Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Oppressor   Listen
noun
Oppressor  n.  One who oppresses; one who imposes unjust burdens on others; one who harasses others with unjust laws or unreasonable severity. "The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds." "To relieve the oppressed and to punish the oppressor."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Oppressor" Quotes from Famous Books



... tears I have shed over the sufferings of such people. Those who tamely endure wrongs which they have the power to end deserve not compassion but contempt. I have felt a little badly that Julian should have been one of the oppressor class, one of the rich. Now that I really understand the matter, I am glad. I fear that, had he been one of the poor, one of the mass of real masters, who with supreme power in their hands consented to be bondsmen, I ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... tyrannies, who plunder under official seals, who curse Algiers with avarice, with fraud, with routine, with the hell-spawn of civilization. It is the 'Bureaucracy,' as your tongue phrases it, that is the spoiler and the oppressor of the soil. But—we endure only for a while. A little, and the shame of the invader's tread will be washed out in blood. Allah ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Washington, but Loring addressed it direct to the home of the assistant, upon whose interest in the case he had reason to rely, and then returned at once to his desk. Were he not to be there it would place it in the power of a would-be oppressor to say the officer designated to receive the property had called during office hours and could not find Mr. Loring. And then, with such patience as he could command, Loring received the visitors who kept dropping in, among them ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... said that so much wealth could not have been honestly acquired; and both rich and poor longed for the day that should humble the pride of the man, whom the one class regarded as an upstart and the other as an oppressor. Jacques was somewhat alarmed at the rumours that were afloat respecting him, and of dark hints that he had debased the coin of the realm and forged the King's seal to an important document, by which he had ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... home, abroad by knaves, The isle of saints became the land of slaves, Trembling beneath her proud oppressor's hand; But, when thy reason thunder'd through the land, Then all the public spirit breathed in thee, And all, except the sons of guilt, were free. Blest isle, blest patriot, ever glorious strife! You gave her freedom, as she gave you life! Thus Cato fought, whom Brutus copied well, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... be done with the men. Do you know what would happen if I was to go up to their lodge and tell right out that Grady was a blackmailer? Why, after they'd got through with me, personally, they'd pass a resolution vindicating Grady. They'd resolve that I was a thief and a liar and a murderer and an oppressor of the poor and a traitor, and if they could think of anything more than that, they'd put it in, too. And after vindicating Grady to their satisfaction, they'd take his word for law and the gospel more ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... furnished with the eight ingredients, viz., cars, elephants, horses, offices, infantry, camp-followers, spies possessing a thorough knowledge of the country, and ensigns led out against thy enemies after having been well trained by superior officers? O oppressor of all foes, O great king, I hope thou slayest thy foes without regarding their seasons of reaping and of famine? O king, I hope thy servants and agents in thy own kingdom and in the kingdoms of thy ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... bloodiest strife: Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe Can act, is acting there against man's life: From flashing scimitar to secret knife, War mouldeth there each weapon to his need - So may he guard the sister and the wife, So may he make each curst oppressor bleed, So may such foes deserve ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... sufferings were, through life, the main sources of Byron's inspiration. Where the hoof of the critic struck, the fountain was first disclosed; and all the tramplings of the world afterwards but forced out the stream stronger and brighter. The same obligations to misfortune, the same debt to the "oppressor's wrong," for having wrung out from bitter thoughts the pure essence of his genius, was due no less deeply by Dante!—"quum illam sub amara cogitatione excitatam, occulti divinique ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... to introduce to you one whose name is, as the saying goes, a nouse'old word. It is thanks to 'im, to this 'ero whom I 'ave the 'onour to introduce to you to-night, that our beloved England no longer writhes beneath the ruthless 'eel of the alien oppressor. It was this 'ero's genius—and, I may say—er—I may say genius—that, unaided, 'it upon the only way for removing the cruel conqueror from our beloved 'earths and 'omes. It was this 'ero who, 'aving first allowed the invaders to claw each other to 'ash ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... deems thee bound, The links are shivered, and the prison walls Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, As springs the flame above a burning pile, And shoutest to the nations, who return Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... in that quarter, of a set purpose, and that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... cause of Hastings with a presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons. She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent man. She is at a loss to conceive how the managers can look at the defendant and not blush. Windham comes to her from the managers' box, to offer her refreshment. "But," says she, "I could not break bread with him." Then again, she exclaims, "Ah, Mr. Windham, how ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... pestilential winds. Nevertheless, sympathy is a wonderful power and the sympathy of a free nation like our own will not lose its moral effect. I calculate strongly on this. It is a more refined and rational kind of chivalry—this interest and activity in the fate of nations struggling to break the oppressor's rod, and it should be encouraged even where it is not directed so as to give it all adequate force. They who would chill it, who would reason about the why and the wherefore ought to recollect that such things can not be called forth by the art of man—they must burst spontaneously ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... he earl point the world to new truths whose recognition and adoption will make better the condition of his species; then, if he be a true man, he will speak, not in humble whispers, lest he offend potentates and powers; not ambiguously, that he may escape "the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely," but in clarion tones, like another Peter-the- Hermit, who, bearing all, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, preached the crusade of the Holy Sepulcher till at last his words of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... voice whatsoever in the government, either directly or by representation; and the only satisfaction he possibly can receive for injuries done to him, and that is merely of a negative kind, is the degradation or the removal of the man in power, who had been his oppressor, and who perhaps may be ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... criminal," said Henry Warden,—for to avoid confusion we describe him by his later and best known name—"Not as judge and criminal do we meet, but as a misguided oppressor and his ready and devoted victim. I, too, may ask, are these the harvest of the rich hopes excited by the classical learning, acute logical powers, and varied knowledge of William Allan, that he should sink to be the solitary ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... linen. The raised effect is obtained by an interpadding of wool, and the designs are outlined in brown thread. This entire coverlet is embroidered with scenes from the life of Tristan, who frequently engaged in battle against King Langair, the oppressor of his country. This bit of quilting hangs in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Another hanging of the fourteenth century, belonging to the same collection, shows a spirited naval battle between galleys. A striking ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... who sees the poor opprest, And hears th' oppressor's haughty strain, Will rise to give his children rest, Nor shall they ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... Saxon oppressor, still potent for harm, Gave Peter a lease of Cornelius' farm: Which Peter accepted with virtuous joy— For he lived quite adjacent ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was fixed and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor's power to make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped already; the nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to be given again. So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now dominating ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... stranger's patience. The vile crew whom our ancestors drove howling and naked across the Danube, in undisturbed apathy gloat over our dearest treasures. Our people are ground into the dust; our women, stripped in the market-place, shriek under the pitiless lash of the oppressor. One man, sworn to protect Italy with his life, can save her, and has refused. That ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... stronger and craftier than I—then do not complain when my strong arms shall tear thy breast open to find thy heart; do not complain when in thy spasm-riven bowels thou feelest the deadly doom which I have passed into them with thy food. Be thou a victim in thy turn, and expiate the crime of the oppressor."[172] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... period in a sense culminated in the great Ramessu II, the oppressor of the Hebrews, who with his Egyptian, Libyan, and Negro armies fought half the world. His reign, however, was the beginning of decline, and foes began to press Egypt from the white north and the black south. The priests transferred ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... and her husband with four children; and they were of the tribe of slaves fleeing from a bondage which was worse than death. There was now no escape—the tribes of Israel had banded against them. On the side of the oppressor there is power. And the young wife and mother, into whose very soul the iron had entered, hearing the cry of the master: "Now we'll have you all!" turning from the side of her husband and father, with whom she had stood to repel the foe, seized ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society

... my diary, at the great monastic house of Abingdon, where I have rejoined my brethren. I have already told how, in company with Elfwyn, Father Adhelm and I sought the forest farm where our beloved ones had found refuge from the cruel oppressor. The joy of the women and children to whom their husbands and fathers were thus restored was very touching; all seemed willing to forget the destruction of their homes, since they had been spared to each other, and I, to whom, by my vows, such love is unknown, yet could but feel how holy ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... trouble, for he was not the man to swallow a wrong and go aside and cry about it. He had the Tasmanian's spirit and endurance, and a notable share of military science besides; and so he rose against the oppressor, did this gallant "fanatic," and started a war that was not brought to a definite end until more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... England. On accepting his commission he had declared that he wanted no more money, and that all he wished for was a thorough reform; which in the end would prove equally beneficial to the oppressed and the oppressor. And, notwithstanding the temptations to enrich himself, by which he was surrounded, Clive adhered to this resolution of self-abnegation. The servants of the company would have enabled him to treble his wealth, if he would have consented ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to consecrate the flag of freedom, to bless the patriot's sword. Be it for the defence, or be it for the assertion of a nation's liberty, I look upon the sword as a sacred weapon. And if it has sometimes reddened the shroud of the oppressor; like the anointed rod of the High Priest it has, at other times, blossomed into flowers to deck the freeman's brow. Abhor the sword and stigmatize the sword? No; for in the cragged passes of the Tyrol it cut in pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and won an ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... is a great grace. But it must be recollected that I am speaking of times of persecution and oppression to Christians, such as the text foretells; and then surely frankness will become nothing else than indignation at the oppressor, and vehement speech, if it is permitted. Accordingly, as persons have deep feelings, so they will find the necessity of self-control, lest they should say what they ought not." He omits these words. I call, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... and its victories are eternal. Its fight is chiefly against the inner, not the outer foe—against sin and wrong-doing, impatience, strife, anger, clamor, meanness, evil-speaking, wrath. It is the foe of tyranny and its heel is upon the head of the oppressor and the avenger. Its banner flies over every country and has been carried through tribulation, through sorrow, through danger, and through death to the remotest parts of the yet-known world. Its troops are legion, marching from the far distances of the past, and extending out ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... of changeless justice bind Oppressor with opprest; And, close as sin and suffering joined, ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington

... Mediterranean and Lake Serbonis. The first definite geographical fact in connection with the sojourn in the Land of Egypt has been established by the excavations at Pithom. The historical identification of Rameses II. with Pharaoh the oppressor also results from the monumental evidence. One short exploration has upset a hundred theories and furnished a wonderful illustration of the historical character of the Book of Exodus. The finding of Pithom (Succoth) is, however, only the beginning, we hope, of a series of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... streets tainting the air, while the two sovereigns sat here sipping their coffee, and swearing to the most deliberate lies in the name of their God, Prophet, and Koran;—all are now dust; that of the oppressor undistinguishable from ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... well-disposed individual. During the afternoon before, he had read prayers for the soul of Schwartz, in whose departure he may or may not have had a part I am inclined to think not, Jones construing his mission as being one to remove the wicked and the oppressor, and Schwartz ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... weak, the swift upon the slow, the clever upon the stupid; and the weak, the slow, the stupid, retaliate by evolving mechanisms of defense, which more or less adequately repel or render futile the oppressor's attack. For each must live, and those already living have proved their right to existence by a more or less complete adaptation to their environment. The result of this twofold conflict between living beings is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... revelation of the moral laws which govern the nations of the earth, and show to men who sought for God in the records of distant ages that the Living Lord still rules on high, and is working out even before our eyes the delivery of the captive and the punishment of the oppressor. The greatest national sin of Christian times has wrought the greatest national overthrow. The hidden evil of the land, which long smouldered underground, has blazed forth at last like a volcano, bursting in sunder the most solid of human institutions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... who loves his people can hide his light under a bushel; can keep quiet when they are assailed. He must, he will raise hand and voice in their defense. Moses refused to dwell in the king's palace while his people suffered about him. No! he went forth, and in his zeal smote an uncircumcised Egyptian oppressor to death and fled into a strange land and there fitted himself for their deliverer. Rev. Hiland Silkirk counted his friends among some leading ministers and laymen of the opposite race. But Rev. Silkirk was true to his own, and when the time came to test that devotion, he ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... in the austere silence imposed by the presence of a few poor Austrian captains and lieutenants. It was not that the Italians feared to be overheard by these enemies; but it was good dimostrazione to be silent before the oppressor, and not let him know that they even enjoyed their dinners well enough, under his government, to chat sociably over them. To tell the truth, this duty was an irksome one to Tonelli, who liked far better to ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... would be foreign to a natural disposition. If the influences of a more refined age had not penetrated the remote glens, then a rougher reprisal must be expected. The coarseness, vice, rapacity, and inhumanity of the oppressor must of necessity have a corresponding influence on their better natures. If to this it be added that some of the chiefs were naturally fierce, the origin of the sad features could readily be determined. Whatever vices ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... public document, the altars of God overthrown, and His Priests slain with the sword. Even to-day they point to the mulberry tree of Isaiah, where one of the greatest of the prophets was slain in the Valley of Kedron. Still looking back, we see the hand of the spoiler and the oppressor busy with the city which had forgotten God—forgotten the things which concerned its peace. The ruined walls, the desecrated temple, the mournful band of exiles, all these seem to pass before us like a dream. Then for a time come brighter scenes, as Israel returns ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliverance ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... nature of the timber. Bribery, they think it is, but Andrew Amos is not to be bribit. He'll have his say about any Goavernment on earth, and tell them to their face what he thinks of them. Ay, and he'll fight the case of the workingman against his oppressor, should it be the Goavernment or the fatted calves they ca' Labour Members. Ye'll have heard tell o' ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... this spot, where Barneveldt was now to suffer a felon's death,—where he had first held out his fostering hand to the infant republic, and infused into it strength and vigour to conquer the giant of Europe,—where he had been humbly sued for peace by the oppressor of his country,—where the ambassadors of the most powerful sovereigns had vied with each other in soliciting his favour and support,—where the wise, the eloquent, and the learned, had bowed in deference to his master-spirit;—if, at this moment, the memory ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... government which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change, no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has read his powerful appeal to his countrymen when they ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Judah, lifted up his voice, and the echo of his words still resounds in our ears, telling us of the joy and hope felt by Judah, and with Judah, by the whole of Asia, at the prospect. Speaking as the prophet of Jahveh, it was to Jahveh that he attributed the impending downfall of the oppressor: "Jahveh is a jealous God and avengeth; Jahveh avengeth and is full of wrath; Jahveh taketh vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies. Jahveh is slow to anger and great in power, and will by no means clear the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... enemies), are protected by the flag. It is impossible that this country should ever abandon the gallant tars who have won for us such splendid trophies. Let me suppose that the genius of Columbia should visit one of them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile him to his forlorn and wretched condition. She would say to him, in the language of gentlemen on the other side: "Great Britain intends you no harm; she did not mean to impress you, but one of her own subjects; ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... stoics of Belgium, of France, of Serbia, of Roumania, of Poland and all other peoples who have felt the mailed fist of the ruthless oppressor; who have looked upon their devastated fields, their dismantled cathedrals, their violated hearth-stones and the desecrated graves of their kindred, and that peace, tranquillity, contentment and prosperity may again be restored to them ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... his thanks, and they rode through the drift and up the Nek. It was, as the Kafir had predicted, a hot day. One of those days which come in the throng of the summer, when the sun is an oppressor, ruthless and joying in pain, when the earth is dead with heat and dryness and the very air forbears to take a freedom I When they came down the slopes beyond the crest, the flanks and rumps of the horses were ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... be friendly to the cause of liberty, who had suffered by the hands, or were pursued by the suspicions of Zamano, and who, it was naturally supposed, would be eagerly alive to every opportunity of shaking off the rule of the oppressor. But patriotism, as a philosophic sentiment, to be indulged after a good dinner, and discussed phlegmatically, if not classically, over sherry and cigars, is a very different sort of thing from patriotism as a principle of action, to be prosecuted as a duty, at every peril, instantly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... tempest as is comen upon me. I have been (as your Majesty knoweth best) never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried suavibus modis. I have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been no haughty or intolerable or hateful man, in my conversation or carriage. I have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. Whence should this be? For these are the things that ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... enjoy your protection: it is not so; he lies, and his loose and criminal life has made him unworthy of such honours, even as he is unworthy of the life whereof my sword shall deprive him. In truth, his very birth was a sacrilege; he is a fratricide, an usurper of the goods of other men, an oppressor of the innocent, and a highway assassin; he is a man who will violate every law, even, the law of hospitality respected by the veriest barbarian, a man who will do violence to a virgin who is passing through his own country, where she had ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... family fortune, family pride, family inconsistency? kept forcing itself upon her. There was no gladness in it-no happiness. And there was the captive, the victim of foul slavery-so foul that hell yearns for its abettors-whose deliverance she prayed for with her earnest soul. She knew the oppressor's grasp-she had, with womanly pride, come forward to relieve the wronged, and she had become sensible of the ties binding her to Clotilda. Unlike too many of her sex, she did not suppress her natural affections; she could not see only the slave in a disowned sister; she acknowledged ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... easily bear the expense of the war, and shall, therefore, vote for that establishment of our troops which will be most likely to procure success, without the least apprehension of being censured either by the present age, or by posterity, as a machine of the ministry, or an oppressor of my country. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... talking to Perry or Susan," I said. "They seem to be convinced that I am an oppressor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... widow sought For aid and counsel. Fearlessly he rose For those who had no helper. His just mind Brought stifled truth to light, disarm'd the wiles Of power, and gave deliverance to the weak. He pluck'd the victim from the oppressor's grasp, And made the tyrant tremble. To his words Men listened, as to lore oracular, And when beside the gate he took his seat The young kept silence, and the old rose up To do him honor. After his decree None spake again, for as a prince he dwelt Wearing the diadem of righteousness, And ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... Separatists at length reached the hospitable shores of Holland, and rejoined their families and friends in the land of strangers, thankful to their Almighty Father that they had escaped in safety, from the 'fury of the oppressor,' and the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... he asked me, "that the medical profession is devoted to relieving physical ills? To warding off death? The law, on the other hand, takes care of your property rights. It is supposed to be the guardian of the weak. How often, however, do we see its mission perverted, and how often it becomes an oppressor of the unfortunate. How many times do we see it aiding in the accumulation of those large fortunes with which our modern civilization is fast becoming ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... every profiteering pirate, every food vulture, every exploiter of labor, every robber and oppressor of the poor, every hog under a silk tile, every vampire in human form will tell you that the A. F. of L. under Gompers is a great and patriotic organization and that the I. W. W. under Haywood is a gang of traitors in the pay ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... brother, juicy as he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the "damnable spirit of Cahst" when the victim thereof sits at the first table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves? You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted "Cussed Be Canaan." I howled feelingly on the subject while it was a living issue, for I felt all that I said and a great deal more; but ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... classical simplicity in the turf-clad heap of mould which covers the poor man's grave, though it has nothing to defend it from the insults of the proud but a bramble. The primrose that grows upon it is a better ornament than the gilded lies on the oppressor's tombstone." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... small store of trinkets and other articles of Indian traffic, with which to buy provisions on the road. The moment Bastides made his appearance, he was seized as an illicit trader by the governor Bobadilla, the oppressor and superseder of Columbus, and sent for trial to Spain. He was there acquitted, and his voyage was so lucrative, that he had considerable ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... base plebeian thrust, He died his band before. God judge 'twixt Marmion and me; He is a chief of high degree, And I a poor recluse; Yet oft, in Holy Writ, we see Even such weak minister as me May the oppressor bruise: For thus, inspired, did Judith slay The mighty in his sin, And Jael thus, and Deborah" - Here hasty Blount broke in:- "Fitz-Eustace, we must march our band; Saint Anton' fire thee! wilt thou stand All day, with bonnet in thy hand, To hear the lady preach? By this good ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... advantages as Larry in birth and blood, had compensation for his inferiority in cash and comforts. When the poor man thought of these things—and he did little else now but think of them—bitterly, though generally in silence, he cursed him whom he looked upon as his oppressor and incubus. It never occurred to him that if Mr. Flannelly built the house he lived in, he should be paid for it. He never reflected that he had lived to the extent of, and above his precarious income, as if his house had been paid for; that, instead of passing his ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... at this and she made a dash for liberty. But she was not quick enough and the hand of the oppressor was upon her. In the wild scene that followed she was slashed with a razor, one gash straight through her right eye, one across her cheek and another slitting her ear. Then she was given medical attention and the wounds gradually healed, but her face ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... was only going to "try it for a few months or so." As the grandson of Adam Patch he was received everywhere with marked courtesy, but the old man was a back number now—the heyday of his fame as first an "oppressor" and then an uplifter of the people had been during the twenty years preceding his retirement. Anthony even found several of the younger men who were under the impression that Adam Patch had ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... was it not destroyed by your own emperors? When they had made Roman citizens of Gauls and Egyptians, Africans and Huns, Spaniards and Syrians, how could they expect that such a motley crew would remain true to the interests of an Italian town, and that town their hated oppressor. Patriotism depends on concentration; it cannot bear diffusion. Something more than such a worldly tie was wanted to bind the diverse nations together; they have found it in Christianity. A common language imparts community of thought and feeling; but ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... floor. Roman moonlight! And so the same moonlight had poured down in old times upon the city of the Caesars; lighted up their palaces and triumphal arches; yes, and the pile of the Colosseum and the bones of the martyrs. The same moonlight! Old Rome lay buried; the oppressor and the oppressed were passed away; the persecutor and his victims alike long gone from the scene of their doings and sufferings; and the same moon shining on! What shadows we are in comparison! thought Dolly; and then her thoughts instantly ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... raised the banner in the name of the republic which you intended to upset; from the moment when you called the nations to you in the name of liberty, in order to rule over them as their tyrant and oppressor!" ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... misunderstood by one who thus loved English Whigs, but hated English Republicans; who could forgive an aristocratic faction grasping power for their order, but who could not sympathise with a nation rising and smiting its oppressor, where they smote in the name of the Lord and of Gideon, nor with a ruler who used his power with noble simplicity in the interests of his people, and established in the heart of the nation a respect for itself such as she has never known since, simply because this ruler knew ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... Protestant Orangemen and Catholic Irishmen will walk arm and arm in the same procession? How long before the German and Russian and Englishman will recognize the Jew as a brother? In the South, the antipathy is between black and white, between a master-class and a subject-class, between oppressed and oppressor. How long before ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various

... novels. And most people of modern, or rather of very recent times got all their notions of history from dipping into historical novels. In those romances the Jew is always the oppressed where in reality he was often the oppressor. In those romances the Arab is always credited with oriental dignity and courtesy and never with oriental crookedness and cruelty. The same injustice is introduced into history, which by means of selection and omission can be made as fictitious ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... old men basking, even in that September day, in the glow of the fire, while a few women and children loitered around, thinking it rather fine to hear Master Original-Sin declaim on the backsliding of the Scots in upholding the son of the oppressor. ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... action concerning him, he resolved at once to write him a note, declaring that their relationship was known, and that should any further persecution be offered, the same should at once be made public to the oppressor's disgrace. ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... of the oppression of the Pharaohs, bemoaning their fate as serfs, but for many years after their sufferings had become severe they had not yet been roused to a determination to throw off the yoke of the oppressor. Even when Moses first attempted to rouse them to make a struggle for freedom, he could not breathe into them his own bold spirit. What measures did Moses take to incite the Israelites to action? What measures did ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny arm to enslave a neighbour less strong than he, the thing would be impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor had taken his measures on ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... the emblem of weakness, tossed about by and bending to a superior force, and of little or no use—"a Reed that will do me no service" (No. 1). It is also the emblem of the blessedness of submission, and of the power that lies in humility to outlast its oppressor...