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Oppressor   /əprˈɛsər/   Listen
Oppressor

noun
1.
A person of authority who subjects others to undue pressures.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Oppressor" Quotes from Famous Books



... with all my soul," replied Ulrica; "I also have had my hours of vengeance; I have fomented the quarrels of our foes; I have seen their blood flow, and heard their dying groans; I have seen my oppressor fall at his own board by the hand of his own son. Yet here I dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance, scorned and insulted where I was once obeyed. Thou art the first I have seen for twenty years by whom ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... sway; tight grasp; brute force, brute strength; coercion &c. 744; strong hand, tight hand. hard lines, hard measure; tender mercies [ironical]; sharp practice; pipe-clay, officialism. tyrant, disciplinarian, precisian[obs3], martinet, stickler, bashaw[obs3], despot, hard master, Draco, oppressor, inquisitor, extortioner, harpy, vulture; accipitres[obs3], birds of prey, raptorials[obs3], raptors[obs3]. V. be -severe &c. adj. assume, usurp, arrogate, take liberties; domineer, bully &c. 885; tyrannize, inflict, wreak, stretch a point, put on the screw; be hard upon; bear a heavy hand on, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... that mankind may escape from self-inflicted calamities that have reached an extreme intensity. Whether an Indian seeks liberation from subjection to the English, or anyone else struggles with an oppressor either of his own nationality or of another—whether it be a Negro defending himself against the North Americans; or Persians, Russians, or Turks against the Persian, Russian, or Turkish governments, or any man seeking the greatest welfare for himself and for everybody else—they do ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy

... wizard." And he told her all that had passed between them from first to last and fell to reviling the Maugrabin with all rancour and heat of heart, saying, "Out on this accursed one, this foul sorcerer, this hard-hearted oppressor, this inhuman, perfidious, hypocritical villain, lacking [281] ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... you are right about the future, and the day will come when you will be blessed; but thus far, we have not blessed you. When the oppressor said: "This world for me!" the oppressed replied: "Heaven for me!" Now ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... swept over Hellas, these maintained themselves in their own land, unmoved; so that it was a common thing for others to turn to them as to a court of appeal on points of right, or to flee to Athens as a harbour of refuge from the hand of the oppressor. (18) ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... Paris. He lived in stirring times, and took a prominent part in the great controversies which agitated the fourteenth century. Pope John XXII. ruled at Avignon, a shameless truckster in ecclesiastical merchandise, a violent oppressor of his subjects, yet obliged by force of circumstances to be a mere subject of the King of France. The Emperor Ludwig IV. ruled in Germany in spite of the excommunication pronounced against him by the Pope. Many voices were raised in support of Louis denouncing the assumptions ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... according to the Explications of the New Testament: And when a Christian Psalmist, among the Characters of a Saint, Psal. 15. 5. meets with the Man that puts not out his Money to Usury, he ought to exchange one that is no Oppressor for an Oppressor or Extortioner, since Usury {247} is not utterly forbidden to Christians, as it was by the Jewish Law; and wheresoever he finds the Person or Offices of our Lord Jesus Christ in Prophecy, they ought rather to be translated in a way of History, ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts

... spirits of mischief are more secret, and of late years they have learned much. They are no longer so much inclined to Socialism, Pere Cabet and 'national ateliers,' still less to guillotines and noyades. But they are firm as ever, as jealous of despotism as ever, and, for an oppressor, as powerful as ever. And we believe that this class of men are firmly attached to the great cause of progressive freedom as represented by the Federal States and by the present Administration. Every day sees the truth spreading in France, and with its extension goes a deeply seated interest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... like our own will not lose its moral effect. I calculate strongly on this. It is a more refined and rational kind of chivalry—this interest and activity in the fate of nations struggling to break the oppressor's rod, and it should be encouraged even where it is not directed so as to give it all adequate force. They who would chill it, who would reason about the why and the wherefore ought to recollect that such things can not be called forth by the art of man—they must burst spontaneously from his nature ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... that he bound him to carry off to his castle; but as they crossed the lake a storm arose, and Tell had to be unbound to save them, when he leapt upon a rock and made off, to lie in ambush, whence he shot the oppressor through the heart as he passed him; a rising followed, which ended only with the emancipation of Switzerland from the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... puzzling in the devotion of a people to their amiable oppressor? They may rebel against absolutism, as Bavarian hates Prussian, but if the political despot is strong enough to win against foreign foes, as Bismarck did at Koeniggraetz, Sedan and Gravelotte, the people kiss ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... scrip, or deeds of parchment, transferable, to be granted or withheld, made immutable or changeable, as caprice, popular favor, or the pride of power and place may dictate, changing ever, as the weak and the strong, the oppressed and the oppressor, come in conflict or change places. Feeling that the subjects proposed for discussion are vitally important to the interests of humanity, we unite in most earnestly inviting every one who sincerely desires the progress of true reform to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... with amazement, none daring to lend assistance to the unfortunate; not considering, that property should ever be under the protection of law; and, what was Edward's case to-day, might be that of any other man to-morrow. But the oppressor kept fair with the crown, and the crown held a rod of iron over the people.—Suffer me to tell the mournful tale ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... class. The tyranny of Richelieu had in the end attained to something noble by the high-handed heedlessness of all his acts. If the people were to be trampled on, it was a species of consolation that their oppressor was feared by others as well as themselves. But that the oppression of the doomed French nation was to be continued by a more ignoble hand was altogether intolerable. Frenchmen had begun to ask one another, who was this Mazarin who had come ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... hampered by no allegory, and with no inward and spiritual signification. The national cause, maintained heroically in a hundred battles, and overwhelmed at last by the brute violence of the foreign oppressor, was subject enough for him; he would never have marred his epic by sickly irresolution and the struggles of a divided will in the principal characters. Perhaps his mind reverted to his old dreams when he came to describe the pastimes wherewith the rebel ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... Byron's inspiration. Where the hoof of the critic struck, the fountain was first disclosed; and all the tramplings of the world afterwards but forced out the stream stronger and brighter. The same obligations to misfortune, the same debt to the "oppressor's wrong," for having wrung out from bitter thoughts the pure essence of his genius, was due no less deeply by Dante!—"quum illam sub amara cogitatione excitatam, occulti divinique ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... asylum to the oppressed of all lands. But its sympathy with them in no wise impairs its just liberty and right to weigh the acts of the oppressor in the light of their effects upon this country, and ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... ray of comfort to my poor sister-in-law. It was quite provoking to find that she had no spirit to resent, or even to blame; she only wept that any one should be so cruel, and, quite hopeless of being heard on her own defence, was ready to obey, and return under the power of her oppressor, if only she might keep her son. All the four years she had lived with us had not taught her self-assertion, and the more cruelly she was ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... were now reduced to the dilemma of submitting to Cleomenes, or of supplicating the aid of Macedon, its former oppressor. The latter expedient was adopted. The contests of the Greeks always afforded a pleasing opportunity to that powerful neighbor of intermeddling in their affairs. A Macedonian army quickly appeared. Cleomenes was vanquished. The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... or triumph, woe or pleasure, That rings Mondego's ravaged shores around; The thundering cry of hosts with conquest crowned, The female shriek, the ruined peasant's moan, The shout of captives from their chains unbound, The foiled oppressor's deep and sullen groan, A Nation's choral hymn, for ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall overcome my oppressor: I know my army and myself. A sigh escaped me, and many more will follow; but one transport will rise amid them, when, vanquisher of my enemies and avenger of my dignity, I press again the hand of Lucullus, mindful ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... to the city. Mrs. Hallet was my companion and my nurse. Why should I dwell upon the rage of fever, and the effusions of delirium? Carwin was the phantom that pursued my dreams, the giant oppressor under whose arm I was for ever on the point of being crushed. Strenuous muscles were required to hinder my flight, and hearts of steel to withstand the eloquence of my fears. In vain I called upon them to look ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... him he hath broke himself? Can he some petty rogue to justice call For robbing one, when he himself robs all? 200 Must not, unless extinguish'd, Conscience fly Into his cheek, and blast his fading eye, To scourge the oppressor, when the State, distress'd And sunk to ruin, is by him oppress'd? Against himself doth he not sentence give; If one must die, t' other's not fit to live. Weak is that throne, and in itself unsound, Which takes not solid virtue for its ground. All envy power in others, and complain ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.—JOB ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... ebony begin to robe themselves as men; on the battle field they have at last put on the virile toga dyed in blood, not now drawn by the lash from the back of the wretched chattel, but from the heart of the man face to face with his oppressor on the field of righteous battle. Rude and uncultured, they hold up to you hands hard with labor, still bleeding from the scarcely fallen manacles, and implore aid and manly mercy. Let it be granted without stint, and let not the freedom God has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... manner; some persons have it more than others; in some persons it is a great grace. But it must be recollected that I am speaking of times of persecution and oppression to Christians, such as the text foretells; and then surely frankness will become nothing else than indignation at the oppressor, and vehement speech, if it is permitted. Accordingly, as persons have deep feelings, so they will find the necessity of self-control, lest they should say what they ought not." He omits these words. I call, then, this base insinuation ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... he pray one day to do And if he pray one day for plague away a plague, The oppressor's to stay, slain and men from 'Twill stay, and 'bate man's tyrants are made free; wrong ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... opened the door wide, and entered boldly. She had heard her grandfather's voice raised, though its hoarse tones did not allow her to distinguish his words. She was alarmed for him. She came in, his guardian fairy, to protect him from the oppressor of six feet high. Rugge's arm was raised, not indeed to strike, but rather to declaim. Sophy slid between him and her grandfather, and, clinging round the latter, flung out her own arm, the forefinger raised ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... whilst the power thereto is in thine hand, For still in danger of revenge the sad oppressor goes. Thine eyes will sleep anon, what while the opprest, on wake, call down Curses upon thee, and God's eye ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... the Catholic church that has been their oppressor. In its name tens of thousands have been murdered, and I fear that the slaughter of those priests at Brill is but the first of a series of bloody reprisals that will take place wherever the people get the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... Your Friend David Harum." For a moment John's face burned, and there was a curious smarting of the eyelids as he held the little stocking and its contents in his hand. Surely the hand that had written "Your Friend" on that scrap of paper could not be the hand of an oppressor of widows and orphans. "This," said John to himself, "is what he meant when 'he supposed it wouldn't take me long to find out what ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... nevertheless looked upon me with a feeling of dread. He could crush the reptile, but he feared the sting. I was strong in my very weakness, for as I had but one solitary motive to link me to life; that being removed, my oppressor felt aware my life would then only serve as the price by which I was to ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... made him unworthy of such honours, even as he is unworthy of the life whereof my sword shall deprive him. In truth, his very birth was a sacrilege; he is a fratricide, an usurper of the goods of other men, an oppressor of the innocent, and a highway assassin; he is a man who will violate every law, even, the law of hospitality respected by the veriest barbarian, a man who will do violence to a virgin who is passing through his own country, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... exclusive right of cultivation," he only, in deference to the Bavarian policy of the time, which wished to copy Mohammed Ali's administration in Egypt, caricatured a misconception of the right of property equally strong in every Greek, whether he be the oppressor or the oppressed. Even the late National Assembly has not thought it necessary to correct any of the invasions of private property by the preceding despotism. Individuals, almost ruined by the plunder of their land, have not even received the offer of an indemnity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... liberty and equality had first come as a blessed promise of deliverance from the oppression of their own divine-right rulers now used the same notions to justify them in rising as nations against the despotism of a foreign military oppressor. Liberty, equality, and fraternity—the gospel of the Revolution—was the boomerang which Napoleon by means of his army hurled against the European tyrants and which returned with ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... exquisite and praiseworthy qualities which adorned and beautified her, she had won the love and admiration of all Italy; and long afterward, when the deliverer of Italy had become her lord and her oppressor, when she had no longer cause to love Bonaparte, but only to curse him, Italy preserved for Josephine a memory full of admiration ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... plunder under official seals, who curse Algiers with avarice, with fraud, with routine, with the hell-spawn of civilization. It is the 'Bureaucracy,' as your tongue phrases it, that is the spoiler and the oppressor of the soil. But—we endure only for a while. A little, and the shame of the invader's tread will be washed out in blood. Allah is great; we ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... out to him a photograph of the Donatello David at Florence—the divine young hero in his shepherd's hat, fresh from the slaying of the oppressor. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... violent, dogmatic, nor unintelligent. He is ready for barricades, but he has studied them, and alone of the workers of the world he has learned about them from actual experience. He is ready and willing to fight his oppressor, the capitalist class, to a finish. But he does not ignore the existence of other classes. He merely asks that the other classes take one side or the other in the bitter conflict that ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... action concerning him, he resolved at once to write him a note, declaring that their relationship was known, and that should any further persecution be offered, the same should at once be made public to the oppressor's disgrace. ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... who said to his enemy, 'I can't shed thy blood, friend, but I will hold thy head under water till thou art drowned.' And so there is a set of demagogical fellows, who keep calling out, 'Farmer, this is an oppressor, and Squire, that is a vampire! But no violence! Don't smash their machines, don't burn their ricks! Moral force, and a curse on all tyrants!' Well, and if poor Hodge thinks moral force is all my eye, and that the recommendation ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... said that they took little part in these misdeeds. There were doubtless some men among them who shared in all the evil of that turbulent time; but most of these frontier riflemen, though poor and ignorant, were sincerely patriotic; they marched to fight the oppressor, to drive out the stranger, not to ill-treat ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... strengthened, as we have seen among the Colonists and English-speaking half-breeds. The Hudson's Bay Company had now re-bought the land of Assiniboia from Lord Selkirk's heirs. Hitherto it was difficult to find out precisely who their oppressor was. Now, though Governor Simpson sought by diplomacy to evade the responsibility, yet the explanation given by the Colonists of the arrival of Recorder Thom, was that he had come to uphold the Company's pretensions and to restrict ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... who always supports the right, crowns our efforts with success. I can make you no definite promises. I have your interest at heart, and will endeavor faithfully and honestly to support you in your efforts and in those of your people to redeem their homes from an oppressor's rule... ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... is an allusion to his own love, the adjective 'despised' is significant. But I doubt the allusion. The other calamities mentioned by Hamlet, 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,' are not at ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... wish to educate a man to be a successful oppressor, with a genius for introducing new horrors and novelties in pain, oppress him early in life and don't give him any reason for doing so. The idea that "God is love" was not popular in those days. The early settlers were so stern even with their own children that if the Indian had not given ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... popular government. In the "witan," or "wise men," who were chosen as advisers and adjusters of difficult questions, exist the future legislature and judiciary, while in the king, or "alder-mann" ("Ealdorman") we see not an oppressor, but one who by superior age and experience is fitted to lead. Cerdic, first Saxon king, was simply ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... modern results of the system, which we all witness to-day in the terrible hostility of class arrayed against class, the poor against the rich, the lower orders against the higher. The opposition in Ireland between the oppressed and the oppressor is of a very different character, is we shall see later. But the fact is, that the clan system, with all its striking defects, had at least this immense advantage, that the clansmen did not look upon their chieftains as "lords and masters," but as men of the same blood, true relations, and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... its dominion and influence greater. The archbishops, bishops and other dignitaries enjoyed large revenues, and the ecclesiastical establishment was splendid and magnificent. The Inquisition was introduced in America in 1570 by Philip II., the oppressor of Protestant England and of the Netherlands, and patron of the monster Alva. The native Indians, on the ground of incapacity, were exempted from the jurisdiction of that tribunal. No scruple was shown, however, in converting the natives ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... more to visit Isabella, but like an obedient and faithful chattel, took himself a wife from the house of his master. Robert did not live many years after his last visit to Isabel, but took his departure to that country, where 'they neither marry nor are given in marriage,' and where the oppressor cannot molest. ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... it was a savage wilderness, tearing themselves from their homes, from civil surroundings; that they might be far from tyranny, in small forms as well as great. Not merely tyranny of king or church, but the shapes of it that Hamlet speaks of—'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the insolence of office.' All for the sake of liberty, they battled with savages and with nature, fought and toiled, bled and starved. And Tyranny ignored them till they had transformed their land and themselves into something worth its attention. And then, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... oppressed child she raises up in a few strokes before him. She is an orphan, and a dependant in the house of a selfish, hard-hearted aunt, against whom the disposition of the little Jane chafes itself in natural antipathy, till she contrives to make the unequal struggle as intolerable to her oppressor as it is to herself. She is, therefore, at eight years of age, got rid of to a sort of Dothegirls Hall, where she continues to enlist our sympathies for a time with her little pinched fingers, cropped ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... will furnish them with ekmek and pilaff, and that is all they expect. They eat meat only on feast-days, and then only mutton. The tax-gatherer is their only grievance; they look upon him as a necessary evil. They have no idea of being ground down under the oppressor's iron heel. Yet they are happy because they are contented, and have no envy. The poorer, the more ignorant, a Turk is, the better he seems to be. As he gets money and power, and becomes "contaminated" by western civilization, he deteriorates. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... poor sort of victory, and no one knew it better than Reginald. If the boy was awed into silence, he was no nearer listening to reason— nay, further than ever. He slunk sulkily into a corner, glowering at his oppressor and deaf to every word he uttered. In vain Reginald expostulated, coaxed, reasoned, even apologised. The boy met it all with a sullen scowl. Reginald offered to pay him for the book, to buy him another, to read aloud to him, to give him an extra ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... Earth lifts up her fettered hands And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands, And her old woe-worn face a little while Grows young and noble: unto thee the Oppressor Looks and is dumb with awe; The eternal law Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding, And he can see the grim-eyed Doom From out the trembling gloom Its silent-footed steeds ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... He "will perfect that which concerneth thee." In all thy troubles, and in all thy joy, commit thy way unto Him. He will guard the sacred deposit. Fear not that thou shalt lack any good thing. Fear not that thou shalt be forsaken. Fear not that thou shalt fall beneath the arm of the oppressor. "He went through the fires of the pit to save thee." Sing, then, thou beloved, "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... the Lord God of their Fathers." This is the covenant, and this is a general view of the general matter; this is according to the aim of those that made it, take it, swear to it. Who but an atheist can refuse the first? who but a papist the second? who but an oppressor, or a rebel, the third? who but the guilty, the fourth? who but men of fortune, desperate cavaliers, the fifth? who but light and empty men, unstable as water, the sixth? In a word, the duty is such, that God hath ordained; ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... consideration. The act, in both cases, is essentially the same—equally inhuman, immoral, piratical. Oppression is not a matter of latitude or longitude; here excusable, there to be execrated; here to elevate the oppressor to the highest station, there to hang him by the neck till he is dead; here compatible with Christianity, there to be branded and punished as piracy. "He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... for this new turn of events of a more general and more profound character than the personal woes of Flemish princes. James de Chiltillon, the governor assigned by Philip the Handsome to Flanders, was a greedy oppressor of it; the municipal authorities whom the victories or the gold of Philip had demoralized became the objects of popular hatred; and there was an outburst of violent sedition. A simple weaver, obscure, poor, undersized, and one-eyed, but valiant, and eloquent in his Flemish tongue, one ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... stand shoulder to shoulder and fight off nature's calamities as the French fought off their oppressor at Verdun. I repeat, we could let nature oppress us as she oppresses the meek Chinese—let her whip us with cold, drought, flood, isolation ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... crown upon his head, to rise up against thee and deprive thee of thy sovereignty. But God set his undertaking at naught, and the honors he sought for himself, fell to the share of my uncle Mordecai, who this oppressor and enemy ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... word and deed, I was the foremost knight of chivalry, Stout, bold, expert, as e'er the world did see; Thousands from the oppressor's wrong I freed; Great were my feats, eternal fame their meed; In love I proved my truth and loyalty; The hugest giant was a dwarf for me; Ever to knighthood's laws gave I good heed. My mastery the Fickle Goddess owned, And even Chance, submitting to control, Grasped by the forelock, yielded ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... leave a track Of glory permanent and bright To which the brave of after-times, The suffering brave, shall long look back With proud regret,—and by its light Watch thro' the hours of slavery's night For vengeance on the oppressor's crimes. This rock, his monument aloft, Shall speak the tale to many an age; And hither bards and heroes oft Shall come in secret pilgrimage, And bring their warrior sons and tell The wondering boys where HAFED ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... should, for where, oh! where is his aiquil to be found? Like yourself, every one that comes near him must love him; and, like you, again, isn't he charity itself to the poor, no matter what their creed may be—oh, no! it's he that is neither the bigot nor the oppressor, although God he knows what he himself is sufferin' from both. God's curse on that blasted Sir Robert Whitecraft! I declare to mercy, I think, if I was a man, that I'd shoot him, like a mad dog, and free the country ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... man in a free land would have credited so sudden a devotion? But this oppressor, through the very arts and sophistries he had abused, to quiet the rebellion of his conscience and to convince himself that slavery was natural, fell like a child into the trap I laid for him. He praised and thanked me; told me I had all the qualities he valued in a servant; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... each side of this chapel present a touching instance of the equality of the grave; which brings down the oppressor to a level with the opprest, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together. In one is the sepulcher of the haughty Elizabeth; in the other is that of her victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... full confession. It all happened just as we thought. It had been determined by the Luddites to kill Mulready, and Stukeley determined to carry out the business himself, convinced, as he says, that the man was a tyrant and an oppressor, and that his death was not only richly deserved, but that such a blow was necessary to encourage the Luddites. He did not care, however, to run the risk of taking any of the others into his confidence, and therefore ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and compels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman.... So successfully had the Church used her formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came, she had enfranchised almost all the bondmen ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... of starvation, resolved to cut their way through the guarded defiles, and succeeded only by the loss of seven thousand men, with all their baggage and military stores. The Morea was delivered from the oppressor, and the Turkish army of thirty thousand was destroyed. Chourchid Pasha was soon after seized with dysentery, brought about by fatigue and anxiety, to which he succumbed; and the ablest general yet sent against the Greeks failed disastrously, to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe Can act, is acting there against man's life: From flashing scimitar to secret knife, War mouldeth there each weapon to his need - So may he guard the sister and the wife, So may he make each curst oppressor bleed, So may such foes deserve the most ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... these proportions between the oppressor and oppressed—to whatever dangers a country so situated may be considered to be exposed, these evils and dangers are rapidly increasing in Ireland. The proportion of Catholics to Protestants is infinitely ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... theory that this life is a state of trial and probation that the tastes can be explained. Happily, it is not very common. Most women know their strong from their weak points, and marshal them on the whole well in the encounter with their lawful oppressor and great enemy, man. And until they have won the victory to which Dr. Mary Walker is now leading them on, may they never lack the female vanity which makes it one of their great objects ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... thoughts of her old fleets and her old victories, her merchants and her statesmen, whom John Bellini drew. Venice sinned, and fell; and sorely has she paid for her sins, through two hundred years of shame, and profligacy, and slavery. And she has broken the oppressor's yoke. God send her a new life! May she learn by her ancient sins! May she learn ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... smallest point, is himself guilty of departing therefrom. He who should give breath stifleth him that could breathe. The land that ought to give repose driveth repose away. He who should divide in fairness hath become a robber. He who should blot out the oppressor giveth him the command to turn the town into a waste of water. He who should drive away evil himself committeth ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... people, they said, had organizations extending from Canada to Louisiana, by means of which information could be communicated throughout the South, when the blow for freedom was to be struck. Philanthropic white men were expected to take sides against the oppressor, while those occupying neutral ground would offer no resistance to the passage of forces from Canada and Ohio to Virginia and Kentucky. Once upon slave territory, they imagined the work of emancipation would ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... encourage each State to receive all the implements of labor, education and comfort which a generous people can bestow, not merely for the benefit of the black freedman, but for the disenthralled white who has grovelled in the darkness of a past age, and who has been, perhaps, the innocent oppressor of a people he may yet serve, and with them enter into the enjoyment of a more glorious freedom than either have ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... could'st thou prove my truth, thou would'st not start, 1520 Nor fear the fire that lights an Eastern heart; 'Tis now the beacon of thy safety—now It points within the port a Mainote prow: But in one chamber, where our path must lead, There sleeps—he must not wake—the oppressor Seyd!" ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... October, Lord John took the same ground in the case of Naples. After quoting with approval the view taken by Vattel of the lawfulness of the assistance given by the United Provinces to the Prince of Orange, and his conclusion that it is justifiable to assist patriots revolting against an oppressor for "good reasons," he stated that the question was whether the people of Naples and of the Roman States took up arms against their Government for good reasons; and of this matter, he added, the people themselves were ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... Lord who sees the poor opprest, And hears th' oppressor's haughty strain, Will rise to give his children rest, Nor shall they trust his ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... Medici, he to whom the title of Duke della citta di Penna was given, was the son of the Duke d'Urbino, Catherine's father, by a Moorish slave. For this reason Lorenzino claimed a double right to kill Alessandro,—as a usurper in his house, as well as an oppressor of the city. Some historians believe that Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The fact that led to the recognition of this bastard as chief of the republic and head of the house of the Medici was his marriage with Margaret of Austria, natural ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... So good and bad, sane and mad, The oppressor and the oppressed; Those who weep to see what others Smile to inflict upon their brothers; 255 Lovers, haters, ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... honour lost, 'tis still decreed For you my bowl shall flow, my flock shall bleed; Judge and revenge my right, impartial Jove! By him and all the immortal thrones above (A sacred oath), each proud oppressor slain, Shall with inglorious ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... Inca Atahuallpa was strangled by the Spaniards in the great square of Caxamalca. From that moment the ancient Peruvian people have looked for the coming of my lord to free them from the yoke of the foreign oppressor, to give them back their country, and to restore them to the proud position which they occupied ere the coming of the cruel Spaniard; and now that my lord has deigned to appear we should be foolish indeed to permit anything—anything, Lord—to stand in the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... suits his pleasure? Or do you not rather believe that he should do the will of all?—You do not answer? You are awed, I see, by the thought that it may come to an end! Listen to my confession! Tomorrow the oppressor dies, and you shall all ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... calls you to the field, in defence of a cause so just and righteous as ours, go. You will be under the care of the same Providence there as elsewhere. Go, and with a dying mother's blessing, and a prayer of faith for your safety and success, do battle manfully for the Heaven-favored side, till the oppressor be cast down, and the oppressed ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... dauntless, cruel and enterprising, seemed to fit him for the situation. Delighting in the tumult and in the struggles of life, he was equally a stranger to pity and to fear; his very courage was a sort of animal ferocity; not the noble impulse of a principle, such as inspirits the mind against the oppressor, in the cause of the oppressed; but a constitutional hardiness of nerve, that cannot feel, and that, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... her with loathing for the man, and she did not conceal her feelings from her husband, who made no attempt to defend the emperor. It was not for love of him that Captain Ladoinski had fought under 'the Little Corporal.' He was a Pole, and it was because Napoleon was fighting the oppressor of the Polish race—Russia—that he fought for the French. The Russians had been humbled, and he, a Pole, had marched as one of a victorious army into their capital. But secretly he wondered if the condition of much-persecuted ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore

... these distressing symptoms of our present social regime. We prefer, it seems, to become like that we contemplate. We seek to terrorize them, as they seek to terrorize us. As the anarchist believes that oppression may be ended by the murder of the oppressor, so society cherishes the thought that anarchism may be ended by the murder of the anarchist. Are not our methods in truth the same, and can any man doubt that both are equally futile and senseless? Both the anarchy ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... at the head of my bed. I heaved a sigh and wished to move myself, but had not sufficient strength. The princess said with kindness, 'O Persian, be of good cheer, and do not grieve; though some cruel oppressor hath used thee thus; yet the great idol has made me favourable towards thee, and ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... point of rock, and looked on the ground discountenanced. Sally stood up glowing and triumphant, as if she had her foot on the neck of her oppressor and meant to make the most ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... were forced to travel on foot to the city of St. Domingo, provided only with a small store of trinkets and other articles of Indian traffic, with which to buy provisions on the road. The moment Bastides made his appearance, he was seized as an illicit trader by the governor Bobadilla, the oppressor and superseder of Columbus, and sent for trial to Spain. He was there acquitted, and his voyage was so lucrative, that he had considerable profit after ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... revolutionist, this latent spirit has found expression. Again and again, spasmodic and abortive emeutes, the calm protest of a D'Azeglio and the fanaticism of an Orsini, sacrifices of property, freedom, and life,—all the more pathetic, because to human vision useless,—have made known to the oppressor the writhings of the oppressed, and to the world the arbitrary rule which conceals injustice by imposing silence. The indirect, but most emphatic utterance of this deep, latent self-respect of the nation we find in Alfieri, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... that a foreign oppressor should disperse you with shame and ignominy carry off honest men, usurp our arsenals, and harass the remainder of our unhappy fellow-countrymen at will? No, comrades, come with me; glory and the sweet consolation of being the saviours of your country await ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... struggle profess and defend. For it is indisputable that this is the source to which the formation of the Jewish mind and heart must be attributed. Let me cite, for one proof, the admission of the most persistent and most powerful oppressor of the Jews, the procurator of the Russian synod. Half the number of all Hebrews are subjects of Russia. They came under her dominion when she conquered and incorporated the Polish provinces; they are kept there ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau

... . bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... that it falls upon the sufferers. We shrink from saying to a pauper, "It serves you right". That sounds brutal, and is only in part true. Still, we should not shrink from stating whatever is true, painful though it may be. It sounds better to lay all the blame upon the oppressor than to lay it upon the oppressed; and yet, as a rule, the cowardice or folly of the oppressed has generally been one cause of their misfortunes, and cannot be overlooked in a true estimate of the case. That drunkenness, improvidence, love of gambling, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... curious cabinet of Mons. le G——, I found out, behind several other casts, a bust of Robespierre, which was taken of him, a short period before he fell. A tyrant, whose offences look white, contrasted with the deep delinquency of the oppressor of France, is said to be indebted more to his character, than to nature, for the representation of that deformity of person which appears in Shakspeare's portrait of him, when he puts this soliloquy in ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... trample and dance, thou oppressor, For thy victim is no redressor! Thou art sole lord and possessor Of her corpses, and clods and abortions—they pave Thy path ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... Daghestan! Soon will the Russian army appear in your midst. And I repeat to you that our troops will come only to deliver you from the yoke of your oppressor, to protect the weak, and those who turn from the error of their ways with repentance, as well as all those who have risen in revolt against the power of the despot. In the name of the great ruler of men, the emperor of all the Russias, who has delivered ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... country's call! Thou canst not hang back. United we stand; divided we fall. Will the Prince of Dynevor be the man to bring ruin upon a noble cause, by banding with the alien oppressor against his own brethren? I will not believe it of thee. Wendot, speak — say that thou wilt go ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the Cabal. Lord Clifford is wearing a crimson robe, under a magnificent flowing mantle of ermine, and in his right hand is the white wand of office. His face shows shrewdness and determination, and a certain geniality, which suggests that, though on occasion he might not have scrupled to act as an oppressor, yet he would always have liked to do so as ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... Deanery House. He might have flourished as the greatest of English statesmen—he became instead a monster, a master-scourger of men, pitiless to them as they had been blind to him. But monster and master-scourger as he proved himself, he always took the side of the oppressed as against the oppressor. The impulse which sent him abroad collecting guineas for "poor Harrison" was the same impulse which moved him in his study at the Deanery to write as "M.B. Drapier." On this latter occasion, however, he also had an ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... call indifferent, and in so doing I have denied the Lord my God." When the bishop began to commend him for his well-led life, putting him in hopes of health, and praised him for his civil carriage and behaviour, saying, He was no oppressor, and without any known vice;—he answered, "No matter, a man may be a good civil neighbour, and yet go to hell."——The bishop answered, "My lord, I confess we have all our faults," and thereafter he insisted so long, that my lord thought him impertinent; this made him interrupt the bishop, saying, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... upon the Warlock-knoll Dare now assemble at their mystic revels. It is a night when, from their primrose beds, The gentle ghosts of injured innocents Are known to rise and wander on the breeze, Or take their stand by the oppressor's couch, And strike grim terror to his guilty soul. The spirit of my love might now awake, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... constitutional—measures. The Extremists, out of deference to the older party, agree, although satisfied of the ineffectiveness of this course. Waiting until this has been demonstrated, they adopt violent methods, and everything becomes easy. The oppressor is disposed of without difficulty. His followers—namely, the Anglo-Indians—are, as it is prophesied in the play and as narrated in the Mahabharata, massacred with equal ease. And the Extremists boast that, having freed their country, they will be able to defend it ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... obligation to stand by one another in weal or in woe, regardless of their own lives, and without inquiring into one another's antecedents. A bad man, however, having joined the Otokodate must forsake his evil ways; for their principle was to treat the oppressor as an enemy, and to help the feeble as a father does his child. If they had money, they gave it to those that had none, and their charitable deeds won for them the respect of all men. The head of the society was called its "Father"; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... anger, bitter opposition to the violation of liberty, are of little avail if the psychological factors are favourable to amalgamation. A few decades, a few centuries, and there is fusion between oppressor and oppressed. Hence the loyalty of conquered nations to their foreign masters, at times, when rivals vainly hope for trouble. Hence the indisputable fact that many a nation which but a short time ago fought valiantly for liberty now manifests not only passive resignation, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... because of their sublime greatness, but also because of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, had written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of compromise. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... lemon, our African brother, juicy as he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the "damnable spirit of Cahst" when the victim thereof sits at the first table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves? You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted "Cussed Be Canaan." I howled feelingly on the subject while it was a living issue, for I felt all that I said and a great ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... oppressor, we plead the cause of the oppressed—While we invite the unhappy slave to a patient and Christian submission to his condition—and urge on his legalized master a humane exercise of his power—While we feel ourselves bound, by all honourable and lawful means, to protect those whom the laws have ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... the most approved loyalty, the longest course of faithful service, and the truest attachment to the protestant cause, were insufficient pledges to her oppressor of the fidelity of her nobles or ministers. The earl of Shrewsbury, whom she had deliberately selected from all others to be the keeper of the captive queen, and whose vigilance had now for so long a period baffled all attempts for her deliverance, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... this being indeed only an incomplete state of hostilities, and generally ending in a formal denunciation of war. These letters are grantable by the law of nations[y], whenever the subjects of one state are oppressed and injured by those of another; and justice is denied by that state to which the oppressor belongs. In this case letters of marque and reprisal (words in themselves synonimous and signifying a taking in return) may be obtained, in order to seise the bodies or goods of the subjects of the offending state, until satisfaction be made, wherever they ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... ceremony, and laid to rest with pompous respect, and the splendid temple dedicated to Theseus was begun, and Phidias was commissioned to make its plastic ornaments. The precincts of this temple later became a sanctuary where the poor man and the slave could be safe from the oppressor. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... upon earth to prove whether, when here below, we shall live obedient to His ordinances and who also will require of us all, when we depart hence to His presence, an account of our life, since He is Judge of all proud wrongdoing; for the groans of the oppressed become the punishment of the oppressor. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... carries with it sighings and groanings, nation-murder, brilliance, beauty, patriotism, splendors, self-sacrifice through generations of gallant men and exquisite women; indomitable endurance of bands of noble people carrying through world-wide exile the sacred fire of wrath against the oppressor, and uttering in every clime a cry of appeal ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... th' market then my price may be the higher, Even when I am nearest to the cook and fire.' So to great men the moral may be stretched; Men oft are valu'd high, when they're most wretched.— But come, whither you please. I am arm'd 'gainst misery; Bent to all sways of the oppressor's will: There 's no deep valley but near some great ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... of a nature to be detested; it is only that she is strong, intolerant, and self-satisfied. She grates a little. Her yea is always yea, and her nay, nay. She would always prefer the oppressed to the oppressor, unless, perhaps, the oppressor might chance to be useful to herself. She likes useful people. Yet, with all this, she is of a merry nature, and very popular with most of her acquaintances. Friends, in the strictest sense, she has none. She doesn't permit herself ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... Their steps where'er he lists to wend,— Through them alone, in toil and pain, My wretched life I still sustain. Enough, for thou hast heard in brief The story of my pain and grief. His mighty strength all regions know, My brother, but my deadly foe. Ah, if the proud oppressor fell, His death would all my woe dispel. Yea, on my cruel conqueror's fall My joy depends, my life, my all. This were the end and sure relief, O Rama, of my tale of grief. Fair be his lot or dark with woe, No comfort like ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... of the Chief of Engineers at Washington, but Loring addressed it direct to the home of the assistant, upon whose interest in the case he had reason to rely, and then returned at once to his desk. Were he not to be there it would place it in the power of a would-be oppressor to say the officer designated to receive the property had called during office hours and could not find Mr. Loring. And then, with such patience as he could command, Loring received the visitors who kept dropping in, among them the boisterous Moreland, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... the Lord, O king of Judah, that sittest upon the throne of David; thou, and thy servants, and thy people, that enter in by these gates: thus saith the Lord, Execute ye judgement and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor."—Jeremiah, xxii, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Poustiakoff drove to the door; Gvozdine, a landlord excellent, Oppressor of the wretched poor; And the Skatenines, aged pair, With all their progeny were there, Who from two years to thirty tell; Petoushkoff, the provincial swell; Bouyanoff too, my cousin, wore(58) His wadded coat and cap with peak (Surely ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... a walking arsenal. He had a way of collecting his bills with a cavalry saber, and once, during the course of a "spree," hearing that a great Irishman named Jack Sawyer had beaten up his son Frank, was seen emerging from the hotel in search of the oppressor of his offspring with a butcher-knife in his boot, a six-shooter at his belt, and a rifle in his hand. Frank himself was less of a buccaneer and was conspicuous because he was practically the only man in Little ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... especially historical novels. And most people of modern, or rather of very recent times got all their notions of history from dipping into historical novels. In those romances the Jew is always the oppressed where in reality he was often the oppressor. In those romances the Arab is always credited with oriental dignity and courtesy and never with oriental crookedness and cruelty. The same injustice is introduced into history, which by means of selection and omission can be made as fictitious as ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... all his family pride, his sense of ancestry with all its stimulus and obligations, had but grown. He was proud of calamity, impoverishment, isolation; they were the scars on pilgrims' feet—honour-marks left by the oppressor. His bare and rained house, his melancholy garden, where not a bed or path had suffered change since the man who planned them had refused to comply with the Test Act, and so forfeited his seat in Parliament; his dwindling resources, his hermit's ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... disappeared. I was alone and friendless in the house of the oppressor. Did I follow the suggestions of my own heart, I should either destroy myself, or quit the protection of Mr. Moncton's roof ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... Englishman, among his million delightful virtues, really has this quality, which may strictly be called "hand to mouth," because under its influence a man's hand automatically seeks his own mouth, instead of seeking (as it sometimes should do) his oppressor's nose. And a man who says that the English inequality in land is due only to economic causes, or that the drunkenness of England is due only to economic causes, is saying something so absurd that he cannot really have ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... and its great interests as you seem to imagine. I see History enacting itself before my eyes, and I cannot sit by with averted face. I hear the grand chant of Liberty as the beautiful goddess comes nearer and nearer and smites down one Oppressor after another with her red right hand; and I cannot shut my ears. I have been an actor in the great drama of Revolution ever since a lad of twelve. I saw my father borne off in chains to Siberia, and heard my mother with her dying breath curse the tyrant ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... fortunate. In England—while the old English literature was crushed out by the heel of the oppressor, the Norman instinct seized on the latent possibilities of the old English political institutions, welded them into a great system, developed out of them representative government, and created ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... charges of a secret guilt Ye bring against me. For what is the gain Of the base hypocrite when God shall take Away his perjured soul? Yourselves have seen How often in this life the wicked taste Of retribution. The oppressor bears Sway for a while,—but look!—the downfall comes. His offspring shall not flourish, nor his grave Be wet with widow's tears. The unjust rich man Heapeth up silver for a stranger's hand, He hoardeth raiment with a miser's greed To ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... suffering at the hands of heathen nations. This condition is summed up in the oft repeated words: "The children of Israel again did evil in the eyes of the Lord" and "the Lord sold them into the hand of the oppressor." ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... her to be the first to miss the girl. The father had forgotten her, friends had overlooked her, but the stepmother, the traditional oppressor, was thoughtful of her, and wanted to include her in the love afloat. This little circumstance made a deep impression on the three witnesses. It was a good omen for Leam, and promised what indeed her new mother ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... feet of countless nomads, travelling with their flocks and herds, from the heat and drought of the extreme south to the markets that receive the trade of the country, or making haste from the turbulent north to escape the heavy hand of the oppressor. ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... your argument upon the void; you discuss that which was, not that which is. The Papacy is dead, choked in blood and mire; dead, because it has betrayed its own mission of protection to the weak against the oppressor; dead, because for three centuries and a half it has prostituted itself with princes; dead, because in the name of egotism and before the palaces of all the corrupt, hypocritical, and skeptical governments, it has for the second time crucified ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various



Words linked to "Oppressor" :   dictator, authoritarian, tormentor, whipper, switcher, persecutor, meany, unpleasant person, tormenter, unkind person, meanie, oppress, torturer, disagreeable person



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