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More "Usurp" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the Holy Ghost, "Believe of him," says he, "the same as of the Father and of the Son," &c. (Cat. 4, n. 16, pp. 59, 60.) On the article of the holy Catholic Church, he observes that the very name of Catholic distinguishes it from all heresies, which labor in vain to usurp it; this always remains proper to the spouse of Christ, as we see, if a stranger ask in any city, Where is the Catholic Church? (Cat. 18, n. 26.) That it is catholic, or universal, because spread over the whole world, from one end to the other; and because universally and without ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... not enough to usurp the rights of a husband and father, he thought to play his part still better by deceiving the mistress also . . . . Ah! it is amusing, is it not? You also, Rose, you thought he was your old lover! Well, I at least am excusable, I the wife, who only thought ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the emperor, who resided at Constantinople, on many occasions to give up the possession of it to others, as a charge full of danger and expense; and sometimes, without his permission, the Romans, seeing themselves so abandoned, created an emperor for their defense, or suffered some one to usurp the dominion. This occurred at the period of which we now speak, when Maximus, a Roman, after the death of Valentinian, seized the government, and compelled Eudocia, widow of the late emperor, to take him for her husband; but she, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... ii. 9), "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former"? It is a question which it is natural to ask, and it should be ingenuously answered. Is it that these were tending to usurp the place of the spiritual, of which they were but the assurance and the symbol, and darken rather than reveal the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... there was no question. He did not at all usurp her office, nor interfere with it. But when he saw her getting weary of a parliamentary discussion, or a long discourse on politics or parties, his hand would gently draw away the paper from hers and his voice carry on the reading. And ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... talk. Indeed, now, two months after, it was still the absorbing theme that occupied the dwellers of the parish: and such it promised to remain till supplanted by something of sufficient dignity and importance to usurp its place. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... beneficence ought not to be done hap-hazard. Nothing needs more reflection than a good action. We never know whether that which seems best at one moment may not prove an evil later. The exercise of beneficence, as I have lived to discover, is to usurp the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... This was an increasingly serious matter, for pious donors were constantly bequeathing churches and tithes to favourite Orders and popular houses, and the abbot attempted with considerable success to usurp the definitely episcopal authority by instituting the parish priest. Nor was this the only matter in which the abbot substituted himself for the bishop. The monastic community might build a church without any reference to the local ecclesiastical authority, and the abbot ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... intervention the work to which the Prussian nation had now committed itself beyond power of recall. It was the fortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the French in Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emancipate its army, and a citizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. Frederick William forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven by the timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to arm themselves ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... had come to Jesus with the request, "Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me." The reply implied that the Master regarded his work as spiritual, and that he was not willing to invade the sphere of civil law or to usurp the place of regularly appointed authorities, "Man, who made me a judge or a divider ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... selfish man I am, I usurp the right. What damnable infatuation can bind you to that miserable poltroon, who skulks in safety, knowing that the penalty of his evil deeds falls on you? One explanation has suggested itself: it haunts me like a fiend, and only you can exorcise it. Are you married to that brute, and is it loyalty ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... had been in past years vague and indefinite enough on several points of importance, it was truly said. But in the pulpit and out of it, on one point it had been full, clear, and definite. A man must rule (well) his own household. "The husband is the head of the wife," who is not suffered "to usurp authority over the man," but who is to listen in silence, being "the weaker ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous assaults of hireling assassins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers to strike terror by an appalling exhibition of force. If ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... cunning, but separated by the very same passions, and a thousand others; living together under a kind of truce, but continually ready to break out into open war; continually jealous of each other; continually on the defensive, because continually dreading an attack; ever ready to usurp on the rights of others, and perpetually entangled in the most wretched contentions, concerning what all would neglect, if not despise, did not the errors of this selfish system give value to what ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... Precedents also in the case. Much is to be offered to you in that; according to the laws of the nations, that was a due Parliament. Those Commissions were issued forth, and what was done was done by their power; and whereas it hath been said we did assume and usurp an authority, I say this was done rather in the fear of ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... their Governor. "I hope you will not be troubled at the change," he said, "for you are now fixed at the mercy of no Governor who comes to make his fortune. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free and, if you will, a sober and industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... this matter his mother was to be supported, whilst his detestation of this adventurer who threatened to usurp the place that should rightly be his own spurred him to mad ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... there are enough generous minds in Europe that will counteract her in the balance. Of course her motive is to cripple a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that threatens even to usurp her history. In twenty more years of prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the Continent of America or the Isle of Britain. Therefore, finding ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... the daring burglar eyeing with confidence the counsel learned in the law's defects, fee'd by its produce to defend its quondam owner. The effigies of Pride, Extravagance, honest Distress, and reckless Plunder, all by turns usurp the scene. In my last waking sleep, just as I had composed myself in delicious indolence, a parcel fell with more than ordinary force on one beneath. These were two of my talking friends. I stirred not, but sat silently to listen to their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... no country, however abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though that chief had revived the military spirit of his country, and roused a nation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp to themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... seems very hard on you. You and your mother are poor, whilst I am no relation. Why should I usurp your place—in fact, be ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade

... on ignoring nothing which is published with the idea of being read, my experiences for observation have been somewhat unusual. The increase in the number of books, and the eagerness of the public to learn about them at the earliest possible moment, have caused the daily press to usurp some of the functions formerly enjoyed by the monthly reviews. The latter do little more than mention the vast majority of publications and confine more and more their critical talents to what they consider conspicuous ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... little perplexed, as if she could not understand how it could be otherwise than wrong for a girl to usurp her seat. ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborn to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson

... wreck—of the debasement and moral ruin of a people endowed by God with surpassing resources for the attainment of human happiness and human dignity. I cannot be loyal to a system of meanness, terror, and corruption, although it usurp the title and assume the form of a 'government.' So long as such a 'government' presumes to injure and insult me, and those in whose prosperity I am involved, I must offer to it all the resistance in my power. But if I despaired of successful resistance, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... led the young man to a small chamber where they were greeted by Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed another to usurp his prerogative and rescue ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... habit of happiness and is so engrossed in the big elemental things of life that she can laugh at the incidental pin-pricks that others call troubles. She differentiates major from minor and never permits a minor to usurp the throne. Being an integral part of her life, her work takes on all the hues of her life. For her, culture is not something added; rather it is a something that permeates her whole nature and her whole life. She does not read poetry and other forms of literature, study the great masterpieces ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... often happens that, in proportion as he has refined and elevated his theory of all the social affections, he has unfitted himself for the practice of them.[52] Hence so frequently it arises that, in persons of this temperament, we see some bright but artificial idol of the brain usurp the place of all real and natural objects of tenderness. The poet Dante, a wanderer away from wife and children, passed the whole of a restless and detached life in nursing his immortal dream of Beatrice; while Petrarch, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... live as though in a different sphere altogether, where another scheme of nature obtained. It is colossal presumption in human beings to give examples to be followed, which, should they be followed, would end the human race. The Supreme Being will end it in His own time; it is not for us to usurp authority." ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... the utter consternation of the king, he rushed out from his hiding-place, and began to assail the duke with the most violent reproaches, alleging that his pretensions of friendship for Henry were false, and that the real design of his movements was to usurp the throne. The duke retorted with equally fierce denunciations and threats. During the continuance of this altercation, the king remained stupefied and speechless, and at length, when the duke retired, officers were ready at the ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... poverty, and that you would traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the case required, barefooted and unostentatiously, in order to preach the word of God in all humility? And do you now presume to usurp these estates to yourselves against the will of the lords of these fees? Your religion appears to be in a great measure dying away, and ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... often, it is possessed by him that receives it with the same right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or fraudulently obtained. But no injury is still done to the people; for what they never had, they have never lost. Caius may usurp the right of Titius; but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people; and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can prompt him to restore what may be proved to have been never taken away. Supposing, what I think ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... not going to allow business to usurp their time and thought during this joyful season! The children must have their trees, hung with gifts; the needy must be especially cared for, and visits must be exchanged; so the City was left to take care of itself, while ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... to pass for white men, as very many of them could easily have contrived to do, woe unto the poor impostors! They were hunted down from city to city as few felons would be, and finally done to death—"serve them right!" being the grim commentary regarding their fate for having sought to usurp the ineffable privilege of whitemanship! All this, Mr. Froude, was [121] the rule, the practice, in America, with regard to persons of colour up to twenty-five years ago. Now, sir, what is the phenomenon which strikes your vision ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... the gates." There was doubtless a great difference among the husbands at the gate, and I feel sure that this one took a specially large and public-spirited view of the business there discussed. The Virtuous Woman would not usurp his office, just because she had the power of speaking well,—she would remember the Russian proverb, "The Master is the Head of the House, while the Mistress is its Soul," and she would be a very high-souled mistress, and care greatly that her master should not ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... a just one. Vane had attempted to usurp the government. Cromwell turned to the speaker, who obstinately clung to his seat, declaring that he would not yield ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... here to ask the question, Why did the pale-face usurp the lands of the Indians without remuneration? It was because the Indian was not orthodox. He may have been lazy from a Puritanical stand-point, and he may also have hunted on the twenty-seventh Sunday after Easter; but still was it not right that ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... the supreme power would undoubtedly devolve on Protestants. Those Tories who held most firmly the doctrine that nothing could justify them in resisting their liege lord would have no scruple about drawing their swords against a Popish woman who should dare to usurp the guardianship of the realm and of the infant sovereign. The result of a contest could scarcely be matter of doubt. The Prince of Orange or his wife, would be Regent. The young King would be placed in the hands of heretical ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... sprats; clarified horse fat is called "fresh country butter," and Irish regiments are made to decorate themselves with common clover under the delusion that it is the shamrock. Other plants have been from time to time utilised to usurp the title of "shamrock." Thus the small Lucerne clover or medicago is often sold as "shamrock" to Irish patriots, and the watercress has been solemnly pat forward as the true shamrock simply because old writers tell us, as evidence of the barbarous state of the Irish, that they fed upon shamrocks ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... been astonished at the schools being shut on the day after his arrival. And they remained shut, both the modern school and the middle-class girls' school for months, because the Professor's quite illegal attempt to usurp the inspectorship was resented. The secondary school was closed and the teachers who had come to [vS]ibenik with their families, but whose permanent domicile was elsewhere, received an order, delivered by carabinieri, that they would have to leave ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... Mordaunt. It appears to me that, under the pretext of acting as guardian to my father, you oppose a reconciliation between us, without even consulting his wishes; and it is strange that a niece, a granddaughter only, should usurp the position of the eldest son, and refuse to ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... one ever thought of asking how much of it he understood. I think it one of the happiest circumstances of his training, that nothing was ever explained to him, and that there was no professedly intellectual person in the family to usurp the place of Providence and supplement its shortcomings, in order to make him what he was never intended to be. His mind developed itself; intentional cultivation might have spoiled it.... He used to invent long stories, wild and fanciful, and tell where he was going when he grew up, and of the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... of the Tower. These acts of violence, exercised against the nearest connections of the late King, prognosticated the severest fate to his defenceless children; and after the murder of Hastings, the Protector no longer made a secret of his intentions to usurp the crown. The licentious life of Edward afforded a pretence for declaring his marriage with the Queen invalid and all his posterity illegitimate. It was also maintained that the act of attainder passed against the Duke of Clarence had virtually incapacitated his children from succeeding to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... there are exceptions, I hope," he said. "Love, like everything else that is great, is very, very rare. We call the disposition to usurp and absorb another person by that name, but woe betide him or her who is the object of such a sentiment. Yet happily, the real thing is to be found now and again. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... claim these prisoners as mine, so you may get up and go about your business. You see, lads," he added, turning to the men, while Swinton rose and retired, "though I have no wish to domineer over you or to usurp authority. I have a right to claim that my voice shall be heard and my reasons weighed. As Swinton truly remarked, no man is master now, but as he followed this remark by making himself master, and laying down a law for us, I thought ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... "None can usurp this height," return'd that shade, "But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest." * * * * * "Are there not thousands in the world," said I, Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade, "Who love their fellows even to the death, Who feel the giant ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... empire. In later ages these were deemed preeminently the patent of imperial power. On one occasion a feudal prince asked the question, "How heavy are these tripods?" A minister of state, suspecting an intention to remove them and usurp the power, replied in a long speech, proving the divine commission of his master, and asked in conclusion, "Why then should you inquire the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... growing disk the sun crosses the sky; the moon shines no more, and is scarcely visible. Yet still, perhaps, the northern lights flicker over the desert, icy plain, and still the stars twinkle in silence, peacefully as of yore. Some have burnt out, but new ones usurp their place; and round them revolve new spheres, teeming with new life, new sufferings, without any aim. Such is the infinite cycle of eternity; such ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... adversaries and admirers, who vied with each other in doing him harm. He was too disgusted to reply. When he read the pronunciamentos directed against him in the pages of an important newspaper by one of those presumptuous critics who usurp the sovereignty of art with all the insolence of ignorance and impunity, he would shrug his shoulders ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... Sicily, one morining gatherd the people together and the Senate of Syracusa, as if he had some what to advise with them of matters belonging to the Commonwealth, and upon a signe given, caus'd his souldiers to kill his Senatours, and the richest of the people; who being slaine, he usurp'd the Principality of that City without any civill strife: and however he was twice broken by the Carthaginians, and at last besieged, was able not onely to defend his own City, but leaving part of his own army at the defence thereof, with the other invaded Affrique, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... would get her a saddle, and then June would usurp Miss Anne's place on a horseback-ride up through the gap to see the first blooms of the purple rhododendron on Bee Rock, or up to Morris's farm on Powell's mountain, from which, with a glass, they could see the Lonesome Pine. And all ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... Lodovico soon saw that his only hope of seeing his native land again was to be found in the support of Ferrante, King of Naples, the sworn foe of the Medici. This monarch looked on Simonetta as a traitorous villain who had taken advantage of Bona's weakness to usurp the supreme power in Milan, and wrote to King Louis XI, begging him to come to his kinswoman's help and assist in restoring the Duke of Bari and his brother to their rights. But the French king had no wish to be drawn into the quarrel, and when Ferrante endeavoured to obtain ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... Cross He nails thy Enemies The Law that is against thee, and the sins Of all Mankind, with him there crucified, Never to hurt them more, who rightly trust In this his Satisfaction: So he dies, But soon revives; Death over him no Power Shall long usurp: e'er the third dawning Light Return, the Stars of Morron shall see him rise Out of his Grave, fresh as the dawning Light, The Ransom paid, which Man ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... not Brutus (I mean that Brutus, who in open senate Stabb'd the first Caesar that usurp'd ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... our Plato's age had oftentimes great conflicts with the rashness of folly? And while he lived, had not his master Socrates the victory of an unjust death in my presence, whose inheritance, when afterward the mob of Epicures, Stoics, and others (every one for his own sect) endeavoured to usurp, and as it were in part of their prey, sought to draw me to them, exclaiming and striving against them; they tore the garment which I had woven with my own hands, and having gotten some little pieces of it, thinking me to be wholly in their possession, departed. Some ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... here to dwell upon athletics and sport which now so largely occupy the attention of the youth of our land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance of bodily fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing pursuit, and instead of being merely a means to an end, may usurp the place in life which ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... of a Reformation, which is only to be effected by a Restoration of the Latin to the usual Dignity in your Papers, which of late, the Greek, to the great Displeasure of your Female Readers, has usurp'd; for tho the Latin has the Recommendation of being as unintelligible to them as the Greek, yet being written of the same Character with their Mother-Tongue, by the Assistance of a Spelling-Book its legible; which Quality the Greek wants: ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother to the reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother and sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... friendship: Open to all, true only to thyself, Thou know'st those arts which blast with envious praise, Which aggravate a fault with feigned excuses, And drive discountenanced virtue from the throne; That leave blame of rigour to the prince, And of his every gift usurp the merit; That hide in seeming zeal a wicked purpose, And ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... shrewd and designing, often making pretence of friendship and affection to gain her ends when in reality hatred and animosity were burning in her bosom. Such was Rebecca Hartz. Such the woman to usurp the household government, when the gentle Mrs. ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... learned scribe Nor arithmaticion Ever able to decide The usurp'd base ambition, Which in truth I shall declare, Traytors here which lately were, Who ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... what was best for her among this crowd of hostile women—flew to the winds. He must go to her—must show her he loved and would protect her, and, above all, that he would permit no other man to usurp his place. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... may be the outcome of his gross pleasures soon begins to haunt him and to usurp in his mind the place of nobler ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... It may necessitate the abolition of some of the big contests that have been the excitement of many thousands. But it must not be forgotten prelude and preparation for life; they must not be allowed to usurp the chief place in a man's thoughts or to unfit him for his greatest after-usefulness. [Footnote: Cf. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 534; Outlook, vol. 98, p. 597.] Is it wrong to smoke? Statistics taken with care at many American colleges ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... aspired like her, like the philosophers, like the popes, like the press in our times, to a participation in the government of the world, but because they disputed her claims as one of the powers of the age. The Jesuits were scandalized that such a woman should usurp the reins of state, especially when they perceived that she mocked and defied them; and they therefore refused to pay her court, and even conspired to effect her overthrow. But they had not sufficiently considered the potency of her wrath, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... to be compelled to record that out of a quarrel, originating in a servile endeavour on the part of the two principal nobles of a great nation to usurp the functions of a maitre-d'hotel, grew an attempt at civil war, which, had not the treachery of Richelieu nipped it in the bud, might have involved France in a sanguinary and unnatural series of conflicts that would have rendered that country ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... "Do you think, Vizier, that this man could usurp my throne? How would it be if I gave him a palace and raised him to be ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... school without it, and regarded the masters, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies. Matters were not so comfortable in the house, either. The new praeposters of the Sixth Form were not strong, and the big Fifth Form boys soon began to usurp power, and to fag and bully the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... efforts. He also opposed the Absolute Veto and led the fight for the sequestration of the property of the Church. This course made him a popular idol and in the early days of the Revolution he was the leader of the extreme wing of the Republicans. When he saw, however, that mob law was about to usurp the place of the Republican institutions for which he had striven, he leaned towards the court and advocated the sacrosanctity of the King's person. Denounced as a renegade, with his life threatened and his influence lost, he retired ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... second article guaranties "the right of people to bear arms." Without this right, ambitious men might, by the aid of the regular army, overthrow the liberties of the people, and usurp the powers ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state. To compass this, the triple bond[69] he broke; The pillars of the public safety shook; And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke: Then seized with fear, yet still affecting fame, Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name. So easy still it proves, in factious times, 180 With public zeal to cancel private crimes! How safe is treason, and how sacred ill, Where none can sin against the people's will! Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known, Since in another's guilt they find their ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... were no less bowed than of yore; nor was his hair less red; but the round face appeared rounder than ever by reason of a thick fringe of whiskers. His body had filled out, and he moved with a rolling gait that caused him to usurp more than one man's ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... in Hate: Resolv'd to Ruine or to Rule the State. To Compass this, the Triple Bond he broke; The Pillars of the Publick Safety shook: And fitted Israel for a Foreign Yoke. Then, seiz'd with Fear, yet still affecting Fame, Usurp'd a Patriot's All-attoning Name. So easie still it proves in Factious Times, With publick Zeal to cancel private Crimes: How safe is Treason, and how sacred ill, here none can sin against the Peoples Will: Where Crouds can wink; and no offence be known, Since in anothers guilt they find ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... was—almost, it seemed to her now, an unpardonable crime. To seize upon another girl's identity; to usurp another's chance; to foist herself upon the unsuspecting and kindly souls at the Ball homestead in a way that raised for them a happiness that was merely a phantom—the thought of it all was now a draught of which the dregs were ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... desert, for that one brief moment before its rays broke into the amazing splendour which is Egypt's, the world became less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the common, everyday life ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... H. Carleton, is my son. He will probably be with you for some time, and will not try to assume any authority or usurp your position as foreman and overseer. You will treat him as you do the other boys, and if he wants to work, pay him the same ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... playfulness to infect her brother Herbert with a portion of her jealousy, for she knew not the contents of those letters Mary ever wrote to Herbert, or she would not for one moment have imagined that either Lord Delmont or St. Eval would usurp her ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... characters on his spear. How he arrived in this position we do not know, any more than we know the origin of the Greek gods; indeed, in this respect and others there are parallels between the Greek and the Northern mythology. Wotan goes in fear lest the powers of the nether world usurp his domination, which he wants to make absolute. He makes a pact with the giants—the Titan forces of the earth—that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill with slain warriors in sufficient numbers to keep down his foes. This is his primary, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... own. The simulated affection was now changed into undisguised hatred. Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the childless Henry ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... class can make the wisest decisions, the majority are the best judges of speeches. All these classes in a democracy have equal power both individually and collectively. But oligarchy shares the dangers with the many, while it does not merely usurp the material benefits, rather it ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou With courtesy receive him; rise and bow; And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave; Then lay before him all thou hast; allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow, Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate The soul's marmoreal calmness: Grief shall be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, grave ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... whole hour. Lebrun visited but seldom. Notwithstanding his elevation, his character remained unaltered; and Bonaparte considered him too moderate, because he always opposed his ambitious views and his plans to usurp power. When Bonaparte left the breakfast-table it was seldom that he did not add, after bidding Josephine and her daughter Hortense good-day, "Come, Bourrienne, come, let ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... thee. Do thou With courtesy receive him, rise and bow, And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave, Then lay before him all thou hast. Allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate Thy soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be, Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles, to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... another party, whose object is to materialise mankind, to hit upon what is expedient without heeding what is just; to acquire knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue; assuming the title of the champions of modern civilisation, and placing themselves in a station which they usurp with insolence, and from which they are driven by their ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... there is neither wood nor ravens to authorize the name. But the "Sunswick," which satisfied the Delafields and Gibbses of the olden, time, and which distinguished their lofty halls and broad lawns, was not elegant enough for the cockney tastes of these latter days, so "wood" must be made to usurp the place of cherries and apples, and "ravens" that of gulls, in order to satisfy its cravings. But all this was lost on Spike. He remembered the shore as it had been twenty years before, and he saw what it was now, but little did he care for the change. On the whole, he rather preferred ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... with whom you may happen to be dancing when supper is announced to the supper-table, unless she has come with a gentleman, in which case you must not usurp his privilege. If she is disengaged, escort her to a seat in the supper-room, if possible, and see that she is served with the dishes she selects. Do not take your own supper at the same time; wait till the lady has finished; then take her back to ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... little surprising that a mother-state should trust large bodies of mercenary troops in her colonies, at so great a distance from her; lest, in process of time, when the spirits of the people shall be depressed by the military power, another Caesar should arise and usurp the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... confusion over a thousand homes. Alas! for the palaces and hovels, that might have been nurseries for heaven, By hot intestine broils blighted into schools for hell; None knoweth his place, yet all refuse to serve, None weareth the crown, yet all usurp the scepter; The mother, heart-stricken years agone, hath dropped into an early grave; The silent sisters long to leave a home they cannot love; The brothers, casting off ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... is widely different with the office of Treasurer. The President ought not to usurp the power of his appointment, which ought, after serious discussion by the Council, to be made by the ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry "some faint idea of the vision bright," to entertain her "partial listening ear," is a pretty thought. But in my opinion the most beautiful passages in the whole ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... however, had been wrought in the course of the last few hours, upon the thoughts and feelings of our two fair captives, a change which had caused reality to usurp for a time at least, the place of romance, and constrained them to gaze with a vacant look upon the superbly natural beauties of the island glen. Therefore with thoughts concentrated upon their immediate personal prospects and fruitless conjectures as ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker

... I not thankfully obey the heavenly voice? Shall I carry my humility to the extreme of disobedience? Shall I not rather arise, and, with a cheerful and joyous heart, do my Saviour what service I can? I will not presume to usurp the prerogative of God, even to judge and punish myself. I will leave myself to Him, the merciful and all-knowing, and He shall do with me what He sees best. I will not reject His mercy. I will not resist His will. Let ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... this: The Emperor loves you, it is true; he calls you his most faithful servant, and promises ever to be a gracious Sovereign to you, but he will never further your projects of becoming an independent ruler, and will not assist you to effect the Elector's ruin, that you may usurp his place. He rather wishes you to remain what you are—Stadtholder in the Mark—and to exert all your energies in maintaining that position, since the Emperor relies upon your good offices for securing ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... longer rock people to sleep with religious lullabys, or satisfy them with the lifeless form, then he comes as an angel of light, probably in the person of some professor or teacher of religion, and seeks to usurp the place of the Holy Spirit; but instead of leading "into all truth," he leads the unwary soul into deadly error; instead of directing him on to the highway of holiness, and into the path of perfect peace, where no ravenous beast ever comes, he leads him into ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... it not, love, for Love to heaven is fled, Since sweating Lust on earth usurp'd his name; Under whose simple semblance he hath fed Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame; 796 Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves, As caterpillars do the ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... it speaks, awful with God's power, armed with his pains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal nature. It ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... vast numbers press'd Around the shrine, and made the same request: 'What! you,' (she cried) 'unlearn'd in arts to please, Slaves to yourselves, and even fatigued with ease, Who lose a length of undeserving days, Would you usurp the lover's dear-bought praise? To just contempt, ye vain pretenders, fall, 400 The people's fable and the scorn of all.' Straight the black clarion sends a horrid sound, Loud laughs burst out, and bitter scoffs fly round, Whispers are heard, with taunts reviling ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... gaberdine and bulbous multiplicity of breeches, sat on his "stoep" and smoked his pipe in lordly silence; nor did it ever enter his brain that the active, restless Yankee, whom he saw through his half-shut eyes worrying about in dog day heat, ever intent on the main chance, was one day to usurp control over these goodly Dutch domains. Already, however, the races regarded each other with disparaging eyes. The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper-heads;" while the latter, glorying in their own nether rotundity, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... first victim, offered to the manes of his murdered father, had to some extent the effect of appeasing the vengeful passion of Don Rafael. At all events his spirit became calmer; and other sentiments long slumbering at the bottom of his heart began to usurp their sway. He perceived the necessity of justifying his conduct—which he knew must appear inexplicable—to the inhabitants of the hacienda Las Palmas. Had he done so at that moment all would have been well; but unfortunately a certain spirit of pride interfered ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... speech familiar to children. Mr. Horne Tooke is bitter in his contempt for it, and will scarcely admit it into civilized company. "The brutish inarticulate interjection, which has nothing to do with speech, and is only the miserable refuge of the speechless, has been permitted to usurp a place amongst words, &c."—"The neighing of a horse, the lowing of a cow, the barking of a dog, the purring of a cat; sneezing, coughing, groaning, shrieking, and every other involuntary convulsion with oral ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... the touch of the mother which forms the basis of the first conception of the mother. After that, the gradually discriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. Till gradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three senses, as medium of correspondence ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... assert its power and majesty against the challenge of any class. The Government, when it asserts that right, seeks not to antagonize a class but simply to defend the right of the whole people as against the irreparable harm and injury that might be done by the attempt by any class to usurp a power that only Government itself has a right to exercise as a protection ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... preeminently loyal to it, have ever cherished the most liberal principles of civil polity, and have framed their constitutions in accordance with the most modern and advanced maxims of popular rights. So far are they from any disposition to usurp authority or to impose unjust or unnecessary restraints upon the political action of the people, that they are charged with the opposite fault of carrying liberty to the extreme of ungoverned license. Of all the American States, these are the least likely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. To usurp a usurpation—that is all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... he was the only survivor of the tragedy. They believed this lie of his, and, taking Alis without objection or dissent, they crowned him emperor of Greece. But it was not long before Alexander learned that Alis was emperor. Then he took leave of King Arthur, unwilling to let his brother usurp his land without protest. The King makes no opposition to his plan, but bids him take with him so great a company of Welshmen, Scots, and Cornishmen that his brother will not dare to withstand him when he ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... it) poetry was but occasional amusement and solace to him, prose his regular avocation from task-work; and there is abundant evidence that, willingly or unwillingly, he never allowed either to usurp the place of the vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear men boast of getting through their work somehow or other, that they may devote themselves to parerga which they like, and which they are pleased to consider ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... Flames in Love, That common dull pretence, Fools in Romances use to move Soft Hearts of little Sense: No, Strephon, I'm not such a Slave, Love's banish'd Power to own; Since Interest and Convenience have So long usurp'd his Throne. ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... last, 235 Last effort meeting him, his strength restored, And wing'd for flight his agile limbs anew? The son of Peleus, as he ran, his brows Shaking, forbad the people to dismiss A dart at Hector, lest a meaner hand 240 Piercing him, should usurp the foremost praise. But when the fourth time to those rivulets. They came, then lifting high his golden scales, Two lots the everlasting Father placed Within them, for Achilles one, and one 245 For Hector, balancing the doom of both. Grasping it in the midst, he raised the beam. Down ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... civil war had nothing repulsive about it: it was a normal procedure—a ladder to power. Naturally, he persuaded others, and perhaps himself, that he acted purely with the patriotic intention of devoting to the public benefit the power which, for that purpose only, it became his duty to usurp. Moved by the ambition to aggrandize Greece, he felt at liberty to use whatever means might conduce to so desirable an end. The sole question that troubled him was, whether this old ladder would serve him as faithfully as in the past. And once again the answer depended ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... each occasion earnestly deprecated the adoption of hasty and violent measures, which might lead to consequences highly prejudicial to both nations. They received an answer,[b] which, assuming it as proved that the States intended to usurp the rights of England on the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... itself at once en permanence, sent her delegates to all the other sections, and called upon "the sovereign people, whose rights the Convention wished to usurp," to make a ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... defenseless and harmless throng of spectators; but the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous assaults of hireling assassins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers to strike terror by an appalling exhibition of force. If the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... the royal insignia on the altar, and addressing the king and his surrounding prelates, said, "There are the crown and sceptre which Canute intrusted to my charge. To you, I neither give nor refuse them, you may take them if you please; but I strictly forbid any of my brother bishops to usurp an office, which is the prerogative ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... and from care, His greatest sorrows flow; When these usurp the heart of man, That heart ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... minor legal changes, will restore the balance,—such a conception of the situation is less than half true. No doubt, the "plain people" of the United States have been morally indifferent, and have allowed unscrupulous special interests to usurp too much power; but that is far from being the whole story. The unscrupulous energy of the "Boss" or the "tainted" millionaire is vitally related to the moral indifference of the "plain people." Both of them have been encouraged to believe ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... can be deprived of the rights and immunities guaranteed by the organic law of the nation, what is to prevent any other class from sharing the same fate? If less than one fourth of the male citizens of Mississippi can usurp the right to exclusively manage the local government, what is to prevent a smaller proportion from doing the same? If it is possible for a minority of the people of Alabama to disfranchise one class of citizens on account of race without the consent of the majority, ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love

... which latter sort, if men would revive the blessed style of that great doctor of the Gentiles, would be carried thus, ego, non dominus; and again, secundum consilium meum, in opinions and counsels, and not in positions and oppositions. But men are now over-ready to usurp the style, non ego, sed dominus; and not so only, but to bind it with the thunder and denunciation of curses and anathemas, to the terror of those which have not sufficiently learned out of Solomon that "The causeless curse ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... to be used by an advocate for the defence, is also a brief and plain definition of a name, adopted in accordance with the opinion of men. In this way—To diminish the majesty of the people is to usurp some of the public powers when you are not invested with any office. And then the confirmation of this definition is derived from similar instances and similar principles. Afterwards comes the separation of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... marrying her, but in the latter I recognised that a girl who meant nothing to my better self had grown of a sudden painfully yet exquisitely desirable. But even during the ascendancy of the latter physical mood, she had only to seat herself beside the harp and sing, for the former state to usurp its place, I watched, I listened, and I yielded. Her voice, aided by the soft plucking of the strings, completed my defeat. Now, strangest of all, I must add one other thing, and I will add it without ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... disregarded. Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers. I wish we could be brought to consider this, and remembering natural obligations a little more ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... debasement and moral ruin of a people endowed by God with surpassing resources for the attainment of human happiness and human dignity. I cannot be loyal to a system of meanness, terror, and corruption, although it usurp the title and assume the form of a 'government.' So long as such a 'government' presumes to injure and insult me, and those in whose prosperity I am involved, I must offer to it all the resistance in my power. But if I despaired of successful ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... errors in a monastery, From whence the odour of good works upwent, They of Christ's passion every mystery Contemplating, through all the churches went; Which now, to our eternal infamy, Foul Moor usurp; what time on strife intent, All Europe rings with arms and martial deeds, And war is ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... Tim," I protested, for I did not care to usurp to myself the sum of all the virtues ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... has been cleared off by man, gigantic grasses usurp the clearances. None of the sylvan vegetation can stand the annual grass-burnings except a species of Bauhinia, and occasionally a large tree which sends out new wood below the burned places. The parrots build thereon, and the men make a stair up 150 feet by tying climbing ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... set the Devil on work; or else it is a Divine Miracle, like that of Peter's not sinking, or that of the Iron that swam at the Word of Elisha. And shall Men try whether God will work a Miracle to make a discovery? If a Crime cannot be found out but by Miracle, it is not for any Judge on Earth to usurp that Judgment which is reserved ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... persisted in securing for the society of Delight Makers a prominence that lay outside of their real attributes. Therefore Hayoue did not speak amiss when, in his interview with Okoya, he accused the Koshare, and principally their leader, of attempting to usurp functions and rights belonging properly to the main official shamans, and thus secure for themselves ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... was not enough to usurp the rights of a husband and father, he thought to play his part still better by deceiving the mistress also . . . . Ah! it is amusing, is it not? You also, Rose, you thought he was your old lover! Well, I at least am excusable, I the wife, who ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of citizen soldiers can restrain the princes of ordinary states who are wont to usurp the whole glory of victories, it must have been still more effectual against the Hebrew captains, whose soldiers were fighting, not for the glory of a prince, but for the glory of God, and who did not go forth to battle till the Divine assent ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza

... first Temple so glorious were wanting in the second could it be said (Hag. ii. 9), "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former"? It is a question which it is natural to ask, and it should be ingenuously answered. Is it that these were tending to usurp the place of the spiritual, of which they were but the assurance and the symbol, and darken rather than reveal the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Blackwater saloon-keeper, and with the equally avaricious Dusty Rhodes—who had been trying to steal more than their share of the prospect and to beat her out of her third. They had thought to ignore her, to brush her aside and usurp her share in the claim; but Wunpost had defended her and protected her rights and put them back where they belonged. And it was for this that he had seized Dusty Rhodes by the throat and kicked down the saloon-keeper's bar. But she ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... changing life, most subtle, most complex, yet indivisibly one, woven each day anew from myriads of aspirations, designs, ideals, recorded or unrecorded. Those heroic personalities, a Hildebrand, a Napoleon, a Cromwell, a Richelieu, who usurp the attributes of the State, do but interpret the State to itself, rudely or faultlessly. Philip and Alexander, Baber and Akbar, are the men who respond to, who feel more profoundly than other men, the ideal, the impulse which beats at the heart of the race. The divine thought ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... all progress for Cornelia, and she well knew it, and yet she was not at ease nor satisfied. She began to find out that it was no such light matter to usurp the place of such a woman as Sophie, though the latter was laboring under the great disadvantage of being ignorant of the plot against her. In most cases, indeed, the attempt would have been wellnigh hopeless, but Cornelia had two exceptionally powerful ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... bow 'Neath victor-pride and insolence—learn to feel What earth's dark woes—when abject vassals kneel; And worse the hour when his remorseless heir, Alike uncheck'd by heaven, or earthly prayer, With lusts ignoble, fed by martial might, Usurp'd man's fair domains and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... that, Two things may be considered in the assault of the demons—the assault itself, and the ordering thereof. The assault itself is due to the malice of the demons, who through envy endeavor to hinder man's progress; and through pride usurp a semblance of Divine power, by deputing certain ministers to assail man, as the angels of God in their various offices minister to man's salvation. But the ordering of the assault is from God, Who knows how to make orderly use ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... and I said to my heart: Can these be true gods, or have I perchance been duped? Thenceforward I held my peace, and set myself to watch, and now after much watching—alas! I must say it to my shame—I have discovered that they are no true gods, but wicked liars who have sought to usurp the places ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... resentment of the whole country, by excluding the native servants and adherents of the prince from the just reward of their services and attachments. Here, my Lords, is the whole civil service brought before you. They usurp the country, they destroy the revenues, they overload the prince, and they exclude all the nobility and eminent persons of the country from the just reward of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... before, self-control is the secret of all power. The day is not distant when the dogmas of science will be set aside for the spirit of philosophic inquiry. Then men will no longer say that they have reached the goal of human capacity or that they can not usurp the prerogative of the gods, for it will be known ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... establishing any schools. As to the people under them, they are not allowed to participate in political affairs by which their experience in politics may be ripened. The result is, on the man in power becoming sick or dying—and the iron rule relaxed—that those who wish to usurp the power of the state rise at once; and as the satisfactory solution of the problem of succession cannot be found, those undertakings which have made progress during the time of peace are swept away without a single exception. In extreme cases the disturbances continues to such an extent ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... by the same line of railway, but he always travelled first class; the same train thus presenting the anomaly of the master being in that place which one would naturally assign to the man, and the man appearing to usurp the position of the master. One day these two alighted at the terminus in full view of each other. "Well," said Mr. B—, in that tone of banter which a superior so frequently thinks it becoming to adopt, "I don't know how you manage to ride first-class, when in these hard times I find ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... supposed to give him. By War Department orders, Army Regulations and customs of the service, the lieutenants and noncommissioned officers are charged with certain duties and responsibilities. Let every one of them carry the full load of their responsibility. The company commander should not usurp the functions of his subordinates—he should not relieve them of any of their prescribed or logical work and responsibility. On the contrary, he should give them more, and he should see that they "deliver the goods." Skill in distributing ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... embarrassed, as she entered her own house. During her rapid ride she had already framed a speech of apology to Major Van Zandt, which, however, utterly fled from her lips as that officer showed himself respectfully on the threshold. Yet she permitted him to usurp the functions of the grinning Caesar, and help her from her horse; albeit she was conscious of exhibiting the awkward timidity of a bashful rustic, until at last, with a stammering, "Thank ye," she actually ran up stairs to hide her ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... by him that receives it with the same right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or fraudulently obtained. But no injury is still done to the people; for what they never had, they have never lost. Caius may usurp the right of Titius; but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people; and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can prompt him to restore what may be proved to have been never taken away. Supposing, what I think cannot be proved, that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... when we have the Divine Scripture": Besides, it is dangerous, since the demons frequently mix falsehood with truth. Or, as Chrysostom [*Cyril of Alexandria, Comment. in Luc.] says: "It was not meet for them to usurp the prerogative of the apostolic office. Nor was it fitting that the mystery of Christ should be proclaimed by a corrupt tongue" because "praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner" [*Cf. Theophylact, Enarr. in Luc.]. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... is no learned scribe Nor arithmaticion Ever able to decide The usurp'd base ambition, Which in truth I shall declare, Traytors here which lately were, Who wanted ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... interest was at the bottom of this favor; for a marriage was negotiating between Velazquez and a sister of the bishop. [389] Complaints and misrepresentations had been sent to Spain by Velazquez of the conduct of Cortez, who was represented as a lawless and unprincipled adventurer, attempting to usurp absolute authority in New Spain. The true services of Cortez had already excited admiration at court, but such was the influence of Fonseca, that, as in the case of Columbus, he succeeded in prejudicing the mind of the sovereign against one of the most meritorious of his ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... Word."[264] "It is proper to kings, princes, and magistrates to be callit lordis and dominators over their subjectis, whom they govern civilly; bot it is proper to Christ onlie to be callit Lord and Master in the spirituall government of the kirk, and all utheris that beiris office therein aucht not to usurp dominion therein, nor be callit lordis, bot onlie ministeris, disciples, and servantis. For it is Christis proper office to command and rewll His kirk universall, and every particular kirk, throw His Spirit ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... the mean time, how doth this concern me, or upon what reference do I usurp his habit? I confess, indeed, that to compare myself unto him for aught I have yet said, were both impudency and arrogancy. I do not presume to make any parallel, Antistat mihi millibus trecentis, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... you see the result of leaving this fair lady's side all unguarded! These fellows come and usurp ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... lui."[32] He somewhat redeemed himself in 1715 with le Triomphe de Bilboquet, ou la Defaite de l'Esprit, de l'Amour et de la Raison, a fancy inspired by the game of cup and ball, so much in vogue at that period that it threatened to usurp the time and rights of conversation, and had even made its way upon the stage, in which simple matter Marivaux found occasion for ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... earthly glory is but vanity, together with a warning against the ambition that o'erleaps itself, and ends in failure and humiliation. That humanity will profit by such a lesson, whether true or invented for didactic purposes, is doubtful, but at least Nature has done her best for once to usurp the seat of the preacher, 'to point a moral and adorn a tale.' Lady Hester, who was born on March 12,1776, was the eldest daughter of Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, by his first wife Hester, daughter of the great Lord Chatham. Lord Stanhope seems to have been an uncomfortable person, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... in Captain Cranston because I want to hear your side of a singular case. In an official letter to the post adjutant, Captain Devers charges that you went to the post hospital last night, ordered the attendant out of the room, and proceeded to usurp control of a patient under the doctor's care,—that you deliberately overthrew his authority and actually told the attendant his orders were of no account. This, if true, is a most serious matter, but I have learned that there are many sides to a story. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... usurp Jussuf's place? Who dares here to pass for Jussuf's wife? I am Jussuf, who was thought lost! Where is the impostor? Let him come here, that he may receive the just reward ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry "some faint idea of the vision bright," to entertain her "partial listening ear," is a pretty thought. But in my opinion the most beautiful ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... athletics and sport which now so largely occupy the attention of the youth of our land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance of bodily fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing pursuit, and instead of being merely a means to an end, may usurp the place in life which belongs ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... or a principle, it should manifestly be that of reinstating itself in power, in consolidating that power, and in acting as a powerful unity, according to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. The CONSTITUTION—bear that word well in mind—the Constitution which suffers no State to usurp a single power belonging to the General Government, and which was expressly framed for the purpose of making all its freemen the citizens of one great nation. Let the reader consult the Constitution, study its unmistakable plan of national integrity and of state subordination, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... every thing assumes a new face. What was entitled to please yesterday in times of tranquillity, is to-day, during the jar of public opinion, and will be to-morrow subject to all the variations of caprice. The marvellous and gigantic usurp the place of the natural, and claim alone the right to entertain. True it is that the dancers have found means to render this new manner interesting, while they have enjoyed the sweets of it. The pleasure of being applauded is so great, that it is no ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... to both these classes of emotions. This is Self-love;—which leads us to seek our own protection, comfort, and advantage. It is a sound and legitimate principle of action when kept in its proper place;—when allowed to usurp an undue influence, it degenerates into selfishness; and it then interferes in a material degree with the exercise of the affections, or, in other words, with our duty to ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... satirizes misplaced ambition by "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... be hypocrisy which the world would detect at once. Let her make her ultimatum, and there are enough generous minds in Europe that will counteract her in the balance. Of course her motive is to cripple a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that threatens even to usurp her history. In twenty more years of prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the Continent of America or the Isle of Britain. Therefore, finding us in a ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... about Louis. He was made to realize the indignity to himself in letting two vulgar Italians usurp his authority. Thus Albert de Luynes, his adored friend, procured his signature to a paper ordering the immediate destruction of Concini and his wife. And when Louis had seen Concini despatched by his ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... the worship of the Joss and the worship of the true God in a Christian Church is striking and affords reflection. The former is of the earth earthy, the latter transports the devout worshipper to the throne of the Most High. There is no fear that the religion of the Joss-House will ever usurp the religion of the Christian altar. Men have expressed the fear that if the Chinese came in overwhelming numbers to America they would endanger the Christian faith by their idolatry. But would this be true? Has Christianity anything to dread? ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... stayed some time with him, often a whole hour. Lebrun visited but seldom. Notwithstanding his elevation, his character remained unaltered; and Bonaparte considered him too moderate, because he always opposed his ambitious views and his plans to usurp power. When Bonaparte left the breakfast-table it was seldom that he did not add, after bidding Josephine and her daughter Hortense good-day, "Come, Bourrienne, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... however, is widely different with the office of Treasurer. The President ought not to usurp the power of his appointment, which ought, after serious discussion by the Council, to be made ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence—what shall be the result of legal argument. As it rarely happens that a man is fit to plead his own cause, lawyers are a class of the community, who, by study ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... religion takes up that place in the mind which superstition would usurp, and so leaves little room for it; and likewise lays us under the strongest obligations ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... will be equally raised with mine, when you hear that your President has dared, contrary to your intention, to continue to usurp the privileges and hereditary powers of the Nabob of the Carnatic, your old and unshaken friend, and the declared ally of the king of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... (Dem., Ind.) We have listened to much excited eloquence upon this question. It is too manifest that Congress, moving on with that impetus which is ever the result of excessive political power. seeks to usurp those powers which are by the Constitution vested in the other Departments of the Government. I do not propose to discuss this subject or answer the speech of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Logan] with any words of my own. I have before me a paper which is full ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... spear. How he arrived in this position we do not know, any more than we know the origin of the Greek gods; indeed, in this respect and others there are parallels between the Greek and the Northern mythology. Wotan goes in fear lest the powers of the nether world usurp his domination, which he wants to make absolute. He makes a pact with the giants—the Titan forces of the earth—that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... upon the door-step with her back turned to the wretched man within—when it came upon her that, traitor as he was, she herself had given him the right to take her bright-faced lover's place, and usurp his tender power—when the fresh sea-breeze blew upon her face and stirred her hair, and the warm, rare sunshine touched her, even breeze and sunshine helped her to the end, so that she broke down into a sharp sob, as any other woman might have done, only that the repressed strength ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... ought to be a Frenchman, Sir Norman! And what if the lady herself, finding her dazzling suitor drop his barnyard feathers, and soar over her head in his own eagle plumes, may not give you your dismissal, and usurp the place of pretty ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... yelping cachinations; to make pain forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth! Truly, humour has its laudable and kindly uses: it is the mind's play-time after office-drudgery—an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study. Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more than a temporary alleviation; when it affects to set up as an atheistic panacea; when it professes to walk as an abiding companion, lighting you on your way with injurious gleams (as that dreadful figure in Dante, who lanterns his path by ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... basis with me. At first I thought that I understood the object of those who are planning to ruin us in this cowardly manner. But I don't now. If they ruin us they also destroy the chances of any other company that may be scheming to usurp our place. For ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... calls you his most faithful servant, and promises ever to be a gracious Sovereign to you, but he will never further your projects of becoming an independent ruler, and will not assist you to effect the Elector's ruin, that you may usurp his place. He rather wishes you to remain what you are—Stadtholder in the Mark—and to exert all your energies in maintaining that position, since the Emperor relies upon your good offices for securing him an ally in ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... it has become so common that all the great houses assume it. All the great, says a modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to highness. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, will usurp that of majesty. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... priests were branded as triple enemies—of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in this state paper, Iyeyas[)u] shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... did'st hear the tempest from afar, And felt'st the horrors of the wat'ry war, To me unknown, yet on this peaceful shore Methinks I hear the storm tumultuous roar, And how stern Boreas with impetuous hand Compell'd the Nereids to usurp the land. Reluctant rose the daughters of the main, And slow ascending glided o'er the plain, Till AEolus in his rapid chariot drove In gloomy grandeur from the vault above: Furious he comes. His winged sons obey Their frantic sire, and madden ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... touch-and-go? The concessions we were prepared to make would have cost the State thirty million pounds, and it would have been cheap. Do you hear that? It would have been cheap! Bakkan is one of the most vulnerable outposts of the Empire. It is a terrible danger-zone. If certain powers can usurp our authority—and, mark you, the whole blamed place is already riddled with this new pernicious doctrine—you know what I mean—before we know where we are the whole East will be in a blaze. India! My God! This contract we were negotiating ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... had oftentimes great conflicts with the rashness of folly? And while he lived, had not his master Socrates the victory of an unjust death in my presence, whose inheritance, when afterward the mob of Epicures, Stoics, and others (every one for his own sect) endeavoured to usurp, and as it were in part of their prey, sought to draw me to them, exclaiming and striving against them; they tore the garment which I had woven with my own hands, and having gotten some little pieces of it, thinking me to be wholly in their possession, departed. ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... ahead. He'd obviously got himself into a hassle maintaining his place in line against two or three heftier would-be soldiers. The little fellow wasn't backing down a step in spite of the attempts of the other Lowers to usurp his place. Joe Mauser liked to see such spirit. You could use it when you were in ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... the government was more and more becoming a parliamentary one. Hayes was determined to reestablish it on its constitutional foundations. When he came into power the lower house was in control of the Democrats and it was they who were determined to usurp executive power. Riders were placed on appropriation bills and efforts were made to force the President to assent to laws which would eliminate the Federal Government from all interference with the affairs ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... man to a small chamber where they were greeted by Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed another to usurp his prerogative and rescue ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... led them to believe him very profound and wise; the majority did submit to him, and he had a great success in revolutionary circles. His activity was directed to the preparation of a rising in which he was to usurp the power and call together a council. A programme, composed by him, should be proposed before the council, and he felt sure that this programme of his solved every problem, and that it would be impossible not ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... The Highland seer pretended that he could see the winding-sheet high upon the breast of the man for whom death was waiting. Could we behold any such visible sign, the man who bore it, no matter where he stood—even if he were a slave watching Caesar pass—would usurp every eye. At the coronation of a king, the wearing of that order would dim royal robe, quench the sparkle of the diadem, and turn to vanity the herald's cry. Death makes the meanest beggar august, and that augustness would assert itself in the presence ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... laws to be shewed to you and many Precedents also in the case. Much is to be offered to you in that; according to the laws of the nations, that was a due Parliament. Those Commissions were issued forth, and what was done was done by their power; and whereas it hath been said we did assume and usurp an authority, I say this was done rather in the fear ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... letters Sax. or Ang.-Sax. tacked on to his exposition of an obscure word. There is no such Saxon vocable as dare, to stare. Again, what more frequent blunder than to confound a secondary and derivative sense of a word with its radical and primary—indeed, sometimes to allow the former to usurp the precedence, and at length altogether oust the latter: hence it comes to pass, that we find dare is one while said to imply peeping and prying, another while trembling or crouching; moods and actions merely consequent or attendant upon the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... of this plan men's minds were, as they usually are upon matters of moment, much divided. Some thought it a fair promise of the future intention of the Committee to abolish that phalanx of authors who usurp the stage, to the exclusion of a large assortment of dramatic talent blushing unseen in the background; while others contended that the scheme would prevent men of real eminence from descending into an amphitheatre in which all Grub Street (that is to say, all London and Westminster) ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... any of us. I felt distressed to think that a woman who was not only a stranger but young should be going to associate with us in so many relations of life, without having any right to do so—nay, that this young woman was going to usurp the place of our dead mother. I felt depressed, and kept thinking more and more that my father was to blame in the matter. Presently I heard his voice and Woloda's speaking together in the pantry, and, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... ends. The party owes its right to existence to the people's will; when its life must be prolonged by artificial stimulants it is fit that it should die. It is not the people's master, but the people's servant; if it should usurp the oppressor's place, it must die ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... And, meriting no ill, no danger fears: Yet mourns his former vigour lost so far, To make him now spectator of a war: Repining that he must preserve his crown By any help or courage but his own: Wishes, each minute, he could unbeget Those rebel sons, who dare usurp his seat; To sway his empire with unequal skill, And mount a throne, which none ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... then if there must be a Singing one alone must sing, not all (or if all) the Men only and not the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the Church by way of propounding questions ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... execrable son! so to aspire Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurp'd, from God not given. He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By His donation; but man over men He made not lord; such title to Himself Reserving, human left ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... kinds stored by the agent, probably for removal. The whole business of our Commission and all its agents are much disliked by the cotton-agents, partly because they don't sympathize with our purposes,—partly because we seem about to usurp their authority, to which of course ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... caused the emperor, who resided at Constantinople, on many occasions to give up the possession of it to others, as a charge full of danger and expense; and sometimes, without his permission, the Romans, seeing themselves so abandoned, created an emperor for their defense, or suffered some one to usurp the dominion. This occurred at the period of which we now speak, when Maximus, a Roman, after the death of Valentinian, seized the government, and compelled Eudocia, widow of the late emperor, to take him for her husband; but she, being of imperial blood, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... him to elbow you aside, as it were, and to thrust you into a false position, if not into obscurity. If Miss Loring is the woman God has created for you, in the name of all that is holy, do not let another man usurp your rights. Do not let one like Dexter bear her off to gild a heartless home. Remember that Jessie is young, inexperienced, and unskilled in the ways of the world. She is not schooled in the lore ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... jealous of her brother's friend, who would most likely deprive her of much of that beloved society. Hitherto she had been Maulevrier's chosen companion, at Fellside—indeed, his sole companion after the dismissal of his tutor. Now this brown, bearded stranger would usurp her privileges—those two young men would go roaming over the hills, fishing, otter-hunting, going to distant wrestling matches and leaving her at home. It was a hard thing, and she was prepared to detest the interloper. Even to-night she would be a loser by his ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen, to prohibit within its jurisdiction all criminal practices, especially of that class which destroy the family relations and endanger social order. Nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson

... Edmund had been his first charm in her eyes, even before she loved him for his deep character and melancholy fate. She thought how unlike all this common-place world was to the world it aped—how far these Raleighs and Sidneys were from being worthy to usurp the name even for one evening! and as to Tressilian, how impossible to see any face here that would even shadow her idea of him! And yet she did not know; she might have to change her mind. There actually ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... seeming friendship: Open to all, true only to thyself, Thou know'st those arts which blast with envious praise, Which aggravate a fault with feigned excuses, And drive discountenanced virtue from the throne; That leave blame of rigour to the prince, And of his every gift usurp the merit; That hide in seeming zeal a wicked purpose, And only build ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... sounds, The spirit walks unholy rounds; The wizard's hour eclipsing rolls; The shades of hell usurp the poles; The moon retires; the heaven departs. From opening earth a spectre starts: My spirit dies—Away, my fears! My love, my life, my ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... his own image, with his own desires and passions, stand in constant need of being recreated. They change as the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter; they are ever bound to do something fresh, lest man should forget them, and new divinities usurp their place. Hence came endless avatars in Hindoo mythology, reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that passive Indian mind. Hence came Jove's adventures, tinged with all the lust and guile which the wickedness ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... They were not going to allow business to usurp their time and thought during this joyful season! The children must have their trees, hung with gifts; the needy must be especially cared for, and visits must be exchanged; so the City was left to take care of itself, while each household was busy making ready for ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... have never sought to ascertain his motives for breaking with me, because he knew I had always befriended him while under my military command, and in securing him his office of Secretary of War. I spoke frequently to President Grant of the growing tendency of his Secretary of War to usurp all the powers of the commanding general, which would surely result in driving me away. He as frequently promised to bring us together to agree upon a just line of separation of our respective ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... all," said the Southern leaders, "for they will lead to discussion on a forbidden subject. They are only an entrance wedge to disrupt the Union. The Constitution has guaranteed to us exclusively the preservation of an institution on which our welfare rests. You usurp a privilege which you call a right. Your demands are dangerous to the peace of the Union, and are preposterous. You violate unwritten law. You seek to do what the founders of our republic never dreamed of. When two of the States ceded their own slave territory to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... intended him to abide by the stipulations of the Armistice, he must have been astonished at the schools being shut on the day after his arrival. And they remained shut, both the modern school and the middle-class girls' school for months, because the Professor's quite illegal attempt to usurp the inspectorship was resented. The secondary school was closed and the teachers who had come to [vS]ibenik with their families, but whose permanent domicile was elsewhere, received an order, delivered by carabinieri, that they would have to leave the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... the highest honors which can fall to the lot of a prince's favorite. Later we behold in him a papal nepot-prince in whom the Pope endeavored to embody all mundane power and honor; he made him his condottiere, his warder, his body-guard, and, finally, his worldly heir. Calixtus allowed him to usurp every position of authority in the Church domain and, like a destroying angel, to overrun and devastate the republics and the tyrannies, for the purpose of founding a family dynasty, the Papacy being of only momentary tenure, and ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... to woman's preaching, and at nearly every meeting I had to explain the Scriptural teaching on this subject. Nearly all opponents to woman's preaching fortified themselves with such scriptures as these: "It is a shame for a woman to speak in the church"; "Suffer not a woman to teach or to usurp authority," etc. The Lord helped me to successfully drive these opposers out of their false positions and to show them that they were ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... ask the question, Why did the pale-face usurp the lands of the Indians without remuneration? It was because the Indian was not orthodox. He may have been lazy from a Puritanical stand-point, and he may also have hunted on the twenty-seventh Sunday after Easter; but still was it not right that he should have received a dollar ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... penetrated very far into the labyrinth of men's abodes which yet lay between them and the outskirts, this aspect began to melt away, and noise and bustle to usurp its place. Some straggling carts and coaches rumbling by, first broke the charm, then others came, then others yet more active, then a crowd. The wonder was, at first, to see a tradesman's window open, but it was a rare thing soon to see one closed; then, smoke rose slowly from the chimneys, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... successful copies of Continental models, such as the Lyonnese calf, the Grolier and Maioli pattern; but in general our ancestors seem to have been satisfied with the paned sides and floriate back, unless heraldic accessories intervened to usurp the space occupied by the lateral ornament or (as in some of John Evelyn's or his sovereign's books) a gilt ornamental cypher formed the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... anything in KIDNAPPED, but there is no doubt there comes a break in the middle, and the tale is practically in two divisions. In the first James More and the M'Gregors, and Catriona, only show; in the second, the Appin case being disposed of, and James Stewart hung, they rule the roast and usurp the interest - should there be any left. Why did I take up DAVID BALFOUR? I don't ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... life, including her work. Indeed, she has contracted the habit of happiness and is so engrossed in the big elemental things of life that she can laugh at the incidental pin-pricks that others call troubles. She differentiates major from minor and never permits a minor to usurp the throne. Being an integral part of her life, her work takes on all the hues of her life. For her, culture is not something added; rather it is a something that permeates her whole nature and her whole life. She does not read poetry and other forms of literature, study the great masterpieces ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... through him. He thought it most unjust and unfair of Baraka to call him to account in that way, but he was not surprised at it, as Baraka, from the beginning of the journey to the present moment, had always been backbiting him, to try and usurp his position. Baraka, at this, somewhat taken aback, said there were no such things as perquisites on a journey like this; for whatever could be saved from the chiefs was for the common good of all, and all alike ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... storm. The chief menace to the general peace was Lodovico Maria Sforza, surnamed Il Moro,(1) who sat as regent for his nephew, Duke Gian Galeazzo, upon the throne of Milan. That regency he had usurped from Gian Galeazzo's mother, and he was now in a fair way to usurp the throne itself. He kept his nephew virtually a prisoner in the Castle of Pavia, together with his young bride, Isabella of Aragon, who had been sent thither by her father, the Duke of Calabria, heir to the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... native land again was to be found in the support of Ferrante, King of Naples, the sworn foe of the Medici. This monarch looked on Simonetta as a traitorous villain who had taken advantage of Bona's weakness to usurp the supreme power in Milan, and wrote to King Louis XI, begging him to come to his kinswoman's help and assist in restoring the Duke of Bari and his brother to their rights. But the French king had no wish to be drawn into the quarrel, and when Ferrante ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... am not greatly given to overtalkativeness," he said shortly. "I have no desire to usurp woman's prerogative." ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... get her a saddle, and then June would usurp Miss Anne's place on a horseback-ride up through the gap to see the first blooms of the purple rhododendron on Bee Rock, or up to Morris's farm on Powell's mountain, from which, with a glass, they could see the Lonesome Pine. And all the time she ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... had been bury'd in 'em. However, unpleasant as it was, she could not forbear gazing after this miserable Spectacle; and the more she beheld it, the more she was confirmed it was Gracelove, or something that had usurp'd his Figure. In short, she could not rest 'till she call'd to one of her Servants, who rode by the Coach, whom she strictly charg'd to go to that poor Traveller, and mount him on his Horse, 'till they came to Dartford; where she order'd him to take ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... the land operations. Stockton, however, claimed to hold supreme land command by instructions from Commodore Sloat already quoted. Through the internal evidence of Stockton's letters and proclamations, it seems he was a trifle inclined to be bombastic and high-flown, to usurp authority, and perhaps to consider himself and his operations of more importance than they actually were. However, he was an officer disciplined and trained to obedience, and his absurd contention is not in character. It may be significant that he had promised to appoint Fremont Governor of ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... she had wept long and bitterly, accusing herself continually of her unworthiness in allowing another image to usurp the throne where the missionary should have reigned supreme; and the only consolation afforded was in the reflection that Douglass had died believing her faithful, happy in the perfect trust reposed in her. He had been buried on a sunny slope of the cemetery ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... vain as their impotent rivalry, and need cause no uneasiness to you, my beloved friend. I frequently smile at the vast pains and precautions of which my '' is the object; and I am encountering '' some of those fair ladies who would fain usurp your place, sometimes bedecked with jewels rare, and sometimes, as Racine says, "<——— dans le simple appareil D'une beaute, qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil.>' "Madame de Grammont, for instance, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... with a tendency to bulls which suggests that the heroine's nationality is also that of the author. A sentence in which we are told of a house that it is "larger, at first sight, than it in reality is," strikes a blow at the very essence of things, and those much-abused words will and would usurp the place of their relatives, shall and should, with a uniformity that proves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... it has become such a dreadful thing to me—the responsibility for pain and death.... It is horrible for humanity to usurp such a power—to dare interfere with life—to mar it, end it!... Children do not understand. I was nothing more a few months ago. To my intelligence the shallow arguments of those takers of life called sportsmen was sufficient. I supposed ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... opposed the Absolute Veto and led the fight for the sequestration of the property of the Church. This course made him a popular idol and in the early days of the Revolution he was the leader of the extreme wing of the Republicans. When he saw, however, that mob law was about to usurp the place of the Republican institutions for which he had striven, he leaned towards the court and advocated the sacrosanctity of the King's person. Denounced as a renegade, with his life threatened and his influence lost, he retired to his native province. In August ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... other men who take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary writer, "is free men, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... monsieur," said he to the composer of dance-music, "how it is that the Napoleon of these tunes can condescend to usurp the place of Palestrina, Pergolesi, and Mozart,—poor creatures who must pack and vanish at the advent of that tremendous Mass for ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... they indicate have been carefully drawn, and appear to be of such authority that they should be generally accepted. Sometimes, as, for example, in mathematics, a conventional set of symbols may quite usurp the function of ordinary language, and may enormously curtail the labor of setting forth the processes and results ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... laws. This reaction brought him up against the encroachments of the church, and the untoward incident of Becket's murder impaired the success of Henry's efforts to establish royal supremacy. But this supremacy must not be exaggerated. Henry did not usurp ecclesiastical jurisdiction; he wanted to see that the clerical courts did their duty; he claimed the power of moving them in this direction; and he hoped to make the crown the arbiter of disputes between the rival spiritual and temporal jurisdictions, realizing that the only alternative ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... transgressor to spoil One right of our homes, or one foot of our soil, One privilege pluck from our keeping, or dare Usurp one blessing ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... caught a bad cold, and my aunt has let loose Dr. Wade upon me. Please come directly, if you will save me from ever so much nasty medicine, at the least. My aunt is not my mother, thank heaven! though she would gladly usurp ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... elsewhere, because our printers ravin on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb. But the printers and the public are very different personages. The former may lead the latter a little out of their track, while the deviation is insensible: but the moment they usurp their direction and that of their government, they will be reduced to their true places. The two last Congresses have been the theme of the most licentious reprobation for printers thirsting after war, some against France, and some against England. But the people wish for peace with both. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... dirty page of a boy who answered the summons, 'tell John Watson to go down to the Railway Tavern directly, and desire them to get a three-stalled stable ready for a gentleman's horses that are coming to-day—a gentleman of the name of Sponge,' added he, lest any one else should chance to come and usurp them—'and tell John to meet the express train, and tell the gentleman's groom ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... against the nearest connections of the late King, prognosticated the severest fate to his defenceless children; and after the murder of Hastings, the Protector no longer made a secret of his intentions to usurp the crown. The licentious life of Edward afforded a pretence for declaring his marriage with the Queen invalid and all his posterity illegitimate. It was also maintained that the act of attainder passed against the Duke of Clarence had virtually incapacitated his children from succeeding to the crown; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... be dispossessed in fact of his estate by violence, by illegal or unjust means, without losing his right, and another may usurp it, occupy it, and possess it in fact without acquiring any right or legal title to it. The man who holds the legal title has the right to oust him and re-enter upon his estate whenever able to do so. Here, in the economical order, the fact and the right are distinguishable, and ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... which is Egypt's, the world became less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the common, everyday life of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... had probably invented, or at least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother to the reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother and sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... was not quite the 'prentice lad I had known. His legs indeed were no less bowed than of yore; nor was his hair less red; but the round face appeared rounder than ever by reason of a thick fringe of whiskers. His body had filled out, and he moved with a rolling gait that caused him to usurp more than one man's share of the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... often mentioned before—the purification of Ithaca, chiefly by the slaughter of the Suitors, "the shameless set, who usurp thy house and woo thy wife." Sitting on the roots of the sacred olive, the two, the man and the deity, plan destruction to the guilty. Verily those double elements, the human and the divine, must co-operate if the great action be performed. The eternal principle of right, the moral ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... because the three-penny tax on tea was so exorbitant that our Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the struggle from love of principle would still work on until the establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments derive their just powers from the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... was of immense value. Its object, according to the king, was that every man might know and be satisfied with his rightful possessions, and not with impunity usurp the property of others. But it was also of great service to the king, so that he might know who were his vassals, the amount of taxation which he could draw from them, and the actual strength ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... in Ili. After the death of Galdan II., son of Arabtan, an attempt was made by one, Amursana, to usurp the principality. He was, however, driven out, and fled to Peking, where he was favourably received by Ch'ien Lung, and an army was sent to reinstate him. With the subsequent settlement, under which he was to have only one quarter of Ili, Amursana was profoundly ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... three or four books, and that the author shows an undue inclination to reflection and metaphysical digression. This will, indeed, be a great objection to the superficial reader, who will impatiently regret that the tedious growth of a miller's boy and girl should usurp so many pages which might better have been filled with exciting incidents. But this very elaboration, tardy and idle though it may seem, was necessary to the completion of the author's plan, and—in our eyes—instead of being a blemish upon a fair story, is one of its principal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... us has been, on my part, to keep Isobel and her grandfather apart. You have doubtless correctly gauged my motive. Isobel's mother was my father's favourite child. If he had an idea that her child was alive, he would receive her without a word. She would completely usurp the place of Adelaide, my own daughter, in ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... hesitates to admit their ultimate success. No difficulties discourage us, no disasters appal. We move on with indomitable will and determination, looking through all the obstacles to the grand result as already accomplished. Does slavery stand in the way, and cotton seek to usurp the throne of universal empire, dictating terms to twenty millions of freemen, and demanding the acquiescence of the world? The first is annihilated by a word proclaiming universal liberation; the second is blockaded in his ports, surrounded by a wall of fire, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Thou deceiver, self-deceived! Thou dost usurp the titles of another; Thou art not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... conqueror; 1005 Though dispensations were not strong Conclusions, whether right or wrong, Although out-goings did confirm, And owning were but a mere term; Yet as the wicked have no right 1010 To th' creature, though usurp'd by might, The property is in the Saint, From whom th' injuriously detain 't; Of him they hold their luxuries, Their dogs, their horses, whores, and dice, 1015 Their riots, revels, masks, delights, Pimps, buffoons, fiddlers, parasites; All which the Saints have title ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... not usurp a priviledge reserved for some one more happy in your acquaintance, may I presume, Madam, to entreat (for a while) the favour of your Conversation, at least till the arrival of whom you expect, provided you are not tired of me before; for then upon the least intimation of uneasiness, ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve

... neighborhood, and several towns fell into the hands of the Christians. Meantime, news arrived that an army of Egyptian Arabs—who acknowledged the Fatimite caliphs, and had as yet resisted the attempt of the Turks to usurp dominion over all the followers of the Prophet—had captured Jerusalem. The Crusaders, filled with indignation, resumed their march to the Holy City, conquering on their way several towns. Embassadors were sent from the Caliph of Cairo with superb presents to the Christian leaders, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... power is always closed with a diplomatic review of the representatives of lawful Princes, who introduce on those occasions their fellow-subjects to another subject, who successfully has seized, and continues to usurp, the authority of his own Sovereign. What an example for ambition! what ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... Constitution, had no power to decide the result of the elections in the States, but that power was committed to State tribunals, how was it possible that any member of either House of Congress, who had sworn to support the Constitution, could usurp that power without being forsworn? Beside, it must be conceded by everybody to be utterly impossible that the power of investigating disputed questions, as to the choice of presidential electors by the States, should be exercised by Congress. There is no time ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... occupied places of almost equal elevation, they were united by a bond of the most durable nature. At the same time it appears that this equality had its disadvantage; it disposed the members of the aristocratic families to usurp the administrative power while recognizing its source, the Throne, and it encouraged factional dissensions, which sometimes resulted disastrously. As to the middle and lower classes, no evidence bearing on their exact composition is forthcoming. It is plain, however, that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... of joy she had known. She had been hard and wild enough at first, but just now, when she slipped down upon the door-step with her back turned to the wretched man within—when it came upon her that, traitor as he was, she herself had given him the right to take her bright-faced lover's place, and usurp his tender power—when the fresh sea-breeze blew upon her face and stirred her hair, and the warm, rare sunshine touched her, even breeze and sunshine helped her to the end, so that she broke down into a sharp sob, as any other woman might have done, only that the repressed strength of ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... that may be the outcome of his gross pleasures soon begins to haunt him and to usurp in his mind the place of ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... prating about him when he is at stool Two opinions alike, no more than two hairs Two principal guiding reins are reward and punishment Tyrannic sourness not to endure a form contrary to one's own Tyrannical authority physicians usurp over poor creatures Unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything Under fortune's favour, to prepare myself for her disgrace Universal judgments that I see so common, signify nothing Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours Unjust to exact from me ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne

... is there usurp'd for her brow; her forehead: and then sleek, as the parallel to smooth, that went before. A kind of paranomasie, or agnomination: do you ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... and rigorously. So much for excess of partiality, so much for over-consideration, so much for lack of faith in over-anxiety, so much more of late for the keen mother-jealousy that had quickened in her to anguish at the thought that another would one day usurp her undivided throne, and claim and take the lion's share of the love that had been all hers. Her spiritual director was far too lenient, in her opinion. She was all the more exacting towards herself. What right had a nun to be so bound by an earthly tie? It was defrauding her Saviour and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... vicinity had probably invented, or at least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother to the reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother and sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... further: "Where the shining glass, Lets in the light amid your temple's side, By broken by-ways did I inward pass, And in that window made a postern wide, Nor shall therefore this ill-advised lass Usurp the glory should this fact betide, Mine be these bonds, mine be these flames so pure, O glorious ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... good thrashing, Mr Terry, for playing the bully. There, there, my good lad, forget and forgive, and don't try and usurp my duties here. I will look ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... an address of thanks to Mr. Pitt, and given instructions to their members; the chief articles of which are, to promote an inquiry into the disposal of the money that has been granted, and to consent to no peace, unless we are to retain all, or near all, our conquests. Thus the city of London usurp the right of making peace and war. But is the government to be dictated to by one town? By no means. But suppose they are not -what is the consequence? How will the money be raised? If it cannot be raised without them, Mr. Pitt must again be minister: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... was in the house, no one else thought of answering the telephone. Mrs. Waddington would have been the last to usurp the prerogative. For that instrument was the tap root of her spy system over her daughter. By it, she picked up things; learned what this irresponsible responsibility of hers was doing. Mrs. Waddington had her mental lists ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... enemy. No country is invaded by another without cause, and as the United States is in friendly relations with all the Powers, there is no reason to fear foreign invasion. Even should a foreign power successfully attack her and usurp a portion of her territories, a supposition which is most improbable, would the enemy be able to hold what he seized? History shows that no conquered country has ever been successfully and permanently kept without the people's consent, and there ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... shewed to you and many Precedents also in the case. Much is to be offered to you in that; according to the laws of the nations, that was a due Parliament. Those Commissions were issued forth, and what was done was done by their power; and whereas it hath been said we did assume and usurp an authority, I say this was done rather in the fear ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... abandon platforms and stand up for peace. Peace with all nations has been the master policy. It has elevated our country to its present condition of power and prosperity. Do not let us sacrifice peace, and suffer violence and discord to usurp its reign. We have a magnificent future if we can only preserve the Union as our fathers constructed it. While it lasts there is a great light in the firmament in which all may walk in security, hope, and happiness. It is a light reaching far down the depths of futurity cheering and guiding ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructers and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... very pleasant; there was no question. He did not at all usurp her office, nor interfere with it. But when he saw her getting weary of a parliamentary discussion, or a long discourse on politics or parties, his hand would gently draw away the paper from hers and his voice carry on ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... obeyed a limited monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished by the liberty of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and adorned the dignity of human kind. [164] The acquiescence of the provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinction of rank, and to disregard the privileges of Roman citizens. The apprehensions of the subjects urged ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... them as he loomed A cloud of black against the crimson sky, Spoke, as a man may hardly speak but once: "My seamen, oh my friends, companions, kings; For I am least among you, being your captain; And ye are men, and all men born are kings, By right divine, and I the least of these Because I must usurp the throne of God And sit in judgment, even till I have set My seal upon the red wax of this blood, This blood of my dead friend, ere it grow cold. Not all the waters of that mighty sea Could wash my hands ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... self-restraint Bawr refrained from striking, that he might seem to usurp no share in Grom's amazing achievement. He stood leaning upon his spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till Grom came scrambling down from the ledge and stood beside him. He took the bow and arrows, and examined them in ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... seed and enabling it to walk invisible, turned the flank of the baronial tariff-system and made the roads safe for the great liberalizer Commerce. This made Money omnipresent, and prepared the way for its present omnipotence. Fortunately it cannot usurp the third attribute of Deity,—omniscience. But whatever the consequences, this Florentine invention was at first nothing but admirable, securing to brain its legitimate influence over brawn. The latter has begun its revolt, but whether it will succeed ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... (I mean that Brutus, who in open senate Stabb'd the first Caesar that usurp'd the ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... therefore, it was their duty to acquiesce. OMAR then beckoned with his hand for audience a second time, and told them, that ALMORAN had not only practised the arts of sorcery to deprive HAMET of ALMEIDA, but that he meditated a design to usurp the sole dominion, and deprive him of the share of the government to which he had a right by the will of Solyman his father. This also they heard with the same sentiments of wonder and acquiescence: If it is decreed, said they, that ALMORAN shall be king alone, who ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... away of other faces and other forms, that face and that form now began to usurp the chief place in my thoughts. Not to my relief and pleasure. That could scarcely be, remembering all that had occurred; rather to my increasing distress and passionate resentment. I longed to forget I was held ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... black man, yes, and the yellow man, his place. Now, I haven't got one particle of race-prejudice. I'm the first to be glad when a nigger succeeds—so long as he stays where he belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and business ability of ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... consequence that the officer who usurps the power of others may design only to advance the public interest and to govern well. The system which permits an honest and well-meaning man to do this will afford equal opportunity for selfish ambition to usurp power in its own interest. Unlimited official power concentrated in one person is despotism, and it is only by carefully observed and jealously maintained limitations upon the power of every public officer that the workings of free institutions ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been liable to the suspicion ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... my lawfull autority of Norroy King of Arms, and have done and will doe as you say, things relating to heraldry, contrary to my prohibition, &c.; these are therefore to acquaint you, that if you continue in the same mind and will usurp on my office, I intend to make you sensible of the wrong you doe me in my office, by taking out process against you, and making you pay for your transgression. I shall give you no hard words, but shal be as good as my word if there is law in England to restrain you; ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various

... this battle—I do not even know by what name it will be known to future generations—would be to usurp the duties of the historian, and I shall only attempt, therefore, to tell you of that portion of it which I saw with my own eyes. On the morning of September 13 four Belgian divisions moved southward from Malines, their objective being the town of ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... of the morning, but set free by it. There are times when Nature permits no rivalry; she claims every thought and gives herself to us only as we give ourselves to her. She effaces us and takes complete possession of our souls. Not so, however, does she usurp the throne of our own personal life in those early hours when the sun, the master artist, whose touch has coloured every leaf and tinted every flower, demands her adoration. Then it is, perhaps, that she turns her thoughts from all lesser companionships and, rapt in universal ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... detect at once. Let her make her ultimatum, and there are enough generous minds in Europe that will counteract her in the balance. Of course her motive is to cripple a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that threatens even to usurp her history. In twenty more years of prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the Continent of America or the Isle of Britain. Therefore, finding us ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... be a pale and perspiring youth, tending to long back hair and apt to be startled by the slightest sound when he is alone. And what a lot of them write poetry, and such poetry too! That is the manner of the man who is going to seize your house and usurp your cow, while you will be lucky if you are allowed a place on a perch in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various

... dreaming hound, That rung, by starts, his deep-ton'd music round. Long by the paddock's humble pale confin'd, His aged hunters cours'd the viewless wind: And each, with glowing energy pourtray'd, The far-fam'd triumphs of the field display'd: Usurp'd the canvas of the crowded hall, And chas'd a line of heroes from the wall. There slept the horn each jocund echo knew. And many a smile and many a story drew! High o'er the hearth his forest-trophies ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... doubt infinitely varied in their nature, their structure and faculties, yet to view the whole scheme with an undoubting persuasion of its truth. It is however somewhat in opposition to the ideas of piety formed by our less adventurous ancestors, that we should usurp the throne ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... handsome, and conciliated general good will by his engaging manners,—was viewed by his father with an anxiety of love that sometimes became almost painful to witness. But this natural self-surrender to a first involuntary emotion Lord Altamont did not suffer to usurp any such lengthened expression as might too painfully have reminded me of being "one too many." One solitary half minute being paid down as a tribute to the sanctities of the case, his next care was to withdraw me, the stranger, from any oppressive feeling of strangership. And accordingly, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... that I am guilty. Impious and rash! thus to usurp the prerogatives of your Maker! to set up your bounded views and halting reason, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... them to believe him very profound and wise; the majority did submit to him, and he had a great success in revolutionary circles. His activity was directed to the preparation of a rising in which he was to usurp the power and call together a council. A programme, composed by him, should be proposed before the council, and he felt sure that this programme of his solved every problem, and that it would be impossible not to ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... precisely the state of the argument concerning the position and duties of women. The facts of moral and intellectual equality being established, it seems somewhat irrational to condemn women to obscurity and detail for their field of exertion, while men usurp the extended one of public usefulness. And a good case may be made out on this very point. Yet the conclusions are false and pernicious, and the prejudices which we now smile at as obsolete are truths of nature's own imparting, only wanting ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... of November 14, 1665, a state paper which has been declared to have "the highly dubious honor of being the one written law in the civilized world which fearlessly carries out absolutism to its last consequences."[779] In the Kongelov it was made lese-majeste in any manner to usurp or infringe the king's absolute authority; it was asserted that the moment the sovereign ascends the throne crown and scepter are vested in him by his own right; and the sole obligation of the king was affirmed to be to maintain the indivisibility of the realm, to preserve the Christian faith in ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labors or usurp their honors, but that I might spare perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... to ask the question, Why did the pale-face usurp the lands of the Indians without remuneration? It was because the Indian was not orthodox. He may have been lazy from a Puritanical stand-point, and he may also have hunted on the twenty-seventh ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... preservation of the vital defensive positions. Barham was far too astute to play into Napoleon's hands, and by blindly following his enemy's lead to be jockeyed into sacrificing the position which his enemy wished to secure. If our maxim be suffered to usurp the place of instructed judgment, the almost inevitable result will be that it will lead us into just the kind of mistake which ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... asked, did the jury think? They were men of the world. Candidly, had they ever seen such a chauffeur and footman before? Did they look like servants? Of course they had Mr. Bumble's—their master's—confidence. But had they the jury's? He did not wish to usurp the functions of the cinema or the stage, but it was his duty to remind them that sometimes Truth was stranger than Fiction.... Here were two servants, who were obviously not servants at all, giving such overwhelming satisfaction that they were allowed unheard-of liberty—liberty ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... this, but I cannot do otherwise; for it is not right that this religious should place these forts in the condition in which he left Cagayan. For with authority as judge-provisor, while my predecessor was exercising the duties of this government, he did his utmost to usurp the royal jurisdiction—arresting and punishing soldiers and other persons without asking the royal aid, or fulfilling his obligation and his Majesty's command. Will your Lordship be pleased to relieve this condition as the occasion demands, by sending a secular cura as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various

... Constitution or by the laws. Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head, "didn't she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour—he can't escape it—it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my chariot wheels, but with that white-headed ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... manifestly be that of reinstating itself in power, in consolidating that power, and in acting as a powerful unity, according to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. The CONSTITUTION—bear that word well in mind—the Constitution which suffers no State to usurp a single power belonging to the General Government, and which was expressly framed for the purpose of making all its freemen the citizens of one great nation. Let the reader consult the Constitution, study its unmistakable plan of national integrity and of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... materialise mankind, to hit upon what is expedient without heeding what is just; to acquire knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue; assuming the title of the champions of modern civilisation, and placing themselves in a station which they usurp with insolence, and from which they are driven ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... multiplicity of breeches, sat on his "stoep" and smoked his pipe in lordly silence; nor did it ever enter his brain that the active, restless Yankee, whom he saw through his half-shut eyes worrying about in dog day heat, ever intent on the main chance, was one day to usurp control over these goodly Dutch domains. Already, however, the races regarded each other with disparaging eyes. The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper-heads;" while the latter, glorying ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... British Merlin sung, Of keenest eye and truest tongue. Say not, the chiefs who first arrive Usurp the seats for which all strive; The forefathers this land who found Failed to plant the vantage-ground; Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow. But wilt thou measure ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... determine what is the seal, and who are the officers, of a community unknown as an organized body to the Congress of the United States? Can the right be admitted in that community to usurp the sovereignty over territory which belongs to the States of the Union? All these questions must be answered before I can consent to any such irregular proceeding as that which is now presented ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... dominators over their subjectis, whom they govern civilly; bot it is proper to Christ onlie to be callit Lord and Master in the spirituall government of the kirk, and all utheris that beiris office therein aucht not to usurp dominion therein, nor be callit lordis, bot onlie ministeris, disciples, and servantis. For it is Christis proper office to command and rewll His kirk universall, and every particular kirk, throw His Spirit and Word, be ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... of your tragedy presently, by way of dessert, for instance. That will be sugared roast meat,—mordioux! Ah! pardon me, monsieur, that was a little oath which escaped me, because it is a habit with my lord and master. I sometimes allow myself to usurp that little oath, as it seems in pretty good taste. I take this liberty only in his absence, please to observe, for you may understand that in his presence—but, in truth, monsieur, this cider is abominable; do you not think so? ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Let not corroding jealousy usurp Your Royal breast, unnumber'd ills attend The wretch ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... that newspapers in America will too much supersede and usurp the place of books, and lead to a superficial knowledge of things. Gleaning the papers in search of that which is really useful, candid, and fair seems too much like hunting for grains of wheat ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... away at once by the strong arm of power. They represented to the sovereigns, that it seemed like insensibility to the goodness of Providence, which had delivered the infidels into their hands, to allow them any longer to usurp the fair inheritance of the Christians, and that the whole of the stiff- necked race of Mahomet might justly be required to submit without exception to instant baptism, or to sell their estates and remove to Africa. This, they maintained, could be scarcely regarded as ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... like her, like the philosophers, like the popes, like the press in our times, to a participation in the government of the world, but because they disputed her claims as one of the powers of the age. The Jesuits were scandalized that such a woman should usurp the reins of state, especially when they perceived that she mocked and defied them; and they therefore refused to pay her court, and even conspired to effect her overthrow. But they had not sufficiently considered the potency of her wrath, or the desperate means of revenge to which she ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... "Either," he said, "the world and countless orbs Throughout the ages wander at their will; Or, if the fates control them, ruin huge Hangs o'er this city and o'er all mankind. Shall Earth yawn open and engulph the towns? Shall scorching heat usurp the temperate air And fields refuse their timely fruit? The streams Flow mixed with poison? In what plague, ye gods, In what destruction shall ye wreak your ire? Whate'er the truth, the days in which we live Shall ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... same passions, and a thousand others; living together under a kind of truce, but continually ready to break out into open war; continually jealous of each other; continually on the defensive, because continually dreading an attack; ever ready to usurp on the rights of others, and perpetually entangled in the most wretched contentions, concerning what all would neglect, if not despise, did not the errors of this selfish system give value to what is ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... in past years vague and indefinite enough on several points of importance, it was truly said. But in the pulpit and out of it, on one point it had been full, clear, and definite. A man must rule (well) his own household. "The husband is the head of the wife," who is not suffered "to usurp authority over the man," but who is to listen in silence, being "the weaker ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... true Peter Craigmile, Jr., dead? Then he can never arise to take the place this young man is now daring to usurp. Can Richard Kildene be proved to be living? Then is he, posing as Peter Craigmile, Jr., free from the charge of murder even if he makes confession thereto. He returns and makes this plea because he would live the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... performed a legitimate function in the past, he contended, when there was no law in the land, that time was now beyond recall; for law was now established, and it was just law. The Queen's government had shown itself fit to cope with the situation, and for them to usurp its powers was to step backward into the night out of which they had come. Further, no lighter word than "criminal" could characterize such conduct. And yet further, he promised them, in set, sober terms, if anything serious were the outcome, to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... that the national policy should be one of 'drift,' although I admit that there are many most excellent persons who by their attitude seem to resent any attempt to steer the ship of State along a definite course as being an impious attempt to usurp the functions of Providence, whose special business ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors, and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force; the frontlet on her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... he proceed to rest the phenomenon, in matter of fact, simply upon a physical cause, to the exclusion of a divine, and to say that the given case actually belongs to his science because other like cases do, I must tell him, Ne sutor ultra crepidam: he is making his particular craft usurp and occupy the universe. This then is the drift of my illustration. If the creature is ever setting in motion an endless series of physical causes and effects, much more is the Creator; and as our excluding ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... called in to assist the reason, usurps its place or leaves its ally helplessly entangled in its web. Names which stand for things are confounded with them; the means are mistaken for the end; the instrument of interpretation for the object; and thus symbols come to usurp an independent character as truths and persons. Though perhaps a necessary path, they were a dangerous one by which to approach the Deity; in which many, says PLUTARCH, "mistaking the sign for the thing signified, fell into a ridiculous superstition; while ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... nature in its due sequences and proportions: first the blade—then the ear—then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear; and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, "not to forget wisdom in teaching knowledge." If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits; if it be robbed by you its guardian of its birthright, or squandered like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... chosen to believe thy lies. They have fallen with thee from before the face of God. Thus hast thou used the power given thee. Thou hast said in thy heart, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.... I will be like the Most High! Thou hast sought to usurp power, to take a kingdom that does not belong to thee. God holds you all as in the hollow of His hand; yet He has not restrained thine agency. He has been patient and longsuffering with you. Rebellious children ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... for its power over the whole national mind, this is far the leading one), we are met at once by questions which may well put all of you at pause. Were they idly imagined to be real beings? and did they so usurp the place of the true God? Or were they actually real beings—evil spirits,—leading men away from the true God? Or is it conceivable that they might have been real beings,—good spirits,—entrusted with some message from the true God? These were the questions ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... heaven of fame is not very large, and the more there are who enter it the less is the share of each. The great names of the past rob us of our place in it; the space which they fill in the popular memory they usurp from us who aspire to occupy it. And so we rise up in revolt against them, and hence the bitterness with which all those who seek after fame in the world of letters judge those who have already attained it and are in enjoyment of it. If additions ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though that chief had revived ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... WESTON. By heav'n! this coldness may to madness drive me. Am I to suffer for another's rashness, Of which, the new-born babe is not more innocent? Perhaps, some other hath usurp'd thine heart? 'Tis plain; too plain—You cannot ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard

... that I acknowledge you the Author Of giving me my Birth, I have discharg'd A part of my Obedience. But if now You should (as cruel fathers do) proclaim Your right, and Tyrant-like usurp the glory Of my peculiar honours, not deriv'd From successary, but purchas'd with my bloud, Then I must stand first Champion for ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... human privileges. Those States of the Union which are preeminently loyal to it, have ever cherished the most liberal principles of civil polity, and have framed their constitutions in accordance with the most modern and advanced maxims of popular rights. So far are they from any disposition to usurp authority or to impose unjust or unnecessary restraints upon the political action of the people, that they are charged with the opposite fault of carrying liberty to the extreme of ungoverned license. Of all the American States, these are the least likely to interfere with the great principles of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... neck and shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last time in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread,' etc. Why Christ fasted forty days and would not exceed the same, without sense and feeling of hunger, is before touched upon, that is, He would provoke the devil to battle by the wilderness and long abstinence, but He would not usurp or arrogate any more to Himself in that case than God had wrought with others, His servants and messengers before. But Christ Jesus (as St. Augustine more amply declares), without feeling of hunger, might have endured the whole year, or ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... altered; trade's unfeeling train Usurp the land and dispossess the swain; Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, 65 Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose, And every want to opulence allied, And every pang that folly pays to pride. These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, Those calm desires that asked but little ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... unnerved, young Paul observed: "It's like a dreadful dream, And Uncle Ben has fallen ten Per cent. in my esteem. Not only did he first usurp us, But now he's left us here ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... not a pupil, of course, and she had only come in response to the heart promptings of motherhood, white, black, or brown, to talk about her offspring to the strange woman who was to usurp a mother's place with her so many hours of each day. She was quite as voluble as American mothers are, and her daughter was quite embarrassed by her volubility. The child sat stealing frightened glances at me and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... generally objects of execration, and so terrible crimes were actually perpetrated in the course of it, that it is only just to note the circumstances which explain the origin of these atrocities, and which enabled violent leaders and wild passions to usurp control. The efforts of the constitutionalists to save the throne were balked by the exiles and the foreign governments. Frederick William II. of Prussia (1786-1797), and Leopold II. the emperor (1790-1792), in the Declaration of Pilnitz (Aug. 27, 1791), called on the other European ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... throne, traitors have stolen my crown; traitors bar the gates of my palace in my face and laugh at me through the bars; there is a false king in Syracuse, but he shall not usurp unchallenged." ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... two rooms, with plenty of furniture of different kinds stored by the agent, probably for removal. The whole business of our Commission and all its agents are much disliked by the cotton-agents, partly because they don't sympathize with our purposes,—partly because we seem about to usurp their authority, to which of course ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... the perfection of representation in the eyes of some, and I understand it to be the opinion of many of the new sect of politics; but I trust to the good sense of the people of England never to permit such a mob, nor any thing resembling it, to usurp the sacred office of their legislature." Windham, one of the most eloquent and accomplished men of the Whig party, warmly seconded Burke, and after a few words from Sheridan and Fox, the conversation dropped. The subject, however, was one of intense interest and not easily to be forgotten. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... man's past in no wise serves to usurp the functions of present duties. Notwithstanding the fact that there are lowering clouds and muttering thunders, yet there is every indication of a day, to express it boldly, that is coming that will ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... the same line of railway, but he always travelled first class; the same train thus presenting the anomaly of the master being in that place which one would naturally assign to the man, and the man appearing to usurp the position of the master. One day these two alighted at the terminus in full view of each other. "Well," said Mr. B—, in that tone of banter which a superior so frequently thinks it becoming ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... was attended soon with difficulties. The old courtiers recovered their influence. Dion was calumniated and slandered, as seeking to usurp the sovereign powers, and that Plato was brought to Syracuse as an agent in the conspiracy. Plato tried to counterwork this mischief, but in vain. Dionysius lost all inclination to reform, and Dion was hated, for he was superior to his nephew in dignity and ability, and was haughty and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... damnable, are performed. Countless sabbaths have I attended within it; or upon Rumbles Moor, or on the summit of Pendle Hill, or within the ruins of Whalley Abbey. Many proselytes have I made; many unbaptised babes offered up in sacrifice. I am high-priestess to the Demon, and thy mother would usurp mine office." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... insigne; the mailed heel trampling a stand of wheat; Harolde Dugald, of the neighboring fief. Geoffrey was on coldly polite terms with Dugald—he had no use for the other man's way of treating his serfs—and now he felt a prickle of indignant rage at this attempt to usurp a share of his glory. He saw Dugald's turret begin to traverse, and hastily tried to get the finishing shot into The Barbarian's tankette before the other Leaguesman could fire. But Dugald was not aiming for The Barbarian. ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry

... deed has been often mentioned before—the purification of Ithaca, chiefly by the slaughter of the Suitors, "the shameless set, who usurp thy house and woo thy wife." Sitting on the roots of the sacred olive, the two, the man and the deity, plan destruction to the guilty. Verily those double elements, the human and the divine, must co-operate if the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... minority of an infant king, convened the popular assembly known as the Thing, and bade the people set her own child's claims aside in favor of Beowulf. This proposal was hailed with enthusiasm; but Beowulf refused to usurp his kinsman's throne, and raising Hardred, Hygelac's infant son, upon his shield, he declared that he would protect and uphold him as long as he lived. The people, following his example, swore fealty to the new king, and faithfully kept this oath ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... on him and sweetly seized him, so that he took himself back to bed laden with slumber. Starkad, coming in on him at daybreak, saw him locked asleep in the arms of his wife, and would not suffer him to be vexed with a sudden shock, or summoned from his quiet slumbers; lest he should seem to usurp the duty of wakening him and breaking upon the sweetness of so new a union, all because of cowardice. He thought it, therefore, more handsome to meet the peril alone than to gain a comrade by disturbing the pleasure of another. So he quietly retraced his steps, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... indicate have been carefully drawn, and appear to be of such authority that they should be generally accepted. Sometimes, as, for example, in mathematics, a conventional set of symbols may quite usurp the function of ordinary language, and may enormously curtail the labor of setting forth the processes and ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... congregation not to rise next Wednesday evening in the prayer meeting, either to pray or testify. The privilege has been withdrawn as one perniciously against the tenets of the church. For Paul says in first Timothy, 'I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence;' also I give you Paul's further command, 'Let the deacons be the husband of one wife, ruling their children and their ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... it, I should willingly have assisted my country with my person or my counsels; but, my lords, this man, who engrosses all authority, seems, likewise, to believe that he is in possession of all knowledge, and that he is equally capable, as he is equally willing, to usurp the supreme and uncontroulable direction both of civil ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... "I love the holy zeal which is jealous of allowing objects, dear even to your wishes, to encroach on the sanctuary of heaven. Be ever thus, meek child of the church, and no human idol will be able to usurp that part of your virgin heart which belongs ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... had long studied canonical interdictions; he consulted neither his ministers nor his doctors; it was a personal reply he addressed to the emperor. "It is out of our power." said he, "to pronounce the judgment of nullity; if we were to usurp such an authority that we have not, we should render ourselves culpable of an abominable abuse before the tribunal of God; and your Majesty yourself, in your justice, would blame us for pronouncing a sentence contrary ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... new governor, like a new broom, has swept all clean. A few weeks glide away, and the nose again recalls the savory old times when streets were never swept, and filth once more reigns paramount. The town relapses into its former state, again the false weights usurp the place of honest measures, and the only permanent and visible sign of the new ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... placed the royal insignia on the altar, and addressing the king and his surrounding prelates, said, "There are the crown and sceptre which Canute intrusted to my charge. To you, I neither give nor refuse them, you may take them if you please; but I strictly forbid any of my brother bishops to usurp an office, which is the prerogative ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... who feel the triviality of them, imitate them. It is true that the titles of Count and Marquis have fallen into the dust because of the quantity of people without wealth, and even without land, who usurp them; and that they have become so worthless, that people of quality who are Marquises or Counts (if they will permit me to say it) are silly enough to be annoyed if those titles are given to them in conversation. It is certain, however, that these titles ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... alas!—Now ghastly desolation, In triumph, sits upon our shatter'd spires; Now superstition, ignorance, and errour, Usurp our ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... the past. At the present day, with better means at hand, a more hopeful view is taken. But here a caution is necessary; for, in attempting to reconstruct the history of primitive times, such is the interest which it inspires, that many allow imagination to usurp the place of research, and write in terms ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... has an extensive influence on our conduct in regard to both these classes of emotions. This is Self-love;—which leads us to seek our own protection, comfort, and advantage. It is a sound and legitimate principle of action when kept in its proper place;—when allowed to usurp an undue influence, it degenerates into selfishness; and it then interferes in a material degree with the exercise of the affections, or, in other words, with ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... meant our Christian neighbors who reside By right of law and ancient heritage Within the land, but not the tribe who do Usurp the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... great rulers of Cordova, Abderrahman III and Al Mansur, drove back the Castilians to the northern mountains and raided the inmost recesses of the Christian territories. Somewhat later the Wild Berber hordes of the Almoravides and the Almohads, crossing from Africa to usurp the Ommeiad dominions and carry on the holy war with greater energy, aroused new fears and provoked in the threatened kingdoms a fanaticism equal to their own. The Spanish Christians appealed for help to their northern neighbours; armies of volunteers from Normandy, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of our rights of property, and the freedom of our laws and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... entered her own house. During her rapid ride she had already framed a speech of apology to Major Van Zandt, which, however, utterly fled from her lips as that officer showed himself respectfully on the threshold. Yet she permitted him to usurp the functions of the grinning Caesar, and help her from her horse; albeit she was conscious of exhibiting the awkward timidity of a bashful rustic, until at last, with a stammering, "Thank ye," she actually ran up stairs to hide her glowing face and ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... sayest that I usurp another's titles. In youth I saw the Wise Men of the East, Magalath and Pangalath and Saracen, Who followed the bright star, but home returned For fear of Herod by another way. O shining worlds above me! in what deep Recesses of your realms ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... dissolution of the Union. He answered Never, because he could conceive of no possible contingency that would make it for the interest and happiness of the people to break up this glorious confederacy. He would yield to it, if Congress were to usurp a power, which he was sure, it never would, of abolishing slavery within the States, for in the contingency of such a usurpation we should be in a better condition as to slavery out of the Union than in it. He believed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... of Columbus and of Vasco di Gama open out new tracks. Suddenly commerce is revolutionised. France, England, Spain, become nearer to America and India than Italy; so Italy declines; while the Atlantic states usurp the first place as the centres ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... beggar-man considered and said, "Be it known unto thee, most noble sir, that the king harboureth against thee the suspicion, that thou wouldest usurp his kingdom, and he spake, as he spake, to sound thee. Arise therefore, and crop thy hair. Doff these thy fine garments, and don an hair-shirt, and at daybreak present thyself before the king. And when he asketh thee, 'What ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... stranger, Rome still offered the appearance of a Pagan city. It contained one hundred and fifty-two temples, and one hundred and eighty smaller chapels or shrines, still sacred to their tutelary God, and used for public worship. Christianity had neither ventured to usurp those few buildings which might be converted to her use, still less had she the power to destroy them. The religious edifices were under the protection of the praefect of the city, and the praefect was usually a Pagan; at all events he would not permit any breach of the public peace, or violation ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... reigned at one time upon earth in the form of a man. His twin-brother Set was jealous of his popularity, and hated him to such a degree that he contrived a plan whereby he succeeded in putting Osiris to death. Set then tried to usurp his brother's kingdom and to make himself sole lord of Egypt, and, although no text states it distinctly, it is clear that he seized his brother's wife, Isis, and shut her up in his house. Isis was, however, under the protection of the god Thoth, and she escaped with ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... from sharing this view, are inclined to take the opposite view. At Athens there was a great tribunal composed of men learned in, and competent to interpret, the law. The people could not tolerate such an institution, so laboured to destroy it and to usurp its functions. The crowd reasoned thus. "We can interpret and carry out laws, because we make them." The conclusion was right, but the minor premise was disputable. The retort can be made: "True, you can interpret and carry out laws because you make them, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... me, monsieur," said he to the composer of dance-music, "how it is that the Napoleon of these tunes can condescend to usurp the place of Palestrina, Pergolesi, and Mozart,—poor creatures who must pack and vanish at the advent of that ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... in order to conceal the fact that they are sprats; clarified horse fat is called "fresh country butter," and Irish regiments are made to decorate themselves with common clover under the delusion that it is the shamrock. Other plants have been from time to time utilised to usurp the title of "shamrock." Thus the small Lucerne clover or medicago is often sold as "shamrock" to Irish patriots, and the watercress has been solemnly pat forward as the true shamrock simply because old writers tell us, as evidence of the barbarous state ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... witness the drinking scene in —, and others equally outrees, in which the author, having turned probability out of doors, ends by throwing possibility out of the window—leaving folly and madness to usurp their place—and play a thousand antics for the admiration of the public, who, pleased with novelty, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... bees, some of them strange and unusual to us. One cicada had a sustained note, in quality about like that of our own August-day's friend, but in quantity and duration as the roar of a train to the gentle hum of a good motor car. Like all cicada noises it did not usurp the sound world, but constituted itself an underlying basis, so to speak. And when it stopped the silence seemed to rush in ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... kept that commandment all the other commandments would be obeyed. If we secure this queen-bee we are given the swarm. To put nothing "before" God! What is left in the circle of obedience? God first, always and everywhere. Nothing allowed to usurp His throne for an hour! I was once allowed to sit on an earthly throne for a few seconds, but even that is not to be allowed with the throne of God. Nothing is to share His sovereignty, even for a moment. His dominion is to be unconditional ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... king, had resolved that the royal ministry had no right to impose taxes so long as the assembly was unable peaceably to pursue its deliberations, and designed, by giving this resolution the form of a law, to lead the people in this manner to break loose from the Government. This attempt to usurp authority was doomed to be disappointed. The assembly, having overstepped its prerogatives, lost its influence. The king found himself again in possession of the reins of power. It rested with him to punish the temerity of the people by tightening the reins, or on his own authority, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... priestly ambition and the desire of domination should in time usurp the place of those laborious, enthusiastic, and pious missionaries who, so happily for the natives, had managed to revolutionize their minds, and so spared their country those scenes of blood which blot with ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... church, represented as it might be by the monstrous brutality of a Borgia, or the military madness of a Julius, was, in his view, sufficient to authorize any hasty Luther to make a profane bonfire of a papal bull; any hot Henry to usurp the trade of manufacturing creeds; so no "sacred right of insurrection," no unflinching patriotic opposition, no claim of rights, (by petitioners having swords in their hands,) are admissible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterward the very engines which had lifted ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... du Barry sought to overcome the objections of the titled class, to quell jealousies and petty quarrels; she did not usurp any power and always endeavored not to trouble or embarrass anyone. After some time, she succeeded in winning the favor of some of the ladies, and, when her influence was fairly well established, she began to plan the overthrow ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... Democratic candidate for the Chief Magistracy over seventy millions of people, on account of a few half-mawkish, half- blasphemous phrases in a convention speech, can bear witness to the necessity of a reform in this particular—a reform which will forbid a sensation-seeking city mob to usurp the function of the whole people ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... reserved. It may necessitate the abolition of some of the big contests that have been the excitement of many thousands. But it must not be forgotten prelude and preparation for life; they must not be allowed to usurp the chief place in a man's thoughts or to unfit him for his greatest after-usefulness. [Footnote: Cf. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 534; Outlook, vol. 98, p. 597.] Is it wrong to smoke? Statistics taken with care at many American colleges show with apparent conclusiveness that ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... dazzling charm of outward form, 5 The power of gold, the pride of birth, Have taken Woman's heart by storm— Usurp'd the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... are the only ends. The party owes its right to existence to the people's will; when its life must be prolonged by artificial stimulants it is fit that it should die. It is not the people's master, but the people's servant; if it should usurp the oppressor's place, it must die the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... the same year with Cimarosa, and even earlier than Mozart, and being the contemporary of Verdi and Wagner, he witnessed almost the origin of the two modern classical schools of France and Germany, their rise to perfection, and, if not their decline, the arrival of a time when criticism would usurp the place of creation, and when to propound new rules for art claims higher consideration than to act according to its ever unalterable principles. His artistic life indeed was a rainbow based on the two extremes of modern music which shed light and glory ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... under the death sentence; the day is set for each man. "I am no worse off," he thought, "than I was before—if I could only see it that way—and I will—I am going to be the Captain of my soul—even though it may be for a very short cruise—no disease or whimpering weakness will usurp my place—'Gladly I lived—gladly I died. And I laid me down with a will,'" he quoted, but his mouth twisted a little on the words. Life was too sweet. He loved it too well to lay it down gladly. O no, there could be ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... dispossession, my own forfeiture, my own abdication, but for the abdication of universal suffrage for ten years, by the coming generations, over whom I have no right, over whom you, an usurper, force me to usurp power, which, by the way, be it said in passing, would suffice to nullify that monstrous ballot, if all conceivable nullities were not already piled, heaped and welded upon it. What! is that what you would have me do? You make me vote that all is finished, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... doubtless, a good deal of abuse of authority on the part of husbands, but the women get their share of the good that is going in the world, as a general thing. If the law is against them, they manage to usurp full an even amount of privilege and authority, and keep along about in line with the other sex. I never knew an out and out controversy between a man and his wife, in which the former did not get the worst of it in the end; ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... high-born Saxon sons to bow 'Neath victor-pride and insolence—learn to feel What earth's dark woes—when abject vassals kneel; And worse the hour when his remorseless heir, Alike uncheck'd by heaven, or earthly prayer, With lusts ignoble, fed by martial might, Usurp'd man's fair ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... limitation Locke suggested is of more doubtful value. Government, he says, in substance, is a trustee and trustees abuse their power; let us therefore divide it as to parts and persons that the temptation to usurp may be diminished. There is a long history to this doctrine in its more obvious form, and it is a lamentable history. It tied men down to a tyrannous classification which had no root in the material it was supposed ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower; here is that crying back to the antique spirit that was leavening the middle-class of France which was about to claim dominion over the land and to step to the foot of the throne and usurp the sceptre and diadem of her ancient line of kings as the Third Estate; and to come to power with violent upheaval, wading to the throne through blood and terror. Here we see Vigee Le Brun, royalist, glorifying motherhood, her arms and shoulders bare in chaste nudity, ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall

... commander in chief of the military forces had, by his own authority, arrested several citizens for civil offences, and had avowed on record, that he had adopted measures to send them out of the territory, openly declaring his determination to usurp the functions of the judiciary, by making himself the only judge of the guilt of the persons he suspected, and asserting in the same manner, and as yet without contradiction, that his measures were taken, after several ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... survey was of immense value. Its object, according to the king, was that every man might know and be satisfied with his rightful possessions, and not with impunity usurp the property of others. But it was also of great service to the king, so that he might know who were his vassals, the amount of taxation which he could draw from them, and the actual strength of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... that place in the mind which superstition would usurp, and so leaves little room for it; and likewise lays us under the strongest ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... late evening; only as twilight came on did a new thought begin to keep me awake, a thought to which as yet I had paid no attention: "What kind of a child could it be, for whom I was now being exchanged? Who was to usurp my place at table, in my bed-room, and in my mother's heart? Was she small or large? beautiful or ugly? obedient or contrary? had she brothers or sisters, to whom I was to be a brother? was she as much afraid of me as ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... they would be found least entitled to the possession of it. Those who have most warrantably declaimed against evil constitutions, have been among those who were least given to assume to themselves a title to power;—they have been found to defend themselves, but not rashly to usurp authority. If there were but one individual who could avenge bloodshed, and were his mind in a proper state, he would seem to have a call addressed to him to do so; failing to attend to it he would err. Were a community ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... you may happen to be dancing when supper is announced to the supper-table, unless she has come with a gentleman, in which case you must not usurp his privilege. If she is disengaged, escort her to a seat in the supper-room, if possible, and see that she is served with the dishes she selects. Do not take your own supper at the same time; wait till the lady ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... fire of life. But the most of all, dread the powers that move in air; their nature is desire unquenchable; their destiny is—never to be fulfilled—never to be at peace: they roam hither and thither like the winds they guide; they usurp dominion over the passionate and tender soul, but they love not in our way; where they dwell the heart is a madness and the feet are filled with a hurrying fever, and night has no sleep and day holds no joy in its sunlit cup. Listen ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... friendships and tastes had a downward tendency, who had not caught the meaning of their position and work, and felt none of its responsibilities. So under this no-government the School-house began to see bad times. The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they were prepostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed signs of resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made common cause with the fifth, while the smaller ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... on to his exposition of an obscure word. There is no such Saxon vocable as dare, to stare. Again, what more frequent blunder than to confound a secondary and derivative sense of a word with its radical and primary—indeed, sometimes to allow the former to usurp the precedence, and at length altogether oust the latter: hence it comes to pass, that we find dare is one while said to imply peeping and prying, another while trembling or crouching; moods and actions merely consequent ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... Humphry Ward, I think, who is our sufficient authority for it) poetry was but occasional amusement and solace to him, prose his regular avocation from task-work; and there is abundant evidence that, willingly or unwillingly, he never allowed either to usurp the place of the vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear men boast of getting through their work somehow or other, that they may devote themselves to parerga which they like, and which ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... in her white silk robes. Decima, with her wondrous beauty, and the hectic on her cheeks again. Many an envious pair of eyes was cast to her. "That dreadful old maid, Decima Verner!" was amongst the compliments launched at her. "She to usurp him! How had my Lady Verner contrived to manoeuvre ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... and unfair of Baraka to call him to account in that way, but he was not surprised at it, as Baraka, from the beginning of the journey to the present moment, had always been backbiting him, to try and usurp his position. Baraka, at this, somewhat taken aback, said there were no such things as perquisites on a journey like this; for whatever could be saved from the chiefs was for the common good of all, and all alike ought to share in it—repeating words ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... such a warning, because I am not aware that in this bill Congress has ever assumed any doubtful power. The power of Congress over this District is without limit, and, therefore, in prescribing who shall vote for mayor and city council of this city it can not be claimed that we usurp power ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... well, Mr. Colbert," asked Mrs. Dunmore; "or do you trespass upon the hours necessary to your repose and recreation that you are so much thinner and paler than you used to be? I fear I must usurp your prerogative and turn preacher if you are really destroying your health by too great ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... heir-apparent to the said King Charles the Second; but James, Duke of York, taking advantage of the absence of the said James, Duke of Monmouth, beyond the seas, did first cause the said late King to be poisoned, and immediately thereupon did usurp and invade the Crown, and doth continue so to do. We, therefore, the noblemen, gentlemen, and commons at present assembled, in the names of ourselves and all the loyal and Protestant noblemen, gentlemen, and commons of England, in pursuance ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... which assures pensions to the legitimate or illegitimate companions of the National Guards, killed in the defence of our municipal rights. No half measures. We, the illegitimate companions, will no longer suffer the legitimate wives to usurp rights they no longer possess, and which they ought never to have had at all. Let the decree be modified. All for the free women, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... He died a poor man, though wealth was within his reach. He devoted himself to the severest toil, amidst allurements to luxuriate in the delights of domestic and social intercourse, such as few indeed have encountered. He silently permitted some to usurp his hardly-earned honours, that no selfish controversy might desecrate their common cause. He made no effort to obtain the praises of the world, though he had talents to command, and a temper peculiarly disposed to ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... acknowledge and adjudge more, I, who have the Paraclete himself in the person of the new prophets, saying: "The Church has the power to forgive sins, but I will not do it, lest they commit still others."{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} I now inquire into your opinion, to discover from what source you usurp this power ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.









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