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... enemies, foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage immigration; encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of the Old World to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and happy, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... conquest? Heroic self-defence, anger, bitter opposition to the violation of liberty, are of little avail if the psychological factors are favourable to amalgamation. A few decades, a few centuries, and there is fusion between oppressor and oppressed. Hence the loyalty of conquered nations to their foreign masters, at times, when rivals vainly hope for trouble. Hence the indisputable fact that many a nation which but a short time ago fought valiantly for liberty now manifests not only passive resignation, but ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... inquired of Him who knew your needs; For those who prospered by your ancient wrong, Invoked the vengeance that upon their heads Is raining ruin. Lo! the Lord is just: Through the Red Sea of War ye, ye alone Come up unharmed; while all the oppressor's host In ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... they may be, have repeatedly mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society. That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxious which, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race, creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and compels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day, in some countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears in advantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity. It is notorious ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... stolid and impassive that it is hard to arouse his wrath. He will bear insults without a murmur for a long time, but in the end he will be stung into madness and he will give force to all his pent up fires of hate that have slumbered like a volcano. He may wait long without having punished his oppressor, but he will bide his time. So it was with the Boxers in China whose story is so painfully fresh in the memories of the great legations of the world ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... satraps; but there was a difference. A moral sense and political sense had been awakened which could see both the wickedness and the folly of such conduct. The voice of a Cicero sounded with trumpet tones against the oppressor, who was brought to trial and exiled for deeds which under the Oriental system, from the days of Artaxerxes to those of the Grand Turk, would scarcely have called forth a reproving word. It was by slow degrees that the Roman came to understand the virtues of his own ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... have met with any Instance of Modesty with which I am so well pleased, as that celebrated one of the young Prince, whose Father being a tributary King to the Romans, had several Complaints laid against him before the Senate, as a Tyrant and Oppressor of his Subjects. The Prince went to Rome to defend his Father; but coming into the Senate, and hearing a Multitude of Crimes proved upon him, was so oppressed when it came to his turn to speak, that he was unable to utter a Word. The Story tells ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... against the church was due to the fact that the church, instead of being the friend of the poor, had become their social oppressor. Through all these social mutterings runs the outcry against the priests, and this was not because the priests were teaching a false theology, but because they were grinding the faces of the poor. Not only in Germany, but all over Europe this cry was heard. "The ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... their feet on her fair neck, and almost crushed her into the earth. One of these, Dionysius by name, had made his power felt by far-off Greece and nearer Carthage, and for years ruled over Sicily with a rod of iron. His successor, Dion, a friend and pupil of the philosopher Plato, became an oppressor when he came into power. Then another Dionysius gained the throne, a cowardly and drunken wretch, who repeated the acts ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... threshold of his door, Vixnu sprang at him, tore him to pieces, and drank his blood. But the blood affected Vixnu so much that he became stupid. Vixnu's fifth transformation was into a dwarf. At that time a cruel king's subjects appealed to Vixnu to relieve them of their oppressor, and, to carry out the people's desire, he, in the form of a dwarf, went to the city where the tyrant kept court. The dwarf begged from the king a grant of three feet of ground whereon to build himself a house. The tyrant was about to comply with the request, when ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... of the Puritans' by heart, and made their children read Calamy's account of the 2,000 ejected ministers along with the stories of Daniel in the Lion's Den and Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego. Sympathy for the persecuted, unbending resistance to the oppressor, was the creed which had passed into their blood. 'This covenant they kept as the stars keep their courses; this principle they stuck by, for want of knowing better, as it sticks by them to the last. It grew with their growth, it does not wither in their decay.... It glimmers ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... full confession. It all happened just as we thought. It had been determined by the Luddites to kill Mulready, and Stukeley determined to carry out the business himself, convinced, as he says, that the man was a tyrant and an oppressor, and that his death was not only richly deserved, but that such a blow was necessary to encourage the Luddites. He did not care, however, to run the risk of taking any of the others into his confidence, and therefore carried ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... a walking arsenal. He had a way of collecting his bills with a cavalry saber, and once, during the course of a "spree," hearing that a great Irishman named Jack Sawyer had beaten up his son Frank, was seen emerging from the hotel in search of the oppressor of his offspring with a butcher-knife in his boot, a six-shooter at his belt, and a rifle in his hand. Frank himself was less of a buccaneer and was conspicuous because he was practically the only man in Little Missouri who did not ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... father's." In the words of Sir John Malcolm, (Central India, i. 122,) "he was the nominal slave, but the rigid master, of the unfortunate Shah Alim; the pretended friend, but the designing rival, of the house of Holkar; the professed inferior in matters of form, the real superior and oppressor, of the Rajpoot princes of Central India; and the proclaimed soldier, but actual plunderer, of the family of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... puts added hues into the picture with which her heavy fancy had dallied, and then beclouds it all with an account of homes and temples profaned, maidens ravished, grandsires, mothers, children, slain by the oppressor. Will she aid in the deliverance? She can by learning from her lover by which path the Egyptians will against the Ethiopians, who are still in the field, though their king is taken. That she will not do. But Amonasro ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the hands of their deliverer Puts invincible might To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, The brute and boisterous force of violent men, Hardy and industrious to support Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue The righteous and all such as honour truth! He all their ammunition And feats of war defeats, With plain heroic magnitude ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... she said the words that the boys were not hiding. They had fallen into the clutches of the oppressor—they had gone. She went slowly now into the deserted room. She was waiting for her breath to return, for her heart to beat easily, to commence her search. Yes: that was the only duty left to her in life—to find the boys and redeem her promise to her mother. She sat down on a chair, and ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... fortress with walls and bulwarks about the babe. Love of offspring caused a weakness to survive. At last an era dawned when many parents united to construct a shield for weak children indeed, but also for weak adults. The state lifted the shield between weakness and its oppressor. The widow and the orphan were permitted to glean after the harvesters. The traveler, passing through the field, might pluck a handful of corn or pull a bunch of figs. The creditor must not take the blanket or coat from the ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... on the whole patriotic, yoke of the Tudors. In Ireland the petty masters unfortunately were always near; the great one was beyond the sea and not so easily to be got at! There was no unity; no pretence of even-handed justice, no one to step between the oppressed and the oppressor. And the result of all this is still to be seen written as in letters of brass upon the face of the country and woven into the very texture of the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... fawning Tertullus and the oppressor Felix knew in their heart of hearts that the words described what a governor ought to be. And though they are touched with the servility which is not loyalty, and embrace a conception of the royal function attributing far more to the personal influence of a monarch than our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... explanation of the obscure passage in the 23d chapter of Isaiah, on which the theory was mainly based, was at variance with other clearer passages of the same prophet. Babylon is called by Isaiah the "daughter of the Chaldaeans," and is spoken of as an ancient city, long "the glory of kingdoms," the oppressor of nations, the power that "smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke." She is "the lady of kingdoms," and "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." The Chaldaeans are thus in Isaiah, as elsewhere generally in Scripture, the people of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... view the diabolical transaction with amazement, none daring to lend assistance to the unfortunate; not considering, that property should ever be under the protection of law; and, what was Edward's case to-day, might be that of any other man to-morrow. But the oppressor kept fair with the crown, and the crown held a rod of iron over the people.—Suffer me to tell the mournful tale from Dugdale's ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... easily be conceived of how painful a nature must have been the future intercourse betwixt Lady Audley and her niece. The former seemed to regard her victim with that haughty distance which the unrelenting oppressor never fails to entertain towards the object of his tyranny; while even the gentle Alicia, on her part, shrank, with ill-concealed abhorrence, from the presence of that being whose stern decree had blasted all the fairest blossoms of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... serve the cause of the devil by crushing the little angel in the service of the Lord. So it is to-day. The great newspapers, which should plead the cause of the oppressed and the down-trodden, which should be the palladiums of the people's rights, are all on the side of the oppressor, or by silence preserve a dignified but ignominious neutrality. Day after day they weave a false picture of facts—facts which must measurably influence the future historian of the times in the composition ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... this was due to his wretched health, which rendered his aim unsteady; but as to Senor Esperandez, he declared that he considered him also responsible, inasmuch as he was willing to associate himself with the oppressor of the people. Neither threats nor persuasion could induce him to say more. The police, however, are making active inquiries, and have ascertained so far (midnight of Sunday) that the prisoner is an Italian Anarchist recently landed at Barcelona ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... corpulent Fat Poustiakoff drove to the door; Gvozdine, a landlord excellent, Oppressor of the wretched poor; And the Skatenines, aged pair, With all their progeny were there, Who from two years to thirty tell; Petoushkoff, the provincial swell; Bouyanoff too, my cousin, wore(58) His wadded coat and cap with peak (Surely you know him as ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... majesty, for daring to contradict you," said Hardenberg, smiling; "it is better to keep the crown, and submit to necessity as long as possible, in order to be able to take future revenge on the oppressor. At times I am likewise tortured by the doubts and fears now disquieting the noble soul of your majesty. But at such hours I always repeat to myself, in order to justify our course, a few words from the letter which the Duke de Bassano addressed to our ambassador, Baron von Krusemark, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... to Death. Deliverer! God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed And crush the oppressor. When the armed chief, The conqueror of nations, walks the world, And it is changed beneath his feet, and all Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm— Thou, while his head is loftiest and his heart Blasphemes, imagining his own right hand Almighty, thou dost ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... hope for Greece, coinciding with the dawn of her own earliest impetus in this direction, and travelling puri passu almost with the growth of her mightiest friend, was the advancing decay of her oppressor. The wane of the Turkish crescent had seemed to be in some secret connection of fatal sympathy with the growth of the Russian cross. Perhaps the reader will thank us for rehearsing the main steps by which the Ottoman power ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... men, whom the Stirns of the world regard malignly, the majesty and law protect their ears, and the merciful forethought of nature deprived their remote ancestors of the privilege of entailing tails upon them. Had it been otherwise—considering what handles tails would have given to the oppressor, how many traps envy would have laid for them, how often they must have been scratched and mutilated by the briars of life, how many good excuses would have been found for lopping, docking, and trimming them—I fear that only the lap-dogs of Fortune would ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... be more demoralizing in the long run than lynch law. And yet lynch law often originates in a burst of generous indignation which is not willing to suffer a bold oppressor to escape by means of corrupt and cowardly courts. It is oftener born of fear. Both motives powerfully agitated the people of the region round about Clifty as night drew on after Ralph's acquittal. They were ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... then of beauty tasted: So I, by lonely contemplation led To muse awhile amid the silent dead— Turn me from all around I hear or see— From all of Shakspeare and of great to thee: And think on all thy wrongs—on all the shame That dims for ever thine oppressor's name; On all thy faults, nor few nor far between, But then thou wert—a woman and a queen. Proud titles, even in a barb'rous age, To stem th' impetuous tide of party rage; While as I gaze each well-known feature seems To stir with life, and realise my dreams That paint ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... obedience, and devotion, this Degree was consecrated to bravery, devotedness, and patriotism; and your obligation has made known to you the duties which you have assumed. They are summed up in the simple mandate, "Protect the oppressed against the oppressor; and devote yourself to the honor and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Munster, or Owen Roe's victory at Beinnburb, flashed and vanished. These songs celebrate M'Carthy or O'More, O'Connor or O'Neill—his prowess, his following, his hospitality; but they cry down his Irish or "more than Irish" neighbour as fiercely as they do the foreign oppressor. True it is, you will find amid the flight of minstrels one bolder than the rest, who mourns for the time when the Milesians swayed, and tells that "a soul has come into Eire," and summons all the Milesian tribes to battle ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... that utilitarian morality is not without its influence upon the oppressor. An act of spoliation causes good and evil—evil for him who suffers it, good for him in whose favor it is exercised—else the act would not have been performed. But the good by no means compensates the evil. The evil always, and necessarily, predominates over the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... fifty baronets belonging to his ancient house." "If your ancestors and your ancient house be all that you can bring in your defence, you may go the same road as he," said one of the devils, "because we can scarcely remember one ancient house, of which some oppressor, murderer, or strong thief did not lay the foundation, and which he did not transmit to people as froward as himself, or to lazy drones, or drunken swine, to maintain whose extravagant magnificence, the vassals and the tenantry must be squeezed to death, whilst every handsome colt ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... he totters to the door, and disappears. His tears are only those of a slave. How useless fall the tears of him who has no voice, no power to assert his manhood! And yet, in that shrunken bosom-in that figure, bent and shattered of age, there burns a passion for liberty and hatred of the oppressor more terrible than the hand that has made him the wretch he is. That tear! how forcibly it tells the tale of his sorrowing soul; how eloquently it foretells the downfall of that injustice holding him in ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... and not rather the wrath of God burning after the steps of the oppressor, and cleansing the earth when it is wet ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... the influences of his life should have been at least as good for the generous side of politics as for the ungenerous; but from the first he cast his lot with the oppressor. In 1845 he was sent to the legislature, where he took a leading part in opposing the repeal of the Black Laws, which kept the negro from voting at the polls or testifying in the courts. Two years later he fixed his home in Dayton, where he quickly ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... most urgent need is a mission of sternest counsel and warning, from the oppressed to the oppressor, I witness the unspeakable insolence of a Gospel of Thrift, preached by order of the rich man to Lazarus at his gate—a deliberate laying on the shoulders of Lazarus a burden grievous to be borne, a burden which Dives ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... said Dan'l Borem, chuckling, "that he said I was a old skinflint, good only at a hoss trade, uneddicated, ignorant, and unable to keep accounts, and an oppressor o' the widder and orphan. Allowed that my cute sayin's was a kind o' ten-cent parody o' them proverbs ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... his working, and still greater miracles doth he even now work; he burst in sunder the oppressor's stronghold, and he burst in ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... and they hastened to offer to the sufferers their sympathy and affection. But the Lord God, who ruleth over all, prevented the necessity of their aid at Rhodes, and inspired your Imperial Majesty with wisdom, justice, and the love of truth. Under your righteous direction the oppressor was laid low, the designs of the wicked made known, and the innocent delivered. I therefore crave permission to offer to your Imperial Majesty the profound gratitude of the hearts of our people, and to utter our prayers that the merciful God ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... characterized proceedings here as elsewhere. The locking up of a large peasant host in Wuerzburg was undoubtedly a source of great weakness to the movement. In the east, in the Tyrol and Salzburg, there were similar risings to those farther west. In the latter case the prince-bishop was the obnoxious oppressor. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... newest and neatest pattern, with which to win back Europe to the Reaction ... infandum renovare dolorem And if we wish to test the truth of this, it can be done by the same method which showed us that Russia, if her race or religion could sometimes make her an invader and an oppressor, could also be made an emancipator and a knight errant. In the same way, if the Russian institutions are old-fashioned, they honestly exhibit the good as well as the bad that can be found in ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton

... the puzzle of historians yet. The explanation, however, is simple enough. He reigned through corruption that he had himself been instrumental in creating; through militarism and an abominable Chauvinism—this last as effective an instrument as the oppressor can wield. Divide et impera is a maxim of despotic state-craft, old as despotism itself; "flatter and rule" is a method equally sure, and such Santa Anna practised to its full. He let pass no opportunity of flattering ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... him to admire. A mercantile community guided by Political Economy from the ledger to the banquet presided over by its Dagon Capital, finds that difficult. However, there 's the secret of him; that I respect in him. His admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds, wins him entirely. He is an active spirit, not your negative passive letter-of-Scripture Insensible. And his faults, short of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... I replied, 'Dread this, that I and the father of these children will gird up the waist of vengeance, and will exert ourselves to the utmost for thy destruction.' The Snake laughed on hearing me, and that cruel oppressor has devoured my young and has also taken his rest in ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... hundred years before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, he observed—"When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people, freed from their master oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among all ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Lord Tynedale, yet he was acrid, and, I suspected, overbearing in his way: there was a tone of despotism in the urgency of the very reproaches by which, he aimed at goading the oppressed into rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still more fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... attendant stood near with the medicine. For over two years, the common threat had been made that the "tube" would be resorted to if I refused medicine or food. I had begun to look upon it as a myth; but its presence in the hands of an oppressor now convinced me of its reality. I saw that the doctor and his bravos meant business; and as I had already endured torture enough, I determined to make every concession this time and escape what seemed to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... was in bondage to the Turk and his soul in bondage to the Greek. But we may suspect that this neatly turned proverb dates only from the awakening of a distinctly national Bulgarian feeling in modern times. The Turk was felt to be an intruder and an enemy, because his rule was that of an open oppressor belonging to another creed. The Greek, on the other hand, though his spiritual dominion brought undoubted practical evils with it, was not felt to be an intruder and an enemy in the same sense. His quicker intellect and superior refinement made him a model. The Bulgarian ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... reduced to the dilemma of submitting to Cleomenes, or of supplicating the aid of Macedon, its former oppressor. The latter expedient was adopted. The contests of the Greeks always afforded a pleasing opportunity to that powerful neighbor of intermeddling in their affairs. A Macedonian army quickly appeared. Cleomenes was vanquished. The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... the spot where he had disbanded his men years before. The big tree was still standing, taller and grayer with age, rotted in spots, but quite as sturdy as ever. Under this tree he had sheathed his sword. Under its branches he once more drew it from its scabbard against the Spanish oppressor. In a few weeks he had recruited almost a thousand men. Starting out with this nucleus of a future army, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... been the sacrifice, we ought also to make every allowance for the evil influence of that system upon the poor whites. It is the fatal necessity of all wrong to revenge itself upon those who are guilty of it, or even accessory to it. The oppressor is dragged down by the victim of his tyranny. The eternal justice makes the balance even; and as the sufferer by unjust laws is lifted above his physical abasement by spiritual compensations and that nearness to God which only suffering is ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... sense of the nation's sufferings from a tyrant's oppression, have so wrought upon the sensitive spirit, as to stimulate it to the determination to achieve the country's freedom by the assassination of the oppressor. It was thus that Jael brought deliverance to her country by the murder of Sisera; Judith, by the assassination of Holofernes; and in modern times, Charlotte Corday sought the rescue of France from the grasp of the murderous despot, Marat, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... with them the shadow-shapes of vigorous rulers, it is found that Kish came under the sway of the pronouncedly Semitic city of Opis, which was situated "farthest north" and on the western bank of the river Tigris. A century elapsed ere Kish again threw off the oppressor's yoke and renewed ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... indicates his murderous character, being of such unusual size. You know the use of that appendage was to prevent blood running down from the spearhead to the hands. They also think that the object under the horse's off hind foot is a snare, into which the old oppressor is to fall instantly. The expression of the faces may be taken either way: both good men and bad may have hard, regular features; and both good men and bad would set their teeth grimly on seeing Death, with the sands ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... times might be withdrawn at once, as was the case after the victory at Caravaggio, purchased by our money and blood, and followed by our ruin. Oh! unhappy states, which have to guard against their oppressor; but much more wretched those who have to trust to mercenary and faithless arms like thine! May our example instruct posterity, since that of Thebes and Philip of Macedon, who, after victory over her ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... innumerable—in their overburdened minds. Visible fever in the delicate frame, to which it seemed the slightest shock might mean death, was a summons to them to put aside every possible thought but that of preserving what Time had spared so long, though Chance had been so cruel an oppressor. It would be the cruellest stroke of all that she should be thus strangely restored to them, only to be ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... how the indomitable pluck and perseverance of Ingomar Vang, the young Norwegian inventor and whaler, enabled him to triumph against heavy odds will stir the blood in every boy's veins. The tragic fate of Prebensen, the rich, cruel and selfish oppressor of everyone in the little northern whaling village, is pictured with much dramatic force. A healthy, honest, manly tone pervades this story of a young man's trials and final successes. The illustrations are in Mr. Taylor's best style, full of character ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... way, and then—oh, then, it would just be good to be alive! Meantime he would diligently keep up his reputation for meekness; and also, as always theretofore, he would allow no one to hear him say a resentful or offensive thing about his oppressor. ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... retrench the story of the early deeds for liberty of Bonivard and his boon companions. There is a rollicking swagger about them all, which by and by begins to be sobered when it is seen that on the side of the oppressor there is power. By violence, by fraudulent promises, by foul treachery on the part of cowardly citizens, the duke of Savoy gains admittance with his army within the walls of Geneva, and begins his delicious and bloody revenge for the indignities ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... who had had opportunities of knowing him, and they ought to be looked to for advice and information. The leaders of faction and the demagogues of a party associated not with him, and could not know him. Why should he be an oppressor? Was it to serve the King, the whole tenor of whose life had been honorable and virtuous? Was it for himself that he should practice oppression? For what should he be an oppressor? Ambition could not prompt him, with a life ebbing slowly ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... what impression the words of the interpreter would make. Well skilled in dissimulation, they say, was the Roman general. Nevertheless, as the interpreter spoke, stupefaction, fear, frenzy and doubt betrayed themselves in the face of Gaul's oppressor. His officers and councillors looked at one another in consternation, exchanging under their breaths words which seemed full of anguish. Then Caesar, sitting bolt upright on his couch, addressed several ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... years the conduct of the Southern people has been admirable. Submitting to the inevitable, they have shown fortitude and dignity, and rarely has one been found base enough to take wages of shame from the oppressor and maligner of his brethren. Accepting the harshest conditions and faithfully observing them, they have struggled in all honorable ways, and for what? For their slaves? Regret for their loss has neither been felt nor expressed. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... reaching the higher authorities. The almost invariable result of such tyranny was revolt; and the tyrant was then made responsible for the disorder, and punished. Though denied in theory, the right of the peasant to rebel against oppression was respected in practice; the revolt was punished, but the oppressor was likewise punished. Daimyo were obliged to reckon with their farmers in regard to any fresh imposition of taxes or forced labour. We also find that although heimin were made subject to the military class, it was possible for artizans and commercial folk to ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... moment, regarding its tenets cynically, tongue in cheek. Thus he came out in command of the Huguenots, ostensibly himself a Huguenot; but his convictions appear to have changed on various occasions, and he is seen now as their abettor, now as their oppressor. In the end he clearly showed himself antagonistic to the convictions of his followers, and took to denouncing them as heretics. With the exception of this leader, the circumstances and motives of the expedition were somewhat similar ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... too much. In the middle of a spasmodic attempt at a salute a dubious look began to spread over the faces of the three victims, which broadened into certainty as with a yell they leapt upon their oppressor and made him stand them ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... is open to little censure, assuredly the use which he makes of his fists is entitled to none at all. Because he has a pair of tolerably strong fists, and knows to a certain extent how to use them, is he a swaggerer or oppressor? To what ill account does he turn them? Who more quiet, gentle, and inoffensive than he? He beats off a ruffian who attacks him in a dingle; has a kind of friendly tussle with Mr. Petulengro, and behold the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... peace were opened on May 20th at Passau on the Danube. The King of France was informed of this, it being found necessary to put some check on his proceedings; to remind him that he was the "defender of the liberties of Germany," not Germany's oppressor. He and his army had advanced into Alsace, and Montmorency had assured him that it would be "as easy to enter Strasburg and other cities of the Rhine as to penetrate butter." However, when they knocked at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... the most approved loyalty, the longest course of faithful service, and the truest attachment to the protestant cause, were insufficient pledges to her oppressor of the fidelity of her nobles or ministers. The earl of Shrewsbury, whom she had deliberately selected from all others to be the keeper of the captive queen, and whose vigilance had now for so long a period baffled all ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... similar to this, and I have no reason to believe that my experiences had been altogether wasted. Their purpose was evident enough now, and in the flush of anticipated victory which brightened every mind with the thought that the one ally of the oppressor was down, I read the reflection of my own certainty. "You are my Italy," said Violet to her father, and in my own mind I repeated her words as if they had been the end of an old song, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray



Words linked to "Oppressor" :   unkind person, tormentor, unpleasant person, tormenter, meany, dictator, persecutor, meanie, authoritarian, switcher, whipper, oppress



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org