All 4 Uses of
tyranny
in
Notes from the Underground
- I saw it all, I divined it, but I did not dare to approach you first, because I had an influence over you and was afraid that you would force yourself, from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in your heart a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that ...because it would be tyranny ...it would be indelicate (in short, I launch off at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a la George Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you are pure, you are good, you are my noble wife.†
Chpt 2.8 *
- I cannot get on without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but ... there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.†
Chpt 2.9unconventional spelling: This is the British spelling. Americans spell it tyrannize.
- In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I repeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral superiority.†
Chpt 2.10
- I have never in my life been able to imagine any other sort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking that love really consists in the right—freely given by the beloved object—to tyrannise over her.†
Chpt 2.10
Definition:
harsh and unjust rule