"Preciousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beams of the wrath, and the other is capable of receiving the golden light of the love. Let us take heed lest, by destroying the wrath, we maim the love; and let us take heed lest, by exaggerating the wrath, we empty the love of its sweetness and its preciousness; and let us accept the teaching that these are one, and that the deepest of all the things that the world can know about God lies in that double saying, which does not contradict its second half by its first, but completes its first by its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... will pick out every little bit of iron there, so surely will that love which He bears to the people, when it is responded to, draw to itself, and therefore draw out of the heap, the men that feel its impulse and its preciousness. And so 'saint' means, secondly, righteous and pure, but it means, first, knit to God, separated from evil, and separated by the power ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... still. Garth was playing "The Rosary." He did not sing it; but the soft insistence of the organ pipes seemed to press the words into the air, as no voice could have done. Memory's pearls, in all the purity of their gleaming preciousness, were counted one by one by the flute and dulciana; and the sadder tones of the waldflute proclaimed the finding of the cross. It all held a new meaning for Jane, who looked helplessly round, as if seeking some way of escape ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... trying to habituate his eyes, full of the snow-glare, to the dimmer light within, he heard a rapturous cry of "Why Bartley!" and he felt Marcia's arms flung around his neck. His burdened heart yearned upon her with a tenderness he had not known before; he realized the preciousness of an embrace that might be the last; but he dared not put down his lips to hers. She pushed back her head in a little wonder, and saw the haggardness of his face, while he discovered her father looking at them. How strong and pure the fire in her must ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... acts of worship, morning and night, thought for others, for dear ones, for parishioners, for colleagues, will have its full place of course. Let it be so, with an ever-growing sense of the preciousness of the work of intercession. But I do meanwhile say to my Brother in Christ, take care that no pre-occupation with things pastoral allows you to forget the supreme need of drawing out of Christ's fulness, and ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... be the object of her life-long wishes and antipathies—that her sense of the preciousness of mortal life and beauty, and her hunger for participation in the development of both, were instincts intended to make her indomitable now. Suddenly she had one of those rare moments when the wall is so strengthened by a feeling of worthy purpose that it becomes tremendous, and everything ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations: it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for us the metal vein and quickening spring; and that for our incitement, I say not our reward, for knowledge is its own reward, herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... in themselves, but the outcome of a thousand little previous incidents, of which the importance is immense, as an epitome of the past and as a link with the future. A hundred times already we have felt the preciousness of the one we love; but a trifle—the perfect touch of two souls united during a walk perhaps by a single word, by some unlooked-for proof of affection, will carry the feeling to its supremest pitch. In ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... something delightful in the fact that even in the Stoic philosophy there was some comfort to keep men from despair. To a holy and scrupulous conscience like that of Marcus, there would have been an inestimable preciousness in the Christian doctrine of the "forgiveness of the sins." Of that divine mercy—of that sin-uncreating power—the ancient world knew nothing; but in Marcus we find some dim and faint adumbration ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... that other command was given,—"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." And of all the things that a man can want and desire to have given him, there is nothing comparable for preciousness ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... as a dreamer. Liberty must come of the claim of the mass; of the general enlightenment, firmness, and probity. It is no great physical secret, which a single brain, finding, may announce and so establish: it is a moral truth, which, like a gem, hides its ray and its preciousness in obscurity, nor becomes refulgent till all around it is beaming with light.—Cabinet Cyclopaedia—History ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... patois and punches holes in it with frenzied thumbs, to quiet, cultivated homes, where community of taste restricts the calling lists—from the noisy studio, where pianos and girls make evenings lively, to the austere bare boards or the velvet elegance of studios where authority and preciousness, and occasionally attainment, reside, and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... to win the highest prize of life. Not only because God is highest and noblest of beings, but also because His pleasure presupposes great moral and spiritual qualities, and unfolds itself in blessings of untold preciousness both in this life and that which is to come. The pleasure of the Lord is graduated to the intrinsic beauty or value possessed by the object which draws it out. It was manifested when the great creation stood in finished order before Him, and He pronounced it "only good." But of a higher kind is that ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... us that it requires a hundred and fifty years to make a perfect maiden. "From all enchanted things of earth and air, this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... mouths...the war must be over by then....As for romance, well, she was in the romantic mood. It was a right of youth that she had missed, but a woman may be quite as romantic at thirty-four as at eighteen, if she has sealed her fountain instead of splashing it dry when she was too young to know its preciousness. Once before she had surrendered to romance, fleetingly: during the week that followed the night she had sat on Calvary with Gathbroke and watched a sea ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... revisers endless gratitude, if for nothing more than the genuine reading of St. Matthew's report of the story of the youth who came to our Lord. Whoever does not welcome the change must fail to see its preciousness. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... her no great violence, evidently recognizing the preciousness of their burden. They had carried her as gently as possible, but had absolutely refused to allow her to walk. At regular intervals they gave her an opportunity to ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... men discern God in the excellence of things. If all were well, as they hope it may some day be, God would henceforth be present in everything. While good is mixed with evil, he is active in the good alone. The pleasantness of life, the preciousness of human possessions, the beauty and promise of the world, are proof of God's power; so is the stilling of tempests and the forgiveness of sins. But the sin itself and the tempest, which optimistic theology has to attribute just as much to God's purposes, are not attributed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... keys and, as it were, died in her lap. Jim Dyckman understood a woman for once, and in a gush of pity for her and of resentment for her disprized preciousness caught at her to embrace her. Her hands came to life. The wifely instinct leaped to the fore. She struck and wrenched and drove him off. She was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... barbarism which had underlain so much that was picturesque in the sixteenth century—a barbarism which had come down from the late Middle Ages, and which was really a dissolution of strong things outworn—to exchange for this a preciousness of quality as against mere rude bulk. It desired to introduce depth of purpose in the place of chaotic moral disorder, originality in place of a frenzied and incoherent eccentricity, and to found a solid structure upon a basis of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... between the little towns of St. Enimie and Le Rozier is enchanted ground by virtue of unrivalled scenery. In time the influx of tourists must make the river-side population rich. The sandy bed of the Tarn must attain the preciousness of a building site near Paris. This materialistic view of the question affords mixed feelings. I have in mind the frugality of these country folks, their laboriousness, their simple, upright, sturdy ways. I can but wish them well, even at the price of terrible disenchantment. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... cheek. Thus a champion of liberty from the Old World and one from the New were linked in this little act of helpfulness. When he was an old man, Whitman still treasured the reminiscence as one of indescribable preciousness. ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... religion, and politics, is compelled to obtain the support of a class, of a herd within the herd. The most eccentric in opinion or conduct is, we may be sure, supported by the agreement of a class, the smallness of which accounts for his apparent eccentricity, and the preciousness of which accounts for his fortitude in defying general opinion. Again, anything which tends to emphasize difference from the herd is unpleasant. In the individual mind there will be an analysable dislike ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... irregular flecks and stains of purple running through the green. The laurel garths were like cool jade; the gardens, where red, yellow, blue and white gleamed together in a mist of heat, had the radiance of opal; the river was a band of dull gold. On every side, as if to enhance the preciousness of the city, the woods hung dark on the hills; above, the sky was violet, specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes. It reminded him of a beautiful bowl in his villa; the ground was of that same brilliant blue, and the artist had fused into the work, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... has forgiven me: yet I believe it will lesson that eternal weight of glory I might have had.' Being asked if she had no wish for earth, she replied, 'O no, not one: I have but one wish, and that is, to be fully ripe for glory:' and added, 'I should like to talk to you of the preciousness of Jesus, but I cannot.' While we were alone, she stretched out her withered arms, and drew me to her side; then holding me fast, she said, 'Let me request of you, my dear cousin, that you will stay a little with ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... into his bag, had he appreciated the sweet amenities of life, its pleasant conversations and companionships, its topped drives, and mushrooms and incalculable incidents. Now they wore a glamour and a preciousness that was bound up with life itself. He starved for more of them, not knowing while they were his how sweet ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... ever saw the worth of human life as Jesus saw it. And no one ever measured the sacred values of humanity as He measured them. And now, in the perfect mercy of God, there is no man but may dwell in the house of God alway and feel life's sacredness amidst a thousand desecrations, and know its preciousness amidst all that seeks to obscure, defile, ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... the shadows fear lest ever again they be lured by specious promises to suffer usury at the hands of Yahn, who is overskilled in Law. Only Yahn sits and smiles, watching his hoard increase in preciousness, and hath no pity for the poor shadows whom he hath lured from their quiet to toil in ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... inestimable preciousness of the new Promethean gifts because they have become familiar. Think first of the privilege we all possess now of preserving the lineaments and looks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... madness. But I suspect that here as before (123), Shakepere would show Hamlet's soul full of bitterest, passionate loathing; his mother has compelled him to think of horrors and women together, so turning their preciousness into a disgust; and this feeling, his assumed madhess allows him to indulge and partly relieve by utterance. Could he have provoked Ophelia to rebuke him with the severity he courted, such rebuke would have been joy to him. Perhaps ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the door, stood in front of the fire and looked round him with a delightful sense of possession, of privacy, of well-being. His new house—indeed, one might almost have said his new life—was still so recent a possession as to have lost none of its preciousness. He still felt a childish joy in all its details. The house was one of those built within the last decade which seem to have made a struggle to escape the uniformity of the older streets. The front door opened into ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... man give in exchange for his soul?" Matt. xvi. 26; though he would give, yet what hath he to give? There are two things endear any privilege to us, and heighten the rate of it,—the necessity of it, and the preciousness of it; and these two are eminent here. Is it not necessary to be, to live, and have a being? All men think so, when they will give all they have to redeem themselves. All other things are accidental to them, they are nearest to themselves; therefore all must go, ere themselves go. But I say ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... were subject to a terrible vacillation on the subject of their hats: they would almost consign them to the care of a monitor appointed to hang them on the pegs made and provided, when a sense of their preciousness would suddenly present itself to their minds, and they would rescue them wildly, and throw themselves on the defensive while they sat upon or otherwise protected ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness and finish of design correspondent to the preciousness of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... proofs of God's existence, and will not be destroyed by its insufficiency to some minds. Religion existed before argument; in fact, it is the preciousness of religion that leads to the seeking for all possible confirmations of ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... that he drives us to the dilemma either of placing Mr. Choate in quite an unworthy rank as a scholar, or of concluding, that, in the case of these conversations, he bestowed upon his listener very little of any particular preciousness, or that what else was bestowed was not understood or remembered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Jesus Christ loves every human being individually, cares for each and has a specific vocation for each one to fulfil. This doctrine of the equal preciousness in the sight of GOD of all human souls is for Christianity fundamental. But the correlative of Divine fatherhood is human brotherhood: just because GOD is love, and fellowship is life and heaven, and the lack of it is hell, ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... your family devotions! O, sir, eternity will be too short to praise my God for what I have learned. It was there I first beheld my lost and wretched estate as a sinner; it was there that I first found the way of salvation, and there that I first experienced the preciousness of Christ in me the hope of glory. O, sir, permit me to say, Never, never neglect those precious engagements. You have yet a family and more apprentices. May your house be the ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the contrast which they present to God's good will, greatly enhance its preciousness. "His favour is life, his loving-kindness is better than life." Where God has a will, God always has a way. At the throne of divine grace, none had ever to shed Esau's tears, or cry with him, Hast thou but one blessing, O my father? Our father ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... where all corporal exercise was necessarily in partial darkness, and only idle people lived in the light. The exercise might give an advantage to the occupants of the gloom, but we should neither be justified in therefore denying the preciousness of light in general, nor the necessity to the workers of the few rays they possessed; and thus I suppose the hills around Stratford, and such glimpses as Shakespere had of sandstone and pines in Warwickshire, or of chalk cliffs in Kent, to have been essential to the development ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... representative of the sun; and this luminary was later spiritualized in the idea of Apollo. Gold was sacred as far as this worship was spread, from India to the North of Europe, and the great demand for it for sacred uses gave the metal much of its preciousness in the markets of the world. It was worn by the living and was buried with the dead; so that if humanity had not refined its conception of the divine, it would have come to be the case at length that every particle of gold in the soil would have had ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... stupid and petty things, the narrow motives, the vanities and the jealousies! And all that is because people haven't this thing that has come to me; they don't know the possibilities of life, they lack the sense of its preciousness and sacredness. And they seek and seek—and go astray! Take drunkenness, for instance; that brings them joy, but it's a false scent, it leads them over a precipice. I've been down at the bottom of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a youth, he was known to spend whole nights in prayer. What those nights must have been to that young heart! What unfoldings of the Gospel and of the love of God! What revelations of the beauties of Christ, the preciousness of His blood, and the treasures of His Covenant! What insight into the value of the soul and its commission from God! What views of stewardship, accountability, rewards, punishments, destiny, eternity! What visions of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... but whatever be done in these things, in the way of giving up, or self-denial, or deadness to the world, should result from the joy we have in God, from the knowledge of our being the children of God, from the entering into the preciousness of our future inheritance, etc. Far better that for the time being we stand still, and do not take the steps which we see others take, than that it is merely the force of example that leads us to do a thing, and afterwards it be regretted. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... daily life at home was a model of simplicity and regularity, and the great secret of the vast amount of work he accomplished was owing to the fact that every odd five minutes were occupied. He had a deep sense of the preciousness of time and the responsibility which everyone incurs who uses or misuses it. "To such a length did he carry this that at a picnic to a favorite Welsh mountain he has been seen to fling himself on the heather and bury himself in some pamphlet upon a question ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... continually and reciprocally submit and surrender in all kind and courteous and affectionate ways: and these submissions and ministries to each other, of which you all know (none better) the practice and the preciousness, are as good for the yielder as the receiver: they strengthen and perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the real sacrifice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others (though it may be needed, and though all ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... it is absorbed into the life of others and lives in them. We wished in this history to speak of a class of lives formed on the model of Christ, and like his, obscure and unpretending, like his, seeming to end in darkness and defeat, but which yet have this preciousness and value that the dear saints who live them come nearest in their mission to the mission of Jesus. They are made, not for a career and history of their own, but to be bread of life to others. In every household or house have been some ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... admirers have always been willing to admit. This recalcitrance has, I think, been mainly due to the erroneous conception of Marivaux as, if not a mere fribble, yet a Dresden-Shepherdess kind of writer, good at "preciousness" and patch-and-powder manners, but ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... this jewel in the young man's heart. A disguised, beggared outcast, he had found out the value of an honest name; forsaken, unfriended, he had learned the preciousness of home and love; made a servant of, tyrannized over, and held in low esteem, he had been taught by hard experience the secret of true humility and charity—the esteeming of ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... 1843, I entered upon a remarkable part of my life, upon which I must dwell somewhat at length, especially as it will, by God's blessing, still further show the Reader the preciousness of depending ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... and therefore a duty; a certainty for all the redeemed in fullest measure hereafter; and, alas! a rebuke to our low lives and feeble expectations. Let us look, then, at the petition, with the desire of sounding, as we may, its depths and realising its preciousness. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... I render to my glorious King? I have but that which I receive from Thee And what I give, Thou givest back to me, Transmuted by Thy touch, each worthless thing Changed to the preciousness of gem or gold, And by thy blessing multiplied a ...
— Coming to the King • Frances Ridley Havergal
... of human atoms that inhabit this vessel," said he, "there is but one who is imbued with reverence for the past and a sense of the preciousness of the unique. I need not tell you, Herr Baronet, who are a scholar, that of this book only two copies exist in this ink-sodden universe. One is in the University Library of Bologna; the other is before your eyes. It is also the only book known to have been printed by Magniagus. See the beautiful, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... a feeling which a husband takes as his due; the sense of the immense preciousness of such perfect love soon wears off, as a debtor, in the course of time, begins to fancy that the borrowed money is his own. This noble loyalty becomes the daily bread of the soul, and an infidelity is as tempting as a dainty. The woman who is scornful, and yet more ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... assurance the heart finds rest. O the preciousness of the promise, "I will come again"! "I am coming for you," is the cheering message. "Yes, Lord," we reply, "we will wait, and watch, and be ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... is kind and loving; I will deck her with my hopes as long as I can. When enthusiasm is shared, it is easy to keep it up. It weighs lightly in spite of its infinite preciousness. If I ever find it a strain, the reason will be that Rose did not really bear her share of it. It will become a burden and I shall relinquish it. All that she will have of me will be the careless ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... moment, hardly venturing to believe, and yet afraid she must. "I heard Miss Valery once say that no man's love after marriage is exactly as it was before it; that the thing attained soon loses its preciousness, and that the wife has to assume a new character, and win another kind of love. I wonder if this is true. I wonder"—and suddenly she changed her seriousness for the tone of raillery she always used with Harrie Dugdaie—"I wonder whether our husbands ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... for their loss or find joy in their continued possession? While if they are beautiful in their own nature, what is that to thee? They would have been not less pleasing in themselves, though never included among thy possessions. For they derive not their preciousness from being counted in thy riches, but rather thou hast chosen to count them in thy riches because they seemed to ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... emeralds to match the green lights that her eyes took on in the glen from the deep fern, the mossy bank and the green boughs overhead. On the terrace at Lessings' under a wide June sky he had supposed them to be blue; but there was no blue stone of that sky colour of sufficient preciousness ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... said, "I didn't mean to insult you. But can't a clever fellow like you understand that all the pretty frills and preciousness of a year ago are as dead as last year's Brussels sprouts? We're up against elemental things and can only get at them with elemental ideas expressed ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... are of the utmost value to society; through any one of them the divine light may shine which will bless many generations. They are very easily hurt by unwise treatment and teaching. We would have the teacher and parent impressed with the preciousness of even the most delicate child. Health of mind and body, not attainment, must be the first consideration in the teaching of the young. It ought to be as much the teacher's business to see that pupils do not suffer in health as to ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... it were no larger than a coriander seed), he somewhat brusquely refused, adding, in a milder tone, that he could not give it me for all the wealth I possessed, and that not on account of its great preciousness, but for some other reason which it was not lawful for him to divulge.... Then he inquired whether I could not show him into a room at the back of the house, where we should be less liable to the observation of passers-by. On my conducting ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... other water spirits, of whom Nereus is the chief, with Palaemon, and Leucothea, the "white lady" of the sea; and Thetis, and nymphs innumerable who, like her, could "suffer a sea change," while the river deities had each independent power, according to the preciousness of their streams to the cities fed by them,—the "fountain Arethuse, and thou, honoured flood, smooth sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds." And, spiritually, this king of the waters is lord of the strength and daily flow of human life—he gives it material ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... that he has been rewriting his book (not for correction of fact, but for improvement of style) for ten years, and that now he doesn't care anything for critics, and endorses it NE VARIETUR (sic).[440] The style itself is a mosaic of preciousness, literary jargon, and positive argot—not quite contemptible, but, like some actual mosaic, unattractive; and the matter does not attract me, though it may attract people who like tiger-taming scenes, crimes, grimes, etc. The address of the dedication, "Mienne," and nothing ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... them for turnips at all. She never afterwards believed them to be turnips; and as for cabbages, they were green inflorescences of majestic bloom. There is one position from which all common things can be seen with reflections of preciousness, and Ellen had insensibly taken it. The window and the shop behind were illuminated with the yellow glare of gas, but the glass was filmed here and there with frost, which tempered it as with a veil. In the background rosy-faced men in ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cannot measure the sacrifice and suffering of these lives. If we could know the infinite value of the unit of personality, or compute the preciousness and potentiality of a single life destroyed, we might then hope to multiply it by the million. If human scales could weigh the sorrow of a widow's heart, could compute the anguish of a mother's loss, could prophesy the deprivation of an orphan's lot, or know the good which ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... word and Spirit leads to deeper peace and a holier walk. Ah! there is nothing like a calm look into the eternal world to teach us the emptiness of human praise, the sinfulness of self-seeking and vainglory, to teach us the preciousness of Christ, who is called 'The Tried Stone.' I have been able to be twice at college to hear a lecture from Dr. Chalmers. I have also been privileged to smooth down the dying pillow of an old school-companion, leading him to a fuller joy and ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... glitter of vanity fair without thought of acquiring its treasures for herself; and, when reminded that she was there to buy, she appeared to be utterly ignorant of the value of money, though a childhood without it was supposed to have taught her its rarity and preciousness. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the laws of Art Nouveau are divine!—perhaps angels and cherubim, unseen, watch fondly o'er my babes, lest all unaware they guiltlessly violate some subtle canon of Art, marring the perfect symmetry of eternal preciousness." ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... helpful text; And when, a little while before, I saw her sobbing on the floor, Because I told her that in heaven She would be as the angels even, And would not want her doll, 'tis true A horrible fear within me grew, That, since the preciousness of love Went thus for nothing, mine might prove To be no more, and heaven's bliss Some dreadful good which is not this. But being about to die makes clear Many dark things. I have no fear, Now that my love, my grief, my joy Is but a passion for a toy. I cannot speak at ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... sometimes low; sometimes steady, sometimes staggering; sometimes in, and sometimes even at the end of thy very wits. For 'so he brings us to our desired haven' (Psa 107:23-30). Yet grace is the gold and preciousness of the righteous man: yea, and herein appears the uprightness of his soul, in that though all these things attend the grace of God in him, yet he chooseth grace here above all, for that it makes him the more like God and his Christ, and for that it seasons ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... now. The man was talking with the missionary, asking the road to somewhere. The girl suddenly realized that this hour of preciousness was over, and life was to be faced again. Those men, those terrible men! She had recognized the others as having been among her brother's funeral train. Where were they, and why had they gone that way? Were they on her track? Had they any clue to her whereabouts? Would ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... some draw from the preciousness of the metal on the one hand, and the image of the king which it bears on the other, although attractive and useful in themselves, are not relevant here. It is better to forego for the time even precious morsels of instruction, than to obtain them by doing ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... glad, very glad, I was allowed to suffer so much, and learn something of the preciousness of truth. It is a diamond with a white light, children. There is no other gem ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... was yet going over and over these precious things, with a strong sense of their preciousness in all her throbbing grief, there came to her ear through the perfect stillness of the night the faint, far-off, not-to-be-mistaken sound of quick-coming horse's feet, nearer and nearer every second. It came with a mingled pang ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... great supper (Luke xiv.), and made some remarks in explication of it; after which Pastor Chabrand spoke with much feeling on the influence of the Holy Spirit, the gradual operation of the Spirit in the secret of the soul, and the preciousness of dwelling in Christ, as the branch in the vine, in order ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... of a painted stone,' of 'the worthless honours of a bust.' The worth of honour lies in that same worthlessness. Fair money wage for fair work done, no wise man will despise. But that is pay, not honour; the very preciousness whereof—like the old victor's parsley crown in the Greek games—is that it had no value, gave no pleasure, save that which is imperishable, spiritual, and not to be represented by gold ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley |
