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Subservient   /səbsˈərviənt/   Listen
Subservient

adjective
1.
Compliant and obedient to authority.
2.
Serving or acting as a means or aid.  Synonyms: implemental, instrumental.
3.
Abjectly submissive; characteristic of a slave or servant.  Synonyms: slavish, submissive.  "A slavish yes-man to the party bosses" , "She has become submissive and subservient"



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"Subservient" Quotes from Famous Books



... angular maids? Or, don't you think, now, that an autumnal attachment—provided some sweet and healthy intelligence comes in contact with his own—is a capital thing in its way? The crackling fireside instead of the lovers' walk? The perfection of rational comfort subservient to, rather than dominating, his early dreams? Respectful affection, fidelity and fondest care as the conditions surrounding one's character, and upholding it in its best symmetry? Cannot the poet think better if his body is kept snug? Cannot the man of feeling remember ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... were his partisans; he had, as to the great question between him and his rival (PITT), reason and justice clearly on his side: but he had against him his squandering and luxurious habits: these made him dependent on the rich part of his partisans; made his wisdom subservient to opulent folly or selfishness; deprived his country of all the benefit that it might have derived from his talents; and, finally, sent him to the grave without a single sigh from a people, a great part of whom would, in ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... into their hands, and that they would be as ruthless in dealing with her as they had been with the nesters whom they had killed. She knew it, she had read it in the inscrutable, level look of Senator Warfield, in the half cringing, wholly subservient manner of Hawkins when he listened to ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... intelligence and influence of the country, instead of laboring to foment sectional prejudices, to be made subservient to party warfare, were in good faith applied to the eradication of causes of local discontent, by the improvement of our institutions and by facilitating their adaptation to the condition of the times, this task would prove one of less ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... your greater chance of security lies in this course. The fellow is a supreme egotist; opposition will anger him, while flattery will make him subservient. You have the wit and discretion to hold him within certain limits. It is a dangerous game, I admit, and a disagreeable one, but the case requires ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... formed ours; we have won it after a fierce battle of long years from the greedy ocean, which is always endeavouring to regain the ground it has lost, but we keep the ocean in check with our wonderful dykes, and make it subservient to our requirements. You showed your wisdom, Mynheers, in determining to visit it before proceeding to other parts of the world. In my opinion, you'll not wish to go further; it contains amply sufficient to satisfy the desire of ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... however, whose ambition it had hitherto been to figure as a modern Maecenas, even a subservient parliament declined the customary registration. The king, too, coming to his senses after the lapse of six weeks, so far yielded to the remonstrances of his more sensible courtiers as to recall his rash ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... held his tongue—between his teeth,—and wished that some day he might have the opportunity of punching Mrs Twitter's head, without, if possible, her knowing who did it. Though thus reduced to silence, he cleared his throat in a demonstratively subservient manner and ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were subordinated and made subservient, and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks, but its edge must be sharp and single: if it be double ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... firm, and be true to ourselves. Our cause is good, and we are bound to win, as we won before. Only stand firm, shoulder to shoulder. Shall we bow down to Popery? No, by the God that made us, No. Shall we truckle to Rome, shall we become slaves to Popish knaves, shall we become subservient to priestcraft and lying and roguery and trickery? Never shall it be said of us. We claim to be part and parcel of the glorious British Empire. We have helped to upbuild that Empire, and we claim our inheritance. We will NOT sell our birthright, we will NOT ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... on biology, founded on all the positive sciences, can give us the laws of humanity. Humanity, or human communities, are the organisms already prepared, or still in process of formation, and which are subservient to all the laws ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... accentual stress, which strengthens periodically certain naturally accented syllables of a verse, is known as rhythmic accent. It plays somewhat the same role as did quantity in Latin verse. All other accents and pauses in the verse are subservient to ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... from the doctor. "Now, from what I've seen of Rolla, I'll say she's a perfect example of 'live-and-let-live.' Nothing either subservient or autocratic in her relations with other people. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... first signs of that new phase in my life upon which I entered from this day forth, and in which I accustomed myself to look upon the outward circumstances of my existence as being merely subservient to my will. And by this means I was able to escape from the hampering narrowness of my ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... course of this had found himself compelled to deal sharply with the Franciscans, who were at the same time the most popular and the most papal of all preachers. In the following out of this policy, first several notable friars were imprisoned, and next a couple of subservient Religious, a Dominican and an Augustinian, were appointed grand visitors of ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... mosses of the mound were scattered the rarest products of the most opposite seasons; those of the present season being too natural to pamper the artificial tastes of luxury. Truly, the arrangement was a charming exemplification of nature made subservient to art; but was it this magnet to which the eyes of Maurice were so irresistibly attracted? He chanced to be seated where his view of the hostess was partially intercepted by the hot-house wonder, and he was seeking in vain to catch a glimpse ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... political in character. It is not until this political determination has been reached that the data for even stating the military problem are in hand; for here, as always, the military arm waits upon and is subservient to the political interests and ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... cases between accidental influences and the regular course of nature is a superficial one. The regular course of nature is in itself a series of accidental influences; that is, the particular occasion is subservient to a general law with which it does not seem at first sight to have any connection. A severe winter may be sufficient to kill the quails, just as the ancient morass was sufficient to drown the mastodon. But the question is, why these causes began to operate just at these times. We may as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... revoking the Edict of Nantes for the glory of God, and bringing the nation to sorrow during many generations, never dreamed of making the construction of his palaces and public buildings wait upon the demands of charity. Louis XV, so subservient to the Church in all things, never betrayed the slightest consciousness that, while making enormous expenditures to gratify his own and the national vanity, he ought to carry on works, pari passu, for charity. Nor did the French nation, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be thrown aside; without system the field of nature would be a pathless wilderness: but system should be subservient to, not the main object ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... even brought before the company all the gods and goddesses with whom he had formed an acquaintance at school. Though embarrassed by this unusual encumbrance of learning, he endeavoured to make all subservient to his immediate design, of paying his court to Lady Clonbrony, by forwarding the object she had most anxiously in view—the match between her son and ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... Agatha, don't you go leading her astray. Politics are no metier for a woman, or they should be subservient to something else. Go marry, Agatha, and bring children into the world, and when you have reared them you can set up a political salon and theorise about the regeneration of humanity. Let Miss Gray do likewise. You play with ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... instrument for the purposes of the government." He did not receive his appointment for that vast, hard-working genius which makes his name the ornament of many an age, but only for his sycophantic devotion to the royal will. Sir Edward Coke was promoted rapidly enough, whilst wholly subservient to the despotic court, but afterwards, though a miracle of legal knowledge, not equalled yet perhaps, he must not be appointed Lord Chancellor on account of "his occasional fits of independence." Chief Justice Ley was one of the right stamp, but it was thought "his ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... a second series on Richard III., King Lear, and Timon of Athens; and in 1789 he concluded his character studies with his essay on Falstaff. As the titles show, Richardson's work has a moral purpose. His intention, as he tells us, was to make poetry subservient to philosophy, and to employ it in tracing the principles of human conduct. Accordingly, he has prejudiced his claims as a literary critic. He is not interested in Shakespeare's art for its own sake; but that he ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... realms have demonstrated that they are in the mind, the condition of a voluntary empire. What more can be desired save by such as desire old country domination of all the concerned countries, and who really long for a formal and subservient Empire? ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... here a vein of grave and wise discourse flavored the meal of the circle that belonged to the Museum; but the senseless revelry of Rome had found its way into the houses of the rich, and even the noblest achievements of the human mind had been made, unawares, subservient to mere enjoyment. A man was a philosopher only that he might be prompt to discuss and always ready to take his share in the talk; and at a banquet a well-told anecdote was more heartily welcome than some profound ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of the equanimity these other articles had destroyed. Wherever one went one was reminded in glaring letters that, after all, man was little better than a worm, that eyeless, earless thing that burrows and lives uncomplainingly amidst nutritious dirt, "an alimentary canal with the subservient appendages thereto." But in addition to such boards there were also the big black and white boards of various grandiloquently named "estates." The individualistic enterprise of that time had led to the plotting out of nearly all the country round the seaside towns into roads and building-plots—all ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... They've misled the people into believing it will work an injury to this district, whereas it will of course be beneficial. Unfortunately too they lead the people by the noses—but not me! I refuse to be subservient." ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... by error or malevolence, went to lodge with the most humble private individuals of Versailles, whose inconsiderate conversation contributed not a little to nourish such mistakes. Everything, in short, tended to render the deputies subservient to the schemes of the leaders ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... "when he should have presided over the investiture of these cities and strongholds of Cyprus in the interests of Naples and Alfonso, 'Prince of Galilee'—installing his own creatures in all those places of power—if Naples were not properly subservient and grateful—he, holding the key to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... hand presses, and eight workmen. He had given the management of it to Peauger. When the hour of the Crime arrived, and with it the necessity of printing the nefarious placards, he sounded Peauger, and found him rebellious. He then turned to Saint Georges, a more subservient lackey. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... not fetch him. Devers explained that as a civilian he had no interest in the proceedings and could not be required to obey the mandate of a purely military court, a view in which the judiciary of the great republic, ever steadfast in the principle that military must be subservient to the civil power, virtually sustained him. It was perfectly competent for a court-martial to summon a civilian witness, said the bench, but it had no recourse in case the civilian treated both court and summons with ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... private emolument, to objects of a public nature, it will be my study, in selecting these, to prove the sincerity of my gratitude for the honour conferred upon me, by preferring such as may appear most subservient to the enlightened and patriotic views ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... homemakers in the city and that city girls are often found establishing homes in the country. Nor should we overlook the truth that some study of home conditions in other than familiar surroundings will broaden the girl's knowledge and fit her in later life to make conditions subservient to that knowledge. ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... from continent to continent over oceans that no animal can cross, and with a speed of which our ancestors would never have dreamed? Is not all the rest of the animal creation so far inferior to us in every point that the best thing it can do is to become completely subservient to our needs, dying, if need be, that its flesh may become a toothsome dish on our tables? And yet here is an insignificant little bird, from whose mind, if mind it has, all conceptions of natural law are excluded, applying the rules of aerodynamics in an application ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... were locking together in great agglomerations of widely-separated activities; the human was superseded by the industrial machine, where men were efficient, subservient cogs in a cold and successful automaton of business. A system of general credit was springing up; the old, old payments in kind, in iron or even meal and apparel, or gold, had given place to reciprocal understandings of deferred indebtedness. The actual thousands of earlier commerce ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... art arising out of the medium or material in or upon which it works, the essential qualities of language and its aptitudes for contingent ornamentation, matters which define scholarship as science and good taste respectively. They are both subservient to a more intimate quality of good style: more intimate, as coming nearer to the artist himself. The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the true literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other art, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... neither was he so utterly alone as he might have been. For he was a cotton buyer. In 1855 there was no business like the cotton business. Everything else was subservient to that. The cotton buyer's part, in particular, was a "pretty business." The cotton factor was harassingly responsible to a whole swarm of planter patrons, of whose feelings he had to be all the more careful when ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... finding itself incompetent to do all that is required of it, and wishing to make a display of liberalism, accords large concessions in the direction of local autonomy; and when it discovers that the new institutions do not accomplish all that was expected of them, and are not quite so subservient and obsequious as is considered desirable, it returns in a certain measure to the old principles ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... time I am ready almost to agree with many of the Pole's assertions. The Jew is very lavish in his dealings with Gentiles. He is subservient, and always ready to give up what is his due. All that is a puzzle to the Gentiles, and every Jew who has been brought up and educated among them knows that as well as I do. Sometimes they have a queer explanation for it. A gentile ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... work. Jesus knew the hearts of these men; he knew that while, in virtue of their office, they affected to expound and apply the divine law, and to rule the people in accordance with it, they were at once ignorant of God's word and tamely subservient to the passions of the people. To tear off, or rather to compel them with their own hands to tear off their cloak of hypocrisy, he addressed to them that question of wonderful simplicity but wonderful power, The baptism of John, whence was it? ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... principle that now affected Mrs. Elwood: not that she had the most distant idea that her son harbored aught of wrong intention toward any of his family, but she felt that his mind was somehow becoming subservient to schemes which existed somewhere in the minds of others, which concerned her or her family. But she felt rather than thought this; and, knowing she could give no reason for her singular impression, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... daily, and so are rumors of a revolution. But a revolution is just what is needed,—a revolution which will unseat those who are opposed to the war, and which will place in power a group of officials submissive and subservient to European influence. A revolution will offer the grand, final excuse for the "protection" of China, by Europe. You will see; mark my words. Only, of course, Japan will not be the power that sets in order this disturbed country. Never Japan, the great commercial competitor. For ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... its adjustment to mental control owes its greatest stimulus to games. When physical strength, speed, or nimble adjustability is the pivot upon which the game depends, special muscles are made subservient to will: behind the game there is the stimulus of strong emotion, and here is the greatest factor in establishing permanent associations between body and mind; psychologists see in many of these games of physical activity ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... shapes, like those of the Round Gothic, cannot, as has been said, be defined by any set of general rules; the intrinsic quality of all Gothic letters almost demands a certain freedom of treatment that would transgress any laws that could be formulated. Indeed the individual forms should always be subservient to the effect of the line or page. Observe in almost every example shown how the form of the same letter constantly varies in some minor detail. The drawing by Albrecht Duerer, reproduced in 144, will, [134] however, serve to show the construction of an excellent Blackletter, ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown

... loosely call 'nature,' his brotherhood even with spirits and angels, as one of an infinite number of microcosms reflecting a common image of God. And poetry which holds by this creed will hardly be subservient to societies and governments and legalised doctrines and conventions; it will hold to them by a long and loose chain, if at all. It flies high enough, at any rate, to take a bird's-eye view of all manner of things ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... gross vice or weakness with which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addison's Cato is a specimen of the one; and would it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... largely responsible for the hurry of the priest's departure. At first he had not been surprised at the silence of Peggy, for he had grown accustomed to the shy modesty of women who are Indian-bred. The women of Keewatin accept it as their fate that they are born to be subservient to men—to be their burden-bearers. But at the end of a few days, when her demeanour had shown no sign of change, he had become a little curious. In the early part of the year the white blood that was in her had been more manifest, and because of it she had been proud. When she had insisted that ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... divers instances of his conduct to prove that there was an intemperance in his blood, which often interfered with his caution; and although he had found means to render this heat sometimes subservient to his interest, yet, in all probability, Heaven mingled the ingredient in his constitution, on purpose to counteract his consummate craft, defeat the villany of his intention, and at least expose him to the justice of the law, and the contempt of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... contact with the open air. They respire by the oxygen which is dissolved from the air by the water, and form carbonic acid; and they all move about to produce the one great work of making the animal and vegetable kingdoms subservient ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... historical romance was an independent and arbitrary personage, who could compress time, resuscitate the dead, give mighty deeds to imaginary heroes, exchange substitutes for popular martyrs on the scaffold, and make the most stubborn facts subservient to her purpose. Indeed, her most favoured son boldly asserted her right to bend time and place to her purpose, and to make the interest and effectiveness of her work the paramount object. But critics have lashed her out of these erratic ways, and she is now become the meek ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... narrower zones are called the ambulacra, while the broader zones intervening between them and supporting the spines are called the interambulacra. Motion, however, is not the only function of these suckers; they are subservient also to respiration and circulation, taking in water, which is conveyed through them into various parts of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... stipend, and, depend upon it, when he arrives at manhood, he will think that if he can secure so much a month for the rest of his life he will be perfectly happy. How would you like him to be a subservient old numskull, like that old Robberts ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... the same sound as the corresponding line in every other stanza, but it ends with the very same word. I shall hardly care to defend this if my reader chooses to call it a whim; but I do say that a large degree of the peculiar musical effect of the poem—subservient to the thought, keeping it dimly chiming in the head until it breaks out clear and triumphant like a silver bell in the last—is owing to this use of the same column of words at the line-ends of every stanza. Let him who doubts ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... former occasion, arrangements were at once begun to bring about the election of another and more subservient Duma. It is significant that throughout Nicholas II and his Cabinet recognized the imperative necessity of maintaining the institution in form. They dared not abolish it, greatly as they would have liked to do so. ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... should find an obstruction in yours?" "Madam," said Joseph, "I can't see why her having no virtue should be a reason against my having any; or why, because I am a man, or because I am poor, my virtue must be subservient to her pleasures." "I am out of patience," cries the lady: "did ever mortal hear of a man's virtue? Did ever the greatest or the gravest men pretend to any of this kind? Will magistrates who punish lewdness, or parsons ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... State, had presided at the trial of the Reformers in 1896, and at the time of the crisis a year before had declared that "no honourable man could possibly accept the position of a judge so long as Law No. 1 remained in force." The judicature was now rendered subservient to the Executive, and the Uitlanders were thus deprived of their last constitutional safeguard against the injustice of the Boer and ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... the details of the convict department was marked by a spirit eminently opposed to the colonial welfare. With singular acuteness and perspicuity Lord Stanley described the former systems as subject to local influence and subservient to local ends. Every governor, he alleged, was under a strong bias in favor of expense, as the patron of a multitude of officials. He stated that the executive council were equally benefited by the wasteful expenditure, either in their ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... offered itself, on which I cannot help feeling rather sanguine. We have just heard of the death of General Mackay: Pitt is now writing to the King, to represent the propriety of making any arrangement, which this event may give rise to, subservient to the purpose of removing this difficulty, and to desire to see the King, in order to converse with him upon that point. The King will probably appoint to-morrow; but as Pitt may not be back till late, I thought it better ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... slippers, and thrust them on her passive feet. She lay back and closed her eyes. From the movements that she heard, she gathered that Walter was getting into his clothes. Once, as he struggled with an insufficiently subservient shirt, he laughed, from mere miserable nervousness. Anne, not recognising the utterance of his helpless humanity, put that laugh down to the account of the devil that had insulted her. Her ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... what an opportunity there was for the naturalist, had a single enthusiast arisen? All lands, all climes, and all their natural productions were subservient to the will of the Emperor. The orb of the earth was searched for the roe of eels or the fins of mullets to gratify Caesar. And the whole world might have been explored, and specimens deposited in one gigantic museum in the Eternal City, at the nod of a single individual. But the observer, the lover ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... interminable series of changes, both unexpected and mysterious;—but when the light of Scripture breaks upon the dark and troubled scene, it discloses the footsteps of Deity walking in the midst of the storm, regulating all human affairs, and rendering every occurrence subservient to his own omniscient purposes. With these discordant elements he is moulding future events, and preparing to exhibit to the admiration of the intelligent universe, "a new heaven and a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... which is moveable upon the surface of the land, tends to the sea, however slowly in its pace, we are now to examine, what comes of those materials deposited within the regions of the waves, still however within the reach of man, and still subservient more immediately to that soil on which plants grow, and ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... was only sixteen years of age. This story, so far as his premature learning goes, seems rather apocryphal; but certain it is, that when scarcely eighteen, he had become M.P. for the above-mentioned borough. The parliament in which he found himself, was one of those subservient and cringing assemblies which James I. was wont to summon to sit till they had voted the supplies, and then contemptuously to dismiss. It met in November 1621, and after passing a resolution in support of their privileges, which James tore out of the Journals with his own hand, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... Lord Ashbridge both tragic and ludicrous. Completely subservient himself to the conventions which he so much enjoyed, it was like the defiance of a child to say such things. He only just checked himself ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... must similarly profit by its labors. In other words, when the vegetable cell dissolves its own starch, some must needs pass out by osmose into the surrounding animal cell; nor must it be forgotten that the latter possesses abundance of amylolytic ferment. Then, too, the Philozoon is subservient in another way to the nutritive function of the animal, for after its short life it dies and is digested; the yellow bodies supposed by various observers to be developing cells being nothing but dead alg in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... Faria, and have been imprisoned as you know in this Chateau d'If since the year 1811; previously to which I had been confined for three years in the fortress of Fenestrelle. In the year 1811 I was transferred to Piedmont in France. It was at this period I learned that the destiny which seemed subservient to every wish formed by Napoleon, had bestowed on him a son, named king of Rome even in his cradle. I was very far then from expecting the change you have just informed me of; namely, that four years afterwards, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in his favor. If the lawyer wants to fight the judge, he has a great deal at stake; he may awaken so strong a prejudice that the judge knowing the rules of the game better than he does, may beat him on a technicality. On the other hand it is a mistake for the lawyer to be subservient and too cringing. Being a bully, the judge is apt to take advantage of his position. The best policy is to appeal to his human instincts as a man. He may be decent in spite of critics of the courts to the contrary notwithstanding. If he is kindly ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... particular sphere and style of living. And the dwellings, conveniences, and customs of life, remain very nearly the same, from generation to generation. This secures the preparation of all classes for their particular station, and makes the lower orders more dependent, and more subservient ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... In older and more mature civilizations—in classical antiquity, in old Japan, in France—modesty, while still a very real influence, becomes a much less predominant and all-pervading influence. In life it becomes subservient to human use, in art to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... others assist him in the chase, in exterminating wilder sorts, or banishing them from the haunts of civilization. Many, indeed, are injurious to him; but most of them, in some shape or other, he turns to his service. Of these there is none he has made more subservient to his purposes than the common ox, of which there is scarcely a part that he has not been able to convert into some useful purpose. Of the horns he makes drinking-vessels, knife-handles, combs, and boxes; and when they are softened by means ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... his to know; His charity still found some germ, some spark Of light in natures that seemed wholly dark. He read men's souls; the lowly and the high Moved on the self-same level in his eye. Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offence he spake the word he meant— His word no trick of tact or courtly art, But the white flowering of the noble heart. Careless he was of much the world counts gain, Careless of self, too simple to be vain, Yet ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... must have looked on Syracuse, and felt that with its fall all the known powers of the earth would fall beneath them. They must have felt also that Athens, if repulsed there, must pause for ever in her career of conquest, and sink from an imperial republic into a ruined and subservient community. ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... worthy of it, than her whole life became as fondly devoted to her husband as if he had been the object of her first romance and her earliest affections. If even her child was so secondary to her husband; if the fate of that child was but regarded by her as one to be rendered subservient to the grand destinies of Trevanion,—still it was impossible to recognize the error of that conjugal devotion without admiring the wife, though one might condemn the mother. Turning from these meditations, I felt a lover's thrill of selfish joy, amidst all the mournful sorrow comprised ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... circumstances alone might possibly have induced the captain-general to take the parole of one who had been detained as a spy; but his subsequent conduct leaves a strong suspicion that he proposed to make the portion of liberty, thus granted as a favour, subservient to evading the expected order from France, should such a measure be then desirable. At length the order arrived, and three years and a half of detention had not produced any very sensible effect on his prisoner; the execution of it was therefore suspended, until another reference should be made to ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... temporary asylum, convinced that he to whose guidance he had committed himself and his beloved family, could, by the outstretched arm of his power, not only overcome every obstacle which to human ignorance might seem insurmountable; but by his concurrent wisdom render difficulties themselves subservient to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... occasions? Is it an adequate cause for the gloom of the merchant, the discontent of the artisan, the foreboding sighs of the mother, the ghastly dreams which haunt the avaricious, the conscious debasement of the subservient, the humiliation of the proud? These are severe sufferings; are they authorised by the nature of poverty? Certainly not, if poverty induced no adventitious evils, involved nothing but a deficiency of the comforts of life, leaving life itself unimpaired. "The life is more than ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... "he will find his master in me. I have never failed to make other men subservient to my schemes, and the King of Prussia shall grace my triumph with the rest. He is the vassal of Austria, and I will be the one to force him back to his allegiance. It is scandalous that this petty king should have been suffered ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... then from what things you have been separated by reason. You have been separated from wild beasts; you have been separated from domestic animals ([Greek: probaton]). Further, you are a citizen of the world, and a part of it, not one of the subservient (serving), but one of the principal (ruling) parts, for you are capable of comprehending the divine administration and of considering the connection of things. What then does the character of a citizen promise (profess)? To hold nothing as profitable to himself; to ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... my plans before the Admiralty. They must listen to me; they can scarcely refuse to consider my plans. They won't do it for love; they never do love a man who has got brains in his head, unless those brains are subservient ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... power. New France also grew stronger. The steady hostility of the rivals never wavered. There was, indeed, little open warfare as long as the two Crowns remained at peace. From 1660 to 1688, the Stuart rulers of England remained subservient to their cousin the Bourbon King of France and at one with him in religious faith. But after the fall of the Stuarts France bitterly denounced the new King, William of Orange, as both a heretic and a usurper, and attacked the English in America with a savage fury ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... for their lives upon their pens; but I seek to know, and venture, though with shame, to ask from one whose word I must respect: whether, by periodical or other writing, I could please myself with writing, and make it subservient to living. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... Gascoigne was satisfied," interrupted Mrs. Grey, not quite liking the flippant manner, the showy style of dress, and the air, at once subservient and forward; in truth, something which, despite her prettiness, stamped the governess as underbred, exactly what Aunt Henrietta had said—"not ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... sword—tempting them to emulate him also in preserving internal peace and a certain reign of justice throughout the country. There was no lack of barons in the Court of James. Angus and Home and Huntly, who had pursued his father to the death and placed himself upon the throne, were not turned into subservient courtiers by his gallantry and charm: but neither was there any one of these proud lords in the ascendant, or any withdrawn and sullen in his castle, taking no share in what was going on. The machinery of the State worked as it ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... Cuba? Infinitely more wretched! English philanthropy cuts a very suspicious figure, when, not content with neglecting the welfare of those whom she undertakes to protect, she thus attempts to made them subservient to national aggrandizement. The fate of the rescued slaves is scarcely better than that of the crews of the captured slave-vessels. The latter are landed on the nearest point of the African coast, where death by starvation or fever almost ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... What views were taken in the imperial parliament has been seen. During the debates there, Lord Durham applied himself to the consideration of questions connected with the management of the crown-lands within his dominion. He formed a design for making these lands more subservient to the purpose of emigration than they had hitherto been. A commission of inquiry into the disposal of the crown-lands to that end was issued by him, and he directed similar investigations to be instituted in the other colonies subject to his control. Subsequently his lordship commenced a progress ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... either raises the intellectual temperature or enriches the blood of the world! The fact is that the highly-cultivated man tends to find himself mentally hampered by his cultivation, to wade in a sea of glue, as Tennyson said. It is partly that highly-cultivated minds grow to be subservient to authority, and to contemn experiment as rash and obstreperous. Partly also the least movement of the mind dislodges such a pile of precedents and phrases and aphorisms, stored and amassed by diligent ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Prince in every measure, which appeared to have such a tendency; but he asserted that he never had resorted to means which the laws or constitution of the Provinces did not warrant. His arguments were unanswerable; but Prince Maurice was determined on his ruin; and the Commissioners were wholly subservient to the prince's views: they accordingly passed unanimously a sentence of ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... don't say it has been a general admission, but that admission has been made by one proprietor at least?-I say that it ought to be a general admission. Another thing I would mention is, that the people with their present beliefs are unfortunately too subservient to come forward and frankly give full evidence upon the matter, and I would give an instance of the sub-serviency and illiterateness that prevails among them. I received the other day a report from two men, in which they use such language as 'resources of science and art,' and ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... complaint, or appeal, distinct and living imagery, happy apposite allusion, and sublime metaphor; but in certain elegant verbal felicities and general charm of style, produced by the force and sweetness of the Latin Language, subservient to the fine ear, the lively and exquisite taste of Horace. These are the graces which we find so apt to evaporate in Translation, while genuine POETIC MATTER, as defined above, is capable of being transfused ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... class of girls in the Sunday School, and she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force of nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar spoke to Mr. Houghton—nay, the very way she addressed herself to him—"What do you think, Mr. Houghton?"—then there seemed to be assumed an immediacy of correspondence between the two, and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... to another Company. In the present one the style is pure. Do you make proof, what, in each character,[21] my ability can effect. If I have never greedily set a {high} price upon my skill, and have come to the conclusion that this is my greatest gain, as far as possible to be subservient to your convenience, establish in me a precedent, that the young may be anxious rather to please ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... departments which he successively occupied he was regarded, as among the most learned, able, and effective teachers and preachers of the country. He was competent to every service required of him, and gave to every position dignity and honor. He was distinctively Christian in them all, and made them subservient to no school or party, but to the gospel through which ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... any peculiar use of vegetation or growth, whereas in the other instances of vegetable porous bodies, there is an anima or forma informans, that does contrive all the Structures and Mechanismes of the constituting body, to make them subservient and usefull to the great Work or Function they are to perform. And so I ghess the pores in Wood, and other vegetables, in bones, and other Animal substances, to be as so many channels, provided by the Great and Alwise Creator, for the conveyance ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... read Philip and Margaret, Egmont or Berlaymont, Alva or Viglius, but he had no plummet to sound the depths of a mind like that of William the Silent. His genius was adroit and subtle, but not profound. He aimed at power by making the powerful subservient, but he had not the intellect which deals in the daylight face to face with great events and great minds. In the violent political struggle of which his administration consisted, he was foiled and thrown by the superior strength of a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... been coming—" the old woman answered him. She was, he noticed, more subservient than she had been on the former occasion. She obviously turned to him now with her greedy old eyes as the one who was likely soon ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... you might imagine," was the reply. "We employ scenery, costumes and actors, but not in ways theatrical, for all our work is subservient to the camera's eye and the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... vessels to be seen among them, but they were presents to their chiefs or ambassadors; the Germans regard them in no better light than common earthenware. It is, however, observable that near the borders of the empire the inhabitants set a value upon gold and silver, finding them subservient to the purposes of commerce. The Roman coin is known in those parts, and some of our specie is not only current, but in request. In places more remote the simplicity of ancient manners still prevails: ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... laws amongst the principal tribes of Franks, a code essentially barbarian, and called the Salic law, or law of the Salians (Fig. 7). Such, however, was the spirit of inequality among the German races, that it became an established principle for justice to be subservient to the rank of individuals. The more powerful a man was, the more he was protected by the law; the lower his rank, the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... growing up strong within him; but the injustice and robbery he saw perpetrated on every side of him, the wholesale theft of Poland by Russian officials—by which I mean the Tsar, his ministers, his generals, soldiers, subservient judges and police—set his blood aboil; and I suppose that, like other boys of his years, as well as many grown men, he fancied his talk would do something to put the world and society right. But in no picture of his life at this time that I have come across is there ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... people. Lord Runnymede had given Mr. Panton a gold beaker, of curious workmanship, on which his lordship's arms were engraved; of this present the citizen was very fond and vain: observing this, Dr. Percy was determined to render it subservient to his purposes. He knew they would be right glad of any opportunity of producing and talking of this beaker to all their acquaintance. He therefore advised—no, not advised; for with some minds if you advise you are not listened to, if you command you are obeyed—he commanded that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... me, that helped me to save my reason through all those early days. God knows how it may help you—for I can't see. I loved your father with a passion nothing, no disaster could destroy. I loved him so that I could crush every other feeling down, subservient to my passion. Go you, child, and find such a love. Go you and find a love so strong that no disaster can kill it. And maybe life may still have some compensations for you, maybe it will lift the curse from your suffering shoulders. It—it is the only thing in the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... robe in the very hour in which he was called before the Judge of all. America stood forth once more the same she was when the old man was a boy. The work which he had watched for years and generations, the work of evil to which all the art of man and the power of the State had been subservient, that work which he sought to finish with the fatal decree of his august bench, one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... shock of recognition, joy, amaze, consternation, and shame, of which all were subservient to the joy. She cried over Joan and murmured over her. Then, suddenly alive to the curious crowd, she put Joan ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... beauty perfect and complete. Their statues only crumble at their feet, Without the master touch of Faith and Pain. And now his face, that perfect seemed before, Chiseled by these two careful artists, wore A look exalted, which the spirit gives When soul has conquered, and the body lives Subservient to ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... has resolved to outdo; for he is well aware to what dangers Tuscany will be exposed after his departure, and since we have made your affairs our primary consideration, he has also resolved to make his own subservient to yours. I come, therefore, to tender his services, with seven thousand cavalry and two thousand infantry, ready at once to march against the enemy, wherever he may be. And I beg of you, so do my lords at Florence and the count, that as his forces exceed the ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... are no institutions which you should prize more highly than your own soul.—Now, however, man learns to know himself: he finds himself miserable, despises himself, and is pleased to find something worthy of respect outside himself. Therefore he gets rid of himself, so to speak, makes himself subservient to a cause, does his duty strictly, and atones for his existence. He knows that he does not work for himself alone; he wishes to help those who are daring enough to exist on account of themselves, like Socrates. The majority of men are as it were suspended in the air like ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... the amount expended in compensation in all its forms, the yearly bill of the state for the care of its sick, injured and aged, amounts to nearly $170,000,000. No wonder that between the care of a grandmotherly state, and the attentions of a subservient womankind, the male population increases. I sometimes question whether there is not something of the hot-house culture about this male crop. Certainly consumption and other diseases are very wide-spread. A very detailed and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... and reflection, but more accomplished also for action in the affairs of life, and especially for public action. Those whose memories we now honor were learned men; but their learning was kept in its proper place, and made subservient to the uses and objects of life. They were scholars, not common nor superficial; but their scholarship was so in keeping with their character, so blended and inwrought, that careless observers, or ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... who desire to excel other animals,[1] to strive, to the utmost of their power,[2] not to pass through life in obscurity, [3] like the beasts of the field,[4] which nature has formed groveling[5] and subservient to appetite. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... exertions increase also. Arms and legs, fingers and toes, muscles and nerves and busy brain are all at work to get something which he desires. He is a mechanic fashioning his little world to his own uses. He is a despot who insists on his divine right to rule the subservient creatures around him. He is an inventor devising ways and means to secure all the ends which he has the wit to see. That these great works on which he has set his heart end in self is obvious enough, but we forgive him. Altruism will ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... in fresco, steals a hair-brush, Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, Makes a strange art of an art familiar, Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets; He who blows thro' bronze may breathe thro' silver, Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess; He who writes may write ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... no argument of weakness that she was so frequently deceived. If she had judged truly of her brother, she would have judged not only without example, but in opposition to the general experience of mankind. But she was not to be forever deceived. Her tenderness was subservient to justice. And when his vices had led him from the gaming-table to the highway, when seized at length by the ministers of law, when convicted and sentenced to transportation, her intercession was solicited, when all the ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... that each of the administrative authorities, except the Bureau of Public Roads, is to some extent subservient to a higher authority, and the Bureau of Public Roads is supervised by the United States Congress. Considerable diplomacy is required on the part of any administrative authority if his contact with other officials is to be without friction. This is especially true ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg

... animals. They particularly drive them away in wet weather; for, if one drop of water from a dog should fall on their raiment, their devotion would be interrupted and useless. They who are fond of hunting make their religion subservient to their pleasure, and say that greyhounds and setters are excepted from the general rule, because when not running these dogs are tied up where nothing unclean can reach them, and they are never suffered to eat any thing unclean. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... denomination of power more offensive, would be submitted to rather than see both the consuls patricians, or rather than not obey and rule in turn; but the one half, located in perpetual power, thinks the commons born for no other purpose than to be subservient." The tribunes are not remiss in encouraging the disturbances; but amid the excited state of all scarcely any are distinguished as leaders. When they had several times gone down to the Campus Martius to no purpose, and when many ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... correspondents may use this intelligence for their own advantage. By these means, and the assistance of flattery and assurance, they often insinuate themselves into the acquaintance of strangers, and, by consulting their dispositions, become necessary and subservient to their prevailing passions. By their connection with apothecaries and nurses, they are informed of all the private occurrences in each family, and therefore enabled to gratify the rancour of malice, amuse ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... qualities on which it ought to rely. Magnanimity, courage, and the love of mankind, are sacrificed to avarice and vanity; or suppressed under a sense of dependence. The individual considers his community so far only as it can be rendered subservient to his personal advancement or profit: he states himself in competition with his fellow creatures; and, urged by the passions of emulation, of fear and jealousy, of envy and malice, he follows the maxims of an animal destined to preserve his separate ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... circumstances, I think it would have been really false pride and apparently mischievous affectation to have declined this mark of His Royal Highness's confidence and favor. I will not disguise that, at this peculiar crisis, I am greatly gratified at this event. Had it been the result of a mean and subservient devotion to the Prince's every wish and object, I could neither have respected the gift, the giver, nor myself; but when I consider how recently it was my misfortune to find myself compelled by a sense of duty, stronger than my attachment to him, wholly to risk the situation I held in his confidence ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... blows, they acquitted themselves like men conscious that they were the pioneers of History, that their footsteps were in the van of the onward march, that they were moulding the future, and making the world subservient to civilisation. They were Crusaders, coming the other way, and robbing the Moslem of their resources. The shipbuilding of the Moors depended on the teak forests of Calicut; the Eastern trade enriched both Turk and Mameluke, and ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... a little homily on Obedience, and said how happy a thing it was, when zeal, a virtue none too common in these degenerate days, was found tempered by humility, and subservient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends[1107].' Often have I reflected on this since; and, instead of being angry at many of those who have written against me, have smiled to think that they were unintentionally subservient to my fame, by using a battledoor to make me ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... particular point amounts to a dangerous and very unnecessary concession. Were it meant merely to affirm that God could so unite a thinking spiritual being with a material organism, as to make the two mutually dependent and subservient, this is no more than is admitted by all the advocates of Immaterialism, and it is actually exhibited in the constitution of human nature. But if it were meant to admit that the power of "thinking" and "willing" might be superadded as a property or quality to matter itself, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... Settlement of the three zones.] Both the companies founded in 1606 were short-lived. In 1620 the Plymouth Company got a new charter, which made it independent of the London Company. In 1624 the king, James I., quarreled with the London Company, brought suit against it in court, and obtained from the subservient judges a decree annulling its charter. In 1635 the reorganized Plymouth Company surrendered its charter to Charles I. in pursuance of a bargain which need not here concern us.[1] But the creation of these short-lived companies left an abiding impression upon the map of North America and upon ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... affection for the country. The king generally bestowed the governorships of the American colonies upon needy noblemen, or hangers-on at court, or disbanded officers. The people knew that such persons would be very likely to make the good of the country subservient to the wishes of the king. The Legislature, therefore, endeavored to keep as much power as possible in their own hands, by refusing to settle a fixed salary upon the governors. It was thought better to pay ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dressed me in it, as you sew gold lace upon the clothing of your lackeys, through vanity. And I endured all this; I made myself insignificant and humble; buffeted upon one cheek, I offered the other. I must live—I must have food. And you, Blanche, how often, to make me subservient to your will, have you said to me: 'You will do thus-and-so, if you desire to remain at Courtornieu?' And I obeyed—I was forced to obey, since I knew not where to go. Ah! you have abused me in every way; but now ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... says this writer, "Fidelio is governed throughout by one purpose, to which everything is rendered subservient. Determination to discover and liberate her husband is the mainspring not only of all her actions, and the theme of all her soliloquies, but, even when others likely to annunce her design in any way are acting or speaking, we read in the anxious gaze, the breathless ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... the general and constant influence of the government is beneficial, although the individuals who conduct it are frequently unskilful and sometimes contemptible. There is, indeed, a secret tendency in democratic institutions to render the exertions of the citizens subservient to the prosperity of the community, notwithstanding their private vices and mistakes; while in aristocratic institutions there is a secret propensity, which, notwithstanding the talents and the virtues of those who conduct the government, leads them to contribute ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... obedience to any law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy nature, which could not act otherwise. As son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he moves with firm yet light steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of liberty, of national independence and of national illumination. When future critics shall weigh out ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... his shoulders. He did not quite like this new disposition of Hadley's to look after his own interests, but at present did not think it politic to say much about it. Though Tom Hadley had generally been subservient to him, he knew very well that if any difficulty should arise between them Tom would be a formidable antagonist. Fortunately for him, Hadley did not know his own power, or he would not have remained in subjection to a man whom he could have overcome had he been so disposed. He did ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... a brilliant name by the purification of petroleum, adapting it for use in private houses, and by the manufacture of paraffin and paraffin-oil. Few men have made the art to which they devoted themselves more subservient to the use of man than he whom Livingstone first knew as Graham's assistant, and afterward used to call playfully "Sir Paraffin." "I have been obliged to knight him," he used to say, "to distinguish him from the other Young." ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... there may be good use of computation by lines and angles in optics; not that the mind judgeth of distance immediately by them, but because it judgeth by somewhat which is connected with them, and to the determination whereof they may be subservient. Thus the mind judging of the distance of an object by the confusedness of its appearance, and this confusedness being greater or lesser to the naked eye, according as the object is seen by rays more or less diverging, it follows ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... images are made to the gods; around it divine worship is conducted, of which music is a subservient ornament; by means of it pictures are given to lovers of their beloved; by it the beauties are preserved which time, and nature the mother, render fitful; by it we retain the images of famous men. And if thou wert to say that by ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... master, beloved by all who ever knew him, and who was never accused, even by his enemies, of having tried to seduce an innocent young girl, or having disturbed the peace of conjugal bliss. He will behold his charity, which was universal and unbounded; a pride which never stooped to be subservient of those in power; a firm political faith; a contempt of public dignities, so far as they reflected glory upon himself; and such a spirit of humility that he was ever ready to blame himself and follow the advice of those whom he deemed to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... Dieu (1616), while it expounds the highest reaches of mystical devotion, yet presents religion as accessible to every child of God. With his tender and ardent devotion, something of a poet's sentiment for nature was united; but mysticism and poetry were both subservient to his aim of regulating the conduct of the heart; he desired to show how one may remain in the world, and yet not be of the world; by personal converse and by his spiritual letters he became the director of courtiers and of ladies. The motto of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... losses and banishment, but whose interests, together with these most valuable possessions, were lost to Great Britain by the subserviency of the British Commissioner, Oswald (a London and American merchant), who looked to his own interests, and was the subservient tool and echo of Dr. Franklin. The above territories were a part of the domain of Congress, irrespective of any State, and therefore at the absolute disposal of Congress. Yet, with these immense accessions of resources, the American ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... College and Camlachie to attend to the type-foundry, and petitioned the Senate to build him a founding-house in the College grounds, basing his claim on their custom of giving accommodation to the arts subservient to learning, on his own services to the University in the matter of the Greek types before mentioned, and on his having undertaken, in spite of the discouraging results of that speculation, to cast a large and elegant Hebrew type for the University press. He estimated ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... State. The State is a perfect community; and the good of the State is of more consequence than the temporal well-being of any individual citizen. The temporal good of the individual, then, is matter of law, in so far as it is subservient to the good of the State. We have, then, to hold that a law is given to the members of a perfect community for the good of the whole. Not every precept, therefore, is a law: nor every superior a lawgiver: for it ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... of viewing Nature in the universality of her relations is no doubt adverse to the rapidity desirable in an itinerary; but it appears to me that, in a narrative, the principal end of which is the progress of physical knowledge, every other consideration ought to be subservient to those of instruction and utility. By isolating facts, travellers, whose labours are in every other respect valuable, have given currency to many false ideas of the pretended contrasts which Nature offers in Africa, in New Holland, and on the ridge of the Cordilleras. The great ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... meantime she admired in the mirror her freshly-budded breasts, her supple waist, her arms, a trifle slender, round and tapering, and her smooth, beautiful knees; and, seeing all this subservient to the fine art of comedy, she became animated and exalted; a slight flush, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the opposition against him. And so Pericles, at that time more than at any other, let loose the reins to the people, and made his policy subservient to their pleasure, contriving continually to have some great public show or solemnity, some banquet, or some procession or other in the town to please them, coaxing his countrymen like children, with such ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... St. Mark's has been painted hundreds of times, but no one has ever given such a good idea of it as Gentile—of its stateliness and beauty, of its wealth of detail; and he does so without detracting from the general effect, for St. Mark's, though the keynote of the whole composition, is kept subservient, and is part of the stage on which the scene is enacted. The procession passes along, carrying the relics, attended by the waxlights and the banners. Behind the reliquary kneels the merchant, Jacopo Salo, petitioning for the recovery of his wounded ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... and the boring of cannon, are the every-day business of one of these manufactories, all of which I saw going on at the same instant, without bustle or effort. Iron, the most universal, the most durable, and most economical of the metals, is thus made subservient to the wants of man, at a time when his improvidence in the use of timber has rendered some substitute necessary. New applications are daily made of it, and a new face is, by its means, promised to society. Used as sleepers and bond-pieces in ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... disposition in himself, but from the instigations of his son. For in him paternal affection had too clearly become a mania; his son was all in all to him; he did his bidding, committed every crime at his pleasure, dealt out punishment at his command, was subservient to him in all things; the minister of a tyrant's caprice, and that tyrant his son. The young man left him in possession of the name and semblance of rule; so much he conceded to his years: but in all essentials he was ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... citing the number three Vandin means to say that as it is Acts that produce the three kinds of born beings, etc., so Acts are supreme and that everything else be it intellect alone, or intellect and consciousness together is subservient to Acts. ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... sentiment left alive in them seems to be fear; all else of human passion appears to be dead. Why, Loskiel, the very power of will has deserted them; they are not civil to us, but obsequious; not obliging but subservient. They yield with apathy and very quietly what you ask, and what they apparently suppose is impossible for them to retain. If you treat them kindly they receive it coldly, not gratefully, but as though you were compensating ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers



Words linked to "Subservient" :   servile, subordinate, subserve, subservience, helpful



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