"Subservient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of science. Upon a deserted island of the Pacific he established his dockyard, and there a submarine vessel was constructed from his designs. By methods which will at some future day be revealed he had rendered subservient the illimitable forces of electricity, which, extracted from inexhaustible sources, was employed for all the requirements of his floating equipage, as a moving, lighting, and heating agent. The sea, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... with me, a forming hand, at times Rebellious, acting in a devious mood, A local spirit of its own, at war With general tendency, but for the most Subservient strictly to external things With which it communed. An auxiliary light Came from my mind which on the setting sun Bestowed ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and spread my elbows as if to begin writing again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Paul. The English ships were seized in all the ports, and, at the pressing instance of the Czar, a Prussian army menaced Hanover. Bonaparte lost no time, and, profiting by the friendship manifested towards him by the inheritor of Catherine's power, determined to make that friendship subservient to the execution of the vast plan which he had long conceived: he meant to undertake an expedition by land against the English colonies ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Winwood Reade said, "To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... when, while followed by fifty servants apiece, they have entered the baths, cry out with threatening voice, "Where are my people?" And if they suddenly find out that any unknown female slave has appeared, or any worn-out courtesan who has long been subservient to the pleasures of the townspeople, they run up, as if to win a race, and patting and caressing her with disgusting and unseemly blandishments, they extol her, as the Parthians might praise Semiramis, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... and too many boys. And the more married belles there are the more will the boys be encouraged. For your married belles like to have men about them younger than themselves—it makes them appear younger, or at least they think so; and besides, such youths are more easily managed and more subservient. But, still worse, the more these boys usurp the place of men in society, the more boyish and retrograde will the few men become who continue to divide the honors of society with them. When Plato enumerated among the signs of a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Russian people. They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power apparently is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conception of what is right, of what it is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit and a universal human sympathy which ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... nobody's opinion; ... nor one of whom the old French proverb says: Il ne soit sur quel pied danser. [He knows not on which leg to dance.] Its principles shall be open, magnanimous and free. It shall be subservient to no party or body of men; and neither the craven fear of loss, nor the threats of the disappointed, nor the influence of power, shall ever awe one single opinion into silence. Honest and fair discussion it will court; and its columns will be open to all temperate and intelligent communications ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... by a great majority, a wrong estimate is made of education. Is it not generally considered as a means which must be employed to accomplish some other purpose, and consequently made subservient and secondary to the employments of life? Is it not considered as being contained in books, and a certain routine of studies, which, when gone through with, is believed to be accomplished, and consequently laid by, to be used as interest may suggest or convenience demand? Education comprehends all ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... nominations were not royal, and there is no reason (p. 254) to suppose that the nominees were any more likely to be subservient to the Crown than freely elected members unless the local magnate happened to be a royal minister. Their views depended on those of their patrons, who might be opposed to the Court; and, in 1539, Cromwell's agents were considering ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... system of industry; to prevent the exercise of worldly anxiety by the competent supply of our necessary wants; to diminish the desire of excessive accumulation by making the acquisition of individual property subservient to upright and disinterested uses; to guarantee to each other the means of physical support and of spiritual progress, and thus to impart a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement and moral dignity to our mode ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... that John had deceived him, when he made his enquiries of him concerning his knowledge of Melissa's removal. But this was not surprising: John was tenant to Melissa's aunt, and subservient to all her views;—she had undoubtedly given him ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... amazing height of power and insolence to which freedmen arrived by making themselves subservient to the vices of the prince, is a striking characteristic of the reigns of some of the worst ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... of Louis XV. having been totally subservient in her movements night and day to the wishes of the Comtesse de Noailles, it will be readily conceived how great a shock this lady must have sustained on being informed one morning that the Dauphine had actually risen in the night, and her ladyship not by to witness a ceremony from which most ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... of iron hoops by means of rollers, and the boring of cannon, are the every-day business of one of these manufactories, all of which I saw going on at the same instant, without bustle or effort. Iron, the most universal, the most durable, and most economical of the metals, is thus made subservient to the wants of man, at a time when his improvidence in the use of timber has rendered some substitute necessary. New applications are daily made of it, and a new face is, by its means, promised to society. Used as sleepers and bond-pieces ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on the poetical character of Homer. He then proceeds to consider him merely as an orator. An orator Homer doubtless was, and a great orator. But surely nothing is more remarkable, in his admirable works, than the art with which his oratorical powers are made subservient to the purposes of poetry. Nor can I think Quintilian a great critic in his own province. Just as are many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations, we can perpetually detect in his thoughts that flavour ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conducted from pair to pair, increasing as it goes, until, if the battery is large enough, it may have the force to send a message round the world. And the current is continuous. The galvanic battery is an electrical machine that goes without turning a handle. By the galvanic battery, electricity is made subservient to man. Among other things, it sends his messages, faces his type with copper, silvers his coffee-pot, and coats the inside of his baby's silver mug ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... his trick at the wheel—he was now the officer in command of the starboard watch—but Sibylla did not allow that circumstance to interfere in the least with her plans; on the contrary, she rather made it subservient to them. For, whereas she had before been obliged to wait for her lesson until Ned's trick came round, she now simply watched her opportunity, and whenever she saw that the young man had nothing very particular to do, she would go up to him and say, "Mr Damerell, is it convenient for you ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... so utterly alone as he might have been. For he was a cotton buyer. In 1855 there was no business like the cotton business. Everything else was subservient to that. The cotton buyer's part, in particular, was a "pretty business." The cotton factor was harassingly responsible to a whole swarm of planter patrons, of whose feelings he had to be all the more careful when ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... answer, there still remains the need for God's help that knowledge may become life, and that all which we understand we may do. To such practical conformity to the will of God all other aspects of religion are meant to be subservient. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... assimilation of all that was worthy in that world. To his mind—and here he was certainly a child of his age, in its best sense, perhaps—all other sciences were handmaidens to theology, queen of them all. All were to be subservient to her aims: the Church he called "Catholic" was to embrace in her arms all that was worthy in the works of "profane" writers—true prophets of God, he held, in so far as writing worthily they unconsciously ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... principles were too early imbibed to be now at this late season eradicated. Slaves that we all are to habits, and dupes to appearances, jealous guardians of our pride, to which our comfort is sacrificed, and even our virtue made subservient, what conviction can be offered by reason, to notions that exist but by prejudice? They have been cherished too long for rhetorick to remove them, they can only be expelled by all-powerful Necessity. Life is, indeed, too brief, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... should be engaged. You would come to me and say: "Epictetus, we can no longer endure being chained to this wretched body, giving food and drink and rest and purification: aye, and for its sake forced to be subservient to this man and that. Are these not things indifferent and nothing to us? Is it not true that death is no evil? Are we not in a manner kinsmen of the Gods, and have we not come from them? Let us depart thither, whence we came: let us be freed from ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... too, as if Nature had seized even the man of trade and made him subservient to her designs. The general draper's, where I fitted myself out for a day or two quite easily, is set back in a tangle of poppies and sweet peas, Madonna lilies and Canterbury bells. The shop itself has a gay awning, and what do you ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of the inn,) ever ready to shew his guests what at that village are esteemed great curiosities, was indefatigable in explaining the various instances in which he has made science subservient to utility. The staircase, as far as the great dining-room, he has, at considerable expense, macadamized; which, provided it is kept well watered, and scrapers attached to the chamber-doors, our worthy host assured us, was infinitely preferable to marble. He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... properly signifies the means of subsistence for man, and for the animals subservient to his use while engaged in the process of production. The jurisconsults of former times expressed the idea by the words RES FUNGIBILES, by which they meant consumable commodities, or those things which are consumed in their use for the supply of man's animal ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... great, beautiful, purple machine with a colored chauffeur in dust-colored uniform. Dewitt was talking easily of trivial things, and shooting a question now and then over his shoulder at Robert Grant Burns, who had shed much of his importance and seemed indefinably subservient toward Mr. Dewitt. Jean ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... of these taxes on the model of the alcabala had been part of a scheme for sweeping away all the provincial jurisdictions and rights and forming the whole of the Netherlands into a unified state, as subservient to despotic rule as was Castile itself. A greater centralisation of government had been the constant policy of the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers since the time of Philip the Good, a policy to be commended if ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... true to slavery, as his subsequent career amply demonstrated. If he had been chosen Speaker he would doubtless have placed some of the Free Soil members on the Committees specified, but the whole power of his office would have been studiously subservient to the behests of the slave oligarchy; and nothing could excuse the conduct of Mr. Wilmot and his associates but their entire ignorance of his political character and antecedents. I regretted this affair most sincerely, for I knew Mr. Brown well, and could undoubtedly have prevented ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... revolution broke out in the City of Mexico which entirely subverted the federal and State constitutions and placed a military dictator at the head of the Government. By a sweeping decree of a Congress subservient to the will of the Dictator the several State constitutions were abolished and the States themselves converted into mere departments of the central Government. The people of Texas were unwilling to submit to this ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... held his tongue—between his teeth,—and wished that some day he might have the opportunity of punching Mrs Twitter's head, without, if possible, her knowing who did it. Though thus reduced to silence, he cleared his throat in a demonstratively subservient manner ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... flashing its opalescent light upon his congregation, but so as always to show the secret fire at the heart of it. In the third epoch, best illustrated by his sermons on Evolution and Theology, the philosophic quality of his mind predominates; his imagination is subservient to and the instrument of clear statement, his dramatic quality shows itself chiefly in his realization of mental conditions foreign to his own, and his style, though still rich in color and warm with feeling, is mastered, trained, and directed by his intellectual purpose. In the first epoch he is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... intellectual temperature or enriches the blood of the world! The fact is that the highly-cultivated man tends to find himself mentally hampered by his cultivation, to wade in a sea of glue, as Tennyson said. It is partly that highly-cultivated minds grow to be subservient to authority, and to contemn experiment as rash and obstreperous. Partly also the least movement of the mind dislodges such a pile of precedents and phrases and aphorisms, stored and amassed by diligent reading, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the natural character of Juan and Maria, their attitude towards the cousins changed magically. The half-breed woman could not do enough for the twain, and Juan of the yellow eyes became suddenly respectful if not subservient. ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... God to adopt us for His children and heirs? What claim can men who are subservient to sin, subject to the curse of the Law, and worthy of everlasting death, have on God and eternal life? That God adopted us is due to the merit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who humbled Himself under the Law and ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... during the Middle Ages than painting. Medival sculpture did not, however, concern itself chiefly with the representation of the human figure, but with what we may call decorative carving; it was almost wholly subservient to the dominant art of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... directed to the same End. No Man is to employ himself so as to exclude the Duties of Religion; and there is as much danger in minding too much the Business of the World, as the Pleasures of it; both of them are to be kept within bounds, and both subservient to Religion. The Passions of Men are active and restless; and 'tis the Prudence of every State to encourage some publick Exercise to keep them at quiet. If the Theatre was down, the Churches wou'd not be the fuller for't. Or if they shou'd, ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... name for himself, and had acquired a certain fame. That, however, was, as he acknowledged to himself, departing from him. He looked the matter straight in the face, and told himself that his fashion must be abandoned; but the office remained to him. He might still rule over Mr Optimist, and make a subservient slave of Butterwell. That must be his line in life now, and to that line he would endeavour to be true. As to his wife and his home,—he would look to them for his breakfast, and perhaps his dinner. He ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Cassiodorus himself, in his later years, when, after the death of his master, he republished his "Various Letters", somewhat modified their diction so as to make them more Roman, more diplomatic, more slavishly subservient to the Emperor, than Theodoric himself ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... retrospect! Romance displays only the amiable side of the picture; it shews the pleasing features, and throws a veil over the blemishes: Mankind are naturally pleased with what gratifies their vanity; and vanity, like all other passions of the human heart, may be rendered subservient to ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... informed the acknowledged chief among the Pirates, all appeared to stand in awe of him, and no one dared to disobey his commands. Such, dear brother, was the character who had promised me protection if I would become reconciled to my situation, in other words, subservient to his will. But, whatever might have been his intentions, although now in his power, without a visible friend to protect me, yet such full reliance did I place in the Supreme Being, who sees and knows all things, and who has promised his protection to the faithful in ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... arts, is seldom subservient to the promotion of either religion or virtue. Elegance is often ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... means the soul rises gradually to its perfection. With the practical reason it attends to noble and worthy conduct. All the other powers of the soul must be obedient to the behests of the practical reason. This in turn is subservient to the theoretical, putting its good qualities at the disposition of the speculative reason, and thus helping it to come into closer communion with the simple substances, the angels and God. This is the highest power there is ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... second class of girls in the Sunday School, and she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force of nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar spoke to Mr. Houghton—nay, the very way she addressed herself to him—"What do you think, Mr. Houghton?"—then there seemed to be assumed an immediacy of correspondence between ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... little things that go to make up the real man have to be left out, or be dropped out. And men think too much of things. For a lang time now things have been riding over men, and mankind has ceased riding over things. But now we plain folk are going again to make things subservient to life, to human life, to the needs and interests of the plain man. That is what I want to talk of always, of late—the need of plain living, ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... condition. Perhaps one might even go so far as to say that as a rule the inwardly rich enjoy at least a competent portion of the good things of this life; for intelligence and character have even a market value, Money, too, can be made subservient to the highest aims of the soul. But what it is essential to remember is, that the inward is the true wealth, and that we must seek and obtain it, even, if necessary, at the sacrifice of the outward. If life is ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the same individuals. "A novel," he said, "is a large, diffused picture, comprehending the characters of life, disposed in different groups, and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purposes of a uniform plan and general occurrence, to which every individual figure is subservient. But this plan cannot be executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene by virtue of his importance."[178] But Smollett presents the "different groups" and ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... tribes of Franks, a code essentially barbarian, and called the Salic law, or law of the Salians (Fig. 7). Such, however, was the spirit of inequality among the German races, that it became an established principle for justice to be subservient to the rank of individuals. The more powerful a man was, the more he was protected by the law; the lower his rank, the less the law ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... a preliminary step to the violent suppression of his work. Jesus knew the hearts of these men; he knew that while, in virtue of their office, they affected to expound and apply the divine law, and to rule the people in accordance with it, they were at once ignorant of God's word and tamely subservient to the passions of the people. To tear off, or rather to compel them with their own hands to tear off their cloak of hypocrisy, he addressed to them that question of wonderful simplicity but wonderful power, The baptism of John, whence was ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... denouncing Roldan and his associates. That turbulent man had taken possession of Xaragua, and been kindly received by the natives. He had permitted his followers to lead an idle and licentious life among its beautiful scenes, making the surrounding country and its inhabitants subservient to their pleasures and their passions. An event happened previous to their knowledge of the arrival of Columbus, which threw supplies into their hands, and strengthened their power. As they were one day loitering on the sea-shore, they beheld three caravels ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the controlling principles of a democratic State is that its military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... My impatience of applause brought me always early to the place of entertainment; and I seldom failed to lay a scheme with the small knot that first gathered round me, by which some of those whom we expected might be made subservient to our sport. Every man has some favourite topick of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end. Every man has some habitual contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Not," he added tersely, "that I think his point of view is greatly inferior to yours, but I happen to prefer the viewpoint of a donkey to that of a mouse. Your particular brand of stupidity is more agreeable to me than Carter's timid, weak, and subservient nature, and some day you will thank me for this. Was his impression of Fitch worth the sacrifice of your ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends[1107].' Often have I reflected on this since; and, instead of being angry at many of those who have written against me, have smiled to think that they were unintentionally subservient to my fame, by using a battledoor to make ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... whole army of the company's officials and employees, who were under no obligation to please the Government, and who had no other interest but to do their work properly. The State will thus transform this free population into government employees, whose primary duty is to be docile and subservient. ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... of the Lawes, has been made in divers manners, according to the different methods, of those men that have written of them. For it is a thing that dependeth not on Nature, but on the scope of the Writer; and is subservient to every mans proper method. In the Institutions of Justinian, we find seven sorts ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... in a few short years, will contain from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand souls; they own half the soil, they pay at least three-quarters of the taxes. Nor are they persons who belong to a subservient race. They come from countries where they freely exercised political rights which can never be long denied to free-born men. They are, in short, men who in capital, energy and education are at least our equals. All these persons are gathered together, thanks to our law, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... the diaconate as well as by the history of the motherhood of Jesus. The influences set in motion by the life of Christ deserve to be carefully pondered. Perverted, they have helped on error. Used and employed as Christ designed them, they are subservient of the highest interests of society. Truly has it been said, The life and the cross of Christ shed a splendor from heaven upon a new and till then unheard of order of heroism—that which may be called the feminine ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... last century] allow the theory but deny the practice of witchcraft'—influenced doubtless by the spirit of the past legislation of their respective countries. In England the famous enactment of the subservient parliament of James I. against the crimes of sorcery, &c., was repealed in the middle of the reign of George II., our laws sanctioning not 130 years since the popular persecution, if not ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... gems, and pearls from all parts of the earth, and made idols thereof a thousand parasangs high. What was worse, by means of the magic arts taught them by the angels Uzza and Azzael, they set themselves as masters over the heavenly spheres, and forced the sun, the moon, and the stars to be subservient to themselves instead of the Lord. This impelled the angels to ask God: "'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?' Why didst Thou abandon the highest of the heavens, the seat of Thy glory and Thy exalted Throne in 'Arabot, and descend ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... matrons or angular maids? Or, don't you think, now, that an autumnal attachment—provided some sweet and healthy intelligence comes in contact with his own—is a capital thing in its way? The crackling fireside instead of the lovers' walk? The perfection of rational comfort subservient to, rather than dominating, his early dreams? Respectful affection, fidelity and fondest care as the conditions surrounding one's character, and upholding it in its best symmetry? Cannot the poet think better if his body is kept snug? Cannot the man of feeling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... used to say, had "governed Scotland by the pen" through his Privy Council. Charles knew much less than James of the temper of the Scots, among whom he had never come since his infancy, and his Privy Council with six bishops was apt to be even more than commonly subservient. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... wish to insist upon the fact that in music it is always through declamation that the public is addressed most directly; not only that, but declamation is not necessarily tied by any of the fetters of the spoken word; nor is it subservient to any of the laws of articulate speech as we meet with them in language. This being admitted, I have no hesitation in giving my opinion that opera, or rather the music drama, is not the highest or the most perfect form of our art. The music drama as represented ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... have a more satisfactory, a more logical, or a more unanswerable argument than that. And at all events—whether you agree with it or not—it is the argument that all ministers act upon now-a-days, even when, in the House of Legislature which sits subservient to their will, there is a majority ready and waiting which thinks differently of the matter, but fears to act lest it should lose touch with the loaves and fishes. For now it is on the life not of a ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... required to combine a successful battle with adversity with high proficiency in art is indeed a rare phenomenon. Carlyle says of such minds: "In a word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were subordinate, and made subservient, and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks, but its edge must be sharp and single; if it be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces, and will rend nothing." It may, therefore, be affirmed that the greatest luminaries of the art ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... so far from maintaining their own. The improvident marriage of one man becomes a tax upon the orderly and regular marriage of all the rest. Therefore those laws are wisely constituted that give a man the use of all his faculties at one time, that they may be mutually subservient, aiding and assisting to each other: that the time of his completing his bodily strength, the time of mental discretion, the time of his having learned his trade, and the time at which he has the disposition of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... general opinion, that education in all its parts should bear a fixed proportion to the frequency, spirituality, and power of the more formal preaching. Nor was it less clear, that the press should be kept strictly subservient to ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... things that correspond to each other act in a like manner, except that one is natural and the other spiritual. How the heart acts in the body is evident from anatomy, which shows that wherever the heart acts by means of the vessels put forth from it, everything is alive or subservient to life; but where the heart by means of its vessels does not act, everything is lifeless. Moreover, the heart is the first and last thing to act in the body. That it is the first is evident from the fetus, and that it is the last is evident from the ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... bigotry of an ambitious pedant, who, under the name of Georgius Scholarius, acted as a warm partisan of the union at the Council of Florence, and under the ecclesiastical name of Gennadius is known in history as the subservient patriarch of Sultan Mahomet II. On returning from Italy, he made a great parade of his repentance for complying with the unionists at Florence. He shut himself up in the monastery of Pantokrator, where he assumed the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... or kill the old public schools and the Oxford and Cambridge tradition altogether. I had men in my mind to begin the work, and I should have found others. I should have aimed at making a hard-trained, capable, intellectually active, proud type of man. Everything else would have been made subservient to that. I should have kept my grip on the men through their vacation, and somehow or other I would have contrived a young woman to match them. I think I could have seen to it effectually enough that they didn't get at croquet and tennis ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... And if the means be just, the conduct true, Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due. As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, To avoid great errors, must the less commit: 260 Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, For not to know some trifles is a praise. Most critics, fond of some subservient art, Still make the whole depend upon a part: They talk of principles, but notions prize, And all to one ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Foreign Affairs under such circumstances were supposed to be more impartially treated, so that even Norway's lawful interests could receive due attention. But by the amendment of the Constitution of 1885 the Swedish Foreign Minister would be entirely subservient to Swedish Parliamentarism, which made the employment of the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, in the protection of Norwegian interests, still more dissatisfactory for Norway than formerly. This is pretended to have become the source of the last twenty year's ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... thoracic space, and, generally, in mammalian forms, they fail or degenerate at that region of the trunk which is not pulmonary or respiratory. In human anatomy, a teleological reason is given for this—namely, that of the ribs being mechanically subservient to the function of respiration alone. But the transcendental anatomists interpret this fact otherwise, and refer it to the operation of a ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... he had lately witnessed at Paris, which proved the almost incalculable rapidity of movement with which electricity was disseminated. The idea suggested itself to the active mind of the artist, that this wonderful and but partially explored agent might be rendered subservient to that system of intercommunication which had become so important a principle of modern civilization. He brooded over the subject as he walked the deck, or lay wakeful in his berth, and by the time he arrived at New York, had so far matured his invention as to have ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... which, as Pythagoras had fancied, some ages before, was the greatest in nature: his master, Plato, imagined a threefold soul, a dominant portion of which—that is to say, reason—he had lodged in the head, as in a tower; and the other two parts—namely, anger and desire—he made subservient to this one, and allotted them distinct abodes, placing anger in the breast, and desire under the praecordia. But Dicaearchus, in that discourse of some learned disputants, held at Corinth, which he details to us in three ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... facie evidence of a vicarious leisure extending far back in the past. So that trained service has utility, not only as gratifying the master's instinctive liking for good and skilful workmanship and his propensity for conspicuous dominance over those whose lives are subservient to his own, but it has utility also as putting in evidence a much larger consumption of human service than would be shown by the mere present conspicuous leisure performed by an untrained person. It is a serious grievance if a gentleman's ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the Judge of all. America stood forth once more the same she was when the old man was a boy. The work which he had watched for years and generations, the work of evil to which all the art of man and the power of the State had been subservient, that work which he sought to finish with the fatal decree of his august bench, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Napoleon should undertake a coup d'etat, he would conduct him as a prisoner to Vincennes. This was reported to the President, who at once resolved to remove him, both from hostility and fear. On Changarnier's removal the ministry resigned. Their places were taken by tools still more subservient. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... sea, but it did not fetch him. Devers explained that as a civilian he had no interest in the proceedings and could not be required to obey the mandate of a purely military court, a view in which the judiciary of the great republic, ever steadfast in the principle that military must be subservient to the civil power, virtually sustained him. It was perfectly competent for a court-martial to summon a civilian witness, said the bench, but it had no recourse in case the civilian treated both court and summons with contempt, and Devers's fellow-citizens ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... constitutions, 1817 and 1819 respectively, and all those in the South arising later, were shaped so as to place general emancipation beyond the power even of Legislatures. Congress was even thus early—so it seemed at the North—all too subservient to the slave-holders, partly through the operation of the three-fifths rule, partly from fear that opposition would bring disunion, partly in that ambitious legislators were eager for southern votes. As to the Senate, the South had taken care, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... attack from the stage. With the morality of plays he did not meddle much; but he still clung to the old superstition that the British drama had only a right to exist as the pastime of royalty; plays and players were still to be subservient to the pleasure of the sovereign. The British public, who, after all, really supported the stage, he declined to consider in the matter; conceding, however, that they were at liberty to be amused at the theatre, provided they could achieve that end in strict accordance with the prescription ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... young ruffian, indeed, with few redeeming qualities. When Dick was in the same business, he tried on two or three occasions to make him acknowledge his superiority; but it was not in Dick's nature to be subservient to any one whom he did not respect. Moreover, Dick had two good stout arms of his own, and knew how to use them in self-defence. The consequence was that Micky Maguire signally failed in the attempts which he made on different occasions to humble our hero, and was ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of business will not open up the adventure with its stimulating factors to its subservient labor force, unless it happens that the present methods fail, in time, to carry forward industrial enterprise on a profit-making basis; or unless labor develops the power which springs from desire ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... let it write swiftly and uninterruptedly, without either considering it strange that it should be doing so, or wondering, at the time, what she was writing. Her thoughts had, in a curious way, become subservient to her actions. Afterwards, when she tried to remember what she had felt, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Old Testament prophecy in reference to any single special event which happened at Capernaum; but that rather the whole following account of the glorious deeds of Christ in Galilee, as well as in Peraea, down to chap. xix. 1, serves to mark the fulfilment of this Old Testament prophecy, and is subservient to this quotation. This passage of Matthew explains the reason, why it is that he, and Luke and Mark who closely follow him, report henceforth, until the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem, exclusively ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people who had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving here and there, but carrying ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as an educator, preacher, professor, and author. He made all his enterprises subservient to the dearest object of his life,—money. He wrote plain books for the masses, and his writings were perused alike in palace and cottage. While a resident in Halle he established an inn in the suburbs of the city where his depraved nature was permitted ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... addressed to any particular class of readers, and being free from technical expressions, is rendered plain and comprehensive to all. We commend this volume of Mr. SWEETSER cordially to our readers, firmly impressed with the belief that the principles which it advances may be rendered subservient both to the physical and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... with ludicrously long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet. Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin prairie, had watched every building it boasted ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... what I mean," said Denot, whose anger was now beyond control, "and they shall know that I will not remain here to be rebuked by a priest, who has thrust himself into affairs with which he has no concern; or to make myself subservient to men who are not fit to be my equals. I will not deign to be a common soldier, when such a man as Stofflet ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... a high officer of state among the Tartars, called Obmann, who had usurped the power of nominating and deposing the khan, and to whom all the lords or chiefs were subservient. This anomalous dignity was now held by Ideku; who, as has been already mentioned, had invited Zegra to accept the dignity of khan. This Ideku, with the khan, all the nobility, and the whole people, wandered continually up and down the country, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... he stood apart, alone In honor spotless as unfallen snow. Nothing all evil was it his to know; His charity still found some germ, some spark Of light in natures that seemed wholly dark. He read men's souls; the lowly and the high Moved on the self-same level in his eye. Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offence he spake the word he meant— His word no trick of tact or courtly art, But the white flowering of the noble heart. Careless he was of much the world counts gain, Careless of self, too simple to be vain, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... there is no scour in it anywhere, no current, and therefore stagnation and death. Gather yourselves together, and amidst all the side issues and nearer aims keep this in view as the aim to which all are to be subservient—that, 'whether I eat or drink, or whatsoever I do, I may do all to the glory of God.' Let sorrow and joy, and trade and profession, and study and business, and house and wife and children, and all home joys, be the means by which you may ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sound a philosophical basis, evidenced the iconoclastic nature of his genius. That he did not rest content until he had demonstrated the validity of his revolutionary assumption shows how truly this great theorizer made his hypotheses subservient to the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... back and looked at the beady eyes, sneering, truculent, cowardly, and there leaped into his vision, as on a screen, the same eyes when their owner was making a sale in the store below—subservient eyes, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... co-belligerent or an ally, because there is a common interest between such on the subject, and both governments may be presumed to authorize any measures conducing to give effect to their arms, and to consider each others ports as mutually subservient.[104] ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... obedience to any law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy nature, which could not act otherwise. As son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he moves with firm yet light steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of liberty, of national independence and of national illumination. When future critics shall weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it will be Southey ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... into for its own sake, will not suffice. They could comprehend, that the multiplicity of interests and activities in detail, instead of constituting of themselves the purpose of life, were to be regarded as things subordinate and subservient to a general scope, and judged of, selected, and regulated, in reference and amenableness to it.—By the presiding comprehensive purpose, we do not specifically and exclusively mean a direction of the mind to the religious concern, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... anhelation and palpitation of heart at their ingress into cold water; but by the habit of a few weeks they are able to bear this diminution of heat with little or no inconvenience; for the power of volition has some influence over the muscles subservient to respiration, and by its counter efforts gradually prevents the quick breathing, and diminishes the associations of the pulmonary vessels with the cutaneous ones. And thus though the same quantity of heat is subducted ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the chastisement which they had so recently received. "In this nation," said he, "we shall not be forgiven for having the upper hand of them: I only thank God we have, or they would try to humble us to the dust." He saw also that the Danish cabinet was completely subservient to France: a French officer was at this time the companion and counsellor of the Crown Prince; and things were done in such open violation of the armistice, that Nelson thought a second infliction of vengeance would soon be necessary. He wrote to the ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... his captive in the most importunate manner, to remain with him for a time, to confirm his wavering rectitude, to instruct him in duty, and thus to gain one human being to the standard of integrity, and to render so extensive possessions subservient to the happiness of mankind. All this he expressed with that ardour, which is congenial to the simplicity of truth; and with that enthusiasm, which in all instances ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... merchants and manufacturers of the mother-country to crush what they feared was becoming a rival power beyond seas. They insisted upon full enforcement of the Navigation Laws, which made America's foreign trade in a cruel degree subservient to English interest. So incorrigible was the colony, it was found that this end could be compassed only by the abrogation of the charter, so that English law might become immediately valid in Massachusetts, colonial laws to the contrary notwithstanding. Accordingly, in 1684, the charter was vacated ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... reasonable proportion to other services. And if the corporations are perverse in throwing obstacles in the way, the people will expect that such coercive measures should be employed, as wisdom may prescribe, to make these creatures of their power subservient to the public good, and not to mere ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... patched professor in Queen Nature's granite-founded College; but methinks he's too subservient. Where wert ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... point entirely. But, though Matter may not be a cause, yet what hinders its being an INSTRUMENT, subservient to the supreme Agent in the production ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... what he has done for him. But another solution has now offered itself, on which I cannot help feeling rather sanguine. We have just heard of the death of General Mackay: Pitt is now writing to the King, to represent the propriety of making any arrangement, which this event may give rise to, subservient to the purpose of removing this difficulty, and to desire to see the King, in order to converse with him upon that point. The King will probably appoint to-morrow; but as Pitt may not be back till late, I thought it better ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... his weaker countrymen, in the day of publick trial, the part they should act, and explain, on constitutional principles, the nature of their allegiance, the ground of which we fervently pray may never be removed, whose force we desire may never with reason be relaxed, but yet may be subservient ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... far surpassed that of any of her people, and her demeanor was so modest and unassuming that it was difficult for the prisoners to believe that her word would decree life or death and that all the others were subservient to her. Tourmaline's eyes were so deep a shade of pink that they were almost hazel, and her hair was darker than that of the others, being a golden-red in color. These points, taken with her light-pink skin ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum |
