"Overruling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... question, as far as seemed suitable to the occasion, in a former chapter; and I only think it necessary to repeat, that the doctrine of the Causation of human actions, improperly called the doctrine of Necessity, affirms no mysterious nexus, or overruling fatality: it asserts only that men's actions are the joint result of the general laws and circumstances of human nature, and of their own particular characters; those characters again being the consequence of the natural and artificial circumstances that constituted ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... is the author of the phrase in question. That noble lord, in giving his judgment in the case of O'Connell and others against the Queen, in the House of Lords, September 4, 1844, thus alluded to the judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland, overruling the challenge by the traversers to the array, on account of the fraudulent omission of fifty-nine names from the list of jurors of the county of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in lordly brevities. The boy climbed up and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Washington may want some of the poetical elements which dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man. Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgement, an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... a great purpose in our coming here, Mammy. He says he believes that the Lord is overruling our defeat, and that the driving us out from our homes and scattering us abroad will be the means of extending King George's sway, and raising up a great ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... customary faith in an overruling Providence, Morse says later in the same letter: "This delay and suspense tries me more than distance or even absence from my dear family. If I could be on my way and pursuing my profession I should feel much better. But all will ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... justice, but to expound and enforce it as he finds it. In short, such is the confusion of the law and the public conscience that the courts of Tortirra do whatever they please, subject only to overruling by higher courts in the exercise of their pleasure; for great as is the number of minor and major tribunals, a case originating in the lowest is never really settled until it has gone through all the intermediate ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... understood by our finite minds. But I do feel vaguely that the laws that compass us, and make our lives possible, point always on—"beyond the realms of time and space"—toward the existence of a mighty overruling spirit. If this is a cold and inadequate conception of God, it is at least one that can be held by any ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... greater was their assurance that these were but the prelude to a glorious vindication and deliverance. This hopefulness was not merely the result of their natural optimism, but of the belief, formed by their experiences in many a national crisis, that a God of justice was overruling the events of history, and that he was working not for man's destruction but for his highest happiness and well-being. It was their insight into the divine purpose that led the Hebrew prophets to break away from ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... enterprise seemed impossible. How could he be of use to her and these dear people to whom he owed so much? War had been costly, but it had taught him that devotion to the duty of the hour which is one of the best lessons of that terrible schoolmaster. There was, as he saw every day, no overruling common sense in the household of Grey Pine, and no apparent possibility of reasonable control. Just now it was worse than ever, and he meant to talk it over with the two McGregors. With Josiah riding behind him, he left ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... spite of all their toil and struggle, they have gone not whither they willed, but whither God willed? Have they not found out that for one circumstance of their lives which they could alter, there have been twenty which they could not, some born with them, some forced on them by an overruling Providence, irresistible indeed—but, as I hold, most loving and most fatherly, though often severe—even to agony—but irresistible still— till what they have really gained by fighting circumstance, however valiantly, has been the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... vessels and protectors, the one on a mission of pure humanity, and the other in calm pursuance of the objects he had proposed to himself to accomplish; and with "three companions," place himself at the mercy of such circumstances, regardless of the danger, and relying on the overruling Providence in which he trusted, to bring him safely through all his ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... cannot be said with propriety that they control the inferior one; they only declare, as it is their duty to declare, that this inferior one is controlled by the other, which is superior. They do not repeal an act of Parliament; they pronounce it void, because contrary to an overruling law." Thus the function of the judiciary to be a barrier against democracy, which, according to Tocqueville, it is destined to be, was not apparent. In the same manner religious liberty, which has become so much identified with the United States, is a thing which grew by degrees, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... had been declared constitutional during the Civil War, and I am very strongly of the opinion that if the case is again presented to the Court the decision will be in harmony with the first decision, overruling the decision of 1895. An income-tax is the fairest of all taxes. It is resorted to by every other nation. It falls most heavily on those who can best afford it. The sentiment in the Republican party has changed, and I believe that at no far distant day Congress will pass an income-tax ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... all unwilling that you should retire then; but you preferred to remain. I had some conversation, at the time, with my nephew on the subject. I insisted upon the fact that your service had been exemplary. I finally succeeded in overruling his objection to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... painful and so delightful, has not devolved upon us as a public journalist. The elevation of the Right Rev., Father in God,, Phineas Lucre to the See of ———, is a dispensation to our Irish Establishment which argues the beneficent hand of a wise and overruling Providence. In him we may well say, that another bright and lustrous star is added to that dark, but beautiful galaxy, in the nether heavens above us, which is composed of our blessed Bishops. The diocese over which he has been called by the Holy Spirit to preside, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Experienced men warned me that I should fail; that such a plan would be destroyed by the innate selfishness and rivalry of human nature; that it demanded what was impossible to find, good faith, fraternal love, overruling moral influence. I answered, that I knew that already; that nothing but Christianity alone could supply that want, but that it could and should supply it; that I would teach them to live as sisters, by living with them as their sister myself. To become the teacher, the minister, the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... more against Bunyan than the "mittimus" expressed, he was afraid of compromising himself by letting him go at large. His refusal, though it sent him back to prison, was received by Bunyan with his usual calm trust in God's overruling providence. "I was not at all daunted, but rather glad, and saw evidently that the Lord had heard me." Before he set out for the justice's house, he tells us he had committed the whole event to God's ordering, with the prayer that "if he might do more good by being at liberty than in prison," the ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... for more. A strong inward feeling remonstrated against such an invasion of the rights of my starving messmates; but if, by fortifying myself, I gained ability to procure something more substantial than a teal duck, my dereliction would be sufficiently atoned for, and my overruling appetite at the same ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... was carried on within the divan, black and white, of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of Hyder Ali. As to the outward members of the double, or rather treble government of Madras, which had signed the treaty, they were always prevented by some overruling influence (which they do not describe, but which cannot be misunderstood) from performing what justice and interest combined so evidently ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of that," said Prospero: "let us not remember our troubles past, since they so happily have ended." And then Prospero embraced his brother, and again assured him of his forgiveness; and said that a wise overruling Providence had permitted that he should be driven from his poor dukedom of Milan, that his daughter might inherit the crown of Naples, for that by their meeting in this desert island, it had happened that the king's son had ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... other day," she said, after the conversation had turned directly on her father's affairs—"when you spoke the other day about a pillar of cloud, I suppose you meant what one might call—an overruling sense of right." ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... stranger would certainly overlook? I cannot entertain a proposition of any kind looking to its ultimate purchase until I know that this has been done, anxious as I am to have this matter definitely concluded. I had thought to die here. But it has been otherwise ordered by an overruling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... If an overruling Providence could smile, wouldn't He smile now? David and Eva never wanted to marry each other, I'm sure of it, and the last thing they desired was a child. Now there are two of them. Their father is away, their mother won't ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... other name would smell as sweet, but there is no doubt that certain names are invested with a peculiar significance. It would appear also that this significance is not always a mere chance coincidence, but is intended, sometimes, to carry the evidence of an overruling prevision. Christopher Columbus was not so named after his achievements, like Scipio Africanus. The name was his from infancy, though human ingenuity could not have conceived one more wonderfully suggestive of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... old, but long before he reached this age he had seen many things to make him doubt the moral government of the universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the fact of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... times, it has very rarely attempted the exercise of this power. In a celebrated instance, those who asserted this power in Parliament vindicated its exercise only in a case in which it could be shown, 1st. That the charter in question was a charter of political power; 2d. That there was a great and overruling state necessity, justifying the violation of the charter; 3d. That the charter had been abused and justly forfeited.[2] The bill affecting this charter did not pass. Its history is well known. The act which afterwards did pass, passed with the assent of the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a Princess in Exile!" he repeated, overruling her. "You come into these sordid surroundings—you mustn't mind my calling them sordid—and it makes them seem as though they didn't matter.... I don't think they do matter. I don't think any surroundings could throw a shadow ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... ruin and devastation in its path, is no less a proof of a wise and overruling Providence than the gentler phenomena of nature, which, with such constant and unvarying regularity, refresh and bless the earth. It cleanses the atmosphere, and sweeps away the poisonous miasmata, which have been engendered during a period of quiescence, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... of the late king, Charles was not to ascend the throne until he reached the age of eighteen, but the diet passed a vote overruling this, and, as the regency concurred, he was at once crowned, and the alliance with Holstein was cemented by the marriage, that had been previously arranged between Charles's eldest sister and the Duke of Holstein, being celebrated ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... weeks before Jonathan was up another tree on the same errand, and when I considered the number of nests in our orchard, and the number of cats—none of them really our cats—on the place, I felt that the position of overruling Providence was almost more than we could undertake, if we hoped to ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... the good purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to be suited to your disease—your present disease, and to your whole disease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... knew, that each of her babies shall eat four baked beans the day it is four days old, eat them it must; and if the baby die in convulsions four days after, it is set down as the mysterious will of an overruling Providence. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... governs and is antecedent to law, which must bend and adapt itself to cast, as the overruling, intrinsic, unalterable condition of Hinduism, of Hindu life. There is one law, one phase of obligation for the twice-born, another for the Sudra. In Manu, cast is not so fully and severely developed: Manu permits to the Brahmana four wives, of whom one may be a Sudra, necessarily permitting, therefore, ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... Antislavery Democrats and antislavery Whigs felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization. The Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the hour. Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was not owing to his virtues and abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery question stirred his soul ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Ourselves are enough to keep our hands full, without taking a lift of our fellows' conduct. And this, further, that, in view of the final judgment, we should hold a preliminary investigation on our own principles of action, and 'decide' to adopt as the overruling law for ourselves, that we shall do nothing which will make duty harder for our brethren. Paul habitually settled small matters on large principles, and brought the solemnities of the final account to bear on the marketplace and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... great favor when he interposed his judgment between my red-hot mentality and the cool minds of the workaday world. Yet this interference with what I deemed my rights proved to be the first step in the general overruling of them by tactless attendants and, in particular, by ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... holding the lines and his voorslag, and grinning. He was dead, too—struck by the lightning in the act of stealing those mules and that Cape cart. Don't let any fellow waste hot air after that trying to persuade me that there isn't such a thing as an overruling Providence!" ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... tenderly, to make her cease and be happy once more; but he did not dare. Had he done so, she might not have repelled him; for, in all intensely passionate grief, there comes a moment of subsidence, when the grief and its origin are forgotten, and the one overruling desire is the desire to be comforted, no matter who the comforter and what his means, so long as they ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... man a primordial and overruling phenomenon which defies analysis. Man may be dissected completely; the elements of Will and Mind may perhaps be found; but there still will remain beyond apprehension the x against which I once used to struggle. That x is the Word, the Logos, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... have gnashed their teeth thereat.[10] Hence then let the saints learn not to commit themselves to their enemies; 'beware of men' (Matt 10:17). They are very merciless men, and will not so much favour you, if they can help it, as you may suppose they may. Nay, unless the overruling hand of God in goodness do order things contrary to their natural inclination, they will not favour you so much ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... watched over them and protected them from dangers, seen and unseen. He was especially struck with the providence of God in the case of McKinlay. The flood of waters which troubled him might have been a deluge to sweep him away, but, by the gracious overruling providence of God his life was preserved, and he was now in their midst. Both Landsborough and McKinlay had returned none the worse for wear, but fresh and blooming, he would say, for the tan which they got from the sun seemed to him to be the richest of blooms. (Laughter.) They were ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... universal element, expressed under different points of view according to the difference of religions, and the moral and intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the epic poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making it instrumental to the accomplishment ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... revelation, teaches an overruling providence, very few deny. There must exist in nature an omnipotent and benevolent Being to keep all her works in harmony—to touch the most secret and subtle springs of the vast machinery of the universe—to regulate seed time and harvest, summer ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... the want of the human race. The philosophies of the ancient world were the earnest effort of human reason to reconcile the finite and the infinite, the human and the Divine, the subject and God. An overruling Providence, which makes even the wrath of man to praise Him, took up all these sincere, though often mistaken, efforts into his own plan, and made them sub-serve the purpose of redemption. They aided in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... is no more to blame for negro slavery than the North. Our slaves were stolen from Africa by Yankee skippers. When a slaver arrived at Boston, your pious Puritan clergyman offered public prayer of thanks that 'A gracious and overruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessings of ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... forsake you; but," and she spread out the veritable handkerchief, so precious to the poor black woman, before his wondering eyes, "you are deserving of the rich blessings of earthly friends; for had I been tried, as it has been the will of an overruling providence that you should be, I doubt if I had borne my cross with the submissive spirit which you have manifested. Tell me," added she, pointing out the crooked marks in the corner of the handkerchief, ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... pretensions to authority are without limit. The Catholic clergy of Ireland claim the right to coerce the laity in political matters, themselves remaining exempt from public criticism. They also claim to be exempt from civil jurisdiction, and to have the right of overruling the law of the land, with every moral obligation, when clashing with the interests of the Church. They distinctly teach that every political question is a question of morals, and that to vote against the priest's instructions is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... be broken." It seemed the most casual circumstance that the soldier plunged the spear into the side of Jesus, to make sure that He was dead; yet an ancient oracle, of which he knew nothing, had said, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced." Thus, by the overruling providence of God, the soldiers, going with rude unconcern about their work, were unconsciously fulfilling the Scriptures; and those who both saw what they had done and knew the Scriptures recognised the Divine finger pointing out Jesus as ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... perplexity, a way of relief is suddenly opened. A lucky suggestion, sent, perhaps, by an overruling Providence, provides a path of escape from some menacing evil. This happened in the ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... explained to be one form of the principle of progress by antagonism, the conservation or discovery of truth by means of inquiry and controversy; a merciful Providence leaving men responsible for their errors, but ultimately overruling evil ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... established by the law. This was a stretch of the king's prerogative that produced results immediately welcome to the Nonconformists, who sent up addresses of thanks. Defoe saw clearly that a king who is thanked for overruling an unwelcome law has the whole point conceded to him of right to overrule the law. In that sense he wrote, "A Letter containing some Reflections on His Majesty's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience," to warn the Nonconformists of the great mistake into which some were falling. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... serious, earnest, noble, grand, solemn, impressive, commanding, imposing. urgent, pressing, critical, instant. paramount, essential, vital, all-absorbing, radical, cardinal, chief, main, prime, primary, principal, leading, capital, foremost, overruling; of vital &c. importance. in the front rank, first-rate; superior &c. 33; considerable &c. (great) 31; marked &c. v.; rare &c. 137. significant, telling, trenchant, emphatic, pregnant; tanti[Lat]. Adv. materially &c. adj.; in the main; above all, , par excellence, to crown ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sailor has experienced most signal proofs of the omnipotence of God. Throughout the daily dangers they are exposed to is the underlying, as well as the overruling, sense of the Almighty Power that holds the heavens in the hollow of ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... overruling Providence was complete. He believed, even in the darkest days of freedom in our land, in the ultimate extinction of Slavery, and at times, although advanced in years, thought he would live to witness that glorious consummation. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... from the door until their figures were lost in the darkness. When she returned to the dining-room, Clytie had already retired to her room, and Mrs. Morpher, overruling M'liss's desire to sit up until the master returned, bade her follow that correct example. "There's Clytie, now, gone to bed like a young lady, and do you do like her," and Mrs. Morpher, with this one drop of balm in the midst of her trials, trimmed the light and sat down in patience ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Away from air it gasps and dies. Water is the native element of the fish. Out of water it chokes and gasps and dies. Trust is the native element of friendship—friendship with God. A constant feeling of confidence in GOD that believes in His overruling power, and in His unfailing love, and rests in Him in the darkness when the thing you prize most is lying ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... these syllables were still audible; and secondly, that Chaucer consequently employed them in his verse, like any other syllables, with the due metrical value:—herein not, as the Laureate thought, overruling, but conforming himself to the use of his mother tongue. To this more than plausible view, which, if the late studies that have been taken in the intelligence of Alfred's speech had been made in Tyrwhitt's day, would not have waited till now for its full establishment, no objection has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... ignorance of Captain Bunker, I endeavored, through my faithful subordinates, to reach a less known port, and a coast rarely frequented by reason of its prevailing fog. Here occurred one of those dispensations of an overruling power which, dear friend, we have so often discussed. We fell in with an unknown current, and were guided by a mysterious hand into the bay ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... heart, yet with that confidence in an overruling Providence which never forsakes a good and brave man, Peveril betook himself to his lowly ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... suffering, have been enlisted to give faithfully, explicitly, and plainly, warnings of danger and exhortations to prudence and nothing remains for us but to maintain the principles of morality, and leave to the disposal of a wise and overruling Providence the mystery of all seemingly untoward events. In every condition of life, evils arise, and most of those which are encountered are avoidable. Humanity should be held accountable for those evils which it might, but ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... again, blessing her overruling stars to have escaped notice so entirely both in going and returning; for the mother was hard at washing near the well, having got in half an hour before, and father has not yet left off digging in his garden. So she crept ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... without proper instruments, it being also late in the season, Captain Morrell was now obliged to put back, without attempting any further progress to the westward, although an entirely open, sea lay before him. He expresses the opinion that, had not these overruling considerations obliged him to retreat, he could have penetrated, if not to the pole itself, at least to the eighty-fifth parallel. I have given his ideas respecting these matters somewhat at length, that the reader may have an opportunity of seeing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sorrow, and doubt, and fearful foreboding of coming evils gathered about him, assumed more and more of the mother's careful and earnest love for the peace of her child. She met him with an ever-cheerful countenance; gently soothed his fears, and constantly referred him to the overruling care of Divine Providence. Affliction had wrought its proper work upon her affections, and as they became gradually separated from the world, they found a higher and purer source of attraction. From a thoughtless girl, she had become a ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... decision of the court or judge on the verdict, or the overruling of the court on a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... acquiesced, and the two dames took their way to Dalcastle, with baskets well furnished with trifles. They did not take the common path from the village, but went about, and approached the mansion by a different way. But it seemed as if some overruling power ordered it that they should miss no chance of attaining the information they wanted. For ere ever they came within half a mile of Dalcastle they perceived the two youths coming as to meet them, on the same path. The road ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... a letter to the King the reasons why he should be Chancellor; criticising justly enough, only that he was a party interested, the qualifications of other possible candidates, Coke, Hobart, and the Archbishop Abbott. Coke would be "an overruling nature in an overruling place," and "popular men were no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." Hobart was incompetent. As to Abbott, the Chancellor's place required "a whole man," and to have both jurisdiction, spiritual and temporal, "was fit only for a king." The ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... of our many discussions it had often happened that after overruling me with great finality she would end by yielding to my point of view. I hoped this would be the case ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... English colonization is an essential ingredient for our large success.... In this new region of Highlands no end of good could be effected in developing the trade in cotton and in discouraging that in slaves.... You know how I have been led on from one step to another by the overruling Providence of the great Parent, as I believe, in order to a great good for Africa. 'Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass.' I have tried to do this, and now see the prospect in front ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... accomplish the entire regeneration of Africa by its present measures, my detestation of its principles would not abate one jot, nor would I bestow upon it the smallest modicum of praise. Never shall the fruits of the mercy and overruling providence of God,—ever bringing good out of evil and light out of darkness,—be ascribed to the prejudice and sin ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... wind." This vanity and presumption is now punished, and, I acknowledge, justly. I should have left it to Providence. Wise are the ways of the Almighty, and salutary all His dispensations to man. Were we not continually put in mind of an overruling Providence by reverses of this kind, the human heart, exalted with its own consequence, would soon cease to implore protection ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of dinners, teas and tennis parties, that are part of the system by which the English keep alive their courage, and growing after a while a little tired of trivialty, she tried to scandalize Sialpore by inviting Tom Tripe to her own garden party, successfully overruling Tripe's objections. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... actual question of the day. He admitted that the liberal contention had been perfectly right under the special circumstances. Their arguments were quite right so long as they took the lower ground of expediency, though wrong when elevated to the position of ultimate principles, overruling arguments from expediency.[143] Toleration, he thinks, is in its right place as softening and moderating an inevitable conflict. The true ground for moral tolerance is that 'most people have no right to any opinion whatever upon these subjects,' and he thinks that 'the ignorant preacher' who 'calls ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... immeasurable misfortune. Her own experience was to her a type of all the desolating evil and sorrow of the world; and in her agony she could not turn to a God who permitted such evil and suffering. It seemed to her that there could be no merciful, overruling Providence—that her husband's view, when his mind was in its most vigorous and normal state, was more rational than a religion which taught that a God who loved good left evil to make ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... influential friends for the Church, and proceeded through part of the College curriculum, but some changes occurring, he ultimately devoted himself to the study of law. Probably his ambition was for the Bar; but overruling circumstances led him, about twelve years ago, to enter on the profession of parliamentary solicitor in London, in which he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... omitt my earnest prayers vnto God to deliver you from such a temptation. Hee that goes to warre must patiently submitt vnto the various accidents thereof. To bee made prisoner by an vnequall and overruling power, after a due resistance, is no disparagement; butt upon a carelesse surprizall or faynt opposition; and you have so good a memorie that you cannot forgett many examples thereof, even of the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the gods, (and have made them instruments of degradation for man,) that they were, one and all, incarnations; not, as even the Christian God is, for a transitory moment and for an eternal purpose; but essentially and by overruling necessity. The Greeks could not conceive of spirituality. Neither can we, metaphysically, assign the conditions of the spiritual; but, practically, we all feel and represent to our own minds the agencies of God, as liberated from bonds of space and time, of flesh and of resistance. This the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane, or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He all but concurs, according to His good pleasure, and in His selected season, in the issues of unbelief, superstition, and false worship, and He changes the character of acts by His overruling operation. He condescends, though He gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the eternal heritage? The deepest conviction of her soul was, "Behind fate, stands God"; hidden for a season, deaf and blind and mute, it seemed, but always surely there; waiting His own appointed season of rescue, and of recompense. So strong was her faith in His overruling wisdom and mercy, that her soul found rest, through perpetual prayer for patience; and as weeks slipped into months, and season followed season, she realized that though no roses of happiness could ever bloom along her arid path, the lilies of peace ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... maturely considered this objection, which, in some cases, is of no little weight. For example, a man may, by the influence of an overruling planet, be disposed or inclined to lust, rage, or avarice; and yet, by the force of reason, overcome that evil influence. And this was the case of SOCRATES. But the great events of the World usually depending upon numbers of men; it cannot be expected ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Bear with me, dearest! I ask for so much; I have so little to offer in return. I dream of a life with you which is perhaps too perfectly happy to be enjoyed on earth. And yet, I cannot resign my delusion. Must my poor heart always long for happiness which is beyond my reach? If an overruling Providence guides our course through this world, may we not sometimes hope for happier ends than our mortal eyes ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... he went on, apparently to the carpet. "I had him dug up that I might bring him here, and mebbe bury some of the trouble and difference along with his friends. It might be," he added, with a slightly glowering upward glance, as to an overruling, but occasionally misdirecting Providence,—"it might be from the way things are piling up on me that some one might have rung in another corpse instead o' HIM, but so far as I can judge, allowin' for the space of time and nat'ral wear and ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... retired parish, he might encourage the devout, reprove and control the erring, and, by his example, counsel, and prayers, so mould and influence the little community, that it should seem another Eden. But an overruling Providence had reserved for him a larger field of usefulness, a more extended mission of mercy, and it was through the path of trial that he was to be led ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... one objection—absolutely overruling, apparently, in Sherman's mind—to any further attempt by Sherman himself, with the main body of his army then in Georgia, to prosecute the primary military object of his campaign—the destruction or capture of Hood's army. To have done so would have conceded a temporary triumph ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not New France, the appendage of an Old World nation. It is Canada,—a ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... settles satisfactorily the vexed question of the dominance or the disappearance of Roman influences. The institutions of the Lombards were similar in character to those of the other Germanic races, and the continuance of any overruling municipal influence among them would have done violence alike to their traditions and to the nature of their race. The old municipal predominance as a system disappeared, the old municipal divisions ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... whirled the heavy barrels about in every direction. The escape of David from very serious injuries seemed almost miraculous. But our little barbarian leaped from the ruins unscathed. It does not appear that he had ever cherished any conception whatever of an overruling Providence. Probably, a religious thought had never entered his mind. A colt running by the side of the horses could not have been more insensible to every idea of death, and responsibility at God's ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... "nothing can be more agreeable to me, my dear friend, than to return to my solitude beneath my noble trees, on the banks of the Loire. If Heaven be the overruling physician of the evils of the mind, nature is a sovereign remedy. And so, monsieur," continued Athos, turning again toward Baisemeaux, "I am ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... am a poor man, but cannot understand how anybody can refuse to be member of the Cabinet of the President of the United States. If such an offer was made to me, and the conditions of our overruling Providence were that I and my family should live in want and poverty for the rest of our lives, ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... meaning a person; they speak of a "him" and a "he" without having in their minds the idea of a living person with all its inevitable limitations. Pantheism is, therefore, as is said by Mr. Blunt in another article, "practically nothing else than Atheism; it has no belief in a personal deity overruling the affairs of the world, as Divine Providence, and is, therefore, Atheistic," and again, "Theism believes in a spirit superior to matter, and so does Pantheism; but the spirit of Theism is self-conscious, and therefore personal and of individual existence-a nature per se, and upholding ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... did not utter a prayer of thanksgiving for his escape, I am certain that I did; and it was a sincere one at that, for nothing but an overruling Providence could have saved one from the effects of two shots at ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... without questioning, to all the teachings of the Church of Rome. She was placid, contented, and cheerful, and, though uninquiring in her devotion, undoubtedly sincere in her piety. In every event of life she recognized the overruling hand of Providence, and feeling that the comparatively humble lot assigned her was in accordance with the will of God, she indulged in no repinings, and envied not the more brilliant destiny of lords and ladies. An ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... directed the footsteps of Pardee Butler to Kansas just at the time he went there, and to the place where he took a homestead and improved it, and lived on it with his family for a third of a century, no one who believes in an overruling providence can for a moment doubt. At the risk of his life, and at the cost of great privation in his own person, and that of his wife and children, he unfurled the blood-stained banner of the cross, and never allowed it to trail beneath his feet through the long years of "border ruffianism," and ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Masters, to guard against the influence of party spirit, either political or religious, as termed by a certain class of people, who, from their weak and shattered principles, have been led to suppose that the great and overruling Bible, among certain classes, is the Divine inspiration of the Deity, and was hewn from a solid rock, for the purpose of satisfying all men of the power of God, whom this band hold sacred, as a being of unchangeable character, who will, in the immortal state, prepare an everlasting place ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... history of the Village will show conclusive proof, that, if the matter had been left to the people there, it would never have reached the point to which it was carried. It was the influence of the magistracy and the government of the colony, and the public sentiment prevalent elsewhere, overruling that of the immediate locality, that ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... left the bar, when they returned with a verdict of one penny damages. A motion was made for a new trial; but the court, too, had now lost the equipoise of their judgment, and overruled the motion by an unanimous vote. The verdict and judgment overruling the motion were followed by redoubled acclamations, from within and without the house. The people, who had with difficulty kept their hands off their champion from the moment of closing his harangue, no sooner saw ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... from Frank a flask of sherry, and overruling the objection made by the brothers that stimulants were forbidden. He further insisted on taking Lance at once to his own berth on board the yacht while Mrs. Rivers meant to conduct her sister to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for thy father, and sees many advantages for us all. I doubt me if he believes I have power to resist his will, and for thee, he would not count thine opposition valid. And the more angry and vehement thou art, the more will he deem himself doing thee a service by overruling thee." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by which the courts have come to their conclusions, is often assailed by the advocate and shown to be fallacious, and the instances are not unfrequent of courts disregarding prior decisions and overruling them when not fairly deducible ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... beginning, for his conviction was rooted, deeper than reason, in the unconquerable prejudices which had passed from the brain into the very blood of his race. He would probably say at the end: "I admit all that you tell me, Gabriella, but my sentiment is against it;" and this sentiment, overruling sense, would insist, with sublime obstinacy, that Gabriella must not work in a shop. It would ignore, after the exalted habit of sentiment, such merely sordid facts as poverty and starvation (who ever heard of a woman of good family starving in Virginia?), and, at last, if Gabriella ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... glance at him. Was he conscious that he was overruling her objections? She saw no sign of it. He looked up at her questioningly, waiting for ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... perform their duty in such a manner as to spread, throughout regions in which the English name is hardly known, the fame not only of English skill and valour, but of English mercy and moderation; and that the overruling care of that gracious Providence which has so often brought good out of evil may make the war to which we have been forced the means of establishing a durable peace, beneficial alike to the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was then judge of the Court of Common Pleas. So far from favoring me on account of my relation to him, he seemed to wish to demonstrate his impartiality by overruling my pleadings or instructing the jury against me. I am quite sure now that this was fanciful on my part, for he was universally regarded as being an excellent example of a just ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must wait with patience the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full—when their tears shall have involved heaven itself in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing a light ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... Moreover, he is not exempt from despotic caprices in the moments of offended pride. Odowalsky knows how to make himself at all times indispensable to him, removes the Russians to a distance, and maintains his overruling influence. ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... did the kind hand of overruling Providence conduct us, through toils, fatigues, and dangers, to independence and peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if religion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are clearly traced in those events which mark the annals of our nation, it becomes ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... granted that the matter was settled as far as Andrea was concerned, that very evening broached the plan to the boy's father and mother, overruling all their objections with the result that the following Monday found the two travelers, with Chico in his basket, on the ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... spectacle. Creusa, however, endeavored to calm and quiet him by soothing words. "My dearest husband," said she, "do not give way thus to anxiety and grief. The events which have befallen us, have not come by chance. They are all ordered by an overruling providence that is omnipotent and divine. It was predetermined by the decrees of heaven that you were not to take me with you in your flight. I have learned what your future destiny is to be. There is a long period of ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hazards, a real country, to exchange what is precious for the sake of having finally what we dreamed we had before,—the most precious of all earthly things,—a Commonwealth of God. Yes, our best things go, like wads for guns, to bid our purpose speak more emphatically, as it expresses the overruling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... mind they generally give him the like power, considering it as a kind of emanation from his own greater mind or essence, and destined to be re-united with him hereafter. Nay, over all the gods, and of superior potency to any, they conceived fate to preside; an overruling and paramount necessity, of which they formed some dark conceptions, and to which the chief of all the gods was supposed to submit. It is, indeed, extremely difficult to state precisely what the philosophic theory of theology was in Greece and Rome, because the wide difference between ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... your faithful and detailed exposure of the existing situation of our country, and we sincerely join in sentiments of gratitude to an overruling Providence for the distinguished share of public prosperity and private happiness which the people of the United States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... Evidence tending to prove its substantial accuracy should be as acceptable as that disproving it. No great principle is here at stake. The truth of Divine Revelation is in no wise concerned. There is nothing in its truth or falsity which should in any way affect man's belief in an overruling Providence, or in an immortality beyond the grave, or which should render any less desirable a life of purity and honor. On the contrary, we think one of the greatest causes of thanksgiving mortals have is the possession of intellectual powers, which enable us to here ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... thus doing. One respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his congregation, and himself into believing that ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... instance, we see our worldly prospects depend, humanly speaking, upon a certain person, we are led to court him, to honour him, and adopt his views, and trust in an arm of flesh, till we forget the overruling power of God's providence, and the necessity of His blessing, for the building of the house and ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Charity. It breathes the noblest spirit of philanthropy. The reader's mind kindles as it enters into the train of thought in which the author referred to "the work we have in hand. It is," he said, "by a mutual consent, through a special overruling Providence, and a more than an ordinary approbation of the churches of Christ, to seek out a place of cohabitation and consortship under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical." The forms and institutions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... so long paddled our own canoe, and in which faithful laborers were still at work. It matters not by whom this great work was accomplished; it matters not by what agencies our prayer of more than four years long, previous to the adopting of this work by the State, was answered. Through an overruling power clouds and icebergs vanished, and in lieu thereof the massive brick buildings of the State Public School in Coldwater were raised, instead of the old Raisin Institute, where ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... themselves, only more vast; with mightier wills, mightier virtues, mightier sorrows, and often mightier crimes; their inward free-will battling, as Schlegel has well seen, against outward circumstance and overruling fate, as every man should battle, unless he sink to be a brute. 'In tragedy,' says Schlegel—uttering thus a deep and momentous truth—'the gods themselves either come forward as the servants of destiny and mediate executors of its decrees, or approve ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... would not allow; so I said at once, "Richard (or James, as the case might be,) you misunderstand my character. If a man will and must practise this difficult (and allow me to add, dangerous) branch of art—if he has an overruling genius for it, why, he might as well pursue his studies whilst living in my service as in another's. And also, I may observe, that it can do no harm either to himself or to the subject on whom he operates, that he should ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... not, Seyton," said Douglas, "though I lament the chance. There is an overruling destiny above us, though not in the sense in which it was viewed by that wretched man, who, beguiled by some foreign mystagogue, used the awful word as the ready apology for whatever he chose to do—we must examine ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... from foreign captivity, and brought them back to their homes. It is certain that no measure simply and exclusively prospective would have sufficed for the emergency. There was an absolute necessity for overruling all that class of preexisting rights which had produced so violent a social fever. While, therefore, to this extent, the Seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of injustice, we may confidently affirm that the injustice inflicted was an indispensable price ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... prejudices find no place in the public deliberations. It will not be sufficient that the rash counsels of human passion are rejected. It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... service, and to compel them to bear his messages and execute his orders; as we see in the case of Balaam and Jonah. God can make use of man to this end, either by reconciling them to himself, and attaching them to his interest or by overruling their corrupt and vicious designs to effect his holy purposes, without their consent or knowledge. Most of the prophets were brought into his view, and made desirous to honor him. Many pagan princes, and others, who knew him not were yet made instrumental in doing his pleasure and executing ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... before them, and especially the Christian temper which he manifested all along." For the results of that memorable Convention, in which so much was gained—may we not say so little lost?—we are mainly indebted, under the overruling wisdom of the Holy Spirit, to the stedfast gentleness of Bishop White and the ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... feet! You will select one of that number for your husband; may he watch over you as I would have done!—love you as I do he cannot! Yes, I repeat it," continued Clifford, vehemently,—"he cannot! None amidst the gay, happy, silken crowd of your equals and followers can feel for you that single and overruling passion which makes you to me what all combined—country, power, wealth, reputation, an honest name, peace, common safety, the quiet of the common air, alike the least blessing and the greatest-are to all ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... redeem their time, or repair their fortune. Thus Gui de Lusignan, after flying from France for murder, was ultimately raised to the throne of Jerusalem. To the more vulgar class were held out inducements which, though absorbed in the more overruling fanaticism of the first crusade, might be exceedingly efficacious when it began rather to flag. During the time that a crusader bore the cross, he was free from suit for his debts, and the interest of them was entirely abolished; he was exempted, in some ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... to be true. Every man with the heart of a farmer within him was at the plough-handles, and making the most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and start at last of his own motion, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... scattered apostles, and the overseers of the deacons as well, of whom Philip named in the text was one, preached wherever they went, and many believed. The very steps taken by the enemies of the cross to put an end to its power "turned out unto the furtherance of the gospel." In this we can see the overruling hand of Providence. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... mind how. Thurstane heard it and understood it. Clara also heard it, as if it were not she who uttered it, but some overruling power, or some inward possession, which spoke for her. She heard it and she acquiesced in it. The matter was settled. Her destiny had been pronounced. The man to whom her heart ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... followed, ambushed and slain with many arrows. Powell observes that that night he slept in peace, "although these murderers of my men were sleeping not 500 yards away." Hamblin improved the time in trying to make the Indians understand the idea of an overruling Providence and to appreciate that God was not pleased with the shedding of blood. He admitted, "These teachings did not appear to have much influence at the time, but afterwards they yielded ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... profit if they will do so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by man and the works of man. But there is something in the harmony and quiet of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... parenthetically handled, and I hope that some one will deal with it competently in an early publication of the S.P.E. The question must here remain to be determined by the evidence of the words in the table of obsoletes, which I think is convincing; my overruling contention being that, however successful we may be in the coinage of new words (and we have no reason to boast of success) and however desirable it is to get rid of some of the bad useless homophones, yet we cannot afford to part with any old term ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... faith in an overruling Power and in a life beyond the grave. They offered human sacrifices to that Power, and when they buried one of their warriors, they buried his spear with him so that he might fight as good a battle in the next world as he had fought in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... for his misconduct in the East, but soon Master of the cattle-ship FALCON on her Virginia voyage; whom we greet next—and best—as Admiral of the Pilgrim fleet, commander of the destiny freighted MAY-FLOWER, and though a conspirator with nobles against the devoted band he steered, under the overruling hand of their Lord God, their unwitting pilot to "imperial labors" and mighty honors, to the founding of empire, and to eternal Peace; whom we next meet—fallen, "like Lucifer, never to hope again" —as Captain of the little buccaneer,—the DISCOVERY, disguised as a trading-ship, on the Virginian ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... and dead reptiles start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced immediately ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason, and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... view the present and retrospect the past, who may say that all has not turned out for the best? We find consolation in the belief that the Lord's hand has shaped our destiny, and we meekly submit to his overruling providence. ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... correct the native thoughtlessness of his character, and no doubt her love and care would henceforth make the happiness of his life. So they said to one another with smiles, and not without grateful tears, in view of the overruling love and care visible in all they had to remember of one ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... and earnest conviction, but it is without a single word, from first to last, of asperity or insinuation against opponents; and this, not from any deficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from an overruling ever-present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a more than ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... cannot be represented on the map; i.e. by immense currents everlastingly in action, some on the surface, some in the mid-heart of the ocean, which drive it in ceaseless course from the equator to the poles, from the poles to the equator; so that the Supreme Intelligence, in His overruling providence, has ordained the same law to set in movement the immensity of ocean, and to effect circulation in the cockchafer's few drops of blood. In the latter we find the moving agent to be a long tube, which runs the whole length of the back, and is called the dorsal ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... of an overruling Providence Horace had expressly rejected in the Satires (Sat. iv, 101), holding that the gods are too happy and too careless in their superior aloof security to plague themselves with the affairs of mortals. But he felt sometimes, as all men feel, the need of a supreme celestial ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... the events which, in the more recent history of mankind, have struck the minds of nations with awe, and appeared to reveal in its direct operation a power overruling the highest human effort, there is none equal in grandeur and terror to the annihilation of Napoleon's army in the invasion of Russia. It was natural that a generation which had seen State after State overthrown, and each ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... which could hardly fail to end in bloodshed, and might precipitate the perplexed and embarrassed country into civil war. Washington issued a general order, recognizing the existence of the manifesto, but overruling it so far as to appoint the meeting for a later day, with the senior major-general, who happened to be Gates, to preside. This order, which neither discipline nor courtesy could disregard, in a measure tied Gates's hands, while it gave Washington time to ascertain ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... the ravening thirst for release from the world and the flesh and the miseries which appertained to them, as one suffocating might thirst for air. He realized suddenly himself, stifling and agonizing, behind a window which he had no need to wait for an overruling Providence to open, which was not too heavy for his own mortal strength, which he could open himself. He realized that whatever lay outside was outside; it was air outside this air, misery outside this particular phase which was driving him mad. His imagination dwelling upon ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... reigns, losing them never to be regained. And with him also vanished the absolute rule of the Swedish kings. For with his death the nobles regained their lost influence and drew up a compact in which the crown was deprived of all its overruling control and the diet of the nobles became the dominant ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... of Pasquale and the two leaders dismounted. Yeager was still at some distance, but he had an uncertain impression that one of them was a woman. They stood on the porch talking. The larger one seemed to be overruling the protest of the other, so far as Steve could tell at that distance. The two passed ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... the crime, the natural disposition was only towards the object, not formally towards the doing it upon wrong motives; and generally the very essence of the crime consists in the liberty of the will forcibly overruling the actual disposition towards being influenced by right motives, and not at all (as you suppose) in the man's having any natural disposition to be influenced by wrong ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... overruling Providence, building better than we knew, had decreed that the sway of this powerful party should be broken by means of the very element of supposed strength on which it so confidently relied for unlimited supremacy. Losing sight of those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... under the sun. For over them is the kingdom of Christ, the Saviour of all men, specially of them which believe, the King of all the princes of the earth, who has always asserted, and will for ever assert, His own overruling dominion. And in them is the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of truth and righteousness; of improvement, discovery, progress from darkness to light, from folly to wisdom, from barbarism to justice, and mercy, and the true civilization of ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the strict observance of this rule and the other injunctions of the Constitution, with a sedulous inculcation of that respect and love for the Union of the States which our fathers cherished and enjoined upon their children, and with the aid of that overruling Providence which has so long and so kindly guarded our liberties and institutions, we may reasonably expect to transmit them, with their innumerable blessings, to the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Zachary Taylor • Zachary Taylor
... purpose of discovering and applying the principles of the law of nations in the just conduct of the common affairs of the Union, is likely, if it acts as a true Justiciar to accomplish much more by the persuasive effect of justice exercised in accordance with an overruling law of nature and of nations, than is an Emperor-State by the issuing of edicts based on a claim of right to be the supreme legislative ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... the early Greeks respecting the dispensations of an overruling Providence, as shown in their belief in retributive justice, are especially prominent in some of the sublime choruses of the Greek tragedians, and in the "Works and Days" of Hesiod. For ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... household, with five children, of whom my sister was the second, she not only did the daily household duties, including washing and baking, but spun and wove the cloth for the clothes of her husband and children, cut and made them up. Her cheerful faith in an overruling Providence must have been, in those days, a supreme consolation, for, even in recalling them in the days of my boyhood, the light of it still illumined her, and she never questioned that He who had led them into the wilderness would maintain them in it. She seemed to have but one ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... some occasions be necessary that the Author of nature display His overruling power in producing some appearance out of the ordinary series of things. Such exceptions from the general rules of nature are proper to surprise and awe men into an acknowledgement of the Divine ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... manner. This is due to our national character.... This course we shall ever pursue, unless circumstances should occur, which we do not now anticipate, rendering a departure from it clearly justifiable, under the imperative and overruling law of self-preservation." House Exec. Doc., 35 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 2, pp. 14-5. See ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... little of that calm, self-possessed courage that leaves to one the full use of his faculties in the midst of danger, and allows him to act wisely, even when meeting death face to face. The only sure foundation for this form of courage is unshrinking trust in the overruling power of God,—a trust that shall make us feel his providence ever clasping its arms about us in all the circumstances of life, causing us ever to bear in mind, that he who watches the fall of the sparrow cannot permit us to perish or to suffer ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... restoration of the Union. Many moralists, failing, as we believe, to see the real significance of the idea of political unity, have looked upon the proposed object of the Government as a low and unworthy one; but have, nevertheless, rejoiced that the hand of Providence is in the work, and overruling it to bring out of these meaner aims ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time, ordered the soldiers to fire into the prisons, through the prison windows, upon unarmed prisoners asleep in their hammocks, on account of a light being seen in the prisons; which barbarous act was repeated several nights successively. That murder was not then committed, was owing to an overruling Providence alone; for the balls were picked up in the prisons, where they passed through the hammocks of men then asleep in them. He having also ordered the soldiers to fire upon the prisoners in the yard of No. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse |
