"Birthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power of Rome. It is this race, broken-hearted and scattered, to which the Czar of all the Russias adds the enormities of his rule upon the victims of the ignorance and slander of the ages. The birthright of this race is thus despoiled; and, Sir, have we no word of protest? Struggling against adversities which no other people have encountered, do they not yet survive—the wine from ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... native Carolinian—you are of Scotch Covenanter blood. You are of my own people of the great past, whose tears and sufferings are our common glory and birthright. Come, you must hear me—I will take no denial. Give me now the order to see ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... superstitions? Was it strange that, persecuted and calumniated as he had been by an implacable faction, his disposition should have become sterner and more severe than it had once been thought, and that, when those who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of his birthright were at length in his power, he should not have sufficiently tempered justice with mercy? As to the worst charge which had been brought against him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out of their inheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what grounds did it rest? ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knelt to receive it. His aspect was gloomy as he received this symbol of successful ambition, for the mass of the people was silent and he was uneasy at the usurpation of a privilege which was not his birthright. The authority of the Pope had confirmed his audacious action, but he was afraid of the attitude of his army. "The greatest man in the world" Kleber had proclaimed him, after the crushing of the Turks at Aboukir in ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... not rich in some of those natural gifts which are considered the birthright of the New Englander. He had not the mechanical turn of the whittling Yankee. I once questioned him about his manual dexterity, and he told me he could split a shingle four ways with one nail, —which, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the name of Joseph's son and the Tribe, but it is used quite frequently in a generic sense, and stands for the Ten Tribes and Manasseh. To Reuben by birthright was the lead politically, but it was taken from him and given to Joseph, and so to Ephraim. From Judah came the Chief Ruler—that is, Christ; but the birthright was ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... beyond belligerent Catholicism and Protestantism, or of sympathizing with the deeply-religious feelings of one who, after calculating all chances and surveying all dogmatic differences, thought that he could serve God as well and his country better in that communion which was his by birthright. To an illuminated intellect there was not in the seventeenth century much reason to prefer one of the Reformed Churches to Catholicism, except for the sake of political freedom. It being impossible to change the State-religion in Venice, Sarpi had no inducement to leave ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... another revolution, doing all in our power to mitigate its horrors and gild its glories. And now, think you, we have no souls to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments; that, after education such as this, we can stand silent witnesses while you sell our birthright of liberty to save from a timely death an effete political organization? No, as we respect womanhood, we must protest against this desecration of the magna charta of American liberties; and with an importunity not to be repelled, our demand must ever be, "No compromise ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Emancipation Bill of 1829, by which liberty of conscience, which was so proudly called the birthright of every Englishman, was extended to Catholics, tended powerfully, no doubt, to promote the development of the Catholic church. It grew also by emigration from Catholic Ireland, and there were some conversions occasionally from the Protestant ranks. It was not, however, till ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... taught that life, though attended with fearful alternatives, is a glorious birthright, with boundless possibilities and promise of good to ourselves and others. Buddhism makes life an evil which it is the supreme end of man to conquer and cut off from the disaster of re-birth. Christianity opens a path of usefulness, holiness, and happiness in this ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into her birthright and into the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... be," he murmured on that October morning, when he sat alone in his wretchedness. "Nothing I've wished for most has ever come to pass. Sorrow has been my birthright from a boy. A curse is resting upon our household, and all are doomed who come within its shadow. First my own mother died just when I needed her the most, then that girlish woman whom I also called my mother; then, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... guillotine, a recently invented machine for beheading, was set in all the chief market-places, and hundreds were put to death on the charge of "conspiring against the nation." Louis XVI. was executed early in 1793; and it was enough to have any sort of birthright to be thought dangerous and put ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the other,—something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not: a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost hope to make the hills of heaven ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... were shining, even through his glasses, and he didn't seem to mind papa one bit. "So that's what you're up to, is it?" he said to Phil, "trying to give me your birthright!" By this time he'd reached Phil's side, and he threw his arm right across Phil's shoulders. "Dear old Lion-heart!" he said,—how his voice did ring out! "And ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... her luxurious lap, Crowned to the full her proud magnificence. Rome regal, throned on her eternal hills, With power supreme and wide-extended hand, Plundered the prostrate nations without stint Of all she coveted, and, chiefly thou, O Liberty, the birthright boon of Heaven. But Rome had passed her noon; her despotism Was overgrown; an earthquake was at work At her foundations; and new dynasties, Striking their roots in ripening revolutions, Were soon to sway the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... country. Taking "culture" in the true sense of the word, as the opening and development of all the faculties, a positive and electric not a negative and apathetic force, Mrs. Van Rensselaer points out that it is not the natural birthright of a select few, but is to be won by none without hard endeavor. The endeavor, the intelligence and, to a certain extent, the desire for culture, already exist here, but are constantly misapplied, and this, as Mrs. Van Rensselaer aims to prove, through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... me—call me Prince. At the same time I would have thee know that on my eighth day I was carried into a temple and registered a son of a son of Jerusalem. The title I give thee for my designation did not ennoble me. The birthright of a circumcised heritor under the covenant with Israel is superior to every purely human dignity ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... sang on, with growing passion and power. Everything small and personal seemed swept away. She felt herself a human creature, singing the needs and aspirations of another human creature. She was alive, she had come into her birthright. This man, whose personality had so haunted and harassed her, was no longer an enigma; she no longer commiserated him. What mattered poverty, suffering, exile? To be alive was enough; to have la patria, or any other great ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... what England proposes, that you should renounce your birthright, retaining the monarchy of Spain and the Indies, or renounce the monarchy of Spain, retaining your rights to the succession in France, and receiving in exchange for the crown of Spain the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, the states of the Duke of Savoy, Montferrat, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... critic in ground-glass spectacles (the same who grasps his statistics by the blade and strikes at his supposed antagonist with the handle) oddly confounds with the, "bloated aristocracy;" whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, shy, sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for learning,—even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, subvirates of an organizable base as they often are, count as full men, if their courage is big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Milton on this day, And Shakespeare's word with Goethe's beats the sky, In witness of the birthright you betray, In witness of the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... sorrow and dismay, and stung with disappointment, that no paramount spirit had emerged to abash the impious crests of the leaders of 'the atheist crew,' and 'to quell outrage and bloody power,' and to 'clear a passage for just government, and leave a solid birthright ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... battered by shrapnel bullets, after nights in the rain and broiling hot days, their faces grimy and unshaven, their clothes torn and spotted, they were still Australians who looked you in the eye with a sense of having proved their birthright as free men. Sometimes the old spirit incited by the situation got out of bonds. One night when a company rose up to the charge the company next in line called out, "Where are you going?" and on the reply, "We've orders to take that ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... crack shots of the world, and its greatest popular entertainer. He is broad-minded and progressive in his views, inheriting from both father and mother a hatred of oppression in any form. Taking his mother as a standard, he believes the franchise is a birthright which should appertain to intelligence and education, rather than to sex. It is his public career that lends an interest to his private life, in which he has been a devoted and faithful son and brother, a kind and considerate ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... hardihood of speech, a contempt for the polite word and the pretty conventional turning of a phrase, a lack of reticence in the expression of ideas and feelings, which jar, in spite of my gratitude, on my unstrung nerves. Her ignorance, too, of a thousand things, a knowledge of which is the birthright of such women as Eleanor Faversham, causes conversational excursions to end in innumerable blind alleys. I know that she would give her soul to learn. This she has told me in so many words, and when, in a delicate way, I try to teach her, she listens ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... was, so far as in him lay, to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. [Footnote: We cannot adduce St. Columba as another example in the same kind, seeing that this name was not his birthright, but one given to him by his scholars for the dove-like gentleness of his character. So indeed we are told; though it must be owned that some of the traits recorded of him in The Monks of the West are not columbine at all.] The Dominicans were well pleased when ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... plenteous confusion and failure, has on the whole been steadily destroying privilege and exclusiveness in other matters, has delivered up art to be the exclusive privilege of a few, and has taken from the people their birthright; while both wronged and wrongers have been wholly unconscious of what ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... down, while such durst be, Shining northward, shining southward, as the aurorean flame, Not our mother, not Northumberland, brought ever forth, Though no southern shore may match the sons that kiss her mouth, Children worthier all the birthright given of the ardent north Where the fire of hearts outburns the suns that fire the south. Even such fire was this that lit them, not from lowering skies Where the darkling dawn flagged, stricken in the sun's own shrine, Down the gulf of storm subsiding, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... full of historic beauty and deep significance. Rows and rows of people who are rarely seen at any public function, whole families of those who are certain to be out of town on a holiday, crowded the place to overflowing. The city was at her birthright fete in the persons of hundreds of her best citizens, men and women whose names and lives stand for the virtues that ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... him to enter. The contract was recognised as null. Rattazzi was notoriously opposed to any cession of territory, and had he known how to play his game it is at least open to argument that the House of Savoy might have been spared losing its birthright as the Houses of Orange and Lorraine had lost theirs. But his weak policy landed Italian affairs in a chaos which made Napoleon once more master ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... not so easily frightened," she asserted; adding, with a touch of the austerity which was her Puritan birthright: "Nor quite so ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... minister preaching on that, Esau sold to his brother Jacob his birthright for a morsel of pottage: base man that he was, quoth he, the belligod loune, sel his birth-right for a cog of pottage, what would he have done if it had bein ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... a smiling sun E'er shed his genial rays upon, Is that which gave a Washington The drooping world to cheer! Sound the clarion-peals of fame! Ye who bear Columbia's name!— With existence freedom came— It is man's birthright here! ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... the younger gentle and prudent. The former becomes the father's, the latter the mother's, favorite. The strife for precedence, which begins even at birth, is ever going on. Esau is quiet and indifferent as to the birthright which fate has given him: Jacob never forgets that his brother forced him back. Watching every opportunity of gaining the desirable privilege, he buys the birthright of his brother, and defrauds him of their father's blessing. Esau is indignant, and vows his ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... treasure; and the French people, dazzled by the apparent splendour of the acquisition, overlooked, if there be any faith in public addresses and festivals, the enormous guilt by which it had been achieved. But ere the ink with which the Spanish Bourbons signed away their birthright was dry, there came tidings to Bayonne which might well disturb the proud day-dreams of the spoliator, and the confidence ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... sir. He slept on a chair, breakfasted, and was off before eight. He left word, as the child was born on his birthright, he'd provide for it, and pay the mother's bill, unless you claimed the right. I'm afraid he suspected—what I never, never-no! but by what I've seen of you—never will believe. For you, I'd say, must be a gentleman, whatever your company. She asks one favour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seemed to cloud the lovely features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill!—ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to my human birthright, if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate had ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... in our reproducing on the scale of the individual the same creative power of Thought which first brought the world into existence, "so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Let us, then, confidently claim our birthright as "sons and daughters of the Almighty," and by habitually thinking the good, the beautiful, and the true, surround ourselves with conditions corresponding to our thoughts, and by our teaching and example help ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... possessed of qualities formed to resist, as well as of qualities doomed to undergo, the infection of evil. While, therefore, I resigned myself to recognize the existence of the hereditary maternal taint, I firmly believed in the counterbalancing influences for good which had been part of the girl's birthright. They had been derived, perhaps, from the better qualities in her father's nature; they had been certainly developed by the tender care, the religious vigilance, which had guarded the adopted child so lovingly in the Minister's household; and they had served their purpose until time ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... blessing. Goodwill? Had she seen any example of it in the hordes of purchasers? Or in herself. She had failed to respond to this invitation merely because it was a little queer and imaginative—she, whose birthright it was to nourish imagination! Better to have accepted, to have tired themselves a little by the journey, than coldly to reply, "Might I come some other day?" Her cynicism left her. There would be no other day. This shadowy woman would never ask ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the faculties of the helpless young immortal may have due training and development,—that this development may not be left to chance, like that of a worthless weed, but may have the protection and guardianship which are the necessary birthright of every rational creature brought into being by the voluntary act of another. But God has ordained society also for this same end, among others, namely, that his rational creatures may have a competent agency, bound by the laws and necessities of its own welfare to make adequate provision for the ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... punishments short of death, and the insolent practice of allowing peers to vote in criminal trials on their honour, while other men vote on their oath." But generally the claims of rank and birth were admitted with a childlike cheerfulness. The high function of government was the birthright of the few. The people, according to episcopal showing, had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. The ingenious author of Russell's Modern Europe states in his preface to that immortal work that his object in adopting the form of a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son is ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... birthright! think'st thou I would deign to breathe on wretched sufferance? No, no; her death is necessary to my honor and my peace. Come on! my hand may falter, but my heart's resolved; 'tis sworn, inexorably sworn: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... spires of Strasburg, where the green and fertile plains of Alsatia woo our coming. They now belong to France, but they shall be the property of Austria. Farther on lies Lorraine. That, too, is mine, for my father's title was 'Duke of Lorraine.' What is it to me that Francis the First sold his birthright to France? All that I covet I shall annex to Austria, as surely as Frederick wrested Silesia ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Margaret Louise had not sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish I had a home that I had a perfect right to go and live in forevermore. I wish my mother was here to comfort ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... No swords we draw. We kindle not war's battle fires. By union, justice, reason, law, We claim the birthright of ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... true life which represents the affinity—latent, oppressed by circumstances, repressed by sin, but always there—between our human nature and the Divine, and through subjection to which we reassume our birthright as "the sons of God"; conscience to see and will to choose—not what shall please ourselves, but—the highest and purest aim ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... ideal State organism, could not well frown on the political aspirations of the Polish patriots. The Liberal sentiment of that time was so extremely philosophical and cosmopolitan that it hardly distinguished between Poles and Russians, and liberty was supposed to be the birthright of every man and woman to whatever nationality they might happen to belong. But underneath these beautiful artificial clouds of cosmopolitan Liberal sentiment lay the volcano of national patriotism, dormant for the moment, but by no means extinct. Though the Russians are in some respects ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our present government, if the spirit of American institutions had not been both the birthright and the birth-blessing of the Colonies? The Indians, the French, the Spaniards, and even England herself, warred in vain against a people, born and bred in the household, at the domestic altar of Liberty herself They had never been slaves, for they were born ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the birthright of the gifted few, Mrs. Lee adjusted herself to the ways of the Marsh household. Some commotion had been caused by the arrival of four more trunks, of different shapes and sizes, but after they had been unpacked and stored, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... often fell from your lips. Not a word that you ever said about the sacredness of marriage has been forgotten. I believe with you that it is a little less than crime to marry when no love exists—that she who does so, sells her heart's birthright for some mess of pottage, sinks down from the pure level of noble womanhood, and traffics away her person, is henceforth meaner in ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... death we can observe a wavering between the principles of election and birthright. The magnates again elected, but limited their choice to the King's house. After the extinction of the Danish-Norman family, they came back to the English-Norman one; they called the son of Ethelred and Emma, Edward the Confessor, to the throne of his fathers, though, it is true, without leaving ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... in Great Britain and in {50} the colonies this form of government seemed, as has been said, fit only for an independent nation, and inconsistent with the colonial status. To Howe it was the essential birthright of British freemen, and he determined to vindicate it for ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... say writing, was an exceptional accomplishment, not only among the labouring classes, but among those who held their heads much higher. This of course impressed me coming straight from Scotland, where a really grand education has been the national birthright ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... 29-34. And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... keep my faith inviolate to you. He threatens me with exile, and with shame, To lose my birthright, and a prince's name; But there's a blessing which he did not mean, To send me back to love and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Take up thy tale, good poet, strain thine art To sing her rendered heart, Given last to him who loved her first, nor swerved From loving, but was nerved To see through years of robbery and shame Her spirit, a clear flame, Eloquent of her birthright. Tell his peace, And hers who at last found ease In white-arm'd Here, holy husbander Of purer fire than e'er To wife gave Kypris. Helen, and Thee sing In whom her beauties ring, Fair body of fair mind fair acolyte, Star of my day ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... told them, This is a by-way to hell, a way that hypocrites go in at; namely, such as sell their birthright, with Esau; such as sell their Master, as Judas; such as blaspheme the Gospel, with Alexander; and that lie and dissemble, with Ananias and Sapphira his wife. Then said Hopeful to the shepherds, I perceive that these had on them, even every one, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... let these people, with their shallow talk and shallow books, rob you of your peace, cheat you out of your birthright. Look at the lives of these doubters, and then look at the lives of Jesus and His saints. See which example is the purer, the more noble. Which is better, to imitate the life of self-sacrifice which Jesus led, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... uninhabited, but finally Teneiya, who claimed to be descended from an Ah-wah-nee'-chee chief, left the Mo'nos, where he had born and brought up, and, gathering of his father's old tribe around him, visited the Valley and claimed it as the birthright of his people. He then became the founder of a new tribe or band, which received the name "Yo-sem'-i-te." This word signifies a full-grown grizzly bear, and Teneiya said that the name had been given to his band because they occupied the mountains and valley which were the favorite ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... him?" Margery waged relentless war with her birthright inclination to lapse into the speech of the mining-camps, but she stumbled now and then ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... attending the birth of children, so Esau signified red, in allusion to his colour, and Jacob signified the supplanter. Esau, and his posterity the Edomites, were of a sanguinary disposition, and peculiarly hostile to Israel; Jacob supplanted his brother in the birthright; Esau was "a cunning hunter, a man of the field;" Jacob, a "a plain ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... is offered to American youth in the confident belief that as they study the wonderful history of their native land, they will learn to prize their birthright more highly, and treasure it more carefully. Their patriotism must be kindled when they come to see how slowly, yet how gloriously, this tree of liberty has grown, what storms have wrenched its boughs, what sweat of toil and blood has moistened its roots, what eager eyes have ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... to all men, and at once the calling becomes an honourable one. Can it be imagined for a moment that any of our raw recruits enter the service from a love for King and country? No; they sell their birthright for a red coat and a pittance, renounce their independence and stultify the natural ambition that should stimulate every man ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... titles of kings and princes. Hereditary influence did certainly exist, but there is much reason to believe it existed rather as a consequence of hereditary merit and acquired qualifications, than as a birthright. Rivenoak, however, had not even this claim, having risen to consideration purely by the force of talents, sagacity, and, as Bacon expresses it in relation to all distinguished statesmen, "by a union of great and mean qualities;" a truth of which ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... her grandest works that no poet can describe nor artist paint. Here, too, the eternal struggle for liberty goes on, for the human soul can never be attuned to harmony with its surroundings, especially the grand and glorious, until the birthright of justice and equality is secured ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... things, but persons,—beings with intellect, affections, and will,—and a strong specific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small measure of personal variation. All robins, we say, look and act alike. But so do all Yankees; yet it is part of every Yankee's birthright to be different from every other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it would seem, almost as badly as she abhors a vacuum. Perhaps, if the truth were known, a ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... in their hands and honey on their tongues. His attitude has been one of manly protest, wherever he was allowed to vote, or made to sulk in silence and indignation. And here has been and here is the rub. When you cannot coax a man against his will, as Jonathan did David, or purchase his birthright as Jacob did Esau, if you have the power you terrorize and shoot him into compliance. That is what the political enemies of the Afro-American have done and are doing, but patient as the ass and with the faith ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Isaac, who sold his birthright to Jacob for a mess of lentils; led a predatory life, and was the forefather of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to the time and place of Friends' Meetings have been pointed out. As concerns these and the like, I may here state that the manuscript of my novel was read with care by a gentleman who was a birthright member of the Society and both by age and knowledge competent to speak. He remarked upon some of my technical errors in regard to the meetings and discipline of Friends, but advised against change and said that it was traditionally ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... religious motives than from hereditary instinct. Like the young man in the dress-coat, he held the Christian girl to be cold of heart, and unsprightly of temperament. He laid it down that all Yiddishe girls possessed that warmth and chic which, among Christians, were the birthright of a few actresses and music-hall artistes—themselves, probably, Jewesses! And on things theatrical this young man spoke as one having authority. Perhaps, though he was scarce conscious of it, at the bottom of his repulsion ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... permit a constitutional question to be decided on according to the forms, and on the principles of the constitution, it must then be decided in some other manner; and rather than it should be given up—rather than the nation should surrender their birthright to a despotic minister, I hope, my lords, old as I am, I shall see the question brought to issue, and fairly tried between the people and the government." The Earl of Chatham next offered some severe remarks on the surrender of Corsica, the augmentation of troops in Ireland, the arrears ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... has already uttered in His. Wordsworth wished to give to man what he found in nature. It was to him a power of good, a world of teaching, a strength of life. He knew that nature was not his, and that his enjoyment of nature was given to him that he might give it to man. It was the birthright of man. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... awoke In Launcelot's breast, while thus the beldame spoke: "A boon, a boon, Sir Launcelot of the Lake! I Pray you of your courtesy to take This damsel to the King. Her enemies Have spoiled her of her birthright, and she flees An innocent outcast from her wasted lands, To lay her life and fortune in his hands." She spoke, and vanished in ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... promote your future efficiency; your one great object being to drive the invader from your soil, and, carrying your standards beyond the outer borders of the Confederacy, to wring from an unscrupulous foe the recognition of your birthright ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... his brother's birthright blessing, but he paid ten thousand times more for it than it was worth. "Who steals my purse steals trash." A man who steals my pocketbook is the chief sufferer, not I. When Jacob had grown to be an old man, he lived in continual suspicion ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... desire Her tears—I view them with a lover's eye; And yet your Christ is mine—a Christian I! The healing, cleansing flood o'er me shall flow, I would efface the stain from birth I owe; I would be pure—my sealed eyes would see! The birthright Adam lost restored to me This, this, the unfading crown! For this I yearn, For that exhaustless fount I thirst, I burn. Then, since my heart is true, Nearchus, say— Shall I not ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... birthright was not given by human hands: Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields, While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him, To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, And teach the reed to utter simple airs. Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... born at Lyons in 1732, had a birthright of sorrow. Her mother, the Comtesse d'Albon, could not acknowledge this fugitive and nameless daughter, but after the death of her husband she received her on an inferior footing, had her carefully educated, and secretly gave her love and care. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... poor to give to the rich—to the very class which made the laws—ours will only take from the superfluity of the rich, not to give to the poor or to any individuals, but to so administer as to enable every man to live by honest work, to restore to the whole people their birthright in their native soil, and to relieve all alike from a heavy burden of unnecessary and unjust taxation. This will be the true statesmanship of the future, and it will be justified alike by equity, by ethics, and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... that she had given her friend a less warm kiss than usual. There can hardly be a plainer proof of the lowness of our nature, until we have laid hold of the higher nature that belongs to us by birthright, than this, that even a just anger tends to make us unjust and unkind: Letty was angry with every person and thing at Thornwick, and unkind to her best friend, for whose sake in part she was angry. With glowing cheeks, tear-filled eyes, and indignant ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... unmoved and unmovable until the tempest exhausts itself, and the child is silent from exhaustion, when he hands him solemnly back to the nurse, and feels that, by so much at least, has he cast out of the young child the spice of Old Adam, which is the birthright of us all! A few such experiences, we are told, and the child would at once cease its struggles and be silent. One would surely think ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Embassadour, he gaue me his hand and swore he had no more hearts but one, and I should haue halfe of it, in that I so inhanced his obscured reputation. One thing, quoth he, my sweete Jacke I will intreate thee (it shalbe but one) that though I am wel pleased thou shouldest be the ape of my birthright, (as what noble man hath not his ape & his foole) yet that thou be an ape without a clog, not carrie thy curtizan with thee. I tolde him that a king could do nothing without his treasury, this curtizan was my purs-bearer, my ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... spread even to this remote place. On the steps of his little chapel, the priest, a peasant himself, was haranguing his brethren of the soil. An Irishman who paid his landlord was a traitor to his country; an Irishman who asserted his free birthright in the land that he walked on was an enlightened patriot. Such was the new law which the reverend gentleman expounded to his attentive audience. If his brethren there would like him to tell them how they might apply the law, this ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... he not perform. And they who possessed it—did it mean to them what it meant to him? They who had everything that life could offer—music and art, freedom and beauty and health—all the treasures of life as their birthright—had they never a thought of those who had nothing, and were set to slave in the galleys of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... de Villerai. Your friends have brought to trial a perfectly innocent man—they have allowed him, for several months, to remain under the intolerable vexations of the ban of society, and to stand deprived of his birthright as a gentleman—have destroyed him at Court—have almost blighted his career—have forced him to expose his life to the ocean, to take far-off and highly perilous journeys to collect his defences—and ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... years in tree climbing, more shame to me; but even when I was most willing to forget the highest, I don't think a little paltry prosperity in the commonplace atmosphere of a colony would have tempted me to sell my birthright." ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... to be the witty, facile, popular dramatist; and he enters slowly on his birthright as the first in time, if not in genius, of English novelists. To this complete severance from the theatre belongs his own remark that "he left off writing for the stage when he ought to have begun." Arrived at a late maturity, and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... hurricane, I pray, Strip my soul naked—dress it then thy way. Change for me all my rags to cloth of gold. Who would not poverty for riches yield? A hovel sell to buy a treasure-field? Who would a mess of porridge careful hold Against the universe's birthright old? ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... adjunct and symbol of his rank. By this action he wished to give emphasis to the accompanying words, in which he protested, that, sooner than fail in satisfying and doing justice to any the least of those who heard him and followed his fortunes, he would be content to part with his own birthright, and to forego his dearest claims. This was what he really said; but the outermost circle of his auditors, who rather saw his gestures than distinctly heard his words, carried off the notion, (which ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... preach it to the winds, To roaring seas, or raging fires! for, curs'd As I am now, 'tis this must give me patience: Thus I find, rest, and shall complain no more. [stabs himself. Chamont, to thee my birthright I bequeath:— Comfort my mourning father—heal his griefs; [Acasto faints into the ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... be praised Who has jogged our elbow. To my mind He has persuaded these Romans to challenge our country that we may get us from sleep. If the Romans trust so greatly in their might that they do according to their letters, be assured the Briton has not yet lost his birthright of courage and hardness. I am a soldier, and have never loved a peace that lasts over long, since there are uglier things than war." Gawain overheard these words. "Lord earl," said he, "by my faith be not fearful because of the young men. Peace is ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... deep blue eyes, very fair hair cut short and brushed up to a crest upon the middle of his head, a complexion of red and white that all the air of the downs and the sea failed to embrown, and that peculiar openness and candour of expression which seems so much an English birthright, that the only trace of his French origin was, that he betrayed no unbecoming awkwardness in the somewhat embarrassing position in which he was placed, literally standing, according to the respectful discipline of the time, as the subject of discussion, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the blood of Cleopatra, who trusted me! Why could I not hate her as I should? There had been a time when I looked on to this act of vengeance with somewhat of a righteous glow of zeal. And now—and now—why, I would frankly give my royal birthright to be free from its necessity! But, alas! I knew that there was no escape. I must drain this cup or be for ever cast away. I felt the eyes of Egypt watching me, and the eyes of Egypt's Gods. I prayed to my Mother Isis to give me strength to do this deed, and prayed as I had never prayed before; ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... in childhood the feelings of her mother, who had taken the first step and repented it—of one who had deserted, but had not been adopted—who became an exile and remained an alien—who had bartered her birthright for degradation and death. It is natural that regret for the past and despair for the future should have been the burden of the mournful ditties of such a woman; that she who had mated without love, and lived without affection, the slave, the drudge, but not the wife ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... were the servants or inferiors; knowing the Truth we became free, and henceforth are brothers, sisters, 'heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.' We now claim our inheritance, the privilege to enter into the kingdom and possess the land, our royal birthright. In this kingdom are 'hid all the ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the world, and guarded, supported, and secured by the Monroe doctrine. The narrow fringe of States along the Atlantic seaboard advanced its frontiers across the hills and plains of an intervening continent until it passed down the golden slope to the Pacific. We made freedom a birthright. We extended our domain over distant islands in order to safeguard our own interests and accepted the consequent obligation to bestow justice and liberty upon less favored peoples. In the defense of our own ideals and in the general cause of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various |
