"Self-sacrifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humiliation. Yet many even of these had earnest and sincere faces, and I could not think so much as I ought, perhaps, of their idle life, and the fleas in their coarse brown cloaks. I confess, indeed, I felt rather a sadness than an indignation at all that self-sacrifice to an end of which I could but dimly see the usefulness. With some things in this grand spectacle we were wholly charmed, and doubtless had most delight in the little child who personated John the Baptist, and who was quite naked, but for a fleece folded about ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the same provincialized spirit, the same family ambitions, feuds, hates, and coalitions, with some exceptional passages, characterize the whole history. Not that there will be found any want of heroism, or piety, or self-sacrifice, or of any virtue or faculty, necessary to constitute a state, save and except the power of combination, alone. Thus, judged by what came after him, and what was happening in the world abroad, Brian's design to re-centralize the island, seems ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Dickens or Father Christmas might have stood for the Time-Spirit. Many good things had Marindin said of Ibsen and Nietzsche and the modern apostles of self-development who sneered at the Gospel of self-sacrifice, and at all the amiable virtues our infancy had drawn from "The Fairchild Family" with its engaging references to Jeremiah xvii. 9. But now he was breaking out in a new way, and I missed the reassuring twinkle in ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... finances, were at their lowest ebb, and she took this step in the almost certain conviction that in a few months at least she would be a widow. The best that she hoped for was to make his last days as comfortable and happy as possible, and that her self-sacrifice was to receive the bountiful reward of fourteen rich years in his companionship, during which time she was to see him win fame and fortune by the exercise of his genius, was far from ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... mind or mar his usefulness. Looking on his work as the work of God, and therefore believing implicitly in its final success, he threw his whole heart into it, devoting to it time, talents, wealth and life, and pursuing it with a courage that never quailed and a heroism of self-sacrifice that never faltered. Profoundly religious, his great aim was to establish it on the solid foundation of faith and piety. For this end, he looked carefully from the beginning to the moral elements of the little ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the Minamoto chief escaped from the fight and took refuge in the house of his concubine, Enju, at Awobaka in Owari. There they were surrounded and attacked by the Taira partisans. The end seemed inevitable. Respite was obtained, however, by one of those heroic acts of self-sacrifice that stand so numerously to the credit of the Japanese samurai. Minamoto Shigenari, proclaiming himself to be Yoshitomo, fought with desperate valour, killing ten of the enemy. Finally, hacking his own face so that it became unrecognizable, he committed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the purest self-sacrifice others. Joel felt that there ought to be a heaven for these latter, yet he hoped that there was no hell for the former. For who can save himself from his own timidity, and who can protect himself from ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... yourself: 'All I want to do is go back home.' But I ask you, is it fair to deprive your wife and kids of a fortune which God himself places within reach of your hand? Is it fair to abandon your motherland in this solemn moment when she most needs the self-sacrifice of her sons, when she most needs her humble sons to save her from falling again in the clutches of her eternal oppressors, executioners, and caciques? You must not forget that the thing a man holds most sacred on earth is ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... the portrait was narrow-chested, clothed in black. So was Julius March. He had long-fingered, finely shaped hands. So had Julius. He gave her the impression of a person endowed with a capacity of prolonged and silent self-sacrifice. So did Julius. She wondered about his story. For Julius, at least—little as she or he then suspected it—the deepest places of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... feelings, a dislike of criticism with a reluctance to reply to it, though never forgetting the attack, a certain timidity with men, a fondness for dress and luxury, an extreme love of conversation, generosity to the point of self-sacrifice, and a religious turn of mind in a sceptical century. His connection with the salons of Paris, where so much of his life was spent in the society of women, probably contributed largely to develop those traits ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... be king only through his own and his adherents' magnanimity, Charles Edward seemed, in the second period of his life, to feel as if he had a right over everything, and nobody else had a right over anything; all sense of reciprocity was gone; he would accept devotion, self-sacrifice, generosity, charity—nay, he would even insist upon them; but he would give not one tittle in return; so that, forgetful of the heroism and clemency and high spirit of his earlier days, one might almost think ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... clerk. The former would probably make a fairly accurate guess at the circumstances responsible for the rumour, and act accordingly. He glanced at Hartley standing awkwardly before him, and, not without a sense of self-sacrifice, resolved ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... the years of revolution in Italy is a story of great things and small, like most human records; but, when all is said, the great predominate, for no blunders could efface the readiness for self-sacrifice displayed by the whole people. The experience of these years was bitter, but possibly necessary. It destroyed illusions. It showed, for instance, that in the nineteenth century a free and independent Italy under the hegemony of ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... in Alice Lancaster's eyes was softer than it had been for a long time, for it was the light of self-sacrifice that shone in them. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... conscience and the intellect as it is found to be by many thoughtful Christians, then it could not possibly have exercised over the minds and hearts of men a compelling fascination, nor could it have been the root of heroic self-surrenders, of touching and pathetic examples of self-sacrifice in the service of man. Something more there must be in it than lies on the surface, some hidden kernel of life which has nourished those who have drawn from it their inspiration. In studying it as one of the Lesser Mysteries ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... would insinuate that I was a child myself; troubled matrons would purse their lips, and say, "I can't tell you, my dear. You are too young." Certainly, oh, most certainly, men of all ages would put me down as a designing minx! In vain industry, self-sacrifice and generosity—that young face, that bright youthful colouring would nullify all ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... silent, impressed by her nobility, her loyalty. Although the joy ebbed from his craving heart, he saw the justice of her self-sacrifice. ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... from her face, and her eyes grew rather sad as she reflected that her happiness had been purchased at the cost of his pain and self-sacrifice. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... thumping rhythm of her climb, dashed up, cried out at the seconds wasted in unlocking the door. She tiptoed into the bedroom—and found her mother just as she had left her. In Una's low groan of gladness there was all the world's self-sacrifice, all the fidelity to a cause or to a love. But as she sat unmoving she came to feel that her mother was not there; her being was not in ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... change. She saw that it was obviously the thing that should happen. If the match had been arranged by the entire city of Boston it could not have been more obvious. But she argued with him that marriage was a mutual self-sacrifice, and that until she felt ready to make her share of the sacrifice it was impossible for her ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... is possible. It may be held that the morality of self-restraint and self-sacrifice are opposed—as Huxley says they are opposed—to the methods of cosmic evolution; and yet the "gladiatorial theory of existence" may not be repudiated; but morality may be modified to suit the claims of evolution. ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... lofty passions, surpassing intellect and measureless love of their country and countrymen—a career so brilliant and instructive even in the last hours of gloom—he will endeavour to infuse into the history of their struggles and their fate, that generous tenderness toward others, that spirit of self-sacrifice and supreme love of truth, which were ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... rights, and the very supremacy which the slaveholders enjoyed was fatal to this feeling. Virginia and Kentucky were rich in independent character, but public spirit is better than this, for it cares for the independence of all through the self-sacrifice of each. That was the secret which Ohio early learned from New England, and which kept her safe from slavery when it pressed so hard upon her in the friendship as well as ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... life or pampering or adorning the body, but perhaps to save father or kin from ruin or starvation. The Yoshiwara has, of course, other recruits, but in the main its inmates are not the victims of lust but of self-sacrifice. There is too often a whole tragedy in the story of a Japanese girl of this kind, and it is deplorable when the self-righteous European comes along and points the finger of scorn at her. I am aware that though ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... grand old forehead lay the dream of his whole life gasping in its death agonies. The cruel phantom of dominion and power, hateful to me, clutched me through the heart of the only parent I have ever known. His life or death was in my hands. A divine power swayed my soul; I resolved upon self-sacrifice. Consent quivered from my shrinking lips—I gave my trembling hand to the unknown, unloved, insupportable. Alas! all are alike abhorrent to me who speak not with thy voice, look not with thy eyes, breathe not with thy breath, love not with thy soul! The lord of the castle has now a son ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not appreciate, as they found the idea of the Messiah's death unthinkable. Jesus, however, saw in it the general law, that life must ever win its goal by disregard of itself, and called his disciples also to walk in the path of self-sacrifice. In order that the new lesson might not quite overwhelm the yet feeble faith of these followers, Jesus assured them that after his death and resurrection he would come as Messianic Judge and fulfil the hopes which his prediction of death ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... certainly you are so far successful that you are bringing the ascetic idea into discouragement and, with the younger folk, into contempt."[109] Welcome to the new joy of living, all honour to the old ascetics, and may a still nobler self-sacrifice take ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... Louvain brutally. Furious inhabitants having treacherously fallen upon them in their quarters, our troops with aching hearts were obliged to fire a part of the town as a punishment. The greatest part of Louvain has been preserved. The famous Town Hall stands quite intact; for at great self-sacrifice our soldiers saved it from destruction by the flames. Every German would of course greatly regret if in the course of this terrible war any works of art should already have been destroyed or be destroyed at some future time, but inasmuch ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... humbler functions, awful Power! I call thee; I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; Oh, let my weakness have an end! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy bondman let ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... fathers flung at their departing,—the mystic effluence of the spirits that trod these wilds and sailed these waters,—the courage and the fortitude, the hope that battled against hope, the comprehensive outlook, the sagacious purpose, the resolute will, the unhesitating self-sacrifice, the undaunted devotion which has made this heroic ground; cast these into your own glowing crucible, O gracious friend, and crystallize for yourself such a gem of days as shall worthily be set forever in your crown ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Tyrant Man himself who is chafing in his chain. Not only is a husband still liable for the wrongs committed by the wife whom he has no longer the power to restrain from committing them, but in many ways—in one very important way—his obligation to her remains intact after she has had the self-sacrifice to surrender all obligation to him. Moreover, if his wife has a separate estate he has to endure the pain of seeing it hedged about from her creditors (themselves not altogether happy in the contemplation) with restrictions ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... others refrained. Mary Louise stared at the detective with almost Peter Conant's expression—her eyes big and round. Irene thrilled with joyous anticipation, for in the presence of this sorrowing, hunted, white-haired old man, whose years had been devoted to patient self-sacrifice, the humiliation the coming disclosure would, thrust upon Mary Louise seemed now insignificant. Until this moment Irene had been determined to suppress the knowledge gained through the old letter in order ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... young nor handsome, but he considered it his duty to provide for her and the children, and not to let her marry a stranger. So you see that polygamy is not always sensual indulgence, and a man may practise greater self-sacrifice so than by talking sentiment about deceased wives' sisters. Hassan has 3 pounds a month, and two wives come expensive. I said, laughing, to Omar as we left him, that I did not think the two wives sounded very comfortable. 'Oh no! not comfortable at all for the man, but he take care of the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... too warm; but does not our holy religion teach us lessons of self-sacrifice and mortification?" said the princess, with a touching expression ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... lost; and the time may come sooner than you expect when you will be right glad of it. I know you cannot think so now, and we will not dwell on this topic. I can testify from four years' experience that no cause was ever defended with higher courage or more heroic self-sacrifice. But your South is not lost; and it will be the fault of its own people if it does not work out a grander destiny within the Union than it could ever achieve alone. But don't let us discuss politics. You have the same right to your views that I have ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... compelling appeal been made to you of all that you as a nation honor and hold true. Be worthy of those who went before you, and leave to your children the richest of all inheritances—the memory of fathers who in a great cause put self-sacrifice before ease and honor above life itself. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... from hard work. It is one of the follies of men to imagine that they can enjoy mere thought, or emotion, or sentiment! As well try to eat beauty! For happiness must be tricked! She loves to see men at work. She loves sweat, weariness, self-sacrifice. She will be found not in palaces but lurking in cornfields and factories and hovering over littered desks: she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child. If you look up suddenly from hard work you will see her, but if you look too long she ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... insufficient stock of clothes implies the small means of his family, soon has burnt into his memory the fact that poverty is contemptible. On entering the world, the lessons that may have been taught about the nobility of self-sacrifice, the reverence due to genius, the admirableness of high integrity, are quickly neutralised by experience: men's actions proving that these are not their standards of respect. It is soon perceived that while abundant outward marks of deference from fellow-citizens, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... in the early eighties. She imparted to its impersonation the subtle charm of her own sweet womanliness, which served to excuse Armand's infatuation and as far as possible lifted the play out of its unwholesome atmosphere of French immorality to the plane of romantic devotion and self-sacrifice. Her Camille seemed a victim of remorseless destiny, a pure soul struggling amid inexorable circumstances that racked and cajoled a diseased and suffering body into the maelstrom ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... deficiency occasioned by the Protestant defection, and confident of the final triumph of a Church, out of whose pale they believed could be no salvation, had scattered themselves over the continent, and with marvellous energy and self-sacrifice, were extending their influence among the natives. No boundaries can be placed to the visions of the enthusiastic religionist. His strength is the strength of God. No wonder, then, that the Roman Catholic priest should cherish hopes of rescuing the entire new ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... his friends gave him credit for being mad, for people are somewhat slow to believe in disinterested self-sacrifice; and the idea of a clergyman with a comfortable living in Norway, who had, besides, a wife and four small children, voluntarily resolving to go to a region in which men could be barely said to live, merely for the purpose of preaching Christ to uncivilised savages, seemed to them absurd. They ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... enable them to learn to live. Independence can only be established by the exercise of forethought, prudence, frugality, and self-denial. To be just as well as generous, men must deny themselves. The essence of generosity is self-sacrifice. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... offspring and adjunct of our condition here. But is there not an aspiration to character which points to something more spiritual and higher than conformity to the utilitarian code? Heroism and self-sacrifice are ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... she may become seized with a sentimental fit. This ends generally in a determination of self-sacrifice; and in such case she would tell the truth in defiance of you, and would be heedless of ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... you asked me for some recollections of those which had particularly impressed themselves upon me. It is hard to choose. The Third Battle of Ypres, to which I have referred, brought out many wonderful deeds of deliberate self-sacrifice. Take ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at that piece of broken quartz again, with the weak little film across it? it seems such a strange lovely thing, like the self-sacrifice of ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... feeling a million years old. She left the presence of Kedzie in a mood of tragic laughter. She was in one of those contemptible, ridiculous plights in which good people frequently find themselves as a result of kindliness and self-sacrifice. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... she should have been allowed to remain single. But the same wonder is often expressed, in actual life, in regard to old maids superior to Miss Roxy in education, accomplishments, and beauty, and her equals in vital self-sacrifice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "but there's no time like the present, believe me. For a man of real convictions this is a fine opportunity of self-sacrifice. You may not find another so favourable, so humane. There isn't even a cat near us, and these condemned old houses would make a good heap of bricks where you stand. You'll never get me at so little cost to life and property, which you are paid ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... to hear that he shared my views entirely. Although I had learned long since how little he considered his own comfort in comparison with that of those dear to him, how unselfish he was—in affection as in other matters—I must avow that I was unprepared for the readiness of his self-sacrifice in this case. We were both of opinion that if all went well, the marriage should take place as early as possible, so as to bring a thorough change in the clouded existence ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that individualism is the only salvation of the race. My husband, Mr. Vibert, believes in altruism, self-sacrifice and all the old-fashioned flummery of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... she should take charge during the following night. Afterwards the night duty was to fall equally between them. She was so shut up in herself that she did not recognise the full value of Mrs. Joll's self-sacrifice, but she did manage to express her thanks, and ask how Mrs. Joll could leave ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... funds outside of the current income of the Association, that there may be at least one Christian mission conducted by Congregationalists in this great northern mission field. Mr. Lopp's plea for "his people" and abandon of self-sacrifice both on the part of himself and his wife, impress every one, as ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... superior. Sometimes in the early centuries great evils and abuses sprang up in connection with monastic life. For example, monks might become fanatical and violent. But they furnished numerous examples of sincere piety, and of unselfish and intrepid self-sacrifice for the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... religion. While awaiting Madame's appearance, I sat in the veranda, on a cushioned sofa of fine Indian work, beside a table holding the newest books and magazines, receiving an impression of the charms with which self-sacrifice has been invested since the days of poor St. Thomas. Presently I was approached by a young Hindu, dreamy and picturesque, who said Madame Blavatsky would soon be with me. Next there advanced a youth who almost seemed an apparition; he proved to be a "lay chela," and his snowy garment ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... rid of the burden of self, which otherwise we should drag for ever. But surely in this there is a confusion of self with selfishness. Selfishness is another name for vice. Self is merely consciousness. Without a self, how can there be self-sacrifice? How can the most unselfish motive exist if there is nothing to be moved? "He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that loseth his life, shall find it," is not a doctrine of selfishness, but it implies a self. We have been rebuked in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... not without anxious feelings; but this young servant of the Most High had laid his all upon the altar, and his wife also possessed much of the spirit of self-sacrifice; and they could not think the Saviour who had said to those he had called and sent out to preach in his name: 'Lo! I am with you always,' would desert them among strangers. After uniting in family prayer he sought a sanctuary in an old barn, and there committed ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... press. She wheedled, she bullied, she threatened, she took a hundred other courses—all with one purpose. She was very often woefully indiscreet, but nobody can withhold admiration for her. Burton was scarcely a model husband—he was too peremptory and inattentive for that—but this self-sacrifice and hero worship naturally told on him, and he became every year more deeply grateful to her. He laughed at her foibles—he twitted her on her religion and her faulty English, but he came to value the beauty of her disposition, and the goodness of her ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... now is. A third is that both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together, and the fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher and continually higher ones. The human soul evolves from the savage to the saint—from animal instincts to the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot escape the conclusion that the race has evolved, is evolving and will continue to evolve until mental and moral perfection has ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... League "voiced" the fact that the professional agitators of the Suffrage movement were not patriots. Again they filled the land with words, while all the others of their sex were blazoning the page of their country's history with deeds of the noblest self-sacrifice, the most gentle daring. When we remember with what infinite patience the great emancipator was waiting for the hour when in his wisdom he discerned that he could "best save the Union by emancipating all the slaves," we realize what added sorrow ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... take leave of Gutenberg, with admiration for his patience, his perseverance, and his self-sacrifice in a cause which has produced such glorious fruits. He was one of those noble spirits who are endowed with a perception of what is good, and pursue it independent of worldly considerations. Posterity has ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... her Captain had given her on her last birthday. Mary had frequently admired it in times past and for months Marjorie had saved a portion from her allowance with which to buy it. She had a theory that a gift to one's dearest friends should entail self-sacrifice on the part of the giver. Mary's changed attitude toward her had not counted. She was still resolved upon giving her the chain. But how was she to do it? And suppose when she offered it Mary ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... exercise a thoroughly conscientious mode of regulating expenditure, eschewing prodigality, that vice of a weak nature, as avarice is of a strong one—how to be generous in giving; 'for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice, waste, on the contrary, comes always by self-indulgence'—how to withstand solicitations for loans, when the loans are to accommodate weak men in sacrificing the future to the present. The essay on Humility and ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... are a set of stupid, undignified, miserable wretches, quarrelling with each other, and trembling in the prospect of inevitable destruction. None of them even appears to have obtained the price of their self-sacrifice in worldly honours and advancement, except Mohareb; and he, though assured by destiny that there was one death-blow appointed for him and Thalaba, is yet represented, in the concluding scene, as engaged with him in furious combat, and aiming many ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... "Hurrah for self-sacrifice!" said Fullerton. "If your principles will allow you to take chicken and tongue sandwiches with you, ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... them at least 1500 years before Christ. From a gesture of propitiation of the gods, sacrifice gradually turned into a magic formula which would work automatically to procure desired ends and eliminate evil. In time the Hindus came to believe that the most effective type of sacrifice was self-sacrifice and suffering, accompanied by a refusal to injure others, or ahimsa.[53] Only the warrior caste of Kshatriyas was allowed to fight. In his autobiography, Gandhi brings out clearly the pious nature of ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... so easy to youth's foreshortening view, to keep the letter of his promise and bury the spirit out of his own sight and the sight of the world forever; then the self-pity and the pleading with fate for a little happiness as an advance deposit on the promise of lifelong self-sacrifice; then the perfumed days when thought was lulled and duty became a memory and a hope. Strangely enough, it was always duty, this unholy thing which he meant to do—this payment of a debt in base metal, when the pure gold of love had been promised. ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... wont in his happy childhood! Where got she the strength to resist the impulse? From her love, O, reader!—her mother-love, which, if thou wilt observe well, hath this unlikeness to any other love: tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and thence all its power of self-sacrifice. Not for restoration to health and fortune, not for any blessing of life, not for life itself, would she have left her leprous kiss upon his cheek! Yet touch him she must; in that instant of finding him she must renounce him forever! How bitter, bitter ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man—that which constitutes human goodness, human greatness, human nobleness—is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness—it is self-sacrifice—it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantages remote or present, because some other line of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of the Gringos, as it darted noisily in and out of the harbor, and carelessly flashed its search-light on the walls of the fortress, came to be regarded less as a nuisance than a blessing. For with noble self-sacrifice the harbor eels lent themselves to the deception. By hundreds they swarmed in front of the dazzling headlight; by dozens they impaled themselves upon the tines of the pitchforks. So expert did ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... Madame de Berny, and La Femme abandonnee was written the year Balzac severed his relations with his Dilecta. But it is especially in the gentleness and patience portrayed in Madame Firmiani, in the affection and self-sacrifice of Pauline de Villenoix for Louis Lambert, and the devotion of Pauline Gaudin to Raphael in La Peau de Chagrin that Madame de Berny is most strikingly represented. She was all this and more to Balzac. Furthermore, he may have obtained from her his historical color ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... more lofty, ideal; which may be manifested more simply, and therefore more perfectly, in the England of the nineteenth century, than in the Germany of the thirteenth. To enter into the meaning of self-sacrifice—to sympathise with any one who aims at it—not to be misled by counterfeits of it—not to be unjust to the truth which may be mixed with those counterfeits—is a difficult task, but a necessary one for any one who takes this work in hand. How far our author has attained these ends, others ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... to a height of joyous exaltation. The idea of Prometheus suffering all agonies for the sake of men came to her like a revelation. While she pondered over it, suddenly like the shining of a great light she understood the truth of "he that loseth his soul shall find it." The Christ-ideal of self-sacrifice meant the highest self-realization. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... blown phalanstery coming like a comet and expected every moment. We shortly would be in a blaze of glory! He loved to talk of the good things to be—of social problems worked out by science and by harmonic modes; to flatter himself that without great self-sacrifice, devotion and untiring industry, the world was to be regenerated. It seemed to his mind, that it could be done all at once by organization and enthusiasm, and it was only necessary to create enough of them to carry everything before them ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the temperature was in the minus sixties we did not enquire what it was. The day's march was bliss compared to the night's rest, and both were awful. We were about as bad as men can be and do good travelling: but I never heard a word of complaint, nor, I believe, an oath, and I saw self-sacrifice ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... an unvarying selfishness and greed. The new world was to them a field for plunder only. Each aimed to own it all, and to monopolize its produce. The priestly missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith did indeed pursue their ends with a self-sacrifice and courage which deserve all praise; they devoted themselves at the risk and often at the cost of their lives to the enterprise of winning souls, as they believed, to Christ. But the Church dignitaries who sent forth these soldiers of religion sought through them only to increase the credit ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... capable of self-sacrifice in their love." That would mean being his champion still, and letting him marry Janie Iver. She did not object much to her own part, but she cavilled suddenly at Janie's—or at Harry's relation to Janie. Would it ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... then when can it ever be learned and proclaimed, since there can never again be such a spiritual ploughing and harrowing and preparation for the seed? If our souls, wearied and tortured during these dreadful five years of self-sacrifice and suspense, can show no radical changes, then what souls will ever respond to a fresh influx of heavenly inspiration? In that case the state of the human race would indeed be hopeless, and never in all the coming centuries would there be ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their voices as they sang duet after duet together. The songs they sung were full of noble sentiment. Their voices mingled until they almost sounded like one rich and perfect note, as they sang of love which is undying and self-sacrifice which is ennobling. Quentyns felt a glow of elation filling his breast as his eyes rested on his lovely wife, and the tormentings of Hilda's conscience were soothed, and she too partly ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... what Colonel Smith calls "The Familiar Dogs," where we find an amount of intellect, which forbids us to say that they do not reason, and where self-sacrifice, fidelity, courage, and affection, in many instances raise them far beyond more gifted creatures. It will be advisable to follow the series of some established work in treating of them, and I have selected that of Colonel Hamilton Smith, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... relations of the capital were not kept oiled by the system of exchange of fictitious courtesies among the women; and it may be true that society at large—men are so apt, when left alone, to relapse—would fall into barbarism if our pasteboard conventions were neglected. All honor to the self-sacrifice of woman! ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of gifts and the sharing of choice possessions is very common. The emotion in its earliest form introduces the element of self-sacrifice for the loved one that is inseparable from the emotion in all of its normal stages of development. It likewise introduces the intense selfishness that comes from the desire to monopolize the allegiance of the one loved. An only child, who as a rule is very ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... she was certainly, though not intellectual, and though she talked little save with a few. It was strange. True as steel, possessed of that keen sense of justice and honor so strangely lacking in many women, with a passionate capability for love and devotion and self-sacrifice beyond power of fathoming, and above all with a clinging womanly nature that yearned for affection as a flower longs for light, she was yet the only girl out of all her set who had never had any especial attention. Perhaps ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... people in England, is the injustice of certain individuals being allowed to hold such immense tracts of country in their possession. We all know what came of the selfish policy of the landowners in France before the Revolution, which consigned them by hundreds to the guillotine. A little self-sacrifice, which, in the end, would have been for their own benefit, might have saved all this. The attempt to depopulate Ireland has been tried over and over again, and has failed signally. It is not more likely to ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... is due, no doubt, to the necessities of group survival; for only that nation, for example, can survive that can maintain the most loyal citizenship, the best institutions, and the largest spirit of self-sacrifice in its members. Human social groups, therefore, try to fit as many individuals as possible for the most efficient membership, and this necessitates caring for the temporarily weak, and also for the permanently incapacitated, in order that the sentiments of social ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... from the noblest families in every country in Europe, and had had princes of royal blood in their ranks; who claimed to act upon the purest and most exalted Christian principles; and who proved the sincerity of their professions by their lives of self-sacrifice, and their deaths, for the cause they had taken up; who had been honored and favored and dowered with gifts and privileges, in gratitude for their exploits—should suddenly have fallen into the blackest crimes. So it is no less difficult to understand how public opinion should ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sat down to luncheon, the preliminary attack was initiated. It was at first a vague discussion about self-sacrifice. They quoted instances from ancient History, such as Judith and Holophern, then, without any reason Lucretia with Sextus, Cleopatra who admitted to her intimacy all the enemy generals and reduced them to slavish servility. Then a fancy History ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... is not a partisan; he would deal equally toward all. Of strong devotion, of stout nobility, of unswerving faith and self-sacrifice, he must approve; and when these qualities are displayed in a contest of forces, the wisdom of means employed, or of ultimate views entertained, may be questioned and condemned; but the men ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... table, and our youth should become as familiar with the practical application of the one as of the other. The lives of great and good men should be held up for admiration and example, and especially the life and character of Jesus Christ, as the sublimest pattern of benevolence, of purity, and of self-sacrifice ever exhibited to mortals. In every course of studies, all the practical and preceptive parts of the Gospel should be sacredly inculcated, and all dogmatical theology and sectarianism sacredly excluded. In no school should the Bible be opened to reveal ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... story of the loyalty and self-sacrifice of a Bedouin boy is well worth the attractive new edition in which it now presents its rare pictures ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... he also apprehends a truth which the world is blind to. Or, after all, is this cheating when every lie is quick with a germ of truth? Is not such lying as this a self-desecration, if you will; but still more a strange, sweet self-sacrifice in the service of truth? At the lowest is it not required by the very conditions of our poor mortal life, which remains so sorry a thing, so imperfect, so unendurable until it is brought into fruitful connection with a future existence? This world of ours is a cruel, blundering, unintelligible world; ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... first time—and indeed it was for the first time—he really and thoroughly comprehended her self-sacrifice, the almost bizarre generosity of her implacably unselfish nature. He measured the force of her love and the greatness of her sacrifice, by the depth of her disillusion; and he began to wonder, almost as a child wonders at things, how he had been ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... could not subdue the feeling of exultation that came over him when she approached with her plea. He knew that it was a base sense of power that made him feel that he could punish his pride's offender by either denying or granting her appeal. The attitude of self-sacrifice appealed to his wounded vanity; he was tempted to profit by an exhibition of his own pain ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... forth, and so forth, in the most heartrending strain of insensate self-sacrifice and heroic self-abasement. The vainest and most heartless dog of a man stands abashed and helpless before such ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... life. He often wondered at my content with home and its seclusion, and owned what fears he had felt, before our marriage, lest I, accustomed to gayety and excitement, should weary of him, the thoughtful, book-loving man. It seemed he had made up his mind to all manner of self-sacrifice in the way of accompanying me to parties, and having guests at our own house. I did not exact much from him; I cared little for the gay world in which William no longer moved. I read with John his favorite books; I interested myself in the sciences ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... asserting that it will not undergo any; that the intention of the man of the tenth century in Europe was as good as that of the man of the twentieth, that the man of the tenth century was as capable of self-sacrifice—was, it may be, less self-seeking. But what I am trying to hint is that the shrinking of the world by our developed intercommunication has made us all ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... day's work at the anvil, that I am sorry I learned the trade, for I wet my feet, tore my dress, spoilt a pair of new gloves, nearly froze my fingers, got an awful headache, took cold, and lost a valuable breastpin, in this my labor of love. After such melancholy self-sacrifice on my part, I trust you will duly prize my gift. I can assure you that it is the last golden handiwork you will ever receive from ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, self-immolation, self- control &c. (resolution) 604; stoicism, devotion, martyrdom, suttee. labor of love. V. be disinterested &c. adj.; make a sacrifice, lay one's head on the block; put oneself in the place of others, do as one would be done by, do unto others as we would men should do unto ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... record of man's good deeds, it lies written in the laughter of the children, in the light of lovers' eyes, in the dreams of the young men; it shall not be forgotten. The fires of persecution served as torches to show Heaven the heroism that was in man. From the soil of tyranny sprang self-sacrifice, and daring for the Right. Cruelty! what is it but the vile manure, making the ground ready for the flowers of tenderness and pity? Hate and Anger shriek to one another across the ages, but the voices of Love and Comfort are none ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... wicks and pouring grease pleased him hardly better than reconciling infant damnation and a red-hot hell with the loveliness of Christianity. The lad remained discontented. His chief taste seemed to be for reading, and great were the ingenuity and the self-sacrifice whereby he secured books and leisure to read them. The resultant of these several forces was at last a suggestion from his father that he should take up, as a sort of quasi-literary occupation, the trade of a printer. James Franklin, an older brother of ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... untouched, what right have you to trifle with the feelings of a poor girl, and raise expectations you cannot and ought not to fulfil? You are too kind, when once you reflect, to inflict such pain, you, who cannot help being loved. Come away while it is time; come home, and have the merit of self-sacrifice. If your fancy is smitten, it will recover in its proper sphere. If it costs you pain, you know to whom you have always hitherto turned in your vexations. Dear Arthur, do not ruin yourself; only come back to me. Write at once; I cannot ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the dealer, Giovanni Battista della Palla, who was still intent on supplying the King of France with Italian works of art. For him he painted a Sacrifice of Abraham, which Vasari thinks one of his most excellent works. The face of the patriarch is full of faith, and yet self-sacrifice; the nude figure of Isaac, bronzed in the parts which have been exposed to the sun, most tenderly expresses a trembling dread, mingled with trust in his father; the landscape is also very airy and beautiful, and a characteristic group ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... instances, only by the names of the spots which witnessed their efforts of love in behalf of their savage brethren. The little French church at Sandwich, opposite Detroit, alone is left, a witness of the zeal and self-sacrifice of ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... College, the first and only College for teaching Christian Science Mind- healing, after accomplishing the greatest work of the [25] ages, and at the pinnacle of prosperity, is closed. Let Scientists who have grown to self-sacrifice do their present work, awaiting, with ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... which they had suffered developed a spirit of self-sacrifice among these indomitable people. Hale young men gave up their own food and shelter to the old and helpless, and worked their way back to parts of the frontier States, chiefly Missouri and Iowa where they were not recognized, and hired themselves out for wages, to purchase more. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... foreigners who in their pictures barely show in the horizon the men who dominate their history. I placed ours in the foreground of the scene; I made them leading actors in this tragedy, wherever I endeavored to represent the three kinds of ambition by which we are influenced, and with them the beauty of self-sacrifice to a noble ideal. A treatise on the fall of the feudal system; on the position, at home and abroad, of France in the seventeenth century; on foreign alliances; on the justice of parliaments or of secret commissions, or on accusations of sorcery, would not ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... those terms had been disputed and maintained in the generation preceding. Yet round those doctrines, in defence or in opposition, some of the best and most honourable principles of human nature used to be gathered—a high-minded love of liberty on the one hand, a no less lofty spirit of self-sacrifice and loyalty on ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Tivoli, near Rome, and subsequently to the grounds of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, from whence it was finally taken to its present site. This obelisk has a special interest because it commemorates one of the most beautiful and touching examples of self-sacrifice which the annals of paganism afford. We are apt to judge of Antinous from the languid beauty of the statue of him in the Roman galleries, as simply the pampered sycophant of a court. But behind his sensual beauty and softness there was an unselfish devotion which ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... whereas I treat it as a complex state of mind including not only diverse feelings or sentiments—sympathy, admiration of beauty, jealousy, affection—but the active, altruistic impulses of gallantry and self-sacrifice, which are really more essential to an understanding of the essence of love, and a better test of it, than the sentiments named by Spencer. He ignores also the absolutely essential traits of individual ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... young men running, with yells and contortions, over a bed of live coals twenty-five feet across to earn the favor of one such cruel goddess. The Chinese, though in worship they exhibit the milder sacrificial spirit of offering sheets of paper, yet in a more stolid way show an equal talent for self-sacrifice. A neighbor of Mr. Pike's, an excellent quiet fellow, having gambled with his own servant for his shop, stock and person, was seen one morning sweeping and serving customers, whilst the youngster sat leisurely smoking, the game having gone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... seen thousands, literally thousands, of food parcels intended for our prisoners of war in Germany falling to bits and incapable of being forwarded for want of skilled packing. The sight was enough to make angels weep. To think that so much self-sacrifice had been exercised in humble homes to save up bits of dripping, crusts of bread, broken cigarettes, and what not, in order that these should reach son or brother or sweetheart in Germany, yet packed so badly albeit by loving hands, that in the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... But he had a conscience. A clear conscience was his sole compensation as he faced the sardonic laughter which Joe led and which finished off his reputation as a dog of the old sort. The annoying thing was that his noble self-sacrifice was useless, for immediately afterwards the roaring ceased, Hagentodt having separated the combatants by means of a burning newspaper at the end of a stick. And the curious thing was that Alderman Keats ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... their fall: Persuasion flies Wing'd, from their grave: The hearts of men are turn'd To worship what they burn'd: Owning the sway of Love's long-suffering eyes, Love's sweet self-sacrifice; The might of gentleness; the subduing force Of wisdom on her mid-way measured course Gliding;—not torrent-like with fury spilt, Impetuous, o'er Himalah's rifted side, To ravage blind and wide, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... only babes that perished before relief came. Does not the fact that so many young children survived the disaster refute the charges of parental selfishness and inhumanity, and emphasize the immeasurable self-sacrifice, love, and care that kept so many of the little ones alive through that long, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... functions to the priesthood, cannot but admire the thoroughness and consistency with which the Catholic priesthood's idea is carried out. It would be hard to overstate the moral effect of that vast organised system of self-sacrifice ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... years later that I was in Paris and succeeded in picking up the thread of Carry's story. Hale and hearty, overflowing with health and happiness, the young doctor had gone to his work at the hospital. He came home blood-poisoned, to die in his wife's arms. It was a case of self-sacrifice in the cause of science, of heroic devotion to a fellow-creature. And the young widow was left alone again, with none to weep over (tears of anguish this time) but the little glory, who, poor thing, could only wonder, but not soothe. What can have become of Carry once more cast adrift ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... frustrated by her old beast of a mother, who, when the girl's answers did not suit, would beat her unmercifully. So he took to meeting Feodora on the highway, and giving her coppers carefully marked. For months he kept this up with wonderful self-sacrifice—the girl being a mere uninteresting angel. He met her daily in the roads and forest. His patience never wearied, his vigilance never flagged. Her most careless glances were conscientiously noted, her lightest words treasured ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... little episode had given each a spirit of self-sacrifice, which was to help them through many hard times, while it had put an idea into Morton's head that he was ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... Manuel Pereira, like another John Wilkes, is to have settled in his person great questions of constitutional liberty. The posterity which in after times shall read of his voluntary martyrdom and heroic self-sacrifice in the cause of suffering humanity, must be somewhat better informed than Mr. Pereira himself; for we observe that his clerkly skill did not reach the point of enabling him to subscribe his name to the petition for habeas ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... resolute efforts of the Parliament not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a maximum term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of rejection after rejection in England, they ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... of the Jews by the Russian-Polish anti-Semites is the more invidious under these circumstances, as 300,000 Jewish soldiers, among them many volunteers, are serving in the Russian Army, and as the self-sacrifice of the army and the Red Cross hitherto has been immeasurable. In the great congregations are special hospitals for Russian soldiers—regardless of their creed—founded by Jews and with Jewish money. Not a few Jewish ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Ghost is. Our body, we read in 1st Corinthians, is the temple of the Holy Ghost. It is to be holy in things like eating and drinking. How often a Christian comes to the consciousness that he takes or seeks too much enjoyment in that eating, eating for pleasure, with no self-denial or self-sacrifice in his feeding the body! How often we tempt one another to eat, and how often the believer forgets that this body is the very secret temple of the Holy Ghost and that every mouthful we eat and drink must be for the glory of God in such a way as to be perfectly well pleasing to Him! Beloved, ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... and as she laid out her best black silk she made a mental note of the fact that Fanny Foster was to have, sometime or other, a silk petticoat, made up to her for this day's work and self-sacrifice. For Grandma was one of those rare practical people who yet believed in respecting the foolish ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... of being mere man, mere woman only, while Cicely played? Such music as hers recalled and revealed the earliest splendour of the days when Poesy was newly born,—when gods and goddesses were believed to walk the world in large and majestic freedom,—and when brave deeds of chivalry and self-sacrifice became exalted by the very plenitude of rich imagination, into supernatural facts of heaven conquering, hell-charming prowess. Not then was man made to seem uncouth, or mean and savage in his attempts to dominate the planet, but strong, fearless, and endowed ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... now once more plunged into the troubled ocean of public affairs. Before following him into new scenes of self-sacrifice and disinterestedness in the service of his country, we pause to notice a pleasing act of private friendship, which, with his usual delicacy, he calls an act of simple justice. In consequence of the active part which he had taken in the French revolution, Washington's bosom friend, Lafayette, had ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... repayment to the government was, that only half the amount advanced should be refunded. Many private individuals, both in Ireland and in Great Britain, exhibited a noble generosity; and the heroic self-sacrifice of clergymen, medical men, and others, in the midst of the famine and plague-stricken people, cannot be too much commended. The liberality and exertions of the Irish residents in England and Scotland was much to their own honour and to the reputation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... whose civilisation is in itself proof both of capacity to judge and of having judged rightly—what an awful admission do unbelievers require us to make, when they bid us think that all these ages and countries have gone astray to the imagining of a vain thing. All the self-sacrifice of the holiest men for sixty generations, all the wars that have been waged for the sake of Christ and His truth, all the money spent upon churches, clergy, monasteries and religious education, all the blood of martyrs, all the celibacy of priests and nuns, all the self-denying ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... celebrations of royal clemency which, according to Gulliver, the king of Lilliput always prefixed to his most sanguinary decrees. If women are better than men in anything, it surely is in individual self-sacrifice for those of their own family. But I lay little stress on this, so long as they are universally taught that they are born and created for self-sacrifice. I believe that equality of rights would abate the exaggerated ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... devoted his time gratuitously to the furtherance of this branch of its operations, actuated only by a desire to promote an important public undertaking. The whole practical management of the work (I do not speak of engineering, little of which could be required) devolved on Mr. Craig; and with much self-sacrifice, he threw into it all that zeal and intelligence which, with universal goodwill, have acquired for him the high estimation in which he is ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Christian field of action being a world of grace enveloping the world of nature, many transitory reversals of acknowledged values may take place in its code. Poverty, chastity, humility, obedience, self-sacrifice, ignorance, sickness, and dirt may all acquire a religious worth which reason, in its direct application, might scarcely have found in them; yet these reversed appreciations are merely incidental to a secret rationality, and are justified ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... in the South, though Peace spread her mantle over the whole united nation. Her people had fought valiantly, and made sacrifices which no one beyond their borders can understand or appreciate. If the devotion and self-sacrifice of the South, the bravery and determination with which her sons fought, and the heroism with which they suffered and died, were the only considerations, they deserved success. But thirty years of peace have made the South ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... privileged; they pretend that they alone have penetrated the mysteries of the kingdom of God; they have a language and science of their own; they believe that their zeal can accomplish everything. Their regular lives favor their vanity; but in truth they are incapable of self-sacrifice, and they go to their devotions with their hearts full of pride and presumption. Unhappy are those who pray in this manner! Unhappy are those whose prayers do not render them more humble, more submissive, more watchful over their faults, and more ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... believe that nations, and the different classes that constitute nations—and, above all, nations that desire to be free—can only live in security and credit under a condition of moral perseverance and energy; with feelings of devotion to their cause, and with the power of opposing courage and self-sacrifice to danger. But devotion does not exclude sound sense, nor courage intelligence. It would be too convenient for ambitious pretenders, to have blind and fearless attachment ever ready at their command. It is ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... there is such a praiseworthy spirit of self-sacrifice among the less wealthy citizens ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... thinks he has found out, and can master, the soul. It is a new asceticism, a denial of nature, a suicide of the senses which may lead to some literal suicide such as that in Rosmersholm, or may feed the brain on some air unbreathable by the body, as in When we Dead Awaken. It is the old idea of self-sacrifice creeping back under cover of a new idea of self-intensification; and it comes, like asceticism, from a contempt of nature, a distrust of nature, an ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... struck at the motives that actuated the self-sacrifice, veiled by the sullen manner which she almost began to respect. "What is done for such reasons must make you happy," she said; "though there may be much that ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... everything? You told me to go away for a while, to throw myself into the pleasures of other people; you reminded me of prayer and of the duty of forgiveness; you told me to try to put myself in his place, and reminded me of self-sacrifice, and then said at last that I must leave it to time, which sooner or later settles everything. I rejected everything that you suggested. But I have accepted everything since, and have learned a lesson and a service ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... intoned by the young priest. The candles, the incense, the intoned familiar words, animated her. Sommers had often wondered at the powerful influence this service exerted over her. To the training received here as a child was due, perhaps, that blind wilfulness of self-sacrifice which had first brought her ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... great a patriot as any of the old Saxons. In a burst of enthusiasm he joined the Special Constables; in an explosion of wrath, following the bombardment of Scarborough, he enlisted in the Kentish Fencibles, and in a wave of self-sacrifice he enrolled himself in the Old Veterans' Fire Brigade. And he had badges upon each lapel of his coat and several dotted all over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... fact, it has had to endure, but it is no part of my business here, nor, if I may venture to say so, is it the business of any Englishman to criticise at any time, except in pathetic admiration, an attitude so beautiful, and marked in its self-sacrifice by so delicate an effusion of scrupulous good taste. We are in presence of a field of those fluttering tricolor flags which fill the eyes of a wanderer over the battle-centres of the Marne with a ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... 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 continued and useful self-devotion ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... disgrace that had come upon his house to his over-indulgence, was now proportionately severe, and to his stern sense of honor the lawless son-in-law was a most unwelcome guest. Through that slow year of Toinetta's life Marina was the veritable angel in the house, not conscious of any self-sacrifice, but only of living intensely, making the living under the same roof possible for these two strong men who looked at life from such different standpoints, soothing the wounded pride of her father by her perfect sympathy while striving to rouse ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... hero of whom she had dreamed during her girlhood; the young prince clad in golden armor, and in quest of adventures and opportunities for self-sacrifice, who should awake her sleeping heart with ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... I was penetrated by Browning's great idea expressed over and over again—the expansion of Paul's dictum that faith is not certainty, but a belief without sufficient proof, a belief which leads to right action and to self-sacrifice. Of the 70 years of life which one might hope to live and work in, I had no mean idea. I asked in the newspaper, "Is life so short?" and answered. "No." I expanded and spiritualized the idea in a sermon, and I again answered emphatically "No." ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... entered life, and the inheritance of a glittering post at court in due time, as its legitimate consequence. Enjoyment, not ambition, seemed the principle of his existence. The contingency of a mitre, the certainty of rich preferment, would not reconcile him to the self-sacrifice which, to a certain degree, was required from a priest, even in those days of rampant Erastianism. He left the colonies as the spoil of his younger brothers; his own ideas of a profession being limited to a barrack in a London ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... takes its rank among the masterpieces of sculpture of all time. It is, in the first place, the incarnation of an abstraction, the spirit of patriotism roused to the highest pitch of warlike intensity and self-sacrifice, and in the second this abstract motive is expressed in the most elaborate and comprehensive completeness—with a combined intricacy of detail and singleness of effect which must be the despair of any but ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... your soul from? There aren't many like you. Look here, brother! Men like me leave no posterity, but their souls are not lost. No man's soul is ever lost. It works for itself—or else where would be the sense of self-sacrifice, of martyrdom, of conviction, of faith—the labours of the soul? What will become of my soul when I die in the way I must die—soon—very soon perhaps? It shall not perish. Don't make a mistake, Razumov. This is not murder—it is war, war. My spirit shall go on warring ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... certain Dugald Dalgettys to help its fortune, Don Rafael and my uncle had lent the revolutionists of Mexico their swords, for which they were repaid in the coin that "patriots" commonly receive for such amiable self-sacrifice. Republics are proverbially ungrateful, and Mexico, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer |
