"Obsequiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a coalition beneficial to the State, and honourable to all concerned, was suffered to escape, the fault was not with the Whig ministers. They behaved towards Pitt with an obsequiousness which, had it not been the effect of sincere admiration and of anxiety for the public interests, might have been justly called servile. They repeatedly gave him to understand that, if he chose to join their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an invaluable servant, and, with a world of obsequiousness, contrived to have his own way on most occasions. He had, I believe, only one great weakness, that of imagining a beau-ideal of aristocracy and then outdoing it in the person ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... faintly disappointed, but he didn't lose his obsequiousness. "Oh, that's quite a way from here, sir—about the closest would be Mallard's, over on Fourteenth Street and Upper Drive. A mile, ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Postmaster and some other taxing functionary, united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the room his face was purple. He had hardly self-control enough to greet Lady Tilchester with his usual obsequiousness. She talked charmingly to him for a few moments, and ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... the quay, puffing their segars with all the gravity and silence that was becoming their rank and birth as officers of his Catholic Majesty and natives of old Spain, a subaltern officer approached, and, with abundance of parade and obsequiousness, informed the governor that there was a ship in the offing, becalmed at that time, but apparently bound in. The officer proceeded to inform him farther, that there were two American ships at St. Josef, one at Monteny, and that a fourth had been seen the day before at sea, standing to the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... would be so daring an outrage that it seemed improbable. What excuse could he offer when coming into the presence of the two American visitors for so high-handed an interference with their rights? Hitherto he had shown a fulsome obsequiousness to both, and acted the part of a high-toned gentleman. How could he throw off that courtesy which seemed a part of his nature, and still forbid their going and coming as ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... feared, perhaps, that they would not enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing—women, even American women, are sometimes strangely deficient in the sense of humour. But they had both been struck by their host's impressive obsequiousness—a very orgasm of servility, which Pelletan had hitherto reserved for personages ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... own hand, which the king received with smiles and a chearful countenance, and many gracious words. His tongue was a great advantage to the Persian in delivering his own business, which he did with so much flattery and obsequiousness, that he pleased as much that way as by his gifts, constantly calling his majesty king and commander of the world, forgetting that his own master had a share of it; and on every little occasion of favourable acceptance, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... story of Esmond Thackeray dropped the satirical tone, and indulged very rarely indeed in the habit of pausing to moralise, as writer to reader, upon social hypocrisy, servile obsequiousness, and whited sepulchres generally. In The Virginians he is less attentive to dramatic propriety; he begins again to turn aside and lecture us, in the midst of his tale, upon the text of De te fabula narratur. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... was all obsequiousness. Yes, Mrs. Staines received few visitors; but she was at home to HIM. He even began to falter excuses. "Nonsense," said Falcon, and slipped a sovereign into his hand; "you are a good servant, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... did not intend to buy. There was a seat for all such. The unoccupied saleswoman had been seeking relief from the strain upon her muscles by leaning back against the shelves, but on the entrance of a customer she must be all obsequiousness. While she might have rested, she was unfeelingly forbidden to do so. Now the customer must be waited on, no matter how completely she may be overcome by fatigue or prostrated by lassitude. Either was sufficient to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... embroidered fabrics, and the land of Lalla Rookh. Its inhabitants, chiefly Moslems, infamously governed by Hindus, are a feeble race, attracting little interest, valuable to travellers as 'coolies' or porters, and repulsive to them from the mingled cunning and obsequiousness which have been fostered by ages of oppression. But even for them there is the dawn of hope, for the Church Missionary Society has a strong medical and educational mission at the capital, a hospital and dispensary under the charge of ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... am foolish, Be yours the fault, not mine. I would not care To-day to cross your wishes; for to-day I've grieved you more than all my other subjects. [Tenderly. Let it then be your fancy. Leicester, hence You see the free obsequiousness of love. Which suffers that which it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the country's expense would, if left to himself, have probably become an excellent billiard-marker or pigeon-shooter. Here is another, who, although a member of Parliament, was elected by no constituency under Heaven or above it; and it is clear he was intended by Nature for a position where obsequiousness and servility meet with their appropriate reward. Another fills the post of some awful Commissioner of something, drawing an immense salary, and doing an immense amount of mischief for it, intended naturally for a secretary to an Autocratic Nobleman, who would trample the rights of the ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... them so {30} sensitive and discriminating as that of the chambermaid or butler. The mere pride of an easy mastery over slaves is the taint of every society in which class differences are recognized as fixed. It attaches to all classes; whether it be called snobbery or obsequiousness, it is all one. The virtue of mastery, on the other hand, lies in the power and in the attainment ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... high station a great deal of simplicity. More than once Morier seized an opportunity for an act of special courtesy to the Tsar; and Alexander appreciated this from a man whose character was too well known for him to be suspected of obsequiousness. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... I also am poor, very poor indeed," the new-comer hastened to reply with the crafty obsequiousness peculiar to the Greek race. "My name is Janaki, and I am a butcher at Jassy. The kavasses have laid their hands upon my apprentice and all my live-stock at the same time, and that is why I have come to Stambul. I shall be utterly beggared if ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... descendant of one of the proudest and oldest families in France, had chosen beauty and virtue rather than rank in his wife. Never for an hour had she given him cause to regret it; but this lawyer brother of hers had, as I understood, offended my father by his slavish obsequiousness in days of prosperity and his venomous enmity in the days of trouble. He had hounded on the peasants until my family had been compelled to fly from the country, and had afterwards aided Robespierre in his worst ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... developed provincial lark. For a certain portion of the passengers had the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towards each other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive to uninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies' shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry with each other's wives, the anxiety about the company luggage and the company health. It became painfully evident presently that it was an excursion, for we heard singing of that concerted and determined kind that depresses ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... threshold and bowed to the Commendatore without speaking. The Commendatore answered at once: "I am coming," and, rising hastily, left the room with a strange expression on his face, where anger was disappearing, and obsequiousness was dawning. ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has always maintained a freedom of independence which has nothing of the obsequiousness of more common traders, and which gave the greater value to the sly compliment which he would insinuate between two jests. No doubt Campbella and Hamilla would laugh at the little man's compliments, his bows and admiring glances, yet would not object to his exposition of the tartan screen, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... soup—hers came at the same time; she had only toyed with some caviare by way of hors d'oeuvre, and it angered him to notice the obsequiousness of the waiters, who passed each thing to the dignified servant to be placed before the lady by his hand. Who was she to be served with this respect ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... loitered on the lawn, Henry the footman came out with a salver, and on it reposed a soiled note. Henry presented it with demure obsequiousness, then retired ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Body also gave grand entertainments in honor of the coronation. That of the Legislative Body was particularly brilliant. This assembly, which rivalled the Senate in obsequiousness, had decided that a marble statue should be raised to the Emperor in the room where it sat, in honor of the drawing up of the civil code. The day when this statue was to be inaugurated was chosen for the festivity. The Empress, followed by a magnificent ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... the rest, Claggett Chew and his fine friend, had stopped some ten feet away at the first sound of mirth. Then into Claggett Chew's gray-white face came astonishment, for he was used to creating many impressions—fear, hatred, or cringing obsequiousness—but never before had he or any of his friends been laughed at. Furthermore, he, the dreaded Claggett Chew, and his gaudy friend Osterbridge Hawsey, were held as being of so little account that a boy ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... jumped out, and running up to the landlord, whispered a few words in his ear, to which the other answered by a deep "ah, vraiment!" and then saluted me with an obsequiousness that made ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Obsequiousness loomed in the doorway. Its mistress flashed an order for port—two glasses. Sir Rebus sprang a pair of eyebrows on her. Suspicion slid down the banisters of his mind, trailing a blue ribbon. Inebriates were one of his hobbies. For an ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... the fox, 'how art thou reduced to humility and obsequiousness and abjection and submission, after disdain and pride and tyranny and arrogance! Verily, I companied with thee and cajoled thee but for fear of thy violence and not in hope of fair treatment from thee: but now trembling is come upon thee and vengeance ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... Guardian Angel returned for his traps and I bade him a sleepy adieu and was startled to see two soldiers standing shading their eyes in salute in the doorway and two gentlemen bowing to my kind protector with the obsequiousness of servants— He sort of smiled back at me and walked away with the soldiers and 13 porters carrying his traps. So I rung up the conductor and he said it was the King's Minister with his eyes sticking out of his head—the ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... the clergy. Meanwhile he tried to show the lawyers, by a prompt and large distribution of rewards and punishments, that strenuous and unblushing servility, even when least successful, was a sure title to his favour, and that whoever, after years of obsequiousness, ventured to deviate but for one moment into courage and honesty was guilty of an unpardonable offence. The violence and audacity which the apostate Williams had exhibited throughout the trial of the Bishops ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... being situated at the confluence of the rivers Rhone and Soane, tempted him to stay some days.—He was one evening sitting with his landlord in the inn-yard, when a post-chaise came in, out of which alighted a gentleman and a lady, just by the place where they were.—The man got up with all the obsequiousness of persons of his calling, to bid them welcome, and shew them into a room:—the lady, in passing, looked earnestly at Natura, and his eyes were no less attached on her: he thought he saw in her face features he was perfectly acquainted ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... always heard rich women do, the men with glossy faces which reminded her in their brilliance and their blankness of the nails on Marion's hands; pretty food, like the things to eat in Keat's St. Agnes' Eve, being carried about on gleaming dishes by waiters whose bodies seemed deformed with obsequiousness; jewel-coloured wines hanging suspended over the white cloths in glasses invisible save where they glittered; bottles with gold necks lolling in pails among lumps of ice like tipsy gnomes overcome by sleep on some ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Turpicula saw nothing but obsequiousness, and heard nothing but commendations. None are so little acquainted with the heart, as not to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome, and that consequently the readiest method of obtaining her kindness is to praise ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... country-house life in which he had described a visit paid for a week-end to Sir Henry Trustall's. There was only a single critical passage in it, and it was one which he had written with a sense both of journalistic and of democratic satisfaction. In it he had sketched off the lofty obsequiousness of the flunkey who had ministered to his needs. "He seemed to take a smug satisfaction in his own degradation," said he. "Surely the last spark of manhood must have gone from the man who has so entirely lost his own ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... superciliousness, but at the same time not in any way deprecatory, while the manner of the young man was simply that of a person intent on discharging correctly the task he was engaged in, equally without familiarity or obsequiousness. It was, in fact, the manner of a soldier on duty, but without the military stiffness. As the youth left the room, I said, "I cannot get over my wonder at seeing a young man like that serving so contentedly ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... glorious Actions, if Singing was not a Delight of the Soul, or if any one had a Soul more sensible of its Charms. On which account, I think, I have a just Pretence to declare myself, with profound Obsequiousness, ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... and twitted Santerre on his obsequiousness towards women. Valentine, mollified by the compliment, soon recovered her birdlike gayety, and such free and easy conversation ensued between the trio that Mathieu felt both stupefied and embarrassed. In fact, he would have gone off at once had it not been for ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... in their attitude and urbane—frequently even to the extent of refusing money from those whom they have obliged, no matter how privately pressed upon them—the low-caste and slavish are not only deficient in obsequiousness, but are permitted to retort openly to those who address them with fitting dignity. Here such a state of things is too general to excite remark, but as instances are well called the flowers of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... pushed in between boxes, which do duty for seats, and be glad that an opportunity had been improved. Not so the wife of the prosperous butcher or baker or candlestick maker, rejoicing, it may be, in the first appearance in plush and silk, and bent upon making it as impressive as possible. To her, obsequiousness is the first essential of any dealing with the order from which she is emerging; and her custom will go to the shop where its outward tokens are most profuse. A clerk found sitting is simply embodied impertinence, and the floor manager who allows it an offender against ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... letting you know, sir," said the clerk of St Roque's, with deadly meaning; "leastways not me, but them as has taken me by the hand. There's every prospect as it'll all be known afore long," said Elsworthy, pushing his wife aside and following Mr Wentworth, with a ghastly caricature of his old obsequiousness, to the door. "There's inquiries a-being made as was never known to fail. For one thing, I've written to them as knows a deal about the movements of a party as is suspected—not to say as I've got good friends," said Rosa's guardian, standing ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... below, the country-people came up to talk to us. The traitors could easily be distinguished by their insolence disguised as obsequiousness. The loyal men were still timid, but more hopeful at last. All were very lavish with the monosyllable, Sir. It was an odd coincidence, that the vanguard, halting off at a farm in the morning, found it deserted for the moment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... from me; but I would not let him, nor quitted it till I entered the hall with it, at which all the students fell a laughing. Going up to the elder of my masters, I put it into his hands, with all the obsequiousness I could, and went and seated myself on my haunches at the door of the hall, with my eyes fixed on the master who was lecturing in the chair. There is some strange charm in virtue; for though I know little or nothing about it, I ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... its two leaders Cromwel and Cranmer, of whom the first was deficient in zeal, the last in courage, now experienced irresistible counteraction from the influence of Gardiner, whose uncommon talents for business, joined to his extreme obsequiousness, had rendered him at once necessary and acceptable to his royal master. The law of the Six Articles, which forbade under the highest penalties the denial of several doctrines of the Romish church peculiarly obnoxious to the reformers, was probably drawn up by this minister. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... tempted the foreigner to Italy, her lot has been hardly less wretched; but Germany has differed from Italy in the successful bravery with which she repelled the invader. Tacitus says of her people, that, "surrounded by numerous and very powerful nations, they are safe, not by obsequiousness, but by battles and braving danger"; [Footnote: "Plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti, non per obsequium, sed prutiis et periclitando tuti sunt."—Germania, Cap. XL.] and this same character, thus epigrammatically ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... made him laugh hundreds of times in the course of their friendship. And Mr. Prohack was aware of a feeling of superiority to Sir Paul. The feeling grew steadily in his breast, and he was not quite sure how it originated. Perhaps it was due to a note of dawning obsequiousness in Sir Paul's laugh, reminding Mr. Prohack of the ancient proverb that the jokes of the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... no nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness and passed. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... standard of orthodoxy which it has set up for itself. Freedom of opinion will be professed and pretended to, but every one will exercise it at the peril of being banished from political communion with those who hold the reins and prescribe the policy to be pursued. Slavishness to party and obsequiousness to the popular whims go hand in hand. Political independence only occurs in a fossil state; and men's opinions grow out of the acts they have been constrained to do or sanction. Flattery, either of individual or people, corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... creature, so bewitching and bewitched must of course consider himself quite irresistible. Yet have all these Continentalists, and particularly the sons of France, the air of annihilating themselves before the fair; their obsequiousness and humility are unbounded: hence their rapid execution among the female sex. To be herself admired by an all-conquering Adonis, is so much more pleasing to a gay young woman than the having only to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Leander and Scapin, who had heard of Zerbine's arrival from the servants, and came to pay their respects, soon followed by old Mme. Leonarde, who greeted the soubrette with as much obsequiousness as if she had-been a princess. Isabelle came also to welcome her, to the great delight of Zerbine, who was devotedly fond of her, and always trying to do something to please her. She now insisted upon presenting her with a piece of rich silk, which Isabelle accepted very reluctantly, and only ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... "please" to them, or even showed thanks in any way, such as giving them a cigarette, lost caste in their eyes as surely as with a butler one might attempt to treat as a man. I tried it on Bruno, and he almost instantly changed from obsequiousness to near-insolence. When I had put him in his place again, he said he was glad I spoke Spanish, for so many "jefes" had pulled his hair and ears and slapped him in the face because he did not understand their "strange talk." He did not mention this in any spirit of complaint, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... with this rigorous inquisition carried on by Cromwell and his commissioners, surrendered their revenues into the king's hands; and the monks received small pensions as the reward of their obsequiousness. Orders were given to dismiss such nuns and friars as were below four and twenty, whose vows were, on that account, supposed not to be binding. The doors of the convents were opened, even to such as were above that age; and every one recovered his liberty who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... any thing but obsequiousness in this woman, little as she liked her, she was frighted at her masculine air, and fierce look—God help me! cried she—what will become of me now! Then, turning her head hither and thither, in a wild kind of amaze. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the meanest and most contemptible persons in the society. It is by powerful protection only, that he can effectually guard himself against the bad usage to which he is at all times exposed; and this protection he is most likely to gain, not by ability or diligence in his profession, but by obsequiousness to the will of his superiors, and by being ready, at all times, to sacrifice to that will the rights, the interest, and the honour of the body corporate, of which he is a member. Whoever has attended for any considerable time ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... look at her; shame, suspicion, obsequiousness and a sudden, reborn passion all had a part in it. "Won't you shake hands with me?" ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... his aspect was nearly that of a man. He held his head erect, the cringe disappeared from his back, the obsequiousness from his manner. Then while an eye might wink, he took on the appearance of a snake ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... messenger of Turriparva, entered, and with the most respectful bow informed Vivian that the horses were ready. In about three hours' time Vivian Grey, followed by the Government messenger, stopped at his hotel. The landlord and waiters bowed with increased obsequiousness on seeing him so attended, and in a few minutes Reisenburg was ringing with the news that his appointment to the Under-Secretaryship of State was now ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... shown in the sudden change adopted by the community toward the household of Greenwood. When the squire had departed in custody he apparently possessed not one friend in Brunswick, but within a month of his return the villagers, the parson excepted, were making bows to him, in the growing obsequiousness of which might be inferred the growing desperation of the Continental cause. Yet another indication was the appearance of certain of the," Invincibles," who came straggling sheepishly into town one ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... very well, without obsequiousness or temper, appealing to Mark as a fellow man-of-the-world against a girl's rash judgment. 'You know,' he said, in the course of his arguments, 'I'm not really an incarnate fiend in private life. Miss Langton is quite convinced I am. I believe I saw her looking suspiciously at my boots the other ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and glass are beautifully bright, your bell quickly answered, and Thomas ready, neat, and good-humored, you are not to expect absolute truth from him. The very obsequiousness and perfection of his service prevents truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or body, and he must go through his service—hand the shining plate, replenish the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork—never laugh when you yourself or your guests joke—be ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... slavish obsequiousness towards a great lady," said he, "but the respect of a poor pastor for an angel whom Heaven by a peculiar act of grace has sent down to us. This is no empty compliment, your ladyship. I am not very lavish of such things myself, but I feel bound to address ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... relations; he carried matters with a high hand, insisting that he should be given the best bedroom, trailing the scabbard of his sword noisily up the marble staircase; but encountering Gilberte in the corridor he drew in his horns, bowed politely, and passed stiffly on. He was courted with great obsequiousness, for everyone was well aware that a word from him to the colonel commanding the post of Sedan would suffice to mitigate a requisition or secure the release of a friend or relative. It was not very long since his uncle, the governor-general at Rheims, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... behaviour of his abductors, found himself partaking of the said breakfast, presented to him in a service of solid gold of curious but most elaborate design and workmanship, and waited upon by his entire suite with as much ceremony and obsequiousness as ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... The shop was proud of him; his appearance was supposed to give it a certain cachet. He neither strutted nor grovelled; he moved about from shelf to shelf in an absent-minded scholarly manner. He served you, not with obsequiousness, nor yet with condescension, but with a certain remoteness and abstraction, a noble apathy. Though a bookseller, his literary conscience remained incorruptible. He would introduce you to his favourite authors with a magnificent take-it-or-leave-it air, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... waking to a sudden thought, he seized my hand impulsively and spread my fingers apart. Having done this, he muttered two or three words of surprise. His face became serious, even solemn, and he treated me with strange obsequiousness. Rushing out of the temple, he went to inform the other Lamas of his discovery, whatever it was. They crowded round him, and from their words and gestures it was easy ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... justified in his conclusion that Joseph's manner to a poor and untitled Ivan would have lost the greater part of its obsequiousness. Joseph did care for his benefactor, honestly. But later in the afternoon there came a little incident which, in some measure, bore out the old musician's instinctive scepticism. Nearly every one in the room had gathered about ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... said Harry, with great obsequiousness, and giving to his captor the royal honors which he claimed—"will 'Your Majesty' pardon me if I assure 'Your Majesty' that the amount of my ransom is so enormous that it is utterly impossible ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... please, asserting popular privileges, has led to disqualification; the opposite fault never has produced the slightest punishment. Resistance to power has shut the door of the House of Commons to one man; obsequiousness and ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... balcony away down yonder in Lucerne. The crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the surly reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times, but by mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness and servility we finally got them to show us to the room which our boy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the plan of the court to make its servants insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humor, and should choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and flexibility and total vacancy or indifference of opinion in all public matters, then no part of the state will be sound, and it will be in vain to think ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... always less to our taste. Ameliorations and improvements seem to us positive evils; we sigh for the good old times, for the dirty streets of Paris, the villanous odours of Rome, the banditti of Naples, the obsequiousness of Greece, and the contempt, with the casual satisfaction of being spit upon, of Turkey. In short, we feel the want of our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... a perfectly unconcerned voice, and Schuetz, fearing lest his observations had failed him, and the 'great one' was after all not nearing her downfall, bowed himself out with his accustomed obsequiousness. He would have changed his mind could he have seen the cloud of misery and anxiety which settled on her face directly she was alone. She arranged various papers, extracting several from the neatly docketed packets. These she regarded as instruments in her ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... schoolmaster's obsequiousness was more in manner than in inclination, and found its excuse in the dependence of his circumstances. It has been immemorially the custom of the world, practically to undervalue his services, and in all time teaching and poverty have been inseparable companions. Nobody ever cared ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... decline. He reproached them with their laxity, and with their want of fervor in cooperating with the peculiar graces they had received from God; he spoke so energetically, that, in censuring their foolish obsequiousness, if such a fault they had, he covered them with confusion. The cardinal was somewhat mortified, and said:—"Pray, why, brother, did you gainsay me, setting the imperfections of your brethren in opposition ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... indeed, I need the pencil of Granville or Tenniel to make you see the two gilt valets on the opposite side of the table putting the monster down before our friends, with a smiling, self-satisfied, benevolent obsequiousness for this ghastly monster was the flower of all comestibles—old Peter clasping both hands in pious admiration of it; Margaret wheeling round with horror-stricken eyes and her hand on Gerard's shoulder, squeaking and pinching; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... stamped about like a man possessed, as he apostrophized one of the musicians in a furious and stuttering voice. The Prince was amused, but the artists in question were rancorous against him. In vain did Jean Michel, ashamed of his outburst, try to pass it by immediately in exaggerated obsequiousness. On the next occasion he would break out again, and as this extreme irritability increased with age, in the end it made his position very difficult. He felt it himself, and one day, when his outbursts had all but caused the whole orchestra to strike, he sent ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... his reasons for signing an act of Congress, the open avowal that, in his vocabulary, used in the performance of one of the most solemn and sacred of his duties, the word 'approved' means not approval, but doubt; not the expression of his own opinions, but mere obsequiousness ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... a mere idle curiosity, and a wretched want of relish for extraordinary powers of mind. Mrs. Thrale justly and wittily accounted for such conduct by saying, that Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... on a peevish man. In every other state of inferiority the certainty of pleasing is perpetually increased by a fuller knowledge of our duty; and kindness and confidence are strengthened by every new act of trust, and proof of fidelity. But peevishness sacrifices to a momentory offence the obsequiousness or usefulness of half a life, and, as more is performed, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the army, I cannot help observing, that I saw nothing here to confirm the remark of Mr. Cook, that the inhabitants of the place, whenever they meet an officer of the garrison, bow to him with the greatest obsequiousness; and by omitting such a ceremony, would subject themselves to be knocked down, though the other seldom deigns to return the compliment. The interchange of civilities is general between them, and seems by no means extorted. ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... from you is the truth, no obsequiousness. Did you ever hear me utter a syllable of ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... looked forth absently and spied the old beggar crouching in his accustomed place. He almost prostrated himself at sight of her, but she had no money with her, nor could she have bestowed any under Lady Bassett's disapproving eye. The carriage rolled on, leaving his obsequiousness unrequited. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... manner which are elicited by those relations, are wanting also. The social machine rubs on with as little oil as possible—there is but small room for the exercise of the amenities and charities of life. The favours of the great are seldom rewarded by the obsequiousness of the small. No leisure and privileged class exists to set an example of refined and courtly bearing; but there are none, however humble, who may not affect the manners of their betters without impertinence, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... bowed with a mixture of obsequiousness and familiarity, and tried to look steadily into Mrs. Dinneford's face, but was not able to do so. There was a steadiness and power in her eyes that his ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... her shaking shoulder. It felt to him like a vibrating bone, so meagre it was. He bent over her and said something that the others did not hear, but her wild rejoinder gave them the key. She was fairly desperate; all her obsequiousness had disappeared. She was burning with her wrongs; she even took a certain pleasure in letting herself loose. She shook her shoulder free from his touch. She turned on him, her tearful, convulsed face uncovered, her frizzes tossing, as bold and unrestrained in her wrath as ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... really loved her father; but their petting admiration soon grew oppressive, after the more bracing air of Compton; and their idolatry of her little brother fretted and tried her all the more, because they thought he must be a comfort to her, and any slight from her might be misconstrued. Mr. Venn's obsequiousness, instead of rightful homage, seemed deprivation of support, and she saw no one, spoke to no one, without the sense of Raymond's vast superiority and her own insensibility to it, loving him a thousand ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The obsequiousness of Coke to his Royal mistress was in perfect keeping with his character. Nothing exceeds his abject servility while in the sunshine, save his fixed malignity when dismissed to the shade. In 1594 the office of Attorney-General became vacant; Coke regarded the prize as his own until he found one ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... never saw Karlee laugh; and if I had happened to snatch him from sudden death by fire or water, I think he would have acknowledged the obligation with precisely the same mathematical salaam, or at most the same sententious obsequiousness, with which he accepted a buksheesh of a half-rupee; and yet in both good-humor and gratitude he was as cheerful and as worthy as the most giddy and gushing of damsels. But I must acknowledge there was something truly corpsy in the solemnity with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... that is a thing which is inexplicable to me. I can only account for it on the ground that she had known him so long, and had been so accustomed to his obsequiousness and apparent conscientiousness, that her usual penetration was at fault. I think she trusted him, as I would have done, partly because there was no other, and partly out ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... complete military organization, a superb administrative hierarchy, a weak public spirit with outbursts of patriotism, the unhesitating docility of the subject along with the hot-headedness of the revolutionist, the obsequiousness of the courtier along with the reserve of the gentleman, the charm of refined conversation along with home and family bickerings, conjugal equality together with matrimonial incompatibilities under the necessary constraints of the law. If, finally, the sentiment of obedience ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... accepted into the family; when it is exposed that they receive the new master, or lady's hand, in a half kneeling posture, and kiss it, as women under the rank of Countess do the Queen of England's when presented at our court.—This obsequiousness, however, vanishes completely upon acquaintance, and the footman, if not very seriously admonished indeed, yawns, spits, and displays what one of our travel-writers emphatically terms his flag of abomination behind the chair of a woman ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... by any mode of election that its conduct will not be influenced by reward and punishment, by fame, and by disgrace. If these examples take root in the minds of men, what members hereafter will be bold enough not to be corrupt? Especially as the king's highway of obsequiousness is so very broad and easy. To make a passive member of parliament, no dignity of mind, no principles of honour, no resolution, no ability, no industry, no learning, no experience, are in the least degree necessary. To defend a post of importance against a powerful enemy, requires an Elliot; a drunken ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the second room, which the secretary formerly had occupied, Abbe Paparelli, the train-bearer, was softly walking up and down whilst waiting for visitors; and with his conquering humility, his all-powerful obsequiousness, he had never before so closely resembled an old maid, whitened and wrinkled by excess of devout observances. Finally, in the third ante-room, the anticamera nobile, where the red cap lay on a credence facing the large imperious portrait of the Cardinal in ceremonial costume, there was Don ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... irritable father. She was the antidote to his age and to his infirmities of body and temper. While she was away the world in general, and his own little sphere in particular, tended toward a hopeless snarl. Jinny, the colored servant, was subserviency itself, but her very obsequiousness irritated him, although her drollery was at times diverting. It was usually true, however, that but one touch and one voice could soothe the jangling nerves. As Graham saw this womanly magic, which apparently cost no more effort ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... grim portraits of Sir Robert Hazlewood's ancestry. The visitor, who had no internal consciousness of worth to balance that of meanness of birth, felt his inferiority, and by the depth of his bow and the obsequiousness of his demeanour, showed that the Laird of Ellangowan was sunk for the time in the old and submissive habits of the quondam retainer of the law. He would have persuaded himself, indeed, that he was only humouring the pride ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... these rash footsteps, and to deepen every fatal impression which they had made;—his insulting reservation of the Tea Duty, by which he contrived to embitter the only measure of concession that was wrung from him;—the obsequiousness, with which he made himself the channel of the vindictive feelings of the Court, in that memorable declaration (rendered so truly mock-heroic by the event) that "a total repeal of the Port Duties could not be thought of, till America ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... It was Denmark's obsequiousness to Russia which led to the first of her unfortunate collisions with Great Britain. In 1800 the Danish government was persuaded by the tsar to accede to the second Armed Neutrality League, which Russia had just concluded with Prussia and Sweden. Great Britain ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... her furs by Peter, with the greatest deference and politeness, but with none of the obsequiousness that had sickened her elsewhere; he laid down her sable cloak with the reverence of one who knew its value, and he asked Rose in a whisper if her sister would like a glass of wine before lunch. The smiling matron shook her head, and whispered something else, which sent him out of the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... has wisely laid down his rule of life; for in these days obsequiousness begets friends; ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... cocks for jealousy. They are a perfect laughingstock with their strivings after vile ends, their jostling of each other at rich men's doors, their attendance at crowded dinners, and their vulgar obsequiousness at table. They swill more than they should and would like to swill more than they do, they spoil the wine with unwelcome and untimely disquisitions, and they can not carry their liquor. The ordinary people who are present ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... shrill apology, retiring, in a paroxysm of silent laughter, behind the shutters of his little box. Why Madame de Nemours endured his vagaries was indeed strange, for she was one who demanded of every other domestic something of an over-obsequiousness in service. It was a well-known fact, however, that he held an assured position in the household, and that the Countess only smiled at his grimaces and drinking, rewarding him with frequent gifts and holidays in ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... which France had assumed toward Austria ever since the dismissal of Choiseul; the willingness of her ministers to listen to Prussian calumnies; the encouragement which they had given to the opposition in the empire; and their obsequiousness to Prussia; while Austria had not retaliated, as she had had many opportunities of doing, by any complaisance toward England, though the English statesmen had made many advances toward her. It is a curious instance of fears being realized in a sense very ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... before I was out of bed, the Abbe Fontanon was announced to me. When he entered he proved to be a tall old man with a bilious skin and a sombre, stern expression, which he tried to soften by a specious manner and a show of gentle but icy obsequiousness. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... These were Captain Langford, the English officer before mentioned; a Virginian planter who had come to Massachusetts on some political errand; a young Episcopal clergyman, the grandson of a British earl; and, lastly, the private secretary of Governor Shute, whose obsequiousness had won a sort of tolerance ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at the smiling face for a moment, his bushy eyebrows contracting ever so slightly. There was a shameless streak of dust across her cheek, but there was also a dimple there that appealed to the grim old man. His eyes twinkled as he replied, with fine obsequiousness: ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the reign of opium. And this indulgent reflection should accompany the mature reader through all such records of boyish inexperience. A good tempered-man, who is also acquainted with the world, will easily evade, without needing any artifice of servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an upright simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in the science of worldly address, cannot always evade without some loss of self-respect. Suavity in this manner may, it is true, be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various |
