"Aspiration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... needless questiones of their order and formes; of them, five be vouales, ane a noat of aspiration, ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... make his authority and that of his successors paramount in all spiritual matters, thus centring in his See the general oversight of the Christian Church in all the countries of Europe. It was a theocratic aspiration, one of the grandest that ever entered into the mind of a man of genius, yet, as Protestants now look at it, a usurpation,—the beginning of a vast system of spiritual tyranny in order to control the minds and consciences of men. It took several centuries to develop this system, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... a shy, scholarly elegance; perfect composure, clear, clean, crisp sentences; maxims as full of glittering truth as a winter night of stars; an incessant spray of fine fancies like the November shower of meteors; and the same intellectual and moral exaltation, expansion, and aspiration, were the characteristics of all ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... Austria-Hungary the same which Austria-Hungary was being blamed for with regard to Serbia, i.e., an infraction of sovereignty. Austria-Hungary having promised to consider the Russian interests by disclaiming any territorial aspiration—a great concession on the part of a state engaged in war—should therefore be permitted to attend to its affairs with Serbia alone. There would be time at the peace conference to return to the matter of forbearance toward the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... hand, things were going ill with the little church of All Angels. Arthur kept his people as tensely strung as ever, but he no longer drew from them the chords of aspiration and enterprise. It was a sad disenchantment, and none the less so because no one seemed to know what the matter was. One darkly guessed he was writing a book, and the vestryman who had praised the lovely simplicity of the wedding lucidly explained that the ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... slinking along there, with her eye on us; suppose, instead of withdrawing your garment, you went over and talked to her, got her to tell you what she really felt and thought, you'd find things that would astonish you. At bottom, mankind is splendid. And they're raised, sir, by the aspiration that's in all of them. Haven't you ever noticed that public sentiment is always in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... becomes instrumental in inciting the youthful to high and pure principles of action, in hedging up the way of sin, and opening the path of wisdom, to any—if it drops but a single good seed into the heart of each of its readers, and awakens the slightest aspiration to morality, usefulness, and religion—it will not have been prepared in vain. With a prayer to God that he would protect and bless the youth of our common country, and prepare them to preserve and perpetuate the priceless legacy ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... often heard it said, that the purity of the Italian is to be found in the lingua Toscana, and bocca Romana. Certain it is, the pronunciation of the Tuscans is disagreeably guttural: the letters C and G they pronounce with an aspiration, which hurts the ear of an Englishman; and is I think rather rougher than that of the X, in Spanish. It sounds as if the speaker had lost his palate. I really imagined the first man I heard speak in Pisa, had met with that misfortune in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the regions of true poetry, preserving just that level which would commend them to the literary statesmen and the politicians at Will's and Button's. Perhaps some advocate of Free Trade might try upon a modern audience the lines in which Pope expresses his aspiration in a footnote that London may one day become a "FREE PORT." There is at least not one antiquated or obscure phrase in the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... reticent individual. 'I hope it may prove so. On all accounts, I am sure.' (This, as a philanthropic aspiration.) ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the same center acts the great function of the heart and breath. Ah, the aspiration, the aspiration, like a hope, like a yearning constant and unfailing with which we take in breath. When we breathe, when we take in breath, it is not as when we take in food. When we breathe in we aspire, we yearn towards the heaven ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... result gains many fold in power from their subtle co-operation. His landscapes have in this way a Wordsworthian directness, simplicity, and severity. They are not troubled and dramatic like Turner's. They are not decorative like Dupre's, they have not the solemn sentiment of Daubigny's, or the airy aspiration and fairy-like blitheness of Corot's. But there is in them "all breathing human passion;" and at times, as in "Le Givre," they rise to majesty and real grandeur because they are impregnated with the sentiment, as well as are ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... were less forbidding. They warmly encouraged the aspiration, and the pair returned to their home, Hugh struggling to hide the new fire from his aged friend. But the old man saw through the artless cloakings and was in despair. He used every entreaty to save Hugh for the good work ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in reality the Hague Tribunal is ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... partially suggested or discoverable by the senses, is {6} preferred to that infinite and indefinite variety and difference which the senses give us at every moment. There is here the germ of a new aspiration, of a determination not to rest in the merely momentary and different, but at least to try, even against the apparent evidence of the senses, for something more permanently intelligible. As a first suggestion of what this permanent underlying ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... matters with a piety and reason the most exalted, which moved all who heard almost to tears. Oh, that those rebellious subjects beyond the ocean could have heard their Monarch! Yet why should this be my aspiration when there were rebels, and filial ones, close at hand, to rejoice in ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... beheaded, and himself to be put in prison, whence he had been liberated by Galba. He made a vow to let his hair grow until he was revenged. He had but one eye, and gloried in the fact, saying that it had been so with Hannibal and with Sertorius, and that his highest aspiration was to be like them. He pronounced first for Vitellius against Otho, then for Vespasian against Vitellius, and then for the complete independence of his nation against Vespasian. He soon had, amongst the Germans on the two banks of the Rhine and amongst the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he can with the Spirit of God. He is not content that men should be as sheep, and look downward to earth for all the food they need. He bids them to a Banquet of another kind, whose dishes are of knowledge for the mind and heavenward aspiration for the soul. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... offered as a vicarious sacrifice for sinners who are thus enabled to escape the penalties they would otherwise have suffered. As the Holy Ghost, God is the vaguely personified ultimate source of the higher and nobler elements of human thought, aspiration, and life in general. The second basic tenet of Christianity is that of human responsibility to God, to whom man is related as the created to a creator, as a subject to a ruler, and as one saved to his redeemer. The institutions of sacrifice and ritual are outward signs ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... for at least another fifteen. From the east of us came apocalyptic figures of nuclear physics; from the west, I heard the strains of Mondrian interwoven with Picasso; south of us, a post mortem on the latest "betrayal" of this or that aspiration of "the people", and to the north, we heard the mysteries of atonality. It was while I was looking around, and letting these things roll over me, that I saw the stranger enter. Jocelyn immediately bounced up from a couch, leaving the crucial problem of atmosphere-poisoning via fission and/or ...
— The Troubadour • Robert Augustine Ward Lowndes
... to the will of the Almighty, which puts to silence every murmuring or repining thought under any dispensation of his providence. It comprehends the habitual suppression of every selfish principle, and the constant aspiration after a state of moral feeling, which proposes to itself no lower standard than that which will bear the inspection of a being of infinite purity. This character seems to correspond with that high tone of morals enjoined in the sacred writings. Its elements ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... least, believe,—that though they be sometimes treacherous and false, there is a balance of good. We cannot have heroes to dine with us. There are none. And were these heroes to be had, we should not like them. But neither are our friends villains,—whose every aspiration is for evil, and whose every moment is a struggle for some achievement worthy ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... social convention against which he steadily rebelled—the more determinedly that in none of his mother's friends could he take the smallest interest; for she was essentially a commonplace because ambitious woman, without a spark of aspiration, and her friends were of the same sort, without regard for anything but what was—or, at least, they supposed to be—the fashion. Indeed, it was hard to understand how Hector came ever to be born of such a woman, although in truth she was of as pure Celtic origin as her husband—only blood ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... to bring a breeze from out of doors into the close, sordid, vitiated air of the Chamber. They stood for the thought of the world outside—the idea fatherless, unsponsored, the aspiration of the great masses—a breath of fresh air in the sick-room of a chronic invalid forever dying, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... have said thus much. These pages must now be suffered to go forth; not without a hearty aspiration that a blessing may attend them from Him sine Quo nihil est validum, nihil sanctum; and that what was intended for the strength and help of those who want helping and strengthening, (I am thinking particularly of what has been offered on the subject of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the ladies were . . . we will hope they have been traduced. But if they were, if they were too tender, ah! gentlemen were gentlemen then—worth perishing for! There is this dream in the English country; and it must be an aspiration after some form of melodious gentlemanliness which is imagined to have inhabited the island at one time; as among our poets the dream of the period of a circle of chivalry here is encouraged for the pleasure of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... visit to London, they were convinced "after a close study and experience of the Southern Slav question in all its aspects and some knowledge of the Adriatic problem as a whole, that there is no necessary or inevitable conflict between the aspiration of the Southern Slav people towards complete unity and the postulates of Italian national security and of the completion of Italian unity; but that, on the contrary, there exist strong grounds for Italo-Southern Slav ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... to be found in the emotional outcry predominating in most of the pictures of Monet. These do not hold for us in this day as solidly as they were expected to. There is a kind of superficiality and consequent dissatisfaction in the conspicuous aspiration toward the first flush, one may call it, of enthusiasm for impressionistic experience. There comes to one who is really concerned, the ever increasing desire to turn toward Pissarro and Sisley and to quietly dispense with many or most of Monet's pictures, not to ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... life of Schiller. The lives of great men are the lives of martyrs; we cannot regard them as examples to follow, but rather as types of human excellence to study and to admire. The life of Schiller was not one which many of us would envy; it was a life of toil and suffering, of aspiration rather than of fulfillment, a long battle with scarcely a moment of rest for the conqueror to enjoy his hard-won triumphs. To an ambitious man the last ten years of the poet's life might seem an ample reward for the thirty years' war of life which he had to fight single-handed. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... the deep portal of the palace, and turning to the left, began to mount flight after flight of a staircase, which, for the loftiness of its aspiration, was worthy to be Jacob's ladder, or, at all events, the staircase of the Tower of Babel. The city bustle, which is heard even in Rome, the rumble of wheels over the uncomfortable paving-stones, the hard harsh cries reechoing in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are here no prejudices of caste, as in India, to impede the missionaries' progress. Mr. Brooke has pointed out what may be effected in this way, and we have only to say amen to his prayer, with an earnest aspiration that it may be ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her—there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... son of Robert Douglas, a labourer in the village of Strathmiglo in Fife, where he was born on the 17th June 1771. Early discovering an aptitude for learning, he formed the intention of studying for the ministry,—a laudable aspiration, which was unfortunately checked by the indigence of his parents. Attending school during winter, his summer months were employed in tending cattle to the farmers in the vicinity; and while so occupied, he read the Bible in the fields, and with a religious sense, remarkable for his years, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... The cherished aspiration for national unity which for ages has inspired the many millions of people speaking the same language, inhabiting a contiguous and compact territory, but unnaturally separated and divided by dynastic jealousies and the ambition of short-sighted rulers, has ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... chain You help'd to rivet round me did contract Since guiltless infancy from guilt in act; Of what in aspiration or in thought Guilty, but in resentment of the wrong That wreaks revenge on wrong I never wrought By excommunication from the free Inheritance that all created life, Beside myself, is born to—from the wings That range ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... admission to the United is earnest literary aspiration. Any member will furnish the candidate for admission with an application blank, signed in recommendation. This application, filled out and forwarded to the Secretary of the association with the sum of fifty cents as dues for the first year, and accompanied by a "credential," ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... lie, but this inequality vanishes the moment it has been perceived. Does the thought that our wish might be nobler not at once bring nobility with it; does not the breast of our destiny throb to this new aspiration, thereby expanding the docile cup of the ideal—the cup whose metal is pliable, still to the cold stern hour of death? No cause for complaint has he who has learned that his feelings are lacking in generous ardour, or the ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of Irish birth or sympathies. Because of the distinctive quality of both the poetry and prose of these Celtic writers, the term "Celtic Renaissance" has been applied to their work, which glows with spiritual emotion and discloses a world of dreams, fairies, and romantic aspiration. As Richard Wagner received from the Scandinavian folk-lore the inspiration for his great music, as Tennyson found the incentive for The Idylls of the Kings in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, so the modern Celtic poets turned back to the primitive ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... man of a gentle, tranquil spirit, had a great sympathy with youth. He was, like all his race, a Whig, and a Moderate, in every human function and aspiration. He did not, however, allow that liberal spirit to be dimmed by fear or by selfishness. He was one of those fortunate men who are not awed by rumour or carried away by prejudice. Still less was there any touch of pride or vulgarity in his nature Meanness and commonness ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... and meaningful peace is our fourth great goal. It is our highest aspiration. And our record is clear: Americans resort to force only when we must. We have never been aggressors. We have always struggled to defend freedom ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is a reform demanded by the social conditions of our times, by the high culture of woman, and by the aspiration of all classes of society to organize and work for the interests they have in common. We can not detain the celestial bodies in their course; neither can we check any of those moral movements that gravitate with irresistible force towards their center of attraction: ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... in effect is "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The one, rich in this lay of human emotion, couched in the simple language of reality; the other, a symbolic picture of the struggle and aspiration of the soul. Interpreters have tried to pin this latter poem down to the limits of an allegory, and find a specific meaning for every phrase and picture, but it has too much the quality of the modern symbolistic writing to admit of ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... meaning of which is of still more general acceptation. The idea, in fact, has doubtless flitted across the minds of most of us, though few, let us hope, would help to realize it; for, notwithstanding its agreeable form, it is not a benevolent aspiration. The reception of the individual in question into the realms of bliss has less interest with us than his removal from the earth's surface, and, consequently, from our path upon it. We may be very civil toward this person, and we often are; but we seldom ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... aspiration of all peoples, even as physical health is the aspiration of all living beings, there are wars which cannot be avoided, as there are diseases which help us to overcome an organic crisis to which we might otherwise succumb. War and peace cannot be regarded as absolutely bad ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... vaguely of politics, Mr. Ritchie," began Monsieur de St. Gre. He spoke English perfectly, save for an occasional harsh aspiration ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the cellar largely developed; he would fain be held a connaisseur in wines, and kept up a good stock of distinguished vintages, from which he had brought of such to Glenruadh as would best bear the carriage. Having no aspiration, there was room in him for any number of petty ambitions; and it vexed him not to reap the harvest of recognition. "But of course," he said to himself, "no ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... after on that pious aspiration of her grandfather's old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return upon her. Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong. She told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this dwindling ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Mrs. Paige, it is a sad task that lies before me. Woman is frail and weak by nature. Man's noblest aspiration can attain no loftier consummation than in the protection of a pure ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... trouble with a great multitude of people is that they are satisfied when conditions do not warrant it. If we are to make progress in the Christian life or accomplish anything for God, we must have strong aspirations. These are as a spur to our energies. Aspiration is the cure for being "at ease in Zion." Aspirations are good or bad according to the motive that prompts them. Some are essentially selfish, and such are necessarily evil. If we desire to be or do for selfish advantage, for glory and praise; if we aspire to be leaders, as so many ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... that was of Themistocles," said Kennedy, "who rejected the offer of a Memoria Technicha, with the aspiration that some one could teach him to forget. Lethe is the grandest of rivers ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... leaves us with a sense of dissatisfaction and unreality. The reader, who through the whole three volumes till close upon the end has been travelling in an atmosphere of ordinary morality and every-day aspiration, knows not how in the last chapter to breathe the ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... "the Daughter of the Voice"[12] that spake. Since the Captivity 'tis the only mode by which the saints are summoned. Oft have I heard of it, but never in these sad degenerate days has its soft aspiration fallen upon us. These are strange times and tidings. The building of the temple is at hand. Son of David, my heart is full. Let ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... High-Altar beyond the tomb of Janus, the hearts of the people in the Piazza joined in the chorus of love and benediction of the choirs within, as, with new hints of devotion in their patient faces, they folded their own little ones closer with some vague, struggling, incomprehensible sense of aspiration—they were one with their Royal Lady and the Blessed Madonna, in the sacred mystery ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... temptations. Too many young men born to shine in social life, to sparkle, it may be, in conversation, perhaps in the lighter walks of literature, become agreeable idlers, self-indulgent, frivolous, incapable of large designs or sustained effort, lose every aspiration and forget every ideal. Our gilded youth want such examples as this of Motley, not a solitary, but a conspicuous one, to teach them how much better is the restlessness of a noble ambition than the narcotized stupor of club-life or the vapid amusement of a dressed-up intercourse which ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... words you have just spoken give us the utmost satisfaction. In the whole world to-day there is no prouder honor than that which it is in the Electors' power to bestow upon you, and it is a blessed augury for the welfare of our country when the energy and aspiration of youth in this high place associates itself with ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... a word of noble import. It lifts the soul of man from low and groveling pursuits, to the achievement of great and noble deeds, and ever keeps the object of his aspiration in view, till his most ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... nothing. To some extent, their attitude to the universe is that of children: and because this is so, they participate to that extent in the Heaven of Reality. According to their measure, they have fulfilled Keats' aspiration, they do live a life in which the emphasis lies on sensation rather than on thought: for the state which he then struggled to describe was that ideal state of pure receptivity, of perfect correspondence ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... use the familiar appellation of Clovis, from the Latin Chlodovechus, or Chlodovoeus. But the Ch expresses only the German aspiration, and the true name is not different from Lewis, (Mem. de 'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... spiritual life which it ever knew is the fitful flame of our own unsteady souls, if it came from dust and to dust will return, leaving behind no recollection of the human labour, sacrifice and aspiration which for a little time it unconsciously enshrined, that outlook makes an incalculable difference to our present lives. For then our very minds themselves, which have developed here by accident upon this wandering island in the skies, represent ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... accordance with thy precepts, were better to be chosen than an immortality of sin!"[3] He is addressing himself, it is true, to Philosophy; but his Philosophy is here little less than the Wisdom of Scripture: and the spiritual aspiration is the same—only uttered under greater difficulties—as that of the Psalmist when he exclaims, "One day in thy courts is better than a thousand!" We may or may not adopt Erasmus's view of his inspiration—or ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... her head in a wild aspiration. And all in a moment it surprised her to feel her eyes wet ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Professor Valeyon was not one of the exceptions, and was haunted by the idea that, were some certain event to come to pass, life would be more pleasant and gracious to him than it was now. Doubtless, however, an ideal aspiration of some kind, even though it be never realized, is itself a kind of happiness, without which we might feel at a loss. If the professor's solitary wish had been fulfilled, and there had been no longer cause ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration: in the beautiful words of Stanton Kirkham Davis, "You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience—the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... another—one which may tell us something of the earliest stumblings in the dawn of human faculty. When we compare man and his next of kin, we find between the two a great gulf, surely the widest betwixt any allied families in nature. Can a being of intellect, conscience, and aspiration have sprung at any time, however remote, from the same stock as the orang and the chimpanzee? Since 1859, when Darwin published his "Origin of Species," the theory of evolution has become so generally accepted that to-day it is little more assailed than the doctrine ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... and unity alone has the Khilafat brought to India. The great block in the way of Indian aspiration for full freedom was the problem of external defence. How is India, left to herself defend her frontiers against her Mussalman neighbours? None but emasculated nations would accept such difficulties and responsibilities as an answer to ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... endeavor to express a quality, with the aspiration to make it real, has the tendency to focus the power of that quality and concentrate the mind upon it. This, by repetition of effort, both increases the power and facilitates its expression. One must come ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... need not remind you of the effect upon the northern mind which has always been produced by the heaven-pointing spire, nor of the theory which has been founded upon it of the general meaning of Gothic architecture as expressive of religious aspiration. In a few minutes, you may ascertain the exact value of that theory, and the degree in which ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... life, early hours, open air, natural exercise, the joyous and free use of all your powers, by dancing, playing games, by refusal to give way to unhealthy and disfiguring fashions, and, above all, by an aspiration after grace and perfection, do what you can to remedy this national defect ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... is held by them, as well as amongst her intimate friends. If she be attentive to her duties; respectful and affectionate to her parents; kind and forbearing to her brothers and sisters; not easily ruffled in temper; if her mind be prone to cheerfulness and to hopeful aspiration, instead of to the display of a morbid anxiety and dread of coming evil; if her pleasures and enjoyments be those which chiefly centre in home; if her words be characterised by benevolence, goodwill, and charity: ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... national aspiration this will mean the establishment and healthy growth along all our coasts of a distinctive national industry, expanding the field for the profitable employment of labor and capital. It will increase the transportation ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... high moment, dreamed that he, too, could attain the orderliness of Truth—and tell Eleanor. "Idiot!" he said, contemptuously. Probably Maurice touched his lowest level when he said that; for to be ashamed of an aspiration, to be contemptuous of emotion, is to sin against the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... nothing deep;—now, upon this urge from the God-world, a sense of the grandeur of the within comes on them; they seek a means of expressing it: throw off the old conventions; will carve the Gods as men; do so, their aspiration leading them on to perfect mastery: for a moment achieve Egyptian sublimity; but—have personalized the Gods; and dear knows what that may lead ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... constitution of an International Authority, even on the general aspiration of Europe towards some form of supernational judicature, war will cease to have any more attraction or justification than the street brawl. For war is actually in the community of nations what the street fight is between individual citizens. War is futile, because it can settle no questions ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... stimulated and awakened as well as where knowledge is communicated. There can be but little stimulation in a school of only a few children. The pupils feel it and so does the teacher. Life, activity, mental aspiration are always found where large numbers of persons congregate. For these reasons the idea of consolidating the small schools into important centers, or units, is forcing itself upon the people of the country. Where the schools are small and the roads ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... better to begin with a definite instance of the working of an ideal, lest it may seem that we are speaking only of an empty aspiration. We may take as an example the reforms connected with medicine and sanitation, and those only in so far as they have been officially established by the joint action of states. This is a very restricted embodiment of a social ideal, since of course we may find the same use of common ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... she had done everything so far. She would do it by those same generous and beautiful qualities that had made him hers! Therein lay the humor of his whole adventure—there lay the deadly nature of this Snare. The cords of it were woven out of love and tenderness, out of ecstasy and aspiration; and they were wound about his very heart-strings, so that it would kill him to pull them loose. And he would never pull them loose—he saw that in a sudden vision of ruin! She would be noble to the uttermost limit ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... wish the seeds of Caesars or of Bonapartes to flourish in our territories. These mobs pant for a spiritual levelling; for there is no more distinction between one man and another than a coloured button on the lapel or a title on the calling-card. Such is the aspiration of our truly socialist types; other distinctions, like valour, energy, virtue, are for the democratic steam-roller, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... (1527-1591). The deep religious feeling which is one strong trait of Spanish character has its representatives in Castilian literature from Berceo down, but Leon was the first to give it fine artistic expression. The mystic sensation of oneness with the divine, of aspiration to heavenly joys, breathes in all his writings. He was also a devoted student of the classics, and his poems (for which he cared nothing and which were not published till 1631) show Latin rather than Italian influence. ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... aspiration is there," I said, "and you owe that to New York. The air, the very same air which forbids completion, is charged with aspiration. We all feel it. The city itself aspires. Since the great days when men set out to build a tower the top of which should reach unto heaven, there has never ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... cry! And these were "The People of the Spider!" What magic, what mystery was this? Lilith's last gift, Lilith's image; even her very name! It had indeed acted as a talisman, as a "charm" to stand between him and the most deadly of peril, as her aspiration had worded it. Verily, again had Lilith's love availed to stand between himself and a swift, sure, and bloody death! A marvel, and a ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the manner of his gait; He rises on the toe; that spirit of his In aspiration lifts him from ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he lends his love the wings of his spirit; he feels, and he paints, he acts and meditates, he multiplies his sensations by thought, present felicity becomes threefold through aspiration for the future and memory of the past; and with it he mingles the exquisite delights of the soul, which makes him the prince of artists. Then the poet's passion becomes a fine poem in which human proportion is often set at nought. Does not the poet then ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... intimate circle felt—Stepan Trofimovitch more acutely than any of us—that her son had come to her almost, as it were, as a new hope, and even as a sort of new aspiration. Her passion for her son dated from the time of his successes in Petersburg society, and grew more intense from the moment that he was degraded in the army. Yet she was evidently afraid of him, and seemed like a slave in his presence. It ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... without reducing it to the level of the commonplace; for Lena was not common as servants are, either in her personality or in the atmosphere she created in her room. Even her visitor, absorbed as she was in her own purpose, was not unconscious of the cleanliness of the place, of the artistic aspiration represented by the few prints on ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... One aspiration of Shakspere clearly shines through his career, in whatever darkness it may otherwise be enveloped—namely, his longing to acquire land near the town he was born in. When he had realised this ambition, he cheerfully seems to have left ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... by others, you will still want to do something for yourselves; if you cannot rest content with Palladio, neither will you with Paxton: all the metal and glass that ever were melted have not so much weight in them as will clog the wings of one human spirit's aspiration. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... their councilors and control their meetings: like the Roman senate with an Antiochus or a Prusias, like an English Resident with the King of Oude or of Lahore. With others as at home, he cannot help but act as a master. The aspiration for universal dominion is in his very nature; it may be modified, kept in check, but never can it be ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... time, literature has found in Italy the scientific and realistic development which has marked it in all other countries. The romantic school came distinctly to a close there with the close of the long period of patriotic aspiration and endeavor; but I do not know the more recent work, except in some of the novels, and I have not attempted to speak of the newer poetry represented by Carducci. The translations here are my own; I have tried to make them faithful; I am ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... gladdening to remember that in its utmost nobleness, the very temper which has been thought most adverse to it, the Protestant spirit of self-dependence and inquiry, was expressed in its every line. Faith and aspiration there were, in every Christian ecclesiastical building, from the first century to the fifteenth; but the moral habits to which England in this age owes the kind of greatness that she has,—the habits of philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of domestic seclusion ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... if reduced to such limits devotes herself in vain, feels that a higher aspiration has been stifled within her. She is yet the mother ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... however, accept the view that a peaceable and just society would necessarily also be one that is uninspired. That view seems to me to proceed from our incurable materialism. We think there is no conflict except with arms; no rivalry except for bread; no aspiration except for money and rank. It is my own belief that the removal of the causes of the material strife in which most men are now plunged would liberate the energies for spiritual conflict; that the passion to know, the passion to ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Aunt Melville, with an explanatory note, a letter from Cousin Bessie admonishing Jill that her new home ought to be "a perfect poem, pervaded and perfumed by a rare feeling of tender longing and homely aspiration," and another from her ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... a sentiment of gratitude to Divinity far above the typical poetic cant of homage to the Muse. And his fine Secular Hymn, composed by Augustus's request for the great Century Games, strikes a note of patriotic aspiration and of moral earnestness, not unworthy to compare with King Solomon's Dedication Prayer; and is such as, with some modernization of the Deities invoked, would hardly misbecome a national religious festival to-day. It was sung by twenty-seven noble boys ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... is something you do that you don't want to do—or something you don't want to do, that you do—I mean that you don't do. Or if you want to eat something and don't. Or an aspiration; ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... unnecessarily spectacled face, the short tight jacket, the cigar, and the frequenting of public-houses were unpleasant outward signs; but far more deplorable was the cynic tone. These were and are the sad excrescences of an otherwise laudable aspiration; but it may be hoped that in course of time the excrescences will disappear. The sooner the better, else the best friends of the progressive tendency among womankind will turn away from it in sorrow and anger at the unsexing of the sex, whose tenderer nature—in Schiller's words, let ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... human character as it exists at present, would be doomed to disastrous failure.' (Bishop Creighton said the same thing more epigrammatically. 'Socialism will only be possible when we are all perfect, and then it will not be needed.') But what we have is no Socialistic State, but a great body of aspiration, based on a great demand for justice in human life. The indictment of our present social organisation is indeed overwhelming, and with this indictment Christianity ought to have the profoundest sympathy, for it is substantially the indictment of the Old Testament prophets. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... suddenly, amazingly. The city itself is God, he cried. Was not God's ultimate promise something about a city—The City of God? Well, but that was only symbolic language. The city—of course that was only a symbol for the race—for all his kind. The entire species, the whole aspiration and passion and struggle, that ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... resolutely in Browning's poetry, and on which, as we shall see later, his optimism is founded. Science tells us that the matter of which the universe is composed is indestructible; Browning believes even more strongly in the permanence of spirit. Aspiration, enthusiasm, love would not be given to us to have their purposes broken off, not if this is a rational and economic universe; the important thing is not to have our hopes fulfilled here, the important ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... Louis Napoleon's momentary success, shaking the faith of cold politicians in the near impendency of a European struggle for liberty; and in addition to all this, the Presidential election, absorbing public attention, and lowering every high aspiration into the narrow scope of party spirit, busy for party triumph; all these circumstances, and many besides too numerous to record, joined to make it probable that the last days of my wanderings on American soil ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... opposition to Boyer had spread in Haiti also, and in 1843 gave rise to a revolution, as a result of which Boyer was driven from the country and Charles Herard installed as dictator-president. Duarte redoubled his activities for independence, struggling against the opinion of many who thought such an aspiration hopeless, but his plans were discovered and he and others obliged to flee. His work had been well done, however; his ideas continued to spread, and it was determined to proclaim the independence of Santo Domingo on February 27, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... the violent dislocations that followed with their menaces of panic and revolution that affected the nerves and the pockets of the entire commonwealth, the irritable reaction against the war itself, knocked romance, optimism, aspiration, idealism, the sane and balanced judgment of life, to smithereens. More cliches. The world was rotten to the core and the human race so filthy the wonder was that any writer would handle it with tongs. But they plunged to their necks. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... struggle for years to secure a college education. This definite end has been adopted for the sake of a somewhat more indefinite end of self-advancement, and from it there issues a whole series of minor ends, which form a hierarchy of steps ascending to the highest goal of aspiration. Now upon the face of things we live very unsystematic lives, and yet were we to examine ourselves in this fashion, we should all find our lives to be marvels of organization. Their growth, as we have seen, began before we were conscious of it; and we are commonly so absorbed in some ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... with mother, wouldn't you?" the girl appealed. I replied with all possible emphasis that I should like to be with Mrs. Pethel. But presently, when the mother and daughter reappeared in the guise of motorists, it became clear that my aspiration had been set aside. "I am to be with mother," ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... can do, however, bear witness to the glowing wings of hope, of longing, of aspiration which his singing violin lent to hearts oppressed by commonplace every-day cares, to the moments of courage, of re-awakened endeavor which he inspired in his fellowmen, to the marvellous magnetism of his playing which seemed for the moment to ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... means a great deal more. It means a life of such a sort as is worth calling life, which is a life in union with God, and therefore full of blessedness, full of purity, full of satisfaction, full of desire and aspiration, and all these with the stamp of unendingness deeply impressed upon them. And that is what comes to us through the look. Not only is the process of dying arrested, but there is substituted for it a new process of growing possession ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... vanished. And then we came, man came, and opened eyes that were a question and hands that were a demand and began a mind and memory that dies not when men die, but lives and increases for ever, an over-mind, a dominating will, a question and an aspiration that reaches to the stars.... Hunger and fear and this that you make so much of, this sex, are but the elementals of life out of which we have arisen. All these elementals, I grant you, have to be provided for, dealt ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... obtaining all the support I might, perhaps, have had on the present occasion, from a very scrupulous delicacy, which I think became and was incumbent upon me, but which I by no means conceive to have been a fit rule for others, I cannot repent it. While the slightest aspiration of breath passed those lips, now closed for ever,—while one drop of life's blood beat in that heart, now cold for ever,—I could not, I ought not, to have acted otherwise than I did.—I now come with a very embarrassed feeling to that declaration which I ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... rank with the smell of dead leaves, and the trees and grass dripped with lifeless moisture. As she goaded and allured alternately her own fainting soul, it writhed and struggled but could not rise; there was no pungency of bitterness in her self-reproach, no thrill of joy in her aspiration; for the hand of Calvin's God lay heavy on ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... less firm earth. How can one see any proof of that goodness in the senseless and intolerable sufferings of man—his helplessness, the brief and troubled span of his life, the inexplicable disproportion between his deserts and his rewards, the tragedy of his soaring aspiration, the worse tragedy of his dumb questioning? Granting the existence of God, a house dedicated to Him naturally follows. He is all-important; it is fit that man should take some notice of Him. But why praise and flatter Him for His unspeakable cruelties? Why forget so supinely His failures to remedy ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... taken form as man, there was an impulse to do what had never been done—when you think that we have hands today because from the first of life there have been adventurers—those of best brain and courage who wanted to be more than life had been, and that from aspiration has come doing, and doing has shaped the thing with which to do—it gives our hand a history which should make us want ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... or mystery is perhaps only another name for that "strangeness added to beauty" which Pater takes to be the distinguishing feature of romantic art. Later in the same article, Dr. Hedge asserts that "the essence of romanticism is aspiration." Much might be said in defense of this position. It has often been pointed out, e.g., that a Gothic cathedral expresses aspiration, and a Greek temple satisfied completeness. Indeed if we agree that, in a general ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the generations before us in one world-embracing empire, maintaining and propagating the principles of justice, freedom and peace, what blessings might arise from their united power to beautify and invigorate the world.' This is the eloquent expression of a lofty and generous aspiration which every good Englishman shares, and to which he will in his heart fervently respond. But the Australian statesman cannot seriously think that the maintenance and propagation of justice, freedom and peace, the beautifying and invigorating of the world, or any of the other ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... so much more at stake, and so much less strength to bring to the defence of her happiness. Justine was always saved from any excess of self-compassion by the sense, within herself, of abounding forces of growth and self-renewal, as though from every lopped aspiration a fresh shoot of energy must spring; but she felt that Bessy had no such sources of renovation, and that every disappointment left an arid spot in ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... sea with the Genoese, he had thought, to himself, that the most glorious thing in life must be to command a well-manned galley, as she advanced to the encounter of an enemy superior in numbers. He had never dreamed that such an aspiration could ever be satisfied—it was merely one of the fancies in ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... death, he was led to questioning the basis of his faith, shaken as it was by the claims of physical science—how from those doubts of his own, he was led to think of the universal trouble of the world—how at length by throwing himself into the hopes and aspiration of humanity he attained to victory and was able to put away his personal grief, believing that his friend's soul was still working with him in the universe for the good of all. At intervals, during the three years mirrored in the poem, we get ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... completed. 'It is the only treaty,' Voltaire declares, 'that was ever made without an oath, and the only treaty that never was broken.' By means of this treaty with the Indians, William Penn is beginning to realize the greatest aspiration of his life. For William Penn has set his heart on being the ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... teachers who would rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more violent terms was, as far as we know, never fulfilled. No inference can be drawn from this circumstance as to the probability of the words attributed to him having been actually uttered. They express the aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy, that he would leave behind him many followers, accompanied by the not unnatural feeling that they would be fiercer and more inconsiderate in their words when emancipated ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... pious frauds is creditable or safe. Effeminating and corrupting as all equivocation comes to be in the long run, there are other evils behind. Who can see without impatience the fearful waste of good purpose and noble aspiration caused by our reticence at a time when it is of primary importance to turn to account all the forces which make for the elevation of mankind? How much intellect and zeal runs to waste in the spasmodic ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... shorter hours. I don't blame them for wanting them—I hope they get them—but I don't know that I see it as very promising that they regard it as the most important thing in life. To do less and get more is not what you'd call a spiritual aspiration, is it?" she laughed. "This is what I mean—it's not ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... whiter than her soul by hiding it in gauze? How could she look so ethereal while her eyes drooped so murderously? Those almost wanton glances seemed to give promise of untold languorous delight, while by an ascetic's sigh of aspiration after a better life the mouth appeared to add that none of those promises would be fulfilled. Ingenuous youths (for there were a few to be found in the Guards of that day) privately wondered whether, in the most intimate ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... people the impression of manliness that constitutes so distinguishing a characteristic of his cousins, Prince Henry and the kaiser. He is lacking alike in virility and intellect, and seems to have no other aim and aspiration in life than to live up to his name and reputation as the leader of masculine fashion or "Gigerl Koenig," which may be rendered into English as "king of the dudes." They say at the Court of Berlin that he is so particular about the fit of his clothes that he will never remain seated for more than ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... is effort, Blackbird—effort, which uplifts and ennobles the lowest! For which reason, you, contemner of every sublime aspiration, I contemn! And that fragile roseate snail, struggling unaided to silver over a whole ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... of his which may seem to refute me. In reference to the song of the angels at the end of the poem he wrote as follows: 'These verses contain the key of Faust's salvation: namely, in Faust himself an ever higher and purer aspiration, and from above eternal love coming to his help; and they are in harmony with our religious conceptions, according to which we cannot attain to heaven by our own strength unless it is helped by ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... still be able to fold the drapery of my couch about me, and lie down to pleasant, even though they be deceitful, dreams."[1] The limitations to the acceptance of truth that President Barnard makes is wrong; for, as Professor Winchell has said, "we think it is a higher aspiration to wish to know 'the truth and the whole truth.' At the same time, we have not the slightest apprehension that the whole truth can ever dissipate our faith in a future life."[2] Let us "Prove all things and hold fast unto that which is ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... reading, but when the resurrecting angel shall stir the dust of young Theophilus with his foot, and sing out "get up, Dobbin," we think that sprightly youth will whimper three times for molasses gingerbread before he will signify an audible aspiration for the Bible. A sweet-tooth is often mistaken for early piety, and licking a sugar archangel may be easily construed as veneration for ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the aspiration was for this proposed improvement upon our species, I cordially responded thereto; for every vertebra in my spine was ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... ground, gardens, orchards and villas forming a striking and pleasing contrast with the wild and dreary scenery of the Appennines. Another thing that indicates one's arrival among the Tuscans is their aspiration of the letter c before a, o and u, which is at first extremely puzzling to a foreigner accustomed only to the Roman pronunciation. For instance, instead of camera, cotto, curvo, they pronounce these words hamera, hotto, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Cross" and "The Little Yaller Baby." Those of this number who were closest to the full-hearted singer know that beneath and within all his exquisite wit and ludicrous raillery—so often directed against the shallow formalist, or the unctuous hypocrite—there were an aspiration toward the divine, and a desire for what is often slightingly called "religious conversation," as sincere as it was resistless within him. My own first remembrance of him brings back a conversation which ended in a prayer, and the last sight ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... year all the out-and-outs unanimously declared war to the knife agin the Government, whatever and wherever the Government might be. How many long and weary years have you waited, Charles, to be told what Zimmerwaldianism might be—a religious tendency, a political aspiration, a valvular disease of the appendix or something to do with motor-cars? Ah, but that is as nothing to the secrets I am going to let you into, to force you into, before I have done ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... are in the hands of our Lover. All that we care to assert of the future is, that Christ will in an ever fuller degree be the environment of all Christian souls, and the effect of that constant environment will fulfil the aspiration of the apostle, "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Communion produces likeness. This even now is the test of our friendship with the Lord. Are we assimilating His mind, His way of looking at things, His judgments, His spirit? Is the Christ-conscience being developed ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... she said nothing. It was—alas that it should be so!—her gain. She dared not, even to herself, deny that; but how could it be his—a man who had no thought but of the beggarly elements of life, no aspiration beyond its present enjoyments? and it was by this dreadful overturn in his existence, this taking from him of everything he cared for, that she had been made free. Such a thought as this is more terrible than ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... take from our heart's speech. There is not the feeblest, faintest glimmer of a desire rising on the far-away horizon of our being, but God sees it. There is not a heart-hunger, not a wish to be holier and better, not an aspiration to be more Christ-like, not a craving to live for God and be a blessing to others, not the faintest desire to be rid of sin's power, but God knows of it. St. Paul has a wonderful word on this subject: God, he says, "is able to do exceeding abundantly above ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... through the long morning, telling her of the doings of his past life, and his schemes for the life to come. He had a great book which he wanted to write,—as to which everybody might laugh at him but she must not laugh. He laughed at himself and his aspiration; but she promised all her sympathy, and she told him of their house at Exeter, and of her mother's future loneliness. He would do anything for her within his power. Her mother should live with them if she wished it. And she spoke of the money which was to be her own, and told ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... who, like Buddha and Mahomet, have been raised to the height of demi-gods by worshipping millions, there are names which leap inevitably to the mind—such names as Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, Rousseau—which stand for types and exemplars of spiritual aspiration. To this high priesthood of the quick among the dead, who can doubt that time will admit Leo Tolstoy—a genius whose greatness has been obscured from us rather than enhanced by his duality; a realist who strove to demolish the ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the intense saffron glow of the sunset sky, changeless monuments of the perishable glory and the imperishable hope of man. He looked up into the face of the crouching Sphinx and vainly tried to read the meaning of the calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it, indeed, the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had said—the cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never can succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in that inscrutable smile—a promise that even the defeated should attain a victory, and the disappointed should discover a prize, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Herbert the first in English poetry who spoke face to face with God. That may be true; but it is interesting to note that not a poet of the first half of the seventeenth century, not even the gayest of the Cavaliers, but has written some noble verse of prayer or aspiration, which expresses the underlying Puritan spirit of his age. Herbert is the greatest, the most consistent of them all. In all the others the Puritan struggles against the Cavalier, or the Cavalier breaks loose ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... work many other deep-lying tendencies away from the bondage and traditions of the past; aspiration for economic and social reforms to liberate the common people and give them some real chance to be persons—tendencies which all the Reformers treated in this ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... serf's longing to breathe, to rest, to find a treasure that may end his sufferings, continually returns. More often, through a lofty aspiration, this treasure becomes a soul as well, a treasure of love asleep, as in The Sleeping Beauty: but not seldom the charming person finds herself by some fatal enchantment hidden under a mask. Hence that touching trilogy, that admirable crescendo of Riquet with the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Officer of a Bureau for the Enforcement of Labour? Do convicts become infatuated with their keepers? To assassinate such a man would become a positive joy. How many years of such life would it take to crush out of the human soul the last spark of hope and aspiration and reduce ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... solitary island, and tilled the soil. He was teacher, sailor, workman, trader, soldier, general, dictator. He was simple, great, and good. He hated all oppressors, he loved all peoples, he protected all the weak; he had no other aspiration than good, he refused honors, he scorned death, he adored Italy. When he uttered his war-cry, legions of valorous men hastened to him from all quarters; gentlemen left their palaces, workmen their ships, youths their schools, to go and ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... wind be keen, some rude blast may have affected her! The heat of noon, the dews of the evening, may endanger the life of her, for whom only I value mine. O Jack! when delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... a mosaic from the Bible and the Fathers of the early Church. But these elements are interwoven with such delicate skill and a religious feeling at once so ardent and so sound, that it promises to remain, what it has been for five hundred years, the supreme call and guide to spiritual aspiration. ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... world save his own fault. Everybody could be mended if everybody else would try. Thus he brought with him into our conservative military court and society the latest breath of generous hope and human aspiration that had blown over Oxford. Surely this was a strange choice of Hammerfeldt's! Was it made in ignorance of the man, or with some idea that my mind should be opened to every variety of thought, or in a careless confidence that his own influence was beyond shaking, and that Owen's spirit would ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... up the enormous arrears which have resulted from six years of blockade. They do not agree with M. Clemenceau that "revolution is a disease attacking defeated countries only." Or, to put it as I have heard it stated in Moscow, they believe that President Wilson's aspiration towards a peace in which should be neither conqueror nor conquered has been at least partially realized in the sense that every country ended the struggle economically defeated, with the possible exception of America, whose signature, after all, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are not confounding what is called "political opinions" with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only indirectly connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It would have been ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... resemblance to Mignon is merely superficial. A certain weirdness is all they have in common. The intensity of the inner life, the unspeakable longing, the cry of the unsatisfied heart, the devout aspiration, the presentiment of the heavenly life which characterize Mignon are peculiar to her; they constitute her individuality. Wilhelm has found her a kidnapped child attached to a strolling circus company, and has rescued her from the cruel hands of the manager. Thenceforth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... struggle between grace and corrupt nature in the soul. Christ has brought us light and life, and would have us put off what we are, and follow Him, who knew no sin. But these men, far from rising even to the aspiration after perfection, do not advance in their notion of spiritual religion beyond the idea of declaring and lamenting their want of it. Confession is with them perfection; nay, it is almost the test of a Christian, to be able to discourse ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Action Ahura-Mazda Aix, Good News to Alexander Allah Among the Noblest Ancient Mariner Animals and Human Speech Animals, Feeling for Animals, Happiness Animals, Innocent Animals, Products Animals, Suffering Another's Sorrow Arabs Argus and Ulysses Aspiration Asoka Inscriptions Atri in ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... aspiration, and to some extent in action, out of the ultra-individualistic stage ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... cent, of the replies expressed, with little variation of words, the simple desire to die 'for His Sacred Majesty, Our Beloved Emperor.' But a considerable proportion of the remainder contained the same aspiration less directly stated in the wish to emulate the glory of Nelson, or to make Japan first among nations by heroism and sacrifice. While this splendid spirit lives in the hearts of her youth, Japan should have little to fear ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... at which all who have been good Buddhists in previous births will become Arhats. I-Ching speaks of meditating on the advent of Maitreya in language like that which Christian piety uses of the second coming of Christ and concludes a poem which is incorporated in his work with the aspiration "Deep as the depth of a lake be my pure and calm meditation. Let me look for the first meeting under the Tree of the Dragon Flower when I hear the deep rippling voice of the Buddha Maitreya."[62] ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... was going not only to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant betterment for himself—straighter living, perhaps straighter thinking—the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even aspiration—or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others which ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it,—motives eminently such as are called social,—come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... cotton, the negro was found in overwhelming numbers, and after emancipation, in utter ignorance of book lore or a pure gospel. To this people the American Missionary Association, through the Avery Institute and its consecrated workers, has brought the light of knowledge and a pure gospel, and awakened aspiration and hope of a better life. The beneficial effects of this work upon such a people, and indirectly upon the city and state, are incalculable. Intelligent Christianity and Christian education has ever been the motto of Avery, and faithfully has it been realized in the lives of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... disclosed the bigoted feelings of the nation. Sicily wanted to be independent of Naples, but it had not the same wish to be separated from the despotic principle. An independent nation, without a free people, was the highest aspiration of revolted Sicily. England and France left her to her fate, except so far as Lord Minto's meddling complicated her condition. The temporarily vanquished Neapolitans returned to the contest, and the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... young to enter the military service when volunteers were mustering in our section, yet the stirring events of the times so much impressed and absorbed me that my sole wish was to become a soldier, and my highest aspiration to go to West Point as a Cadet from my Congressional district. My chances for this seemed very remote, however, till one day an opportunity was thrown in my way by the boy who then held the place failing to pass his examination. When ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... eternal life is the spiritual nature of man, made ready by humility and love,—"In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." In the quietness that waits for God to act, the confidence that knows that He will act when the time comes. It is well if our aspiration is to be of the number of those who live lives hid with Christ in God; who are seeking nothing but that the love of God may be shed abroad in their hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the love of Jesus. It is true that ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... I have to say at present is that, if we would keep ourselves, by faith, by love, by meditation, by aspiration, by the submission of the will, and by practical obedience, in Jesus Christ, enclosed in Him as it were—then, and then only, should we learn His lesson, and then, and then only, should we hear Him speak. Why! if you never think about Him, how can you learn Him? If you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... this world, none of the ship-wrecked in heart ever seemed to me to want peace more than she did. We saw much of her last winter; and over a great gulf of differing opinion we both felt drawn strongly to her. High and pure aspiration she had—yes, and a tender woman's heart—and we honoured the truth and courage in her, rare in woman or man. The work she was preparing upon Italy would probably have been more equal to her faculty ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Religious Houses for the most part, now disguised and pulled about beyond recognition, ranging right and left from the Ludgate itself: behind these rose again towers and roofs, and high above all the tall spire of the Cathedral, as if to gather all into one, culminant aspiration.... The light from the west lay on every surface that looked to his left, golden and rosy; elsewhere lay ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson |
