Let the princess share With me her father's crown.' To simple hearts Changes come gently. Soon, all trust, she stood Before God's altar with her destined lord: Adown her finger while the bride-ring ran So slid into her heart a true wife's love: ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... hidden; but one day he went to the Recogidas and asked to see Sister Chucha. He was obsequious, but impassioned, full of cajolery, but not for a moment did he try to impose upon his countrywoman by any assumption of omniscience. That was reserved for his master, and was indeed a kind of compliment to his needs. Sister Chucha heard him at ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. But while they freely waive ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... advisers that it was also illegal, to inflict punishment without giving any opportunity for defence. He accordingly, in the humblest terms, represented his difficulties to the King, and privately requested Sharp not to appear in the pulpit for the present. Reasonable as were Compton's scruples, obsequious as were his apologies, James was greatly incensed. What insolence to plead either natural justice or positive law in opposition to an express command of the Sovereign Sharp was forgotten. The Bishop became a mark ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... go. He visited many a foreign port with the officers of the ship; he packed a hundred note-books with trite and superfluous observations; he posed, in brief, as the captain of the ship without responsibility. Arrived at Port Jackson, he was acclaimed a hero, and received with obsequious solicitude by the Governor, who promised that his 'future situation should be such as would render his banishment from England as little irksome as possible.' Forthwith he was appointed high constable of Paramatta, and, like Vautrin, who might ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the parquette floor. The old lady began calling the dog to her in a coaxing voice. Mumu, who had never in her life been in such magnificent apartments, was very much frightened, and made a rush for the door, but, being driven back by the obsequious Stepan, she began trembling, and huddled close up ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... you please," she said. This time Dan detected just a trace of the sharpness with which she had dismissed the obsequious Jean. It gave him courage and a sense of protection from the fascination he knew that this strange woman was ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... led me, in the presence of the great man, he did not venture any airy presentation. Boller of '89 inside of the study door was quite a different person from the Boller without it. The bold manner fled. He was suppressed, obsequious; even his clothes seemed to shrink and grow humbly dun. We entered so quietly that the doctor, bending over his desk, did not hear us, and we had to cough apologetically to apprise him ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... porch, and through a portal wide, And I am in my Castle, Lord of all; My faithful groom is standing in the hall To doff my shining robe, while servitors, And cringing chamberlains beside the doors Waving their gilded wands, obsequious wait, And bow me on my way ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... admission; which, being steadily refused them, they obtained by the assistance of a file of soldiers, who forced the doors with pick-axes. Then entering, they saw Mrs. Fell in the lodgings, Dr. Fell being in prison at London, and ordered her to quit them, but found her not more obsequious than her husband. They repeated their orders with menaces, but were not able to prevail upon her to remove. They then retired, and left her exposed to the brutality of the soldiers, whom they commanded to keep ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... England since 1570. It is a Composite plant, and bears the name Calendula from the Latin calendoe, the first days of each month, because it flowers all the year round. Whittier styles it "the grateful and [327] obsequious Marigold." The leaves are somewhat thick and sapid; when chewed, they communicate straightway a viscid sweetness, which is followed by a sharp, penetrating taste, very persistent in the mouth, and not of the warm, aromatic kind, but of an acrid, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... brought the German population to heel and kept them there. Cap in hand, the German men came to him, and begged to be allowed to work for the conqueror; their carpenters' shops, the blacksmiths' forges were at the service of the high commander. No German on the footpaths; hats raised from obsequious Teuton heads whenever a Belgian officer passes. How the chivalry of Belgium heaped coals of fire upon the German heads! And had the Hun been of such, a fibre as to appreciate the lesson, of what great value we might hope that it would be? But decent treatment never ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... it would, among other things, "induce them to submit more tamely to the government of the Franks" (Ibid, p. 170). And we see missionaries among the savages usurping "a despotic dominion over their obsequious proselytes" (Ibid, p. 157); and "St. Boniface," the "apostle of Germany," often employing "violence and terror, and sometimes artifice and fraud, in order to multiply the number of Christians" (Ibid, p. 169). Thus do "villains" very often "teach honesty." Nor is it true that these apostles were ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... sitting-room and thence the two passed to their respective dressing-rooms. An obsequious valet offered Alban a cigarette while he made his bath, and served a glass of an American cocktail. The superb luxury of these apartments did not surprise the young English boy as much as they might have done, for he had already stayed one night ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... (Ib. i. 100-151. Weber, i. 11-50.) have pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little Toilette; with a whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on her glance: fair young daughter of Time, what things has Time in store for thee! Like Earth's brightest Appearance, she moves gracefully, environed with the grandeur of Earth: a reality, and yet a magic vision; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Durwan, you think, will be ready with profound and obsequious salaam. Not so; he draws himself up to the very last of his extraordinary inches, and touches his forehead lightly with the fingers of his right hand, only slightly inclining his head,—a not more than affable salute,—almost with a quality of concession,—gracious as well as graceful; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the box to open the door. He was conscious of a small grill with a yellow face peeping out, backed by flickering lantern light, of a rainy, windswept compound, with a shaft of light from an open door flooding the courtyard. Then he was inside a warm, bright anteroom, with an obsequious China-boy relieving him of overcoat and muffler, and he became aware of many big, fur-lined overcoats, hanging on pegs on the wall. Beyond, in the adjoining room, were two long tables, the players seated ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... of Don Sebastian chafed because he was only one among many favourites. The court was full of flatterers as assiduous and as obsequious as himself; his proud Castilian blood could brook no companions.... But one day, as he was moodily waiting in the royal antechamber, thinking of these things, it occurred to him that a certain profession had always been ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... princess with her husband, the archduke Philip. The desolation which walks through palaces admits not the familiar sympathies and sweet consolations which alleviate the sorrows of common life. Isabella pined in state, amidst the obsequious homages of a court, surrounded by the trophies of a glorious and successful reign, and placed at the summit of earthly grandeur. A deep and incurable melancholy settled upon her, which undermined her constitution, and gave a fatal acuteness to her bodily maladies. After four months of illness, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... with obsequious inquiries. The princess suddenly shivered. "Ask them," she said, abruptly, "to bring up the temperature to ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... magic of love that can restore a man in an instant of time from being an obsequious wreck to a thing of fire and resolution. A moment before Steve's only immediate object in life had been to stay quiet and keep out of the way as much as possible. He had never been a man of ready speech in the presence ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... For, oddly enough, the effect of my entrance on the scene was like that on a noisy class-room at the teacher's return. The tumult stopped, rather sheepishly, and that earful of men instinctively slipped on their armor plate of over-obsequious sex gallantry. They knew I wasn't a low-brow. I went right up to them, though something about their funereal discomfiture made me smile. So Dinky-Dunk, mad as a wet hen though he was, had to introduce every man-jack of them to me! One was a member of ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... his form and features. Out of the flame and radiant mist he grew, and showed himself to me in the trim shape and semblance, with the small head and alert air of a youth; and such as he was, in the belted tunic and peaked cap of a telegraph messenger, he came smoothly down the lane formed by the obsequious throng, and stood in the midst of it and looked keenly, with his cold, clear eyes and fixed and inscrutable smile, from one expectant face to another. There was no mistaking him whom all those people so eagerly awaited; ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... imagination, is not so much the favourite of Elizabeth, the soldier and sailor; it is the baited prey of Coke and Popham, the browbeaten convict of Winchester, the attainted prisoner of the Tower. Against the Court of James and its obsequious lawyers he was struggling for bare life, for no sublime cause, for no impersonal ideal. Yet so high was his spirit, and his bearing so undaunted, that he has ever appeared to subsequent generations a martyr on ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the obsequious dedication, the composer describes them as works "debolissimo Talento mio." As Bach's earliest published sonatas, they are, for our purpose, of special interest. Their order ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... confusion, very natural to a poor bhearer who had never before been taken by a Sahib in the very bosom of his family. There was something at once pitiful and comical in the subdued "fidget" with which, applying his joined palms to his forehead, and lowly louting, he made his most obsequious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... unexperienc'd blood, and maids' sharp plights, Must now grow staid, and censure the delights, That, being enjoy'd, ask judgment; now we praise, As having parted: evenings crown the days. 10 And now, ye wanton Loves, and young Desires, Pied Vanity, the mint of strange attires, Ye lisping Flatteries, and obsequious Glances, Relentful Musics, and attractive Dances, And you detested Charms constraining love! Shun love's stoln sports by that these lovers prove. By this, the sovereign of heaven's golden fires, And young Leander, lord of his desires, Together from their lovers' ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... An obsequious official came forward to greet them as they descended, and Mordaunt entered into conversation with him. Two soldiers were on guard here also, standing like images on each side of the entrance. Noel studied them with frank interest. Chris ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... above all things the light of knowledge that streams from New England; it is natural that the unquestioned immorality and laxity of principle engendered by slavery should shrink from the contrast with a state of morals unsurpassed for purity in the world; and that an obsequious church and clergy, which, in the holy name of religion, and 'using the livery of heaven to serve the devil in,' had dared by the thinnest sophistries and most palpable perversions to garble the true teachings of the Bible, and been willing to brave the anathemas denounced against ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Kuznetski Bridge, where, halting at a Picture shop, I entered it with my eyes looking to every side. It was not precisely horses by Adam which I meant to buy, since I did not wish to be accused of too closely imitating Woloda; wherefore, out of shame for causing the obsequious shopmen such agitation as I appeared to do, I made a hasty selection, and pitched upon a water-colour of a woman's head which I saw displayed in the window—price twenty roubles. Yet no sooner had I paid the twenty roubles over the counter than my heart smote me for ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... this passion, I felt it rise up like a snake in my breast when I saw that feeble woman. She was splendidly dressed—wrapped in furs of the most costly kind, trailing behind; her velvets and lace worth a countess's dowry. She was attended by obsequious menials; surrounded by luxuries; her compartment of the carriage was a perfect palace in all the accessories which it was possible to collect in so small a space; and it seemed as though 'Cleopatra's cup' would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... wife—he fortunately had no children—induced him to stand or sit behind his counter with regularity, but people would not come to buy of him, because he never seemed to consider their buying as any favour conferred on him; and thus he became gradually displaced by his more energetic or more obsequious rivals. In the end he was obliged to put up his shutters. Unhappily for him, he had never been a very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious worship in the town, and he had therefore no organisation to ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... adepts in the science to visit him at Champtoce. The messengers he despatched on this mission were two of his most needy and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville. The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable pleasures, he had intrusted with the education of his motherless daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission, that he might marry her at ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... stout Parkhead were nigh, Obsequious at their Regent's rein, And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, That saw fair Mary ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... pay court to; feed on, fatten on, dance attendance on, pin oneself upon, hang on the sleeve of, avaler les couleuvres [Fr.], keep time to, fetch and carry, do the dirty work of. go with the stream, worship the rising sun, hold with the hare and run with the hounds. Adj. servile, obsequious; supple, supple as a glove; soapy, oily, pliant, cringing, abased, dough-faced, fawning, slavish, groveling, sniveling, mealy-mouthed; beggarly, sycophantic, parasitical; abject, prostrate, down on ones marrowbones; base, mean, sneaking; crouching &c v.. Adv. hat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... soon—so one of them expressed it to me—"walks round them without getting off his chair" and, on the strength of his undeserved reputation for simplicity and fair dealing, keeps them dangling a lifetime in a tremble of obsequious amiability, cheered on by the hope of ultimately over-reaching him. Idle dream, where a pliant and sanguine southerner is pitted against the unswerving Saxon or Teuton! This accounts for the success of foreign trading houses in the south. Business is business, and the devil ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... was to his last day as unspoiled by his unaccustomed grandeur as his brother Alexis. Each was ready at any moment to turn from the obsequious homage of nobles to hobnob with a peasant friend or relative. How utterly devoid of false pride Alexis was is proved by the following anecdote. One day when, in company with the Empress, he was paying a visit to Count Loewenwolde, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... gave a prompt and obsequious obedience. The Fighting MacDonalds individually must ever be treated with respect, but the Fighting MacDonalds in a body! Surely not the most vivid Orangeman could blame him in his extremity. Perhaps the distracted landlord felt that, after all, here was a providential means of escape ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... very long wait, Ina went down and sung her principal song, with the usual bravas and thunders of applause. She was called on twice, and as she retired, Severne stepped forward, and, with a low, obsequious bow, handed her a beautiful bouquet. She took it with a stately courtesy, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... following Belle's death the Hon.———sat down to a sumptuous dinner in one of the most fashionable of the Saratoga hotels. A costly bottle of wine added its ruddy hue to his florid complexion. The waiters were obsequious, the smiling nods of recognition from other distinguished guests of the house were flattering, and as the different courses were brought on, the man became the picture of corpulent complacence. His aspect might have changed could ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... a man, bolder than the rest, entered the room, and advanced on tiptoe towards the bed. He was followed by others, and the chamber was rapidly filled, as silently as if the new-comers had been the most humble and obsequious courtiers. D'Artagnan saw every thing through a hole he had made in the curtain. In the man who had first entered, he recognised his former servant Planchet, who, since he had left his service, had been a sergeant in the regiment of Piedmont, and who was now a confectioner in the Rue des Lombards, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... who gave us law, In corners, with selected friends, withdraw: There, in deaf murmurs, solemnly are wise; Whispering, like winds, ere hurricanes arise. The most corrupt are most obsequious grown, And those they ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... moment, the arrival of her friend was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth, though in the course of their meetings she must sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she saw Mr. Darcy exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of her husband. He bore it, however, with admirable calmness. He could even listen to Sir William Lucas, when he complimented him on carrying away the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed his hopes of their all meeting frequently at St. James's, with very decent composure. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... factors in succession, to look after his estate and manage his slaves. The present one is known as 'the Paphlagonian,' or sometimes as 'the Tanner,' an unprincipled, lying, cheating, pilfering scoundrel, fawning and obsequious to his master, insolent towards his subordinates. Two of these are Nicias and Demosthenes. Here we have real names. Nicias was High Admiral of the Athenian navy at the time, and Demosthenes one of his Vice-Admirals; both held still more important commands later in connection ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... into the public-house with him, if he had to call, and often sat beside him in the bar-parlour as he drank his beer or brandy. The landladies paid court to her, in the obsequious way landladies have. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... not the genuine article at all, we must go to Africa for that—but the sort of creatures generations of slavery have made them: obsequious, trickish, lazy and ignorant, yet kind-hearted, merry-tempered, quick to feel and accept the least token of the brotherly love which is slowly teaching the white hand to grasp the black, in this great struggle for the liberty of both ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... with cheerful alacrity: "Mr. Agenor Clerambault—Mr. Hyacinth Moncheri," and asked the Honourable Under-Secretary of State to what he owed the honour of his visit. The Honourable Under-Secretary, not in the least surprised by the obsequious welcome of the old scholar, settled himself in his armchair with the lofty air of familiarity suitable to the superior position he held over the two representatives of French letters. He represented ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... pure gold. A hat of the costly grass from the shores of the South Sea crowns his well-oiled locks, and thus you have the "bar-keeper of the boat." His nether man need not be described. That is the unseen portion of his person, which is below the level of the bar. No cringing, smirking, obsequious counter-jumper he, but a dashing sprig, who, perhaps, owns his bar and all its contents, and who holds his head as high as either the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Captain Pearson, "but I in my service must be more pointedly obsequious, than thou in thy plainness art ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the crowd of rich men who occupy box and pit bestow a thought on the domestic life of these young girls? Do their wives and daughters, lolling on cushioned seats, clothed in purple and fine linen, and waited on by a host of obsequious fops, ever think whether the dancing-girls have a domestic life of any kind or not? They came to the theatre to be amused,—not to meditate; why should they permit their amusement to be clouded by a single thought as to whether any others but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... between them he caught a glimpse of the sunken Lake of Death, darkly gleaming in its deep bed. There was no movement, no sound, on the plain where he walked, except the soft-padding feet of his dumb, obsequious flock. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... decision of 1895,[4] in which the Court accepted Mr. Joseph Choate's invitation to "correct a century of error". The "constitutional revolution" of 1937 produced numerous reversals of earlier precedents on the ground of "error", some of them, the late Mr. James M. Beck complained, without "the obsequious respect of a funeral oration".[5] In 1944 Justice Reed cited fourteen cases decided between March 27, 1937 and June 14, 1943 in which one or more prior constitutional decisions were overturned.[6] On the same occasion Justice Roberts expressed the opinion that ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Women's Christian Association," he commanded the obsequious young Valentine who drove the big Chambers. Mr. Vandeford was never sufficiently unoccupied of mind to pilot a car in and out of New York traffic. For half a second the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and scientific turn of the wrist,' he insisted, 'and—yes, those fellows at first were obsequious enough; now, some of them, having found out how ill-mannered the Americans dare be without being beaten, are aping our manners. I—I trust the ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of money Hans at once became the most obsequious of hosts, and so would remain while it lasted. But Dennis saw that the moment it was gone his purchased courtesy would change, and he trembled at his narrow escape from being thrust out into the wintry streets, friendless, penniless, to beg or starve—equally ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... musing I behold The grateful and obsequious marigold, How duly every morning she displays Her open breast, when Titan spreads his rays; How she observes him in his daily walk, Still bending towards him her small slender stalk; How when he down declines, she droops and mourns, Bedewed, as 'twere with tears, till he returns; And how ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... to-morrow. And there's a central point, a fazenda, where one may talk direct with The Master, whoever and wherever he may be. And—judging by Ribiera—my guess is that The Master has the same hold upon them that they have on their underlings. Ribiera is too arrogant a scoundrel to make obsequious reports if he were not afraid to omit them." He was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he said abruptly, "Try to get some sleep, if you can. That pistol of Ribiera's—you have it handy? Keep it where you can reach it in the dark. I'm ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... you fools?" he said brutally. He felt as though he could throw himself down amongst them and never move any more. But they seemed cheered; and in the midst of obsequious warnings, "Look out! Mind that manhole lid, sir," they lowered him into the bunker. The boatswain tumbled down after him, and as soon as he had picked himself up he remarked, "She would say, 'Serve you right, you old ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... for dinner and sitting about amidst the scarlet furniture—satin and white-enameled woodwork until the gong should gather them; and my aunt is there, very marvelously wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage-like veil, and there are hotel porters and under-porters very alert, and an obsequious manager; and the tall young lady in black from the office is surprised into admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my uncle, making his first appearance in that Esquimaux costume I have ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... peril. Beatrix, who had pouted sufficiently (and who whenever a stranger appeared began, from infancy almost, to play off little graces to catch his attention), her brother being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the doctor was very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said the obsequious Moor, pointing to the helpless girl. "I hope it is deserving the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... prince; assiduous at feasts, at galas, at ladies' receptions, at ceremonies, and in battle; servile in a gentlemanlike way; very haughty; with eyesight dull or keen, according to the object examined; inclined to integrity; obsequious or arrogant, as occasion required; frank and sincere on first acquaintance, with the power of assuming the mask afterwards; very observant of the smiles and frowns of the royal humour; careless before a sword's point; always ready to risk his life on a sign from his Majesty ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of the wide stairway under the unlighted porte-cochere. It was a dark night, and the lights of the motor-cars cut as sharply through the blackness as knives would cut through solid substance. The obsequious lackey—the automatic genie of the house which belonged to none of the three men,—stood like a graven statue after having helped them in. The fur-coated chauffeurs bulked dimly in their seats. One after the other, like spurred steeds, the cars leaped into the blackness, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... and even obsequious at first, ready to condescend and accommodate, he is equally prompt when matters require that peculiar turn which southerners frequently find themselves turned into,—no more tick and a turn out of doors. At times, Mr. O'Brodereque's ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd: To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive At his kind hand my customary crumbs, And common portion in his feast of scraps; Or when night warn'd ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... he was as polite as to his father, and to both he was almost obsequious. It was rather difficult for father or son to realize that this was the man who had threatened to send his own brother to the fort as a soldier, to say nothing of the ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... character of The Rehearsal, a farce by George Villiers, duke of Buckingham (1671). Bayes is represented as greedy of applause, impatient of censure, meanly obsequious, regardless of plot, and only anxious for claptrap. The character ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... society. He looked uneasy in his clothes, he was at a loss to know what to do with his hands, he shifted about from one foot to another as he spoke, and half rose and sat down again when anybody spoke to him. He seemed ready to do some menial service; he was obsequious, nervous, and grave by turns, laughing eagerly at every joke, listening with servility; and occasionally, imagining that people were laughing at him, he assumed a knowing air. His treatise weighed upon his mind; again and again he ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... made of palm wood, and covered with sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written "L'Entree de Sidi Laid," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables, chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various nationalities, black, bronze, and cafe au lait in colour, offer him perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys staggering beneath sacks of grain, ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... only the envy, but the trifling ambition of Madame Cheron, who, since she could not rival the splendour of her festivities, was desirous of being ranked in the number of her most intimate friends. For this purpose she paid her the most obsequious attention, and made a point of being disengaged, whenever she received an invitation from Madame Clairval, of whom she talked, wherever she went, and derived much self-consequence from impressing a belief on her general acquaintance, that they were ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... is a child's portrait, posed and painted in a rather distant, if obsequious, imitation of the manner of Velasquez, the great difference being that whereas the Spaniard's work is most remarkable for supreme distinction, the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... these are trifles. Downward flies my Lord, Nodding beside my Lady in his carriage. Away! away! "Fresh horses!" are the word, And changed as quickly as hearts after marriage; The obsequious landlord hath the change restored; The postboys have no reason to disparage Their fee; but ere the watered wheels may hiss hence, The ostler pleads ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Parliament, in assuming the crown; this act of usurpation—for Richard's true heir was Roger Mortimer, a descendant of an older branch of the family—had two important results; it made Henry more obsequious to the Parliamentary power which had placed him on the throne, and it was the occasion of the bloody Wars of the Roses that were to devastate the kingdom during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; Henry's own reign was a troubled ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for pastime took a prance, Some time ago, to peep at France; To talk of sciences and arts, And knowledge gained in foreign parts. Monsieur, obsequious, heard him speak, And answered John in heathen Greek: To all he asked, 'bout all he saw, 'T was ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... led in chains and pining in dungeons; they were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers for the sake of raising at last, out of the ruins, the mausoleum of their own dignity and freedom, in the midst of the monotonous solitude of an obsequious world. To them, it was not given to excite emotion by the tempered accents of mental suffering, and to touch with a light and delicate hand every note in the scale of feeling. They naturally sought also in Tragedy, by overleaping all intervening ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Representatives, I found the door guarded by a negro, squalid and filthy. He evidently reveled in his new citizenship; his chair was tilted back against the wall, his feet were high in the air, and he was making everything nauseous about him with tobacco; but he soon became obsequious and admitted us to one of the most singular deliberative bodies ever known—a body composed of former landed proprietors and slave-owners mixed up pell-mell with their former slaves and with Northern adventurers then known as "carpet-baggers.'' The Southern ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... burghers of a certain description, who have a huge relish for good feeding, and an humble ambition to be great men in a small way—who thirst after a little brief authority, that shall render them the terror of the almshouse and the bridewell—that shall enable them to lord it over obsequious poverty, vagrant vice, outcast prostitution, and hunger-driven dishonesty—that shall give to their beck a hound-like pack of catshpolls and bumbailiffs—tenfold greater rogues than the culprits they hunt down! My readers ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... bath and the subsequent putting on of a clean, whole suit of clothes placed upon the bed by the so obsequious man servant, who said his master had sent these clothes with his compliments and the hope that they would fit. The clothes I accepted thankfully enough, for I had decided to ask M. Cartier the address of a shop in the city in which ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... sat on his Throne one day, His Crown upon his brow; To him, in most obsequious way, The ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... with new sensations—until he stood before one of the popular cafes, now effervescing with sprightly life. He paused here a moment to listen to the music. A group of well-groomed men and women laughingly clambered out of a big touring car and passed in before the obsequious attendants. He watched them with some envy. Music, good food, good wines, laughter, and bright eyes—the flimsiest vanities of life to be sure—and yet there was something in his hungry heart that craved them all. Well, ten years from now perhaps,—his hand fell upon the vial. No. Not ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... prison life in general, modify it ever so much by special chambers, obsequious turnkeys, a general tendency to make one as comfortable as possible, a jail is a jail, and there is no getting away from that. Cowperwood, in a room which was not in any way inferior to that of the ordinary boarding-house, was nevertheless conscious ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Overflowing with obsequious respect for "his illustrious confreres," as he unctuously called them, he prowled about their conference and tried to take part in it; but his confreres kept him at a distance, hardly answered him, or answered him haughtily, as Fagon—Louis the Fourteenth's ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... for instance, coming along the road. He used to pass you with a jaunty, gallant, curious look as if you were seventeen and he were saying, "There's a girl who ought to be married. Why isn't she?" He had just sidled past them, abashed and obsequious, a little afraid of the big man. Even Mrs. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... nothing that the obsequious and attentive waiter could bring proved tempting enough to recall the vanished appetite. Never having known what it was to be sick, Griswold disregarded the warning, drank a cup of strong coffee, and went out to the lobby to get a cigar, leaving his table companions in the midst of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... disappointed. Maggie's rather silly, obsequious smile concealed but for a moment the ineffable tragedy that had lain in wait ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not that the trio were set any better example by their noble ally, who began by smiling at the whole affair, and was content to the last in taking an observant interest in the bushranger's methods. These were simple and in a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... not unhappy,—to those about him most kind,—most affectionate, obsequious even to the women of his family, whom he scarce ever contradicted; but there had been some bankruptcy of his heart, which his spirit never recovered. He submitted to life, rather than enjoyed it, and ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... were not. One of them was the renowned Colonel Maitland. I never heard anything about his war service, but I do know that as a gastronomist his reputation is European. The cool way he will condemn an entree, presented to him by an obsequious waiter, merely after casting a single glance upon it, speaks volumes for his critical insight; and as for wines—well, he can tell the vineyard and the vintage of a claret by the scent alone. I verily believe that were he to be served with ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... nature, of course. Solomon in all his glory had never broken eggs in such a dining room. It had onyx pillars, too, and gilt furniture, and table after table of the whitest napery stretched from one end of it to the other. The glass and silver was all of a special pattern, and an obsequious waiter handed Honora a menu in a silver frame, with a handle. One side of the menu was in English, and the other in French. All around them were well-dressed, well-fed, prosperous-looking people, talking and laughing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Germany, and Spain, inviting all the adepts in the science to visit him at Champtoce. The messengers he despatched on this mission were two of his most needy and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville. The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable pleasures, he had entrusted with the education of his motherless daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission that he might marry her at the proper time to any person he chose, or to himself ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Sleep! (Saturnia thus began) Who spread'st thy empire o'er each god and man; If e'er obsequious to thy Juno's will, O power of slumbers! hear, and favour still. Shed thy soft dews on Jove's immortal eyes, While sunk in love's entrancing joys he lies. A splendid footstool, and a throne, that shine With gold unfading, Somnus, shall be thine; The work of Vulcan; to indulge thy ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... bows, our old friend, who had been so obsequious to Admiral Bell, entered the room, and begged to know what orders the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... observed, "most advisedly." The train was already on the move, and the departing passenger was compelled to step hurriedly into a carriage. Tallente, waited upon by the obsequious station master, strolled across the line to where his car was waiting. It was not until his arrival there that he realised that Miller had offered him no explanation as to his presence on the platform of this tiny ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... alleged grandson of his grandfather. A perpetual breeder of trouble; never did a decent day's work the whole trip. Insolent, mutinous, and overbearing, till I went for him with intent to do bodily mischief; then he became extremely obsequious. Like the rest of the foregoing, he resigned and resumed at ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... they seated themselves at a table and an obsequious waiter began to put ice and then water into their glasses. "Now, what would you like ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... get your dinner, sir!" exclaimed Tag-rag, sternly, after having received Messrs. Shuttle and Weaver's obsequious message of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... senses; they are bewildered by the uprising, by the unanimity, by the warlike, earnest, unflinching attitude of the masses of the freemen, of my dear Yankees. The diplomats have lost the compass. They, duty bound, were diplomatically obsequious to the power held so long by the pro-slavery party. They got accustomed to the arrogant assumption and impertinence of the slavers, and, forgetting their European origin, the diplomats tacitly—but for their common sense and honor I hope reluctantly—admitted the assumptions of the Southern ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... n't the slightest idea. You sent for me." Fairchild produced the telegram, and the greasy person who had taken a position on the other side of a worn, walnut table became immediately obsequious. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and mortals of a wood near Athens. In the days of divine sovereignty, the jester, we see, was by all odds the wise man of the palace; the real fools were those he made his butt—the foppish pages, the obsequious courtiers, the swaggering guardsmen, the insolent nobles, and not seldom majesty itself. And thus it is that painters and romancers have loved to draw him. Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric, or Touchstone than Le Beau, or ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... explaining myself, "I mean, they need not send in dinner! I will not have any!" I cannot stand another repast—three times longer than the last too—for one can abridge luncheon, seated in lorn dignity between the staring dead on the walls, and the obsequious living. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... bowed low, smiled, and left the room with the empty cups, and returned directly after with them full, and after another glance at the scarlet and yellow turban, he looked at the swords and pistols and became more obsequious than ever. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... faith, limited in the exercise of his boasted power, their enemy when he dared to show himself such, and the friend of those only among their number, who were able to compel him to be so; and who, though to them an obsequious ally, was to the others, when occasion offered, an ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of modesty, or diffidence, that does a man so much injury with the other sex; who, though they pretend to prize modesty so highly among themselves, abominate it as unnatural, absurd, and affected, in men; while the pert and obsequious fluttering of a fashionable water-fly, which is always received with a smile, is generally more prized, and rewarded more bountifully still. There is, however, some consolation in the thought, that repentance ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Chatham. The sun streamed warmly upon the concrete floor of the court just beyond the row of palms and oleanders that fringed the rail against which his Herald rested, that he might read as he ran, so to speak. He was the only person having dejeuner on the "terrace," as he named it to the obsequious waiter who always attended him. Charles was the magnet that drew Brock to the Chatham (that excellent French hotel with the excellent English name). It is beside the question to remark that one is obliged to reverse the English ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... her seat, however, than there was the dog close to the car, timid, obsequious, winning, with his wisp of a head cocked on one side. We drove on, and he followed pertinaciously. Mildly adjured by the Countess to "go home, little dog," he came on the faster. Many adventures he had, such as a fall over a heap of stones and entanglement ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... round with flashing eyes, and checking an evident desire to dash at them, instantly made a bow so very low, so very obsequious, and, by a furtive expression, so contemptuous, that Mr. Lepel colored with indignation and moved toward ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... was by any means "typical," which so often means very untypical. This is specially true of the Family. They were not in my time, and, indeed, never have been, persons "complete with" fox-hounds, racers, cellars of port, mortgages, gaming or elections debts, obsequious tenantry, and a brutal enforcement of the Game Laws, varied by the semi-fraudulent enclosure of the poor man's common. With such rural magnificoes, if they ever existed in that form, which I greatly doubt, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... rights he had little difficulty in deposing Richard, and, with the consent of Parliament, in assuming the crown; this act of usurpation—for Richard's true heir was Roger Mortimer, a descendant of an older branch of the family—had two important results; it made Henry more obsequious to the Parliamentary power which had placed him on the throne, and it was the occasion of the bloody Wars of the Roses that were to devastate the kingdom during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; Henry's own reign was ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... deception's art, Hope to conceal and jealousy, False confidence or doubt to impart, Sombre or glad in turn to be, Haughty appear, subservient, Obsequious or indifferent! What languor would his silence show, How full of fire his speech would glow! How artless was the note which spoke Of love again, and yet again; How deftly could he transport feign! How bright and tender was ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... of Police. Massive entrance, heavily guarded, a great lobby, halls with swinging doors, many obsequious schwitzars on the lookout for tips, many poor creatures sitting against the walls on dirty benches, desks and clerks, brilliant boots and epaulets of gay young officers who are telling tales of the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... tribute to the piratical Dey, in consideration of his granting to American vessels the right of travel on the high seas. And when some slight delay occurred in making the first payment of tribute, the obsequious government presented the Barbary corsair with a frigate, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... The obsequious Mr Pecksniff proffered his arm. The old man took it. Turning at the door, he said to Martin, waving him ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hopes rose high. Dreams visited his slumber, not of the sable-decked scaffold in the Tower-yard, but of canopies of state, obsequious courtiers, pomp, splendor, the smile of the once more gracious queen, and a light beaming from the magic gem, which illuminated his ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Travers excellently. He shook himself free from the obsequious native, who showed very clearly that he would have preferred to have kept on a watchful attendance, and began a languid, indifferent examination of the labyrinth-like passages and deserted halls. But the languidness ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... imprisoned, without exciting any popular commotion in their behalf, the court became emboldened to propose in parliament a solemn reconciliation of the country to the papal see. A house of commons more obsequious than the former acceded to the motion, and on November 29th the legate formally absolved the nation from all ecclesiastical censures, and readmitted it within the pale of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... at last, poor SIR ARGUS began to complain, Of the sad inconvenience he felt from his train, And propos'd, as the sky seem'd to threaten a shower, To rest till the morning, at Nightingale Bower; The obsequious PARROT replied by a bow, And they went on as fast as their ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... in the doorway's pause, Fluttered with fancies in my breast; Obsequious to all decent laws, I felt exceedingly distressed. I knew it rude to enter there With Mrs. V. in such a state; And, 'neath a magisterial air, Felt actually indelicate. I knew the nurse began to grin; I turned to greet my Love. Said she— "Confound your modesty, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... procured him admittance at once, and the same talisman converted the head jailer into an obsequious servant. ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... manner of saying it. He was a strange combination of sudden extremes, at one while on a tone of easy but not undignified familiarity with his visitors, as if their equal in position, their superior in years; then abruptly, humble, deprecating, almost obsequious, almost servile; and then again, jerked as it were into pride and stiffness, falling back, as if the effort were impossible, into meek dejection. Still the prevalent character of the man's mood and talk was social, quaint, cheerful. Evidently he was by original ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiter—an obsequious one if possible—and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg's ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... windows, resplendent with gilding, marble-topped tables with snow white covers, vases of flowers, and all the other appurtenances of glittering cut glass and silver. The obsequious waiters were in evening dress, the walls were covered with lofty plate-glass mirrors in carved and gilded frames, and at certain hours of the day and night an orchestra consisting of two violins and a harp discoursed ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... preachers. This bowing movement of the parrot recalled to his memory a terrible, pale woman who for a time haunted all churches in which he ministered, who was perpetually endeavouring to catch his eye, and who always bent her head with an obsequious and cunningly conscious smile when she did so. The parrot went on bowing, making a short pause between each genuflection, as if it waited for a signal to be given that called ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... pleasant dream, and one in which the self-deceived Regent was eagerly encouraged by those around her. The halls and galleries of the Louvre were crowded with animated and obsequious courtiers, and the apartments of Marie herself thronged by the greatest and proudest in the land; all of whom appeared, upon so joyous an occasion, to have laid aside their personal animosities and to live only to obey her behests. Madame had also formed her separate Court, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... country at their parents' houses; the portion they brought being more in virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the comfort ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the architect was. It has a fine tower and a couple of solid bells; it has a few bits of good brass-work, a chandelier and some candlesticks, and it has a fine eighteenth-century tomb in a corner, with a huge slab of black basalt on the top, and a heraldic shield and a very obsequious inscription, which might apply to anyone, and yet could be true of nobody. Why the particular old gentleman should want to sleep there, or who was willing to spend so much on his lying in state, no one knows, and I fear that no ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for general use, for many of the best of wives and mothers, the kindest of friends, and the most pious of Christians, are very far from appearing amiable under circumstances of such great temptation. The obsequious manners of British shopmen, who never show any spirit or any resentment, tend to lull conscience, while the strife between the desire for display and style, and the love of money, makes many women at once fastidious and ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... all obsequious, and a relay of about seven negroes, old and young, male and female, little and big, were soon whizzing about, like a covey of partridges, bustling, hurrying, treading on each other's toes, and tumbling over each other, in their ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... respectfully, and went up the gangway, followed by the obsequious porter. A moment later they reached the deck, and no sooner had the captain disappeared round a corner than both men approached the second mate, with whom they had a hurried and earnest conversation, followed by an interchange of something which that officer ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... and it was surprising the way he got us through. If the crowd didn't fall apart instantly of itself at his approach, an obsequious policeman—one of those same Berlin policemen who are so rude to one if one is alone and really in need of help—sprang up from nowhere and made it. It's as far from the Friedrichstrasse to the Schlossplatz as it is from here to ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... you would have perceived that the man, although small, was neatly made; that his hands were very different in texture and colour from those of common seamen; that his features in general, although sharp, were regular; and that there was an air of superiority even in the obsequious manner of the little personage, and an indescribable something about his whole appearance which almost impressed you with awe. Amine's dark eyes were for a moment fixed upon the visitor, and she felt a chill at her heart for which she could not account, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with reason beleeve that the first election of the Party wherein you stood engaged, proceeded from inexperience and the mistake of your zeal; not to say from your compliance to the passions of others; because I both knew your education, and how obsequious you have alwayes shewed your self to those who had then the direction of you: But, when after the example of their conversion, upon discovery of the Impostures which perverted them; and the signal indignation of God, upon the several periods which your eyes have lately beheld, of the bloudiest ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... Delaney, seeing me bettered and able to sit up a little, told me this strange story. While I was ill and unconscious, an officer had come to inspect the prison. Cunningham was very obsequious to this gentleman, and on Delaney's seizing the chance to complain, said it was a pack of lies, and how could he help the dysentery and typhus? All jails had them, even in England, which was ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... sheet, and to hold herself at the disposal of the commissary and the doctor, who would come for the particulars. She replied, somewhat nettled, that she knew please God, what she had to do. She did indeed know. Madame Simonneau was born in a social circle which is obsequious to the constituted authorities and respects the dead. But when, having questioned Monsieur de Ligny, she learnt that he had dragged the body into the front room, she could not conceal from him that such behaviour was imprudent and might ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... outlines of my body without fretting me. I was picturesque and beautiful; its successor, so stiff, so heavy, makes a mere mannikin of me. There was no want to which, its complaisance did not lend itself, for indigence is ever obsequious. Was a book covered with dust, one of the lappets offered itself to wipe the dust away. Did the thick ink refuse to flow from the pen, it offered a fold. You saw traced in the long black lines upon it how many a service it had rendered me. Those ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... taste of the best paper-hangers, will bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet stores, and there are thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with flowery convolutions and medallion centres, as if the flower gardens of the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of arabesque,—roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the windows, and requested her Hofcompositor to take care that 'that fair-headed blockhead,' the ringleader of them all, got 'einen recenten Schilling' (slang for 'a good hiding')." The command was only too willingly obeyed by the obsequious Reutter, who by this time had been ennobled, and rejoiced in the addition of "von" to his name. Many years afterwards, when the empress was on a visit to Prince Esterhazy, the "fair-headed blockhead" took the cruel delight of thanking ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault than ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... polite and obsequious as if they were sitting near Society ladies, did slightly intimidate their neighbors; but Baron von Kelweingstein, let loose in his vice, was beaming; he cracked unsavory jokes, and with his crown of red hair, seemed to be on fire. He paid gallant compliments in his defective French of the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... in resignations which according to the records did not exceed two hundred. To account for so small a number, we must suppose that the regulations were to a considerable extent evaded; if not, the clergy must have been singularly obsequious. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... and sometimes at Mary Louise in a far-off, absent-minded way. And then they would ask each other whose deal it was and "How were the honours?" and then they would be at it again. Claybrook laughed at the slightest provocation, and seemed to pay a little too obsequious attention to whatever Thompson had to say, and after a while the conversation narrowed down entirely to the two men, with Mrs. Thompson contracting a glassy look in her pale-blue eyes beneath their fine-plucked brows. And at ten o'clock ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... III of Portugal, a very devout man, directed his viceroy Barreto to draw up and transmit to him an authentic account of Xavier's miracles, urging him especially to do the work "with zeal and speedily." We can well imagine what treasures of grace an obsequious viceroy, only too anxious to please a devout king, could bring together by means of the hearsay of ignorant, compliant natives through all the little towns ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... had never even smelled before. How immensely she enjoyed it, with all its surroundings—the comfortable room, the glowing fire, the clean table, the rich food, the obsequious attendance, her own genteel and becoming dress, the company of a highly respectable guardian—all, all so different from anything she had ever been accustomed to, and so ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... matter seem worse, if possible, was that when rich persons came in their chariots, or riding on beautiful horses, with their servants in rich liveries attending on them, nobody could be more civil and obsequious than the inhabitants of the village. They would take off their hats, and make the humblest bows you ever saw. If the children were rude, they were pretty certain to get their ears boxed; and as for the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... intolerant class of men who ever traded on the exploded traditions of the past. The Jesuits returned to promulgate their sophistries and to impose their despotic yoke; the halls of justice were presided over by the tools of arbitrary power; great offices were given to the most obsequious slaves of royalty, without regard to abilities or fitness. There was not indeed the tyranny of Spain or Naples or Austria; but everything indicated a movement toward it. Those six years which comprised the reign of Charles X. were a period of reaction,—a return ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... wave only obsequious to the wind Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap, Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned By the strong god's breath moving on the deep From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind That shakes ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... into a small, dimly lighted room, and noted that the landlord came to wait on them with obsequious attention. Two peons were drinking in a corner, but they went out when the landlord made a sign. Jake thought this curious, but Don Sebastian filled his glass and gave ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence was recognized, it would swell to the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... devote to her husband, walking or driving or riding with him, in rather a ceremonial manner, almost as she might have done had she belonged to that charmed circle whose smallest walk or drive is recorded by obsequious chroniclers in every journal in the united kingdom. Then came six brilliant weeks in August and September, when Arden Court was filled with visitors, and Clarissa began to feel how onerous are the duties of a chatelaine. She had not Lady Laura Armstrong's delight in managing a great ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... salaries being vast in comparison with the pittances paid in the days when parliaments were created by hod-carriers, who viewed official salaries from a hod-carrying point of view and compelled that view to be respected by their obsequious servants. Justice was wisely and rigidly administered; for a judge, after once reaching his place through the specified line of promotions, was a permanency during good behaviour. He was not obliged to modify his judgments ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fitness? So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons: Come all to help him, and so stop the air 25 By which he should revive: and even so The general, subject to a well-wish'd king, Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love Must needs ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Agenor Clerambault—Mr. Hyacinth Moncheri," and asked the Honourable Under-Secretary of State to what he owed the honour of his visit. The Honourable Under-Secretary, not in the least surprised by the obsequious welcome of the old scholar, settled himself in his armchair with the lofty air of familiarity suitable to the superior position he held over the two representatives of French letters. He ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... general was desirous to send vs now the second time also vnto your Highnes. We do make our humble sute therfore, in the name and behalf of our master and Order aforesaid, vnto your kingly supremacy, that, hauing God and iustice before your eies, and also the dutifull and obsequious demeanor of the said master, and order towards you, you would vouchsafe to extend your gracious clemency, for the redresse of the premisses: wherby the foresaid losses may be restored and repaied vnto our subiects. All which notwithstanding, that it would please you of your wisedome and prouidence ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... and many a yet bitterer sin. Passionate grief and despairing murmurs he had felt and flung out, while it slowly unfolded itself. When the Pharaoh had asked, 'How old art thou?' he had answered in words which owe their sombreness partly to obsequious assumption of insignificance in such a presence, but have a strong tinge of genuine sadness in them too: 'Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.' But lying dying there, with it all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the discovery that no one seemed to know of Binhart or his movements. He merely waited his time, and extended new ramifications into newer territory. His word still carried its weight of official authority. There was still an army of obsequious underlings compelled to respect his wishes. It was merely a matter of time and mathematics. Then the law of averages would ordain its end; the needed card would ultimately be turned up, the right dial-twist would at last complete the ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... the exiled King of the French, aged 77 years. Few princes experienced so many and such great vicissitudes of fortune. He died at Claremont, in Surrey. When in his power the most obsequious homage was paid to him by the court and the citizens of London; in his exile, he was allowed to sink almost unnoticed into obscurity and death. His faithlessness to political engagements, his avarice, and want of principle generally, had created a universal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... trifles. Downward flies my Lord, Nodding beside my Lady in his carriage. Away! away! "Fresh horses!" are the word, And changed as quickly as hearts after marriage; The obsequious landlord hath the change restored; The postboys have no reason to disparage Their fee; but ere the watered wheels may hiss hence, The ostler pleads too ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 1770, occurred the Boston Massacre; and, while it was not the real commencement of the Revolutionary struggle, it was the bloody drama that opened the most eventful and thrilling chapter in American history. The colonists had endured, with obsequious humility, the oppressive acts of Britain, the swaggering insolence of the ministerial troops, and the sneers of her hired minions. The aggressive and daring men had found themselves hampered by the conservative views of a ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... like a barocco apostle. I had an idea that he had had a lurid past and had seen some fighting in his youth. The admirers of the two girls stood in great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his behaviour to them was friendly and even somewhat obsequious, yet always with a certain truculent glint in his eye that made them pause in everything but their generosity—which was encouraged. I sometimes wondered whether those two careless, merry hard-working creatures understood the secret moral beauty of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... The first assault it sustained was from lord Hervey, who had been divested of his post of privy-seal, which was bestowed on lord Gower, and these two noblemen exchanged principles from that instant. The first was hardened into a sturdy patriot, the other suppled into an obsequious courtier. Lord Hervey, on this occasion, made a florid harangue upon the pernicious effects of that destructive spirit they were about to let loose upon their fellow-creatures. Several prelates expatiated on the same topics; but the earl of Chesterfield attacked the bill with the united powers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Parkhead were nigh, Obsequious at their Regent's rein, And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, That saw ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... to be minutely related had taken place since Sidney had ceased to be Lord Lieutenant. The government had suffered the colonists to domineer unchecked over the native population; and the colonists had in return been profoundly obsequious to the government. The proceedings of the local legislature which sate at Dublin had been in no respect more important or more interesting than the proceedings of the Assembly of Barbadoes. Perhaps the most momentous event in the parliamentary history ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the inspector's manner. His deportment had been respectful from the first, because he had recognized his visitor as a lady; but his manner was obsequious now that he heard ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... kept hidden; but one day he went to the Recogidas and asked to see Sister Chucha. He was obsequious, but impassioned, full of cajolery, but not for a moment did he try to impose upon his countrywoman by any assumption of omniscience. That was reserved for his master, and was indeed a kind of compliment to his needs. Sister Chucha heard him at ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... indeed are heavily burdened, But perhaps a little relief may be got for them. Let us cherish this centre of the kingdom, To secure the repose of the four quarters of it. Let us give no indulgence to the wily and obsequious, In order to make the unconscientious careful, And to repress robbers and oppressors, Who have no fear of the clear will (of Heaven)[1]. Then let us show kindness to those who are distant, And help those ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... to Yuen Yan it was overwhelming. Thoroughly imbued with the deferential systems of antiquity, he led his band from place to place with a fitting regard for the requirements of ceremonial etiquette and a due observance of leisurely unconcern. Those to whom he addressed himself he approached with obsequious tact, and in the face of refusal to contribute to his store his most violent expedient did not go beyond marshalling his company of suppliants in an orderly group upon the shop floor, where they sang in unison a composed ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... new United States Bank in 1816, and the attempted launching of an internal improvements regime in 1821, all three the plain marks of federalist survival, however men might shun that name. Republicans like Clay, Calhoun in his early years, and Quincy Adams, while somewhat more obsequious to the people, as to political theory differed from old Federalists in little but name. The same is true of Clinton, candidate against Madison for the Presidency in 1812, and of many who ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbour, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... softly, for he was familiar with the look which had now come into Duke Alessandro's face. Indeed, all persons about court were quick to notice this odd pinched look, like that of a traveler nipped at by frosts, and people at court became obsequious within the instant in dealing with the fortunate woman who had aroused this look, Count ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... transportation to New Holland. Look at him now pouring the thundering strains of his eloquence, upon crowded audiences in Great Britain, and see in this a triumphant vindication of his character. And have the slaveholder, and his obsequious apologist, gained any thing by all their violence and falsehood? No! for the stone which struck Goliath of Gath, had already been thrown from the sling. The giant of slavery who had so proudly defied the armies of the living God, had received his death-blow before he left our shores. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... claimed for himself the surname of Felix, as he attributed his success in life to the favor of the gods. All ranks in Rome bowed in awe before their master; and among other marks of distinction which were voted to him by the obsequious Senate, a gilt equestrian statue was erected to his honor before the Rostra, bearing the inscription "Cornelio Sullae ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... by obsequious helpers, who, un- called for, imagine they can help anybody and steady [30] God's altar—this ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... just see myself on an elephant swaying between lanes of obsequious natives. But I don't know if father would let me go. We ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... gravitation. He is likewise protean. Banish him—he takes half a minute to change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always—if you don't mind the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... grass from the shores of the South Sea crowns his well-oiled locks, and thus you have the "bar-keeper of the boat." His nether man need not be described. That is the unseen portion of his person, which is below the level of the bar. No cringing, smirking, obsequious counter-jumper he, but a dashing sprig, who, perhaps, owns his bar and all its contents, and who holds his head as high as either the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... she sat under the shade of a sweeping cedar tree; with a crowd of obsequious relations round her, trying to ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... on the parquette floor. The old lady began calling the dog to her in a coaxing voice. Mumu, who had never in her life been in such magnificent apartments, was very much frightened, and made a rush for the door, but, being driven back by the obsequious Stepan, she began trembling, and huddled ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... the door. He was conscious of a small grill with a yellow face peeping out, backed by flickering lantern light, of a rainy, windswept compound, with a shaft of light from an open door flooding the courtyard. Then he was inside a warm, bright anteroom, with an obsequious China-boy relieving him of overcoat and muffler, and he became aware of many big, fur-lined overcoats, hanging on pegs on the wall. Beyond, in the adjoining room, were two long tables, the players seated with their backs to him, absorbed. Only a few people were present, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... to trace Inspired perceptions of celestial grace, Th' ideal spirit, fugitive as wind, Art's forceful spells in adamant confined: Curved with nice chisel floats the obsequious line; From stone unconscious, beauty beams divine; On magic poised, th' exulting structure swims, And spurns attraction with elastic limbs. While ravish'd fancy vivifies the form; While judgment toils to analyze its charm; ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Bull for pastime took a prance, Some time ago, to peep at France; To talk of sciences and arts, And knowledge gain'd in foreign parts. Monsieur, obsequious, heard him speak, And answer'd John in heathen Greek: To all he ask'd, 'bout all he saw, 'Twas, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... noblemen of feudal Germany, were seen at Paris exhibiting their ceremonial, whose obsequious formalities were much more agreeable to the first consul than the still easy manner of the French; and asking back what belonged to them with a servility which would almost make one lose the right to one's own property, so much had it the air of regarding the authority ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... blood were the direct and inevitable consequences. Had Governor Martin the power at that time, he would have seized every member of this "rebellious" body and tried them for treason. In this dilemma, he summoned his ever obsequious Council for consultation, who, becoming alarmed at the "signs of the times," ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Mrs. Byram's elegant country which gleamed afar, ablaze with light. The obsequious footman threw open the door, and they entered a tropical atmosphere laden with the perfumes of exotics. Already the music was striking up for the chief feature of the evening. Bel reluctantly accepted of Hemstead's escort, as sh; had no ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the abuse It matters not. Let them all go together, As empty phrases and frivolities, And common as gold-lace upon the collar Of an obsequious lackey. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the little white-painted tables of the restaurant, ordered a light breakfast. While he was seated there, there was a loud tramping of horses, and a party of young Russian generals—persons of the highest society, of weight and importance—arrived, and with much noise and ostentation summoned the obsequious waiters to attend to their wants. Litvinov made haste to drink off his glass of milk, paid for it, and, putting his hat on, was just making off past ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... wrinkled, sallow woman, forty-five years of age, with a toothless smile on her constrainedly-anxious and empty countenance, and in the depths of the box an elderly man was visible, wearing an ample coat and a tall neckcloth, with an expression of feeble stateliness and a certain obsequious suspicion in his little eyes, with dyed moustache and side-whiskers, an insignificant, huge forehead, and furrowed cheeks,—a retired General, by all the signs. Lavretzky could not take his eyes from the young girl who had startled him; all at once, the door of the box opened, and Mikhalevitch ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... delights, That, being enjoy'd, ask judgment; now we praise, As having parted: evenings crown the days. 10 And now, ye wanton Loves, and young Desires, Pied Vanity, the mint of strange attires, Ye lisping Flatteries, and obsequious Glances, Relentful Musics, and attractive Dances, And you detested Charms constraining love! Shun love's stoln sports by that these lovers prove. By this, the sovereign of heaven's golden fires, And young Leander, lord of his desires, Together from their lovers' arms arose: ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... insulted on my account, as I had been on his—who had watched my commands, and (pardon me, Madam) ever changeable motion of your pen, all hours, in all weathers, and with a cheerfulness and ardour, that nothing but the most faithful and obsequious passion ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the clerk, looking superciliously at the modest attire of the poor widow, and mentally deciding that she was not entitled to much consideration. Had she been richly dressed, he would have been very obsequious, and insisted on sending home the smallest parcel. But there are many who have two rules of conduct, one for the rich, and quite a different one for the poor, and among these was the clerk who was attending upon ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and for the first time I felt that I would with pleasure give up being at the head of my father's establishment to follow the fortunes of another man. If my predilection was so strong, I had no reason to complain of want of attention on his part. He courted me in the most obsequious manner, the style more suited to my haughty disposition, and I at once gave way to the feelings with which he had inspired me. I became fervently in love with him, and valued one of his smiles more than an earthly crown. Two months passed, his original invitation had been ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... the square, empty, gas-lit hall, and looked round her with distaste. The place struck her as very ugly and forlorn, utterly lacking in what she had always taken to be the amenities of flat life—an obsequious porter, a ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... chansons, ballades, lais, virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of wine. I was born in a garret, and I shall not improbably die upon the gallows. I may add, my lord, that from this night forward I am your lordship's very obsequious servant ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... done? The court was obsequious to the Proconsul, afraid of Rome; jealous that the mob should have been more forward than the magistracy. Had the city moved sooner, as soon as the edict came, there would have been no rising, no riot. Already they had been called on ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... in time to save Priscilla's hardly tried self-control. The girls shook hands primly. Peggy and Priscilla wished Claire a pleasant journey. Claire replied by effusive thanks. At length, to the relief of all three, she handed her suitcase to an obsequious porter and stepped ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... the next time the carriage was ordered, for the purpose of making a stylish call, she was gratified to see a footman mounted. When she arrived at her place of destination, the door of her carriage was opened, and the steps let down in a very obsequious manner, by the new servant; and great was her surprise and confusion, to recognize in him ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will come to the Meeting," he said, turning with her. He felt it necessary to be obsequious to Phoebe, after the terrible mistake ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... springing from the short chin. At first glance one would have taken him for an art-worker, a wood engraver or a glider of saints' images, but on looking at him more closely, observing the eyes, round and grey, set close to the nose, almost crossed, and studying his solemn voice and obsequious manners, one asked oneself from what quite special kind of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... very capacious arm-chair, with several persons standing in a semicircle round her. This little group had divided as the marquis came up, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward and stood for an instant silent and obsequious, with his hat raised to his lips, as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches as soon as they entered their pews. The lady, indeed, bore a very fair likeness to a reverend effigy in some idolatrous ...
— The American • Henry James
... momentary pause in the babble of conversation as the two stalked boldly in, and a score of suspicious glances were leveled at them, for the Chief was well known in the Italian quarter. The proprietor came bustling toward the new-comers with an obsequious smile upon his grizzled features. Taking the end of his apron he wiped the surface of their table dry, at the same time informing Donnelly in broken English that he was honored by the privilege of ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... resist the pleasure of rounding off his sentence with the grand word "Gentleman," and he was gratified by the waiter's meekly obsequious reception of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Writers for the Stage labour under, besides 'tis observable, that an obsequious prolifick Muse generally meets with a worse Reception than a petulant inanimate Author; and when a Poet has finished his Labours, so that he has brought his Play upon the Stage, the best Performance has oftentimes the worst Success, for which ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... "Now charnels rattle; scatter'd limbs, and all The various bones, obsequious to the call, Self moved, advance; the neck perhaps to meet The distant head; the distant head the feet. Dreadful to view! see, through the dusky sky Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, To distant regions journeying, there to claim Deserted ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... lovely Queen of Scotland. "Money, more money, and Escovedo," became at length, in his perplexity and anguish, the importunate clamour of the governor of the Netherlands. Then it was, as Perez tells us, that Philip and his obsequious counsellors meditated on the course best fitted for what was evidently a serious conjecture. Then it was, we learn from the same authority, that the king determined ON ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... bishop, supported by Leander and Andreas, rose from prayer, he was led by the obsequious clerics to a hall illumined by several lamps, where two brasiers gave forth a grateful glow in the chill of the autumn morning. Round about the walls, in niches, stood busts carved or cast of the ancestors ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... England. This declaration extremely heightened her zeal for promoting his interests, and overcoming the inflexibility of her council. After employing other menaces of a more violent nature, she threatened to dismiss all of them, and to appoint counsellors more obsequious; yet could she not procure a vote for declaring war with France. At length, one Stafford, and some other conspirators, were detected in a design of surprising Scarborough;[*] and a confession being extorted from them, that they had been encouraged by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... surprise, I found him excessively civil, and almost obsequious: but I noticed that he had taken a violent dislike to our head overseer, whom I shall call Jean Marie, and whom he seemed to suspect as the person who had betrayed him to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... young to the old in the other—with head to body, as head to body; and nose to knee, as nose to knee, &c. &c., (and the critics have done a great deal)—then is the work oracularly pronounced one of 'High Art;' and the obsequious artist is pleased ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... incorruptibility—are 'well-preserved,' as by swathes and spices; and the young ones are just as mummified as they. Some of them are pleased to crack jokes; jokes of the sarcophagus, that twist our lips to obsequious laughter, but send a chill through our souls. There are 'strong' judges and weak ones (so barristers will tell you). Perhaps—who knows?—Minos was a strong judge, and Aeacus and Rhadamanthus were weak ones. But all three seem equally terrible to us. And so seem, in virtue ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... faction, cannot maintain himself in it except by force and bribery. He must coerce and corrupt. Moreover, to rule without a rival, he must surround himself with men vastly inferior to him both in talent and in virtue: men who, in return for their obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy and of tyranny ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... as the ministrations won from loveless hearts (12) are felt to be devoid of grace, and embraces forcibly procured are sweet no longer, so the obsequious cringings of alarm are hardly honours. Since how shall we assert that people who are forced to rise from their seats do really rise to honour those whom they regard as malefactors? or that these others who step aside to let their betters pass them ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... which the Imperial procession was to pass. The terraces of the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the quais were thronged. Numberless spectators covered the slopes of the Champ de Mars. The ever obsequious Moniteur, in its official account of the ceremony, said; "If the spectators were uncomfortable, there was not one who was not consoled by the feeling that held him there, and by the expression of his wishes which the applause ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... "Oui, Mademoiselle," said the obsequious footman, hurrying away on his errand. He quickly returned, bearing a tin of French beans ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... not speak. Alves was unusually weary, and he was sad over the decision he had just made, weakly, it seemed to him. A good deal of the importance of his revolt against commercial medicine disappeared. Lindsay tried oily, obsequious means of attracting attention. He was to hang his sign from a corner store. Some dim idea of the terrible spectre that haunts the days and nights of those without capital or position confronted him. If he had never been rich, he had always ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the mill for grinding corn; and we were astonished to see how quickly our hostess reduced the grains to an impalpable meal. The only thing that looked like a bed was a stiff rawhide thrown over a series of round poles running lengthwise. This primitive couch, and likewise the whole house, the obsequious governor gave up to us, insisting upon sleeping with his wife and little ones outside, though the nights were cold and uncomfortable. Parents and children were of the earth, earthy—unwashed, uncombed, and disgustingly filthy. We found the governor one day taking lice for his lunch. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... with the nosegay in his bosom had now perceived our two friends, and was approaching the young girl with obsequious rapidity. He bowed to Winterbourne as well as to the latter's companion; he had a brilliant smile, an intelligent eye; Winterbourne thought him not a bad-looking fellow. But he nevertheless said to Daisy, "No, he's ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... Coralth as an enemy; but he now escorted him to the door with every obsequious attention—in fact, just as if he looked upon him as his preserver. A word which the viscount had dropped during the conversation had considerably helped to bring about this sudden revulsion of feelings. "You cannot fail ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Bark'd not, but fawn'd around him. At that sight, And at the sound of feet which now approach'd, Ulysses in wing'd accents thus remark'd. Eumaeus! certain, either friend of thine Is nigh at hand, or one whom well thou know'st; 10 Thy dogs bark not, but fawn on his approach Obsequious, and the sound of feet I hear. Scarce had he ceased, when his own son himself Stood in the vestibule. Upsprang at once Eumaeus wonder-struck, and from his hand Let fall the cups with which he was employ'd Mingling rich wine; to his young Lord he ran, His forehead kiss'd, kiss'd his bright-beaming ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... for halting at each booth and inspecting the wares, and each time that I made as if to do so, the obsequious peasantry fell away before me, making way invitingly. But Messer Arcolano urged me along, saying that we had far to go, and that in Piacenza there were better shops and that I should have ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... please," she said. This time Dan detected just a trace of the sharpness with which she had dismissed the obsequious Jean. It gave him courage and a sense of protection from the fascination he knew that this strange woman ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... ingratiate himself with a setter bitch that accompanied him. Whilst stopping to water his horse, he remarked how amorous the mongrel continued, and how courteous the setter seemed to her admirer. Provoked to see a creature of Dido's high blood so obsequious to such mean addresses, the doctor drew one of his pistols and shot the dog; he then had the bitch carried on horseback for several miles. From that day, however, she lost her appetite, ate little or nothing, had no inclination to go abroad with her master, or attend to his call, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... kingdom of Italy the territory of Genoa, whilst forming the domains of Lucca and Piombino into a principality in favor of his eldest sister, Elisa Baciocchi. The storm was already threatening the feeble government of Naples: the queen, obsequious in her alarm, had sent to Milan an ambassador to congratulate the emperor and king. "Tell your queen," exclaimed Napoleon, "that her intrigues are known to me, and that her children will curse her memory, for ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... suppose capable of altering the path of events, decide which course to take by asking what path events will follow? If they follow my direction, evidently my direction cannot wait on them. The only possible manner in which an evolutionist can use his standard is the obsequious method of forecasting the course society would take but for him, and then putting an extinguisher on all personal idiosyncrasies of desire and interest, and with bated breath and tiptoe tread following ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... weeks' absence, Gualtier returned. Hilda, full of impatience, sent for him to the morning-room almost as soon as he had arrived, and went there to wait for his appearance. She did not have to wait long. In a few minutes Gualtier made his appearance, obsequious ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... civilities. An assize ball was still held, though it was falling into some neglect and disrepute. Whenever any cause of special local interest took place she had commanded the best seat in the court, and had obsequious attention paid to her. She had learned well the aspect of the place, and the mode of procedure. But hitherto her recollections of a court of justice were all agreeable, and her impressions those of a superior ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
