"Overruling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Guest, and He dwells in our very midst, and He speaks to us in the innermost chambers of our being. But then the external working of His power does not cease, but it only increases, and seems the more glorious. The Power that dwells within us works without us, answering prayer, healing sickness, overruling providences, "Doing exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the Power that worketh ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... and destroy, seemed not to be so much (p. 040) incensed against her as against their own government. The theory of the party was, substantially, that England had been driven into these measures by the friendly tone of our government towards France, and by her own stringent and overruling necessities. The cure was not to be sought in resistance, not even in indignation and remonstrance addressed to that power, but rather in cementing an alliance with her, and even, if need should be, in taking active part in her holy cause. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... thoughts And spread them with a wider creeping; felt Incumbencies more awful, visitings Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul, 120 That tolerates the indignities of Time, And, from the centre of Eternity All finite motions overruling, lives In glory immutable. But peace! enough Here to record that I was mounting now 125 To such community with highest truth— A track pursuing, not untrod before, From strict analogies by thought supplied Or consciousnesses not to be subdued. To ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... other, they ought all to be subordinate to her, else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance. It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling plenitude of its power. She is never to intrude into the place of the others while they are equal to the common ends of their institution. But in order to enable Parliament to answer all these ends of provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... had, but she at least had ceased deciding anything, since the overruling of her veto in the matter of precedence when one is hoisted upon ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... ratification until the following February; and it was two years to a day after the signing of the treaty that Adams and Vives exchanged formal ratifications. Again Adams confided to the pages of his diary, so that posterity might read, the conviction that the hand of an Overruling Providence was visible in this, the most important ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... was one objection—absolutely overruling, apparently, in Sherman's mind—to any further attempt by Sherman himself, with the main body of his army then in Georgia, to prosecute the primary military object of his campaign—the destruction or capture of Hood's army. To have done so would have conceded a ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... not only with theological subtilities, but with a catholic respect for freedom of mind. Skeptical of tradition as the basis of faith, he respected reason rather than authority; and, after a momentary lapse into fatalism, he gained with increasing years an increasing trust in the overruling providence of God. Adhering to none of all the religions in the colonies, he yet devoutly, though without form, adhered to religion. But though famous as a disputant, and having a natural aptitude for metaphysics, he obeyed the tendency of his age, and sought by observation to win an insight ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... how. Thurstane heard it and understood it. Clara also heard it, as if it were not she who uttered it, but some overruling power, or some inward possession, which spoke for her. She heard it and she acquiesced in it. The matter was settled. Her destiny had been pronounced. The man to whom her heart belonged had ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... the two dames took their way to Dalcastle, with baskets well furnished with trifles. They did not take the common path from the village, but went about, and approached the mansion by a different way. But it seemed as if some overruling power ordered it that they should miss no chance of attaining the information they wanted. For ere ever they came within half a mile of Dalcastle they perceived the two youths coming as to meet them, on the same path. The road leading from Dalcastle towards ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... people afflicted by famine were deplored, they were regarded with deep pity; everything was done which could be done to relieve them, but it was hoped that out of this calamitous state of affairs would be evolved, through the overruling of Providence, a signal moral and spiritual benefit to the people generally. Here was a large band of boys and girls taken out of native society, cut off from idolatrous training and associations, and made over in the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... the higher Self, except their deficiencies, which come through thwarting the will of the higher Self, and can be conquered only through compliance with that will. By the true acceptance, the disciple comes into oneness of spirit with the overruling Soul; and, since the own nature of the Soul is being, happiness, bliss, he ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... and exactitude in all the ordinary actions of life, above all in the exercises of religion; leaving nothing to chance or hazard; beholding in everything GOD'S overruling Will, and saying to one's self sometimes, as the hour for such and such duty arrives, "I must hasten, GOD is ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... Rome for Venice, and we were travelling northward by diligence because the railways were still more or less interrupted by the storms and floods predicted of Matthieu de la Drome,—the only reliable prophet France has produced since Voltaire;—and if our accident was caused by an overruling Providence, the company, according to the very law of its existence, was not responsible. To be sure, we did not see how an overruling Providence was to blame for loading upon our diligence the baggage of two diligences, or for the clumsiness of our ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... by any other name would smell as sweet, but there is no doubt that certain names are invested with a peculiar significance. It would appear also that this significance is not always a mere chance coincidence, but is intended, sometimes, to carry the evidence of an overruling prevision. Christopher Columbus was not so named after his achievements, like Scipio Africanus. The name was his from infancy, though human ingenuity could not have conceived one more wonderfully suggestive of his ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... is so intimately near to every human heart, and who has never ceased to be the want of the human race. The philosophies of the ancient world were the earnest effort of human reason to reconcile the finite and the infinite, the human and the Divine, the subject and God. An overruling Providence, which makes even the wrath of man to praise Him, took up all these sincere, though often mistaken, efforts into his own plan, and made them sub-serve the purpose of redemption. They aided in developing ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... power to press the most reluctant into his service, and to compel them to bear his messages and execute his orders; as we see in the case of Balaam and Jonah. God can make use of man to this end, either by reconciling them to himself, and attaching them to his interest or by overruling their corrupt and vicious designs to effect his holy purposes, without their consent or knowledge. Most of the prophets were brought into his view, and made desirous to honor him. Many pagan princes, and others, who knew him not were yet made instrumental in doing his pleasure ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... definite proportional, or atomic number of a body; for I have such conviction that the power which governs electro-decomposition and ordinary chemical attractions is the same; and such confidence in the overruling influence of those natural laws which render the former definite, as to feel no hesitation in believing that the latter must submit to them also. Such being the case, I can have, no doubt that, assuming hydrogen as 1, and dismissing small fractions for the simplicity of expression, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... expressed a special tolerance for my own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one—"between you and me, sir, they hadn't a sound business head among them." As for Ted and Katherine, before the day when he had washed his hands of Ted in the office lavatory, uncle James had tried to play the part of an overruling Providence in their affairs, and the young infidels had signified their utter disbelief in him. Since then he had ceased to interfere with his creatures; and latterly his finger was only to be seen at times of marked crisis ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the time when, as the curate of some retired parish, he might encourage the devout, reprove and control the erring, and, by his example, counsel, and prayers, so mould and influence the little community, that it should seem another Eden. But an overruling Providence had reserved for him a larger field of usefulness, a more extended mission of mercy, and it was through the path of trial that he was to be led ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... case of the earl of Devonshire, who in the late reign had been fined thirty thousand pounds for assaulting colonel Culpepper in the presence-chamber. They reported that the court of king's bench, in overruling the earl's plea of privilege of parliament, had committed a manifest breach of privilege; that the fine was excessive and exhorbitant, against the great charter, the common right of the subject, and the law of the realm. The sentence pronounced upon Samuel Johnson, chaplain to lord Russel, in consequence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... such ascendency over them as he who appeals to what is the nobler part in human nature. Nestors of the whigs used to wonder how so much imagination, invention, courage, knowledge, diligence—all the qualities that seem to make an orator and a statesman—could be neutralised by the want of a sound overruling judgment. They said that Gladstone's faculties were like an army without a general, or a jury without guidance from the bench.[120] Yet when the time came, this army without a general won the crowning victories of the epoch, and for twenty ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... edict, as it was of one of her class whom I knew, that each of her babies shall eat four baked beans the day it is four days old, eat them it must; and if the baby die in convulsions four days after, it is set down as the mysterious will of an overruling Providence. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fifty-nine years old, but long before he reached this age he had seen many things to make him doubt the moral government of the universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the fact ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced immediately ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Comandante's influence with Don Ambrosio might be the means of overruling this decision and hastening the wished-for nuptials. Roblado was therefore but too eager to lay his superior ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... thinks there is a great purpose in our coming here, Mammy. He says he believes that the Lord is overruling our defeat, and that the driving us out from our homes and scattering us abroad will be the means of extending King George's sway, and raising up a ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... children, of whom my sister was the second, she not only did the daily household duties, including washing and baking, but spun and wove the cloth for the clothes of her husband and children, cut and made them up. Her cheerful faith in an overruling Providence must have been, in those days, a supreme consolation, for, even in recalling them in the days of my boyhood, the light of it still illumined her, and she never questioned that He who had led them into the wilderness would maintain them ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... men and women like themselves, only more vast; with mightier wills, mightier virtues, mightier sorrows, and often mightier crimes; their inward free-will battling, as Schlegel has well seen, against outward circumstance and overruling fate, as every man should battle, unless he sink to be a brute. 'In tragedy,' says Schlegel—uttering thus a deep and momentous truth—'the gods themselves either come forward as the servants of destiny and mediate ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... his scruples. This was in 1670, or thereabouts. A legal transfer was made to my uncle, who, I think, loved my father, and understood that, being set in his ways, he would defy the king's authority to the end. And so—wisely I think—the overruling providence of God brought us to a new land, where ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... inherent dignity of the person is denied, and they are reduced below the level of the most uncomfortable nations of the Old World. The philosopher accustomed to draw consolation from the sufferings of his richer fellow-men, and to infer an overruling Providence from their disgraces, might well bless Heaven for the spectacle of such degradation, if his thanksgiving were not prevented by his knowledge that this is quite voluntary. And now consider that on every ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... over you as I would have done!—love you as I do he cannot! Yes, I repeat it," continued Clifford, vehemently,—"he cannot! None amidst the gay, happy, silken crowd of your equals and followers can feel for you that single and overruling passion which makes you to me what all combined—country, power, wealth, reputation, an honest name, peace, common safety, the quiet of the common air, alike the least blessing and the greatest-are ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... occasion he may say, with public assent and approval, that it is his duty, not to make the law conform to justice, but to expound and enforce it as he finds it. In short, such is the confusion of the law and the public conscience that the courts of Tortirra do whatever they please, subject only to overruling by higher courts in the exercise of their pleasure; for great as is the number of minor and major tribunals, a case originating in the lowest is never really settled until it has gone through all the intermediate ones and been passed upon by the highest, to which it might just as well ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to be suited to your disease, your present disease, and to your whole disease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of any contrivance ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... utter a prayer of thanksgiving for his escape, I am certain that I did; and it was a sincere one at that, for nothing but an overruling Providence could have saved one from the effects of two ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... assurance that these were but the prelude to a glorious vindication and deliverance. This hopefulness was not merely the result of their natural optimism, but of the belief, formed by their experiences in many a national crisis, that a God of justice was overruling the events of history, and that he was working not for man's destruction but for his highest happiness and well-being. It was their insight into the divine purpose that led the Hebrew prophets to break away from the popular traditions ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... rooted, deeper than reason, in the unconquerable prejudices which had passed from the brain into the very blood of his race. He would probably say at the end: "I admit all that you tell me, Gabriella, but my sentiment is against it;" and this sentiment, overruling sense, would insist, with sublime obstinacy, that Gabriella must not work in a shop. It would ignore, after the exalted habit of sentiment, such merely sordid facts as poverty and starvation (who ever heard of a woman of good family starving in Virginia?), and, at ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... railroad southwestward of what is known as Manassas Junction;... the expedition to move before or on the 22d day of February next." This was the distinct, as the general order had been the indirect, adoption of his own plan of campaign, and the overruling of that of the general. McClellan at once remonstrated, and the two rival plans thus came face to face for immediate and definitive settlement. It must be assumed that the President's order had been really designed only to force exactly this issue; for on February 3, so soon as he received the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... bending low upon his knees he poured the flowing water as a sign of the gift of the Getavana Vihara for the use of the priesthood throughout the world. The lord then received it, with the prayer that "overruling all evil influences it might give the kingdom permanent rest, and that the happiness of Anathapindada might flow out in countless streams." Then the king Prasenagit, hearing that the lord had come, with his royal equipage went to the Getavana to worship at the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... control the inferior one; they only declare, as it is their duty to declare, that this inferior one is controlled by the other, which is superior. They do not repeal an act of Parliament; they pronounce it void, because contrary to an overruling law." Thus the function of the judiciary to be a barrier against democracy, which, according to Tocqueville, it is destined to be, was not apparent. In the same manner religious liberty, which has become so much identified with the United States, is a thing which ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... so overruling in whatever inspires us with awe, in all things which belong ever so remotely to terror, that nothing else ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... offshoots, may be surely crushed, and by which unity and peace may be permanently secured. They know well that the action of Congress may be with the co-operation of the slave-masters, or even without the co-operation, under the overruling law of military necessity, or the commanding precept of the Constitution "to guarantee to every State a Republican form of government." Above all, they know well that to save the country from peril, especially to save the national life, there ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... its sister force, magnetism, than what we find in Pliny's writings. There, without recognizing a qualitative distinction between them, he refers to the faculty of rubbed amber and of certain pieces of iron to attract other small pieces of matter. It required the awakening of that overruling interest in material nature, characteristic of our own age, for the essential difference between electric and magnetic attraction to be recognized. The first to give a proper description of this was Queen Elizabeth's doctor, Gilbert. His discovery was soon followed by the construction of the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... question whether a thing is natural or not is not at all pertinent, and involves an entire misunderstanding of education itself. The very essence of civilization, of morality, and of religion, consists in the overruling and directing of the merely natural. By nature, man is not man at all. Only in so far as by force of spirit he overcomes, rules, and directs the nature in him, can he lay any claim to manhood. Education, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... them from the door until their figures were lost in the darkness. When she returned to the dining-room, Clytie had already retired to her room, and Mrs. Morpher, overruling M'liss's desire to sit up until the master returned, bade her follow that correct example. "There's Clytie, now, gone to bed like a young lady, and do you do like her," and Mrs. Morpher, with this one drop of balm in the midst of her trials, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... religious liberty than, as he believed, any other people in the world, that result had been accomplished, not by vesting in either of the three estates, the Crown, the Lords, or the Commons, exclusive or overruling power over the others, but by maintaining for each its own separate and independent authority, and also by the three powers combining together to bear and forbear, endeavoring by harmonious concert with each other to avoid those conflicts and clashings ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason, and my more composed judgment, to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open. Certainly, nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery attending, and which it was impossible for me to escape, could have pushed me forward against ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... stranger would certainly overlook? I cannot entertain a proposition of any kind looking to its ultimate purchase until I know that this has been done, anxious as I am to have this matter definitely concluded. I had thought to die here. But it has been otherwise ordered by an overruling and all-wise Providence." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Matebele, the most cruel enemies the Bechuanas ever knew, and this they thought might portend something as bad, or it might only foreshadow the death of some great chief. On this subject of comets I knew little more than they did themselves, but I had that confidence in a kind, overruling Providence, which makes such a difference between Christians and both the ancient and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... previous income- tax had been declared constitutional during the Civil War, and I am very strongly of the opinion that if the case is again presented to the Court the decision will be in harmony with the first decision, overruling the decision of 1895. An income-tax is the fairest of all taxes. It is resorted to by every other nation. It falls most heavily on those who can best afford it. The sentiment in the Republican party has changed, and I believe that at no far ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... that the liberal contention had been perfectly right under the special circumstances. Their arguments were quite right so long as they took the lower ground of expediency, though wrong when elevated to the position of ultimate principles, overruling arguments from expediency.[143] Toleration, he thinks, is in its right place as softening and moderating an inevitable conflict. The true ground for moral tolerance is that 'most people have no right to any opinion whatever upon these subjects,' and he thinks that 'the ignorant preacher' who ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... a poor man, but cannot understand how anybody can refuse to be member of the Cabinet of the President of the United States. If such an offer was made to me, and the conditions of our overruling Providence were that I and my family should live in want and poverty for the rest of our lives, I would ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... the reasons why he should be Chancellor; criticising justly enough, only that he was a party interested, the qualifications of other possible candidates, Coke, Hobart, and the Archbishop Abbott. Coke would be "an overruling nature in an overruling place," and "popular men were no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." Hobart was incompetent. As to Abbott, the Chancellor's place required "a whole man," and to have both ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... surprised to discover that there is such a power, and that there is actually a disposition to exercise it. The public— the all-powerful omnipotent, overruling, law-making, law-breaking public—has a passing caprice to possess itself of your beloved Point; and Ned Effingham must show unusual energy, or it will ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... and struggling in his voice that Dolores forgot herself and stood up listening, suddenly filled with anxiety for him again. He was surely going mad. She would have gone to him again, forgetting her terror that was barely past, the woman's instinct to help the suffering man overruling everything else. It was for his sake that she stayed where she was, lest if she touched him he should lose his ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... spoke the other day," she said, after the conversation had turned directly on her father's affairs—"when you spoke the other day about a pillar of cloud, I suppose you meant what one might call—an overruling sense of right." ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... that any considerable popular disaffection would be fatal to it. These fears proved to be unfounded. The day Washington took the oath, the government was as stable as it now is. Disturbing elements undoubtedly existed, but they were controlled by great and overruling necessities, recognized by all men. Thus the final purpose of the administration was accomplished at the outset. The labor which it was expected would task the patriotism and exercise the skill of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... his liquor easily. Only in his eyes and in his ever more slippery smile that would slide about his face did he show that he had been drinking. He helped her into a hansom with a flourish and, overruling her protests, bade the driver go to the Casino. Once under way she was glad; her hot skin and her weary heart were grateful for the air blowing down the avenue from the Park's expanse of green. When Gideon attempted to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Smith. A sort of religion they had, with priests or conjurors, and houses set apart as temples, wherein images were kept and conjurations performed, but the ceremonies seem not worship, but propitiations against evil, and there seems to have been no conception of an overruling power or of an immortal life. Smith describes a ceremony of sacrifice of children to their deity; but this is doubtful, although Parson Whittaker, who calls the Indians "naked slaves of the devil," also says they sacrificed sometimes themselves and sometimes their own ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in an overruling Providence, Morse says later in the same letter: "This delay and suspense tries me more than distance or even absence from my dear family. If I could be on my way and pursuing my profession I should feel ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... and Asia were blessed by communion with God through the medium of His prophets, and obtained divine laws to regulate their ways and keep them in mind of Him who made them, the Africans were excluded from this dispensation, and consequently have no idea of an overruling Providence or a future state; they therefore trust to luck and to charms, and think only of self-preservation in this world. Whatever, then, may be said against them for being too avaricious or too destitute of fellow-feeling, should rather ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... like the weird high note of a wind-harp. It had its effect on Zelie. She turned back, though muttering against the overruling of her lady's commands by a creature like a bat, who could probably send other powers than a decent ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in us to visit offences against ourselves on the offenders, if we discern God's purpose working through our sorrows, and see, as the Psalmist did, that even our foes are 'men which are Thy hand, O Lord.' True, His overruling providence does not make their guilt less; but the recognition of it destroys all disposition to revenge, and injured and injurer may one day unite in adoring the result of what the One suffered at the other's hands. Surely, some Christian persecutors and their victims have thus ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... true King, for whom they destined a Cross. Man's greatest sin, the rejection of the visible King of the world, brought about the firm establishment of His dominion on earth and in heaven. The cross is the great instance of the same law as is embodied in this history,—the overruling providence which bends the antagonism of men into a tool for effecting ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... been brooding anew over the old prophecies, reviewing afresh events since the resurrection of Jesus,—the growth of the Church, and now the severe persecution, with himself a prisoner. And while he in no way doubts the unseen overruling Hand, yet he is seeking to get a fresh outlook into the future from the ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... among "the writings," between Esther and Ezra. The Greek version placed it between the major and the minor prophets, and this has determined its position in modern versions. The book is both like and unlike the prophetic books. It is like them in its passionate belief in the overruling Providence of God and in the sure consummation of His kingdom; but in its peculiar symbolism, imagery, and pervading sense of mystery it stands without a parallel in the Old Testament. The impulse ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... ever been an enemy of slavery. From his earliest recollections he had ever used his influence against it to the extent of his power; but its abolition was environed by so many difficulties that it seemed to require the overruling hand of God to consummate its destruction. And he did not see how it could have been brought about so speedily but for those who desired to perpetuate it by raising rebellious hands against the nation. Now, with regard to the last sentiment expressed, concerning reconstruction, he ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... in Exile!" he repeated, overruling her. "You come into these sordid surroundings—you mustn't mind my calling them sordid—and it makes them seem as though they didn't matter.... I don't think they do matter. I don't think any surroundings could throw a ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... personae, however familiar nominally, and however much derived from material suggestions, are yet in all their motions obedient to an alien centre as opposite as is possible to the ordinary centre about which the mere mechanism of life revolves. We should therefore expect beforehand in De Quincey an overruling tendency towards this remote architecture of dreams. The careful reader of his "Autobiographic Sketches" will remember, that, at the early age of seven, and before he knew of even the existence of opium, the least material hint which bordered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... God's providence, and exemplary in his respect for the forms of public worship, no philosopher of the eighteenth century was more firm in the support of freedom of religious opinion, none more remote from bigotry; but belief in God, and trust in his overruling power, formed the essence of his character. Divine wisdom not only illumines the spirit, it inspires the will. Washington was a man of action, and not of theory or words; his creed appears in his life, not in his professions, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... allegiance gave way. Antislavery Democrats and antislavery Whigs felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization. The Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the hour. Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was not owing to his virtues and abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery question ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... upon women. Pauperism, amongst other evil effects, has sometimes locally disturbed this predominating sentiment of Englishmen; but never at any time with such depth as to kill the root of the old hereditary manliness. Sometimes at this day a gentleman, either from carelessness, or from overruling force of convenience, or from real defect of gallantry, will allow a female servant to carry his portmanteau for him; though, after all, that spectacle is a rare one. And everywhere women of all ages ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... to remember than to pass through. Twice they had been captives, but each time they had been providentially rescued. Harry felt that God had watched over him, and delivered him from danger and the schemes of wicked men, and his confidence and trust in an Overruling Power were stronger ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... The doctrine of an overruling Providence Horace had expressly rejected in the Satires (Sat. iv, 101), holding that the gods are too happy and too careless in their superior aloof security to plague themselves with the affairs of mortals. But he felt ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Doubtless there is an overruling Providence in this matter which we may not distrust without accusing the order which has not yet failed in the due succession of the seasons and the days and nights. While we are saying it is never going to rain, it rains; or when it seems as if nature were finally frozen up, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to be instituted over the whole and over the parts of this extensive country. Relying, however, on the purity of their intentions, the justice of their cause, and the integrity and intelligence of the people, under an overruling Providence which had so signally protected this country from the first, the representatives of this nation, then consisting of little more than half its present number, not only broke to pieces the chains which were forging and the rod of iron that was lifted up, but frankly ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... a sailor has experienced most signal proofs of the omnipotence of God. Throughout the daily dangers they are exposed to is the underlying, as well as the overruling, sense of the Almighty Power that holds the heavens in the hollow ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... an overruling Providence pointing at Washington was neither mistaken nor unobserved, when, to realize the vast hopes to which our Revolution had given birth, a change of ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... "Wait patiently! McClellan is slow, but sure. He will take Richmond before he ends the campaign, and that is enough!" Such had been public confidence—the confidence of a public who perhaps did not know the General, but who certainly did not know the government directing and overruling his every action. At last even the time of the great capture had been fixed. Officers leaving on short furlough had been admonished to return quickly, "if they expected to take part in the capture of Richmond." What else could this mean, than confidence on the part of the commanding general, that ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... rational conviction. The first aspect of the guest-chamber had inspired him with a joyous credulity. It wooed him with its large and welcoming light, its four walls were golden white and warm, and in all its details he had found unmistakable evidences of design. There was an overruling coquetry in the decorative effects, in the minute little arrangements for his comfort. A finer hand than any housemaid's must have heaped that blue china bowl with roses, laid out that writing-table, and chosen ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... a swift glance at him. Was he conscious that he was overruling her objections? She saw no sign of it. He looked up at her ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... some dim faith in an overruling Power and in a life beyond the grave. They offered human sacrifices to that Power, and when they buried one of their warriors, they buried his spear with him so that he might fight as good a battle in the next world as he had fought in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... native element of the bird. Away from air it gasps and dies. Water is the native element of the fish. Out of water it chokes and gasps and dies. Trust is the native element of friendship—friendship with God. A constant feeling of confidence in GOD that believes in His overruling power, and in His unfailing love, and rests in Him in the darkness when the thing you prize most is lying bound on ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... in silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in lordly brevities. The boy climbed up and sat ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... and the omnipotence of circumstances. (5) If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least part of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some broken evidences of a plan and some signals of an overruling goodness; shall I then be so mad as to complain that all cannot be deciphered? Shall I not rather wonder, with infinite and grateful surprise, that in so vast a scheme I seem to have been able to read, however little, and that that little ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some form and determination to the abstract formlessness of the "merely many." Next, we rise to, or project for ourselves, the world of "the one and the many." This is the sphere in which our consciousness normally moves. We are conscious of an overruling Mind, but the creatures still seem external to and partially independent of it. Such is the temporal order as we know it. Above this is the intelligible world, the eternal order, "the one-many," das ewige Nu, the world in which God's ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... stand there talking, but run at once! Oh, Willis! Never tell me again that there's no such thing as an overruling providence. Oh, what an interposition! Oh, I can never be grateful and humble enough—Goodness me, Jane! ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... own experience was to her a type of all the desolating evil and sorrow of the world; and in her agony she could not turn to a God who permitted such evil and suffering. It seemed to her that there could be no merciful, overruling Providence—that her husband's view, when his mind was in its most vigorous and normal state, was more rational than a religion which taught that a God who loved good left evil to make such ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... give him the like power, considering it as a kind of emanation from his own greater mind or essence, and destined to be re-united with him hereafter. Nay, over all the gods, and of superior potency to any, they conceived fate to preside; an overruling and paramount necessity, of which they formed some dark conceptions, and to which the chief of all the gods was supposed to submit. It is, indeed, extremely difficult to state precisely what the ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... time forward, a continued plot was carried on within the divan, black and white, of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of Hyder Ali. As to the outward members of the double, or rather treble government of Madras, which had signed the treaty, they were always prevented by some overruling influence (which they do not describe, but which cannot be misunderstood) from performing what justice and interest combined so ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in these surroundings the wonderful measure of prophecy's fulfillment, within the span of a short century, the spirit, the patriotism and the civic virtue of Americans who lived a hundred years ago, and God's overruling of the wrath of man, and his devious ways for the blessing of our nation. We are all proud of our American citizenship. Let us leave this place with this feeling stimulated by the sentiments born of the occasion. Let us appreciate more keenly than ever how ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... the Nez Perces, evince strong and peculiar feelings of natural piety. Their religion is not a mere superstitious fear, like that of most savages; they evince abstract notions of morality; a deep reverence for an overruling spirit, and a respect for the rights of their fellow men. In one respect their religion partakes of the pacific doctrines of the Quakers. They hold that the Great Spirit is displeased with all nations who wantonly engage ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... and tennis parties, that are part of the system by which the English keep alive their courage, and growing after a while a little tired of trivialty, she tried to scandalize Sialpore by inviting Tom Tripe to her own garden party, successfully overruling Tripe's objections. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... peninsular coast, and the pardonable ignorance of Captain Bunker, I endeavored, through my faithful subordinates, to reach a less known port, and a coast rarely frequented by reason of its prevailing fog. Here occurred one of those dispensations of an overruling power which, dear friend, we have so often discussed. We fell in with an unknown current, and were guided by a mysterious hand into ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... every mile of it, and which outbreak, therefore, neither may be able to suppress in a day, may take vengeance into its own hands, and without even a remonstrance, and in the absence of any pressing or overruling necessity may invade the territory of the other, would inevitably lead to results equally to be deplored by both. When border collisions come to receive the sanction or to be made on the authority of either Government general war must be the inevitable result. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of Pasquale and the two leaders dismounted. Yeager was still at some distance, but he had an uncertain impression that one of them was a woman. They stood on the porch talking. The larger one seemed to be overruling the protest of the other, so far as Steve could tell at that distance. The two passed ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... the evidences for the existence of an overruling Providence that I can discover, I see none more convincing than the elaborate and for the most part effectual provision that has been made for the suppression of genius. The more I see of the world, the more necessary I see it to ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... each other. Ourselves are enough to keep our hands full, without taking a lift of our fellows' conduct. And this, further, that, in view of the final judgment, we should hold a preliminary investigation on our own principles of action, and 'decide' to adopt as the overruling law for ourselves, that we shall do nothing which will make duty harder for our brethren. Paul habitually settled small matters on large principles, and brought the solemnities of the final account to bear on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... as had Stener, to get up in the world and be something—just a little more than miserably poor; and now this unfortunate complication had to arise to undo them—this Chicago fire. What a curious thing that was! If any one thing more than another made him doubt the existence of a kindly, overruling Providence, it was the unheralded storms out of clear skies—financial, social, anything you choose—that so often brought ruin and disaster to ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... heart an anti-slavery man. He wished in his heavy but wholly patriotic way as heartily as Lincoln wished that all men might enjoy the blessings of freedom. Jefferson was almost radical on the question. Though he did not heartily believe in an overruling Providence, he felt the need of one when he considered the afflictive system of slavery with which his State and country were encumbered. He said that considering it he trembled when he remembered that God ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... pleased him for the moment to be angry, to be in love, to be cynical, or to be furiously indignant. The end, therefore, of his life exhibits a series of short impetuous fits of passionate endeavour, rather than devotion to a single overruling purpose; and all his writings are brief outbursts of eloquent feeling, where neither the separate fragments nor the works considered as a whole obey any law of logical development. And yet, in some ways, Hazlitt boasted, and boasted plausibly enough, of his constancy. He has the same ideas to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... not be broken." It seemed the most casual circumstance that the soldier plunged the spear into the side of Jesus, to make sure that He was dead; yet an ancient oracle, of which he knew nothing, had said, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced." Thus, by the overruling providence of God, the soldiers, going with rude unconcern about their work, were unconsciously fulfilling the Scriptures; and those who both saw what they had done and knew the Scriptures recognised the Divine finger pointing out Jesus as the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... immeasurably increased his power to act; to do his duty was all that he ever proposed to himself, and therefore he was able to concentrate his every faculty on that alone. The lessons of experience were never thrown away upon him, and his faith in an overruling Providence rendered him calm at all times, except on the rare occasions when some subordinate's incompetence or negligence at a critical moment caused to burst forth in him that terrific wrath which was more appalling to its object than the guns of a battery. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... first intended by some influential friends for the Church, and proceeded through part of the College curriculum, but some changes occurring, he ultimately devoted himself to the study of law. Probably his ambition was for the Bar; but overruling circumstances led him, about twelve years ago, to enter on the profession of parliamentary solicitor in London, in which he has ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... soon Master of the cattle-ship FALCON on her Virginia voyage; whom we greet next—and best—as Admiral of the Pilgrim fleet, commander of the destiny freighted MAY-FLOWER, and though a conspirator with nobles against the devoted band he steered, under the overruling hand of their Lord God, their unwitting pilot to "imperial labors" and mighty honors, to the founding of empire, and to eternal Peace; whom we next meet—fallen, "like Lucifer, never to hope again" —as ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... where the man commits the crime, the natural disposition was only towards the object, not formally towards the doing it upon wrong motives; and generally the very essence of the crime consists in the liberty of the will forcibly overruling the actual disposition towards being influenced by right motives, and not at all (as you suppose) in the man's having any natural disposition to be influenced by wrong ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... A man of covenanting antecedents, heroic in his physical proportions, with a massive, Jove-like head and beard, tirelessly devoted to his work, watching every detail with a microscopic eye, marshaling a huge force of workers who were as possessed by this one overruling idea as was McCormick himself, he certainly presented an almost unassailable battlefront to his antagonists. The competition that raged between McCormick and the makers of rival machines was probably the fiercest that has prevailed in any ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... Richmond of Mauchline, and afterwards given by Burns himself to Mr. Woodburn, factor of the laird of Craigen-gillan; the song of "For a' that, and a' that" was inserted by the poet, with his name, in the Musical Museum of February, 1790. Cromek admired, yet did not, from overruling advice, print it in the Reliques, for which he was sharply censured by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review. The scene of the poem is in Mauchline, where Poosie Nancy had her change-house. Only one copy in the handwriting of Burns is supposed to exist; and of it a ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... all hazards, a real country, to exchange what is precious for the sake of having finally what we dreamed we had before,—the most precious of all earthly things,—a Commonwealth of God. Yes, our best things go, like wads for guns, to bid our purpose speak more emphatically, as it expresses the overruling inspiration of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... too virtuous himself, most stainless likeness of Athene, but in trying to make others so. He forgot one half of Juvenal's great dictum about "Panem and Circenses," as the absolute and overruling necessities of rulers. He tried to give the people the bread without the games.... And what thanks he received for his enormous munificence, let himself and the good folks of Antioch tell—you just ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... still waters below: no longer stay possible there. The vis vitae overruling the vis inertia, we take up the line of march. Fold the napkin away from your eyes, O daughter of the ages, and behold, there lies your road—a throng already pressing their way where you thought you were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... more wholesale mutiny, which could hardly fail to end in bloodshed, and might precipitate the perplexed and embarrassed country into civil war. Washington issued a general order, recognizing the existence of the manifesto, but overruling it so far as to appoint the meeting for a later day, with the senior major-general, who happened to be Gates, to preside. This order, which neither discipline nor courtesy could disregard, in a measure tied Gates's hands, while ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... turning the horses into the corral, the two pushed out into the river. Daylight was beginning to break and, keeping close in, they scanned the shore eagerly for sign of Long Bill's ferry. Hour after hour they drifted, Endicott overruling Bat's suggestion that they stop for food. It was sometime after noon that the half-breed stood up and pointed toward the other side. "A'm t'ink mebbe-so de boat on de odder side. 'Long tam A'm watch de drift. De heavy stuff—de tree an' de beeg log, dey mos' all ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open. Certainly, nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... whom is intrusted the task of exacting reparation may perform their duty in such a manner as to spread, throughout regions in which the English name is hardly known, the fame not only of English skill and valour, but of English mercy and moderation; and that the overruling care of that gracious Providence which has so often brought good out of evil may make the war to which we have been forced the means of establishing a durable peace, beneficial alike to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conviction of her soul was, "Behind fate, stands God"; hidden for a season, deaf and blind and mute, it seemed, but always surely there; waiting His own appointed season of rescue, and of recompense. So strong was her faith in His overruling wisdom and mercy, that her soul found rest, through perpetual prayer for patience; and as weeks slipped into months, and season followed season, she realized that though no roses of happiness could ever bloom along her arid path, the lilies of peace ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of thus doing. One respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his congregation, and himself into believing ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... correct the native thoughtlessness of his character, and no doubt her love and care would henceforth make the happiness of his life. So they said to one another with smiles, and not without grateful tears, in view of the overruling love and care visible in all they had to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... noble, grand, solemn, impressive, commanding, imposing. urgent, pressing, critical, instant. paramount, essential, vital, all-absorbing, radical, cardinal, chief, main, prime, primary, principal, leading, capital, foremost, overruling; of vital importance &c in the front rank, first-rate; superior &c 33; considerable &c (great) 31; marked &c v.; rare &c 137. significant, telling, trenchant, emphatic, pregnant; tanti [Lat.]. Adv. materially &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Greeks respecting the dispensations of an overruling Providence, as shown in their belief in retributive justice, are especially prominent in some of the sublime choruses of the Greek tragedians, and in the "Works and Days" of Hesiod. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... between you; I cannot omitt my earnest prayers vnto God to deliver you from such a temptation. Hee that goes to warre must patiently submitt vnto the various accidents thereof. To bee made prisoner by an vnequall and overruling power, after a due resistance, is no disparagement; butt upon a carelesse surprizall or faynt opposition; and you have so good a memorie that you cannot forgett many examples thereof, even of the worthiest ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... protectors,—the one on a mission of pure humanity, and the other in calm pursuance of the objects he had proposed to himself to accomplish; and, with three companions, place himself at the mercy of such circumstances, regardless of the danger, and relying on the overruling Providence in which he trusted, to bring him safely through all his ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... protest, addressed to me, and of my reply, are inclosed. He not unnaturally complains of having been now seized, after he had on the previous occasion been recognised as a ship of war. But this is manifestly nothing more than the inevitable result of the overruling by Her Majesty's Government of the conclusion arrived at on the previous ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... trees, and the cool evening breeze, combined with my matted hair to stop the flow of blood. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, brooding over the singular and mournful lot to which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole scale or circle of belief and unbelief, from faith in the overruling providence of God, to the blackest atheism, I again took up my journey toward St. Michael's, more weary and sad than in the morning when I left Thomas Auld's for the home of Mr. Covey. I was bare-footed and bare-headed, and in{177} my shirt sleeves. The way was through bogs ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... ordained by them as necessary for salvation have neither strength nor authority unless it may be declared that they are taken out of Holy Scripture." The battle was fought and won by quotations, not from tradition, but from the Old and New Testaments. The overruling sentiment was that even ancient opinions were not to be received without sifting and inquiry. The chief combatant and champion of the faith was not the bishop of Antioch or of Rome, nor the pope ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... yet they could not take possession. Phoebe would have given the world that the sets had been appropriated, so that Mervyn and Mr. Crabbe should not have had to make her miserable by fighting her battles, insisting on her choosing, and then overruling her choice as not of sufficiently valuable articles, while Bertha profited by the lesson in harpy-hood, and regarded all claimed by the others as so much taken from herself; and poor Maria clasped on every bracelet one by one, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fell upon me but once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions when the mal-de-mer proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth, composing his little limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my insular ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... yet with that confidence in an overruling Providence which never forsakes a good and brave man, Peveril betook himself to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... that he had done me a great favor when he interposed his judgment between my red-hot mentality and the cool minds of the workaday world. Yet this interference with what I deemed my rights proved to be the first step in the general overruling of them by tactless attendants and, in particular, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... understood by our finite minds. But I do feel vaguely that the laws that compass us, and make our lives possible, point always on—"beyond the realms of time and space"—toward the existence of a mighty overruling spirit. If this is a cold and inadequate conception of God, it is at least one that can be held ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... behaviour, always afraid, for the sake of his party or of his client, lest his auditors should become angry, or become impatient, or become weary. And from that intense fear, trammeling the freedom of his steps at every turn, and overruling every motion to the right or to the left, in pure servile anxiety for the mood and disposition of his tyrannical master, arose the very opposite result for us of this day—that we, by the very means adopted ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... Pope's doctrine, about the ruling passion, does not seem to be refuted, though it is called, in harsh terms, pernicious, as well as false, tending to establish a kind of moral predestination, or overruling principle, which cannot be resisted. But Johnson was too easily alarmed in the cause of religion. Organized as the human race is, individuals have different inlets of perception, different powers of mind, and different sensations ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson |
