"Renunciation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is singular that the oath of renunciation to Great Britain and her king, which every one employed in the continental service was obliged to take at that time, should have been administered in one half of the United States by a Frenchman of twenty years ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they assured him that Audaine was getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot, at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism, are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]—as, ma foi! he would most naturally do, since his metier was simply to shout well-rounded common-places,—and the circumstance that he shouted would always attract attention, while the fact that he shouted platitudes would invariably ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... approves of the project of a treaty to the same effect submitted to him, but proposes an additional article providing for the renunciation of privateering. Such an article, for most obvious reasons, is much desired by nations having naval establishments large in proportion to their foreign commerce. If it were adopted as an international rule, the commerce of a nation having comparatively a small naval force would be very much ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... illustration—in ode, in satire, and epistle—that without self-control and temperance in all things, there would be no joy without remorse, no pleasure without fatigue—that it is from within that happiness must come, if it come at all, and that unless the mind has schooled itself to peace by the renunciation of ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live—that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... bitterly, "you have been educated in too good a school, and are too thoroughly a Hohenzollern, not to believe in the complete self-renunciation of women. At this court, women ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... been thirsty lips that have made a still more trying renunciation. Our own Sir Philip Sidney, riding back, with the mortal hurt in his broken thigh, from the fight at Zutphen, and giving the draught from his own lips to the dying man whose necessities were greater than his own, has long been our proverb for the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Her fingers felt like iron rods, pressing into his flesh. As if to complete her renunciation she dropped his hand abruptly. She mastered some violent convulsion that left the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... esteem'd one of the greatest Village Towns in all France. It was in the great Church of this Place, that Lewis XIV according to Marriage Articles, took before the high Altar the Oath of Renunciation to the Crown of Spain, by which all the Issue of that Marriage were debarred Inheritance, if Oaths had been obligatory with Princes. The Natives here are reckon'd expert Seamen; especially in Whale fishing. Here is a fine Bridge of ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... never willing to own that you were right. My pride in you blinded me, I suppose. I could not bear to dream any fate for you but the greatest. I saw you always leading events, rather than waiting on them. But true greatness lies in the man, not in his actions. Compromise, delay, renunciation—these may be as heroic as conflict. A woman's vision is so narrow that I did not see this at first. You have always told me that I looked only at one side of the question; but I see the other side now—I see that ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... said the cardinal, continuing the conversation in Castilian, "that the condition of the marriage of the Infanta with the king of France was the absolute renunciation of the rights of the said Infanta, as well as of King Louis XIV., to all claim to the crown of Spain." The Franciscan made ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... finished the remainder of his days. Such was the origin of the power of the great Cistercian monastery which still stands at the junction of the rivers Glane and Sarine in the county of Fribourg. Not content with this unequalled act of piety and renunciation, the insatiable Bishop of Lausanne exacted the cession of every chateau and every rood of land belonging to the family of de Glane, part of which—through the marriage of Agnes to Count Rodolphe I, and of Juliane to Guillaume of the cadet branch of Gruyere—had extended the domain ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... of Crawford, had furnished money to influence three Adams men to vote for the Georgian. He had followed their go-between from Syracuse to Albany, from Albany to New York, and from New York back to Albany; he had heard their renunciation of Adams and their changed sentiments toward Crawford; and he knew also that the Adams ticket was lost if these three votes, or even two of them, were cast for the Crawford ticket. Weed straightway proposed that the dishonourable ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... distributed among the twenty-one metropolitan churches of his empire. After having put these first two lots under seal, he willed to preserve to himself his usual enjoyment of the third so long as he lived. But after his death, or voluntary renunciation of the things of this world, this same lot was to be subdivided into four portions. His intention was that the first should be added to the twenty-one portions which were to go to the metropolitan churches; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... station in the morning; and the question asked him by Rogojin about THE EYES and Rogojin's cross, that he was even now wearing; and the benediction of Rogojin's mother; and his embrace on the darkened staircase—that last supreme renunciation—and now, to find himself full of this new "idea," staring into shop-windows, and looking round for things—how ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... from the Pope, from Germany, from Austria, were rejected with fierce denunciation, most passionate scorn, as "peace plots" and "peace traps," not without the terrible logic of the vicious circle, because, indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation in some of those offers of peace, and the powers hostile to us were simply trying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own kind of peace which should be that of conquest. The gamblers, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... with consequent acquisition of foreign nationality; (4) Assuming public office under the government of a foreign State, for which only nationals of that State are eligible; (5) Voting in an election or participating in a plebiscite in a foreign State; (6) Formal renunciation of citizenship before an American foreign service officer abroad; (7) Conviction and discharge from the armed services for desertion in time of war; (8) Conviction of treason or an attempt at forceful overthrow of the United States; (9) Formal renunciation of citizenship within the United States ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... was thus speaking, a fearful struggle took place in the breast of Alessandro—for the renunciation of his creed, a creed in which he must ever in his heart continue to believe, though ostensibly he might abjure it—was an appalling step to contemplate. Then to his mind also came the images of those whom he loved, and who were far away in Italy:—his aunt, who had been so ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... too much of a certain sort of acquiescence in Swartz's mind, missionary as he was. He did not attack the system of caste, with its multitudinous separations and distinctions. Of course he wished it to be abolished, but he accepted converts without requiring its renunciation, allowed high-caste persons to sit apart in the churches, and to communicate before Pariahs, and did not interfere with their habits of touching no food that the very finger of a person of a different caste had defiled. He no doubt thought these things would wither away of themselves, but ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the Kaiser was compelled by the revolutionists to abdicate, and the crown prince signed a renunciation of his right to the succession. The abdication of the Kings of Bavaria and Wurtemburg occurred at the same time. The ex-emperor and the crown prince, in an attempt to reach the British line and surrender themselves, were headed off by the revolutionary forces and took ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the fact being, that he lacked what a French psychologist has called the function of the real; his temperament was not of the kind to cope with actualities. This retirement is an epoch in his life—it is the Grand Renunciation. Henceforward he loses personal touch with thinking humanity. At Macchia he remained, brooding on Albanian wrongs, devising remedies, corresponding with foreigners and writing—ever writing; consuming his patrimony in the cause of Albania, till the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... untrue to himself, rushes on board his ship and hastily puts out to sea. Senta's courage rises to the occasion. Though the Dutchman has cast her off, she remains true to her vows. She hastens to the edge of the cliff hard by, and with a wild cry hurls herself into the sea. Her solemn act of renunciation fulfils the promise of her lips. The gloomy vessel of the Dutchman, its mission accomplished, sinks into the waves, while the forms of Senta and the Dutchman transfigured with unearthly light are seen rising from the bosom of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... my presence. But before I go, Bettina," he said, with a sudden break in his voice, "I must and will satisfy my heart by one thing: I must, for the sake of my own soul's peace, tell you this. I have never ceased to love you, and I never shall. I gave you up when I saw the renunciation to be inevitable, but I knew then, as I know now, that I can never put any other in your place. You were the love of my youth, and you will be the love of my old age, if my lonely life goes on till then. Don't turn from me. Don't hide your face ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... like "a flaming sword," [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 91.]cut in every direction and affected the future of all the presidential candidates. The hope of Crawford to reap the reward of his renunciation in 1816 was based, not only upon his moderation in his earlier career, which had brought him friends among the Federalists, but also upon the prospect of attracting a following in Pennsylvania, with the aid of the influence of Gallatin, and in New ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... every respect, as he may seize res nullius in the time of peace; but it does not follow from thence that the effect of these two actions is the same, when applied to objects of so different a condition, or that the right of war alone, without cession or renunciation, is a title sufficient for a ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... path so easy, took the lead. "Just a formal renunciation of the crown," he said. "Give as your reason, if you choose, your inability to fall in with the expressed desire of the Cabinet that you should marry a Serbian lady. It is essential that you ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Valjean of Victor Hugo's noble romance not a figment of the theatre, but an all too actual type? The believer who looks to another world to redress the wrongs and horrors of this; the sage who warns us that the law of life is resignation, renunciation, and doing-without (entbehren sollst du)—each of these has a foothold in common language. But to say that all infractions of love and equity are speedily punished—punished by fear—and then to talk of the perfect compensation ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... carried on with the Swedes and the Danes. In March, 1665, a treaty was drawn up between Sweden and the United Provinces in which the former country agreed to renounce her claims of damage against the West India Company and all her rights to any places on the African coast, for which renunciation the States General was to pay 140,000 rix dollars. The treaty failed of approbation on account of the reluctance of the king of Sweden to withdraw his interests from the coast of Africa. Aitzema, XI, 1102, 1103; S. P., Holland, 174, f. 148, Downing to Bennet, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... not if it were a large estate," continued Father Antoine, "it would be no difference: if it had been millions she would have left it and come away. She was full of renunciation. Ah! but she must be beloved of ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... weak-headed men and women made it their occupation, and family scenes and plays speedily surpassed the romances of chivalry in number. The poet, nevertheless, exercised no less an influence, notwithstanding his voluntary renunciation of his privilege to elevate the sinking minds of his countrymen by the great memories of the past or by ideal images, and his degradation of poetry to a mere palliation of the weaknesses ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... watching her through this wordless passage, gathered all the currents that had been running through her will into an indeterminate determination. In that moment she realized the full bitterness of a renunciation that does not mean renouncing a wholly dear and desired thing, but does mean renouncing the beloved thing which one ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... a moment, and assuming a theatrical manner, befitting the gestures of those about me, I fling the fruit down, and, with a sublime renunciation, stalk away. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Set the parsons after them! Teach them heaven! Set them to singing about harps and golden crowns, and milk and honey flowing! Then you can shut them up in slums and starve them, and they won't know the difference. Teach them non-resistance and self-renunciation! You've got the phrases all pat... handed out from heaven direct! Take no thought saying what ye shall eat! Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth! Render unto Caesar the things that ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... pagan antiquity. In Hellenic paganism, we behold the triumph of humanity. The human form in its most ideal beauty is the type of all things divine. Christianity starts at once with the peremptory condition of a renunciation of individual beauty and strength. Christianity counted sensual beauty as nothing: she regarded the mind alone. She permits the human form only as the incorporation of some hidden thought divine. In the one instance, the form was all in all; in the other, it is the expression. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... his cross and follow me;' but who has understood it? The letter of the law has indeed been observed by many earnest followers of Jesus to a degree not considered necessary in this age, but what has it demonstrated? What has come of all the fasting and renunciation, the cruel asceticism ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... words contained. It was something to know that Francis remembered her, and more to know that he recalled her as a good friend. What more could she expect? Then, taking her love and her longing with both hands, she laid them a sacrifice before the welfare of the man she loved, and made the renunciation of her one hope without a quiver in ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... New, are right, then our moral code will undergo a sad deterioration. Polygamy was allowed to the Israelites, was the practice of the holiest men, and was common and licensed in the age of the apostles. But the apostles no where condemn it, nor was the renunciation of it made an essential condition of admission into the Christian Church." To this we answer, that so far as polygamy and divorce were permitted under the old dispensation, they were lawful, and became so by that permission; and they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... spot of greater significance and sacredness to any Christian than this, where in a sanguinary and licentious age a young man suddenly broke all the bonds of self, and taught in his own person humility, renunciation and brotherly love as they had hardly been taught since his Master's death. The sternness of his personal self-denial is only equaled by his sweetness toward all living things: not men alone, but animals, birds, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... going to be as you wish me to be, to help you, to serve you.... If you can't come to meet me, I'll meet you. I can't help but love you, I can't do without you. Never in my life have I subscribed willingly to the idea of renunciation. I've hated renunciation. But if there is no other course but renunciation, renunciation let it be. I'm bitter about this, bitter to the bottom of my soul, but at least I'll have you ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... horseback. Frank Fordyce was a splendid rider, as indeed was the old rector, who had followed the hounds, made a leap over a fearful chasm, still known as the Parson's Stride, and had been an excellent shot. The renunciation of field sports had been a severe sacrifice to Frank Fordyce, and showed of what excellent stuff he was made. He used to say that it was his own fault that he had to give them up; another man would ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... popular art pursued the downhill road sedately while plutocratic art went with a run is a curious accident of which the traces are soon lost; the outstanding fact is that with the Renaissance Europe definitely turns her back on the spiritual view of life. With that renunciation the power of creating significant form becomes the inexplicable gift of the occasional genius. Here and there an individual produces a work of art, so art comes to be regarded as something essentially ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... attention. His sympathy was the more grateful for the tactful brevity with which it was indicated rather than expressed. He only wished that I had told him of this complication in the beginning; as I had not, he agreed with me that the only course was a candid and complete renunciation. It was not as though my divinity had a penny of her own, or I could earn an honest one. I had explained to Raffles that she was an orphan, who spent most of her time with an aristocratic aunt in the country, and the remainder under the repressive roof of a pompous politician ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... born about the year 1721. His life was checkered with a vicissitude of fortunes bordering on romance. At the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, his father fled from France, preferring self-expatriation to the renunciation of his religious belief, and settled in Alsace, on the Rhine where, under the enlightening influences of the reformation, freedom of opinion in matters of conscience was tolerated. The family name was originally spelt ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... courageously, upon the Pardiggle path; they have tried absurd experiments, like Ruskin, in road-making and the formation of Guilds; they have taken to journalism and committees like William Morris. But they have been baffled. I do not mean to say that such lives of splendid renunciation may not have a deep moral effect; but, on the other hand, it is little gain to humanity if a richly-endowed spirit deserts a piece of work that he can do, to toil unsuccessfully at a piece of work that cannot yet be ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not reply for some time to the question. Then she took the pins out of her hat and threw it on a chair, thus symbolising the renunciation of her intention of returning ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... beautiful you look! You have never been so wonderful. If I could paint that rapt face! Quick, I believe I can get it. Stand there, on the throne." He seized his pallette and brushes and worked furiously while Mary stood, still flaming with her renunciation. In a few minutes it was done. He ran to her and covered her face with kisses. "Come and look!" he cried exultingly, holding her before ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... first three centuries after our era, at Aphaca, at Hierapolis, and at Antioch, where, in the time of Julian, even a Libanius confessed that the great festival of the year consisted only in the perpetration of all that was impure and shameless, and the renunciation of every lingering spark ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... frankly surprised and pleased. This unexpected support and enthusiastic commendation of his plan was something he gratefully accepted, and he assumed a new manner toward me. He ascribed to me a power of self-renunciation which won his ardent ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... they began addressing each other as Esq., and have done so ever since. Neither is any the better for the honors they exchange on the envelopes they do not look at, and doubtless if mankind could be brought to the renunciation of the vain prefixes and affixes which these friends once disused the race would be none the worse for it, but all the better. One prints Mr. Smythe Johnes on one's visiting-card because it passes through the hands of a menial who is not to be supposed for a moment to announce ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... in our day. Capodistrias lighted his pipe with Canning's treaties and King Leopold's renunciation; and Colettis makes game of the feeble acts and strong expressions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... for ever, and embrace God,—“Not the God of philosophers or of savants,” but “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob—the God of Jesus Christ,” from whom he had been severed, but from whom he felt he never more would be severed; abiding in Him in “sweet and total renunciation” of all else. The idea, of course, is that Pascal’s dream or vision was the result of physical derangement; and it may be safely granted that if the reality at all corresponded to Lélut’s imaginary picture, this is its natural explanation. The story of the “vision” and the ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Mr. Slope receiving a full renunciation from Mr. Quiverful of any claim he might have to the appointment in question. It was only given verbally and without witnesses, but then the original promise was made in ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with a pretty thorough course of reading upon sin, repentance, faith in Christ, renunciation of all evil, walking obediently in God's holy will and commandments, which is another name for holy living, and as she prayed constantly for God's blessing upon her efforts, she had great cause for thankfulness ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... Edmund soon divined Billy's renunciation, though not the nature of it; and several questions brought it forth—the old pioneer dream of land spaciousness; of cattle on a hundred hills; one hundred and sixty acres of land ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... greatly surprised me. You have pleaded and continue to plead his cause very powerfully: but have you no consideration for me? Granting all you have supposed in his favour possible, am I so situated as to justify a romantic renunciation of claims which, if asserted, may aid me to accomplish ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... vague, calm countenance it was, wearing an air of supreme indifference. Prolonged taciturnity had made her dumb; the darkness of her dwelling and the continual sight of the same objects had dulled her glance and given her eyes the limpidity of spring water. Absolute renunciation, slow physical and moral death, had little by little converted this crazy amorosa into a grave matron. When, as often happened, a blank stare came into her eyes, and she gazed before her without seeing anything, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... more directly bathed in what he calls, beautifully, 'this queen of colours, the light.' There is a passage in the tenth book which may almost be called a kind of aesthetics. They are aesthetics indeed of renunciation, but a renunciation of the many beauties for the one Beauty, which shall contain as well as eclipse them; 'because those beautiful patterns which through men's souls are conveyed into their cunning hands, come from that Beauty, which is above our souls.' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... conscientious acceptance of what Nature reveals. The first condition of success is an honest receptivity and a willingness to abandon all preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation which has something noble in it, and of which the world never hears, is often enacted in the private experience of the true votary ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... thereby the future might be better. And he gave God thanks for the strength that enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... whose tenderness toward the weak and unhappy are drawn from the Christ-Story, takes almost the form of a Pagan Eros—the full-grown, soft-limbed Eros of later Greek fancy—when the question of restraint or renunciation or ascetic chastity ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... theoretical, but experimental; not sentimental, but practical. It requires self-renunciation and self-control. It wears a stern face toward men's vices, and interferes with many of our pursuits and our fancied pleasures. It penetrates beyond the region of vague sentiment; beyond the regions where moralizers and philosophers ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... I have only loved you, but now I respect you," but I doubt whether this renunciation, worthy of ancient Home, was ever really uttered. On the contrary they say that he wept violently. A fortnight after he was superseded, all of them, in a "family party," went one day for a picnic to a wood outside ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fancied it was a noise or some slight movement, made him look quickly toward the bed; and at sight of the still, white face among the pillows, boyish love—God Himself has made no stronger passion—swept doubt, distrust, rebellion, worldly ambition, all, into the abyss of renunciation. He went softly, groping because the quick tears blinded him, to kneel at the bedside. She was his mother; for one thing she had lived and striven and prayed; living or dying she must not, she should not, be disappointed. And if his service must be of the lip and not of the heart, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... doing. Her reward came in the knowledge that after all his love was hers—that he was sharing her sacrifice. Why this was she did not understand; she only felt sure that she was right, and she gloried in it. Then, woman-like, she reproached herself for the moments when she had cheapened her renunciation by the suspicion that he ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... you here to lead the life that you live here? For, surely, to accept the doctrines of such total renunciation of all personal interests, a man must have been disgusted with the world, or ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... lo! his short, massive form and his square-cut, honest countenance in that ardour of renunciation had suffered a change to things almost divine. At that moment—to her sight at least—this homely Hollander wore the aspect of an angel. She ground her teeth and pressed her hands upon her heart. "For his sake—to save him," she ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... retire to England. He therefore prayed his majesty, as a favour to him and as an act of justice, to require the nobleman to whom he had granted the estates to pay her a handsome sum, when she would make a formal renunciation of the estates ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... I hear the maddening echo of your accusing cry, 'You have ruined my life!' God knows, you have as effectually ruined mine. You have your revenge—if it comfort you to know it; but I am incapable of your sublime renunciation. I am no patient martyr; I am, instead, an intensely selfish man. You choose to hug the ashes of desolation; I purpose to sweep away the wreck, to rebuild on the foundation of one hope, which all the legions in hell cannot shake. Between you and me the battle has only ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... force instead of a weakness; to their indelicacy and impudence the doors of a public career stand wide open.—Such is the august personage into whose hands, according to the theory, I am called upon to surrender my will, my will in full; certainly, if self-renunciation were necessary, I should risk less in giving myself up to a king or to an aristocracy, even hereditary; for then would my representatives be at least recommended by their evident rank and their probable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sign, if Thou art indeed merciful! Show me that there is relenting in Thee! Grant me the hope, at least, that my great renunciation may open a gate by which, after cycles of expiatory suffering, I may at last pass through to where she dwells in Thy Brightness. Give me to see her face with a smile on it—to touch her hand—after all—after all! The ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... much to the temporary lull. No one attracted in this respect greater attention than the most illustrious person among the prisoners—the daughter of the Seigneur de Rambouillet and wife of De Rentigny, standard-bearer of the Duke of Guise—who resolutely rejected the pardon, based on a renunciation of her faith, which her father and husband brought her from the king, and urged her with tears to accept.[648] Others, who, on account of their youth, were expected to be but poor advocates of their doctrinal views, proved more than a match ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... bliss of Nirvana countless ages ago, when he was born as the Brahmana Sumedha, in the time of Dipankara Buddha: he had then reached the stage where he might have entered Nirvana, had he not loved mankind more than himself. This renunciation implied his voluntarily enduring the miseries of earthly lives until he became Buddha, for the sake of teaching all beings the way to emancipation and to give rest to ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... Lords found their party impracticable, and they were compelled (or thought themselves so) to give way to the prejudices of the majority. But Peel did not understand this knocking under to violence and folly, and his pride was mortified, because it was a sort of renunciation of his authority as leader and chief of the whole party. Accordingly it was with reference to these proceedings that Peel spoke with great bitterness to Sandon, and said that 'he never would be the tool of the Lords,' He left town in high dudgeon, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... even if she were willing he could not. Yielding was not the simple thing it had seemed. Something he lacked—or something he had—which forever shut the gates of that kingdom upon him. It had been but an evil impossible dream. But a beautiful dream! There was yet no joy in renunciation. ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... the ground, moved slightly his hand in a hopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned his eyes away from him, and scanned deliberately the paper he had been ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... made known, that he was charged by Gov. Hamilton, to make prisoners of the garrison, but not to treat them harshly; and that if nine of their principal men would come out, and negotiate a treaty, based on a renunciation of allegiance to the United States, and on a renewal of their fealty to the king, the Indian army should be instantly withdrawn. Boone did not confide in the sincerity of the Frenchman, but he determined to gain the advantage of farther preparation for resistance, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... unto the present, otherwise blessed day. But, dear old friend, is not this sublime sneering? and is there not an honest ray or two of truth mingled here and there in the colder coruscations of this wit? Of the sincerity of this repudiation and renunciation so fashionable in the Pope circle I have nothing to say; but in certain moods of the mind it is vastly entertaining, and cures one's melancholy as cautery cures certain physical afflictions. It may be amusing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... had, apparently, but just begun, when fresh troubles broke out in the north-east. Gotarzes had never ceased to regret his renunciation of his claims, and was now, on the invitation of the Parthian nobility, prepared to came forward again and contest the kingdom with his brother. Vardanes had to relinquish his attempt to coerce Izates, and to hasten to Hyrcania in order to engage the troops ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... no Christian at heart. Nay, nor are any of our house, though they perceive it not. My father fasts at Lent, but it is the Pagan Aristotle that nourishes his thought. Rome counts her beads and mumbles her paternosters, but she has outgrown the primitive faith in Renunciation. Our pageants and processions, our splendid feasts, our gorgeous costumes, what have these to do with the pale Christ, whom thou ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... there, since she had renounced her own demands, privileged to see the larger view, to share the vast desires and sufferings of the mass of mankind. She had been too lately and too roughly mastered by facts to take an easy pleasure in the relief of renunciation; such satisfaction as she felt came only from the discovery that, having renounced everything that made life happy, easy, splendid, individual, there remained a hard reality, unimpaired by one's personal adventures, remote as the stars, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... was swallowed up in holiness—his thoughts were of heaven—his daily conduct tinged and illumined with a heavenly hue. Nothing could surpass the intense devotedness of the child of God, except perhaps the self-devotion, the self-renunciation, and the profound humility which distinguished him in the world, and in his conversation amongst men. "The companion of the wise shall be wise." I observed my benefactor, and listened to his eloquence; I pondered on his habitual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... for the convictions which are presumed to kindle it, and which burns itself out quickly because it neither comes from principle nor leads to action. No resolution to follow Christ can be too enthusiastic, nor any renunciation for His sake too absolute, to correspond to His supreme authority. But there may very easily be brave words much too great for the real determination which is in them. A half-empty bottle makes more noise, if you shake it, than a full one. We cannot ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... joy; sometimes it comes freighted with complications which rob it of half its zest; sometimes it brings no charm at all, but only bitterness and disappointment; and again—oh, often again, thank God for His mercies!—it comes at the moment of hopelessness, of renunciation, dazzling the eyes and heart with ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... law of Nature, and the instinct of self-preservation which leads to struggle is acknowledged to be a natural condition of existence. "Man is a fighter." Self-sacrifice is a renunciation of life, whether in the existence of the individual or in the life of States, which are agglomerations of individuals. The first and paramount law is the assertion of one's own independent existence. By self-assertion alone can the State ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... her eggs, covers them with the down of her breast, and presses them against that living calorifer, her heart. The Lycosa turns hers about beneath the fires of heaven; she gives them the sun for incubator." (10.2.) Could abnegation be more perfect? What greater proof could there be of renunciation and self-oblivion? ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... vision was not attained by him, any more than by others, without deliberate renunciation. He lays great stress upon this; and yet it is a point in his teaching sometimes overlooked. He insists repeatedly upon the fact that before any one can taste of these joys of the spirit, he must be purified, disciplined, self-controlled. He leaves us a full account of his purgative stage. Although ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... exclude forever the Old Jewry doctrine of "a right to choose our own governors," they follow with a clause containing a most solemn pledge, taken from the preceding act of Queen Elizabeth,—as solemn a pledge as ever was or can be given in favor of an hereditary succession, and as solemn a renunciation as could be made of the principles by this society imputed to them:—"The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... against many troubles—and on the other hand it can save a man from innumerable little wretchednesses and horrors which destroy the beauty and dignity of life. I don't believe mechanically in humiliation and renunciation and ignominy and contempt, as purifying influences. It all depends upon whether they are gallantly and adventurously and humorously borne. They often make some people only sore and diffident, and I don't believe in learning to hate life. Not to learn your own limitations ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... reference to religious standards: as a layman he was perfectly free to seduce Heloise; the scandal, the horrible sin, was not the seduction, but the profanation by married love of the dress of a nun, the sanctuary of the virgin. So it is with the renunciation of all the world's pleasures and interests. The ascetic sacrifice of inclination, which the stoics had conceived as resistance to the tyrant without and the tyrant within, as a method for serene and independent ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... something of the divine, something high and marvelous—a gift from Heaven to hold the human race above the mire which threatens to engulf it.... Every day it asserts itself somewhere; in sacrifice, in devotion, in simple courage, in lofty renunciation. It is common; wonderfully, beautifully common... yet there are men who do not see it, or, seeing, do not comprehend, and so despair of humanity.... Ruth, crouching on the floor of her little parlor, might have numbered countless brothers and sisters, had she known.... She was uplifting ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... no political innovation of any kind. They expressly accepted matters as they were. All statutes, charters, and privileges of provinces, cities, or corporations were to remain untouched. They intended to form neither an independent state nor an independent federal system. No doubt the formal renunciation of allegiance, which was to follow within two years, was contemplated by many as a future probability; but it could not be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hunting grounds in the Mississippi Valley and Atlantic plain to more restricted and barren lands in the far West, and the withdrawal of the Australian natives from the fertile coasts to the desert interior have meant racial renunciation of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... argument, to hold that communion with them, that belongeth only unto them that are married to him by this solemnity! Brother, God give him repentance. I wot that through ignorance and a preposterous zeal he said it: unsay it again with tears, and by a public renunciation of so wicked and horrible words; but I thus sparingly pass ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "It has been customary in the Christian church from the most remote period, for the candidates for baptism to renounce the devil and all his works, before they were admitted to that sacrament. This renunciation was always followed by a profession of faith in Christ, as it is now in the English liturgy. The last interrogation and answer "Vis baptizari, Volo" have long been used in the west. (Martene de Antiq. Eccl. rit. tom. ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with absolute fidelity to her renunciation of the right to legislate for Ireland. Whatever were the other flaws in the Treaty of Union, it was no violation either of 22 Geo. III. c. 63, or of 23 Geo. III. c. 28. The worst features of the method by which the Act of Union was carried would have been avoided had the English Parliament resumed ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... as one can use such terms of a human creature—be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service—the true ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... a terrible avenging sword, before which no Englishman can stand. But she, too, had to have her tragic guilt. So Schiller makes her supernatural power depend—by the Virgin's express command—on her renunciation of the love of man. A fleeting passion for the English general Lionel, conceived on the battle-field in the fury of combat, fills her with remorse and the sense of treason to her high mission. For a while she is deprived of her self-confidence, and with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... persons'—a great danger in all times of ecstatic enthusiasm. He is also alive to the dangers connected with that kind of asceticism which is based on theories of the impurity of the body—the typical Oriental form of world-renunciation. But he does not appear to have foreseen the unethical and polytheistic developments of sacramental institutionalism. In this particular his Judaising opponents had a little more justification than he ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... theory is there, and it is especially applied to the love of beauty and therefore to the arts. The illustrations are taken from music and painting, from sculpture and poetry. Only in dwelling too exclusively, as perhaps the situation demands, on the renunciation of this world's successes, he has left out that part of his theory which demands that we should, accepting our limits, work within them for the love of man, but learn from their pressure and pain to transcend them always ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... experiencing that species of comfort which follows rapid denouements, when at the windows of the attics in the chateau appeared men-servants tearing their liveries to pieces. They flung their torn clothes into the garden, as a mark of renunciation. The people hooted at them, and then ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... soul from the depths of life to its sunary heights. Mozart transposed life into music, Wagner and his pupils transposed problems of life. Wagner questions and receives no answer. Mozart affirms life. His "Don Juan" liberates, "Tannhaeuser" leads into the labyrinth of bothersome renunciation. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... disproportion in their lots. Ordinary folk in the East hope that a life of virtue will secure them another life as happy beings on earth or perhaps in some heaven which, though not eternal, will still be long. But for many the higher ideal is renunciation of the world and a life of contemplative asceticism which will accumulate no karma so that after death the soul will pass not to another birth but to some higher and more mysterious state which is beyond birth and death. It is the prevalence ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... no affection for them," said Tito, with a shrug; "servitude agrees well with a religion like theirs, which lies in the renunciation of all that makes life precious to other men. And they carry the yoke that befits them: their matin chant is drowned by the voice of the muezzin, who, from the gallery of the high tower on the Acropolis, calls every Mussulman ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... am just to that now. It has been an object of curiosity to me that people raise so many just roses. Here is a world by itself. There is a rose for every station in society. There are roses for beast and saint; roses for passion and renunciation; roses for temple and sanctuary, and roses to wear for one going down into Egypt. There are roses that grow as readily as morning-glories, and roses that are delicate as children of the Holy Spirit, requiring ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood, and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes, rock-crystals, and shells and scraps ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... prepared to renounce the land of their birth without a struggle. They wished rather to get control of the Government in order that their own ideas might prevail, and were more disposed to purify a corrupt society by act of Parliament than by passive renunciation and unobtrusive example. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the empty joys of living. To all such, Koheleth offers some practical rules of conduct to enable them to make the best of what is to be had; but the gist of his discourse is identical with those of Jesus, of the Buddha, of Schopenhauer—renunciation. ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... on the plane of a philosophy which had undermined the old traditions and conventions and had not yet crystallized into constructive principles that could safely guide the individual through life. Their souls wavered between self-realization and self-renunciation; their minds eagerly followed the example of Ibsen inquiring into individual motives and responsibilities, and their eyes were at the same time opened to the economic struggle of the masses which had roused the social conscience. A world unknown to the poets of the previous generation, or ignored ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... think Philip would give him even—me. His renunciation was wide and deep. He, the great, strong soul of him, went on—alone. It had no real part with his weakness and all that was bound up in his weakness—he wanted John to have everything of which he had deprived him. You can understand, can you not? At the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... to be, independent in relation to other nations, it has, and can have, no independence in the face of the Church, the kingdom of God on earth: they would have seen at a glance that support of the civil authority against the spiritual, no matter in what manner, was the renunciation of their faith as Catholics, and the actual or virtual assertion of the supremacy of the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... acquirement of powers, whether psychic or intellectual, though both are its servants. Neither is occultism the pursuit of happiness, as men understand the word; for the first step is sacrifice, the second, renunciation. ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... human passion—Tristan's soul is the antithesis of Lohengrin's. The Ring is, from beginning to end, a gorgeous spectacle, a glorification of the grandeur and loveliness of the earth, the splendour and beauty and strength of human life. Not even Wotan's renunciation takes away a jot from its note of praise of humanity—one might even say praise of the joy of living. Parsifal is a denial of the value and richness and worthiness of human life: the world is pushed away; and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman |
