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Servitude   /sˈərvətˌud/   Listen
Servitude

noun
1.
State of subjection to an owner or master or forced labor imposed as punishment.



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"Servitude" Quotes from Famous Books



... mutiny among the Turks; and even his son Solyman too hastily withdrew from the field. The forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were drawn away to the banners of their lawful princes. His Tartar allies had been tempted by the letters and emissaries of Timur, who reproached their ignoble servitude under the slaves of their fathers; and offered to their hopes the dominion of their new, or the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts and irresistible arms; but these ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... her countenance, and with a pert smile took the hand which her former mistress graciously extended. By universal custom a servant retains some of the privileges of humanity for several minutes after entering upon a new servitude. Mr. Boutwood vanished. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... a visit, she would open herself very freely, and reveal to me many curious bits of secret history relating to her husband's literary friends. She was very amusing on the Sage of Chelsea. I recollect she treated Mrs. Carlyle's account of her dreary life and servitude to her great husband as a sort of romance or delusion, conveying that she was not at all a lady likely to be thus "put upon." In vulgar phrase, the boot was ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... And O, the history of that place! The music of the sareng, the jingle of anklets, the occasional flash of daggers and the glowing wine of Shiraz poison, and the piercing flashing glance! What infinite grandeur, what endless servitude! ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... Lacedaemonians and Cretans, as well as by the manner in which they educated their children, that all which they had in view was to make them soldiers: besides, among all nations, those who have power enough and reduce others to servitude are honoured on that account; as were the Scythians, Persians, Thracians, and Gauls: with some there are laws to heighten the virtue of courage; thus they tell us that at Carthage they allowed every person to wear as many rings for distinction as he had served ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... too much of the Tartar servitude, was that recorded by Peter Heylin in his Little Description of the Great World (Oxford, 1629), who says: "It is the custom over all Muscovie, that a maid in time of wooing sends to that suitor whom she chooseth for her husband such a whip curiously by herself wrought, in token of her subjection ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... drudgery, and not being admitted to an equality with their husbands. Notwithstanding all this, the missionaries give them a high character. They bear pain with fortitude, and have a horror of slavery, although so many of them are reduced to servitude by greedy traders. A sea captain once offered a negro any amount of money, on condition that he should become his slave. "All the gold your ship could hold," said the spirited African, "is no price for my liberty." They are very sensitive, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... month, he now gets twenty-one days. If it he a serious offence, or if the criminal be a habitual offender, he now receives eighteen months' imprisonment, whereas he used to receive five years' penal servitude. As far as most judges and stipendiary magistrates are concerned, sentences of imprisonment have decreased in recent years more than twenty-six per cent.; and if there was a corresponding movement on the part of Chairmen of ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... had been adopted, it was in the power of the adoptive father to cancel the act of adoption and reduce him to his former state of servitude if he had not performed his part of the contract and the parties who had witnessed it were willing that it should be cancelled. We learn this from a deed that was drawn up in the thirteenth year of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... my acquaintances are not heroes, for I am sorry to say that my old friend Downy has served his term of penal servitude, and is at liberty once more to beg or steal. He is not ashamed to beg, but I know that he prefers stealing, for he richly enjoys anything obtained "on the cross," and cares little for ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... been no sudden change—no dramatic incident, such as the high spots in the history of his native Khloris. Here, things had just drifted from freedom to servitude, with the people dropping their rights as a man ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole

... expenditure of muscular effort on the part of the farmer or farm labourer. On the fruit and vegetable garden the great preponderance of the power usefully exercised must, under existing conditions, come direct from the muscles of men. Spade and plough represent the badges of the rural workers' servitude, and to rescue the country residents from this old-world bondage must be one of the chief objects to which invention will in ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... sir! (cried Clinker) I hope I shall never be base enough to sell for gold and silver, what freely comes of God's grace. I distributed nothing, an like your honour, but a word of advice to my fellows in servitude and sin.' 'Advice! concerning what?' 'Concerning profane swearing, an please your honour; so horrid and shocking, that it made my hair stand on end.' 'Nay, if thou can'st cure them Of that disease, I shall think thee a wonderful doctor indeed' 'Why not ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... twenty-first to his thirty-first year, he suffered from the loss of virile power, a calamity which he laments in the following words: "And I maintain that this misfortune was to me the worst of evils. Compared with it neither the harsh servitude under my father, nor unkindness, nor the troubles of litigation, nor the wrongs done me by my fellow-townsmen, nor the scorn of my fellow-physicians, nor the ill things falsely spoken against me, nor ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... sweeten men's conditions. The laws they will have to administer will be no clearer than those we know to-day, and the body which is to regulate their administration no wiser than the British Parliament. So that upon all hands we may look for a form of servitude most galling to the blood—servitude to many and changing masters, and for all the slights that accompany the rule of jack-in-office. And if the Socialistic programme be carried out with the least fulness, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with freedom to contend, As both their deeds compared this day shall prove. To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied. Apostate! still thou errest, nor end wilt find Of erring, from the path of truth remote: Unjustly thou depravest it with the name Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains, Or Nature: God and Nature bid the same, When he who rules is worthiest, and excels Them whom he governs. This is servitude, To serve the unwise, or him who hath rebelled Against his worthier, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... faint, gasping cry of a day-old baby. That cry drowned the cooing of the doves, the song of the robin, and the chirping of the dwellers in the grass; to Jimmy the bleat of the little human lamb sounded like the roar of a lion. He could endure penal servitude on his Saturday, with a patience born of something approaching a philosophy; he could wear a checked gingham apron, even as a saint wears an unbecoming halo; but the arrival of the new baby—the fifth addition to the family in the short period of years ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... as I felt it and weighed it in my hands it seemed to me there must be more than this. It was too bulky. What more was to be laid to my charge? After all, a thousand pounds was not much to tempt a man like myself to run the risk of penal servitude. In this new agitation, scarcely knowing what I did, I caught the surrounding strap in my fingers just above the fastening and tore the staple out of the lock. These locks, you know, are ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... be contagious. Other residents of Valley Rest, overhearing some of the chats between the members, expressed a desire to listen to the discussions of the class, and to all was extended a hearty welcome, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of religious servitude, and all were invited to be doers as well as hearers. So at the next session appeared ex-Judge Cottaway, who had written a book and was a vestryman of St. Amos Parish; Broker Whilcher, who worshiped with the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... the omnipotency of gold, or say not unto it, thou art my confidence. Kiss not thy hand when thou beholdest that terrestrial sun, nor bore thy ear unto its servitude. A slave unto Mammon makes no servant unto God. Covetousness cracks the sinews of faith, numbs the apprehension of anything above sense; and only affected with the certainty of things present, makes a peradventure of things ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... Haughtiness is not authority. It is not we who are the law; the law is over our heads. We only interpret it, but to make it valid in the eyes of others, we must first be subject to it ourselves. To command and to obey in the society of men, are after all but two forms of the same virtue—voluntary servitude. If you are not obeyed, it is generally because you ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... a source, transit, and destination country for women trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude; Iranian women are trafficked internally for the purpose of forced prostitution and for forced marriages to settle debts; Iranian children are trafficked internally and Afghan children are trafficked into Iran for the purpose of forced marriages, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Sahalin, and two short stories, "Gusev" and "In Exile." His articles on Sahalin were looked on with a favourable eye in Petersburg, and, who knows, it is possible that the reforms which followed in regard to penal servitude and exile would not have taken place ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... the Mosaic Law makes a very great and decidedly partial distinction between men-servants and maid-servants, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter, particularly in their release from servitude. These same texts—some of them, at least—have been quoted in defense of African slavery. The term, selling a Jewish servant, in the Scripture, is simply the same as binding out a child under English law. A Jewish ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... might yield her crown to the camera and the stenographer; and divine imagination would degenerate into vulgar inventiveness. Imagination is incompatible with inventiveness, or imitation. Imitation is death, imagination is life. Imitation is servitude, imagination is royalty. He who claims the name of artist must rise to that vision of a loftier reality—a more true because a more beautiful world—which only imagination can reveal. A truer world, —for the world ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... from the centers where social discontent boils with passion and because it prevents his appreciating class differences, makes him a conservative element in our national life, but one always big with the danger of a blind servitude to traditions and archaic social judgments. The thinking of the farmer may be either substantial from his sense of personal sufficiency or backward from his lack of contact. The decision regarding his attitude is made ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves

... people, particularly as in the transition state of society just after the close of the war there prevailed much lawlessness, which vented itself chiefly on the freedmen. It was greatly feared that political rights were to be given those so recently in servitude, and as it was generally believed that such enfranchisement would precipitate a race war unless the freedmen were overawed and kept in a state of subjection, acts of intimidation were soon reported from all parts ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... indifferentlie replenished and furnished this Iland with people, Albion, the giant, repaired hither with a companie of his owne race proceeding from Cham, and not onelie annexed the same to his owne dominion, but brought all such as he found here of the line of Japhet, into miserable servitude and most extreame thraldome. After him also, and within lesse than six hundred and two yeares, came Brute, the son of Sylvius, with a great train of the posteritie of the dispersed Trojans in 324 ships; who rendering the like courtesie ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... belief has been kept, so that to Scotch, Irish, and Welsh peasantry brooks, hills, dales, and rocks abound in tiny supernatural beings, who may work them good or evil, lead them astray by flickering lights, or charm them into seven years' servitude unless they ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... love their captivity. To the unknown force of negation they prefer the miserably tumbled bed of their servitude. Man alone can give one the disgust of pity; yet I find it easier to believe in the misfortune of mankind ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... a child he exhibited thieving propensities; soon got into the hands of the police, and was in and out of gaol continually. He led the life of a confirmed tramp, and roved all over the United Kingdom. He has been in penal servitude three times, and his last term was for seven years, with police supervision. After his release he married a respectable girl, and tried to reform, but circumstances were against him; character he had none, a gaol career only ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... timber and slaves seem to have been the objects; no less than fifty-seven of the natives were brought back to Portugal, and doomed to bondage. These unhappy savages proved so robust and useful, that great benefits were anticipated from trading on their servitude;[58] the dreary and distant land of their birth, covered with snow for half the year, was despised by the Portuguese, whose thoughts and hopes were ever turned to the fertile plains, the sunny skies, and the inexhaustible ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... out of a memory. Your fathers were the servants of my fathers. I remember that in 1861, when I was a very small boy, the sound of war went through this land. My father, kinsmen and friends went forth to battle to keep your fathers in servitude. I remember that not a few of your fathers knew what that war meant—that if my fathers succeeded, your fathers would be kept in servitude forever and my fathers would remain the master class. All the men that could protect the women and children ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various

... can come to terms?" replied the prince. "I was born to servitude, and a stranger's bread is always bitter, so that it matters little to me what master I serve. But what will you promise me ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... may recognise important steps in that great Education of the Human Race which the Apostle Paul refers to in a bold philosophy of history (Galat. iv.), and which later thinkers have striven to set forth in detail. After the long servitude of mankind to irrational practices and to gods who were no gods, there comes first the period when men recognise that the true God is to be found not merely outside them but within their hearts and minds, and then the period when they find that the true God is ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... arrested, and in such case evidence sufficient to secure his conviction was usually found in his possession. Proceedings under the Official Secrets act were taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and in six cases sentences were passed varying from eighteen months to six years' penal servitude. At the same time steps were taken to mark down and keep under observation all the agents known to be engaged in this traffic, so that when any necessity arose the police might lay hands on them at once; and, accordingly, on the 4th of August, before ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... to be recalled without a blush—the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the anathema ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... but the development of their trade into an art, stimulated by foreign precepts, imported principally from Greece, Sicily and Asia Minor, opened up to the practitioners not only the door to freedom from servitude but it offered even positions of wealth with social and political standing, often arousing the envy, satire, criticism of bona-fide politicians, journalists, moralists, satirists and of the ever-present hordes of parasites and hangers-on. Some cooks became ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... she had been old enough to think at all, she had been inordinately proud of "being a man," and profoundly contemptuous of the women about her whose colorless lives spelled thraldom and hard servitude. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... foreign fashions, and foreign ideas of government. They believe in caste. They detest equality. They have no love and very little respect for the equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They despise honest labor. They consider it menial, as a badge of servitude. They believe that wealth is a power which can raise the wealthy few to the dominancy of a privileged class. They believe that as members of this class, they can treat all other classes as servitors and dependents, who may be hired to do anything for money. They view with complacency, the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... pity sits in anger's place. Poor maiden, come thou from the car; no way There is but this—take up thy servitude. ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... this example is easy, if we do not let ourselves be misled in estimating the wealth of barbarians by the ostentatious "pearl and gold" of kings and nobles, where 99 per cent. of the people live in penury and servitude. The wealth of civilisation is not only great but diffused, and in its diffusion its greatness must ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... share of these wagers," smiled the young officer, willing to pass by a possible argument. "Moreover, I am quite willing to discuss arrangements for changing the term of servitude of this young lady. I've been doing a little thinking about one or two ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... Miss Prue's opinion; but to drive a heathen one! To replace "Jupiter" she considered "Ann" a sensible, dignified, and proper name, and "Ann" she named him, regardless of age, sex, or "previous condition of servitude." The villagers accepted the change—though with modifications; the horse was known thereafter as ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... voluntary up to a certain point, beyond which it becomes involuntary or automatic. In the fullest sense of that which is not only without the will but distinctly in opposition to it, or compulsory, involuntary becomes an antonym, not only of voluntary but of spontaneous; as, involuntary servitude. A spontaneous outburst of applause is of necessity an act of volition, but so completely dependent on sympathetic impulse that it would seem frigid to call it voluntary, while to call it involuntary ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... long as men are allowed to act as milliners, with what propriety can they exclude women from the post of school commissioners when chosen to such positions by their neighbors? To deny them such rights, is to leave them in a condition of political servitude as absolute as that of the African slaves before their emancipation. This conclusion is readily to be deduced from the opinion of Chief Justice Jay in the case of Chisholm's Ex'rs vs. The State of Georgia (2 Dallas, 419-471), although the learned Chief Justice had of course no idea ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... on the other, to express the domination of Christian Rome over the souls, as they had represented the domination of heathen Rome over the bodies of men. And so side by side with the towers of the Norman keep rose the towers of the Norman cathedral— the two signs of a double servitude. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... sufferings led on to a common effort. If some prejudices passed away under the Napoleonic rule, many more still remained, and possibly, to eradicate so old an evil, no cure less drastic than universal servitude would have sufficed. Italians felt for the first time what before only the greatest among them had felt—that they were brothers in one household, children of one mother whom they were bound to redeem. Jealousies and millennial feuds ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... granting it. In the Southern States Congress had already planted a negro electorate by law. The Fifteenth Amendment forbade the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and was not submitted to the States until after the inauguration of General Grant. A fear that the South would disfranchise the freedmen, pay the price, and revert to Democratic control seems to have been the prime motive in its adoption. When it was proclaimed, March 30, 1870, the radical ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... bread upon the wider waters, but that he would make the most of what remained to him by withdrawing to some riverside nook, where his love of the unconventional, and his taste for a free life in the open air, could expand, emancipated from all servitude to society, including the necessity of keeping up what is ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... that, It is owing to its servility that servile fear may be evil. For servitude is opposed to freedom. Since, then, "what is free is cause of itself" (Metaph. i, 2), a slave is one who does not act as cause of his own action, but as though moved from without. Now whoever does a thing ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... counsellor of this Court, and possessed of no small sympathy for persons in peril of their freedom, when it was known that a person claimed as a fugitive slave was arrested, and in a few hours, perhaps, to be sent into eternal servitude, Mr. Davis steps over to my office and suggests to me that we offer our services as counsel. He leaves his business, which is large, while five courts are in session in this building. He sits here that whole Saturday forenoon by the prisoner, to whom he is recommended by Mr. Morton. He is twice ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various

... church, which must have its daily bread in order to exist, and of the faithful who supply her earthly needs in the humble conviction that by so doing they will gain something of high and eternal value. Hence on neither the one side nor the other does a sense of servitude arise, but rather on both sides there is a deep feeling of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... and still. Its very emptiness and stillness seemed to reproach her. There stood the desk—she ran across to it, pulled the indentures from her pocket, put them in their old place, and shut the lid down. There they staid till the full and just time of her servitude had expired. ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... world runs on, Motherless, wild; Our servitude and long duress, Our shameless, harem idleness, Both ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... about the Negroes in connection with other explorers. His treatment of the development of the slave trade and of the introduction of slavery shows a slightly improved conception of his task. In his discussion of the Negroes in the colonies, into which he works servitude and slavery, the Indian, the mulatto, the free Negro, and efforts for social betterment, he presents a veritable hodgepodge. Passing then to the study of the estrangement from Great Britain, the participation of the Negro in the Revolutionary War, and the effect ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... is a brotherhood; God is the Father, Love is the law of this great human commonwealth, and Love knows no servitude. It is that which gilds with ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... letter of Miss Trevert's contained that made Victor Marbran and the secretary chap so desperately anxious to get hold of it. For you understand, don't you?" he said briskly, turning to Robin, "that they were after that and that alone. And they risked penal servitude in this country ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... the power it has had to hinder this simple remedy of an alleged wrong or error,—and this, by procuring the defection of sordid Northern Representatives from what they confessed to be the right, to this corrupt evasion,—an evasion designed to fit the people of Kansas for servitude by tempting them to sacrifice their self-respect and their honor. Let these miscreants make haste to seize the price of their perfidy before popular contempt and loathing shall sweep them forever out of sight into the abyss of infamy and forgetfulness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... and contention are common qualities Obstinacy is the sister of constancy Obstinacy and heat in argument are the surest proofs of folly Obstinate in growing worse Occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude" Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous Occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal cause Of the fleeting years each steals something from me Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate Oftentimes agitated with ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne

... been construed by Donna's admirers as a direct attack on home industry. In fact, one made money by purchasing his hats of Donna Corblay. If she never accepted less than one dollar for a hat, regardless of age, color, original price and previous condition of servitude, she never charged more. Hence, everybody was satisfied—or, if not satisfied at the time, all they had to do was to await the arrival of the next train. The "zephyrs" were steady and reliable and in San Pasqual it is an ill wind that ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... misdirected ever leads astray; But hope inspired by faith will guide to heaven! To win the laurel wreath the soldier fights; To free his native land the patriot bleeds; And to secure his crown the martyr dies! For beauteous Rachel Isaac's son endured Seven years of bitter servitude, and deemed The weary months but moments to obtain From crafty Laban's hand his promised bride. To prove his friendship for the man he loved, The generous Jonathan forgot his claims To royalty, intent to save the life Of him whom God had called to fill his throne. And wilt thou feel less zealous ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... of man is found in "an equality amongst men," [25] which is to be respected and vindicated by governments that are just and humane. "By a natural right," he says, "all men are born free; and, nature having set all men upon a level and made them equals, no servitude or subjection can be conceived without inequality."[26] Again he says that it is "a fundamental principle relating to government that, under God, all power is originally in the people."[27] This is true of the church as well as of the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... cradle to the grave, it being a matter of considerable importance to all who value a whole skin, and "Olo custom" being an extremely strong motif, it would now be well-nigh impossible to abolish this badge of servitude, even were the enforcement of it abandoned. In addition to this national obligation it is the custom for men to clean shave until they become grandfathers, when a moustache is cultivated, and later on sometimes a beard, though ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... the key and looked at it, thinking of all the doors in the world it would unlock for him, thinking of the powers of which it was a symbol, of how it fastened the door of his freedom and opened for him the door of a great servitude of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... his self-imposed servitude. She does not demand it; she is even a good deal incommoded by it. But her woman's instinct tells her that the thing is a disease, which a man must catch, like the measles. Until the husband's passion for home-building quiets down, she is content ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... of Goshen" where the Israelites in a state of servitude worked for the oppressing Pharaoh (Rameses II), excavators have found bricks made without straw as mentioned in Scripture, undoubtedly the work of Hebrew slaves, also glazed bead necklaces. They are looking for the ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... the other side, where the balance changes from popular to oligarchical or monarchical, the public interest, with the reason and justice included in the sane, becomes more private; luxury is introduced in the room of temperance, and servitude in that of freedom, which causes such a corruption of manners both in the nobility and people, as, by the example of Rome in the time of the Triumvirs, is more at large discovered by the author to have been altogether incapable of ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... of these States had its own customs and laws. The nobles were tumultuary, and ever ready, if their privileges were infringed, to rise in insurrection. Military force alone could hold these turbulent realms in awe; and the old feudal servitude which crushed the millions, was but another name for anarchy. The peace establishment of the emperor amounted to one hundred thousand men, and every one of these was necessary simply to garrison his fortresses. The enormous expense of the support of such an army, with all the outlays for the materiel ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... great many ways of classifying human beings, and as in the case of the construction of tribal lays, "every single one of them is right," as far as it goes. You may classify people according to race, color, previous condition of servitude, height, weight, shape of their skulls, amount of their incomes, or their ability to write Latin verse. You may inquire whether they belong to the class that goes to church on Sunday, whether they are vaccinationists or anti-vaccinationists, whether they like problem ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... I don't blame him for getting sleepy," responded Polly pityingly. "It all seemed to be about convict labor and penal servitude and such things. I shouldn't wonder if something was the matter ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... a few short years of useful life, 430 And all will be complete, thy race be run, Thy monument of glory will be raised; Then, though (too weak to tread the ways of truth) This age fall back to old idolatry, Though men return to servitude as fast 435 As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame By nations sink together, we shall still Find solace—knowing what we have learnt to know, Rich in true happiness if allowed to be Faithful alike in forwarding a day 440 Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work (Should ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... eschewed Those wars of tyranny and servitude! I'm bored with them: for they, as soon as done, Straight recommence; and no one calls to mind That he in sooth is only played upon By Asmodeus, who still lurks behind. They battle, so 'tis said, for freedom's rights— More clearly seen, 'tis slave ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... read, in order to learn, with terror and self-gratulation, how the aridity of the world's soul may neutralise the greatest individual powers for happiness and good. These letters are as chains which we should keep in our dwelling-place, to remind us of past servitude, perhaps to ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... of age, who was a cousin of the dead lad, and the betrothed wife of his father. The girl clung to her mother, weeping piteously. Sometimes she would come and clasp "Ma's" feet, beseeching her to help her, or waylay the chiefs, and offer herself in servitude for life in exchange for ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... suddenly flourish again, are imperialistic; peoples who die are peoples who abdicate. Fascism is a doctrine which most adequately represents the tendencies, the state of mind of a people like the Italian people, which is rising again after many centuries of abandonment and of foreign servitude. ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... down the body, the prisoners are led from their penal den, within this fortress, to their appointed toil. There were many old men among these culprits; and their great age rather sought and met with sympathy, than excited detestation of the crime that had brought them to servitude; and, perhaps, it would be a wiser enactment of the Norwegian Government to forego the system of task-work thus publicly, and adopt some other method of punishment less exposed to the popular eye; for, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... so it came to pass that in this last scene in the struggle with Mahdism the stage was cleared of all its striking characters, and Osman Digna alone purchased by flight a brief ignoble liberty, soon to be followed by a long ignoble servitude. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... 1810, the slave-trade had been but recently abolished; and there were in consequence many more male than female slaves,—a circumstance, of course, very unfavourable to procreation. Slaves are perpetually passing into the class of freemen; but no freeman ever descends into servitude; so that the census will not exhibit the whole effect of the procreation which really ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... do not, in Japan (except, perhaps, in those open ports where European vice and brutality have become demoralising influences), ever reach that depth of degradation to which their Western sisters descend. Many indeed retain, through all the period of their terrible servitude, a refinement of manner, a delicacy of sentiment, and a natural modesty that seem, under such conditions, as ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... labour, from deaths, desertions, and their becoming free. Those who were first sent to the colony, and had been originally transported for seven and fourteen years had served their times, the former in 1793, and the latter in 1800; numbers had been released from their servitude on account of their exemplary behaviour, or of services done to the colony; and all who became settlers being allowed one, two, or more convicts to assist in the cultivation of the tracts assigned to them, ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... part of the enjoyments I possess, immaterial enjoyments to which he is abundantly entitled, he the workman in the vast temple which the heavens are vast enough to embrace. He lacks knowledge of his own sentiments. They who condemned him to servitude from his mother's womb, being unable to take from him the power of reverie, have taken ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... His intellect was just great enough (as his birth was small enough) to render it jealous of him under that aspect. There is an instinct in Toryism which renders pure intellect intolerable to it, except in some inferior or mechanical shape, or in the flattery of voluntary servitude. But, by a like instinct, it is not so jealous of military renown. It is glad of the doubtful amount of intellect in military genius, and knows it to be a good ally in the preservation of power, and in the ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... relaxing as he glanced after his grizzled henchman, "but his exaggeration of courtesy is a blank sight more natural and manly than the exaggeration of discourtesy which your superior civilized 'helps' think is self-respect. The excuse of servitude of any kind is its spontaneity and affection. When you know a man hates you and serves you from interest, you know he's a cur and you're a tyrant. It's your blank progress that's made menial service degrading by teaching men to avoid it. Why, sir, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... had created the precedent for this. When stricken by mortal illness, he had proclaimed remission of all obligations, "whether in rice or in valuables," incurred on or before the last day of the preceding year. But Jito's edict had a special feature. It provided that anyone already in servitude on account of a debt should be relieved from serving any longer on account of the interest. Thus it is seen that the practice of pledging the service of one's body in discharge of debt was in vogue at that epoch, and that it received official recognition ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... given in her sovereign capacity, if indeed she be an intelligent creature, and provided she be competent to exercise the power of suffrage, which is the sovereignty, even if that government be wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an enforcement of servitude and slavery against her on the part of man. If woman, like the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all participation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... my most courteous consideration. I think it was equally hard for her to adapt her conduct to these new conditions. Accustomed all her life to respect, to admiration, to the courtesy of men, she could not stoop to the spirit of servitude. It was this effort to humble herself, to compel remembrance, which caused her to speak of herself so often as ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... such objects as water and in the mountain landscapes of the late bas-reliefs; but, in the main, there was no advance upon Egypt. There was a difference which was not necessarily a development. Painting, as we know the art to-day, was not practised in Chaldaea-Assyria. It was never free from a servitude to architecture and sculpture; it was hampered by conventionalities; and the painter was more artisan than artist, having little freedom ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... him bending over the stove, pale, dark-visaged, with the subdued manners and voice which mark the aristocracy of servitude. My employer's confidence in him must be immense, for while he watched over me I ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the young men Nobody prognosticated that I should be wicked, but only useless Not having been able to pronounce one syllable, which is No. O Athenians, what this man says, I will do Obstinacy and contention are common qualities Occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude" Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood Philosophy is that which instructs us to live Philosophy looked upon as a vain and fantastic name Preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader Reading those books, converse with the great and heroic ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger

... scholars, come in upon some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at once learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves; at once studying freedom and practising servitude.' Yet a young man like Whitefield was willing enough to be a servitor. He had been a waiter in his mother's inn; he was now a waiter in a college, but a student also. See my Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... or in penal servitude. Never should have expected to see her here," said some one else behind ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... been exaggerated. In writing as I have done, I am well aware that I have invited criticism; but before the critic judges harshly, let my explanation be carefully read and weighed. If I have portrayed the dark side of slavery, I also have painted the bright side. The good that I have said of human servitude should be thrown into the scales with the evil that I have said of it. I have kind, true-hearted friends in the South as well as in the North, and I would not wound those Southern friends by sweeping ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... hereabouts. Help us to find our friends in the swamp, and we will take you all with us," Jack said; but feeling a good deal of compunction, as he was not so sure that the freedom bestowed upon these guileless friends might not, for a time at least, be more of a hardship than their happy-go-lucky servitude. Meanwhile, in the expansion of renewed hopes and full stomachs, no watch had been kept on the outside; a tallow dip had been lighted, and the whole party busied in getting together such necessaries as could be carried. One of the boys, passing the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... none of my readers be placed in a position where the only road to follow is: "the Great Divide." However, when there is no way out, no means of reconciliation, no tangible reason for submission to penal servitude for life, the only solution left is to face the truth; to turn one's back upon the ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... "but your son came to tell me the vizier his father had changed his purpose, and instead of reserving me for the king, as he first designed, had made him a present of my person. I easily believed him; for, oh! think how a slave as I am, accustomed from my infant years to the laws of servitude, could or ought to resist him! I must own I did it with the less reluctance, on account of the affection for him, which the freedom of our conversation and daily intercourse has excited in my heart. I could without regret resign the hope of ever ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... to our Lenglet. Had he composed his own life, it would have offered a sketch of political servitude and political adventure, in a man too intractable for the one, and too literary for the other. Yet to the honour of his capacity, we must observe that he might have chosen his patrons, would he have submitted ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... beautiful. Nothing remains but the fragrance of it, and its dream-like quality, the sense I have of straying with the beloved through a fair country. Such things assure me that I was not wholly dead during those crushing years of servitude. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... refused—now for three-and-twenty years—to listen to his call for repentance and reaffirms the certainty, at last made clear by the Battle of Carchemish, that their deserved doom lies in the hands of a Northern Power, which shall waste their land and carry them into foreign servitude for seventy years. The suggestion that this address formed the conclusion of the Second Roll dictated by Jeremiah to Baruch is suitable to the contents of the address and becomes more probable if we take as ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... would unlock the doors of the whole world, and beside her the little boarding-house help, equally young, and with all youth's big demands pent up within her, yet ahead of her only a drab vista of other boarding-houses—some better, some worse, mayhap—but always eating the bread of servitude, her only possible way of escape by means of matrimony with ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... Prosecutor—State Attorney; in a court of the third class, it's true, because he's not a wire-puller, because he hasn't played the political game. And yet he's a valuable man—no one can deny that. Since he's been District Attorney he has secured three sentences of penal servitude for life! And in a country like this, where crimes are so frightfully rare! That's pretty good, don't you think? Of course, I know he'll have had three acquittals in the session that ends to-day. Granted. But that was mere bad luck. And for protecting society ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... human mind, both to the invention of new methods of intellectual cultivation and the application of knowledge to the practical purposes of life. Fostered by the spirit of freedom, which goes before to disenthral the mind from that state of servitude in which its powers had been made to minister to ignorant and wayward ambition, or still more cramping and perverting superstition, it promises to gain an universal ascendancy, and to render all that influence which had been arrayed against it, henceforth subservient ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... to her: "I want to get away from this complication, this servitude. I want to do some—some work. I want to get my mind clear and my hands clear. I want to study government and the big business ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... were to be admitted with or without slavery, as the people of each should determine. Northern men demurred, but Douglas saved the situation by offering as an amendment, "And in such States as shall be formed north of said Missouri Compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall be prohibited."[195] The amendment was accepted, and thus amended, the joint resolution passed by an ample margin of votes. In view of later developments, this extension of the Missouri Compromise ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... knelt; and fragments of his prayer were brought me by the wind, 'O Heavenly Father! let not this blooming soul wither away upon this arid earth! Lead it not into the temptation of human servitude; remove from it all sinful stain! Let it serve Thee alone! Thee and the many times ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... distinguish the names of men who had been with me on one or both the former expeditions. Those to whose names the letter T is also prefixed having previously obtained a ticket of leave releasing them from a state of servitude. Each man was also furnished with a small case containing six cartridges which he was ordered always ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... Gallican Liberties were but the survival of the liberty possessed by individual churches in the early centuries, that these liberties had been restricted gradually by the Holy See, which succeeded in reducing the national churches to servitude, and that the French Church alone had withstood these assaults, and had maintained intact the discipline and constitution of the apostolic age. The rulers of France, well aware that every restriction upon the authority of the Church meant an increase of the power ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... Saviour himself gives the true explanation when he says: "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so." Matt. 19:8. This general principle applies also to polygamy and the modified form of servitude which prevailed among the Hebrew people. That the Mosaic economy suffered, for the time being, certain usages not good in themselves, is no valid objection to it, but rather a proof of the divine wisdom of its author. Though it was his purpose to root out of human society every organic ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... so brought into open market. As that saying of his, That the inhabitants of Asia served but one alone, because they could not pronounce one onely syllable, which is Non, gave perhaps both subject and occasion to my friend Boetie to compose his booke of voluntarie servitude. If it were no more but to see Plutarke wrest a slight action to mans life, or a word that seemeth to beare no such sence, it will serve for a whole discourse. It is pittie men of understanding should so much love brevitie; without doubt their ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... air, this man stood there on the steps, a moment, then advanced to meet a woman who was coming toward him in the August glare. As he removed his cheap, convict-made cap, one saw his finely shaped head, close cropped with the infamous prison badge of servitude. Despite the shoddy miserable prison-suit that the prostituted government had given him—a suit that would have made Apollo grotesque and would have marked any man as an ex-convict, thus heavily handicapping him from the start—Gabriel ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... the last remnant of sovereignty or, at least, of independence. The privileged person avoids or repels taxation, not merely because it despoils him, but because it belittles him; it is a mark of the commoner, that is to say, of former servitude, and he resists the fisc (the revenue services) as much through pride ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... be longer denied to him! And after all that he had done for his country—his ungrateful, thankless, ignorant country—was he thus to be treated? Was he to be turned adrift without any mark of honour, any special guerdon, any sign of his Sovereign's favour to testify as to his faithful servitude of sixty years' devotion? He, who had regarded it as his merest right to be an Admiral, and had long indulged the hope of being greeted in the streets of Devonport as Sir Bartholomew Cuttwater, K.C.B., was he to be thus thrown aside in his ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... he burst out, in answer to Fullerton, "I feel like a criminal. I haven't seen fifty per cent of the men who came, and I've sent back at least half a dozen who have no more right to be working than they have to be in penal servitude. It is ghastly, and yet what can we do? I have no mawkish sentiment, but I could have cried over one fellow. His finger was broken, and then blood-poisoning set in. Up to the collar-bone his arm is discoloured, and the glands are blackish-blue here and there. He smiled ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... by laws quickly become anarchy Associating patience with activity Blindness that make authority to consist only in force Bounty, which, though very often secret, had the louder echo Civil war is one of those complicated diseases Clergy always great examples of slavish servitude Confounded the most weighty with the most trifling Contempt—the most dangerous disease of any State Dangerous to refuse presents from one's superiors Distinguished between bad and worse, good and better Fading flowers, which are fragrant to-day and offensive ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger

... "Articles of Compact" to govern them after they were admitted into the Union. Religious liberty and personal rights were to be secured; general morality and education to be encouraged; and finally it was provided that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The introduction of this clause is due to New England men, who were anxious to form a colony on the Ohio, and who desired to secure the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... the tale of MISTER WILLIAM, if you please, Whom naughty, naughty judges sent away beyond the seas. He forged a party's will, which caused anxiety and strife, Resulting in his getting penal servitude for life. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert



Words linked to "Servitude" :   thralldom, villainage, thrall, bondage, freedom from involuntary servitude, villeinage, slavery, thraldom



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