"Benign" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the depth of thousand years, And marks the revel shine; Her dusky face is lit with sober light, Sibylline, yet benign. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... gracious and benign, that goest through the lurid air visiting us who stained the world blood-red,—if the King of the universe were a friend we would pray him for thy peace, since thou hast pity on our perverse ill. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... air benign, "Go on, ye human race! This lower world I you resign; Be fruitful and increase. The liquid fire of strong desire I've pour'd it in each bosom; Here, in this hand, does mankind stand, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the whole round of the shepherd's life—his duties, his solicitude, his ceaseless care of his sheep. But here, be it noted, in this opening verse, the reference, so direct and unmistakable, is not to an earthly shepherd; it is to the benign and constant Providence of Jehovah towards His children, to the untiring love of God, our Father and Saviour, for the souls He has created and redeemed. The Psalmist is looking back, in grateful remembrance, upon the history ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... of Nature can show, and which, of itself, ought to be sufficient to compel mankind to the belief, that they and every other part of the creation, are constantly under the protecting power of a superintending Being, whose benign dispensations seem as exhaustless as they ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... a quarter to nine when Madame von Marwitz, with Karen, who had hastened out to meet her, following behind, appeared at last, benign and unperturbed as a moon sliding from clouds. In the doorway she made her accustomed pause, the pause of one not surveying her audience but indulgently allowing her audience to survey her. It ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the gentleman was prepossessing. He was tall and spare, but with a benign expression of countenance. He was well dressed, wore gold spectacles, and his scant hair and a tuft of whiskers on either side of his cheeks were snowy white, while his features were regular. He must have been an unusually ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... subjects. The barons, whom a severe administration alone could have restrained, gave reins to their unbounded rapine upon their vassals, and inveterate animosities against each other; and all Normandy, during the reign of this benign prince, was become a scene of violence and depredation. [MN 1103. Attack of Normandy.] The Normans, at last, observing the regular government which Henry, notwithstanding his usurped title, had been able to establish in England, applied to him, that he might use ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... weak surmises of the gods or fond opinion about things after death to disorder themselves with; nor have they as much as imagination or notion that there is anything in these to be dreaded. I confess, had they left us the benign providence of God as a presumption, wise men might then seem, by reason of their good hopes from thence, to have something towards a pleasurable life that beasts have not. But now, since they have made it the scope of all their discourses of God that they ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... consideration for the many admirable virtues of la cure Sypher, yet there were certain maladies of the skin for which he personally would not prescribe it. For this, for that—he rattled off half a dozen of learned diseases—it might very well be efficacious. Its effect would probably be benign in a case of elephantiasis. But in a case of abrasion of the cuticle, where there was a large surface of raw flesh laid bare, perhaps a simpler treatment might ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... a brand-new flannel shirt and calico ditto, his hair—he is a light mulatto—frizzled to the most intense degree of corkscrewity, and a benign and self-satisfied smile irradiating his face, such as should illumine the features of a great artist when he knows that he has achieved something, the memory of which the world will not willingly let die. In truth, he needed but white kid gloves to have been worthy of standing ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... them much more than he would alone, Mrs. Douglass," said Mrs. Evelyn, who still had hold of Mr. Olmney's arm, looking round to the lady with a most benign face. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and prudence are the gifts of Heaven, for which I daily give thanks, without presuming to derive any merit from them myself. The title of Mother of the Country is, in my eyes, the most dear of all,—the only one I can accept, and which I regard as the most benign and glorious recompense for my labors and solicitudes in behalf of a people ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... in the back row of seats, behind a small iron table, slackening her muscles and leaning back, making the mere act of sitting down yield her her money's worth. The shadow of the awning turned the day to a benign coolness; there was a sense of privilege in being thus at rest in the very street, at the elbow of its passers-by. A crop-headed German waiter brought the cafe au lait which she ordered, and set it on the table before her two metal jugs, a cup and saucer, a little ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... they are but the Stewards of the Public; For the LAND is the PEOPLE'S FARM. The Expenses of the Government do not cause the Misery that surrounds us, but the enormous exactions of these 'Unjust Stewards.' Landed Monopoly is indeed equally contrary to the benign Spirit of Christianity, and destructive of The Independence and Morality of all Mankind. 'The Profit of the Earth is for all;' Yet how deplorably destitute are the great Mass of the People? Nor is it possible ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the river the River of May,—it is now the St. John's,—and on its southern shore, near its mouth, planted a stone pillar graven with the arms of France. Then, once more embarked, they held their course northward, happy in that benign decree which locks from mortal eyes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... accidentally jostled any person, he would (as they were all satisfied) have stopped to offer the most gentlemanly apologies: with his devilish heart brooding over the most hellish of purposes, he would yet have paused to express a benign hope that the huge mallet, buttoned up under his elegant surtout, with a view to the little business that awaited him about ninety minutes further on, had not inflicted any pain on the stranger with whom ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... captives grown supine, Chained to their task in sightless mine: Above, the bland day smiles benign, Birds carol free, In thunderous throes of life divine Leaps ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... what I admire in this subject even more than the activity of the Graces is the serene dignity of the Adonis. I have seen my old friend in many trying positions, but I never realised till now all the simpering absurdity, the flattered silliness, the senile coquettishness, of which his benign ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... returned to the Hemlock Farm at stated periods during the summer. He had, to be plain, sat down before Jane's heart to besiege it with the same ponderous benign calm with which he ate an egg or talked of death. There was a bronze image of Buddha in the hall at the Farm, the gaze of the god fixed with ineffable content, as it had been for ages, on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... 1503, among the ruins of ancient Antium, and it derives its name from its position in the belvedere, or open gallery, of the Vatican at Rome, where it was placed by Pope Julius II. It shows the conception which the ancients had of this benign deity, and also the high degree of perfection to which they had attained in sculpture. A modern writer gives the following account ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Thy Kingdom shall for ever be, Thy grace, might, wisdom, glory ever shine, As in the Triune majesty benign He reigns for ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... dreams, a form divine Of light and love, to soothe the thoughts that pine For what has been, to stem the tide of tears That inward flows upon the heart and sears Its inmost core. Her countenance benign, Where Love and Pity's chastened graces shine, Reflects the ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... form benign, O goddess, wear, Thy milder influence impart; Thy philosophic train be there To soften, not to wound, my heart; The generous spark extinct revive, Teach me to love and to forgive, Exact nay own defects to scan, What others are to feel, and know ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... graves under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... how reserved the employes of the police are—who do not forget—they would reverence these honest men as much as they do Cheverus. The police is supposed to be astute, Machiavellian; it is, in fact most benign. But it hears every passion in its paroxysms, it listens to every kind of treachery, and keeps notes of all. The police is terrible on one side only. What it does for justice it does no less for political interests; but in these it is as ruthless and as one-sided ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the fortunes of all books! Benign Ceruleans of the second sex! Who advertise new poems by your looks, Your "Imprimatur" will ye not annex? What! must I go to the oblivious cooks,[eo] Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks? Ah! must I then the only minstrel be, Proscribed from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize without alloy the sweet enjoyment of partaking in the midst of my fellow-citizens the benign influence of good laws under a free government—the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... teeming millions of this district don't exactly approve of you, and think that under your benign rule they are going to have a good time. It strikes me that you had better make arrangements. I act, as you know, by your orders. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Harry very heartily agreed. He had the highest respect for Gabriel as a man and a priest, and could not believe that he had wantonly committed a brutal crime, so repulsive to his benign nature, so contrary to the purity and teachings of his life. He was quite satisfied that the young man both could, and would, explain how the pistol had passed out of his possession; but he did ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... sunset when he reached the first fringes of the northward slope of the mountain. Here his reception was benign. On the banks of a tiny brook, rosy-gold in the flooding afternoon light, he found a bed of wild catnip. Here for a few minutes he rolled in ecstasy, chewing and clawing at the aromatic leaves, all four paws in air, and hoarsely purring his delight. When, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... chilling influences of Lake Huron, that spring began to show striking evidences of her rapid advances, and on reaching Detroit, the state of horticulture and fruit trees betokened a quite different and benign climate. The difference in latitude, in this journey, is full four degrees, carrying the voyager from about 46-1/2 deg. to about 42-1/2 deg.. This fact, which it is difficult to realize from the mere inspection ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... that he saw, corrugated about the brows, and with stiff iron-grey hair untrimmed about the ears. It shocked Romarin a little; he had hardly looked to see certain things so accentuated by the passage of time. Romarin's own brow was high and bald and benign, and his beard was like a broad shield ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... enough for all practical purposes while it does not endanger life. The Emperor K'ang Hsi, whose name is inseparably connected with one of the most valuable lexicons that have ever been compiled, forbade bambooing across the upper part of the back and shoulders. "Near the surface," said this benign father of his people, "lie the liver and the lungs. For some trivial offence a man might be so punished that these organs would never recover from the effects of the blows." The ruling system of bribery ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... procession through the field. Edna sat like a little queen guiding her ponies, and distributing smiles and gay speeches. Admiration and pleasure were as the breath of life to her; she was at once peremptory and gracious; she looked down at her escort with a sort of benign amusement. When Captain Grant handed her out of the low chaise, she made her way through the ladies with the air ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... swallow the contents of his flask, and as Dare choked and gasped himself back into the fuller possession of his faculties, and experienced the benign influences of whiskey, entertained at first unawares, his heart, always easily touched, warmed to the owner of the silver flask, and of the strong arm that was supporting him with an unwillingness he little dreamed of. His momentary jealousy of Charles in ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... himself the equal of the Gods, Man was given a punishment befitting such arrogance." He paused and took a breath, surveying the twenty-odd students in the classroom (and some, he told himself wryly, very odd) with a sort of benign boredom. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... deserved. Let us admit at the outset that Mr. Squeers is dead; but then he was dead before Arnold took in hand to reform our system of Education. Mr. Creakle, it is to be feared, still exists, though his former assistant, the more benign Mr. Mell, has to some extent supplanted him. Dr. Blimber is, perhaps, a little superannuated, but still holds his own. Dr. Grimstone is going strong and well. In a word, the Private School for bigger boys—(we are not thinking of Preparatory Schools for little boys)—still ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) "I shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set my house in order for the season. When do you come?" she asked, smiling on him from her benign ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... looking away from earth, - Oh, did they know! - this knowledge would do much more towards healing the sick and preparing their helpers 365:6 for the "midnight call," than all cries of "Lord, Lord!" The benign thought of Jesus, finding utterance in such words as "Take no thought for your life," would heal 365:9 the sick, and so enable them to rise above the supposed necessity for physical thought-taking and doctoring; but if the unselfish affections be lacking, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... of Cronus and Rhea. She was the goddess of Fire in its first application to the wants of mankind, hence she was essentially the presiding deity {49} of the domestic hearth and the guardian spirit of man, and it was her pure and benign influence which was supposed to protect ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... of the house, under the narrow eaves, and opening, I think, into the long kitchen, was one huge window, as high as the others, and as wide as it was high. How it found a place there I never knew, but nothing could be more benign in effect than its generous breadth. The panes were small and green and warped, after the manner of glass known to former times; but through it the sun poured a flood of warm light every morning, and on winter evenings the glow of the firelight within made a grand ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... Roussillon is a charming sketch. She is like one of Titian's old women, who still, amid their wrinkles, remind us of that soul of beauty and sensibility, which must have animated them when young. She is a fine contrast to Lady Capulet—benign, cheerful, and affectionate; she has a benevolent enthusiasm, which neither age, nor sorrow, nor pride can wear away. Thus, when she is brought to believe that Helen nourishes a secret attachment for her son, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... adapts may be as wise and skilful as he who invents and creates. The man who loves his people, plans and labors for their good, will not peril their welfare by his experiments, disdaining the help of those who have wrought before him, and the guidance of his contemporaries in examples, the benign results of which he may have had opportunity to witness. The truth appears to be that Lycurgus had respect to the reverence of the people for the ancient ways, and retained as far as he was able the suitable elements of the primitive ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... cannot, however, equal your boast of breakfasting, dining, and supping on them. As for the civilians[80]—peace be with them, and may the dust lie light upon their heads—they deserve this prayer in return for those sweet slumbers which their benign influence infuses into their readers. I fear I shall too soon be forced to disturb them, for some of our family being now at Kelso, I am under the agonies lest I be obliged to escort them into town. The ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... in the year of our salvation 1474,(5) on the sixth day of March, four hours before daylight on a Monday. A fine nativity truly, which showed how great the child would be and of how noble a genius; for the planet Mercury with Venus in seconda being received into the house of Jupiter with benign aspect, promised what afterwards followed, that the birth should be of a noble and high genius, able to succeed in every undertaking, but principally in those arts that delight the senses, such as painting, sculpture, and architecture. Having completed ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... there at Shirley, and it is doubtless a good likeness of the Father of our Country; but it is not just the George Washington that most of us have in our mind's eye. When the average American thinks of hatchets and cherry trees and abnormal truthfulness, the face that rises before him is that benign and fatherly one that he has seen a thousand times in the popular reproductions of the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. Just as for generations only the good has been told of George Washington, so ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... forth in raiment strange apparelled, And by kind fate was led Unto the spot where stayed my soul's desire. The beauteous nymph who feeds my soul with fire, I found in gentle, pure, and prudent mood, In graceful attitude, Loving and courteous, holy, wise, benign. So sweet, so tender was her face divine, So gladsome, that in those celestial eyes Shone perfect paradise, Yea, all the good that we poor mortals crave. Around her was a band so nobly brave Of beauteous dames, that as I gazed at these Methought heaven's goddesses ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a wholly wrong impression of what Bishop Berkeley calls 'the philosophy of fire' if we set before our minds in this connection, the raging element whose strength is in destruction. Let us rather picture to ourselves as the type of fire the benign and beatific solar heat, the quickener and fosterer of all terrestrial life. For according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire, the one destructive, the other what we may call 'constructive,' and which he called 'artistic'. This latter kind ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... were temporarily plugged, the child waved a demanding arm in the direction of the main exhibit to indicate a desire for the resumption of the narrative. But the ancient was not anxious to disturb so soon the benign and acceptable silence. In fact it was not until he observed the sergeant's look of inquiry ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Maro a faint warmth supplies, The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies: By Johnson's genial culture, art, and toil, Its root strikes deep, and owns the fost'ring soil; Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins, And grows a native of Britannia's plains. Soft-ey'd compassion, with a look benign His fervent vows he offer'd at thy shrine; To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid,[60] And helpless females bless'd his pious aid: Snatch'd from disease, and want's abandon'd crew, Despair and anguish from their victims flew; Hope's soothing balm into their bosoms ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... lay a smock of grey, All grimed with blood and smoke; A thankful sign to Heaven benign, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... requires ready action of the lower virtues. It often appears that a contemplative mind is more capable of action than an actively objective one. Dr. Emerson says: "It is good to know that it has been recorded of Alcott, the benign idealist, that when the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, heading the rush on the U.S. Court House in Boston, to rescue a fugitive slave, looked back for his following at the court-room door, only the apostolic philosopher was there cane in hand." So it seems that his idealism had some ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... me feel that they applied to me, youth is so vain and exacting even of the Lord's words. Nevertheless, as I went along the dark streets I heard them ringing in my ears with such a benign meaning as I never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... we refuse to count the menials as being such—were two in number, a lady and gentleman, both of advanced years. Their snow-white hair and benign countenances indicated that they belonged to that rare class of beings to whom rank and wealth are but an incentive to nobler things. A gentle philanthropy played all over their faces, and their eyes sought eagerly in the passing scene of the humble street ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... any,—nothing but kindness, forbearance, mutual confidence, and attention to each other's happiness. And that we may be less unworthy of so great a blessing, may we be assisted to cultivate all the benign and charitable affections and offices, not only toward each other, but toward our neighbors, the human race, and all the creatures of God. And in all things wherein we have done ill, may we properly repent our error, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... lady with a benign expression was said to be a tragic actress who was studying in secret for a season ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... frightened out of his wits at the position in which he found himself; but August was brave, and he had a firm belief that God and Hirschvogel would take care of him. The master-potter of Nuernberg was always present to his mind, a kindly, benign, and gracious spirit, dwelling manifestly in that porcelain tower whereof ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... her, but by my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which encrease the ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... himself violently away from the benign influence, "it was not to sympathize with Hector, but to conquer with Achilles, that Alexander of Macedon kept Homer under his pillow. Such should be the use of books to him who has the practical world to subdue; let parsons and women construe it ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Constitution the utmost unanimity should prevail. That all men are born equal, so far as the benefits of government extend; that each and every man is justly entitled to the enjoyment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so long as these benign benefits be not forfeited by infraction upon the rights of others; that freedom of thought and unmolested expression of honest conviction and the right to make these effective through the sacred medium of a fair vote and an honest count, are God-given ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... d'Alembert expresses his horror at the publication of an anti-Christian pamphlet, Le Testament de Jean Meslier,[531] and in another urges him to have it circulated in thousands all over France,[532] so Weishaupt is careful in general to exhibit the face of a benign philosopher and even of a Christian evangelist; it is only at moments that he drops the mask and reveals the grinning ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... of the laws of general utility, the only conscientious aim of human ambition. But though we both entertained these ideas, we differed in their application. Resentment added also a sting to my censure; and I reprobated Raymond's conduct in severe terms. Adrian was more benign, more considerate. He admitted that the principles that I laid down were the best; but he denied that they were the only ones. Quoting the text, there are many mansions in my father's house, he insisted that the modes of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... not dine jovially. The whole town of Vouvray was put in a ferment about the "affair" between Monsieur Vernier and the apostle of Saint-Simonism. Never before had the tragic event of a duel been so much as heard of in that benign ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... a furtherance of the generic life process. At its best, in its direct economic bearing, it is a conversion of the economic substance of the collectivity to a growth alien to the collective life process—very much after the analogy of what in medicine would be called a benign tumor, with some tendency to transgress the uncertain line that divides the benign from the malign growths. The two barbarian traits, ferocity and astuteness, go to make up the predaceous temper or spiritual attitude. They are the expressions of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. Both ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever have been ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... by this success, and by the daily progress of that luminous and benign spirit of liberty, which is diffusing itself throughout the world, and humbly hoping for the continuance of the divine blessing on our labors, we have ventured to make an important addition to our original plan, and do therefore earnestly solicit the support and assistance of all who can feel ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of feeling and sensation fine, By mild reserve from common eyes conceal'd, The ray of genius and the heart benign, In artless gaiety ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... which, however, has also this in common with that of the female mind, that evidently nothing sticks deeply, but is quickly wiped out by what any other lecturer, or writer, or politician has to tell you. I was prepared for indifference—I was not prepared for receptivity and that benign lady's smile, behind which ladies, like all people who are only clever, usually hide their inward contempt for the foolishness of mere men! I was prepared for abuse, and even a good fight—I was not prepared for an extremely faint-hearted criticism; ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... feeding strangers to go into disuse. We come among them as members of a superior race, and servants of a Government that desires to elevate the more degraded portions of the human family. We are adherents of a benign, holy religion, and may, by consistent conduct, and wise, patient efforts, become the harbingers of peace to a hitherto distracted and trodden-down race. No great result is ever attained without patient, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Ishmael rested from worldly labors and went to church to refresh his soul. But for this Sabbath's rest, made obligatory upon him by the Christian law, Ishmael must have broken down under his severe labors. As it was, however, the benign Christian law of the Sabbath's holy rest ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of our proudest sorrows, suggestive only of our least sordid ambitions; that we can meet here to renew our pledge of fealty to the ancient mother who did so much for the generations that have gone before us, and who will be as benign to those who, by-and-by, shall look back and call us fathers. The tie that binds us to our college is one of the purest, since it is that which unites us also with our youth; it is one of the happiest, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... imagine them coming back from the war, and pale, benign, leaning on their canes as returning heroes do in plays, talk across the footlights to real young soldiers you have just seen limping in with real wounds—pink-cheeked boys with heads and feet bandaged and Iron Crosses on black-and-white ribbons tucked into their coats, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... And Blackbird and Turtle with voice of pine; Ring-dove and Culver, and eke Hazar, * And Kata calling on Quail vicine; So fill with the mere and the cups make bright * With bestest liquor, that boon benign;— This site and sources and scents I espy * With ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... would be very angry with me for speaking, but he replied not a word. However, before that time on the following day, being the 21st of June, much to our great joy and astonishment, we saw the providential hand of our benign Creator, whose ways with his blind creatures are past finding out. The preceding night I dreamed that I saw a boat immediately off the starboard main shrouds; and exactly at half past one o'clock, the following day at noon, while I was below, just as we had ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... objects of contemplation, all the reveries of the traveller, must have a reference to ancient generations, and to very distant periods, clouded with the mist of ages.—Here, on the contrary, everything is modern, peaceful, and benign. Here we have had no war to desolate our fields: [Footnote: The troubles that now convulse the American colonies had not broke out when this and some of the following letters were written.] our religion does not oppress the cultivators: we are strangers to ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... benign approval as she leisurely began on her iced strawberries, "I had quite forgotten that you were such a ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... distinguished host had bidden farewell to his elder guests, whom he accompanied to the steps, he turned to me with a look so benign and affectionate I never shall forget it, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... suggest how important a personage she was in his estimation. Assured, as she thought, of her influence in Washington, she seems also to have aspired to equal influence in the Vatican. That would not be the first occasion on which Cardinals' hats had been bestowed through the benign feminine intercession. Reports from Rome were favorable; Archbishop Ireland's prospects ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... ere she crusht the Poles, Appealed to the benign Divinity; Then cut them up in protocols, Made fractions of their very souls— All in the name of the blest Trinity; Or when her grandson, ALEXANDER, That mighty Northern salamander,[1] Whose icy touch, felt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... has made attempts upon me. We owe our survival"—he pointed to a row of books upon a corner shelf—"to the knowledge which you have accumulated in half a life-time of research. In the face of science, in the face of modern scepticism, in the face of our belief in a benign God, this creature, Antony Ferrara, has proved himself ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... that she was the last branch of her house—a house to which the tutelage and protection of the miraculous Image, and the enmity and evil influence of the revengeful Vanda, had been peculiarly attached for ages. It seemed to her as if she were the prize, for the disposal of which the benign saint and vindictive fiend were now to play their ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... this letter is so long, I cannot close it without again expressing my appreciation of your soul-satisfying letter; so laden with the fragrance, the benediction of your love; so potent with the charm of happiness for me. To its benign influence my heart responds by the awakening of the highest and best emotions of my spiritual nature. Written in clear, plain English, it appeals to me as a letter of such sterling intelligence as only my ideal of a lover ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... to equal rights. It is fortunate that we have in Colorado an opportunity of bringing to bear the restraining, purifying and ennobling influence of women upon politics. It is a reform that will require all the benign influences of the country to sustain and carry out, and, as I hope for the perpetuation of our free institutions, I dare not neglect the most promising and potent means of purifying politics, and I regard the influence ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... said the vicar. "I must not longer intrude on you, but I am bound to tell you, Captain Maynard, that I consider your soul in imminent danger, and I earnestly pray that another day, ere it be too late, a benign influence may induce you more willingly to receive my ministrations. Farewell." And Mr Lerew, rising with a frowning brow, walked to the door, while the captain, sinking back on his pillow, rang his bell. Soon after Mr Lerew had returned to the drawing-room, the servant entered ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... nation was disposed to refer this to inexperience, or the ebullition of youthful spirit, and indulged the cheering anticipations which are usually entertained of a new reign and a young monarch. [1] Henry was distinguished by a benign temper, and by a condescension, which might be called familiarity, in his intercourse with his inferiors, virtues peculiarly engaging in persons of his elevated station; and as vices, which wear the gloss of youth, are not only pardoned, but are oftentimes popular ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... case—and altogether, no doubt, in the case of others less fortunate —all this good might be swept away for ever. We had seen the rich fruit-trees waving in the soft air, the tender herbs shooting upwards under the benign influence of the bright sun; and the next day we had seen these good and beautiful trees and plants uprooted by the hurricane, crushed and hurled to the ground in destructive devastation. We had lived for many months in a clime for the most part so beautiful that we ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... The great Clock ticks now in a private patriotic Clockmaker's apartment; no longer measuring hours of mere heaviness. Vanished is the Bastille, what we call vanished: the body, or sandstones, of it hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries to come, over the Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize; (Dulaure: Histoire de Paris, viii. 434.) the soul of it living, perhaps still longer, in the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... compelled to omit two or three pages, in which the author describes the interview, and gives his idea of the personal appearance and deportment of the President. The sketch appears to have been written in a benign spirit, and perhaps conveys a not inaccurate impression of its august subject; but it lacks reverence, and it pains us to see a gentleman of ripe age, and who has spent years under the corrective influence of foreign institutions, falling into the characteristic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... What can I do—it is too much joy—too much bliss! [Aloud.] Princess! the green garlands on the little window down there, the potted flowers offer a secret retreat—the little linnet in his cage is impatient for the return of his beautiful and benign mistress. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Highness the Duke of Connaught visited Mafeking in 1906, he was touched by the grateful references which Chief Lekoko made to the benign rule of His Royal Highness's late illustrious mother. And he assured the assembled Natives, in the name of His late Majesty King Edward VII, that the death of their beloved Queen would "not alter their status in any manner whatsoever as His Majesty took the same deep interest in ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... and break up The ice: let influence more benign Enter with four-years-treasured wine, Fetched in the ponderous ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... faces, their uncannily contrasting white teeth and eyeballs, their strange and varied rags lit up by the torches blazing where a gangplank lay ready for running out. And high and clear in the lovely June night sailed the moon, spreading a faint benign light upon hills and shores and glistening river, upon the graceful, stately mail steamer, now advancing majestically upon the wharf boat. Susan watched all, saw all, with quick beating heart and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... One at this, "may all the stars of the celestial regions look down upon your greatness with benign eyes, valiant knight, and shed every prosperity and valour upon your heart, that it may be the shield and safeguard of the abused and downtrodden race of duennas, detested by apothecaries, sneered at by squires, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his hands and smiled at Dan like a benign old Chips to a third-form schoolboy. "The Starship isn't going to Alpha Centauri or anywhere else. It's not going to leave the ground. I thought I'd live long enough to launch that ship and be one of its crew. Well, I won't. That ship wouldn't leave the ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... revolution, Wordsworth the dogma of private apotheosis; Byron's theory of life was one of liberty and self-sacrifice, Wordsworth's one of self-restraint and self-improvement; Byron's practice was dictated by a vigorous and voluptuous egoism, Wordsworth's by a benign and lofty selfishness; Byron was the 'passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope,' Wordsworth a kind of inspired clergyman. Both were influences for good, and both are likely to be influences for good for ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... one, desire now had possession—that I might forever remain under this benign influence. Did ever the birds chirp so sweetly! Was ever parched nature or dried-up grass more beautiful! Oh, why did I have to come back to this world! But how selfish! Now came the longing to share my joy with others; I was eager to do so. Would ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... valetudinarian, valetudinarianism; sanitarian; sanitarium, sanitOrium. V. be salubrious &c adj.; agree with; assimilate &c 23. Adj. salubrious, salutary, salutiferous^; wholesome; healthy, healthful; sanitary, prophYlactic, benign, bracing, tonic, invigorating, good for, nutritious; hygeian^, hygienic. innoxious^, innocuous, innocent; harmless, uninjurious, uninfectious. sanative &c (remedial) 662; restorative &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... star-lighted evening, with no settled plan of action in mind save to do about as they liked for the succeeding three hours. Clint Thayer had a strip of plaster across the saddle of his nose, which gave him a strangely benign expression. Tom walked a bit stiffly and confessed to "a peach of a shin," which probably meant something quite different from what it suggested. Only Tim, of the three first team fellows, had emerged ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... upon it; when once this Gorgon claims acquaintance with us, the phantom of friendship, that before courted our notice, will vanish into unsubstantial air, and the whole world before us appear a barren waste. Pardon me, ye dear spirits of benevolence, whose benign smiles and cheerful-giving hand have strewed sweet flowers on many a thorny path through which my wayward fate forced me to pass; think not, that, in condemning the unfeeling texture of the human heart, I forget the spring from whence flow an the comforts ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... variance with his tastes,—and it would be futile. He must summon courage to tell her that he no longer wished for the match; but he could not do it on this morning. Then,—for that morning,—some benign ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... together the Sons of the rich, and the poor, among whom it makes no distinction; it will cultivate the natural Genius, elevate the Soul, excite laudable Emulation to excel in Knowledge, Piety, and Benevolence, and finally it will reward its Patrons, and Benefactors by sheding its benign Influence on the Public Mind. Education inures Men to thinking and reflection, to reasoning and demonstration. It discovers to them the moral and religious duties they owe to God, their Country and to all Mankind. Even Savages might, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... ascribed the choice that disease makes in such or such a race. Glanders, for instance, so virulent with the horse, the ass, and man, produce in the case of the dog only a local accident; peripneumonia, so contagious among horned cattle, is more benign in its action on Dutch than other breeds of stock; the cattle plague that decimates so many farms is communicated by cattle to each other from the slightest contact, while the closest and most constant association is necessary ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... One danced entirely with his arms; his feet had very little to do with the time. One hopped through with a most dolorous expression of intense absorption in the arduous task. Another never changed a benign smile that had appeared on entering, but preserved it unimpaired through every accident. One female, apparently of the tender age of thirty, wore a yellow muslin, with her hair combed rigidly a la chinoise, and tightly fastened at the back of her head in a knot whose ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... from the window, she found the eyes of the Good Shepherd in the picture fixed upon her, the beautiful benign eyes she loved so well; and looking up at him responsively, she waited a moment for her heart to expand anew, and then set herself to meditate upon his life. It was a religious exercise she had taught herself, not knowing that ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of that? Almost ever since Ottawa was, the C.P.R. has been said to own it. Governments of either party have never been inhospitable to the benign octopus—centipede it became—that had its origin in the Parliament of Canada and wrecked one Tory Government. The penalty of transcontinental railways is that they require to have mortgages on governments. Presently the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... most sublime excess, and thinks every person to whom he speaks honoured beyond measure by his notice, nay, he does not even look at anybody without evidently displaying that such notice is more the effect of his benign condescension, than of any pretension on their part to deserve such a mark of his perceiving their existence. But you will think me ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Tacitus, exitiabilis superstitio—odio humani generis convicti,[217] show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude imbued the educated class also. One asks oneself with astonishment how a doctrine so benign as that of Jesus Christ can have incurred misrepresentation so monstrous. The inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, no doubt, in this,—that Christianity was a new spirit in the Roman world, destined to act in that world as its dissolvent; and it was ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... oppressive heat, dust, noise, weariness; there was the disappointment of the churches and the image; there was the sour unfamiliarity of the place and the experience; and yet I was neither troubled nor depressed nor irritated nor disappointed. It appeared to me as if some great benign influence were abroad, soothing and satisfying; lying like a great summer air over all, to quiet and to stimulate. I cannot describe this further; I can only say that it never really left me during those three days, I saw sights that would have saddened me ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'Hawwa' spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath one ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... has had its tragedies, hasn't it, as well as its triumphs; and well should the elephant know it. He had the best chance of all. Wiser even than the lion, or the wisest of apes, his wisdom furthermore was benign where theirs was sinister. Consider his dignity, his poise and skill. He was plastic, too. He had learned to eat many foods and endure many climates. Once, some say, this race explored the globe. Their bones are found everywhere, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... left, with its gilded tiles glistening in the sun—at least they were gilded within the next few years—rises the most sacred structure of all, the building most closely identified in the Roman mind with the eternity of the empire. This is the splendid temple of Jove, Supreme and Most Benign. Of this edifice nothing considerable except its platform now remains, its site being occupied by an object of which the existence would have been inconceivable to the ancient Roman—to wit, the German Embassy. On the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... combat with that bitter heartache which is felt when youth parts, and probably forever, with her he loves. As, pressed by the urgency of the moment, and the impatience of Crevecoeur, they hasted on through the rich lowlands of Hainault, under the benign guidance of a rich and lustrous harvest moon, she shed her yellow influence over rich and deep pastures, woodland, and cornfields, from which the husbandmen were using her light to withdraw the grain, such was the industry of the Flemings, even at that period, she shone on broad, level, and ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. Marrapit, and Mr. Marrapit had warmed to her and bade him fetch her to Herons' Holt. She ripped George's description of his uncle from about the old man; dressed Mr. Marrapit in snowy locks and a benign smile; pictured him coming down the steps with outstretched hand to greet her. She heard him say, "My daughter"; she saw him draw George to her, lock their hands; she heard him murmur, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... monseigneur," said the prisoner calmly; "but I reserve the right of appeal to the benign intervention of the very venerated majesty of the King of France, of whom I am, or have been, chamberlain and marshal, as may be proved by my letters patent duly enregistered ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of a lunatic whose reason was restored by the shock of the sight of the killing of a beautiful girl by her pursuing father, whose fury had been roused by her choice of a husband. A monument to this unfortunate graces Gheel, and as St. Dymphna she is supposed to be in benign control of the lunatic-sheltering colony. Some of the features of the Gheel system of care are also distinctively known as the Scotch system. There the placing of patients in family care is common. Massachusetts has also adopted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... to let the corners of his lips curl away from some very white teeth. Dr. Sandford rarely laughed. And there was nothing mocking about his smile now, though I have used the word "curl;" it was merely what Daisy considered a very intelligent and very benign curve of the mouth. Indeed ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... intensity, as of a woman whose vital energies, once spending themselves in mere corruscations, in mere action for action's sake, were now concentrated on one definite thought, one purpose, one emotion, which with an intense yet benign fire blended in perfect harmony the life of the soul and of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... procrastination and routine; if they had only taken their task a bit less seriously and had not tried to apply too strictly to an empty continent the paternal administration of an older country; we might have been privileged to witness the development and operation of as complete and benign a system of colonial government as has been devised in modern times. The public initiative of the Spanish government, and the care with which it selected its colonists, compare very favourably with the ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... evidently not made up his mind to say anything, but was still weighing the matter. He kept his gaze attentively fixed on Christ and Judas as they sat together. And that strange proximity of divine beauty and monstrous ugliness, of a man with a benign look, and of an octopus with immense, motionless, dully greedy eyes, oppressed his ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... indicate Philosophy, and her attendant branches of knowledge. By the next I wished to personify the whole Art of Design, including Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture. The third is Music, which cannot be omitted from the sphere of intellectual culture. That other, with so gracious and benign a mien, stands for Generosity, lacking which the mental gifts bestowed on us by God will not be brought to view. I have attempted to portray your Majesty, your very self, in the great central statue; for you are truly a god Mars, the only brave upon ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of the handsome young Quaker, under existing difficulties, was highly amusing. He bore the infliction of the prevailing malady with such a benign air of resignation, that it was quite edifying. Wiping the salt water from his face with a pocket-handkerchief of snowy whiteness, he exclaimed, turning to Flora, who was sitting at his feet with Josey in her arms, "Friend Flora, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... The Odd Women (1893, new edition, 1894) is a rather sordid and depressing survey of the life-histories of certain orphaned daughters of a typical Gissing doctor—grave, benign, amiably diffident, terribly afraid of life. 'From the contact of coarse actualities his nature shrank.' After his death one daughter, a fancy-goods shop assistant (no wages), is carried off by consumption; ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... great ornaments to the drawing-room that evening, as the old professors agreed while they sat blinking at them, like a pair of benign owls. Casimer surprised them by his skill in music, for, though forbidden to sing on account of his weak lungs, he played as if inspired. Amy hovered about him like a moth; the major cultivated the acquaintance of the plump widow; and Helen stood at the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... so weak and excited when I woke up from these trances, I thought of nothing but the march, and how I could get out of Lumeresi's hands. He, with the most benign countenance, came in to see me, the very first thing in the morning, as he said, to inquire after my health; when, to please him as much as I could, I had a guard of honour drawn up at the tent door to fire ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... become a Thing; for the truth is not in it! Though printed, hotpressed, reviewed, celebrated, sold to the twentieth edition: what is all that? The Thing, in philosophical uncommercial language, is still a No-thing, mostly semblance, and deception of the sight;—benign Oblivion incessantly gnawing at it, impatient till Chaos, to which it belongs, do ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... or benign. The essential difference between the two classes is that while benign tumors depend for their ill effects entirely upon their situation, malignant neoplasms wherever located inevitably destroy life. The clinical features of each group are ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... chains confined. } The sudden blow his resolution shook; Deliberate fortitude his heart forsook; The pile of hope, that many a year had rear'd, Seem'd sunk in air, and now no more appear'd. Stenon had welcomed him, benign and free, With warm and undissembling amity, Enroll'd him in the list of friends select He singled out his measures to direct— And e'en his life was in Ernestus' power. This Christiern saw, and urg'd the fatal hour. With bribes and honours he the youth attack'd, With promised ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... and went; and now returned again To Sicily the old Saturnian reign; Under the Angel's governance benign The happy island danced with corn and wine, And deep within the mountain's burning breast Enceladus, the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... diplomatist who, with the good taste which characterizes the school now dominant in French politics, took occasion to mention to a well-known ecclesiastical statesman that he was an Atheist. "O de l'atheisme a votre age," said the Nuncio, with a benign smile: "pourquoi, quand l'impiete suffit et ne vous engage a rien?" But with the new signification imposed upon the word, a profession of Atheism would pledge one in quite another sense: it would be equivalent to a profession of insanity; for where, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... to a standstill. Oddly enough, a bird, too, causes a great deal of trouble. The "oven-bird" makes a large domed nest of clay, the size of a cocoa-nut. In that treeless land the oven-birds look on telegraph-posts as specially provided by a benign Providence to afford them eligible nesting-sites, and from some perversity of instinct, or perhaps attracted by the gleam of the white earthenware, they invariably select one of the porcelain insulators as the site of their future home, and proceed to coat it laboriously ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... as Mr. Frazer or Mr. Lang would tell us, becomes then merely the hieroglyph for a social standard, a manner of life. This, I think, will explain the name Oxford on the Isis—the Ford of Apis, the ox- god at this one place able to pass over the benign deity. You remember, too, the horrid blasphemy of Cambyses (his very name suggests Cambridge), and the vengeance of the gods. So be it to any sacrilegious reformer who would transmute either the Oxford Don or the Oxford undergraduate—the most ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... primitive tribe; that, however marked and ingrained they may be, they are not congenital and perhaps not indelible. Englishmen and Frenchmen are closely assimilated by education; and the weaknesses of character supposed to be inherent in the Irish gradually disappear under the more benign influences of the New World. Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Romans to the special qualities of their race, we should not be solving the problem, but only stating it again in ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... ideas, and whose lives and actions would best enable him to give picturesque sketches of the times. On its sturdy oaken legs it trudges diligently from one scene to another, and seems always to thrust itself in the way, with most benign complacency, whenever an historical personage happens to be looking round ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which the grandsires gazed, whose faces now in picture frames still watch serenely the sad present from their happy past. Therefore the rooms lie in still depths of association, and from the walls, the stairs, the furniture, flows the benign influence of undispersed memories; it sheds its tempered radiance upon the old miniatures, and upon every fresh flower that comes in from the garden; it seems to pass through the open doors to and fro like a tranquil blessing; it is beyond joy and pain, because ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... oar which they bring up, from classmates and college friends. I miss, as all Harvard men must miss to-night, the venerable and kindly figure of Andrew Preston Peabody, the student's friend, the consoler of the plucked, the encourager of the strong, Maecenas's benign almoner, the felicitous exponent of Harvard's Congregational Unitarianism. I miss, too, another of high scholarship, of rare poetic taste, of broad liberality—my personal friend, Elbridge Jefferson Cutler, loved alike by students and his fellow-members of the Faculty for his conscientious ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the war are constantly changing. Meanwhile the most reprehensible means have been employed by both parties to extort money from foreigners, as well as natives, to carry on this ruinous contest. The truth is that this fine country, blessed with a productive soil and a benign climate, has been reduced by civil dissension to a condition of almost hopeless anarchy and imbecility. It would be vain for this Government to attempt to enforce payment in money of the claims of American citizens, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisition of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... it was accompanied with constant teachings respecting the incompatibility of interests, and the inevitable conflict, between the North and the South; the superiority of slavery over every other form of labor; and the imminent danger of the overthrow of this benign institution by Northern fanaticism, and by the unfriendly influence of the commercial and financial policy of that section. Thus, the mischievous error of secession was roused to life and action by the exhibition of those unreal phantoms, so often conjured up ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that I had been mingling with it in this manner for some time past or that I repudiated the suggestion of its benign influence. I entered the tram meekly. As soon as we ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... few words," he answered, looking at me with a new keenness which sat strangely on his benign features. "But I want no more. The government has fallen—the doctors say the Emperor's life ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... element in the life of Ireland, and we may be sure that he was not displeased when his stepdaughter married one of them. Yet the creator of literature works more wisely than he knows, and Borrow's books have won the wise and benign appreciation of many an Irish and Roman Catholic reader, whose nationality and religion Borrow would have anathematised. Irishmen may forgive Borrow much, because he was one of the first of modern English writers ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... coming toward us, smiling. I didn't like their smiles; they were meant to be benign, but there was a cruel and vindictive twist to their lips which chilled ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... of age is repose: And thus from that love-sweetened toil, which the heavens had so prospered and blest, The old Campanaro will go to that vine-covered cottage to rest; But Paolo is pious and grateful, and vows as he kneels at her shrine, To offer some fruit of his labour to Mary the Mother benign— Eight silver-toned bells will he offer, to toll for the quick and the dead, From the tower of the church of her convent that ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Rock. The teaching of her Church was to her divinest truth. The supernatural was real, the spiritual actual. The conflict between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, between good angels and evil angels, between benign influences and malefic forces, was no figure of speech with her, but a reality. In these last years of her life more especially the earthly veil seemed to have fallen over her eyes. She seemed to have grasped something of the vision of the servant of ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... were on a stormy sea. The ship in which we sailed tossed like a cork, while the waves, foam-crested, hurled themselves furiously on our bark. A great panic seized the ship's crew, and they gave themselves up for lost. But for myself I had no fear. A great benign influence was around me, and I felt as safe as a babe rocked on its mother's breast, while the wild winds that roared seemed as sweet as the lullaby of a mother to ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... of literature, or else uses the large type that it does in order to attract the attention of its readers to the sublime virtues of the author, the quotation of but a small part of the production will suffice to bring out its real worth and at the same time show us the benign effects of Socialist teachings: ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... anguish overflowing shame And the tongue's pudency confides to her, With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, Then is the Goddess tenderness Maternal, and she has a sister's tones Benign to soothe intemperate distress, Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease To those of her milk-bearer votaries As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source Direct; erratic ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ever. He would like to return to a primitive form of government. Farewell to his wild schemes and revolutionary measures! Farewell to his disestablishments, abolitions, and suppressions! The throne and government have new attractions in his eyes; loyalty, a new feeling, asserts its benign influence; and if he could return to his former position, his normal conduct would be straighter than ever, for by sad experience he has learned the value of those things ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... even-handed justice call give; and if these are not fully granted now, the day is coming when they will be possessed. Lancashire seems to be the great centre of Catholicism in England, and Preston appears to be its centre in Lancashire. This benign town of Preston, with its fervent galaxy of lecturing curates, and its noble army of high falutin' incumbents, is the very fulcrum and lever of northern Romanism. If Catholics are wrong and on the way to perdition ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... presence there— Each heart, expanding, grew more gay; Yet something loftier still than fair Kept man's familiar looks away. From fairy gardens, known to none, She brought mysterious fruits and flowers— The things of some serener sun— Some Nature more benign ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... country become under the benign influence of foreign trade and civilization, that other treaties were speedily concluded with almost every nation under the sun, and his Majesty found it necessary to accredit Sir John Bowring as plenipotentiary for ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... an Irishman, and a patriotic one at that, but for "somethin' warrum" he evidently preferred Scotch whiskey to that which is produced on the Emerald Sod. Beneath the benign influences of this draught he became more confidential, and I grew more serene. We sat. We quaffed the fragrant draught. We inhaled the cheerful nicotic fumes. We became friendly, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... for New England. This icy cover, like the lid of a pot, is always suspended over it: when it shuts down, that is winter. This would be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing from under the ribs of the equator,—a white knight of the South going up to battle the giant of the North. The two meet in New England, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... himself to be led without a question, like one in a dream. There seemed some faint reminiscence from the past of this man, with his harsh features, and kindly, genial expression, the deep-set eyes, beaming with a benign light from under the rugged eyebrows, and the firm yet friendly pressure of his guiding arm; and his mind was groping about the dark labyrinth of memory to seize his former knowledge of him, if there had ever been any. There was a vague apprehension about him lest he should discover that this friend ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the threshold to greet us, with that benign smile, that beautiful, winning smile that had so long been slumbering on his face, but which grew brighter and brighter every time it beamed ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... a man look peaceful, but not all other callings make him look wise. Mr. Emblem was born by nature of a calm temperament,—otherwise he would not have been happy in his business; a smile lies generally upon his lips, and his eyes are soft and benign; his hair is white, and his face, once ruddy, is pale, yet not shrunk and seamed with furrows as happens to so many old men, but round and firm; like his chin and lips it is clean shaven; he wears a black coat extraordinarily shiny in the sleeve, and a black silk stock just as he used to wear in ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... spinsters—the Duncans, Miss Mary, Miss Janet, and Miss Phemie. I don't know what Priorsford would do without these good women. Spinsters they are, but they are also real mothers in Israel. They have time to help everyone. Benign Miss Mary is the housekeeper—and such a housekeeper! Miss Janet is the public one, sits on all the Committees. Miss Phemie does the flowers and embroiders beautiful things and is like a tea-cosy, so soft and warm and comfortable. Somehow they always seem to be there when you want them. You ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... bilious fever. Others regarded it as a mucous discharge, or a depurative; and others, as a salutary crisis, removing from the constitution that which oppressed the different organs. Others had recourse to inoculation, in order to give it a more benign character; and others, and among them Chabert, considered that it possessed a character of peculiar malignity, and he gave it a name expressive of its nature and situation—'nasal catarrh'. It exhibited ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Thus passed a benign hour. At ten o'clock Mr. Tate decided that they'd better be starting. He donned his clown's costume; Perry replaced the camel's head, arid side by side they traversed on foot the single block between the Tate house ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Madden, reticent by nature, had never been known to speak in the domestic circle about his pecuniary affairs. He seemed to be the kind of man who would inspire his children with affection: grave but benign, amiably diffident, with a hint of lurking mirthfulness about his eyes and lips. And to-day he was in the best of humours; professional prospects, as he had just explained to Alice, were more encouraging than hitherto; for twenty years he had practised ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing |
