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More "Obsequious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has never seemed to respect anything but organised force. In the sixteenth century it proclaimed Henry VIII the Supreme Head of the Church; in the seventeenth century it passionately upheld the 'right divine of kings to govern wrong'; in the eighteenth and nineteenth it was the obsequious supporter of the squirearchy and plutocracy; and now it grovels before the working-man, and supports every scheme of plundering the minority. In fact, we must distinguish sharply between ecclesiasticism, theology, and religion. The future of ecclesiasticism is a political question. In the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... had already reached the convent of Butuan, and Dabao sent his Manobo Indians to the river Humayan with obsequious appearances of readiness to receive him, but with the peremptory order to kill him. God so arranged that the father visitor, Fray Juan de San Antonio, should pass to the convent of Cagayang without stopping to visit that of Linao. He left a letter for the father prior of Linao which he sent ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... keen sense of wickedness as we mounted the steps in the yellow flare of the flaming arc-light on the Broadway corner not far below us. A heavy, grated door swung open at the practised signal of my friend, and an obsequious negro servant stood bowing and pronouncing his name in the sombre mahogany portal beyond, with its green marble pillars and handsome decorations. A short parley followed, after which we entered, my ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... from hand to hand—tipping was still in style. The obsequious steward gave him further directions for finding the games and recreational rooms, and other points of ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... (Queen Anne's son), during their boyhood. My grandfather and the Duke were playfellows; and the Duke's tutor was Dr. Burnet. One day, when the Doctor went out of the room, the Duke having as usual courted him, and treated him with obsequious civility, young Bathurst expressed his surprise that his Royal Highness should treat a person, whom he disliked as much as he did the Doctor, with so much courtesy and kindness. The Duke replied, 'Do you think I have been so long a pupil of Dr. Burnet's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... fretting me. I was picturesque and beautiful; its successor, so stiff, so heavy, makes a mere mannikin of me. There was no want to which, its complaisance did not lend itself, for indigence is ever obsequious. Was a book covered with dust, one of the lappets offered itself to wipe the dust away. Did the thick ink refuse to flow from the pen, it offered a fold. You saw traced in the long black lines upon it ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... changed suddenly. From the impatient, slightly pompous official, conscious of her position, she became obsequious and even affectionate. Possibly she remembered that the girl was to become the wife of the most powerful man in Moscow, whose word was amply sufficient to send even Gregory Prodol to the execution yard, and Gregory's ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... at the switchboard. The rest of them sat down at the long conference-table. Laviola and Meyerstein and Buhrmann were especially obsequious in seating von Schlichten in Sid Harrington's old chair, and in getting a chair for Paula Quinton. After a while, the jumbled colors on the big screen resolved themselves into an image of Hideyoshi O'Leary, grinning like a pussy-cat ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... elected Podesta of Cadore as far back as 1321.[3] The name Tiziano would appear to have been a traditional one in the family. Among others we find a contemporary Tiziano Vecelli, who is a lawyer of note concerned in the administration of Cadore, keeping up a kind of obsequious friendship with his famous cousin at Venice. The Tizianello who, in 1622, dedicated to the Countess of Arundel an anonymous Life of Titian known as Tizianello's Anonimo, and died at Venice in 1650, ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... discovered. He it was who pooh-poohed the necessity of arming Kimberley, and we accordingly lost no time in setting him up in the game of Siege Aunt Sally as a popular target for our rancour. And pelted he was with right good will. The genial Mr. Quilp, when he found himself deserted by his obsequious flatterer, Sampson Brass, cried out in the seclusion of his apartment at the wharf: "Oh, Sampson, Sampson, if I only had you here!" and he was considerably consoled by his operations with a hammer on the desk in front of him. The feelings of Mr. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... with a setter bitch that accompanied him. Whilst stopping to water his horse, he remarked how amorous the mongrel continued, and how courteous the setter seemed to her admirer. Provoked to see a creature of Dido's high blood so obsequious to such mean addresses, the doctor drew one of his pistols and shot the dog; he then had the bitch carried on horseback for several miles. From that day, however, she lost her appetite, ate little or nothing, had no inclination to ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... saw it was impudently false, childish, sentimental. My head ached, the humidity sapped my strength, at heart I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I was down and out. And seeing this, Temptation, like an obsequious floorwalker, came hurrying forward. ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... BUBB DODINGTON is a lesson in the philosophy of intrigue, or the art of imposing on our fellow men. It is addressed to Bubb Dodington[127] as to an ambitious, obsequious, unscrupulous, and only partially successful courtier; and undertakes to show that, being (more or less) a knave, his conduct also proclaimed him a fool, and lost him the rewards of knavery. Mr. Browning does not concern himself ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... table for you just at present," he was saying. "But perhaps you'll let me take your order,"—and he imitated the obsequious attitude of a waiter. "A little fresh caviar and a clear soup, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... presence was regarded. Now I knew the reason; I had come at the clerk's hour, and the keen eyes of discriminating shopmen had recognised my low estate. I came now under altered auspices. To shop at three in the afternoon is to give proof of leisure; behold, in the eyes of obsequious shopmen I had at once become a wealthy dilettante, nurturing the growth of an expensive library, and the rarest books were laid before me with an ingratiating smile. Let the man who would understand how much the estimates men take of us are based on wealth, or supposed ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... of art seated herself in the most important chair in the room; and when David, after carefully wiping the shoes he had already wiped three times on his way up, entered with a respectful but no wise obsequious bow, she ordered him, with the air of an empress, to shut the door. When he had obeyed, she ordered him, in a similar tone, to be seated; for she sought to mingle condescension ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... plentiful, was coarse; his liquors strong and bad; and more ale and whiskey were expended in his establishment than generous wine. He was loud and arrogant at his own table, and exacted a rich man's homage from his vulgar and obsequious guests. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... renominated John T. Hoffman. It was still the fashion to praise all he said and all he did. Before his arrival the Reformers claimed a majority, but as the up-State delegates crowded his rooms to bend the obsequious knee he reduced these claims to a count, finding only forty-two disobedient members. He was too tactful, however, to appear in the convention hall. His duty was to give orders, and like a soldier he pitched his headquarters near the scene of action, boasting that his friends were everywhere ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... fire-escape, sorr," said Officer Donahue, in a tone of obsequious respect which not only delighted, but astounded Archie, who hadn't known he could talk like that, "accordin' to instructions, when I heard a suspicious noise. I crope in, sorr, and found this duck—found the accused, sorr—in front ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which he wore suspended by a ribband from his buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, Puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a short time settled into our former tranquillity, never probably to be thus interrupted more. I thought myself, however, happy in being ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... entertaining. It was not so much in what he said as his manner of saying it. He was a strange combination of sudden extremes, at one while on a tone of easy but not undignified familiarity with his visitors, as if their equal in position, their superior in years; then abruptly, humble, deprecating, almost obsequious, almost servile; and then again, jerked as it were into pride and stiffness, falling back, as if the effort were impossible, into meek dejection. Still the prevalent character of the man's mood and talk was social, quaint, cheerful. Evidently ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mistaken; this shaven, obsequious, suavely jovial innkeeper is a Neapolitan. He takes his stand in his mosaic-paved hall, and is at the service of all who wish for information about Lago Maggiore, the list of its sights; in a word, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... third expedition to Guiana, which he placed under the command of Captain Leonard Berrie. This navigator was absent until the summer of the following year, when he returned, not having penetrated to Manoa, but confirming with an almost obsequious report Raleigh's most golden dreams. It is at this time, after his return from Cadiz, that we find Sir Walter Raleigh's name mentioned most lavishly by the literary classes in their dedications and eulogistic addresses. Whether his popularity was at the same time ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Guiche, who comes down from Roxane's box, and crosses the pit surrounded by obsequious noblemen, among them the Viscount de Valvert): He pays a fine court, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... upon the object of its hatred, however blameless, and be rewarded for perjury by being allowed the use of our jails as places in which to satisfy its vengeance. Such a view of the law made Sarah Althea the magistrate at Stockton on the 14th of August, and Justice Swain her obsequious amanuensis. Such a view of the law would enable any convict who had just served a term in the penitentiary to treat himself to the luxury of dragging to jail the judge who sentenced him, and keeping him there without bail as long as the magistrate acting ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... with gates made of palm wood, and covered with sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written "L'Entree de Sidi Laid," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables, chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various nationalities, black, bronze, and cafe au lait in colour, offer him perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's priests send him presents from afar; camels ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... the clerk, looking superciliously at the modest attire of the poor widow, and mentally deciding that she was not entitled to much consideration. Had she been richly dressed, he would have been very obsequious, and insisted on sending home the smallest parcel. But there are many who have two rules of conduct, one for the rich, and quite a different one for the poor, and among these was the clerk who was attending upon ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the people at the close of the gorgeous ceremony, he claimed for himself the surname of Felix, as he attributed his success in life to the favor of the gods. All ranks in Rome bowed in awe before their master; and among other marks of distinction which were voted to him by the obsequious Senate, a gilt equestrian statue was erected to his honor before the Rostra, bearing the inscription "Cornelio Sullae ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... certainly, to laugh at Joinville's admiral's flag floating at his foremast, in yonder black ship, with its two thundering great guns at the bows and stern, its busy crew swarming on the deck, and a crowd of obsequious shore-boats bustling round the vessel—and to sneer at the Mogador warrior, and vow that we English, had we been inclined to do the business, would have performed ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The use or the abuse It matters not. Let them all go together, As empty phrases and frivolities, And common as gold-lace upon the collar Of an obsequious lackey. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... insubstantial background faces came and went all day long, faces solemn and obsequious, faces glazed and feverish with emotion; Robert's face with red-rimmed eyes hiding Robert's unutterable sympathy under a thin mask of fright; Kitty's face with an entirely new expression on it; and her own face met them with an incomprehensible and tearless calm. For she was not even sure ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... pleasant dream, and one in which the self-deceived Regent was eagerly encouraged by those around her. The halls and galleries of the Louvre were crowded with animated and obsequious courtiers, and the apartments of Marie herself thronged by the greatest and proudest in the land; all of whom appeared, upon so joyous an occasion, to have laid aside their personal animosities and to live only to obey her behests. Madame had also formed her separate Court, in the midst ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... condition and probable chances of life, in a manner utterly revolting to me. I caught many a glance of disgust bent upon them by the poor fellows who were thus treated as if they were stocks or stones. These women were, while under the eye of the surgeon, obsequious and eager to please, but I thought I saw the "lurking devil in their eyes," and felt ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... the moment of departure. The three machines stood like weird night monsters at the gravelled foot of the wide stairway under the unlighted porte-cochere. It was a dark night, and the lights of the motor-cars cut as sharply through the blackness as knives would cut through solid substance. The obsequious lackey—the automatic genie of the house which belonged to none of the three men,—stood like a graven statue after having helped them in. The fur-coated chauffeurs bulked dimly in their seats. One after the other, like spurred steeds, the cars leaped into the blackness, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... to the Undertaker's Apprentice, a grim, saturnine figure with his grey face, protuberant eyes, and obsequious solemnity, in which lurked a callous smile. The burial of the great, the execution of the wicked, were alike to him. In him Fate seemed to personify life's revenges, its futilities, its calculating ironies. The flag-draped coffin was just about to pass, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... valet and maid to bring the luggage, which an obsequious customs officer cleared at once, he ushered his wife into a ramshackle victoria and told the man to drive to ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... she experienced a sensation of anger that he had not complied with her wish. It was a new experience to have gentlemen, especially Van Dam, so long her obsequious slave, think of anything contrary to her wishes. She also feared that Edith might be right, and that Van Dam designed evil against her. She would not openly admit, even to herself, that this was his purpose, and yet ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... merely waited for the opportunity to get a court that would so pronounce it. The vacancy of the archbishopric of Canterbury enabled him to appoint to it Thomas Cranmer, [Sidenote: Cranmer] the obsequious divine who had first suggested his present plan. Cranmer was a Lutheran, so far committed to the new faith that he had married; he was intelligent, learned, a wonderful master of language, and capable at last of dying for his belief. But that he showed himself pliable to his master's ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... humble ambition to be great men in a small way—who thirst after a little brief authority, that shall render them the terror of the almshouse and the bridewell—that shall enable them to lord it over obsequious poverty, vagrant vice, outcast prostitution, and hunger-driven dishonesty—that shall give to their beck a hound-like pack of catshpolls and bumbailiffs—tenfold greater rogues than the culprits they hunt down! My readers will excuse this sudden warmth, which I confess ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... distance I keep him at; and thinks himself entitled now to call in question my value for him; strengthening his doubts by my former declared readiness to give him up to a reconciliation with my friends; and yet has himself fallen off from that obsequious tenderness, if I may couple the words, which drew from me the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... been the great object of his policy. He had placed himself above the control of the law. By the grant of a subsidy for life he was relieved from the necessity of meeting his parliament; with the aid of his committee, the members of which proved the obsequious ministers of his will, he could issue what new ordinances he pleased; and a former declaration by the two houses, that he was as free as any of his predecessors, was conveniently interpreted to release ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Abel exclaimed one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... entertaining at his country house at Stillbrook. He was a very useful and pleasant personage in a country house. He entertained the young men with queer little anecdotes and grivoises stories on their shooting parties, or in their smoking-room, where they laughed at him and with him. He was obsequious with the ladies of a morning, in the rooms dedicated to them. He walked the new arrivals about the park and gardens, and showed them the carte du pays, and where there was the best view of the mansion, and where the most favorable point to look at the lake: ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the only being who saw Christ face to face and spoke to Him, yet never heard His voice. For penitent sinners, weeping women, prattling children, for the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the rabbis, for the perjured high priest and his obsequious and insolent underling, and for Pilate the pagan, Christ had words—of comfort or instruction, of warning or rebuke, of protest or denunciation—yet for Herod the fox He had but disdainful and kingly ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... now he is austere and haughty and cannot abide familiarity. Once his family were his sole thought, but now he goes about thinking of his fish-hooks all the time. And his wealth makes everybody cringing and obsequious to him. Formerly nobody laughed at his jokes, they being always stale and far-fetched and poor, and destitute of the one element that can really justify a joke—the element of humour; but now everybody laughs and cackles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... design'd; For 'twas his very nature to be kind: Large was his soul, his temper ever free; The best of masters and of men to me: And I who was before decreed by fate, To be made infamous as well as great, With an obsequious diligence obey'd him, Till trusted with his all, and then ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... room and the boy trailed after her with the organ. Both had been brought in from the street. Svidrigailov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything about him was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Philip, was by now an old friend and very obsequious. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... noiselessly after him in the shadow of the gallery, lest you should see me; for I knew you would prevent my going with the man. We descended the stairs, but it was not until we reached the bottom that I saw we had not come down by the way I had ascended. Selim was most obsequious, and seemed ready to do everything for my comfort. As we walked down a narrow street, he presented me with a new fez, and made signs to me to put it on instead of my hat, which he then carefully wrapped in a handkerchief and carried in his hand. At a place near the bridge several caiques were lying ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... sightseeing by this time. Churches, picture galleries, museums were our daily diet. While in Berlin we returned from a drive one day to the hotel and found ourselves the objects of unusual solicitude and attention from the hotel proprietor and his servants. With many obsequious bows we were informed that the Russian Ambassador had called upon us in our absence, and had informed the hotel people that he had a special package from the Czar to deliver to me. He left word that he would be at the hotel at 2 p.m. the following ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... life of me, I didn't know whether that was something nice to eat or to wear; but I have since learned that it is something French, and spelt, b-o-u-d-o-i-r,) and was waited upon by handsome pages, and took her airing on a dappled-gray palfrey, attended by trusty and obsequious grooms; when Sir Knight, followed by his sturdy henchmen, rode forth in gay and gaudy attire, with glittering helmet and cuirass, and entered the lists, and bravely fought for his fair lady's fame. She spoke with fervid eloquence, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... visited many a foreign port with the officers of the ship; he packed a hundred note-books with trite and superfluous observations; he posed, in brief, as the captain of the ship without responsibility. Arrived at Port Jackson, he was acclaimed a hero, and received with obsequious solicitude by the Governor, who promised that his 'future situation should be such as would render his banishment from England as little irksome as possible.' Forthwith he was appointed high constable of Paramatta, and, like Vautrin, who might have taken the youthful Barrington ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... back somewhere. There were eyes; the round inhuman orbs of the dwarf chaks, the faceted stare of the prism eyes of the Toys. The workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it felt longer than a good many miles I've walked. Here and there the dwarfs murmured an obsequious greeting to Miellyn, and she made ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... As those do that forerun the wheels of fate, Not take their dust—that force the virgin hours, Hew life into the likeness of themselves And wrest the stars from their concurrences. So firm his mould; but mine the ductile soul That wears the livery of circumstance And hangs obsequious on its suzerain's eye. For who rules now? The twilight-flitting monk, Or I, that took the morning like an Alp? He held his own, I let mine slip from me, The birthright that no sovereign can restore; And so ironic Time beholds us now Master ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... Alison was missed to-day, having a very valuable head for business. Shaw, the owner of the shop; was standing near the doorway. He felt cross and dispirited. He did not recognize Mrs. Reed when she came in. He thought she was a customer, and bowed in an obsequious way. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... into a fairly wide, well-lighted hall, and an obsequious attendant showed us up a stair, and opening a door, pointed out the place she asked for. Imagine my utter astonishment when we stood together within the gaming room at Bertrand's. What an infernal ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... alleged grandson of his grandfather. A perpetual breeder of trouble; never did a decent day's work the whole trip. Insolent, mutinous, and overbearing, till I went for him with intent to do bodily mischief; then he became extremely obsequious. Like the rest of the foregoing, he resigned ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... pause, Fluttered with fancies in my breast; Obsequious to all decent laws, I felt exceedingly distressed. I knew it rude to enter there With Mrs. V. in such a state; And, 'neath a magisterial air, Felt actually indelicate. I knew the nurse began to grin; I turned to greet my Love. Said she— "Confound your modesty, come in! —What shall ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in favour of Popery (and not likely to do it much service, I should think) written by the King, his brother, and found in his strong-box; and his open display of himself attending mass—the Parliament was very obsequious, and granted him a large sum of money, he began his reign with a belief that he could do what he pleased, and with a determination ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... A waiter of the hotel was strutting across the floor and sputtering out protests against this unseemly use of the sitting-room. The person was the same who the night before had haunted Davy's elbow with his obsequious "Yes, sirs," "No, sirs," and "Beg pardon, sirs"; but the morning had brought him knowledge of Davy's penury, and with that wisdom had come ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... he wished to know who I was, where I came from and what was my business here. Towards the Russians, whether strangers or natives of Siberia, the Yakuts are always on their guard and excessively obsequious. Every Russian, however poorly dressed, is always the 'tojan', the master. Their behaviour towards the Poles, on the other hand, is very friendly. No Yakut ever took the information that I was not a Russian ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... liberty they could wish. Here I imagined the stripping was to stop, but I reckon short; my spark, at the desire of the rest, tenderly begged, that I would not suffer the small remains of a covering to rob them of a full view of my whole person; and for me, who was too flexibly obsequious to dispute any point with them, and who considered the little more that remained as very immaterial, I readily assented to whatever he pleased-In an instant, then, my under petticoat was untied and at my feet, and my shift drawn over my head, so ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... from Southern France, and has been cultivated in England since 1570. It is a Composite plant, and bears the name Calendula from the Latin calendoe, the first days of each month, because it flowers all the year round. Whittier styles it "the grateful and [327] obsequious Marigold." The leaves are somewhat thick and sapid; when chewed, they communicate straightway a viscid sweetness, which is followed by a sharp, penetrating taste, very persistent in the mouth, and not ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the night and gets up, Inger sleeping fine and sound after her long tramp, and out he goes to the cowshed. Now it must not be thought that he talked to Cow in any obsequious and disgustful flattery; no, he patted her decently, and looked her over once more in every part, to see if there should, by chance, be any sign, any mark of her belonging to strange owners. No mark, no sign, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... picture. Some think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the other's manoeuvres with eyes that did not disguise their amusement. He was always ready for a chat in which Monkey liberally be-larded him with sirs, was obsequious and deferential; but he would never cross the door of a public-house, and never, as the little man ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... burning desires her present company did greatly inforce mee, which I esteemed to yeelde mee more comfort, then the North starre in a tempestuous night to the troubled Marriner: more acceptable then that of Melicta to Adonis, or to Phrodites, the obsequious Nymph Peristera: and more delightfull then Dittander to the daughter of Dydo, with the Purple flowre for the wounde of Pius [Ae]neas: And finding my heart strooken and inwardly pricking, secretly filled and compressiuely stuft; recording and gathering together ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... bofe waitin' for you, sah," said that obsequious darky, preceding me through the dark passage. I followed, mounted the old-fashioned wooden steps, and fell into the outstretched arms of the colonel before I could ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for his grandfather was dead, and he was heir to the property. He was, if possible, more haughty than before; but students are not, as a class, ready to respond to claims of superiority upon such grounds as he possessed, and, except by a few who were naturally obsequious, he continued to be called Beauchamp, and by that name I ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... marking shoals, Thelismer Thornton stood at the head of the broad granite steps that led up to the convention hall. An unlighted cigar was set hard between his teeth. Men flocked past him with obsequious greetings, but he merely grunted replies. He was watching for some one. He swore under his breath when he saw his man. General Waymouth and Harlan came up the steps together. He swung between them, and went along ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Let me send you in a few dozen." He offered Mr. Punch an elaborate price-list as he concluded his self-condemnatory verse with an obsequious bow. ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... perfectly decorous, and, as our author was assured, would never "dream of violating the laws of decency and good temper." For the Hindu, on the other hand, as an entirely conventional and artificial creature, obsequious, hypocritical, inhospitable, disdainful of the race on whom he fawns and before whom he trembles as "unclean," Mr. Hornaday has no other feeling than aversion and contempt. He gives an amusing account of his indignation on finding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes, twirled his large moustache, and said in an obsequious voice: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... been the familiar intercourse between the Bishop and his boys, not only the advanced scholars, but the last and newest comers. The kindly and friendly disposition of the Melanesians leads to a great deal of free and equal familiarity even where there are chiefs, and the obsequious familiarity of which one hears in India is here quite unknown. Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether other Melanesians live in the same familiarity with their missionaries—e.g., Carry, wife of Wadrokala, writes ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boys. Beth went with her mother to see the old lady off at the station. On account of their connections the little party attracted attention, and Mrs. Caldwell, feeling her importance, expected the officials to be obsequious, which they were; and, in return, she also expected Aunt Victoria to make proper acknowledgment of their attentions. She considered that sixpence at least was necessary to uphold the dignity of the family on such occasions; but, to her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... for these silly reports, but, if any special formalities were prescribed, Mr. Chamberlain brushed them aside, and simply conducted himself with quiet, easy grace, always calm and self-possessed, and never fussy or needlessly obsequious. ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... bedchamber, so as to have him constantly about his person. Such was his favour that every one pressed around him to obtain their suits with the King. He received rich presents; the ladies courted his attention; the greatest lords did him the most obsequious and disgusting homage."[61] He afterwards formed that connection with Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, which resulted in her divorce from her husband, and, subsequently, on his marrying Lady Essex, the King made him Earl of Somerset, that the lady might not lose in rank. On the circumstances ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... associated the idea of punishment, vindictiveness, revenge. I remembered again suddenly my odd notion that she sought to keep her present mistress here, a prisoner in this bleak and comfortless house, and that really, in spite of her obsequious silence, she was intensely opposed to the change of thought that had reclaimed Mabel to a happier ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... came, and never spoke; but the landlord saw one evening the tip of a bushy white tail protruding from beneath the stranger's rags. The sight aroused strange surmises and weird hopes. From that night he began to treat the mysterious visitor with obsequious kindness. But another month passed before the latter spoke. Then what he ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Mrs. Day?" hastily interposes an obsequious Mr. Gibbon. He was assiduous in his attentions on the ladies, ever anxiously polite and kind. That he found his happiness among them and was eager to gain and to retain their favour he plainly showed. If he sometimes jarred on their fastidiousness he ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... "Grand March" had been inaugurated with full pomp. Sid Waters, as president, was sitting in the go-cart, his head ornamented with a huge smothering three-cornered hat, made out of a New York daily. Rick Grimes, as governor, was walking behind the go-cart, now and then giving the "chariot" an obsequious push, but impatiently awaiting his turn for a ride. Billy Grimes and Pip Peckham were serving as horses, and soldiers also, pulling along the president and sharing the broom-handle between them. Whether that handle might be a "musket" or a "spear," no one ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... The court was obsequious to the Proconsul, afraid of Rome; jealous that the mob should have been more forward than the magistracy. Had the city moved sooner, as soon as the edict came, there would have been no rising, no riot. Already ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... because in childhood circumstance and the black art of education alike conspire to make the worker humble in heart and to take the crown and sceptre from his spirit, and his elders are already tamed and obsequious. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... be disappointed. Maggie's rather silly, obsequious smile concealed but for a moment the ineffable tragedy that had lain ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... woman," the obsequious attendant said, "and her room the best in the house; she would not remain much longer, and when she was gone the young lady could have it alone, or share it with her companions. It contained two beds, of course, besides a few ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... won from loveless hearts (12) are felt to be devoid of grace, and embraces forcibly procured are sweet no longer, so the obsequious cringings of alarm are hardly honours. Since how shall we assert that people who are forced to rise from their seats do really rise to honour those whom they regard as malefactors? or that these others who step aside to let their betters pass them in the street, desire thus ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... as matter of interest to the public, for whose presence the "world" had postponed its fetes, might now travel hundreds of miles without observation or inquiry. He upon whose steps had waited a crowd of obsequious attendants, now found himself with one follower, whose tone of independence hardly permitted him to call him servant. In cities, where he would still have been surrounded by those conventional distinctions of which he had himself been deprived, the sense of a great loss would have been ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... sir, you have ever found them obsequious and slavish and ready to abet you in many acts which I regret that you ever committed. There is the case of that unfortunate man, Trailcudgel, and many similar ones; were they not as active and cheerful! in bearing out your very harsh orders ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... windows, a whole secret hell of cruelty and darkness, such as our Christian land knows nothing of, which we can never understand, but which for ever lies waiting for the moment to burst forth, under the obsequious and servile behaviour of the natives of India. Since that time, I confess, I have never regarded, nor can regard, them as my fellow-beings; I look upon all faith or mercy shown to them as wasted, and were it possible for ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Russia has ever been our friend, England our foe. The sympathies of Russia are with Republican France, with Republican America—the hand of England has ever been against the world. She has ruthlessly despoiled wherever and whenever she possessed the power, while slavishly obsequious when confronted by equal force. "Human liberty," your gran-dam! How long has it been since England repealed the Test Act?—since she granted political equality to Jews?—to Catholics? In this respect she even legged behind ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and mortals of a wood near Athens. In the days of divine sovereignty, the jester, we see, was by all odds the wise man of the palace; the real fools were those he made his butt—the foppish pages, the obsequious courtiers, the swaggering guardsmen, the insolent nobles, and not seldom majesty itself. And thus it is that painters and romancers have loved to draw him. Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric, or ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... great nuisance as a rule, but that she had a pet friend, a "dear docile creature, so useful with the dogs," and he was coming back by the 6.30 train. You would have laughed, if you could have seen him when he did arrive! A fair humble thing, with a squeaky voice and obsequious manners. He had been up to town to get the dogs new muzzles, as the muzzling order has just been put in force in this county. It appears Lady Theodosia has him always here, and he attends to the dogs for a home, but I would rather be ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... who had asked some friends into their balcony to see the carriages go to the levee. Nothing daunted, Mr. Streatfield questioned and questioned again. What was the old gentleman's name?—Dimsdale.—Could he see Mr. Dimsdale's servant?—The obsequious shopkeeper had no doubt that he could: Mr. Dimsdale's servant should be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... in, a footman in livery and the major-domo. Your average Carioca servant is either fawning or covertly insolent. These two were obsequious. The footman carried a tray with a bottle, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... by incidents of rather a suspicious kind. Gifford, the manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre, professing to have received from some anonymous writer a play of singular scurrility, carried the work to the prime minister. The obsequious manager was rewarded with one thousand pounds for his patriotic conduct, and the libellous nature of the play he had surrendered was made the excuse for the legislation that ensued. It was freely observed at the time, however, that Gifford had profited ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... servile race, Who, in mere want of fault, all merit place; Who blind obedience pay to ancient schools, Bigots to Greece, and slaves to musty rules; With solemn consequence declared that none Could judge that cause but Sophocles alone. Dupes to their fancied excellence, the crowd, Obsequious to the sacred dictate, bow'd. 190 When, from amidst the throng, a youth stood forth,[20] Unknown his person, not unknown his worth; His look bespoke applause; alone he stood, Alone he stemm'd the mighty ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... distance from the school, and explained that he would guide him by a short cut, leaving the driver to take the dog-cart to a farm where it could be put up. The unsuspecting inspector agreed, and they set off, the obsequious dominie carrying his bag. He led his victim into another glen, the hills round which had hidden their heads in mist, and then slyly remarked that he was afraid they had lost their way. The minister, who liked to attend the examination, reproved the dominie for ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... down close to the rostrum whence she could watch the sale, and mayhap make a bid for a purchase on her own account; the rich Roman matrons with large private fortunes and households of their own, imperious and independent, were the object of grave deference and of obsequious courtesy—not altogether unmixed with irony, on the part of the young ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Cassel-Nassau were always awed and stiff in her society; their minds were harassed by the fear lest they should be guilty of some appalling breach of etiquette. The manner of the Twins, therefore, was a pleasant change for her. They were polite, but quite unconstrained; and the obsequious people by whom she had always been surrounded had never displayed that engaging quality, save when, like the baroness, they were safely ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... prosperity is too deeply rooted to be overturned by the malignant fury of vengeful despots. It must be evident that the power of the governor of this colony is sufficiently leviathan, uncontrolled as he is by a council, and possessed as he is of an incontrovertible right to nominate the most obsequious of his creatures as jurymen on all trials, whether of a civil or criminal nature, to endanger the property and life of every individual under his government. Nor should it here be forgotten that there has been a governor who, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... and if Laura had spoken as Helen hoped, who knows what temptations Arthur Pendennis might have been spared, or what different trials he would have had to undergo? He might have remained at Fairoaks all his days, and died a country gentleman. But would he have escaped then? Temptation is an obsequious servant that has no objection to the country, and we know that it takes up its lodging in hermitages as well as in cities; and that in the most remote and inaccessible desert it keeps company ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... obsequious gravity, and waved me to the visitor's seat on a raised platform. "You will be asked to speak," he said, "and I beg that you will tell the boys of the wonderful chemical discoveries that won you the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... chief of the captors, when the prisoners have been placed in obsequious attitudes before the lesser mandarins, "thus the matter chanced: The honourable Wang, although disguised under the semblance of an applewoman, had discreetly concealed himself by the roadside, all but his head being underneath a stream of stagnant water, when, at the eighth hour of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... correspondence. In the generation before his birth, a French lady, Madame de Sevigne, had, with an affectionate industry, found her chief occupation and pleasure in keeping her daughters in the provinces fully acquainted with every event which interested or entertained Louis XIV. and his obsequious Court; and in the first years of the eighteenth century a noble English lady, whom we have already mentioned, did in like manner devote no small portion of her time to recording, for the amusement and information of her daughter, her sister, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... pursuing his own way, conscious that the task before him involved difficulty and danger. He was aware that Haight, notwithstanding his obsequious politeness, was one of his worst enemies, and would injure him in every underhanded way within his power, as, beneath the smooth, smiling exterior, Houston could detect a deep, subtle malignity toward himself; and he rightly judged that Jim Maverick, the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... good deal older and graver, but almost as handsome as ever; only somewhat changed in mind. He had become a zealous clergyman, and his soul appeared to be in his work. He was distant and very respectful to Lady Bassett; I might say obsequious. Seemed almost ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... "but I in my service must be more pointedly obsequious, than thou in thy plainness art bound to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... charms, Triumphs o'er reason: in her look she bears A paradise of ever-blooming sweets; Fair as the first idea beauty prints In the young lover's soul; a winning grace Guides every gesture, and obsequious love Attends on all ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... his wife came, and looked remarkably calm for a couple leading a flock of fellow humans to perdition. Captain Elkanah Wingate and Mrs. Wingate came last of all and marched majestically to the seats reserved for them by the obsequious Mr. Tidditt. The hall lights were dimmed. The curtain rose. And George Kent, very handsome and manly as "March Gale," was seen ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... marshes, alive with wild fowl, at the distant green of waving corn, the flower-embowered great house, the white quarters from which arose many little spirals of savory smoke, and a bland and childlike content took possession of their souls. With eager and obsequious "Yes, Mas'rs" they obeyed the overseer's objurgatory indications as ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... he may help me in procuring pardon for Ruperto. Luckily my good looks, if I have any, never received notice from the grand colonel, who has eyes only for you; so he's not jealous of Ruperto. As the obsequious servant of his master, hostile to him no doubt; but that might be overcome by your doing ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... box to open the door. He was conscious of a small grill with a yellow face peeping out, backed by flickering lantern light, of a rainy, windswept compound, with a shaft of light from an open door flooding the courtyard. Then he was inside a warm, bright anteroom, with an obsequious China-boy relieving him of overcoat and muffler, and he became aware of many big, fur-lined overcoats, hanging on pegs on the wall. Beyond, in the adjoining room, were two long tables, the players seated with their backs to him, absorbed. Only a few people were present, for the night was ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... character had come with his misfortunes. So long as he had money to spend and could ride, arrogant and high-handed, over the obsequious shopkeepers who benefited by his prodigality, and the poor ranchers who had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first seen him. She adored his imperious ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... upon his second term with new courage and invigorated authority. Twice certified, who should dare doubt his competency? Even Joshua was civil, and lesser louts of course obsequious; though the girls took more liberties, for they feel even at that early age, that influence is ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... successive imitations of successive actions, and why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... judge for ourselves as to the evils of Monte Carlo, we followed the stream of people through the gilded and handsome suite of ante-rooms, to the gambling-saloons. The obsequious lacqueys opened the doors to all who wished to pass, and no questions were asked, though I believe you are supposed to have your private visiting ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... and the fare he may pass days on board, and, every day, and sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship. He oscillates between the cabin, where he is entertained with strange meats, and the trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures of shopping on a scale to match his person. A few obsequious attendants squat by the house door, awaiting his least signal. In the boat, which has been suffered to drop astern, one or two of his wives lie covered from the sun under mats, tossed by the short sea of the lagoon, and enduring agonies of heat and tedium. This severity ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his master's palace neither saluted nor welcomed by the once obsequious slaves in the outer lodge. Neither harps nor singing-boys, neither woman's ringing laughter nor man's bacchanalian glee, now woke the echoes in the lonely halls. The pulse of pleasure seemed to have throbbed its last ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... instance, coming along the road. He used to pass you with a jaunty, gallant, curious look as if you were seventeen and he were saying, "There's a girl who ought to be married. Why isn't she?" He had just sidled past them, abashed and obsequious, a little afraid of the big man. Even Mrs. Belk ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... nearly thirty years of life that was worse than death, the sun shone again for her. One day her dungeon door flew open, and to the bowing of obsequious courtiers, the prisoner was conducted to a sumptuous apartment. "The walls were hung with splendid stuffs; the table was covered with gold-plate; ten thousand roubles awaited her in a casket. Courtiers stood ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... article—no, not the genuine article at all, we must go to Africa for that—but the sort of creatures generations of slavery have made them: obsequious, trickish, lazy and ignorant, yet kind-hearted, merry-tempered, quick to feel and accept the least token of the brotherly love which is slowly teaching the white hand to grasp the black, in this great struggle for the ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... thick-set, healthy peasant, of middle height, with a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising, especially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one side, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was for ever dreaming of improving ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bows, our old friend, who had been so obsequious to Admiral Bell, entered the room, and begged to know what orders the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... schooling is chiefly seen by the activity with which the young persons emigrate, and the success attending it; and at home, by a general orderliness and gravity, with habits of independence and self-respect: nothing obsequious or fawning is ever to be ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... fame, As man's sole joys, shall find no joy in him; Yet of far nobler kind His silent pleasures prove. For not unmarked by him the ways of men; Nor yet to him the ample page unknown, Where, traced by Nature's hand, Is many a pleasing line. Oh! when the world's dull children bend the knee, Meanly obsequious, to some mortal god, It yields no vulgar joy Alone to stand aloof; Or when they jostle on wealth's crowded road, And swells the tumult on the breeze, 'tis sweet, Thoughtful, at length reclined, To list the wrathful hum. What though the weakly gay affect to scorn The loitering dreamer of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... The obsequious Mr Pecksniff proffered his arm. The old man took it. Turning at the door, he said to Martin, waving ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... followed him into a small, dimly lighted room, and noted that the landlord came to wait on them with obsequious attention. Two peons were drinking in a corner, but they went out when the landlord made a sign. Jake thought this curious, but Don Sebastian filled his glass and gave him ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... O'erturning every purpose; then at last Sit down dismay'd, and leave the entangled scene For Scorn to sport with. Such then is the abode Of Folly in the mind; and such the shapes In which she governs her obsequious ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... power will be in the hands of those who have acquired wealth and influence through a great position in industry or finance. Such men are in the habit, in private life, of finding their will seldom questioned; they are surrounded by obsequious satellites and are not infrequently engaged in conflicts with Trade Unions. Among their friends and acquaintances are included those who hold high positions in government or administration, and these men equally are liable ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... ill-omened blood, nor even the royal crown which now, for the first time, was set upon his huge, round head, could hide from those who watched that this bridegroom was ill at ease. Even as he stood there, bowing in answer to the obsequious shouts of the multitude, the sceptre in his fat hand shook, and his red lips blanched and trembled. Still he smiled and bowed on, till at length the shouting died away, and quiet ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... the obsequious senators who met to decide the fate of the memorable turbot. His fourth satire frequently reminds us of the great political poem of Dryden; but it was not written till Domitian had fallen: and it wants something of the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shaken, their spirits cowed, their hopes shattered—the Egyptian subjects of Cambyses made up their minds to submission. The Oriental will generally kiss the hand that smites him, if it only smite hard enough. Egypt became now for a full generation the obsequious slave of Persia, and gave no more trouble to her subjugator than the weakest or the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... one approached the marquis, who received them with very unequal courtesy. To the common herd he was sharp, dry, and bitter; to the great he was obsequious, yet with a certain grace and manliness of bearing that elevated even the character of servility; and all the while, as he bowed low to a Medina or a Guzman, there was a half imperceptible mockery lurking in the corners of his mouth, which seemed to imply that while his policy cringed his heart ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which now approach'd, Ulysses in wing'd accents thus remark'd. Eumaeus! certain, either friend of thine Is nigh at hand, or one whom well thou know'st; 10 Thy dogs bark not, but fawn on his approach Obsequious, and the sound of feet I hear. Scarce had he ceased, when his own son himself Stood in the vestibule. Upsprang at once Eumaeus wonder-struck, and from his hand Let fall the cups with which he was employ'd Mingling rich wine; to his young Lord he ran, His forehead kiss'd, kiss'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... day; and here the night was spent, the two white men being housed in a capacious tent, most luxuriously furnished and adorned, in which, shortly after their arrival, a meal of so elaborate a description, that it might almost be termed a banquet, was served to them by a staff of reverentially obsequious servants, and in which they subsequently slept the sleep of the just, on great piles of soft rugs spread upon ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Women's Christian Association," he commanded the obsequious young Valentine who drove the big Chambers. Mr. Vandeford was never sufficiently unoccupied of mind to pilot a car in and out of New York traffic. For half a second the young ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... is the most objectionable, because it is the most demoralizing of all. Where such discrimination obtains, every shipper is in the power of the railroad corporation. It makes of independent citizens of a free country fawning parasites and obsequious sycophants who accept favors from railroad managers and in return do their bidding, however humiliating this may be. The shipper, realizing that the manager's displeasure or good will toward him finds practical expression in his daily freight bills, finally loses, like the serf, all self-esteem ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... ourselves across the spine of Italy, from the plains of Eridanus to the seashore of Etruscan Luna. I had secured a carriage and extra post-horses the night before; therefore we found no obstacles upon the road, but eager drivers, quick relays, obsequious postmasters, change, speed, perpetual movement. The road itself is a noble one, and nobly entertained in all things but accommodation for travellers. At Berceto, near the summit of the pass, we stopped just half an hour, to lunch off a mouldy hen and six ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a prompt and obsequious obedience. The Fighting MacDonalds individually must ever be treated with respect, but the Fighting MacDonalds in a body! Surely not the most vivid Orangeman could blame him in his extremity. Perhaps the distracted landlord felt that, after all, here was a providential ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... all the people around patronized it. Alison was missed to-day, having a very valuable head for business. Shaw, the owner of the shop; was standing near the doorway. He felt cross and dispirited. He did not recognize Mrs. Reed when she came in. He thought she was a customer, and bowed in an obsequious way. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... manual, of their approbation of a law outraging the principles of Democracy, as well as of common justice and humanity. Each and all of these men were rejected, and the slaveholders selected an individual whom they were well assured would be their obsequious tool, but who had offered ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... only the envy, but the trifling ambition of Madame Cheron, who, since she could not rival the splendour of her festivities, was desirous of being ranked in the number of her most intimate friends. For this purpose she paid her the most obsequious attention, and made a point of being disengaged, whenever she received an invitation from Madame Clairval, of whom she talked, wherever she went, and derived much self-consequence from impressing a belief on her general ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... respecting the original of his picture. Some think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... information, such as that the mules will arrive presently—two cents—warm day, sir—two cents—take you four hours to make the ascent—two cents. And so they go. They crowd you —infest you—swarm about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look sneaking and mean, and obsequious. There is no office too degrading for them to perform, for money. I have had no opportunity to find out any thing about the upper classes by my own observation, but from what I hear said about them I judge that what they lack in one or two ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Goliath, who often makes out of humble individuals efficient instruments to push forward the condition of mankind towards that destiny which His merciful will has assigned to it—His will, against which neither the proud ambition of despots, nor the skill of their obsequious tools can prevail—in Him I put my trust and go cheerfully on in my duties. I am in the right way to benefit the cause, noble and just and great, to which I devoted my life; for if there were no success in what I am engaged, the despots would neither fear, nor hate, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... looking superciliously at the modest attire of the poor widow, and mentally deciding that she was not entitled to much consideration. Had she been richly dressed, he would have been very obsequious, and insisted on sending home the smallest parcel. But there are many who have two rules of conduct, one for the rich, and quite a different one for the poor, and among these was the clerk who was ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... all the characteristics of the true Jean Baptiste. Neither fatigue, exposure, nor hard labor could ever impair his cheerfulness and gayety, or his obsequious politeness to his bourgeois; and when night came he would sit down by the fire, smoke his pipe, and tell stories with the utmost contentment. In fact, the prairie was his congenial element. Henry Chatillon was of a different stamp. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... sight of money Hans at once became the most obsequious of hosts, and so would remain while it lasted. But Dennis saw that the moment it was gone his purchased courtesy would change, and he trembled at his narrow escape from being thrust out into the wintry streets, friendless, penniless, to beg or starve—equally ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Miss Christine did not put her feet into Cousin Kitty's bandbox, to the demolition of her bonnet; but that both bonnet and cap survived to grace the heads of their respective proprietors. The only mishap that occurred, dear reader, befell your obsequious servitor, who went to bed with a sick headache, caused really by her acute sympathy with the misfortunes of the hero and heroine of our aunt's story, but which Miss Christine grossly attributed ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... They were, indeed, liable to no other construction respectful to him, or trustful to his honor and sincerity; nor can there be a doubt that they would have been quoted hereafter as a precedent. No man living could have imagined that the word 'approved' could be construed to mean either doubt or obsequious submission to the will of others; and it is with extreme regret that the committee see, in the President's exposition of his reasons for signing an act of Congress, the open avowal that, in his vocabulary, used in the performance of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Lawless[8] called on Arbuthnot to ask him some question about the Deccan prize money, in which a brother of his has an interest. He entered upon politics, was very obsequious in his manner, extravagant in praise of the Duke, quite shocked that he should have fought a duel, and said, 'Sir, we are twelve of us here, and not one but what would fight for him any day in the week.' He said that some ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in society, and whose studies and pleasures seemed to them alike incomprehensible. Some habits of hasty irritation he had contracted, partly from an early disappointment in love, but yet more by the obsequious attention paid to him by his maiden sister and his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... He is sitting up in his cot, languidly permitting himself to be adored, waited upon by obsequious attendants, and fed upon the fat of the land. This is the period when outsiders cry gushingly to an invalid's relations, "How happy you must be!" But as a cold matter of fact they usually feel very depressed and snappy and bored. This sounds ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of mankind: None are supinely good: thro' care and pain And various arts, the steep ascent we gain. This is the scene of combat, not of rest, Man's is laborious happiness at best; On this side death his dangers never cease, His joys are joys of conquest, not of peace. If then, obsequious to the will of fate, And bending to the terms of human state, When guilty joys invite us to their arms, When beauty smiles, or grandeur spreads her charms, The conscious soul would this great scene display, Call down th' immortal ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the method of selection as I guessed it. "He forced his way into the F.O. and in an obsequious tone, which you and I, Geraldine, would be ashamed to adopt, begged for the favour of a bag to carry with him. If the KING had known about it he would rather have sent his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... Magazine. Neither my home nor my family was by any means "typical," which so often means very untypical. This is specially true of the Family. They were not in my time, and, indeed, never have been, persons "complete with" fox-hounds, racers, cellars of port, mortgages, gaming or elections debts, obsequious tenantry, and a brutal enforcement of the Game Laws, varied by the semi-fraudulent enclosure of the poor man's common. With such rural magnificoes, if they ever existed in that form, which I greatly doubt, we had nothing in common. Even when reduced to reasonable ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... my marvel: not that we Should master with desire the sundering world, We who bore in our hearts such destiny, There was no force knew to be dangerous Against it, but must turn its malice clean Into obsequious favour worshipping us. Rather hath this astonisht me, that we Have not for ever lived in this high hour. Only to be twin elements of joy In this extravagance of Being, Love, Were our divided natures shaped in twain; And to this hour the whole world must consent. Is it not very ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... at him. 'May I venture to ask you, most reverend knight-errant,' he began in an obsequious voice, 'these enigmatical words you have deigned to utter as the result of some exercise of your reflecting faculties, or under the influence of a momentary necessity to start the vibration in the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... has been with the newspapers, which have ever been the obsequious reflex of distempered public opinion, siding always with the strong and powerful; so that in 1831, when the "Liberator" (published in Boston by the intrepid and patriotic Garrison) made its appearance, it was a lone David among a swarm ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... fellow of twenty-one or two, booted and spurred, his dark eyes flashing, his face tingling with the sting of the early morning air, dashed past the obsequious darky and burst into Temple's presence with the rush of a north-west breeze. He had ridden ten miles since he vaulted into the saddle, had never drawn rein uphill or down, and neither he nor the thoroughbred pawing the mud outside ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... when the door was bluntly opened and then partly closed. He faced around in amazement at the audacity of anyone boldly intruding into a bath room—the only place left in Germany for the self-respecting Naked Cult. His eyes fell upon another uniformed emissary from the Police. This one was very obsequious and bowed and scraped his ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... not the least instance of the Queen's address, that she had contrived that one of her principal attendants, Lady Suffolk, should unite in her own person the two apparently inconsistent characters, of her husband's mistress, and her own very obsequious and complaisant confidant. By this dexterous management the Queen secured her power against the danger which might most have threatened it—the thwarting influence of an ambitious rival; and if she submitted to the mortification ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sooner entered a private chamber, to which Goodman Crane himself had condescended to usher them, and dispatched their worthy and obsequious host on the errand of procuring wine and refreshment, than Wayland Smith began to give vent to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... four-and-twenty summers he withdrew; And thither took with him his motherless Babe, [15] And one domestic for their common needs, An aged woman. It consoled him here To attend upon the orphan, and perform 280 Obsequious service to the precious child, Which, after a short time, by some mistake Or indiscretion of the Father, died.— The Tale I follow to its last recess Of suffering or of peace, I know not which: 285 Theirs be the blame who caused the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... anything was required to convince it of the value of the possession it was the fact that it was being constantly pushed off. To a firm-minded cat this alone gave the counter a value difficult to overestimate, and sometimes an obsequious customer fell into raptures over its beauty. This was soothing, and the animal allowed customers of this type to scratch it ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... The girls shook hands primly. Peggy and Priscilla wished Claire a pleasant journey. Claire replied by effusive thanks. At length, to the relief of all three, she handed her suitcase to an obsequious porter and stepped ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... the empire, and giving peace, security, and happiness to his country by the power of his arms and the wisdom of his administration, the poet has been called a traitor to the nobler principles of his youth—an obsequious flatterer of a man whom he ought to have denounced to posterity as a tyrant. Adroit esclave is the epithet applied to him in this respect by Voltaire, who idolises him as a moralist and poet. But it carries little weight in the mouth of the cynic who could fawn with more ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... of art, the slight blunder to which we refer could not have occurred. The Spitz-dog noses, instead of smelling Rat, would have smelt its anagram, Art. Its influence would at once have been acknowledged by them, and they would have backed out from the August Presence with obsequious genuflexions. It becomes a question of moment, then, whether a course of lectures upon art should not henceforth be considered an indispensable branch of the education of our excellent detectives. We would not limit the proposed extension of their education, however, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... To the hasty and obsequious greetings of the landlord De Lacy gave only a short nod and ordered lodging for himself and men. Choosing a small table in the farthest corner and in the shadow of the big chimney, he slowly sipped his wine. There were eight others in ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... glimpse of him next morning, coming out of the hotel bureau. He was speaking to the manager in French, and had evidently given instructions concerning me, for I found myself preceded by an obsequious waiter to quite a charming bedroom on the second floor, while the "English breakfast" placed before me later in the coffee-room was of a size and character that in those days I did not often enjoy. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... brought his pony round—or what you will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid, and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing service. My dear, good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask for your newspaper, and Jeames says, "I'm reading it, and jest beg not to be disturbed;" or suppose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks, "You great, big, 'ulking fellar, ain't you ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Durwan, you think, will be ready with profound and obsequious salaam. Not so; he draws himself up to the very last of his extraordinary inches, and touches his forehead lightly with the fingers of his right hand, only slightly inclining his head,—a not more than affable salute,—almost with a quality of concession,—gracious as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... her history. The disasters of her fleets and armies abroad were the natural fruits of almost universal corruption at home. The admirals and generals, chosen by a German king and a subservient ministry, proved worthy of the mode of their selection. An obsequious Parliament served but to give the apparent sanction of the people to the selfish and despotic measures of the crown. Many of the best blood and of the highest chivalry of the land still held loyal devotion to the exiled ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... jumps by the other riders; but the stones they had kicked down were almost as agitating to Pilot's ruffled nerves as those that still remained in position. She found it the last straw that she should have to wait for the obsequious runners to tear these out of her way, while the galloping backs in front of her grew smaller and smaller, and the adulatory condolences of her assistants became more and more hard to endure. She literally hurled the shilling at them as she set off once more to try to recover ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a stranger. First may be remarked the substantial Dutchman, with his pretty, smiling, round-faced, and particularly well-dressed daughter: then the knot of 'Qui hi's,' sent to the Cape, per doctor's certificate, to husband their threadbare constitutions, and lavish their rupees: next the obsequious, smirking, money-making China-man, with his poking shoulders, and whip-like pig-tail: then the stout, squat Hottentots—who resemble the Dutch in but one characteristic!—and half castes of every intermediate tint between black and white. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... literati had a custom which Mackay found very interesting. One proud scholar marching down the street and scarcely noticing the obsequious bows of his inferiors, would meet another equally proud scholar. Each would salute the other in an exceedingly grand manner, and then one would spin off a quotation from the writings of Confucius or some ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... seated themselves at a table and an obsequious waiter began to put ice and then water into their glasses. "Now, what would you like ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... conformity both by word and writing, and for that purpose sent instructions to all the presbyteries within his jurisdiction. The people of Edinburgh were also threatened by the bishop's thunder; for on the first communion finding them not so obsequious as he would have had them, he threatened that, if life was continued, he should either make the best of them communicate kneeling or quit his gown; and who doubts of his intention to do as he had promised? ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the fifteen men who had stood across the road to bar our progress had their fifteen guns ready to shoot if our stop had not been instanter. Information had been sent from Hannover that we were suspects. Who sent it we are never likely to know—the obsequious hotel proprietor, the owner of the blue eyes, the smiling boy officer, or the insolent waiter. No matter, we were suspects, and the worst conclusions were drawn when we arrived in a car without lights, and when I emerged into the flaring ring of light in a rose-red coat—a Russian colour, ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... any other race. The family thus separated from the rest of the nation, was distinguished by peculiarities in dress and ornaments, which it was unlawful for others to assume. The monarch himself appeared with ensigns of royalty reserved for him alone; and received from his subjects marks of obsequious homage and respect, which approached almost to adoration. But among the Peruvians, this unbounded power of their monarchs seems to have been uniformly accompanied with attention to the good of their subjects. It was not the rage of conquests, if we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... is a lesson in the philosophy of intrigue, or the art of imposing on our fellow men. It is addressed to Bubb Dodington[127] as to an ambitious, obsequious, unscrupulous, and only partially successful courtier; and undertakes to show that, being (more or less) a knave, his conduct also proclaimed him a fool, and lost him the rewards of knavery. Mr. Browning does not concern himself with the moralities ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... being cast all that was left to be done was to rush through the voting in the Provinces. Obsequious officials returned to the use of the old Imperial phraseology and Yuan Shih-kai, even before his "election," was memorialized as though he were the legitimate successor of the immense line of Chinese sovereigns who ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... taken her seat, however, than there was the dog close to the car, timid, obsequious, winning, with his wisp of a head cocked on one side. We drove on, and he followed pertinaciously. Mildly adjured by the Countess to "go home, little dog," he came on the faster. Many adventures he had, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... moved among the guests, receiving, as they passed, obsequious salutations, which to Angelique seemed a foretaste of royalty. She had seen the gardens of the palace many times before, but never illuminated as now. The sight of them so grandly decorated filled her with admiration of their ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... since I've seen your honor at The Jolly Grig," murmured Marmaduke, with a certain obsequious familiarity that he reserved for old and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... itself, no insult, no mutilation; but in every house they entered, that blow fell on man, woman, and child,—nothing that had a white skin was spared. From every house they took arms and ammunition, and from a few money. On every plantation they found recruits: those dusky slaves, so obsequious to their master the day before, so prompt to sing and dance before his Northern visitors, were all swift to transform themselves into fiends of retribution now; show them sword or musket, and they grasped it, though it were ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... was honour knew, And with obsequious majesty approv'd My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower I led her blushing like the morn; all heaven And happy constellations on that hour Shed their selectest influence; the earth Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill; Joyous the birds; ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... sleeve of, avaler les couleuvres [Fr.], keep time to, fetch and carry, do the dirty work of. go with the stream, worship the rising sun, hold with the hare and run with the hounds. Adj. servile, obsequious; supple, supple as a glove; soapy, oily, pliant, cringing, abased, dough-faced, fawning, slavish, groveling, sniveling, mealy-mouthed; beggarly, sycophantic, parasitical; abject, prostrate, down on ones marrowbones; base, mean, sneaking; crouching &c v.. Adv. hat in hand, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... advancers of schisms, heresies, and oppressions of the church." [45] He cites another passage from a Greek writer, and plainly insinuates, that it is justly applicable to Her Majesty's reign: "Princes choose such men to that charge [of a bishop] who may be their slaves, and in all things obsequious to what they prescribe; and may lie at their feet, and have not so much as a thought contrary to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... without any enthusiasm for the religion she intended to restore in England, and prayed to the Virgin in her own private Chapel, while she was undoing the work of her Catholic sister Mary. The obsequious apologies to the Pope were withdrawn, but the Reformation she was going to espouse, was not the fiery one being fought for in Germany and France. It was mild, moderate, and like her father's, more political than religious. The point she made ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... not sure it would have made much difference. We were deadly polite to each other, but I hinted in a veiled way that, if he were concealing any secret from me, the French authorities might have something to say to him. I was obsequious about the great power of Islam in general, and his in particular, but I suggested that France was the upper dog just now. Maybe his guilty conscience made him think I knew more than I did. I hope he expects to have the whole power of France ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Rust, fiercely; 'what cared I for gold? Ho! ho! Michael Rust values gold but as dross; but it is the world; the cringing, obsequious, miser-hearted world, that kisses the very feet of wealth, which set Michael Rust on; it was this that lashed him forward; but not for himself. I married a woman whom I loved,' said he, in a quick, stern tone; 'she abandoned ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... life of this scared and enervated lady—whose existence might have been developed to so much higher purpose but for the ignoble ambition of her parents and the conventions of the time—was one of obsequious amativeness towards a perverse and cruel man. Little personal events came to her in quick succession—half a dozen, eight, nine, ten such events,—in brief; she bore him no less than eleven children in the eight following years, but half of them came prematurely into the world, or ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... peeping out, backed by flickering lantern light, of a rainy, windswept compound, with a shaft of light from an open door flooding the courtyard. Then he was inside a warm, bright anteroom, with an obsequious China-boy relieving him of overcoat and muffler, and he became aware of many big, fur-lined overcoats, hanging on pegs on the wall. Beyond, in the adjoining room, were two long tables, the players seated with their backs ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... that candour, he is sometimes blinded into discovering truth unawares; but nothing can be more futile and fastidious than the meagre notes of the original actor, fresh woven and discoloured by the hands of an obsequious servant, who conceals all the facts he cannot explain, and all the motives he cannot justify. Such memoirs resemble the real life as the skeleton does ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... stooped, he took a secret satisfaction in crushing his accomplice with his imaginary superiority and lordly disdain. According as his humor was good or bad, he called him "my dear extortioner," "Mons. Fortunat," or "Master Twenty-per-cent." But though these sneers and insults drove the obsequious smile from M. Fortunat's lips, he was quite capable of including them in the bill under the head ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... set out, and it was surprising the way he got us through. If the crowd didn't fall apart instantly of itself at his approach, an obsequious policeman—one of those same Berlin policemen who are so rude to one if one is alone and really in need of help—sprang up from nowhere and made it. It's as far from the Friedrichstrasse to the Schlossplatz as it is from here ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... her husband," naming the man, and his father-in-law, then dead, and his mother, still alive; the truth of which the woman, upon examination, openly avowed. A similar circumstance happened in our time in Denmark. A certain unknown priest paid court to the archbishop, and, from his obsequious behaviour and discreet conduct, his general knowledge of letters and quick memory, soon contracted a great familiarity with him. Conversing one day with the archbishop about ancient histories and unknown events, on which topic he most frequently heard him with pleasure, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... a fashion to this class of literature was the courtly and romantic Elizabeth herself; her obsequious wits and courtiers would not fail to feed and flatter her taste. Whether they all felt the beauties, or languished over the tediousness of "The Faerie Queen," and the "Arcadia" of Sidney, at least her majesty gave a vogue to such sentimental ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... aware that some one in a remote seat had bowed to him. He looked, and the salute came again, unctuous and obsequious. He coldly responded and frowned, for the men he was with had ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... fellow, a dark-skinned, obsequious Lydian, returned looking scared and yet on the verge of laughter. He could barely control his merriment, yet was plainly afraid to utter what he had to say. His master ordered him ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Cousin Bill, docile and obsequious, hurried off to execute her ladyship's commission. He found the pair chatting pleasantly together in a corner of the deserted ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... on th' fire-escape, sorr," said Officer Donahue, in a tone of obsequious respect which not only delighted, but astounded Archie, who hadn't known he could talk like that, "accordin' to instructions, when I heard a suspicious noise. I crope in, sorr, and found this duck—found the accused, sorr—in front of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... proceeding from a stringed instrument. We stopped at the edge of the small, cleared space before the inn and sent Blaise to reconnoitre. He boldly entered and presently returned, followed by the decrepit Godeau and his strapping wife, Marianne. Both gave us glad welcome, the old man with obsequious bows which doubtless racked his rheumatic joints, the ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... train to meet her, and when the slender chic figure in the most correct of tailor made suits appeared at the gateway, with an obsequious porter bearing her smart bag and ulster, he gave a sudden gasp of surprise at the picture. He had been aware for some time of the increase in her inches and the charm of the pure cameo-cut profile, but he regarded her still as a child ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... sudden and overwhelming rage) Don't talk to a gentleman like that! You cur! (With a sudden resumption of his obsequious manner.) I ...
— The Reckoning - A Play in One Act • Percival Wilde
... peddling interference they resented. The groom, when he rode into town for the letter-bag, always stopped to tell Ills friends some fresh instance of it. All the shopkeepers and tradesmen, and everybody else, had heard of it. But they were none the less obsequious when the squire passed up the street. The servants were never so glad as when young master came home with the liberal views imbibed in modern centres of learning, and with a free, frank mode of speech. But miss, the sole daughter, they simply ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... has been cultivated in England since 1570. It is a Composite plant, and bears the name Calendula from the Latin calendoe, the first days of each month, because it flowers all the year round. Whittier styles it "the grateful and [327] obsequious Marigold." The leaves are somewhat thick and sapid; when chewed, they communicate straightway a viscid sweetness, which is followed by a sharp, penetrating taste, very persistent in the mouth, and not of the warm, aromatic kind, but of an acrid, saline nature. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... account, as I had been on his—who had watched my commands, and (pardon me, Madam) ever changeable motion of your pen, all hours, in all weathers, and with a cheerfulness and ardour, that nothing but the most faithful and obsequious ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... with a violent headache, was obliged to remain above stairs for a time, and Gertrude alone witnessed her brother's triumph. She was standing near Mr. and Mrs. Stanton, carelessly twirling a costly boquet, which one of her obsequious beaux had given her, when she overheard Nellie say to her husband, "I do hope she will come, for I am all impatience to see one whom you have praised ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Travers excellently. He shook himself free from the obsequious native, who showed very clearly that he would have preferred to have kept on a watchful attendance, and began a languid, indifferent examination of the labyrinth-like passages and deserted halls. But ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... the Kuznetski Bridge, where, halting at a Picture shop, I entered it with my eyes looking to every side. It was not precisely horses by Adam which I meant to buy, since I did not wish to be accused of too closely imitating Woloda; wherefore, out of shame for causing the obsequious shopmen such agitation as I appeared to do, I made a hasty selection, and pitched upon a water-colour of a woman's head which I saw displayed in the window—price twenty roubles. Yet no sooner had ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... This usage deters men of generous minds from placing themselves in such a station of life; and hence persons of quality are frequently excluded from the improving, agreeable conversation of a learned and obsequious friend. In this satire ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Gallic nationality. His smooth shaven face showed a firm mouth with bloodless lips so thin as to be hardly perceptible. His eyes, when they could be seen at all, were greenish in color, and small and restless as those of a ferret. He advanced into the room with the obsequious deferential manner which in all well-trained servants becomes second nature, moving across the thickly carpeted floor with the rapidity ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... perforce to dry the tears Guicciardini has it that he shed, and, replacing them by a smile, servile and obsequious, repaired, hat in hand, to protest his friendship for ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Parkhead were nigh, Obsequious at their Regent's rein, And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, That saw fair ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... resolution, and very neatly attired after the manner of his caste. The gardener was plainly annoyed by this encounter; but he put as good a face upon it as he could, and accosted the clergyman with an obsequious and smiling air. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... medical corps. They were less stiff and automaton-like than the officers and sergeants of the line service. Their attitude varied in accordance with the number of stars they had on their epaulette. If their rank were inferior to mine, they were exaggeratedly obsequious, holding their hands along the crease in the seam of their trousers with their fingers close together—at strict attention. If their rank were superior to mine, they were defiant and insolent. Nevertheless, they showed themselves more communicative ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... Doctor Todd to which he led me, in the presence of the great man, he did not venture any airy presentation. Boller of '89 inside of the study door was quite a different person from the Boller without it. The bold manner fled. He was suppressed, obsequious; even his clothes seemed to shrink and grow humbly dun. We entered so quietly that the doctor, bending over his desk, did not hear us, and we had to cough apologetically to ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... this business; and proceeded accordingly to bring forward such laws as were in reality neither honorable nor advantageous for the public; his whole design being to outdo Caius in pleasing and cajoling the populace (as if it had been in some comedy), with obsequious flattery and every kind of gratifications; the senate thus letting it be seen plainly, that they were not angry with Caius's public measures, but only desirous to ruin him utterly, or at least to lessen his reputation. For when Caius proposed the settlement of only two colonies, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and even obsequious at first, ready to condescend and accommodate, he is equally prompt when matters require that peculiar turn which southerners frequently find themselves turned into,—no more tick and a turn out of doors. At times, Mr. O'Brodereque's customers have the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... a hundred note-books with trite and superfluous observations; he posed, in brief, as the captain of the ship without responsibility. Arrived at Port Jackson, he was acclaimed a hero, and received with obsequious solicitude by the Governor, who promised that his 'future situation should be such as would render his banishment from England as little irksome as possible.' Forthwith he was appointed high constable of Paramatta, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... I saw the obsequious seraphim Their rosy fleece of fire bestow; For well they now can spare their wings, Since heaven itself lies here below. "Well done," said I; "but are you sure Your down, so warm, will pass for pure?" Chorus. "Well done," said ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another misfortune for a man of society,—he became fat and lethargic. 'My brother Ned' Horace Walpole remarks, 'says he is grown of less consequence, though more weight.' And on another occasion, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... papers. All showed the fatal date. He arrived at the palatial hotel in a cab filled with papers, from which his bewildered countenance peered forth like that of a canary-bird in the nesting-season. He was scarcely within the door, when obsequious servants seized his luggage, and vied with one another for the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Feather, with its proud motto, "J'y suis, j'y reste." In the eighteenth century it had adopted by compulsion from Germany an alteration in its law of regal inheritance, and had marked its adhesion to the new formula by the institution of the order of the Dachshund, with the obsequious motto, "Das ist mir ganz Wurst," popularly mistranslated by the wags of the day into, "That is the worst for me." Beaten by the infidel in the Crusades it had joined thenceforth to its regalia the holy crown of Jerusalem; and having thrown ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Church of Canterbury, greeting health and salvation," &c., &c. This was the tone of the highest ecclesiastics in England towards the ruler of Ireland, in the reigns of William I. and Henry I., and equally obsequious were the replies of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... changed from hand to hand—tipping was still in style. The obsequious steward gave him further directions for finding the games and recreational rooms, and ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... the Huns on the northern frontiers of the Roman domain led to a terrific war in 441. Attila was king. His first assault upon the Roman power was directed against the Eastern Empire. The court at Constantinople had been duly obsequious to him, but he found a pretext for war. The dreadful ravages of his hordes and the shameful treaty which he forced upon the empire form a thrilling yet terrible chapter in the history of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... St. Paul's for the scattering and shattering of the Armada. Here Cromwell, a king in all but name and twice a king by nature, received the keys of the City, as he rode to Guildhall to preside at the banquet of the obsequious Mayor. William of Orange and Queen Anne both clattered over these stones to return thanks for victories over the French; and old George III. honoured the street when, with his handsome but worthless son, he came to thank God for his partial restoration ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to feel that France was his own personal possession and that Europe might be. It was the combination of a great king with a small man which produced this composite being. He had built Versailles, a palace unmatched since the Caesars. He not only commanded the presence, but the obsequious presence of all that was illustrious and great at a time when France was in the full flower of her splendid genius. Corneille, Racine, Moliere, if permitted to be, must pay him an almost idolatrous homage. The beautiful Valliere was sent away, and de Montespan's ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... hand. The majority in the Assembly who voted for a revision of the Constitution was found to be ninety-seven less than the three-fourths required, and all further opposition of the Assembly against Louis Napoleon's measures was denounced as factious. Maupas, the obsequious Chief of Police, discovered dangerous plots against the government and against the person of the President. Fears of possible Napoleonic aspirations had been silenced by Louis Napoleon's energetic protests. He himself stated publicly: "They think that I wish to revive Napoleon. What could I revive ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... arrival at Kingdon, Bettina, having breakfasted in her room, went for a ramble over the house. It seemed solemnly vast and empty, and she would have lost herself many times had she not encountered now and then a courtesying house-maid or an obsequious footman, who answered her inquiries and told her into what ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... anxious, obsequious, terrified, were only too ready to obey the citizen Representative in ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowd the dust of the great? That was no thoroughfare of business—no mart of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants! "What servants," says Jeremy Taylor, "shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... said Mr.. Bryany, sitting down opposite Edward Henry at the centre table, and reaching with obsequious liveliness for the dispatch-box. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the magic of love that can restore a man in an instant of time from being an obsequious wreck to a thing of fire and resolution. A moment before Steve's only immediate object in life had been to stay quiet and keep out of the way as much as possible. He had never been a man of ready speech in the presence of an angry woman; words intimidated him as blows ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... master all the pleasure of his voyage, and he mourned for the loss of this youth as if it had been his own, yea only, son; for as he was in himself a man of a worthy mind, so the boy, by his witty and handsome behaviour in general, and obsequious carriage towards him in particular, had very much wrought himself into ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Jove gave a consenting nod. The seasons now obsequious stand, Quick to obey their lord's command, And now the Farmer undertakes the god; Now calls for sunshine, now for rains, Dispels the clouds, the ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... more prudent; at his instigation the obsequious senate raised to the throne Lib'ius Sev'erus, of whom history records little more than his elevation, and his death, which occurred in the fifth year after his election. During the nominal reign of Sev'erus and the interregnum that followed, the entire power ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... use always to be thus obsequious to my Friends, especially when they require nothing but what's reasonable. O ridiculous! Do you think I would refuse when offer'd me, that which I should have ask'd for of ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... sufficiently, (and who, whenever a stranger appeared, began, from infancy almost, to play off little graces to catch his attention,) her brother being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the Doctor was very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated learning ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... listless as to exhibit, to more serious eyes, signs of grace in the girl. Flor wondered, if Zoe had spoken the truth, that nothing appeared changed on the plantation: all their own masters, why so obsequious to the driver still? This was one of the last of the great places; behind it, the small farms, with few hands, ran up the mountains; why was there no stampede of these unguarded slaves? She hardly understood. She listened outside the circle of the fire on the ground at night, where two or three ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... another judge decided that the education, &c., was the right of the father, although the marriages was that of his majesty as king of this realm, yet not exclusive of the prince, their father. He assured the king, that the ten obsequious judges had no authority to support their precipitate opinion; all the books and precedents cannot form a prerogative for the king of this realm to have the care and education of his grandchildren during the life and without the consent of their father—a prerogative unknown to the laws of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... here, sir," said Mabel; "Mr. Vane will come as soon as he can leave his company." Triplet entered in a series of obsequious jerks. "Sit down and rest you, sir." And Mrs. Vane seated herself at the table, and motioned with her white hand to Triplet to sit ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... the abate was clearly not to Don Gervaso's taste; but he stood silent, turning the comment of a cool eye on the soprano's protestations, and saying only, as Cantapresto swept the company into the circle of an obsequious farewell:—"Remember, signor abate, it is to your cloth this business is entrusted." The abate's answer was a rush of purple to the forehead; but Don Gervaso imperturbably added, "And you lie but one ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... not in one part alone, How imitative nature takes her course From the celestial mind and from its art: And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, Not many leaves scann'd o'er, observing well Thou shalt discover, that your art on her Obsequious follows, as the learner treads In his instructor's step, so that your art Deserves the name of second in descent From God. These two, if thou recall to mind Creation's holy book, from the beginning Were the right source ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... price. A few of their number had fallen, and hardships still awaited the survivors. Gourgues, however, reached Rochelle on the day of Pentecost, and the Huguenot citizens greeted him with all honor. At court it fared worse with him. The King, still obsequious to Spain, looked on him coldly and askance. The Spanish minister demanded his head. It was hinted to him that he was not safe, and he withdrew to Rouen, where he found asylum among his friends. His fortune was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the king, and he was obnoxious to the nobility, who envied his eminence, and to the people, because he desired the prosperity of France more than the gratification of their pleasures. He was succeeded by Louvois, who long retained a great ascendency by obsequious attention to all the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... awkward but deep and obsequious reverence, turned and went out of the door, passing Juba, who was entering with a salver laden with bread and meat and a couple of bottles. "Put down the food, Juba," said Haward, "and see this gentleman out ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Throne one day, His Crown upon his brow; To him, in most obsequious way, The Tiger ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... his mansion, above the entrance of which is written "L'Entree de Sidi Laid," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables, chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various nationalities, black, bronze, and cafe au lait in colour, offer him perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's priests send him presents from afar; camels laden ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... was opened by the obsequious Timothy, who pushed away the ostlers and waiters, as if unworthy to approach his master, and the Great Aristodemus made his appearance. As he ascended the steps of the door, his passage was for a moment barred by one whose profession Melchior well knew. "Stand ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... deal older and graver, but almost as handsome as ever; only somewhat changed in mind. He had become a zealous clergyman, and his soul appeared to be in his work. He was distant and very respectful to Lady Bassett; I might say obsequious. Seemed almost ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... a pleasant summer lounging-place for all gay cits. One day a very portly, aldermanic man presented himself at the entrance of the restaurant and asked the price of a dinner. Shaffer, who was present, immediately assumed all the obsequious airs of a waiter, and calling for a tape-measure, proceeded to measure the distance around the protuberant waist of the astonished and insulted inquirer, who could hardly believe his sense of hearing ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the word obsequious Trollio speeds, And to the secret hall the soldiers leads. The youth, resign'd, bow'd down his thoughtful head, And calmly silent follow'd where they led. "Such be the fate of all," the monarch cried, "Who, born to meanness, swell with worthless pride; Who, glad with nobler men ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... giddy larum half the town. Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew; Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display, Thou, only thou, directing all our way! To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs, Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons; Or Tiber, now no longer Roman, rolls, Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls: To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines, Where slumber abbots, purple ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... there was any foundation for these silly reports, but, if any special formalities were prescribed, Mr. Chamberlain brushed them aside, and simply conducted himself with quiet, easy grace, always calm and self-possessed, and never fussy or needlessly obsequious. ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... are heavily burdened, But perhaps a little relief may be got for them. Let us cherish this centre of the kingdom, To secure the repose of the four quarters of it. Let us give no indulgence to the wily and obsequious, In order to make the unconscientious careful, And to repress robbers and oppressors, Who have no fear of the clear will (of Heaven)[1]. Then let us show kindness to those who are distant, And help those who are near,—Thus establishing (the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... smartly dress'd; Whiskeys and gigs and curricles are there, And high-fed prancers many a raw-boned pair. On all without a lordly host sustains The care of empire, and observant reigns; The parting guest beholds him at his side, With pomp obsequious, bending in his pride; Round all the place his eyes all objects meet, Attentive, silent, civil, and discreet. O'er all within the lady-hostess rules, Her bar she governs, and her kitchen schools; To ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... fazenda, where one may talk direct with The Master, whoever and wherever he may be. And—judging by Ribiera—my guess is that The Master has the same hold upon them that they have on their underlings. Ribiera is too arrogant a scoundrel to make obsequious reports if he were not afraid to omit them." He was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he said abruptly, "Try to get some sleep, if you can. That pistol of Ribiera's—you have it handy? Keep it where you can reach it in the dark. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... courted and married a beautiful young lady, possessing every accomplishment that can give grace and attractiveness to a woman, and had carried her to his castle, where she should have at her disposal an unlimited amount of money and be served by obsequious servants, and stand on a level with all the fine ladies and gentlemen in the land. Old Blue Beard gave to her the keys unlocking all the rooms in his castle, but said to her, "There is one key, unlocking one door, into one room, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... met at a private door and escorted, with my precious party, by a circuitous route to where the 5.48 was shunted, waiting the moment to run back to the departure platform. There was a coupe ready for Lady Claire, and she took her place quietly, observed by no one but the obsequious official who had managed ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... lies," Tallente observed, "most advisedly." The train was already on the move, and the departing passenger was compelled to step hurriedly into a carriage. Tallente, waited upon by the obsequious station master, strolled across the line to where his car was waiting. It was not until his arrival there that he realised that Miller had offered him no explanation as to his presence on the platform of this ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... about prison life in general, modify it ever so much by special chambers, obsequious turnkeys, a general tendency to make one as comfortable as possible, a jail is a jail, and there is no getting away from that. Cowperwood, in a room which was not in any way inferior to that of the ordinary boarding-house, was nevertheless conscious of ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Triumphs o'er reason: in her look she bears A paradise of ever-blooming sweets; Fair as the first idea beauty prints In the young lover's soul; a winning grace Guides every gesture, and obsequious love ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... I in my service must be more pointedly obsequious, than thou in thy plainness art bound ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the elevator she turned with hasty step toward the office where sat the hotel clerk, pen in hand. He listened with obsequious mien, like a polyglot quick to understand each of his guests, and coming out from his enclosure he made straight toward Jaime, who, still embarrassed by his unsuccessful venture, was pretending to read the advertisements in the vestibule. Febrer at first did not realize ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... your dinner, sir!" exclaimed Tag-rag, sternly, after having received Messrs. Shuttle and Weaver's obsequious message of apologies ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... again, and Saxham came riding through the embrasure in the oblong earthwork, and down the gravelly glacis that led into the Women's Laager. An obsequious Hindu, in an unclean shirt and a filthy red turban, rose up salaaming, almost under his horse's feet, and took the bridle. He dismounted and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... as this woman, at once servile, despotic, and obsequious, had placed his cup on the table, he buried his nose in a book, and by his repellent ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... progress along the platform with his genial, important tiptoe walk, and elbows squarely stuck out, to the carriage that was at once reserved for him, to touch the brim of his grey top-hat (if travelling up to town) to the obsequious guard, and to observe the heads of passengers who wondered why their express was arrested, thrust out of carriage windows to look at him. A livened footman, as well as a valet, followed him, bearing a coat and a rug and a morning or evening paper and a dispatch-box ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... on foot, pale and obsequious like others in the presence of those dread ambassadors, but more collected, I thought. With the deepest bows he welcomed them, handing them drink in a golden State cup, and when they had drunk (I heard the liquor running down ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... crave your pardon, doctor, but wouldn't it do for the cattle?" asked the mischief-maker with an obsequious smile. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... scorched undulations. A sweet desolation, an everlasting peace, seemed to hang in the air. A very old man (a fragment, like the castle itself) emerged from some crumbling corner to do me the honors, - a very gentle, obsequious, tottering, toothless, grateful old man. He beguiled me into an ascent of the solitary tower, from which you may look down on the big sallow river and glance at diminished Tarascon, and the barefaced, bald-headed hills behind it. It may appear that I insist ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Gay appeared, having received a letter telling him to hurry ahead with the plans and contracts. Gay was rather obsequious in his manner since he did not know whether it was Steve or Beatrice who was to ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... off his heavy buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity—taking not 25 the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquiries after his health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders of service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station keepers and hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team out of the 30 stables—for in the eyes ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... ado all four were placed into the uncomfortably crowded hack and shortly unloaded at the Northern. An obsequious porter ushered them into the office and Uncle was astounded with a demand for twenty dollars down. "But I've paid," Uncle protested. The clerk looked at his card and assured him he was at the wrong hotel. It was now dark and Uncle concluded to pay the money and start out anew the next ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... difference; and the servant became as obsequious as if he had just recognized in his visitor a millionaire that had dropped in to spend a part of ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... hour later, the awe in which he was held by the half superstitious ruffians appeared to have increased. Whatever story the fugitive Miguel had told his companions regarding Pereo's protection of the young stranger, it was certain that it had its full effect. Obsequious to the last degree, the landlord was so profoundly touched, when Pereo, not displeased with this evidence of his power over his countrymen, condescendingly offered to click glasses with him, that he endeavored to ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... easy to see the elegant young king and his court in the setting of a sophisticated out-of-doors, wandering on grassy paths, lingering under arches of roses, plucking a flower to nest beside a smiling face, stopping where servants—obsequious adepts, they were then—supplied dainty things to eat and drink. Madame de Sevigne was there, she of the observant eye, an eye much occupied at this time with the figure of Superintendent Foucquet, the host of this glorious occasion. This gracious lady lacked none of the appearance ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... could not help noticing an increased and even exaggerated respect paid him by the hotel attendants. He was asked if his EXCELLENCY would be served with breakfast in a private room, and his condescension in selecting the public coffee-room struck the obsequious chamberlain, but did not prevent him from preceding Paul backwards to the table, and summoning a waiter to attend specially upon "milor." Surmising that George and the colonel might be in some way connected with this ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... eyes all the liberty they could wish. Here I imagined the stripping was to stop, but I reckon short; my spark, at the desire of the rest, tenderly begged, that I would not suffer the small remains of a covering to rob them of a full view of my whole person; and for me, who was too flexibly obsequious to dispute any point with them, and who considered the little more that remained as very immaterial, I readily assented to whatever he pleased-In an instant, then, my under petticoat was untied and at my feet, and my shift drawn over my head, so that my cap, slightly fastened, came ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... priestly guide; and the instant after an old man crossed the threshold, followed by a troop of pastophori, as obsequious as the courtiers at the heels of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the funnel at full speed, but slowed down as it approached. The functionaries grouped themselves, straightened their backs, hitched their swords and eased their collars, while Jansoulet went down the track to meet the train, an obsequious smile on his lips, his back curved ready for the "Salam Alek." The train proceeded very slowly. Jansoulet thought it had stopped, and put his hand on the door of the royal carriage, glittering with gold under the black sky. But, doubtless, the impetus ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the evening, the ordinary amusement is mere drinking; but sometimes a kadanka (singing girl) is sent for. The Arabs practise hospitality generally; but among the Fezzaners that virtue does not exist, they are, however, very attentive and obsequious to those in whose power they are, or who can repay them tenfold for their pretended disinterestedness. Their religion enjoins, that, should a stranger enter while they are at their meals, he must be invited to partake, but they generally contrive to evade this injunction ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... lady, she flounced about our market-place with insufferable airs of patronage and condescension. She bought, indeed, with liberality, but her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass, and playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any gratitude. She had a tail behind her of heavy, obsequious old gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to whom she appeared to be an oracle. "This one can really carve prettily: is he not a quiz with his big whiskers?" she would say. "And this one," indicating myself with her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gave the money or who the architect was. It has a fine tower and a couple of solid bells; it has a few bits of good brass-work, a chandelier and some candlesticks, and it has a fine eighteenth-century tomb in a corner, with a huge slab of black basalt on the top, and a heraldic shield and a very obsequious inscription, which might apply to anyone, and yet could be true of nobody. Why the particular old gentleman should want to sleep there, or who was willing to spend so much on his lying in state, no one knows, and I fear that no one ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Christian Association," he commanded the obsequious young Valentine who drove the big Chambers. Mr. Vandeford was never sufficiently unoccupied of mind to pilot a car in and out of New York traffic. For half a second the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... full speed, but slackened its pace as it drew near. The functionaries formed a group, drawing themselves up, arranging their swords, adjusting their false collars, while Jansoulet walked along the track toward the train, the obsequious smile on his lips and his back already bent for the "Salem alek!" The train continued to move, very slowly. Jansoulet thought that it had stopped, and placed his hand on the door of the royal carriage glittering with gold under the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the original Statutes of Corpus Christi Coll. Oxon, a Scholar slept in a truckle bed below each Fellow. Called also "a trindle bed." Compare Hall's description of an obsequious tutor: ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... incompatible to her sister's nature, for she both dissipated and presented the major part of her brother's Council; but this will be of certain, that how compliable and obsequious soever she found them, yet for a good space she made little use of their counsels, more than in the ordinary course of the Board, for she had a dormant table in her own privy breast; yet she kept them together and in their places, without any sudden ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... made such an abject speech as Omer Talon, the greatest lawyer in France, did to Louis XIII, in the Parliament of Paris. Three hundred years ago everybody bowed down to exalted rank: witness the obsequious language which all authors addressed to patrons in the dedication of their books. How small the chance of any man rising in the world, who did not court favors from those who had favors to bestow! Is that the meanest or the most uncommon thing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... had even an obsequious courtesy, but at the same time a remarkable decisiveness), the figure placed itself in the great chair. Sitting there, in such visible obscurity, it was, perhaps, as much like the actual presence of a ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
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