Word: autocrats
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Adenauer, a staunch democrat in politics, is an autocrat of the breakfast and the dinner table. His son says: "Father leaves democracy at the door. He rules our family with a strong hand. If a rose tree must be transplanted, he decides when and where. If my sister wants to bake a cake, he must say yes or no. This is not unusual in Germany, you know; this is how it should...
Many middle-of-the-road Belgians, unimpressed by Le Peuple's poisonous campaign, nevertheless suspected that Leopold, a man of considerable intelligence and ability, was a natural autocrat who would never be comfortable within the limits of a constitutional monarchy. In 1940, two weeks after the Germans invaded Belgium, he had refused the pleas of the Belgian cabinet to leave the country and form a government-in-exile in London. In 1944, the Nazis took him to Germany; he was liberated there by the Allies and went to Switzerland. The Brussels Parliament installed his brother Charles as Regent...
...years, Holt never altered his methods, nor changed his ways. He was always the amiable autocrat who collected antiques, breakfasted in his four-poster bed (George Washington had slept there), was forever popping into classrooms to see how things were going. Last week, as he said farewell, he delivered an autocrat's final warning: "If the Rollins faculty reverts to the lecture and recitation system with their inevitable grades and examinations, all of which tend to make the professor a detective and the student a bluffer, then you may hear the creaking sound as I turn over...
...manners (sword-wearing and smoking in front of ladies were banned), ordered all the old ladies to sit in the back rows and all the shyest maidens to dance. The plump, dandiacal "King of Bath," whose crown was an enormous cream-colored beaver hat, ruled society like an autocrat.* Graceful new Georgian buildings transformed Bath into the handsomest of English towns...
...years, Bostonians had come to boast of their Russian-born conductor as their grandparents once boasted of Emerson or Dr. Holmes. He was a welcome autocrat at any Brahmin table, and when his concerts were over, Boston dowagers liked to flock backstage to kiss and be kissed on both cheeks...