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despot
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  • MY NEW NURSE is an unsmiling despot with a nursing degree.†   (source)
  • If my sister Rachel and Mr. William Shakespeare put their heads together to invent an extravagant despot, they couldn't outdo Mobutu.†   (source)
  • So while I slept the Hegemony became a formal entity, the Worldweb was spun to something close to its final shape, the All Thing took its democratic place among the list of humanity's benevolent despots, the TechnoCore seceded from human service and then offered its help as an ally rather than a slave, and the Ousters retreated to darkness and the role of Nemesis… but all these things had been creeping toward critical mass even before I was frozen into my ice coffin between the pork…†   (source)
  • Rather than cherish that medal, Madame, you should regard it as a symbol of your unwitting complicity with this despot who worked to death and brutalized and eventually exterminated thousands and thousands of African peoples.†   (source)
  • His quest to create a powerful first impression was good showmanship, but it also exposed the aesthetic despot residing within.†   (source)
  • They created a system of government with checks and balances so that no branch of government would become despotic.†   (source)
  • In such ways are despots made.†   (source)
  • In his amiable way he was telling the truth, because one could not imagine a less despotic husband.†   (source)
  • Willoughby was rare—his preference to remain behind the scenes implied the absence of vast personal conceit, a trait essential for two-penny despots.†   (source)
  • Paula Many of the refugees in Clarkston had been displaced by events far removed from their immediate lives—the decision of some despot hundreds of miles away to clear a region of a particular ethnic or political group in order to seize its resources, or the sudden appearance of soldiers in a village, fighting for a remote cause with no concern for collateral damage.†   (source)
  • Still, she knew that acts like those were what separated her, Orrin, Hrothgar, and Islanzadi from Galbatorix's despotism.†   (source)
  • Schools were good around Franklin Borough and Johnstown; Bethlehem Steel, a benevolent despot, paid for good buildings and teachers and even an indoor swimming pool.†   (source)
  • He hasn't said anything to me at school since the day he told me he wasn't going to make me relinquish my seat at his table, benevolent despot that he is.†   (source)
  • Every day, he grew more irate and despotic, ordering her put my pillow here, no, higher up, bring me wine, no, I said white wine, open the window, close it, this hurts, I'm hungry, I'm hot, scratch my shoulder, lower.†   (source)
  • Yossarian and Dunbar were busy in a far corner pawing orgiastically at four or five frolicsome girls and six bottles of red wine, and Hungry Joe had long since tramped away down one of the mystic hallways, propelling before him like a ravening despot as many of the broadest-hipped young prostitutes as he could contain in his frail wind-milling arms and cram into one double bed.†   (source)
  • Tereza occupied his poetic memory like a despot and exterminated all trace of other women.†   (source)
  • Have I mentioned how much I can't stand despotic psychopaths?†   (source)
  • We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight.†   (source)
  • John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator still months away from beginning his campaign for the presidency, knew that Batista was a ruthless despot who had murdered more than twenty thousand of his own people.†   (source)
  • In the 5th Century B.C. graffiti poems were scratched onto the rock face of Sigiriya—the rock fortress of a despot king.†   (source)
  • To reject this outcome would destroy the basis of constitutional democracy, said Lincoln, and "fly to anarchy or to despotism."†   (source)
  • Arguments that the army or militia will be used despotically are made by people who like to stir up trouble.†   (source)
  • The wars, the suffering, the lack of economic progress, the despotism—all this was the fault of Israel.†   (source)
  • She was of course absurdly mistaken—just as she was mistaken or perhaps devious (and guilty of another lie to me) when she claimed that her father hated the despotic hand of Marshal Pilsudski, that quondam radical, because he brought a virtually totalitarian regime to Poland in the late twenties.†   (source)
  • True as may be the political principles for which we are now contending …. the ships themselves must be ruled under a system of absolute despotism.†   (source)
  • A benevolent despot.†   (source)
  • We did not fight for an elective despotism.†   (source)
  • One hundred and seventy-three despots are as oppressive as one.†   (source)
  • And it will restrain the ambition of powerful people in single States who could become despots.†   (source)
  • In a despotic government, the same people hold all of the government's powers.†   (source)
  • At dawn, worn out by insomnia and fever, he made the calm decision to marry her in order to free her from the despotism of her grandmother and to enjoy all the nights of satisfaction that she would give the seventy men.†   (source)
  • The inhabitants of the house resigned themselves to eating chick-peas and rice pudding almost every day, for no one had the courage to face the procession of wart-faced, ill-tempered, and despotic cooks who succeeded each other in that kingdom of abused and blackened saucepans.†   (source)
  • The military tried to work its population into some kind of anger at the expected invasion, but the big despots had to bribe smaller despots with rum just to get them out in respectable numbers.†   (source)
  • A twenty-three-year-old printer from Philadelphia, a private in the 71st Pennsylvania wounded while helping to repel Pickett's assault at Gettysburg, wrote to his father that any sacrifice was worth the cost, "for what is home with all its endearments, if we have not a country freed from every vestige of the anarchy, and the tyrannical and blood thirsty despotism which threatens on every side to overwhelm us?"†   (source)
  • Reliance on a single legislature was a certain road to disaster, for the same reason reliance on a single executive—king, potentate, president—was bound to bring ruin and despotism.†   (source)
  • "At this rate," he concluded, "you'll not only be the most despotic and bloody dictator in our history, but you'll shoot my dear friend Ursula in an attempt to pacify your conscience."†   (source)
  • Admit the right of the seceding states to break up the Union at pleasure …. and how long will it be before the new confederacies created by the first disruption shall be resolved into still smaller fragments and the continent become a vast theater of civil war, military license, anarchy and despotism?†   (source)
  • The "Executive Party," Gallatin argued, was creating the crisis only to "increase their power and to bind us by the treble chain of fiscal, legal and military despotism."†   (source)
  • As the U.S. government's patience waned with the despotic military government, as ragged, half-starved Haitians continued to wash up on beaches in Fort Lauderdale, ruining the view from the condo canyons, the forced return of Haiti's Savior seemed to inch closer.†   (source)
  • But to a correspondent in England, he warned, "Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel asunlimited despots," and he lamented that so much more blood would have to flow before the lesson was learned.†   (source)
  • Writing to an Italian friend, Philip Mazzei, during the debate over the Jay Treaty, Jefferson had described America as a country taken over by "timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty," and by leaders who were assimilating "the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British model."†   (source)
  • IN ere a law to be made "that no man should hold an office who had not a private income sufficient for the subsistence and prospects of himself and family," Adams had written earlier while in London, then the consequence would be that "all offices would be monopolized by the rich; the poor and the middling ranks would be excluded and an aristocratic despotism would immediately follow."†   (source)
  • If despotism had been established in Massachusetts, how would it have changed liberty in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, or New York?†   (source)
  • Judicial despotism comes from arbitrary impeachments, arbitrary methods of prosecuting pretended offenses, and arbitrary punishments on arbitrary convictions.†   (source)
  • Alone at his desk at Poplar Forest, where more than a hundred slaves labored in the fields beyond his window, Jefferson had written one of themost impassioned denunciations of his life, decrying slavery as an extreme depravity: The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions [Jefferson had written], the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.†   (source)
  • Opponents first say the federal government's power will be despotic and unlimited and then say it doesn't even have the authority to call out the POSSE COMITATUS.†   (source)
  • The same answer that should be given to people who tell us that a government, with the whole power in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.†   (source)
  • They should guard against hazarding anarchy, civil war, a perpetual alienation of the States from each other, and perhaps the military despotism of a victorious demagogue, while they pursue what they can only learn from TIME and EXPERIENCE.†   (source)
  • Blackstone is worth quoting: "To bereave a man of life, (says he) or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government."†   (source)
  • Sophie had passed the room many times on her way up to and down from the office, and had noted that the door was often left open—not a remarkable fact really, she had reflected, when one realized that petty theft in this despotically well-regulated stronghold was nearly as unthinkable as murder.†   (source)
  • …developed by the Nazis of which Rubenstein writes (extending Arendt's thesis) is a "society of total domination," evolving directly from the institution of chattel slavery as it was practiced by the great nations of the West, yet urged on to its despotic apotheosis at Auschwitz through an innovative concept which by contrast casts a benign light on old-fashioned plantation slavery even at its most barbaric: this blood-fresh concept was based on the simple but absolute expendability of…†   (source)
  • Instead, he rambles on about the fate of the Confederacy and about Lincoln, the despot.†   (source)
  • In Vietnam, the chain-smoking Catholic despot Diem is out of control.†   (source)
  • That whimsical despotism was in the nineteenth century too.†   (source)
  • When has such damage been done by the gaze and so much awful despotism belonged to the eyes?†   (source)
  • The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not".†   (source)
  • The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism.†   (source)
  • These hands and feet were small; she wore a shriveled sort of lisle on her legs and her slippers were gray--ah, the gray of that felt, the gray despotic to souls--with pink ribbons.†   (source)
  • When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty,—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.†   (source)
  • It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism--the real motives for which despotic governments act.†   (source)
  • The plague was no respecter of persons and under its despotic rule everyone, from the warden down to the humblest delinquent, was under sentence and, perhaps for the first time, impartial justice reigned in the prison.†   (source)
  • If Hitler can bring under his despotic control the industries of the countries he has conquered, this will add greatly to his already vast armament output.†   (source)
  • Whatever he did—(and he might do anything, he felt, looking at the Lighthouse and the distant shore) whether he was in a business, in a bank, a barrister, a man at the head of some enterprise, that he would fight, that he would track down and stamp out—tyranny, despotism, he called it—making people do what they did not want to do, cutting off their right to speak.†   (source)
  • Her gentle efforts to guide the hand of destiny, by decoying her master with feeble tricks or by reticent considerations—these had not been strong enough to be recognized in the despotism of life.†   (source)
  • Lord Dudley, THE TIMES said when Lady Dudley died the other day, 'a man of cultivated taste and many accomplishments, was benevolent and bountiful, but whimsically despotic.†   (source)
  • In other parts of Gramarye, of course, there did exist wicked and despotic masters—feudal gangsters whom it was to be King Arthur's destiny to chasten—but the evil was in the bad people who abused it, not in the feudal system.†   (source)
  • Philip writhed under that despotism which never vouchsafed a reason for the most tyrannous act.†   (source)
  • The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government.†   (source)
  • You're an advocate of patriarchal despotism.†   (source)
  • His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion.†   (source)
  • Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding despotism!†   (source)
  • I admit that Russia has its beauties, among others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots.†   (source)
  • Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have been brought about by despotism.†   (source)
  • He knew how to make even his mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in his control of her.†   (source)
  • Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.†   (source)
  • Freedom engenders private animosities, but despotism gives birth to general indifference.†   (source)
  • They have employed their despotism and their violence against the human mind.†   (source)
  • Despots count for something in the question of philosophers.†   (source)
  • If it lead not to despotism by sudden violence, it prepares men for it more gently by their habits.†   (source)
  • Despotism violates the moral frontier, an invasion violates the geographical frontier.†   (source)
  • Of all the forms which democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst.†   (source)
  • The constitution of nations was despotic at that time, but their manners were free.†   (source)
  • I admit that Russia has its beauties, among others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots.†   (source)
  • It would seem as if every step they make towards equality brings them nearer to despotism.†   (source)
  • It had been supposed, until our time, that despotism was odious, under whatever form it appeared.†   (source)
  • Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius.†   (source)
  • Thus the vices which despotism engenders are precisely those which equality fosters.†   (source)
  • Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.†   (source)
  • Paris without a king has as result the world without despots.†   (source)
  • But this same principle of equality which facilitates despotism, tempers its rigor.†   (source)
  • Despotism therefore appears to me peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic ages.†   (source)
  • Chapter VI: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear.†   (source)
  • …States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace…†   (source)
  • For it was the conviction of both ladies that, under the iron despotism of his senior partners, the young man's life was spent in the most exhausting professional labours—and he had never thought it necessary to undeceive them.†   (source)
  • "Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say?" she screamed suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for displaying, before a 'newcomer' of Forcheville's importance, at once her unfailing wit and her despotic power over the 'faithful.'†   (source)
  • The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the selfish despotism of society.†   (source)
  • He loomed up now in different guise, not as a jealous suitor, but embodying the mysterious despotism she had known from childhood—the power of her creed.†   (source)
  • And he saw Giuseppe Settembrini—the tricolor in one hand, a swinging saber in the other, black eyes turned heavenward to seal his vow—at the head of a troop of revolutionaries storming the phalanx of despotism.†   (source)
  • "And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic paternalism.†   (source)
  • Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve—a timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining— the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.†   (source)
  • And since this other, this irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our Legrandin's charming vocabulary, shewed an infinitely greater promptness in expressing himself, by means of what are called 'reflexes,' it followed that, when Legrandin the talker attempted to silence him, he would already have spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to deplore the bad impression which the revelations of his alter ego must have caused, since he could do no more now than…†   (source)
  • Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others, and so govern through capably benevolent representatives?†   (source)
  • Mrs. Foster said that the Vicar must not talk, it would tire him; she treated him like a child, with kindly despotism; and there was something childish in the old man's satisfaction at having cheated all their expectations.†   (source)
  • But should I grant the support of my soul to Sarmatian despotism, when it is about to put the torch to our most noble continent?†   (source)
  • They watched as a rousing tale of love and murder in the court of an Oriental potentate unrolled silently before them; scene after opulent scene sped past, full of naked bodies, despotic lust, and abject servility blind in its zeal, full of cruelty, prurience, and fatal desire—and then suddenly the film slowed to linger revealingly on the muscular arm of an executioner.†   (source)
  • …engendered by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the 'machinery' of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her…†   (source)
  • ") the impression left on me by the despotic tone in which Gilberte's mother had spoken to her, without her replying, by exhibiting her to me as being obliged to yield obedience to some one else, as not being indeed superior to the whole world, calmed my sufferings somewhat, revived some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love.†   (source)
  • "The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.†   (source)
  • It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fireplace and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely Righteous manner.†   (source)
  • The British Crown exercises a real and despotic dominion over the larger portion of this vast country, and has a governor-general stationed at Calcutta, governors at Madras, Bombay, and in Bengal, and a lieutenant-governor at Agra.†   (source)
  • It has always been against the policy of despotic governments to suffer the victims of their persecutions to reappear.†   (source)
  • She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family.†   (source)
  • It was upon the cardinal that all the responsibility fell, for one is not a despotic minister without responsibility.†   (source)
  • Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that man must have been as free as culture could make him.†   (source)
  • The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever — there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow.†   (source)
  • After he was gone, Dorothea dwelt with some agitation on this indifference of his; and her mind was much exercised with arguments drawn from the varying conditions of climate which modify human needs, and from the admitted wickedness of pagan despots.†   (source)
  • He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him.†   (source)
  • The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity.†   (source)
  • It is despotism; it is tyranny.†   (source)
  • But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.†   (source)
  • If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions.†   (source)
  • Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.†   (source)
  • Such was Herod the Great—a body broken by diseases, a conscience seared with crimes, a mind magnificently capable, a soul fit for brotherhood with the Caesars; now seven-and-sixty years old, but guarding his throne with a jealousy never so vigilant, a power never so despotic, and a cruelty never so inexorable.†   (source)
  • In our age, freedom cannot be established without it, and despotism itself cannot reign without its support.†   (source)
  • Go to Lucas Beaumanoir, and say thou hast renounced thy vow of obedience, and see how long the despotic old man will leave thee in personal freedom.†   (source)
  • The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.†   (source)
  • When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous.†   (source)
  • O, my dear brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity Fair, which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolent despots?†   (source)
  • Luke was appointed to wait upon his bed-ridden master, whose despotic habits were greatly increased by exasperation at his own helplessness.†   (source)
  • PROKTOPHANTASMIST I tell you, spirits, to your face, I give to spirit-despotism no place; My spirit cannot practise it at all.†   (source)
  • He was, in truth, their ruler; and, so long as he could maintain his popularity, no monarch could be more despotic, especially while the tribe continued in a hostile country.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless, it is well known that little which could be called monarchical or despotic entered into the politics of the North American tribes, although the first colonists, bringing with them to this hemisphere the notions and opinions of their own countries, often dignified the chief men of those primitive nations with the titles of kings and princes.†   (source)
  • Squeers, casting a triumphant glance at his assistant and a look of most comprehensive despotism on the boys, left the room, and shortly afterwards returned, dragging Smike by the collar—or rather by that fragment of his jacket which was nearest the place where his collar would have been, had he boasted such a decoration.†   (source)
  • But he controlled himself, and only said, with a touch of despotic firmness— "What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge.†   (source)
  • I understood that, sitting there where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man, caring as I. The veil fell from his hardness and despotism.†   (source)
  • The plantation organization replaced the clan and tribe, and the white master replaced the chief with far greater and more despotic powers.†   (source)
  • Thus trained in the exercise not only of free will, but despotic authority, Rowena was, by her previous education, disposed both to resist and to resent any attempt to control her affections, or dispose of her hand contrary to her inclinations, and to assert her independence in a case in which even those females who have been trained up to obedience and subjection, are not infrequently apt to dispute the authority of guardians and parents.†   (source)
  • Oh, my prostrate friends, with the galling yoke of tyrants on your necks and the iron foot of despotism treading down your fallen forms into the dust of the earth, upon which right glad would your oppressors be to see you creeping on your bellies all the days of your lives, like the serpent in the garden — oh, my brothers, and shall I as a man not add, my sisters too, what do you say, now, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders and about five foot seven in height,…†   (source)
  • On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy….†   (source)
  • If low-minded, brutal people will act like themselves, what am I to do? they have absolute control; they are irresponsible despots.†   (source)
  • The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism, tempered by a Chamber that might or might not be elected.†   (source)
  • As he lay there on his bed, a mere degraded wreck of manhood, he took into his head the strangest freaks of despotism; and if Luke hesitated to submit to his orders, the constable was immediately sent for.†   (source)
  • It's permissable for anyone, I should hope, to defend himself and I never allow anyone to use violence to me on principle, for it's an act of despotism.†   (source)
  • IDEALIST This once, the fancy wrought in me Is really too despotic: Forsooth, if I am all I see, I must be idiotic!†   (source)
  • The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity.†   (source)
  • But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.†   (source)
  • And, I declare, its perfect despotism.†   (source)
  • Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.†   (source)
  • Thus night at length with slow-retreating steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire that have aspired to lessen the darkness.†   (source)
  • The tempter stood by him, too,—blinded by furious, despotic will,—every moment pressing him to shun that agony by the betrayal of the innocent.†   (source)
  • His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty.†   (source)
  • "I know why I want to see him out here in the frost," Kolya cut him short in the despotic tone he was fond of adopting with "small boys," and Smurov ran to do his bidding.†   (source)
  • …his excess of subservience, because she was a stranger to the meanness of mind, and to the constant state of timid apprehension, by which it was dictated; but she bore herself with a proud humility, as if submitting to the evil circumstances in which she was placed as the daughter of a despised race, while she felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice permitted her to aspire to.†   (source)
  • An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual.†   (source)
  • "Why, it matters this much, mistress," says the lawyer, deliberately putting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill; "the law is so despotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good English citizens from being troubled, even by a lady's visits against his desire.†   (source)
  • A curious mess he looked upon: little despotisms, communistic experiments, slavery, peonage, business speculations, organized charity, unorganized almsgiving,—all reeling on under the guise of helping the freedmen, and all enshrined in the smoke and blood of the war and the cursing and silence of angry men.†   (source)
  • In fact, the return of Richard had quenched every hope that he had entertained of restoring a Saxon dynasty in England; for, whatever head the Saxons might have made in the event of a civil war, it was plain that nothing could be done under the undisputed dominion of Richard, popular as he was by his personal good qualities and military fame, although his administration was wilfully careless, now too indulgent, and now allied to despotism.†   (source)
  • Tom heard the message with a forewarning heart; for he knew all the plan of the fugitives' escape, and the place of their present concealment;—he knew the deadly character of the man he had to deal with, and his despotic power.†   (source)
  • All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots — provided only they be sincere — have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule.†   (source)
  • Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and much too despotic for the occasion.†   (source)
  • He was kept, to be sure, rather cross and crusty; but on the whole I could see he was excellently entertained, and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his judgment, satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste less.†   (source)
  • As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission — the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and…†   (source)
  • Democratic liberty is far from accomplishing all the projects it undertakes, with the skill of an adroit despotism.†   (source)
  • In the present age they are in rapid decay, because their religion is departing, and despotism only remains.†   (source)
  • He arrives with his legions, superstitions, with his sword, despotism, with his banner, ignorance; a while ago, he won ten battles.†   (source)
  • —THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC much alarmed by the citadels erected against the human mind in every direction, by superstition, despotism, and prejudice.†   (source)
  • And if complete equality be our fate, is it not better to be levelled by free institutions than by despotic power?†   (source)
  • Appendix Z It cannot be absolutely or generally affirmed that the greatest danger of the present age is license or tyranny, anarchy or despotism.†   (source)
  • A long war almost always places nations in the wretched alternative of being abandoned to ruin by defeat or to despotism by success.†   (source)
  • Neither despotism nor terrorism.†   (source)
  • This concentration is at once prejudicial to a well-conducted administration, and favorable to the despotism of the majority.†   (source)
  • In the eyes of despotic governments, who are always interested in having liberty calumniate itself, the Revolution of July committed the fault of being formidable and of remaining gentle.†   (source)
  • The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling.†   (source)
  • Whoever you may be, if your name is Prejudice, Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin.†   (source)
  • The magistrate ceases to be elective, but he retains the rights and the habits of an elected officer, which lead directly to despotism.†   (source)
  • Under a despotism communities give way at times to bursts of vehement joy; but they are generally gloomy and moody, because they are afraid.†   (source)
  • ] In despotic States the fortune of no citizen is secure; and public officers are not more safe than private individuals.†   (source)
  • Despotism then, which is at all times dangerous, is more particularly to be feared in democratic ages.†   (source)
  • I've had enough of despotism.†   (source)
  • Near the basin there was a bourgeois forty years of age, with a prominent stomach, who was holding by the hand a little urchin of five, and saying to him: "Shun excess, my son, keep at an equal distance from despotism and from anarchy."†   (source)
  • *d [Footnote d: A striking instance of the excesses which may be occasioned by the despotism of the majority occurred at Baltimore in the year 1812.†   (source)
  • Despotism of this kind, though it does not trample on humanity, is directly opposed to the genius of commerce and the pursuits of industry.†   (source)
  • It is true, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom by the natural reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a constitutional order was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great regret of the conquerors.†   (source)
  • By such a nation the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual.†   (source)
  • In like manner an aristocracy protects the people from the excesses of despotism, because it always possesses an organized power ready to resist a despot.†   (source)
  • Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it were to a single principle.†   (source)
  • I am inclined to attribute the singular paucity of distinguished political characters to the ever-increasing activity of the despotism of the majority in the United States.†   (source)
  • [Footnote a: See Appendix Y.] I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world.†   (source)
  • Such is not the case with despotic institutions: despotism often promises to make amends for a thousand previous ills; it supports the right, it protects the oppressed, and it maintains public order.†   (source)
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