"Nobleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... defeat at Ethandune, or that long residence in a Christian land and contact with Christian subjects have shaken his faith in his own gods, or that he has learned to measure and appreciate the strength and nobleness of the man he had so often deceived, at any rate for the time Guthrum is subdued. At the end of fourteen days he sends to Alfred, suing humbly for terms of any kind; offering on the part of the army as many hostages as may be required, without asking for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... themselves to ignorance, if not to vice, for a vain show. Is this evil without remedy? Is human nature always to be sacrificed to outward decoration? Is the outward always to triumph over the inward man? Is nobleness of sentiment never to spring up among us? May not a reform in this particular begin in the laboring class, since it seems so desperate among the more prosperous? Cannot the laborer, whose condition calls him so loudly ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... only on its intellectual side indeed that Elizabeth touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects were simply dead to her. It was a time when men were being lifted into nobleness by the new moral energy which seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, when honour and enthusiasm took colours of poetic beauty, and religion became a chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the men about her touched Elizabeth simply as the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... better woman, to bring out something noble which lay in her heart unknown to her, though not to Him who knew what was in man. Perhaps He wished to shew his disciples, who looked down on her as a heathen dog, that a heathen, too, could have faith, humility, nobleness, and grace of heart. Be that as it may, when the poor woman came crying to Him, He answered her not a word. His disciples besought Him to send her away—and I am inclined to think that they wished Him to grant her what she asked, simply to be rid ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... little hut, in a glow of patriotism and enthusiasm. "Manuela," she cried, "did you ever see such nobleness, such lofty yet gracious courtesy? Ah! I knew he was a man to die for. How happy we are, to be here at last, after dreaming of it so long! I thrill; I burn with sacred fire—what is the matter, Manuela? you look the spirit of gloom. What ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... more true is all this in the case of the moral sense? When the heart is still young and tender, how spontaneously and sweetly and urgently does every vision of goodness and nobleness in the conduct of another awaken the impulse to go and do likewise! And if that impulse is not obeyed, how certainly does the first approving perception of the beauty of goodness become duller, until at last we may even come to hate ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Hamilton himself had signalised and honoured as already a sterling thinker, and the strength of whose logic, when you grappled with him in argument, seemed equalled only by the strength of his hand-grip when you met him or bade him good-bye, or by the manly integrity and nobleness of his character."[8] And again, writing of him as he was at a later date, the same critic gives this estimate of his old fellow-student's mental calibre: "I can name one former student of Sir William Hamilton's, now a minister in what would be accounted in England one of the straitest ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... though they had never been. It is idle to draw, as is often done, a different conclusion from such phrases as that after death we are a shadow and mere dust, "pulvis et umbra sumus!" or from Horace's bewildered cry (Odes, I. 24), when a friend of signal nobleness and purity is suddenly struck down—"Ergo Quinctilium perpetuus sopor urget?"—"And is Quinctilius, then, weighed down by a sleep that knows no waking?" We might as reasonably argue that Shakespeare did not believe in a life after death ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... his nephew, Philip Sidney, had won a place in the favour of his sovereign, which even the honest protest he had made against this marriage with the Duke of Anjou had failed to destroy; a high place also in the esteem of the world by the purity of his life and the nobleness of a nature which commended itself alike to gentle and simple; while he had the reputation of a true knight and brave soldier, pure, and without reproach, as well as a scholar versed in the literature of other countries, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... impatiently, and with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm began a new story, Weir of Hermiston, which would undoubtedly have been his masterpiece, had he lived to complete it. In luminosity of style, in nobleness of conception, in the almost infallible choice of words, this astonishing fragment easily takes first place in Stevenson's productions. At the end of a day spent in almost feverish dictation, the third of December 1894, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Brian de Bois-Guilbert, make offer to you, styling yourself, for the present, the Disinherited Knight, of the horse and armour used by the said Brian de Bois-Guilbert in this day's Passage of Arms, leaving it with your nobleness to retain or to ransom the same, according to your pleasure; for such is the law ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... his heir with some disdain; That, without concert with him, and alone He dared to plight his daughter, whom he fain Would marry to the Grecian emperor's son; And not to him that has no kingly reign, Nay has not ought that he can call his own; And should not know, how little nobleness Is valued ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... but was coloured with sanguine and lively carnation. His eyes were black; in look and sharpness of light, they were vivid, piercing, and terrible. The outlines of his nose and all his countenance expressed a certain manly nobleness, combined with goodness and prudence.' Such is the portrait drawn of Colleoni by his biographer; and it well accords with the famous bronze statue of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... not steady his voice to answer her. Would any other girl have taken it in this way? He felt there were depths in her nature that he had not fathomed yet. The nobleness of the action seemed to lift her up out of her grief. The heroic death was a fit ending to that brave ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and his wife had newly imagined it, and, to disguise the originals the more effectively, he made the girl, whom he had provisionally called Salome, more like himself than Louise in certain superficial qualities, though in an essential nobleness and singleness, which consisted with a great deal of feminine sinuosity and subtlety, she remained a portrait of Louise. He was doubtful whether the mingling of characteristics would not end in unreality, but she was sure it would not; she said he was so much like a woman in the traits he ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... that is good for us. It is just as true for us as for the crystal, that the nobleness of life depends on its consistency,—clearness of purpose—quiet and ceaseless energy. All doubt and repenting, and botching and re-touching and wondering what will it be best to do next, are vice, as well ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... Reserved no strange or mystical condition To breed fine points of doctrine, or confound The simple-minded and the slow of faith. Heart-purity and singleness and love, Fertile in loving acts, sole proof of these, Summed up for them, my father and my mother, All nobleness, all duty, all salvation, And ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over speculative pollution to the cynics and the 'righteous overmuch' who, disagreeing in everything else, unite in blind insensibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in inability to appreciate the grandeur of the place Man ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... whole nation were fixed upon their king, who, for nobleness of mien, and gracefulness of person, had no equal; but it was not then known that he was possessed of those superior abilities, which, filling his subjects with admiration, in the end made him so formidable to Europe. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... visited from sixteen to twenty-five daily, with my assistance. I do not think, that, during the month, we were in bed for one whole night. Two-thirds of these patients were unable to pay a cent. During these years, I learned all of life that it was possible for a human being to learn. I saw nobleness in dens, and meanness in palaces; virtue among prostitutes, and vice among so-called respectable women. I learned to judge human nature correctly; to see goodness where the world found nothing but faults, and also to see faults where the world could see nothing but ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky; for these and other glories more than these refuse not to connect themselves in his thoughts with the work of his own hand; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclopoan waste of mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic semblances of fortress towns; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... their tremendous oar. It has the boldness of a plunging bird and the regularity of a pendulum. Sometimes, as you see this movement in profile, in a gondola that passes you—see, as you recline on your own low cushions, the arching body of the gondolier lifted up against the sky—it has a kind of nobleness which suggests an image on a Greek frieze. The gondolier at Venice is your very good friend—if you choose him happily—and on the quality of the personage depends a good deal that of your impressions. He is ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... inspiration gracefully chronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's self as to cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be one's own best friend and to give one's self, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action: ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Aramis, moved by the pallor and excitement of the young man, "the nobleness of your heart fills me with joy and admiration. It is not you who will have to thank me, but rather the nation whom you will render happy, the posterity whose name you will make glorious. Yes; I shall indeed have bestowed upon you more than life, I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... something impossible to conceive. Had she not met Edgar she would never have loved any one, she thought: having met him, it was impossible that she should not have loved him, the ideal to her as he was of all manly nobleness and grace, given to her to love by a Power higher than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... his grace and nobleness, should say to me, 'Now that I am rich and am come to my own again, choose and have,' I should kneel and ask him to give command that our village should ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the footsteps of Savonarola, had preached to eager listeners, but 'in Italy men did not adopt Lutheranism, though they approached it;' and in all the crowd of great Italian artists of the day, Michael Angelo shows deepest traces of the conflict—of its trouble, its seriousness, its nobleness. He only, among his brethren, acted out his belief that the things of the world sank into insignificance before those thoughts of God and immortality which were alone fully worthy of the soul. And it was, as to a ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... gentle ladies sent to ask me to send them some of these rhymed words of mine; wherefore I, thinking on their nobleness, resolved to send to them and to make a new thing which I would send to them with these, in order that I might fulfill their prayers with the more honor. And I devised then a sonnet which relates my condition, and I sent it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... conspicuously by Burns, has given a tone to the poetry of that century which is better explained by reference to its historical origin than by naming it, in the common criticism of our day, artificial. There is again, a nobleness of thought, a courageous aim at high and, in a strict sense manly, excellence in many of the writers:—nor can that period be justly termed tame and wanting in originality, which produced poems such as Pope's Satires, Gray's ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... is an excellent index of character. As the beard distinguishes man from woman, so its full and luxuriant growth often indicates strength and nobleness, intellectual and physical; while a meager beard suggests an uncertain character—part masculine, part feminine. Was there ever a truly great man, or one with a generous disposition, with a thin beard and a weazen face? On the other hand, show me a man with ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... to possess; but, like Washington, he yielded his private sentiments and impulses to the consideration of the public good. His own plan, which he had urged with all his eloquence and energy, differed radically from the one adopted; yet, with a nobleness of spirit which challenges our highest admiration, he sacrificed the pride of opinion, and when the constitution had passed the ordeal of severest criticism and amendment by the convention, he avowed himself ready to sign it, and urged others, who hesitated, to do the same "No man's ideas are ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... add lustre to bravery, and those talents that shine alike in the cabinet and in the field. His manners and dispositions were so conciliating as to gain the affection of all whom he commanded, while his innate nobleness and dignity of mind secured him a respect almost amounting to veneration. He is now styled the Hero of Upper Canada, and, had he lived, there is no doubt but the war would have terminated very differently from what it did. The Canadian farmers are not over-burthened with sensibility, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... said, smiling at him. Her cheek was leaning lightly on her hand, her eyes had an unusual animation; and her long white dress, guiltless of any ornament save a small old-fashioned locket hanging from a thin old chain and a pair of hair bracelets with engraved gold clasps, gave her the nobleness and simplicity ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reflection, which here and there almost imperceptibly appeared, rendered it all the more charming. In the bold yet beautiful contour of those features, in the full red lips, in the high pale forehead and, above all, in those dark and haunting eyes lay a depth of feeling and profundity and nobleness of thought, which to a reflective mind have a charm infinitely more irresistible than that which belongs to mere youthful perfection. There was a bland beauty in the smile which slept upon her lips, a delicacy of sentiment in the faint flush that tinged her soft cheek, and a deep meaning in her ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... needlessly, whether by his own hand or by that of an accomplice, not only injures his victim, but injures himself. He stifles what nobleness of character he may have and he cultivates depravity and barbarism. He destroys in himself the spirit of true religion and isolates himself from those whose lives are made beautiful by sympathy. No one need hope for a spiritual Heaven ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... about twenty-one years old; he had been esteemed an excellent student. His appearance was manly, open and free. His eye indicated a nobleness of soul; although his aspect was tinged with melancholy, yet he was naturally cheerful. His disposition was ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... speaking of his father. I seem to see him now, rising from his chair, standing in front of the chimneypiece, and in strains of fervid eloquence dwelling on the grandeur, the breadth and depth of his character, his generosity, his nobleness, last and greatest of all—his loving nature. His eyes filled with tears as he exclaimed: "None but his children can know what torrents of tenderness flowed from ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the world once, now the pity: Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus? What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian? The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger, That honourable war ne'er taught a nobleness Nor worthy circumstance show'd what a man was? That never heard thy name sung but in banquets And loose lascivious pleasures? to a boy That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness No study of thy life to know thy goodness?... Egyptians, dare you think your high pyramides Built ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... own heart's that concurrently became stronger. In the reluctance he had felt to believe that she loved any one; in his desire to set that question at rest; in a half-formed consciousness he had had that there would be a kind of nobleness in his helping her love for any one, was there no suppressed something on his own side that he had hushed as it arose? Had he ever whispered to himself that he must not think of such a thing as her loving him, that he must not take advantage of her gratitude, that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... was simply under the spell of an infinite fascination. Since then, however, I have understood and admired her, realising how unique and radiant a soul was imprisoned under the thick-set exterior and happy face of that holy woman. I have loved her ever since for all that she awakened within me of nobleness. I love her for the letters which she wrote to me, letters that I often read over and over again. I love her also because, imperfect as I am, it seems to me that I should have been one hundred times more so had I not known and loved that ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... says that, in truth, a steward is but half himself who hath not his wand: methinks when his rod of office is wanting, his Highness of Lilliput's steward is but unequally divided. In truth, he is stout enough to be Aaron's wand that swallowed up all the rest. But has your nobleness any serious objection to my carrying a wand? It ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... level-headeder boy never lived than Thomas Jefferson Allen. He is just right, and always wuz. And though I wouldn't have it get out for the world, I can't help seein' it, that he goes fur ahead of Tirzah Ann in intellect, and nobleness of nater; and though I love 'em both devotedly, I do, and I can't help it, like him jest a little mite the best. But this I wouldn't have get out for a thousand dollars. I tell it in strict confidence, and s'pose it will be kep' as such. Mebby I hadn't ort to tell it at all. Mebby it hain't ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... no means unfavorable, of Philip at this time. He had an agreeable person, a generous disposition, free and open manners, with a certain nobleness of soul, although spurred on by a most craving ambition. But he was so ignorant of affairs, that he became the dupe of artful men, who played on him for their own ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... so! The soul Breasts her own griefs; and, urged too fiercely, says: "Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... conscientious of translations must always be attended—it may be looked upon by English readers with somewhat of the admiration which I have long felt for the original, on account of the artistic finish of its execution, the purity of its tone, and the delicacy and the nobleness of the sentiment by ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... in single-heartedness and strength and women comely and simple and superb as goddesses; and with a music of leaves and winds and waters, of plunging ships and clanging armours, of girls at song and kindly gods discoursing, the sunny- eyed heroic age is revealed in all its nobleness, in all its majesty, its candour, and its charm. The air is yet plangent with echoes of the leaguer of Troy, and Odysseus the ready-at-need goes forth upon his wanderings: into the cave of Polypheme, into the land of giants, into the very regions of the dead: to hear among ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... house and take it away from him. This act, so characteristic of the despotic arrogance which marked Richard's character, shows that the reckless ferocity for which he was so renowned was not softened or alleviated by any true and genuine nobleness or generosity. For a rich and powerful king thus to rob a poor, helpless peasant, and on such a pretext too, was as base a deed as we can well conceive ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cannot blame them. They showed that the crowded city life can bring out human nobleness as well as human baseness; that to be crushed into contact with their fellow-men, forced at least the loftier and tender souls to know their fellow-men, and therefore to care for them, to love them, to die for them. Yes—from ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... that he possesses? His power is too great to spring from an honorable source. Sabine is sacrificing herself to this man for some reason or other, and he, like a dastardly cur, is ready to take advantage of the nobleness ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... deportment or conduct. If this girl was changed at all by her great good fortune, she was changed for the better. She had never been more modest, gentle, affable, and sensible than she was now. The fact shows a clearness of mind and a nobleness of heart which place her very high among the wise and good. Such behavior under such circumstances is equal to heroism. We are conscious that in saying these things of Clara we are drawing largely upon the reader's faith. But either her present trial of character was peculiarly fitted ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... their wives not only all that is comfortable or graceful, but all that is wise, in the arrangement of their lives, the frequent remark, "You cannot reason with a woman,"—when from those of delicacy, nobleness, and poetic culture, falls the contemptuous phrase "women and children," and that in no light sally of the hour, but in works intended to give a permanent statement of the best experiences,—when not one ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a richly dull color. Her thick skirts are spread about her with a contented dignity which does not interfere with her eating large sandwiches openly and vigorously at the opera. To-day the mellow sunlight crowned her ancient nobleness with a becoming hue, as Gard was jogged along in a roundabout way through the city. Here at the left were the august bridges and great park, all famed in Napoleon's battles. Over there were the dowdy royal palaces. There, too, was the house of the sacred Sistine. Her sweet lineaments shone down ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... events literary history, in the noting of the popular characters in books, who have supplied words that have passed into common speech. Thus from Homer we have 'mentor' for a monitor; 'stentorian' for loud-voiced; and inasmuch as, with all of Hector's nobleness, there is a certain amount of big talk about him, he has given us 'to hector'; [Footnote: See Col. Mure, Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 350.] while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... round her cousin! I liked her for having no conventionalities, fast or slow, and especially for hating heroes! And when my sister had helped to let her get into this intolerable web, how could I look on without feeling the nobleness that has never shifted blame from herself, but bowed, owned all, suffered—suffered—oh, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there in selfish enjoyment of the delights of knowledge! Woe to him if he does not week by week return laden, and ever more richly laden, and saying, Yes, brothers, I have been to that land; and it is a land of light and peace and nobleness: but I have never forgotten you and your needs and the dear bonds of brotherhood; and look, I have brought back this, and this, and this: take it to gladden and ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... because we had once found love of art connected with moral baseness, the love of art must be the general root of moral baseness; and equally unfair to assert that, because we had once found neglect of art coincident with nobleness of disposition, neglect of art must be always the source or sign of that nobleness. But if we pass from the Indian peninsula into other countries of the globe; and from our own recent experience, to the records of history, we shall still find one great fact fronting ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... of Vasco Nunez had, in fact, risen with his circumstances, and now assumed a nobleness and grandeur from the discovery he had made, and the important charge it had devolved upon him. He no longer felt himself a mere soldier of fortune, at the head of a band of adventurers, but a great ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the book its unique character. One to whose judgment on an educational matter I attach the greatest value writes to me these words: "For refining influence, for power to stimulate the sense of beauty, the tenderness, the sentiment of nobleness of the child-soul, I can imagine no volume more worthy of a place on the book-shelf of the people's schools." Having myself often witnessed this influence at work, I can emphatically indorse this ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... once admitted so much of the thin end of the wedge as that a horse and an ass might be related. It is plain, therefore, that he is not speaking "au reel" here, and we accordingly find him talking clap-trap about the nobleness of the lion in having no species immediately allied to it. A few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual way that the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... was not sure it was not a mere fancy, but it seemed to him that he had never seen her look just as she was looking then. It was a humble, touching, appealing look, and it threw into wonderful relief the nobleness of her beauty. "How many more metamorphoses," he asked himself, "am I to be treated ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... used to love to tell a beautiful story of a man whose saintly life left its permanent and gracious impress upon her own. He seemed to grow in grace and charm and in all nobleness with every day he lived. At the last he could speak of nothing but the glories of his Saviour, and his face was radiant with awe and affection whenever he mentioned that holy name. It chanced that, as he was dying, a document ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... be said to have been by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, and that is that God did not interfere to save Jesus from the last dread ordeal. He allowed wickedness to do its worst, and thereby made the disinterested nobleness of the character of Jesus all the clearer. In such a time as that in which Jesus lived such a life as His was sure to end on a Calvary of some kind, unless He ran away from it, or God supernaturally intervened to save ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... souls being one, there could be no veil not rent away by Love and Nature, and the secret each had kept was revealed to the other, 'twas surely so revealed as but to draw them closer and fill them with higher nobleness, for no other human creature heard of ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... awe of Nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus? What poor fate follow'd thee, and pluckt thee on To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian; The life and light of Rome, to a blind stranger, That honorable war ne'r taught a nobleness, Nor worthy circumstance shew'd what a man was, That never heard thy name sung, but in banquets; And loose lascivious pleasures? to a Boy, That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness, No study of thy life to know thy goodness; And leave thy Nation, ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... which gives him simplicity; the rest of his talk is, perhaps, less than is generally imagined. Beauty and simplicity have so great a share in the composition of a great style, that he who has acquired them has little else to learn. It must not, indeed, be forgot that there is a nobleness of conception, which goes beyond anything in the mere exhibition, even of perfect form; there is an art of animating and dignifying the figures with intellectual grandeur, of impressing the appearance of philosophic wisdom or heroic ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... reasons, old man," replied the priest, "for devoting thy life to the ruining of his, and what I guess at be such as I dare not voice; but let us understand each other once and for all. For all thou dost and hast done to blight and curse the nobleness of his nature, I have done and shall continue to do all in my power to controvert. As thou hast been his bad angel, so shall I try to be his good angel, and when all is said and done and Norman of Torn swings from the King's gibbet, as I only too well fear he must, there will ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that the statesman whose upright patriotism, moderation, and nobleness of purpose thus breathed through every word spoken by him in public or whispered to friends was already held up by a herd of ravening slanderers to obloquy as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is no practice more crossing the genuine nature of genteelness, or misbecoming persons well-born and well-bred; who should excel the rude vulgar in goodness, in courtesy, in nobleness of heart, in unwillingness to offend, and readiness to oblige those with whom they converse, in steady composedness of mind and manners, in disdaining to say or do ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... thoroughly, all Omar's complete integrity—without any sort of mention of it—his self-denial in going ragged and shabby to save his money for his wife and child (a very great trial to a good-looking young Arab), and the equally unostentatious love he has shown to me, and the delicacy and real nobleness of feeling which come out so oddly in the midst of sayings which, to our ideas, seem very shabby and time-serving, very often I wonder if there be anything as good in the civilized West. And as Sally most justly says, 'All their goodness is quite their own. God knows there is no one ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... not so much their meanness and weakness, as that of those who have distorted these innocent servants of truth to become tools of falsehood and the abject instruments of the extinction of all honesty and nobleness. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of M. de Rohan? The pretended correspondence and interviews he speaks of? All that I know is, that I have the most absolute confidence in the queen, which she merits by the nobleness of her character. It was easy for her to have told me nothing of all this; but she always makes an immediate appeal to me in all difficulties, and confides to me the care of her honor. I am ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... jilted, my dear Olive. You don't like the King, and you show your nobleness of mind ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... shimmerings of silver in its folds that came and went with every one of her graceful movements. She was a tall and slender girl, with a beautiful long white throat, smooth and round, that took on entrancing curves of pride and gentleness, of humility and nobleness. She had splendid rippling hair of a deep bronze, that had been red a few years earlier; and dark blue dreamy eyes under broad dark eyebrows; a long sweep of cool fair cheek, and a rather wide mouth with a little tender, pathetic ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... go into battle almost nude; at least, we must suppose so, from their invariably receiving their death-wounds in that condition. I will not believe that a sculptor or a painter is a man of genius unless he can wake the nobleness of his subject, illuminate and transfigure any given pattern of coat and breeches. Nevertheless, I never go into St. Paul's without being impressed anew with the grandeur of the edifice, and the general effect of these same groups of statuary ranged in their ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his stately head, and throws aside his marks of superstition. "I believe," he says, and the hearts of all bend with him; and Owen leads them to the lake, and baptizes them, and it is another St. Sacrament! Oh! that is what it is to have nobleness enough truly to overcome the world, truly to turn one's back upon pleasures and honours—what are they to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... daughter found in his courteous reply a gleam of nobleness which inspired them with a shadow of confidence. Above all, they were proud, and more averse to noisy scenes than women usually are. They received him coldly, then, but calmly. On his part, he displayed toward them in his looks and language ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... beautiful for heroes proved, In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved. And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine! America! America! God shed ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... struggle for self-mastery that made him the man he was, and taught him the secrets of nobleness that he taught his pupils with their three "R's"; and this was the best of his work for ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... like less," she cried, "a coward—although I don't admit that your brother is one—or one who boasts of his own bravery and taunts you with his own kind deeds. Roger, do you think because you cannot appreciate your brother's nobleness that it ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... hath in her such beauty and worth and wisdom and courtesy and nobleness that never ought she to be forgotten of any ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... He drew his camp-stool beside her. Suddenly she asked him what time it was. The haggard nobleness of her pale face amid the folds of black veil, the absent passion of the eye, thrilled to his heart. Where ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has become in our day a kind of promenade which has little charm for the young, and is but a scene of etiquette for those of a riper age. Our fathers danced it with a marvellous ability and a gravity full of nobleness; the dancer, making gliding steps with energy, but without skips, and caressing his moustache, varied his movements by the position of his sabre, of his cap, and of his tucked-up coat-sleeves, distinctive signs of a free man and warlike ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... not as he represented it, all its tragic beauty, all the nobleness which tempered and, in a measure at least, discounted the great wrong of it, stripped away—leaving it naked, torn from its setting, without context and so without perspective. Against this not only her tenderness, but sense of justice, passionately fought. He made it ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of Hamilton, and husband of the celebrated beauty, Miss Gunning; but the friendly efforts of that nobleman were thought rather to have "hurried him to the block."[381] When a report reached him that one of the prisoners would be spared, Lord Kilmarnock had desired, with the utmost nobleness of soul, that Cromartie should be preferred to himself. Balmerino lamented that he had not been taken with Lord Lovat; "for then," he remarked, "we might have been sacrificed, and these two brave men have been spared." ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... ourselves to see this clearer by an illustration drawn from the treatment of a single great idea which has profoundly engaged the human spirit, and has given it eminent opportunities for showing its nobleness and energy. It surely must be perceived that the idea of the immortality of the soul, as this idea rises in its generality before the human spirit, is something grander, truer, and more satisfying, than it is in the particular forms by which St. Paul, in the famous ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... could they have endured the existence they had? True, there are in our day men who profess unbelief in that future, and yet lead an enjoyable life, nor even say to themselves, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;" but say instead, with nobleness, "Let us do what good we may, for there are men to come after us." Of all things let him who would be a Christian be fair to every man and every class of men. Before, however, I could be satisfied that I understood the mental ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... the world that he owed his good fortune to merit alone, he disdained to court the soldiers by largesses; in short, he displayed a nobleness of disposition worthy of the most illustrious birth, and befitting the exalted station to which he had arrived. This prince was the founder of the noble amphitheatre, called the Coliseum, which remains to this day. Twelve thousand Jewish captives were employed in its erection, and it was capable ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... outside the open door, and whined and indulged in sharp "yaps" of protest against hope deferred. When they saw their mistress advancing with a heaped-up plate of food, both gave reins to their joy, and jumped and barked around her with delight. Pocahontas loved animals; the nobleness and fidelity of their instincts, harmonized with the large ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... and although an excellent shot, he could never enjoy hunting or shooting, as it hurt him to kill birds or animals. He abhorred the copying, by Americans, of European aristocratic "sport," for the nobleness of his nature could not descend to the vicious customs of those only noble by assumption or in title. His intellectual bearing, his catholicity of tastes and his learning presented a striking contrast to the narrow outlook and brainlessness of the average high-brow type of ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... dearest old ladies of my acquaintance," replied Mr. Ingram. "Beatrice owes a great deal of her nobleness of heart and singleness of purpose to her mother. Mrs. Bertram, I have never heard that woman say an unkind word. I have heard calumny of her, but never from her. Then, of course, Meadowsweet ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... kings; Nay, first among them, passed through dangers gate In war unscathed, and perils out of date, To meet a fool whose pistol-shot yet rings Around the world, and at mere greatness flings The cruel sneer of destiny or fate! Yet hath he made the fool fanatic foil To valor, patience, nobleness, and wit! Nor had the world known, but because of it, What virtues grow in suffering's sacred soil. The shot which opened like a crack of hell, Made all hearts stream with sacred pity's well And showed that unity ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our loneliness; that which has touched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal affections have shrivelled up with pain; that which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness and conceptions of superhuman excellence? Shall we say It or He? What is It? Who is He? Those anticipations of Immortality and God—what are they? Are they the mere throbbings of my own heart, heard and ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... had been his own father; and the latter had fully reciprocated this affection, and had chosen Brusson, in spite of his poverty, to be his son-in-law, since his skill was equal to his faithfulness and the nobleness of his character. All this the girl related with deep, true, heart-felt emotion; and she concluded by saying that if Olivier had thrust his dagger into her father's breast in her own presence she should take it for some illusion caused ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... passions of Hell; now beaming with celestial truth, now masked in hypocrisy and lies; now a virgin, now a harlot; an imperial queen, and a tinselled actress. Clearly, she is of earth, not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill, the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and tenderness, that battle in ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Miss Nugent, feeling it strange that her heart did not leap up at the bare presence of one she loved so much, yet conscious of the soothing of her sympathy. And Mary, watching her all through, had been struck with the increased sweetness and nobleness her countenance had acquired during these years of discipline. More of her mother's expression had come than could have been thought possible in features of such a different mould, formed for so ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in her presence falls Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her Loses discountenanced, and like Folly shows; Authority and Reason on her wait, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally; and, to consummate all, Greatness of mind and Nobleness their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelick placed. To whom the Angel with contracted brow. Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine; and be not diffident Of Wisdom; she deserts thee ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... manhood might be possible beside it, for a season. Beside it; or even, if you will, by means of it, and in virtue of it, though that is by no means so certain as is often supposed. Alas, no: the reflective constitutional mind has misgivings as to the origin of old Greek and Roman nobleness; and indeed knows not how this or any other human nobleness could well be "originated," or brought to pass, by voting or without voting, in this world, except by the grace of God very mainly;—and remembers, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... occasion he happened to be at some high festival of the M'Kenzies at Castle Braan. One of the guests was so exhilarated by the scene of gaiety, that he could not forbear an eulogium on the gallantry of the feast, and the nobleness of the guests. Kenneth, it appears, had no regard for the M'Kenzies, and was so provoked by this sally in their praise, that he not only broke out into a severe satire against their whole race, but ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... me, "To dare and die so divinely and leave such a record is to be transfigured on a mountain top, a master symbol to all men of cloud-robed human victory, angel-attended by reverence and peace...a gospel of nobleness and faith." And another, "How truly 'God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.' Mr. Hubbard went to find Lake Michikamau; he failed, but God spelled 'Success' of 'Failure,' and you brought back ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be. There has just reached us, it may be, the nobleness of some such silent behavior, not to be forgotten, not to be remembered, and we shudder to think how it fell on us cold, though in some true but tardy hour we endeavor ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Ruskin says: "The love of Nature is an invariable sign of goodness of heart and justice of moral perception; that in proportion to the degree in which it is felt, will probably be the degree in which all nobleness and beauty of character will also be felt; that when it is absent from any mind, that mind in many other respects is hard, worldly, and degraded." The love of Nature has ever been characteristic of ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... Earl assures us that he could not but wish to make a handsome return for the Venus and Adonis; and that whatever of the kind he did was bound to be something rich and rare; while it was but of a piece with his approved nobleness of character, to feel more the honour he was receiving than that he was conferring by such an act of generosity. Might not this be what Shakespeare meant by "the warrant I have of your honourable disposition"? That the Earl ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... formerly touching her liberty, and not long continuing here after her resignation; and she thanked him for his advice, and said, that in case those here should not deal justly with her, she hoped she should find the Protector a friend to her, and that she did put herself upon his nobleness and friendship. Whitelocke told her, that the Protector was a great lover and maintainer of justice and honour, and had a particular affection to her Majesty, which he believed she would find him ready to manifest upon this or any other occasion, and find him a true ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... incapacity on proper occasions to express, and on improper ones to control it. The pride of a gentleman of the old school used to be in his power of saying what he meant, and being silent when he ought (not to speak of the higher nobleness which bestowed love where it was honorable, and reverence where it was due); but the automatic amours and involuntary proposals of recent romance acknowledge little further law of morality than the instinct of an insect, or the effervescence ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... fresh-coloured; and beaming with health, spirit, and vivacity. Its almost womanly sweetness was chastened and redeemed by the massiveness of the head, the deep penetrating eye, and an aspect of uncommon elevation and nobleness. Till the last, he was the very personification of the old Dux—the Duke of Chivalry—the foremost leader and commander of the people. But instead of chained mail and helmet, he was to be seen every day walking about amongst his people in hoddin-gray ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a continuance of the matrimonial tie, which bound them together when all the world supposed that he wished it sundered, seems to have resulted from a conscientious sense of duty, and implies certain latent traits of generosity and nobleness in Charles's character, which, though ordinarily overpowered and nullified by the influences of folly and vice, still always seem to have maintained their hold, and to come out to view from time to time, in the course of the gay monarch's life, whenever ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... cares and mean anxieties, they add many a comfort and many a source of culture. But, after all, a true, lofty life may be lived with a very small modicum. There is no proportion between wealth and happiness, nor between wealth and nobleness. The fairest life that ever lived on earth was that of a poor Man, and with all its beauty it moved within the limits of narrow resources. The loveliest blossoms do not grow on plants that plunge their greedy ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... suppose it would be admitted, even in New Hampshire, that no man ever commended himself to general favor, I may say to general admiration, by a wiser, more prudent, or more honorable bearing, amid the greatest and most trying difficulties. Indeed, such was his conduct of affairs, and such the nobleness of his whole character, as displayed in his intercourse with the government of the State, with a rival institution under the public authority, and with all classes of men, that not a few who began with zeal for the college over which he presided, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... consequences of so doing, and news also reached Luther of the troubles and distress of his other friends, he repeatedly sent to them at Augsburg fresh words of encouragement, comfort, and counsel, which remain to attest, more than anything else, the nobleness of his mind and character. He speaks, as from a height of confident, clear, and proud conviction, to those who are struggling in the whirl and vortex of earthly schemes and counsels. He has gained this ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... this generous outspoken man was esteemed in his own time. To us, in ours, it has been given still more to know the noble son of 'that giant brood,' whose name will be loved and held in honour as long as people live to honour nobleness, simplicity, and genius; those things which ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... Sir Carados by the collar and pulled him under his horse's feet, and then he alighted and pulled off his helm and struck off his head. And then Sir Launcelot unbound Sir Gawaine. So this same tale was told to Sir Galahad and to Sir Tristram:—here may ye hear the nobleness that followeth Sir Launcelot. Alas, said Sir Tristram, an I had not this message in hand with this fair lady, truly I would never stint or I had found Sir Launcelot. Then Sir Tristram and La Beale Isoud went to the sea ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... across, and on which the first step no more allowed of second thoughts than Caesar's passage of the Rubicon; untiring study, knowledge as extensive as the science of his day, skillful but honorable management of courts to persuade them to truth; propriety of demeanor, nobleness, and dignity in outward bearing, which afford proof of greatness of mind and attracts eyes and hearts; language adapted to the grandeur of his thoughts; eloquence which could convince kings and quell the mutiny ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... plans of check and reform,—you are seized with a passionate desire to do something great for the world, and you are ready to speak the truth fearlessly on all occasions. But just think of the enormous task it would be to stir to even half an inch of aspiring nobleness, the frightful mass of corruption in London to-day! In all trades and professions it is the same story,—everything is a question of GAIN. To begin with, look at the Church, the 'Pillar of the State!' There, all sorts of worthless, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... received this letter he regarded it as only a passing cloud-shadow. "To-day I have a long letter from Greeley, full of sharp, pricking thorns," he wrote Weed. "I judge, as we might indeed well know from his nobleness of disposition, that he has no idea of saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it is sad to see him so unhappy. Will there be a vacancy in the Board of Regents this winter? Could one be made at the close of the session? Could he have it? Raymond's nomination and election is hard ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Lord Ainsworth exhibited nobleness of mind in his generosity to the humble miller and his daughter, Patty; when he found her blessed with all the qualities that captivate and endear life, and knew she was capable of adorning a higher ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... venomous gore, than Saint George likewise took his death's wound by the deep strokes of the dragon's sting, which he received in divers parts of his body, and bled in such abundance that his strength began to enfeeble and grow weak: yet, retaining his true nobleness of mind, he valiantly returned victor to the city of Coventry, where all the inhabitants stood without the gates to receive him in great royalty, and to give him the honour that belonged ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, and that little master should be enjoined by his mama, in case of an affront, to resort to his master for redress and protection. To the custom, indeed, as it now prevails, the English youth are, in a great measure indebted for their nobleness and manliness of character. Two boys quarrel, they agree to box it out—they begin and they end by shaking hands; the enmity terminates with the contest—And what is this but a lesson of courage, magnanimity, and forgiveness? the principles ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... still purer and also nobler for the fruits and for the seeds in them; and this is done by means of heat from the sun. Here the branches, leaves, and fruit are distinct, and yet they extract together and instantly and from the same soil foods of such different purity and nobleness. ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... that Protestantism is daylight, that Popery is darkness, and that the sun is rising. They believe with Carlyle that "Popery cannot come back any more than paganism, which also lingers in some countries." They also believe with the sage that "there is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man who actually and earnestly works; in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair." So they work every day and all the day, save on rare occasions, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... reasonable that one should capture the lamb and another go off with the fleece. If they had been willing to participate in our discoveries, use their means and risk their persons, they would have given evidence of their honour and nobleness, but, on the contrary, they show clearly that they are impelled by pure malice that they may enjoy the fruit of our labours equally with ourselves.' Against folk of this sort Champlain felt he had to protect the national interests which were so dear to ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... characteristic kindness of its representative in Charleston, the appeal was promptly responded to. The consul attended him in person, and even provided from his own purse things necessary to make him comfortable. We could not but admire the nobleness of many acts bestowed upon this humble citizen through the consul, showing the attachment and faith of a government to its humblest subject. The question now was, would the Executive release him? Mr. Grimshaw had interposed strong objections, and made unwarrantable ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Especially valuable and helpful have we found his obiter dicta on the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture; for example, when he says of the Tuscan palaces that "in their large dependence on pure symmetry for beauty of effect, [they] reproduce more than other modern styles the simple nobleness of Greek architecture." And we would note also what he says of the Albani Antinoues. It must be a nimble wit that can keep pace with Mr. James's logic in his aesthetic criticism. It is apt to spring airily over the middle term to the conclusion, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... is not alone and isolated, in a world where it is advisable for him to take and keep all that he can; but that he is one of a great fellowship of emotions and interests, and that his happiness depends upon his becoming aware of this, while his usefulness and nobleness must depend upon his disinterestedness, and upon the extent to which he is willing to share his advantages. The teaching of civics, as it is called, may be of some use in this direction, as showing a boy his points of contact with society. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... spare Antinous; The world reputes thee valiant, do not soyle All thy past nobleness with such a cowardize. As murthering innocent Ladies will ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... go to Guerande after reading this history you cannot fail to quiver when you see that blazon. Yes, the most confirmed republican would be moved by the fidelity, the nobleness, the grandeur hidden in the depths of that dark lane. The du Guaisnics did well yesterday, and they are ready to do well to-morrow. To DO is the motto of chivalry. "You did well in the battle" was the praise of the Connetable ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... moment, as if unbelieving, and then, as though satisfied, made obeisance like a fellow well used to ceremonial. "I trust my lord, in his infinite strength, will pardon my sin in not knowing him by his nobleness before. But truth to tell, I had looked to see ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... himself saw me, and he bowed with the most marked civility of manner; my courtesy was the most ungrateful, distant, and cold ; I could not do otherwise ; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause, so impossible I found it to titter one word of admiration for a performance whose nobleness was so disgraced by its tenour, and so conscious was I the whole time that at such a moment to say nothing must seem almost an affront, that I hardly knew which way to look, or what to do with myself.(267) ' In coming downstairs ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... spite of all that earth can inflict or can take away; the call to take up the Cross and follow Him that was crucified; the warnings and the promises, the precepts and the prohibitions; let him think of the Leader who never flinched, of the Lawgiver who outdid His own law; let him think on the nobleness of the aims to which He pointed; of the promise of inward peace made to those who sacrificed themselves, made by our Lord and re-echoed from the very depths of our spiritual being; let him think of the sure help promised in return for absolute trust, tried ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love. Stephen had the fibre of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal; but in the same moment—how could it be otherwise?—that pleading beauty gained new power ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... in her look there seemed to be written the history of all the prayers and yearnings of her youth over the pretty wayward child who had been her joy and torment. Rose could not but meet that look—its nobleness, its humble surrender. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at work in the youth which, together, saved him from the follies about him: first, and greater, the nobleness of character which was his by heredity; and, second, the high ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... thou be that passeth by Where this corps entombed lie, Understand what I shall say, As at this time, speake I may. Such as thou art, sometime was I. Such as I am, shalt thou be. I little thought on th' oure of death, So long as I enjoyed breath. Great riches here did I possess, Whereof I made great nobleness; I had gold, silver, wardrobes, and Great treasure, horses, houses, land. But now a caitife poore am I, Deepe in the ground, lo! here I lie; My beautie great is all quite gone, My flesh is wasted to the bone. My house is narrow now and throng, Nothing but Truth ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... you with a question of which the answer was preordained, to ask you how a countenance could fail to be noble of which the measurements were so correct. You could contest neither the measurements nor the nobleness, and had to feel that Mrs. Farrinder imposed herself. There was a lithographic smoothness about her, and a mixture of the American matron and the public character. There was something public in her eye, which was large, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... might of anguish in a fragile woman, the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the presence of her woman's greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so great in its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look on life as the raw material of a passion ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... fixed star of loftiest consciousness. The inner life begins when the soul becomes good, and not when the intellect ripens. It is somewhat strange that this inner life can never be formed out of evil. No inner life is for him whose soul is bereft of all nobleness. He may have full knowledge of self; he may know, it may be, wherefore he shuns goodness; and yet shall he seek in vain for the refuge, the strength, the treasure of invisible gladness, that form the possessions of him who can fearlessly enter ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... money—I suppose I should be driving about in that fine phaeton you speak of. That is very good: I like driving, and I should be pleased with the appearance of the trap and the horses. But what do you fancy I should think of myself—what would be my opinion of my own nobleness and generosity and humanity—if I saw Sheila Mackenzie walking by on the pavement, without any carriage to drive in, perhaps without a notion as to where she was going to get her dinner? I should be a great hero ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... emotions. The conclusion is, therefore, unavoidable, that every soul can become great. By processes of culture to which it is able to subject itself, it can perpetually increase in wisdom, in strength, and in nobleness. ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... of the Royal Geographical Society, after a copious notice of his life, summed it up in these words: "As a whole, the work of his life will surely be held up in ages to come as one of singular nobleness of design, and of unflinching energy and self-sacrifice in execution. It will be long ere any one man will be able to open so large an extent of unknown land to civilized mankind. Yet longer, perhaps, ere we find a brighter example of a life of such ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... it was with a mind that, casting off the burdens of the past, looked serenely and steadily on the obstacles and hardships of the future. We have seen that a scruple of conscience or of pride, not without its nobleness, had made him refuse the importunities of Gawtrey for less sordid raiment; the same feeling made it his custom to avoid sharing the luxurious and dainty food with which Gawtrey was wont to regale himself. For that strange man, whose wonderful felicity of temperament and constitution rendered ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
