His docility rather than his capacity marked him out to succeed Alva.
Liberty has become a crime punishable by death, and the majority of the population lives in a drug-induced state of docility.
Ibrahim was undoubtedly helped by Colonel Seve and the European officers in his army, but his intelligent docility to their advice, as well as his personal hardihood and energy, compare most favourably with the sloth, ignorance and arrogant conceit of the Turkish generals opposed to him.
The parlement, which had confused political power with judiciary administration, was given to understand, in the session of April 13, 1655, at Vincennes, that the era of political manifestations was over; and the money expended by Gourville, Mazarins agent, restored the members of the parlement to docility.
He cou'd imagine admirable situations, and he could write verses of incomparable grandeur - verses that reverberate again and again in the memory, but he could not, with the patient docility of Racine, labour at proportioning the action of a tragedy strictly, at maintaining a uniform rate of interest in the course of the plot and of excellence in the fashion of the verse.