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Use behest in a sentence

Definition of behest:

  • (noun) an authoritative command or request

Sentence Examples:

Jove's behest we cannot fetter, Fate's decrees are always his.

On high behests his angels to and fro Passed frequent.

He must needs bestir himself in obedience to the high behest.

He would pursue the fleeting pig at the behest of a drover.

"I came at your behest, actuated entirely by kindness of heart," said Satan.

We degrade and finally vitiate our conscience if we do not respect its behests.

He must surrender himself unconditionally to the costumier, and obey implicitly his behests.

The poor people gathered together their impedimenta and prepared to obey the officer's behest.

He requires constant writing to, and woe betide me if I do not obey his behests.

To speak without circumlocution, look at the slaves doing the behests of their masters.

It is the representative of his forefathers, whose behests he holds in the greatest respect.

Here is a chance for capital to tyrannize at the behest of organized iniquity and lawlessness.

And he will be wroth against us if we delay yet longer to do his behest.

This behest admonishes us that we beware that we anger not father nor mother wittingly.

He had avowedly accepted the behests of the sword, and did not repudiate his master.

In this behest is forbidden us all sin of the flesh, that one calls generally lechery.

Are we to dismember our country at the behest of a stranger, of a foreigner, and a Roman?

My interests pre-eminently consist in being obeyed by those whom I pay for doing my behests.

The pilgrim snarled, seemingly exasperated by the reluctance of the instrument to obey the master's behest.

For this too had Serbian nationality been split into three separate bodies at the behest of Teutonic diplomatists.

I would have pledged my soul's welfare to execute any phantasmagoric behest she had chosen to ordain.

The servants flew hither and thither carrying orders; the scullions obeyed the behests of their commander.

Experience had taught them to carry out the behests of their German masters with the utmost celerity.

The clouds, the winds, the ocean obeyed his behest, and fell upon the voyager in a furious tempest.

At her behest all those acquired habits fell away from our punctilious diplomat like so many borrowed plumes.

Seemingly forgotten, too, are the warring Ashikaga, at whose behest the noble Zen arts of Japan were shaped.

The other had figured her as a portly commanding dame, to whose behests all were to bow obsequiously.

To obtain an office the politician had to crawl to it on his marrow bones and slavishly obey its behests.

"I require," rejoined Faustus, "that you should sedulously attend upon me, answer my inquiries, and fulfil my behests."

Sir John was a man of overbearing temper, impatient of opposition to his behests, and implacable in his hatred.

At her behest apparitions, in the disguise of charming nymphs, shepherds and shepherdesses, bind him with garlands of flowers.

The behests of humanity, which so far have been but pious wishes, will be converted into regulative principles in international dealings.

For a couple of centuries, great gates have been swinging throughout the East at the behest of frigates and armed merchantmen.

"Does he not feel it as a wound to bow to the tyrant's behest, and dismiss his noblest and ablest servant?"

And that accounts now, although it did not then, for the astounding circumstance that he punished me at her behest.

He went on doing the behests of his employer, and in that way endearing himself to the great adversary of souls.

Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries; and Helen is given to him for a bride.

Archibald, however, was a Scotchman, and promised himself no exuberant pleasure in seeing his countrywoman undergo "the terrible behests of law."

If it had risen straight out of the ground at the behest of his fancy he could not have been more painfully disconcerted.

He arrived all breathless, at the queen's behest, and in the meantime the old crone had disappeared as mysteriously as she came.

He complied with this at once supplicating and imperious behest, and related in a despairing voice the events which had wrought his woe.

Napier had told the grenadier company to defend the opening to the last man, and nobly did they answer his behest.

The bondmen, too, who, even in matters of religion, were compelled to obey the behests of their masters, embraced the religion of their lords.

The two took turns at batting, laying down bunts, cracking out liners and arching long flies at the behest of the manager.

The saddened bird, forced to build its shelter at the behest of nature in the multiplication of the species repeats its anxious labors.

The behests of fashion often make sad inroads upon it, but the seductive siren lures us on until we can no longer follow.

Obeying its behest, he turned abruptly from the street where he was seeking the impresario to whom his master had sent him.

Members of Scottish clans to-day, look with more reverence upon their chief, than upon the Queen: they obey his behests sooner than parliamentary laws.

Exclaimed Geraldine, enthusiastically, and he rose at once like a gallant knight who has no other wish than to do the behest of his lady-love.

In setting ourselves against this accursed succession, we follow the solemn behests of the Great Declaration, so constantly championed by the martyred President.

It appeared also from the confessions that if the servants of Satan refused to do his behests, they are beaten and otherwise maltreated by him.

If noblesse oblige means anything at all in these days, it demands of those who live up to its behests that they be self-contained, not hysterical.

He was not running, but Newt, being an undersized individual, had no other means of keeping up with him unless he obeyed the sardonic behest.

The terrified maidens are forced to submit to his behests, and to hold the heads of the sufferers, while he magnetizes them back to life.

Flasks had to be replenished, farewell drinks taken, wives and families parted from, the last behests made, of those going upon an errand of death.

That was an easy escape for a youth whose only taskmasters were the Muses and who worked or played at the behest of his own mood.

Scarcely a man there but had felt at some time the weight of his brutal fist and the indignity of helpless obedience to his tyrannous behest.

It was no lifeless brick and mortar which those compelling orbs transfixed, and which the moving but voiceless lips ordered to perform their behests.

At times the immortal fire he buried in his unfruitful soil would leap out at my behest; but for the most part Strode was an uncultured yokel.

A smooth face, thickly strewn underneath with arteries and veins, in which the scarlet fluid comes and goes at the slightest behest of the passionate will.

And if the framers do not owe allegiance to the Treaty they drafted, why should those who only accepted it under duress bow to its behests?

It is high time the real masters awoke from their fatal lethargy, and forced their insubordinate hinds to stand once more, cap in hand, at their behest.

He bawled his scraps of song that the world might know that he was a lover riding far and hard at the behest of his lady.

Although he had lied volubly to her for his own ends, he stood in awe of her commanding personality, and never dreamed of disregarding her high behests.

Coerced themselves, the authorities applied corresponding coercion to the people, even at the behest of foreigners, "truckling" to whom was equally disgraceful to both the Chinese parties.

It is one of the consequences of civilization that we are denied the privilege of unmasking at the behest of the elemental emotions; that we are constrained to bleed decorously.

To afford those myriads a treacherous food, the behest of nature had been too much disregarded; lands destined for pasture had been turned into potato and oat plots.

Is not your sympathy, humane reader, all with the linnet and its gallant rescuer, although the hawk was but carrying out the behests of its Maker!

I obeyed your behest; and in spite of my disinclination to a second marriage, I bent my will before the necessities of diplomacy, and the command of my sovereign.

Arthur Fletcher by this time would have asked her to bring him his slippers, taking infinite pride in having his little behests obeyed by so sweet a servitor.

Accordingly, though with much misgiving, I did his ticklish behest in Fleet Street, where, despite my past, I was already making a certain lowly footing for myself.

In this exclamation, he unconsciously announced those great principles by which his own conduct through life was regulated, and to whose slightest behest he ever yielded an unhesitating obedience.

Italy wished to deliver herself from the Austrian yoke, and after long struggles the liberty that Napoleon had promised her consisted but in entire submission to his own behests.

I did her behests manfully, as a general rule; and if her sway became intolerable, I complained and bewailed, on which she relented, being as easily moved to pity as to wrath.

He had hastily to consider, that he was banished beyond appeal, with the whole torture of banishment to an adorer of the Countess Livia, or else the mad behest must be obeyed.

The others had obeyed her behest and fled from the house, leaving her to battle single-handed with the enraged animal, while they filled the air with cries for help.

The old man lay at his feet, ready to obey his behests; but, to all appearance, rigid and motionless as the dead, whom his blanched hues and shrivelled form resembled.

Craig, and finally sallied forth to execute that gentleman's behest upon an upper Fifth Avenue squatter who had declined to vacate property recently dedicated to blasting, the Irish, and general excavation.

They are mere puppets, even the higher commanders, working in a vile system that makes monkeys of them at the behest of their ambitious and conscienceless rulers, or the one ruler, Kaiser Bill.

The Convention affords the world a melancholy spectacle, voting, at the popular behest, laws so absurd that it is obliged to annul them as soon as the rioters have quitted the hall.

The colonel, however, did not wait to see his behest carried out, and a very gentlemanly German subaltern quietly urged his men to get back to their train and leave us alone.

And, secondly, it explains how art can fulfil the behests of our changing and discursive interest in things while satisfying the imperious unchanging demands of the contemplated preference for beautiful aspects.

When, however, the excitement subsided, and Antony himself was charged with investigating the acts of Caesar's administration and carrying out all the latter's behests, he no longer kept within bounds.

She might have been provided for otherwise, but Gwen's beauty and positiveness, and her visible taking for granted that her every behest would be obeyed, had swept all obstacles away.

The sordid story is mainly important to our history as an example of the completeness of the influence of the papal autocracy, and of the submissiveness of clergy and laity to its behests.

And in this heaven of gardening land gardeners galore flit to and fro, ever doing their master's behest, and manure and water, and time and money may be considerations but are not anxieties.

They pass a train of mourners bearing a coffin to the grave, but at the behest of the bewildering bridegroom the funeral party leaves the body and joins in the mad ride.

Henry Clay, who had believed "slavery to be a wrong, a grievous wrong, which no contingency can make right," now, at the behest of slaveholders, threw his great influence against the cause of humanity.

By his means the sturdy oak, which flung abroad its stalwart arms and waved its leafy honors defiant in the forest, was made to bow to the behest of the simple aborigines.

This extraordinary demand was a bad blot upon the measure, and it is difficult to understand how it ever was permitted to be inserted at the behest of some unscrupulous and sordid scheme of exploitation.

The wild beast acknowledged its master and proceeded to obey his orders in a surly fashion, even as Caliban might have reluctantly carried out some behest of the superior intelligence that had enslaved him.

Harold and his companion stand in the royal presence, both to betoken their reverence for their monarch, and their readiness to depart on the instant in the performance of the royal behests.

Her health has been sacrificed, and in countless instances her life has paid the penalty; while posterity has been dwarfed, maimed, and enervated, and in body, mind, and soul deformed at its behests.

Besides, the pressure from without must have been very strong to have produced so immediate a compliance with a behest not uttered in a very peremptory manner, or, generally speaking, to a very obedient child.

The ordinances of the government obtain gradually the same efficacy in private concerns as in matters of state, and are no longer liable to be overridden by the behests of a despot enthroned by each hearthstone.

In contradistinction to this and to every form of weakness, the resurrection body will be full of power, able to accomplish the behests of the will, and fit for all that is required of it.

The Spanish Bourbons had been the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, obeying his behests without a question: for their degradation there was no plea either of expediency or of a right secured by conquest.

Corruption and licentiousness stalked openly in the legislative halls and sat unblushingly on the judicial bench, while in the Executive office was a Governor ready to obey the behests of his party at any cost.

Fortunately human nature does not readily yield to such behests, and so life is not robbed of its mainspring, and the whole machinery of human nature is not reduced to a chaotic bundle of useless wheels.

When the woodpecker in the fall excavates a lodge in a dry limb, we know he is prompted to it by the instinct of self-preservation, but the birds themselves obey the behests of nature without knowledge.