"Self-forgetful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its windows. Her father watched her, and could not observe that she was either timid or excited in the prospect of the new scenes upon which she was about to enter. Her big brown eyes were wide open, busy and interested, at the same time wholly self-forgetful. Self-forgetful they remained when arriving at the house, and when she was introduced to the family; and her manner consequently left nothing to be desired. Yet house and grounds and establishment were on a scale to which Dolly hitherto had ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... a man ought to live for virtue. To be self-dedicated to the help of others; to be courageous as an army which had never met defeat; to be self-forgetful, so that hunger, pain, thirst, fatigue, become trifles; to have love become absorbing; to fill the mind's unfathomed sky with dreams outshining dawns; to count honor to be so much more than life, as that honor is all and life is naught; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... part of the story a reverent, loving, self-forgetful look came into her face, and made her seem to me like an angel. As for myself, the recalling of the incident, now that I knew its sequel, prevented my keeping my eyes dry. I felt a little ashamed of myself and hurried away, but her look while I spoke of her father, and her trembling form ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... cat—which bore in speech and appearance so queer a likeness to Sir Abel Barking—from the ugly fate awaiting it. He had gathered it tenderly in his arms, pitying and striving to heal it. Was the child, by instinct, finer, nobler, more self-forgetful, than the man in the full possession of reason, instructed in the divine science, fortified by the example and merits of the saints? That would, indeed, be a melancholy conclusion. And so it occurred to him, not merely as conceivable but as incontestable, that the road to the far horizon, instead ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the unwavering self-forgetful intentness of his look, arrested her attention, and she returned his gaze for an instant, and then turned away and took the arm of an elderly gentleman who stood beside her. She moved slowly, as ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... humble, so pathetic, so self-forgetful in the homage that the tears sprang to the girl's eyes and she longed to put her arms about his neck and draw his face close to hers and tell him how her heart was ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... word of this narrative Elinor had listened, absorbed and self-forgetful. As for the Princess, she loved the unexpected, and here she found it. The more she studied Pats, the better she liked him and his cheerfulness,—a cheerfulness which seemed to rise triumphant above all human hardship. She took an interest in his unkempt hair and barbaric, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... the flesh and of the spirit! How grim of wit, when wit alone might serve! What wisdom his to know the boundless might Of banded effort in a world like ours! How meek, how self-forgetful, courteous, calm! A silent figure when men idly raged In murderous anger; calm, too, in the storm,— Storm of the spirit, strangely imminent, When spiritual lightnings struck men down And brought, by violence, the sense of sin, And violently ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... good a man—of such deep and unaffected piety, so sympathetic and kindly, so thoroughly Christian-hearted—should yet be benumbed by the presence of a cold prudential morality which might seem incompatible with the self-forgetful impulses of warm religious feeling, he may see, in what he wonders at, the ill effects of a faith too jealously debarred by reason from contemplations in which the human mind quickly finds out its limits. When religion, in fear lest it should become unpractical, relaxes its hold upon what may ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... We are hardly conscious even of the artistic taste which fits each phrase, and sentence, and episode, to the larger occasion as well as to each other. Indeed, we lose the rhetorician altogether in the devoted pleader, the patriot, the self-forgetful chief of a noble but losing cause. His careful study of the great orators who had preceded him undoubtedly taught him much; yet it was his own original and creative power, lodged in a far-sighted, generous, and fearless nature, that enabled him to leave to mankind ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... good humor and intelligence. The French soldier, the French citizen, and the French woman are to-day marvelously moulded in the heroic type of their best tradition: in the full sense of the word they are gallant—chivalrous, self-forgetful, devoted. Is there any price too great to pay for such a resurrection ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... tenderer light of the opal; for the beholding of love made bare acts like the flame of the furnace, and the dissolving passions, through an anguish of remorse, the lightnings of pain, and through an adoring pity, are changed into the image they contemplate and melt in the ecstasy of self-forgetful love, the spirit which lit the thorn-crowned brows, which perceived only in its last agony the retribution due to its tormentors, and cried out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... polite errand to the minister, and stood with a sort of triumph before the two ladies, who were sitting in the front doorway, as if they were waiting for visitors, Helena still in her white muslin and red ribbons, and Miss Harriet in a thin black silk. Being happily self-forgetful in the greatness of the moment, Martha's manners were perfect, and she looked for once almost pretty and quite ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... correspondence with your Southern ecclesiastical bodies. But I began to speak of little graves. You will see by my involuntary wandering from them how full our hearts are of your colored people, and how self-forgetful we are in our desires and efforts to do them good. And yet some of your Southern people can find it in their hearts to set at nought these our most ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... watching her pretty alacrity of manner, hearing her caressing speech, he inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, believe her self-forgetful, her affection genuine, guiltless of design or after-thought. If so, so very much the better! He was far from grudging her redemption, specially at the hands of Damaris.—Only were things, in point of fact, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet |
