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Obedience   Listen
noun
Obedience  n.  
1.
The act of obeying, or the state of being obedient; compliance with that which is required by authority; subjection to rightful restraint or control. "Government must compel the obedience of individuals."
2.
Words or actions denoting submission to authority; dutifulness.
3.
(Eccl.)
(a)
A following; a body of adherents; as, the Roman Catholic obedience, or the whole body of persons who submit to the authority of the pope.
(b)
A cell (or offshoot of a larger monastery) governed by a prior.
(c)
One of the three monastic vows.
(d)
The written precept of a superior in a religious order or congregation to a subject.
Canonical obedience. See under Canonical.
Passive obedience. See under Passive.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Obedience" Quotes from Famous Books



... name, informed him that his endeavour to dissipate his filth into infinity by the sole of his shoe was useless, and ordered him forthwith to take his handkerchief out and wipe it up clean. Disobedience was expulsion: with crimson cheek he expiated his offence by obedience to the order, and doubtless during the hushed silence in which he completed his labour, he became ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... excitement and a sudden craning of necks in the direction indicated by the attorney's glance, where three men had sprung forward in obedience to his orders. ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... were, able to increase the power of auto-suggestion tenfold upon itself? Might one admit that, under certain circumstances of extreme exaltation, a multitude became an agent of sovereign will compelling the obedience of matter? That would have explained how sudden cure fell at times upon the most sincerely excited of the throng. The breaths of all of them united in one breath, and the power that acted was a power of consolation, hope, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... have returned to its habits of discipline and obedience. There was little fatiguing work to do, and they had a good deal of leisure. The temperature kept above freezing point, and it seemed as if the thaw had removed ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... a quick cry of keen disappointment, but as quickly she suppressed it in obedience to Mrs. Carew's warning glance. With new horror, however, she ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... a man of intellectual tastes, who entered politics reluctantly and only in obedience to the resistless leading of his conscience. He was a student of literature and art; a connoisseur of engravings, for example, of which he made a valuable collection. He was fond of books, conversation, and foreign travel, and in Europe, while ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... 406-m. Horus, son of Isis, slew Typhon, aided by Isis, 376-u. Horus, the God of Time, pours ambrosia on the hair of Isis, 379-m. Horus, the younger, the point in a circle, the hieroglyphic of, 79-u. Hospitallers and Templars vowed obedience, poverty, chastity, 802-u. Hospitallers' Houses despoiled by Elizabeth, Queen of England, 802-m. Hospitallers' Houses were Almshouses, Dispensaries, Inns, 802-m. House of all things the name for the Principle ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... her servants, the Picards, father and daughter, are on their way to or are at Chastel, a little village not far from here, where the French have established a huge hospital for the wounded. She left Paris in obedience to a letter from her brother, and we are to tell Philip if we ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... as truly serve Christ by listening as I by preaching. If you preach, explain the Scriptures, baptize, comfort or aught else, through you works the same Christ who works through another. All is wrought in obedience to the order of him who commands me to hear his Word as well as to preach to you, and to exercise the same faith and Spirit with you. Thus all alike praise the one Lord. You say, "The Word I hear is the true Word of God," ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... friends, however, she could not expect this reserve, and she was doomed to hear stories of Richard which clouded and embittered her thoughts of him. And a still severer trial was in store. She accompanied her father, in obedience to his wish, and against her own desire, to the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia. It has passed into a proverb, that the Friends, on these occasions, always bring rain with them; and the period of her visit was no exception to the rule. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Israelite, whilst it was permitted between Israelite and Gentile. Furthermore, it seems impossible to decide what was the nature of the obligations imposed—whether the prohibition supposed and ratified an already existing universal obligation, in charity or justice, or merely imposed a new obligation in obedience, binding the consciences of men for economic or political reasons. So, too, it seems impossible to decide absolutely whether the decrees were intended to possess eternal validity; the probabilities, however, seem to favour very ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... manners be neither boorish nor blunt, but even these are preferable to simpering and crawling. I wish every English youth could see those of the United States of America; always civil, never servile. Be obedient, where obedience is due; for, it is no act of meanness, and no indication of want of spirit, to yield implicit and ready obedience to those who have a right to demand it at your hands. In this respect England has been, and I hope always will be, an example to the whole world. ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... be the younger by some centuries," quoth he, "and perchance should not be at all. But allowing it, dost thou perceive that such a difference should mean a change in all things?—that no fear should in likelihood mean no reverence nor obedience, and might come ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... still, after more than two years of close observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. He might as well have supposed that he could stop a mountain torrent in spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose obedience upon Voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a threat 'du cote de la boursse.' Before the month was out all Germany was swarming with Akakias; thousands of copies were being printed in ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... so-called Christians, who try the same immoral and impossible division of what must in its very nature be wholly given to One Supreme. To 'serve God and mammon' is demonstrably an absurd attempt. The love and trust and obedience which are worthy of Him must be wholehearted, whole-souled, whole-willed. It is as impossible to love God with part of one's self as it is for a husband to love his wife with half his heart, and another woman with the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... very much in love with this young lady"—there was a slight, almost imperceptible emphasis upon the "once" which somehow made Vane wince—"you might have married her, but you forewent that happiness in obedience to a conviction which would have done honour to the best of us. You would have been either more or less than human if your heart had not beaten a little harder and your blood had not flowed a little faster when you met her unexpectedly like that in ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... sermon and Godwin's comment had elicited no remark from her. Did she belong to the ranks of emancipated women? With his experience of Marcella Moxey, he welcomed the possibility of this variation of the type, but at the same time, in obedience to a new spirit that had strange possession of him, recognised that such phenomena no longer aroused his personal interest. By the oddest of intellectual processes he had placed himself altogether outside the sphere of unorthodox spirits. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... the eyelids of the living woman open slowly like the eyelids of the dead; saw her rise, as if in obedience to some silent ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... his feet, bristling indignantly and with new protests rising to his lips, but an imperious gesture of command from Parish silenced him into a bewildered obedience. It had become suddenly ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... afford to laugh at his ill-humour. She had his promise of obedience. She told him to say ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... obedience to your majesty's commands, diligently searched all his pockets, we observed a girdle about his waist, made of the hide of some prodigious animal, from which, on the left side, hung a sword of the length of five men; and on the right, a bag or pouch divided into ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... occasionally he eyed these semblances speculatively as they stretched on the sandy ground or skulked in the underbrush behind their unconscious principals. Once or twice he lifted his own arm with an alert gesture in imitative energy, and looked over his shoulder at his squat little image, to note its obedience to his behest. One might have thought he had put the greater part of the fat meat in smears about his rosy cheeks and fresh baby lips, and certainly the pleated bosom of his immaculate linen suit had received a generous remembrance. The ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... something more-than-the-natural and calls him to account regarding it; when it speaks of something different and better for him than this world and what it can offer. "Take my yoke upon you" is the attractive invitation, "make inner obeisance and outward obedience to something higher than ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... they made haste to dress as if the millennium could be hurried here by the rate at which they put on their clothes. Beth then and there composed a terrible oath, binding them to secrecy and obedience, and swore them all in solemnly; then she chose one for her orderly, who was to take round the word on occasion; and they were all to meet again in the fields behind the church ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... not risen to his present heights by beating about the bush in his dealings with others. He had seized Success by the windpipe and throttled it into obedience, and he ruthlessly bent everything and everybody to his own purposes. The task he set before Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... severity. He also commissioned them to make the declaration, which to him undoubtedly seemed perfectly just and reasonable, but which, to our more enlightened minds, seems atrocious in the extreme, that it was their only object to bring him and his people into obedience to their lawful sovereign, the king of Spain. With this end in view, he invited the chief to a friendly interview. It can hardly be doubted that in that benighted age De Soto felt that he was acting ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... captain's countenance at the impertinence of her action melted slowly away into a genial smile. And yet had fortune been unkind she might have brought us some calculating routinist with pride in strict obedience to the letter of the ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... in the twenty-fifth article of this treaty, the other party shall discover there are any of those sorts of goods which are declared prohibited and contraband, and that they are consigned for a port under the obedience of his enemy, it shall not be lawful to break up the hatches of such ship, nor to open any chests, coffers, packs, casks, or other vessels found therein, or to remove the smallest parcels of her goods, whether the said vessel belongs to the ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... advice rather odd. If the servant had to be paid anyhow, he did not understand what difference it could make whether it was by the year or by the month. However, he had many times proved that his mother was wiser than he, so he promised obedience. ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... with the stern realities of emigrant life in the backwoods. A class formed mainly from the younger scions of great families, naturally proud, and not only accustomed to command, but to recieve implicit obedience from the people under them, are not men adapted to the hard toil of the woodman's life. Nor will such persons submit cheerfully to the saucy familiarity of servants, who, republicans at heart, think themselves quite ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... you wish me to do?" he asked Lincoln. Lincoln thinks it would be well if Douglas used his great influence to appeal to doubtful sections, or wavering peoples. In obedience to this suggestion ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... be made to this scheme I have endeavoured maturely to consider; and cannot find that a modern soldier has any duties, except that of obedience, which a lady cannot perform. If the hair has lost its powder, a lady has a puff; if a coat be spotted, a lady has a brush. Strength is of less importance since fire-arms have been used; blows of the hand are now seldom exchanged; and what is there to be done ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... Racine, the man of genius? The work is eternal."[35] Without attempting to solve this problem in casuistry, we recognise Diderot's mood, and the hatred with which it would be sure to inspire him for the starved and mutilated passions of the Christian type. The humility, chastity, obedience, indolent solitude, which had for centuries been glorified by the Church, were monstrous to this vehement and energetic spirit. The church had placed heroism in effacement. Diderot, borne to the other extreme, left out even discipline. To turn from his maxims on the foundation of conduct, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... just two cities on your map. The Nineveh of obedience and the Tarshish of disobedience. You are going to Nineveh or to Tarshish. I do not claim to know where your Nineveh is. It may be a distant city. It may be a city across the seas whose streets you ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... 'Urizen,' the 'Europe,' 'Ahania,' and 'The Book of Los.' Such oracular works Blake put forth as dictated to him by departed spirits of supreme influence and intellectuality, or by angelic intelligences, quite apart from his own volition; indeed, only with his "grateful obedience." Such claims are not out of place in the instance of one who "saw God"; who often "conversed familiarly with Jesus Christ"; who "was" Socrates; who argued conclusions for hours at a time with Moses, with Milton, with Dante, with the Biblical prophets, with Voltaire; who could "see ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... wife of the mediaeval and Renaissance periods occupied much the same position in her husband's house. He was her absolute master and lord, the head and soul of "the feminine and feeble creature" who owed to him "perfect love and obedience." She was his chief servant, the eldest of his children, his wife and subject; she signed herself "your humble obedient daughter and friend," when she wrote to him. The historian, De Maulde la Claviere, who has brought together evidence on this ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... center a boy refuses to be kissed and pawed about, maintaining his proud independence like a little wild animal. From this center he likes to command and to receive obedience. From this center likewise he may be destructive and defiant and reckless, determined to have his own way at ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... resign his crown to her: having accordingly assembled the senate, he declared his resolution to them, and having delivered his sceptre into the princess's hand, he obliged her to ascend the throne; and to set the example, was the first to kiss her hand, and vow eternal obedience to her. The senators were ready to stifle the new queen with panegyrics and addresses; the people, though they adored the old king, were transported with having a new sovereign, and the university, according to custom immemorial, presented her majesty, ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole

... that you will be faithful to the State, and that without respect to my private will you give me that counsel which you think best." Cecil served the Queen until his death, forty years afterward. The almost implicit obedience with which Elizabeth followed his advice sufficiently proves that Cecil was the real power not only behind, but generally above, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... assignation, some of the gazers looked again at the handsome face, on which anticipation had set its divine halo. The youth was interesting; the longer he wandered, the more curiosity he excited. Everything about him proclaimed the habits of refined life. In obedience to a fatal law of the time we live in, there is not much difference, physical or moral, between the most elegant and best bred son of a duke and peer and this attractive youth, whom poverty had not long since held in its iron grip in the heart of Paris. Beauty and youth might cover ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... responded like a live thing to his touch. On the wide, straight stretches it went at a mad pace that took her breath, and again, in turning a corner or passing another car, it slowed down, purring in meek obedience. Once she gasped: "Not so ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... beyond Fairfax Court House, on the Warrenton Turnpike, is Germantown. It is here that Tyler's Division has rested, on the night of the 17th. At 7 o'clock on the morning of Thursday, the 18th, in obedience to written orders from McDowell, it presses forward, on that "Pike," to Centreville, five miles nearer to the Enemy's position behind Bull Run—Richardson's Brigade in advance—and, at 9 o'clock, occupies it. Here McDowell has intended Tyler to remain, in accordance with the plan, which he has ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... In obedience to this last hail of Mr Mackay, which had a sharp authoritative ring about it, a short, podgy little man with a fat neck and red whiskers, who, as I presently learned, was Mr Saunders, the second mate, came up the companion way; and as I perceived him to be ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... "Such instant obedience to the will of God", said Colombo, "and such fine enthusiasm to further His kingdom on earth, does your Majesties great credit. And I shall indeed congratulate the inhabitants of this to-be-discovered land for their good fortune in ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart

... the practice of great deeds, there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as memorial; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others; but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in great national life;—the obedience and the peace of ages having extended gradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral land; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter from whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... them. He who caused them to become of more importance in the affairs of Italy, was Theodoric, king of the Goths, when he established the seat of his empire at Ravenna; for, Rome being without a prince, the Romans found it necessary, for their safety, to yield obedience to the pope; his authority, however, was not greatly increased thereby, the only advantage being, that the church of Rome was allowed to take precedence of that of Ravenna. But the Lombards having taken possession, and Italy being divided into many ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... green signal-beam shot out. It wavered here and there. Tommy commanded again. And as the signal-beam flickered, he somehow sensed the obedience of the invisible ships about him. They were sweeping off to right and left. Bombs of the Death Mist were dropping in the darkness. Even in the starlight, Tommy could see great walls of pale vapor ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... gazing at him across the table; and if ever a face cried "Don't!" with all the eloquence of pleading eyes and parted lips, Mollie's said it at that moment. The message was so unmistakable and ardent that it demanded obedience, and to his own surprise Jack found himself murmuring conventional words of thanks, instead of the heated disclaimer ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... none other but the obedience of Christ; the which he performed in the days of his flesh, and can properly be called no man's righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ; because no man had a hand therein, but he completed it himself. ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... position. Your security, your safety now and later, will depend upon your own actions. You have proved yourself politically dangerous to the peace—to the welfare of Europe. My mission was to bring you safely into Germany. Failing in that, I must exact absolute silence and obedience——" ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... direction our wants are supplied. The patriarch, with his long white beard and clear far-seeing eyes, receives the respect and obedience of all the village, settles all disputes, and is personally responsible to the kaid of the district for the order and safety of the n'zala. Three men come from the well, each bearing a big clay amphora of water ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... leave the ship at Plymouth?" asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... the council for liberty to his father to come to him; which being granted, his father came next night, to whom he discoursed a little concerning obedience to parents from the fifth commandment, and then, after prayer, his father said to him, "Hugh, I called thee a goodly olive tree, of fair fruit, and now a storm hath destroyed the tree and his fruit."——He ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... apartment and summoned the genie of the lamp, and required him to immediately prepare and present the gift, before the sultan closed his morning audience, according to the terms in which it had been prescribed. The genie professed his obedience to the owner of the lamp, and disappeared. Within a very short time, a train of forty black slaves, led by the same number of white slaves, appeared opposite the house in which Aladdin lived. Each black slave carried on ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... loue the fauour, and the forme Of this most faire occasion, by the which We will vntread the steps of damned flight, And like a bated and retired Flood, Leauing our ranknesse and irregular course, Stoope lowe within those bounds we haue ore-look'd, And calmely run on in obedience Euen to our Ocean, to our great King Iohn. My arme shall giue thee helpe to beare thee hence, For I do see the cruell pangs of death Right in thine eye. Away, my friends, new flight, And happie newnesse, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... families cooked at the different fires, which was the usual practice in the different tribes; the stores were probably common, and the household under a matron. It will be noticed also that they gave him maize bread when he first entered the house. He little supposed that it was in obedience to a law or usage universal in the ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... to the whole world. In the latter case, not an unusual effect is that those who are charged with the infancy of the new type in the family are incompetent to their duty; and accordingly Shelley was regarded merely as "a strange boy," wayward, mutinous, and to be severely chastised into obedience. It has been said that he attracted no particular notice at school; but this is not true. At Eton his resentment of tyrannical authority displayed itself not only against the masters, but against the privileges of young patricians. He refused to be "fag"; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... to seek a lodging in the city, where we had never been before. But good fortune having brought us to your gate, we made bold to knock, when you received us with so much kindness, that we are incapable of rendering suitable thanks. "This, madam," said he, "is, in obedience to your commands, the account I was to give how I lost my right eye, wherefore my beard and eye-brows are shaved, and how I came to be ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... you from himself (because from his own letters to me) in the penning of his life, as your own prudence shall direct you: using my name for your warranty in the account given of him, as much or as little as you please too. You have a performance of my promise, and an obedience to ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... would render troops more efficient. Of the bravery of the British there can be no doubt; but there can be just as little doubt, that every increase to the personal security of troops renders them calmer under fire, and of course fitter for obedience in the exigiencies of service. Besides, it is a public duty to the brave men in our service, not to expose them needlessly on any occasion; and they are exposed needlessly, when they are sent into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... an act of our judgment, in obedience to which, we grant a preference to things which are agreeable, over those ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... against Obedience, which you owe your father. For The contract you pretend with that base wretch, One bred of alms and foster'd with cold dishes, With scraps o' the court, it is no contract, none; And though it be allowed in meaner parties— ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... tells me that the practice of witchcraft in Cuba is sometimes attended with serious and fatal consequences, and that crimes of the worst description are frequently the result of it. An individual unwittingly takes his neighbour's life in obedience to commands from a sanguinary sorcerer, who requires a certain weight of human blood to complete the ingredients of an enchanted preparation. 'Bring me a couple of handfuls of hair, and four ounces of blood from Fulano,' says the weird, who has been ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... named to assess the amount which every landowner was bound to lend, and to examine on oath all who refused. Every means of persuasion, as of force, was resorted to. The pulpits of the Laudian clergy resounded with the cry of "passive obedience." Dr. Mainwaring preached before Charles himself, that the king needed no Parliamentary warrant for taxation, and that to resist his will was to incur eternal damnation. Soldiers were quartered on recalcitrant boroughs. Poor men who refused ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... they knew it would mean punishment, and perhaps death, they absolutely refused to go to work. Of course the German officials were raging, and they resorted to their special line of torture to compel obedience. The boys were taken to where boxes were placed against large trees, they were forced to mount these and extend their arms full length about their heads. Then their wrists were strapped together and fastened to the tree—the box was kicked away and they hung by their arms often ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... nation is something other than a pleasure party, or a mutual admiration society,—it includes a principle of rightful authority and necessary submission. The harmony vital to national unity is not merely a mutual complacence of the members,—at its root is a habitual, disciplined obedience to the central authority, which in a democracy is the orderly expressed will of the majority. You cannot leave us and we cannot let you go. And if you attempt to break the bond, it is ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... given to the policy of his people, still more in a change of the spirit within them. Again, the statesman must work with a rough and ready instrument. The soldier finds or makes his army ready to yield unhesitating obedience to his commands, the sailor animates his fleet with his own personal touch, and the great man in art, literature or science is master of his material, if he can master himself. The statesman cannot mould a heterogeneous people, as the men of a well-disciplined army or navy can ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... itself in each of the subordinate groups of organic units which are differentiated by the modifying forces. Each of these subordinate groups, like the original group, must gradually, in obedience to the influences acting on it, lose its balance of parts—must pass from a uniform into a multiform state. And ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. Our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on the one side, and servile obedience on the other. Whatever we covet, they must instantly resign: Our permission is the only tenure, by which they hold their possessions: Our compassion and kindness the only check, by which they curb our lawless will: And as ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... bombardment of Fort Sumter, on the eventful 12th of April, 1861, whose vibrations thrilled the whole North, and reaching us in our pastoral home, changed entirely our plans and purposes. When our youngest boy was twenty-four hours old, his father went to St. Paul, in obedience to a summons from Governor Ramsey, and was soon after commissioned Colonel of the "2d" Regiment of Minnesota Volunteers, which was rendezvoused at Fort Snelling for thorough organization and drill. As ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... when one of the volunteer nurses announced that Aunt Hannah was resting as comfortably as could be expected under the circumstances, Gladys, in obedience to Mrs. Dean's peremptory command, went to bed; but Seth positively refused ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis

... poor witness can do to keep on the chair. The judge is on his right, the counsel on the left, and the jury in front of him, and after vainly trying to keep his eye on them all at the same time, in obedience to his counsel's injunctions, he is requested by the opposing counsel to observe some witness in the court behind him. In my opinion the witness ought to be provided with a swivel chair, or else the clerks who sit round ought to be adepts in the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... laid his hand affectionately on the shoulder of the younger. If for the moment Richard felt beneath the softness of that touch the iron glove of one who expected obedience from a subordinate, he did not show it by word ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... that in obedience To your precepts, to your wishes, I will strive from this day forward So to act, that you will think me ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... best friend to man, and also his most formidable enemy, an important question to be discussed is the secret of influence and popularity—the art of winning men's affections. For to govern by bribes or by force is not really to govern at all; and no obedience based on fear can be lasting—"no force of power can bear up long against a current of public hate". Adventurers who ride rough-shod over law (he is thinking again of Caesar) have but a short-lived reign; ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... as it was"—a compromise between barbarism and civilization—can never be restored, for the opposing principles of freedom and slavery can not exist together. Liberty is life, and every form of government yet tried proves that slavery is death. In obedience to this law, our republic, divided and distracted by the collisions of class and caste, is tottering to its base and can be reconstructed only on the sure foundation of impartial freedom to all. The war in which ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... him, reducing everything to unity, elaborating ultimate realities, and presenting to his startled gaze a universe so concrete of realization that it was like the model of a ship such as sailors make and put into glass bottles. There was no caprice, no chance. All was law. It was in obedience to law that the bird flew, and it was in obedience to the same law that fermenting slime had writhed and squirmed and put out legs and wings ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... myself (and I take no merit in giving the assurance, being induced to it from principles of gratitude, veracity, and justice, a grateful sense of the confidence you have ever placed in me), a recollection of the cheerful assistance and prompt obedience I have experienced from you under every vicissitude of fortune, and the sincere affection I feel for an army I have so long had the honor to command, will oblige me to declare, in this public and solemn manner, that in the attainment ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... country. In the year 1237 Snorre visited Norway again, and entered, as it is believed, into treasonable conspiracies with Jarl Skule. In 1239 he left Norway against the wishes of King Hakon, whom he owed obedience, and thereby incurred the king's greatest displeasure. When King Hakon, in 1240, had crushed Skule's rebellion and annihilated this dangerous opponent, it became Snorre's turn to feel the effects of the king's wrath. At the instigation of King Hakon, several chiefs ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... might well come to pass that, for want of a market, the prisoners would, in such a case, be slaughtered. Should he find it needful to exercise a real control over any of these tribes, it will be better to leave to the chieftains the direct government. Their obedience must be secured by making them ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... forces dominant in society 48, the division of power against the State, the thought of individuals against the practice of ages, neither authorities, nor minorities, nor majorities can command implicit obedience; and, where there has been long and arduous experience, a rampart of tried conviction and accumulated knowledge, where there is a fair level of general morality, education, courage, and self-restraint, there, if there only, a society may be found that exhibits the condition of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... obedience to the peremptory instructions he had received from his client, did not refer this letter to Darrell, but having occasion at that time to visit Paris on other business, he resolved (without calling on Mr. Hammond) to institute there some private inquiry—into that rising ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... synonym thrall has become obsolete in our language, but some of its derivations, as thralldom, are still in use. In Greek the same idea was expressed by doulos, and in Hebrew by ebed. The one idea of servitude, or of obedience to the will of another, is accurately expressed by all these terms. He who wishes to see this topic thoroughly examined, may ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... that my conscience was somewhat aided by a piece of casuistry from the most brilliant scholar in the Yale faculty of that time, Professor James Hadley. I had been brought up with a strong conviction of the necessity of obedience to law as the first requirement in any State, and especially in a Republic; but here was the fugitive slave law. What was our duty regarding it? This question having come up in one of our division- room debates, Professor ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... dresses, and feeds it; walks out with it, and regulates all its little wants; and, even at this early age, many good qualities are required to do so in a satisfactory manner. Patience and good temper are indispensable qualities; truthfulness, purity of manners, minute cleanliness, and docility and obedience, almost equally so. She ought also to be acquainted with the art of ironing and trimming little caps, and be ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... that at nearly middle age, and in obedience to an impulse, I was launched as an author; that I had very slight literary training; and that my appearance as a novelist was quite as great a surprise to myself as to any of my friends. The writing of sermons certainly does not prepare one ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... —there he reads Of gainful ventures and of godly deeds; There all he gets or loses find a place, A lucky bargain and a lack of grace. The joys above this prudent man invite To pay his tax—devotion!—day and night; The pains of hell his timid bosom awe, And force obedience to the church's law: Hence that continual thought,—that solemn air, Those sad good works, and that laborious prayer. All these (when conscience, waken'd and afraid, To think how avarice calls and is obey'd) He in his journal finds, and for his grief Obtains the transient opium of relief. ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... wide enough to permit thee to descend into a place where thou shalt find one of the greatest treasures that the earth contains. Hast thou courage to descend into the subterranean vault?" Abdallah swore he might depend upon his obedience and zeal. Then the Dervish lighted a small fire, into which he cast a perfume; he read and prayed for some moments, after which the earth opened, and he said to the young man, "Thou mayest now enter. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet and the spheres that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... will find the demand for their labor gradually increasing and its recompense proportionally enhancing. With a larger field and more decided usefulness will come a truer and deeper respect; and woman, no longer constrained to marry for a position, may always wait to marry worthily and in obedience to the dictates of sincere affection. Hence constancy, purity, mutual respect, a just independence and a little of happiness, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and day out these minutiae were rehearsed. The children were drilled in their parts with a military exactitude; obedience and punctuality became cardinal virtues. The vast importance of the undertaking was insisted upon with scrupulous iteration. It was a manoeuvre, an army changing its base of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... courage to bring up her daughter to good principles; she had made herself employ a false severity which enabled her to compel obedience and repress the little evil that existed in the girl's soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had, what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of thought, a freshness ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... emanating from the sexual object. The same overestimation spreads over the psychic sphere and manifests itself as a logical blinding (diminished judgment) in the face of the psychic attainments and perfections of the sexual object, as well as a blind obedience to the judgments issuing from the latter. The full faith of love thus becomes an important, if not the ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... yellow mud on foot—literally—for few of them had shoes; they were on their way to protect Davis and join Johnston, now that Lee was no more. There was no murmuring, no faltering, and it touched Richard Hunt to observe that they were now more prompt to obedience, when it was optional with them whether they should go or stay, than they had ever been in the proudest days of ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... more speedily without the accompanying medicine, than they can be restored while the system has the poisonous drugs to throw off. It may be reasonably assumed that a goodly number of recoveries ascribed to drug treatments are due, in reality, to the resisting force of a good constitution, or to obedience to the laws of health given ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... week Christ on His Cross, sacrificing Himself for us and all mankind; and may that sight help to cast out of us all laziness and selfishness, and make us vow obedience to the spirit of self- sacrifice, the Spirit of Christ and of God, which was given to us at our baptism. And let us give, as we are most bound, in all humility and contrition of heart, thanks, praise, and adoration, to that immortal Lamb, who abideth for ever in the midst of the ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... the court, and Gallas was furnished with a secret commission containing the emperor's orders to the colonels and officers, granting an amnesty for their adhesion to Wallenstein at Pilsen, and ordering them to make known to the army that it was released from its obedience to Wallenstein, and was placed under the command of Gallas himself, who received orders, ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... took Tommy for his servant, and dressed him in a smart livery; and soon the boy showed by his bright ways and obedience that he was worthy any kindness bestowed ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... Way (1677) beseeches his readers "to enlist under the standard of that method which proceeds in strict obedience to the teaching of nature ... in short, the method which nature herself pursues in the bowels of ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... aliens they, seeking a refuge in an unknown land, but the sturdy possessors of homes where they were born, and around which clustered all tender family ties. The passionate love for England, filtered through three generations, had moderated to a filial respect without impairing filial obedience. ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... beauty and her ten thousand dollars. His game, however, was to pay court to her, and in so pointed a way that it should be remarked and talked about in the neighborhood. Let it once come through others to the old man's ears, he would have proved his obedience and could not be reproached if the ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... justifiably zealous in guarding the Filipinos from a knowledge of other doctrines which would only lead them to immeasurable bewilderment. Hence all the civilized natives were Roman Catholics exclusively. The strict obedience to one system of Christianity, even in its grossly perverted form, had the effect desired by the State, of bringing about social unity to an advanced degree. Yet, so far as I have observed, the native seems to understand extremely little of the "inward and spiritual grace" of religion. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... and flung into the fermenting vats. Our author saw the vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day after they had been filled, and heard, deep down, 'perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working spirit; and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil.' In a little while, it would have been impossible to breathe an atmosphere thus saturated with carbonic acid gas; and the superintendents can only watch the process ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... behind him in the loose sand tracks more than three feet apart to show how eager was his obedience; and Dade sat down upon a dead log that had been dragged to the Picardo camp-fire, to consider how this new phase of the affair would affect the temper of the people who owned such warm hearts and ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... between Clement and me. What do you think he had the impertinence to say to me once? That no one was fit to govern who had not learned to obey. That it would be wiser for me to learn the lesson of obedience myself, than to attempt to teach it to my ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... life for them where their new-found dignity of spirit will not be abased. Men no more will be content under rulers of industry they do not elect themselves than they were under political rulers claiming their obedience in the name of God. They will not for long labor in industries where they have no power to fix the conditions of their employment, as they were not content with a political system which allowed them no power to control ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... Sanin recollected too how he had later on—oh, ignominy!—sent the Polozovs' footman to Frankfort for his things, what cowardly terror he had felt, how he had had one thought only, to get away as soon as might be to Paris—to Paris; how in obedience to Maria Nikolaevna, he had humoured and tried to please Ippolit Sidoritch and been amiable to Doenhof, on whose finger he noticed just such an iron ring as Maria Nikolaevna had given him!!! Then followed memories still worse, more ignominious ... the waiter hands him a visiting card, and on it ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... insistence. There was no softness in it. Had he displayed kindness in that moment she would have burst into tears. But he put her hands down again with a brief, repressive gesture, and the impulse passed. She yielded him obedience, scarcely ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... more gnarled and perverse. Woe betide the imprudent human who crossed him! What chance had anybody against a man who had the command of all the forcible words in twenty-eight languages! His peremptory voice everywhere ensured obedience. To all save his dearest friends he was proud and haughty. Then came the gold shower. There was actually a plethora of money. The world, so long irreconcilable, had acknowledged his merits, and the whole man softened. The angelical character ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... body on the steps. He was trying to get an idea of what had happened without asking. If the negro had not been present he might have asked questions, but this was an unusual situation, and he felt his responsibility, and his importance. Olive now stepped toward him, and in obedience to her quick gesture he bent his head, and she whispered something to him. Instantly he was quivering with excitement. He thrust the pistol into his pocket, and turned to the negro. "Run," said he, "and get your ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... most active in his pursuit, had been sharers in the profits of his crimes. The tone assumed by this robber, was that of an independent chief, and in the management of his men he attempted the discipline of war. They subscribed to articles, which bound them to obedience: penalties were inflicted, such as cutting and carrying wood for their fires, or even stripes. He professed the piety of a quarter-deck, and read to them the scriptures: his style and title was "Governor of the Rangers," and he addressed the King's ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... there was no hesitation in her; she made a display of her obedience, and her heart scarcely took time to hear the order. She seemed less to obey the will of her father than affect to set at defiance the will of ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... will to prefer a religion of principle to one of mere feeling; in other, words, to obey the will of God when no comfortable glow of emotion accompanies your obedience. ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... marry him?' she said to herself. 'Because Owen, dear Owen my brother, wishes me to marry him. Because Mr. Manston is, and has been, uniformly kind to Owen, and to me. "Act in obedience to the dictates of common-sense," Owen said, "and dread the sharp sting of poverty. How many thousands of women like you marry every year for the same reason, to secure a home, and mere ordinary, material comforts, which after all go far to make ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... exclaimed Jim, "we are all ready for you. We have installed you in command, and hereby promise attention and obedience." ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart



Words linked to "Obedience" :   compliance, disobedient, flexibility, obey, submissiveness, tractableness, obedient, obeisance, tractability, respect, obedience plant



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