"Ennobling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "As to the rest of the people—bah! you can't rouse Calcutta. It is sunk in its torpid liver, and imagines itself superior. It's really funny, you know, the way hepatic influences can be idealised—made to serve ennobling ends. ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... other hand, what was gained by the warriors of science for religion? Certainly a far more worthy conception of the world, and a far more ennobling conception of that power which pervades and directs it. Which is more consistent with a great religion, the cosmography of Cosmas or that of Isaac Newton? Which presents a nobler field for religious thought, the diatribes of Lactantius or ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in his native land, not in climes where excitement is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the exercise of duties. In the hardy air of the liberal England, he was already, though unknown to himself, bracing and ennobling his dispositions and desires. It is the boast of this island that the slave whose foot touches the soil is free. The boast may be enlarged. Where so much is left to the people, where the life of civilization, not ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... correspond with the whole environment, most certainly is partially dead. The author of "Ecce Homo" may be partially right when he says: "I think a bystander would say that though Christianity had in it something far higher and deeper and more ennobling, yet the average scientific man worships just at present a more awful, and, as it were, a greater Deity than the average Christian. In so many Christians the idea of God has been degraded by childish and little-minded ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair spirit for my monitor! That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her. Ye elements, in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted, can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot— Though with them to converse can rarely ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... her entrance into a room the prelude to higher thoughts and finer feelings. She was naturally kind without consciousness of a mission, neither seeking to enslave nor enfranchise, but by a silent outflowing of goodness ennobling whatever company she was in. Nor was her tongue the prattling servant of her beauty, but a guide of cheerful converse; for just as she charmed without device or scheme of fascination, so she possessed the art of speaking well without seeming ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... energies and feeling, will pursue most eagerly, be most entirely engrossed by, the delights of being admired and loved by those to whom in return she is entirely indifferent. Having once acquired the habit of enjoying the selfish excitement, the simple, safe, and ennobling employments of self-cultivation, of improving others, are laid aside for ever, because the power of enjoying them is lost. Do not be offended if I say that this is the fate I fear for you. At the present moment, the two paths of life are open before you; ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... feeling is not in touch with conscience and neither to ourselves, nor to others, does it inspire ennobling sentiments. A proper name for it is ambition—a selfish quality, whose essence bears no relation to the aspiration of boy and girl, man and woman, toward what ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... sight, A fairy train appear'd in order bright; Adown the glittering stream they featly danc'd; Bright to the moon their various dresses glanc'd: They footed o'er the wat'ry glass so neat, The infant ice scarce bent beneath their feet: While arts of Minstrelsy among them rung, And soul-ennobling Bards heroic ditties sung. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... influence—which always comes from outside—and become completely absorbed in the cult of one's own soul. One would even have to object to being born, and would have to create one's self out of nothing. It has always been regarded as the splendid privilege of great men to exert an ennobling influence on others—why, therefore, should the influence of a beloved woman on her ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... all our old circle of friends at his house. They convinced me that the work of ennobling men's souls was not in my line at all. Besides, it is such a hopeless task, any way. I shall let ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the most tame scenery;—yet not so but that we may always distinguish between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the charm which it derives from the architecture. Much of the majesty of French landscape consists in its grand and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Africa. Thousands of industrious natives would gladly settle round it, and engage in that peaceful pursuit of agriculture and trade of which they are so fond, and, undistracted by wars or rumours of wars, might listen to the purifying and ennobling truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Manganja on the Zambesi, like their countrymen on the Shire, are fond of agriculture; and, in addition to the usual varieties of food, cultivate tobacco and cotton in quantities more than equal to their wants. To the question, "Would ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... in memory what has tamed Great nations; how ennobling thoughts depart When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student's bower for gold,—some ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... can afford to pay for. Kulin polygyny, though unlimited, is not really a popular institution: if you are a person of high caste you pay another person of very august caste indeed to make your daughter momentarily one of his sixty or seventy momentary wives for the sake of ennobling your grandchildren; but this fashion of a small and intensely snobbish class is negligible as a general precedent. In any case, men and women in the East do not marry anyone they fancy, as in England and America. Women are secluded and marriages ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... the true source of Alan's self-respect, and from self-respect there came a strength greater and more enduring than he had ever known before. Redeemed from the material baseness of his past when he changed the prison cell for Lettice's ennobling presence, he was now saved from the mental and moral feebleness to which he might have sunk by the ordeal through ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Cornelia may have felt in the course of her acquaintance with Bressant, preventing her love from ennobling and elevating her. Alas! if it were so. If she cannot draw a high inspiration from the affection which must be her loftiest sentiment, what shall be her safeguard, and who ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... this hell-blight to come upon them? Will they wait till violence and suspicion are the only principles retaining power among them? Will they look on while the Repeal movement—the educating, the ennobling, the sacred effort for liberty—is superseded by the buzz of assassination and vengeance? Or will they now join O'Connell and O'Brien—the Association, the Law, and the Priesthood; and whenever they hear a breath of outrage, denounce it as they would Atheism—whenever they see an attempt at crime, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Soodra, the laborer, he is not born into the full enjoyment of his honors, but, on the contrary, is scarcely of more consideration than a Pariah, until by the Upanayana he has been admitted to his birthright. Yet, once decorated with the ennobling badge of his order, our friend became from that moment something superior, something exclusive, something supercilious, arrogant, exacting,—Asirvadam, the high Brahmin,—a creature of wide strides ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government's maintenance. It undermines the self-reliance of our people and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favoritism. It stifles the spirit of true Americanism and stupefies every ennobling trait ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... in memory what has tamed Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart When Men change Swords for Ledgers, and desert The Student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed I had, my Country! am I to be blamed? But, when I think of Thee, and what Thou art, Verily, in the bottom ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... this battlefield, I was slightly horrified at first, but chiefly conscious only of the frightful odour of mortality. It is on thinking the thing over in retrospect and with cold blood that the real sense of horror begins to creep into one's soul. Such is the so-called "ennobling influence of war"! As I went over this grim battlefield, with all its tragic sights, I reflected bitterly on the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the Twelve, and continued with a discourse embodying the sublime principles He had taught among the Jews in the Sermon on the Mount.[1470] The Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, and the same splendid array of ennobling precepts are set forth, and the same wealth of effective comparison and apt illustration appear, in both Matthew's and Nephi's versions of this unparalleled address; but a significant difference is observed in every reference ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the peaceful scene which lay before them; and, as they noted the peculiar outline of the lake, what wonder that the thought came—this was indeed the heart of the Mississippi, pulsating with life for the great stream flowing onward and ever onward, enriching and ennobling the land, until at last it loses itself, by reason of its own vastness, in ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... improvement in the material welfare of the nation was the most notable feature in the first years after the Revolution, simply because it was the place at which any improvement must begin, yet the ennobling and softening of manners and the growth of geniality in social intercourse are said to have been changes scarcely less notable. While the class differences inherited from the former order in point ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... quote Mr. Skinner's stirring remarks to show that probably Jim and Li Tee ran away only in anticipation of a possible lynching, and to prove that advanced sentiments of this high and ennobling nature really obtained forty years ago in an ordinary American frontier town which did not then ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... most of our readers, this last theme would seem to offer fewer inducements to the poet's pen than any of those thus enumerated; and genius could scarcely have selected one, which seemed less ennobling in itself, or rather, which at once presented such palpable discouragements, from the coarse associations connected with it, and the cureless vulgarity and nauseousness with which the whole subject appears to be invested. In opposition to so many obstacles and dissuasives, this great man yielded ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the Countess that followed this fateful meeting—days of sweet communion of twin souls, hours of stolen bliss, when they could dwell apart in a region of high and ennobling thoughts, while the besotted husband was sleeping off the effects of his drunken orgies in the next room. To Alfieri, Louise was indeed "the anchor of his life," giving stability to his vacillating nature, and inspiring all that was best and noblest in him; while ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... 'tabernacles of the righteous,' in which the voice of joy and rejoicing is ever heard. Not only wedded love, but family love, and all earthly love, are then most precious, when into them there flows the ennobling, the calming, the transfiguring thought of Christ and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the white fire of Dante's love. And the thought will arise that this purely intellectual love of a scarce-noticed youth for a scarce-known woman is a thing which does not belong to life, neither sweetening nor ennobling any of its real relations; that it is, in its dazzling purity and whiteness, in fact a mere strange and sterile death light, such as could not and should not, in this world of ours, exist twice over. And, lest we ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... also have ellipses of greater or less eccentricity. If the ellipse has not the perfect simplicity of the circle it has, at least, the charm of variety which the circle has not. The oval curve has also the beauty derived from an outline of perfect grace and an association with ennobling conceptions. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... hand, holds fast to everything that is ennobling and elevating in its history. It is the party of national honor, which has removed the foul reproach of slavery, and redeemed the plighted faith of the government in financial legislation and administration. It is the party of equal rights, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... purifies this soul of all natural, distinct, and perceived operations, that at last He makes it more and more conformed to Himself, and then uniform, raising the passive capacity of the creature, enlarging it and ennobling it, though in a hidden and unperceived manner, which is termed mystical. But in all these operations the soul must concur passively, and in proportion as the working of God becomes stronger, the soul must continually yield to Him, until He absorbs ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... this Association, whose heroic type of missionary and teaching service makes our whole membership and ministry the more attractive and ennobling; in the name of its schools which became churches, and its churches which are schools; in the name of their 8,400 professing Christians, and their 15,000 Sunday-school scholars, and the 1,000 converts of the year; in the name of the races of three continents to whom ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... which combines in a higher unity the essential elements of the doctrines formerly believed to be exclusive of one another. The German Jews, while emphasizing the needs of Diaspora Judaism and anxious to build up its largest manifestation in America, learned to appreciate the quickening and ennobling effect upon the Diaspora of a normal Hebrew life in Palestine, and became interested in the regeneration of the Holy Land. The Russian Jews, on the other hand, though laying particular stress on the possibilities of Judaism in Palestine, put their shoulder to the wheel and were ready ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... her task, and work as no junior French mistress had ever worked before; she determined never to lose patience, never to grow cross, never to indulge in a sarcastic word, always to be a model of tact and forbearance. She determined to wield such an ennobling influence over the girls in her form-room that they should take fire from her example, and go forth into the world perfect, high-souled women who should leaven the race. She determined also to be ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... paths has its own peculiar advantages and detriments; and the chief difference between them is that actions are fleeting, while works remain. The influence of an action, be it never so noble, can last but a short time; but a work of genius is a living influence, beneficial and ennobling throughout the ages. All that can remain of actions is a memory, and that becomes weak and disfigured by time—a matter of indifference to us, until at last it is extinguished altogether; unless, indeed, history takes ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Countess of Windsor had fallen from her dream of power, rank and grandeur; she had been suddenly seized with the conviction, that love was the only good of life, virtue the only ennobling distinction and enriching wealth. Such a lesson had been taught her by the dead lips of her neglected daughter; and she devoted herself, with all the fiery violence of her character, to the obtaining the affection of the remnants of her family. In early years ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... have here the unveiling of his inmost self in response to what he knew would be an eager desire for news of his welfare. This whole section appears to me to be a wonderful revelation of his prison thoughts, an example of what we may call the ennobling power of a passionate enthusiasm for Christ. Remember that he is a prisoner, shut out from his life's work, waiting to be tried before Nero, whose reign had probably, by this time, passed from its delusive morning of dewy promise to its lurid noon. The present and the future were ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... freedom, of the freedom of the press, of the liberty of speech, of the trial by jury, of the habeas corpus, and of the domestic institutions of each of the States, leaving the private citizen in the full exercise of the high and ennobling attributes of his nature and to each State the privilege (which can only be judiciously exerted by itself) of consulting the means best calculated to advance its own happiness—these are the great and important guaranties ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... looking backward o'er his years, Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears, If he hath been Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... time joyous festival, the chorus appeared and recited the triumphal hymn, which was considered the fairest ornament of the triumph. Such an occasion, a victory in the sacred games and its end, the ennobling of a ceremony connected with the worship of the gods, required that the ode should be composed in a lofty and dignified style. Pindar does not content himself with celebrating the bodily prowess of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... things the pulpit is doing its duty, and let us believe that it is likewise doing its best, and doing it in the most harmless and respectable way. And so I have said, and shall keep on saying, let us give the pulpit its full share of credit in elevating and ennobling the people; but when a pulpit takes to itself authority to pass judgment upon the work and worth of just as legitimate an instrument of God as itself, who spent a long life preaching from the stage the selfsame gospel without the alteration of a single sentiment or ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... aspire to higher intellectuality, and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... boldest hope; if nor the wiles Of Pallas triumph o'er the ennobling thought; Nor Pleasure lure with artificial smiles To quaff the poison of her ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... mercy. With an added reward also, if the struggle lead you to perceive (what he did not perceive), as the light of your darkness, the sweet of bitter, that real struggling is itself real living, and that no ennobling thing of this earth is ever to be had by man on any other terms: so teaching him, none too soon, that any divine end is to be reached but through divine means, that a great ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... his native language, was a service of real patriotism, he composed a work on the grammar and orthoepy of the Latin language. Cicero and himself were the only Romans of distinction in that age, who applied themselves with true patriotism to the task of purifying and ennobling their mother tongue. Both were aware of the transcendent quality of the Grecian literature; but that splendor did not depress their hopes of raising their own to something of the same level. As respected the natural wealth ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... most ennobling, perhaps, of scientific truths—a truth not less ennobling to religion than to science—forced in coming before the world, to sneak and crawl." (White: "History of Warfare of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Tucker, in a loud voice, "you have witnessed a most satisfying, edifying, gratifying, ennobling, superb and sublime spectacular prelude, as our press agent would say. But, if you know what's good for you, you will now hasten to the high places, for there's going to be something doing around here in about ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... found in this most cruel crisis to be a rock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial of his moral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had been granted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacle of one who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitter fruits, into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seeking to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude of Shelley's over-daring ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... of our girls,[13] and his letters bear out the remark.[14] Yet delight in Nature was always with him: Klopstock's lofty morality pours forth all through it. Nature, love, fame, wine, everything is looked at from an ennobling point of view.' ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... a general shop which was for sale in the country town, close by. Now Jim Rooney had a queer pride in him that made the thought of the shop very distasteful. The land was quite another thing, and farming, to his mind, as ennobling an occupation as any under heaven. But he quite understood that he could not shape the young fellow to his ways of thinking. He said, gently: 'And why, Patrick, are you bent on leaving the ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... souls. This consecration is renewed every day, calling forth patient foresight of the teacher. As the father shows no special favour, but lets his love and compassion go out to the weakest, so it is with the Indian teacher and his pupil. There is the relation something very human, something very ennobling. He would say it was essentially human rather than distinctively Eastern. For do we not find something very like it in Mediaeval Europe? There too before the coming of the modern era with its lack of leisure and its adherence to system and machinery, there was a bond ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... sick-bed, lovingly tended by Ephraim and Viola, an ennobling influence gradually came over the heart of the old gambler, and so deeply touched it, that calm peace crowned his closing days. It was strange that the events of that memorable night, and the vicissitudes that had preceded it, had left no recollection behind, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... for the machinations of the European statecraft which has borne its lamentable fruits in the recent cataclysm we have all witnessed. He was thrown on the resources with which he was more familiar: those of an ennobling idea and of the exactions of self-devotion in its cause. Immediately after his eyes had been opened at Szczekociny to the new peril that had burst upon his country he sent out another order, bidding his commanders to "go over the Prussian and Russian boundaries" into the provinces ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... in the process. They knew that the money they accumulated was foul with the sweat of their brother men, and wet with the tears of little children, but they were deaf and blind and callous to the consequences of their greed. Devoid of every ennobling thought or aspiration, they grovelled on the filthy ground, tearing up the flowers to get at ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... quiet life, are living among those strange problems which haunt the naturalist, or among those awful forces which rule the stars and pervade the dead and living world of matter. There must be something quieting and ennobling in this steady contemplation of vast machineries, which have all the force and terror of human passions, and yet the serene steadiness and certainty of unchanging law. It is "a purer ether, a diviner air," from whence its citizens ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... such—he possessed everything which had survived the great shipwreck of ancient thought. Not only did he found monasteries and schools, but he gathered writers round him; and, in order to stimulate them, he himself wrote original books and translations, thus ennobling, we are told, the literary vocation in the eyes of his rude and warlike race. He would probably have smiled if he had known that one of his writers had attributed to him the subjection of the Serbs; but what ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... the chieftain. The order of nobility among the Celts was therefore natural and not artificial; being neither the result of some conventional understanding nor of brute force. Nature was with them the parent of nobility and chieftainship; and the ennobling, or raising a person by mere human power to the dignity of noble, was unknown to them: a state of things ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... faith of the flappers in Oxford, or whether his long silences made the undergraduates more stupid than they would otherwise have been, I care little: I only know that he was what I call great and that he had an ennobling influence over my life. He was apprehensive of my social reputation; and in our correspondence, which started directly we parted at Gosford, he constantly gave me wise advice. He was extremely simple-minded and had a pathetic belief in the fine ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... in noble breasts, and there Has its appointed space, As heat in the bright flames finds its allotted place. Kindles in noble heart the fire of love, As hidden virtue in the precious stone: This virtue comes not from the stars above, Till round it the ennobling sun has shone; But when his powerful blaze Has drawn forth what was vile, the stars impart Strange virtue in their rays; And thus when Nature doth create the heart Noble and pure and high, Like virtue from the star, love comes from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... whole punishment of their sin was included; and that, as far as regarded the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for them by their Master, in all tenderness and love, and with the full purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon the earth. It might have seemed to us more honourable that both should have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the Tabernacle, the congregation of Israel watching by their side; and all whom they ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... relations to the soul of which it is the body. It is as if a glorious anthem had passed into outward solid form in the very ecstasy of its grandest chorus. Milton has told us of such a miracle, wrought by fallen angels, it is true, but in a description rich with all his opulence of caressing and ennobling language:— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... standard at all, her capacities for what is admirable not only make her crimes the darker, but they also make her virtues partake of the nature of sin. How, then, can an intimacy with this eternal criminal be an ennobling or a sacred thing? The theist, of course, believes that truth is sacred. But his belief rests on a foundation that has been altogether renounced by the positivists. He values truth because, in whatever direction it takes him, it takes him either to God or towards Him—God, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... students, but if we show undue leniency toward the frivolous students who would insult a new teacher without cause, it would affect the dignity of this school. The spirit of education is not only in imparting technical knowledges, but also in encouraging honest, ennobling and samurai-like virtues, while eliminating the evil tendency to vulgarity and roughness. If we are afraid of reaction or further trouble, and satisfy ourselves with make-shifts, there is no telling when we can ever get rid of this evil atmosphere[G]. We are here to eradicate ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... national evil, the long interregnum in dramatic excellence in our writers, and the woful degradation in the direction of dramatic representations at our metropolitan theatres. Immense is the influence of lofty and ennobling dramatic pieces when supported by able and impassioned actors. As deleterious is the sway of questionable or immoral pieces when decked out in the meretricious garb of fancy, or aided by the transient attractions of beauty. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... you, I'm sure, to notice my humble labours," replied the old lady, expanding at once under the first word of flattery. "My brother tells me you're connected with a great newspaper. How ennobling that must be! It gives you such a ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... something ennobling in the blacksmith calling. It not only strengthens the muscles but ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... misery, degradation, and premature death. They will indulge In the most degrading of all vices with prostitutes on the street. They will defile the atmosphere of social life with filthy talk and ribald jest. Even a clean and ennobling passion can do little to redeem them. The pure stream of human love is made turbid with lust. After a temporary uplifting in marriage the soul is again dragged down, marriage vows are broken and the blessings of home life are turned into wormwood ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... to their immediate superiors, we shall find reason to confess that the independence which has been gained since the total decay of the feudal system, has been dearly purchased by the loss of kindly feelings and ennobling attachments. They are less contented, and in no respect more happy—that look implies hesitation of judgment, and an unwillingness to be convinced. Consider the point; go to your books and your thoughts; and when next we meet, you will feel little inclination ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... are introduced by way of simile. At times he employs the simplest epic figure, drawn from the habits of rustic or animal life. But his favourite figure is the "long-tailed simile," or, as it is better called, the decorative comparison, used for its ennobling, rather than for its elucidating virtue. Here he parts company with Homer, and even with Virgil, who could draw on no such vast and various store of history, geography, and romance. From Herodotus to Olaus Magnus, and onward to the latest discoveries in geography and astronomy, the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... paralysing influence which I had experienced: I saw that though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing. All this was entirely consistent with the doctrine of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... axiom that one type of music bred one type of character, another type another. A change in the music of a state, wrote Plato, will be followed by changes in its constitution. It is of the utmost importance, said Aristotle, to provide in education for the use of the ennobling and the fortifying moods. These philosophers knew that music creates a spiritual world, in which the spirit cannot live and move without contracting habits of emotion. In this vagueness of significance but intensity of feeling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye Elements!—in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted—can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... their own happiness, as well as to the happiness of others, will at times awaken a natural pang, but he looks forward with gladdened heart to that glorious period when justice shall have established the universal fraternity of love. These soul-ennobling views bestow the virtues which they anticipate. He whose mind is habitually impressed with them, soars above the present state of humanity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of the Most High. Regarding every event, as he that ordains it, evil ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; 210 Give back the need to worship, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the changing climate of the political world, and capable of accommodating itself to the shifting condition of men and things. And this not by forcing or leading public sentiment, but by yielding to it. Thus while it is founded upon, and in its workings evolves, so many lofty and ennobling truths, keeping constantly before the eyes of the people lessons of purity and moral dignity, acting as a check upon the visionary and a safeguard to our liberties, it nevertheless yields quietly to the requirements of the times, and changes according to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... women that any strong impression made at a certain time during pregnancy will exert a powerful influence in producing some defect or deformity in the child. The opposite is also held, to the effect that beautiful objects, delightful music, and everything elevating and ennobling will have a favorable effect upon the body or mind of ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... whose business it seems to have been to sing his praises. Surrounded with splendors like these, the plain title of "Mr." Dexter would have been infinitely too mean and common. He therefore boldly took the step of self-ennobling, and gave himself forth—as he said, obeying "the voice of the people at large"—as "Lord Timothy Dexter," by which appellation he has ever since been known ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... test of genius. We have come to attach to the word "imagination" a larger meaning than the mere reproduction in the mind of certain absent objects of sense that have been perceived; there must be a suggestion of something beyond these, and an ennobling suggestion, if not a combination, that amounts to a new creation. Now, it seems to me that the transmutation of the crude and theretofore unpoetical materials, which he found in the New World, into what is as absolute a creation as exists in literature, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... literature, and civilisation, the records of their own history, and the ruins of their monuments, attest their deterioration in common with that of every other nation which has not at some time been brought under the ennobling ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... round the lakes. A cottage built for Her Majesty was pointed out to us, and we heard of a royal deer hunt held here. We heard rapturous accounts of stags hunted to the verge of death, and saved alive to repeat the ennobling sport. And we censure without measure the Spanish bull fight where the animals are killed once! How many deaths do these timid deer suffer? I am afraid we are not as noble and merciful a people as we think ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... theatrical journeyman. The one great follower of Shakespeare—"haud passibus aequis" at all points; "longo sed proximus intervallo"—has recognized, with Shakespearean accuracy and delicacy and elevation of instinct, the necessity of ennobling and transfiguring his characters if their story was to be made acceptable to the sympathies of any but an idle or an ignoble audience. And he has done so after the very manner and in the very spirit of Shakespeare. The noble creatures of his invention ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that music has a purifying, ennobling, and substantial effect upon society, if only Gluck's friend and partisan, the successful composer and immortal writer, Jean Jacques Rousseau, would not intrude upon the picture with his faun-like ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... of this drama was the narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde by Chaucer. Contrary to his custom, Shakespeare has degraded the characters of his original, instead of ennobling them. The camp scenes are adapted from Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye; and the challenge of Hector was taken from some translation of Homer, probably that by Chapman. An earlier lost play on this subject by Dekker and Chettle is mentioned in contemporary reference. We do not know ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... in so doing they give up the home; for in a real true home there must be parents and children, and this comes through sex. We may go even farther and say with Mr. Grant Allen that everything high and ennobling in our nature springs directly from the fact of sex. He claims that to it 'we owe our love of color, of graceful forms, of melodious sound, of rhythmical motion, the evolution of music, of poetry, of romance, of painting, of sculpture, of decorative art, of ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... above the jagged battlements. The deep blue sky, the shining snow, the huge, dark, rocky bases, the different shades of color harmoniously blending, the soft and rugged shapes contrasting vividly—well may impress the soul with pleasure-relieving awe, with awe-ennobling pleasure. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born there: yonder dirty, swindling, ragged blackguards, lolling over greasy cards three hours before noon, quarrelling and shrieking, armed to the teeth and afraid to fight, are bred out of the same land which begot the philosophers and heroes. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is to make everything good, man's highest privilege, as well as duty, is to co-operate with him in realizing that purpose. Are men to-day as a whole growing happier and nobler? In what practical ways may a man contribute to the happiness and ennobling ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... to us the clear consciousness of pardon, the calm sense of communion, the joyful spirit of adoption, righteousness rooted in our hearts and to be manifested day by day in our lives; it brings all elevation and strengthening and ennobling for the whole nature, and is the one power that makes us really men as God would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... September to town, by the first of March will have been blasted. It only takes one winter to ruin a young man. When the long winter evenings have come, many of our young men will improve them in forming a more intimate acquaintance with books, contracting higher social friendships, and strengthening and ennobling their characters. But not so with all. I will show you before I get through that, at this season of the year, temptations are especially rampant: and my counsel is, Look out how you spend your ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... of this little volume imbue you with a taste for the beautiful and ennobling science of Geography, my object will be gained; and that such may be the result of these humble endeavors is the sincere ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... prospects. There were also others who regarded Northern men as cowards, who, even if willing to fight, would not at best be equal, a half dozen of them, to one Southern man. These false notions were sincerely entertained. The Southern people regarded slavery as ennobling to the white race, and free white labor as degrading to the people of the free States, and hence were confident of their own superiority in arms and otherwise. There were even some people North who had so long heard the Southern boasts of superior courage that they half believed in it themselves, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... life! to feel it and portray it in its reality, to love it for itself, to behold in it the only real, lasting, and changing beauty, without any idiotic idea of ennobling it by mutilation. To understand that all so-called ugliness is nothing but the mark of individual character, to create real men and endow them with life—yes, that's the only way to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... knowing how the time passed; Eric could not help thinking how very, very different their relative positions might have been; how, while he might have been aiding and ennobling the young boy beside him, he had alternately led and followed him into wickedness and disgrace. His heart was full of misery and bitterness, and he felt almost indifferent to all the future, and weary of ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... much accepted, that the long tenure of a fief ended by ennobling the commoner. Subsequently, by a sort of compensation which naturally followed, lands on which rent had hitherto been paid became free and noble on passing to the possession of a noble. At last, however, the contrary rule prevailed, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... protecting it from the inroads of error and corruption. And herein lies the great secret of all true national life. For no nation was ever yet truly great that had not constantly before it some lofty and ennobling object to direct all its strivings, some great central truths at its very core, continually working outward through all the great arterial ramifications of society, keeping up a brisk and healthy circulation by the force of its own eternal energy. Lack of a noble ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this connection of philosophy with life does not mean its reduction to the terms of life as conceived in the market-place. Philosophy cannot emanate from life, and quicken life, without elevating and ennobling it, and will therefore always be incommensurable with life narrowly conceived. Hence the philosopher must always be as little understood by men of the street as was Thales by the Thracian handmaiden. He has an innocence and a wisdom peculiar to ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... interesting and brilliant career. And he has married a most admirable wife. Lady Chiltern is a woman of the very highest principles, I am glad to say. I am a little too old now, myself, to trouble about setting a good example, but I always admire people who do. And Lady Chiltern has a very ennobling effect on life, though her dinner-parties are rather dull sometimes. But one can't have everything, can one? And now I must go, dear. Shall I call for ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... children as an embodiment of wisdom and learning. Mrs. Stuart saw as little of her children as her husband; her time was fully occupied in attending committee meetings, opening bazaars, and superintending numerous pet projects for ennobling and raising the standard of social morality amongst the masses. She was not an indifferent mother; she was only an active, busy woman, who, after carefully selecting a thoroughly good and trustworthy woman as her nurse, left the children's training with perfect confidence ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... for the purposes of science, this fruitful suggestiveness for philosophic thought, Jewish history, as compared with the history of other nations, enjoys another distinction in its capacity to exercise an ennobling influence upon the heart. Nothing so exalts and refines human nature as the contemplation of moral steadfastness, the history of the trials of a martyr who has fought and suffered for his convictions. At bottom, the second ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... and delicate sensibilities, love darkness, when all is said and done, much for the same reason that thieves love it. The mission of a great spire or statue should be to strike the spirit with a sudden sense of pride as with a thunderbolt. It should lift us with it into the empty and ennobling air. Along the base of every noble monument, whatever else may be written there, runs in invisible letters the lines ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... thinking things out logically, or of jumping to conclusions; of thinking critically and independently, or of taking things unquestioningly on the authority of others. We may form the habit of carefully reading good, sensible books, or of skimming sentimental and trashy ones; of choosing elevating, ennobling companions, or the opposite; of being a good conversationalist and doing our part in a social group, or of being a drag on the conversation, and needing to be "entertained." We may form the habit of observing the things about us and enjoying ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... their walls. The work of your own Church in this regard has been magnificent and unrivaled, and the results which have been attained have been grand and elevating to the entire Negro race in America. The complement to all this generous and ennobling effort is the elevation of the black woman. Up to this day and time your noble philanthropy has touched, for the most part, the male population of the South, given them superiority, and stimulated them to higher ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the future a foundation must be sought and found for culture and morality, different from that which can be furnished to us by religion. It is not the fear of God that acts amelioratingly or ennoblingly upon manners, of which the middle ages furnish us with a striking proof; but the ennobling of the conception of the world in general which goes hand in hand with the advance of civilization. Let us then give up making a show of the profession of hypocritical words of faith, the only purpose of which seems to be that ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... age of translations. Du Bellay himself translated two books of the Aeneid, and other poetry, old and new, and there were some who thought that the translation of the classical literature was the true means of ennobling the French language:—strangers are ever favourites with us—nous favorisons toujours les etrangers. Du Bellay moderates their expectations. "I do not believe that one can learn the right use of them"—he ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... was added the attractiveness of mental inaccessibility. The ennobling influence of scientific pursuits was demonstrated by the speculative purity which expressed itself in his eyes whenever he looked at her in speaking, and in the childlike faults of manner which arose from his obtuseness to their difference of sex. He had never, since becoming ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... virulently, wickedly active within its sphere, which is the space the vision of a lad may carry—that I was by this magic incapacitated and overcome. 'Tis an excuse made by fallen lads since treason was writ of; 'tis a mere excuse, ennobling no traitorious act: since love, to be sure, has no precedence of loyalty in hearts of truth and manful aspiration. Love? surely it walks with glorious modesty in the train of honor—or is a brazen baggage. But, as it unhappily chanced, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... of mediaeval Spain, in a small column entitled "Songs of a Semite." The tragedy was dedicated, "In profound veneration and respect to the memory of George Eliot, the illustrious writer who did most among the artists of our day towards elevating and ennobling the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... engraver, a plebeian but also an ardent royalist, participating in all the plots for the deliverance of the royal family. This explains the mesalliance. She hoped, besides, that the monarchy, of whose reestablishment she had no doubt, would recognise my father's services by ennobling him and reviving the name of Brecourt, which was now represented only in the female line. She always called herself Moisson de Brecourt, and bore me a grudge for ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the experience of people whose cuticle is not white. It is, however, but bare justice to say that, as Negroes are by no means deficient in self-love and the tenderness of natural affection, such gratifying fulfilment of a family's hopes exerts an elevating and, in many cases, an ennobling influence on every one connected with the fortunate household. Nor, from the eminently sympathetic nature of the African race, are the near friends of a family [38] unbenefited in a similar way. This is true, and distinctively human; but, naturally, no apologist ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... called the most gifted among Italian composers. In Tosca especially he has shown the ennobling influence of music over an otherwise repulsive theme. The lovely melodies inspire us with a warm interest in all the persons of the play, with the exception of Scarpia, that living incarnation of evil and corruption. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... in the Senate, March 4, 1858, that its "frame of society is the best in the world." Jefferson Davis defended it as "a form of civil government for those who by nature are not fit to govern themselves";[327] Mason, a descendant of the great Mason of revolutionary days, described it as "ennobling ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... him as he said those few words, she would have seen what he thought of her in his face. She would have seen, innocent as he was in this world's knowledge, that he knew the priceless value, the all-ennobling virtue, of a woman who speaks the truth. But she had no courage to look at him—no courage to raise her eyes ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... she sifted the records of history, tracing in every epoch the sovereigns of the hearth-throne who had reigned wisely and contentedly, ennobling and refining humanity; and she proved by illustrious examples that the borders of the feminine realm could not be enlarged, without rendering the throne unsteady, and subverting God's law of order. Woman reigned by divine right only at home. If married, in ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... we be true to ourselves and our calling; future, inasmuch as its completion waits to be unveiled in another order of things, where perfect purity and perfect consecration shall issue in perfect joy. And all this ennobling and enriching of human nature is produced by that good news about the grace and glory of God and of Christ, if we will only listen to it, and let it work its work ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... sighed from those perfervid verses. So touched, indeed, was she as to believe the Lord Giovanni's love to be the pure and holy thing those lines presented it, and to conclude that his love had wrought in him a wondrous and ennobling transformation. That so she thought I have the best of all reasons to affirm, for I had it from ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... immediate everyday purposes of human life has ever been recognised by thoughtful men as a prerequisite to a worthy or beautiful, or even a blameless, human life. In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... recommended as a specific for the particular evil of Mammon-worship. Such it never was, even in the days when the Greek heroes longed for the booty of Troy, and anticipated lying by the wives of its princes and its citizens. Still it had, in times now gone by, ennobling elements and tendencies of the less sordid kind. But one inevitable characteristic of modern war is, that it is associated throughout, in all its particulars, with a vast and most irregular formation ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... frame of mind he suddenly secured the entree into London Society. For some reason, as unaccountable as the reverse, a wave of popularity for Americans was breaking against the oak doors, and he was carried in on the crest. The result was not ennobling. The dormant instinct of satire leaped to life and the idealist ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... wrong, the beauty of virtue, and the ugliness of sin. Whatever there was in life to raise men above their earthly struggles, their evil passions, and the despair of a hard and dangerous existence, was supplied by her. The consolations of religion, the ennobling acquaintance with the character of Christ, and the hope of salvation through Him were incalculable blessings. Her aid in suppressing disorder and in establishing a respect for law and government is not to ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... this I never complained. I have not merit enough to boast that I am proud, for pride has always something ennobling about it: but I was vain, and vanity enabled me to put on the appearance of courage. When questioned by the few schoolfellows who would speak to me, I acknowledged no ghosts, and would own to no fear. All this, in the sequel, was remembered to my honour. Besides, I had found a singular antidote ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... difficulties of the subject are resolutely faced and expounded with as much simplicity as their nature will admit. As a literary effort this work is admirable, both on account of its picturesque language and the ennobling conceptions of the universe which it unfolds. The student who desires to become acquainted with those recondite departments of astronomy, in which the effects of the disturbing action of one planet upon the motions of another planet are considered, will turn to ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... well-being. Give them thus a sense of being something in the great social order, a direct palpable interest in the honor and prosperity of the community. There will then be a dignified sense of independence; the generous, liberalizing, ennobling sentiments of freedom; the self-respect and conscious responsibility of men in the full exercise of their rights; the manly disdain of what is base; the innate perception of what is worthy and honorable, developing itself spontaneously ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... thought of race pride, think now. Not only think, but act well your part. Without the ennobling power of our women we can never be a great and noble race. If young men aspire to reach the highest pinnacles of fame, they rise but to fall lower, unless the women are pure and will demand respect. Learn to resent insults, young women. Learn to respect and defend the women ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... the front door of "Les Marches," she felt a tremor pass through her whole frame. The once familiar surroundings and the ennobling object of her visit inspired her with strangely ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... danger. Try as he would to make his feet go forward, his hands pulled against the stretcher handles, until Hastings turned and repaid him with a longer string of oaths. These, and a memory of the ennobling words of Bonsecours, gave him strength for a new spurt; yet both soon ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... ignorance and wickedness, and wholly unfitted to guide the passions which they are able to excite. We want a poetry which shall speak in clear, loud tones to the people; a poetry which shall make us more in love with our native land, by converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thoughts; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... it was not so much from principle as from fear. Hence she resorted to all sorts of arts to deceive her husband. Her genius was sharpened by perpetual devices, and cunning was her great resource. She cultivated no lofty friendships; she engaged in no philanthropic mission; she cherished no ennobling sentiments; she kindled no chivalrous admiration. Her amusements were frivolous, her taste vitiated, her education neglected, her rights violated, her sympathy despised, her aspirations scorned. And here I do not allude to great and infamous ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... some extent music, painting, and sculpture, arouse the emotions and direct them-if the art is good-into proper channels. Meunier's sculptured figures, Millet's Angelus or Man with the Hoe, the oratorio of the Messiah or a national song like the Marseillaise, have a stirring and ennobling effect upon the soul; while such a poem as Moody's Ode in Time of Hesitation, a story like Dickens's Christmas Carol, or a play like The Servant in efficacious than many a sermon. The study of any art has a refining influence, teaching ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... proprietors, they will cease to be a great power. The court is already no more than a palace where people beg; by and by it will become an antechamber, when it will be composed only of those who constitute the suite of the King. Great names will begin by ennobling vile offices; but, by a terrible reaction, those offices will end by rendering great names vile. Estranged from their homes, the nobility will be dependent upon the employments which they shall have received; and if the people, over whom they will ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... give pleasure To Prometheus, her well-loved one, Brought a brimming bowl of nectar From the glorious realms of heaven As a blessing for his creatures, And to pour into their bosoms Impulses for arts ennobling, She with rapid footstep hasten'd, Fearing Jupiter might see her, And the golden goblet trembled, And there fell a few drops from it On the verdant plain beneath her. Then the busy bees flew thither Straightway, eagerly to drink them, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... and her voice was like trickling honey, "only wait until you are a little older and you will find that you do care, care very, very much. The understanding and sympathy of other women will become very sweet to you. It is so pure and ennobling, so free ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of verbal inspiration or some of the miracles, or even get confused about the Trinity, because their religious nature is not built on the sand. The art of leading young men through college without ennobling or enlarging any of the religious notions of childhood is anti-pedagogic and unworthy philosophy, and is to leave men puerile in the highest department ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and mighty Passion. Passion, or "sensation." I am not afraid of the word; still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against sensation lately; but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The ennobling difference between one man and another,—between one animal and another,—is precisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us; if we were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Lincoln. His image was as homely as that of Silenus was bestial. His talk was of ploughs and boats, polecats and whiskey. But those who opened this homely image found in him a likeness as of no other man, and in his words a meaning that was of widest and most ennobling comprehension. And, as Crito said for all ages, after the sun that was on the hilltops when Socrates took the poison had set and darkness had come: "Of all the men of his time, he was the wisest and justest and best." So has the poet of that western democracy given ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley |
