"Self-abasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the others appear like old maids cheapening remnants. Rachel followed in the wake of the matrons, as if in a trance; a curious scent of violets came back from Mrs. Dalloway, mingling with the soft rustling of her skirts, and the tinkling of her chains. As she followed, Rachel thought with supreme self-abasement, taking in the whole course of her life and the lives of all her friends, "She said we lived in a world of our own. It's ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... would be too ignoble to recognise it if I chanced upon it? Perhaps. But why strip me of my last illusion? In the torment of my self-abasement this morning, I have clung to that one comfort: That I love you with a love which a truly worthless man could not feel. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... approach personally; even his evil thoughts dared not rest upon her directly. He had nothing with which to lure her; not even a decent approach could be made. The girl was always on guard; he could make no apology; he could hope from no self-abasement to win her faith. To harm her brutishly would be to secure his own death, for well he knew that the subtle force that was coming into life in The Hollow was making the men remember they were men and the women to realize ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... head fell upon his breast in extreme self-abasement, then he slowly lifted his eyes and seeing in her face a full knowledge of his sin, murmured in overwhelming shame ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... nervous agitation, she unconsciously opened a book of her father's that lay upon the table,—the words that caught her eye in it, seemed almost made for her present state of acute self-abasement:— ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... main, was a good-hearted as well as good-natured fellow; and the self-abasement of his companion completely got the better of the passing feeling of personal vanity. He regretted the allusion he had made to the other's appearance, and endeavored to express as much, though it was done in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood at one of the dim, shuttered windows for a while. He spoke of places, too, and of happenings in them, from Westchurch to Constantinople, from a nautch at Singapore to a country fair at Farley Row. But, recurrent through all his wanderings, were allusions, unsparing in revolt and in self-abasement, to a woman whom he had loved and who had dealt very vilely with him, putting some unpardonable shame upon him, and to a man whom he himself had very basely wronged. The name, neither of man nor woman, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... education she must have had, and the accomplishments she must possess, the soul of Hill became abject within him. She had spoken to him first over a difficulty about the alisphenoid of a rabbit's skull, and he had found that, in biology at least, he had no reason for self-abasement. And from that, after the manner of young people starting from any starting-point, they got to generalities, and while Hill attacked her upon the question of socialism—some instinct told him to spare her a direct assault upon her religion—she was gathering resolution to undertake what she ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... down to a lower depth of self-abasement. "My poor child," he felt like answering, "the shame of it is that I've never thought of you at all!" But he could only uselessly repeat: "I'll do anything I can ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... not read them. This was her design and her consolation, even while she read and re-read them with a devouring eagerness. She never paused to ask herself why this was. She avoided any investigation into her feeling for Horace. It was enough that, in spite of all the self-accusation and self-abasement which she carried in her heart, this being who knew the very worst of her could still think her worthy of kindness and respect. When she thought of this she felt as if she could go on her ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... burst into tears and begged his forgiveness. Recognising that my humility was sincere, he desired me to continue my confession on condition that I realised my own self-abasement. ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... couldn't say any more. And the father, smiling at her, thought he understood the emotions which tied her tongue, which underlay her fervent good night kiss. But he could never have guessed all the love, gratitude, repentance, self-abasement and high resolves at that moment welling ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Cercamorte, pouncing upon such a treasure as had never come within his reach before, met his first defeat. His fire proved unable to melt that ice. His coarse mind was benumbed by the exquisiteness of his antagonist. Now, instead of terror and self-abasement, he met scorn—the cold contempt of a being rarefied, and raised above him by centuries of gentler thought and living. When he laid his paws on her shoulders he felt that he held there a pale, soft shell empty of her incomprehensible spirit, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... or 'omnino indignus', or any other positive self-abasement before God, I can understand; but how an express avowal of unworthiness, comparatively superlative, can consist with the Job-like integrity and sincerity of profession especially required in a solemn address to Him, to whom all hearts are open, this I do not understand ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... God of high heaven. It caused a weaning of affections from the things of this world, a healing of controversies and animosities, a confession of wrongs, a breaking down before God, and penitent, broken-hearted supplications to Him for pardon and acceptance. It caused self-abasement and prostration of soul, such as we never before witnessed. As God by Joel commanded, when the great day of God should be at hand, it produced a rending of hearts and not of garments, and a turning unto the Lord with fasting, and weeping, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... of the heart. 3. Wealth may seek us but wisdom must be sought. 4. The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. 5. Occidental manhood springs from self-respect Oriental manhood finds its greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. [Footnote: In this sentence we have a figure of speech called Antithesis, in which things unlike in some particular are set over against each other. Each part shines with its own light and with the light reflected from the other part. Antithesis gives great force to the thought ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... such thought crossed Frank's mind. He was just as good a Churchman as ever—why not? Just as fond of his own ideal of what a parish and a Church Service ought to be—why not? But the only thought which did rise in his mind was one of utter self-abasement. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... once and cease to love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there's a great deal of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from pride.... I am too young and I've loved you too much. I know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am going far away, and shall never come back.... It ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... than many things that philosophy has discovered in the natural world. Yet, even infidels do not think of disputing facts conclusively proved by philosophy, because they cannot understand them. It becomes us, then, with the deepest humility and self-abasement, to submit our reason to ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... depths of self-abasement when I heard a sound behind me. It was a long breath, quite audible, that ended in a groan. I gripped the parapet and listened, while my heart pounded, and in a minute it ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as though he could still hear her; but after her laugh there came a few moments of overwhelming bitterness that sent her on her knees by the side of the couch in self-abasement. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... This is a manly world we live in. Our reverence is good for nothing if it does not begin with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from that as its basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of climate. Whether the questions which assail ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... like that!" said Rose, Tom's utter self-abasement and humility rousing all her better nature. "Don't you see that it's you who ought to forgive me for the cruel way I've treated you; and if you'd died, Tom, and my wickedness had killed you, how could ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... you go from my presence never to return. Hold! not just yet, I have a parting word to say before you leave. I confess, with self-abasement, that I once loved you, and with deep humiliation, amounting to agony, that that love was the cause of my ruin. The vail is now torn from my eyes, and I behold you as you are, a corrupted, debased, unfeeling demon, ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... fervent, does not give one the same idea of self-abasement in the sight of the Almighty. It would be unfair to compare him to that other personage of the parable, namely, the Pharisee, for the latter was obviously lacking in sincerity; but at the same time, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... and self-abasement!" Pao-yue interposed. The other day, I was outside the garden, consulting with the gentlemen about paintings, and, when they came to hear that we had started a poetical society, they begged of me to let them have the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Romish penances, satisfactions, and work-righteousness. Says Luther in the Smalcald Articles: "Here, too, there was no faith nor Christ, and the virtue of the absolution was not declared to him, but upon his enumeration of sins and his self-abasement depended his consolation. What torture, rascality, and idolatry such confession has produced is more than can be related." (485, 20.) The chief parts of Christian doctrine but little taught and nowhere correctly taught,—such was the chief hurt of ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... thought of what had occurred from my mind, but as soon as I felt able, I sat down, with the whole matter before me, as it were, and deliberately looked it in the face. I think I never felt more inane in my life than when I remembered my folly, as I now regarded it. All that saved me from utter self-abasement was the fact that it had occurred at a time when I was at such a low ebb physically, by reason of illness. I determined to try to forget it, as speedily as possible. But, however keenly I felt the humiliation and folly of my emotion upon ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... us, was the symbolic figure of the incoming tide of Europe's rebirth in the sixteenth century. Rabelais, the priest, physician, and compounder of a new fish sauce, held that life is its own justification, and need not be lived in doleful self-abasement. Do what you wish, enjoy life, be interested in a thousand things, feel a perpetual inquisitive delight in all the details of human affairs! The gospel of exuberance—that is Rabelais. Is ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... a moral feature to the splendour of the season. The dreary Lenten time was over, with its vigils and fasts, its self-abasement and penitence. The dread Holy Week had gone, with its plaints and laments, its confession of sins and cries for mercy, its darkened windows and stripped altars, its quenched tapers and hushed bells, its fourteen stations of that Via Crucis which rehearses ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... closed the avenues of sympathy and consolation, and shut herself up with her own corroding thoughts, for the transient feelings of humility and self-abasement had passed away with the low, sweet echoes of the voice of Clinton, leaving nothing but the sullen memory of her grief. And yet the hope that he still loved her was the vital spark that sustained and warmed her. His last words ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the Bohemians erected a church and monastery to St. Mary on the White Mountain. You may see this church, looking somewhat dilapidated—I should say ashamed of itself—as it stands there a monument to the Bohemian nation's self-abasement. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... The object of the punishment which the law pronounces is not vindictive chastisement of the culprit. The object of punishment is purely reformatory. Only it must not be forgotten that there can be no reformation without penitence, and no penitence without self-abasement. And this consists in confessing one's self guilty, admitting that the guilt has become a part of one's being, and humbling one's pride to the ground. The public sentence pronounced by the judge, the shame which he fixes upon the culprit, has, then, for its object to pave the way toward reformation, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... sacrificed wife from Hades, to restore her—a figure veiled and motionless, yet instinct with glad life, every vein throbbing with love and thankfulness—to the arms of her husband, more joyful, and at the same time, in the middle of his joy, more full of yearning sorrow and self-abasement than ever was ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... practice that; while if self-assertion seems best, then we should assert ourselves. The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self-abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe subjection is woman's duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or to many men. Women have the right of independence, of conscience, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the good people, who had been accustomed so long to repeat mechanically their Oriental hyperboles of self-abasement, to hear their worthy minister maintaining that the dignified attitude of the old Patriarch, insisting on what was reasonable and fair with reference to his fellow-creatures, was really much more respectful ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... also did the steady candor of her gaze and the sweet courage of her lips. Her helplessness roused his protective instinct, and her words, the sound of her voice, so precise, so alien-sweet, filled him with bitter sadness, and he re-entered the house in such spirit of self-abasement as he ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... wrote his 'social' after Max Schurz's affair, he felt he had already touched the lowest depths of degradation. He knew now that he had touched a still lower one. Oh! horrible abyss of self-abasement!—he had taken the blood-money. And yet, it was to save Dot's life! Herbert was right, after all: quite right. Yes, yes, all hope was gone: the environment ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... girl would find relief in self-abasement, so he relaxed his arms, and she sank to her knees upon the dungeon floor. She wept softly for a moment, and then throwing back her head with her old impulsive manner looked ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... was evident that something had gone wrong with him. His face wore a look of hot, flurried excitement, and his manner was one of abject, cringing self-abasement. ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... appeared crushed. His moustache hung down straight; his right side was all wet from the waves, his eyes were sunken in his head and without life. He was a pitiful and dull object. His likeness to a bird of prey had disappeared; self-abasement appeared in the very folds ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... the walk of our daily experience. This I have observed myself in the perturbing effect which a sudden death, a grievous accident, or in recent years the declaration of war, has exercised upon all except the most lethargic or the most determined minds. Secondly, he experienced the profound self-abasement or mental annihilation caused by the near conception of a being of a superior order. In the presence of an existence wearing, indeed, the human form, but of attributes widely different from and superior to his own, he felt the combined reverence and revulsion which even the noblest wild animals exhibit ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... cause of these errors and incongruities is our self-abasement to a style which depends for its effect upon continuous uniformity of design, while, from the very nature of our society, our houses must be diverse in size and pretension. We are a social people, it is true, but our individualities are strongly marked, and our dwellings, while designed ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... how to think of her, in connection with himself; but he experienced an inward indefinable feeling of deep regret, a gnawing sorrow, and unconquerable depression of spirits, and also a species of self-abasement that he—he Mr Arabin—had not done something to prevent that other he, that vile he, whom he so thoroughly despised, from carrying off ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... habit of pious indifference. We thus attain to a negation. Death do you say? Not altogether. Without mingling in the world, or heeding its voices, we get thereof an echo dim and soft. It is like a windfall of Divine Grace, so mild and searching; never more so than in moments of self-abasement, when the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... following the bent of his own will, arrived at the city of the Kurus with ten thousand disciples. And seeing the irascible ascetic arrived, Duryodhana and his brothers welcomed him with great humility, self-abasement and gentleness. And himself attending on the Rishi as a menial, the prince gave him a right worshipful reception. And the illustrious Muni stayed there for a few days, while king Duryodhana, watchful of his imprecations, attended on him diligently by day ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... associations, derived from sympathy, from love, and still more from fear; from all the forms of religious feeling; from the recollections of childhood and of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally even self-abasement. This extreme complication is, I apprehend, the origin of the sort of mystical character which, by a tendency of the human mind of which there are many other examples, is apt to be attributed to the idea of moral obligation, and which leads people to believe that ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... her intended husband, who, with the subterfuge of an interested spirit, had hoped to mislead the little circle of his own acquaintances and gratify his cupidity at the cheapest possible rate to himself. But there is a point of self-abasement beyond which the perfect consciousness of right rarely permits even the most timid to proceed. As the bride moved up the lane of human bodies, her eye grew less disturbed and her step firmer,—for the pride of rectitude overcame the ordinary girlish sensibilities of her sex, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the sole individual learned and powerful in the Gospel, all others to be insignificant and useless, he would willingly do it; he would be glad could he alone be regarded as Mister Smart. At the same time he affects deep humility, great self-abasement, and preaches of love and faith. But he would take it hard had he, in practice, to touch with his little finger what he preaches. This explains why the world is so filled with fanatics and schismatics, and why every man would master and outrank ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have come out of the mill a finished little product, clever, adaptable, and not a gawky, under-nourished, over-strenuous bumpkin like himself. In the depths of his self-abasement, Scott Brenton did not hesitate to ply himself with ugly adjectives. Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards the removal of his doubts concerning ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... past some youthful misdeed, and set the faded picture up before a girl's eyes, framed in fiery retribution—for an object lesson and a terrible example—so will I, benevolent, if not middle-aged, put before the eyes of my sisters a certain experience of mine. I expect my little act of self-abasement for the instruction of my sex to have this merit: the picture I will show you is not dim with age, and not cut and cramped to fit the frame of a special case. The colours are hardly dry, and both picture and tale ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... gave the reins to his fine fancy, it was a treat to listen, and therefore I never interfered; but, with the planters, sat in mute admiration before him. This apparent self-abasement on my part must have been considered as truly indicative of our respective merits; for, to my no small concern, I quickly perceived that, in the estimate formed of us, Long Ghost began to be rated far above myself. For aught I knew, indeed, he might have privately thrown out a hint ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... that he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather than to anything else. She saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in his character; she saw clearly that he would have to find himself ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... dress, to disarm the power of her charms! Or, it may be, as the priests are at the bottom of most things in Spain, who can tell but their influence was exerted to get this law passed in the pious hope of inducing those feelings of self-abasement and humility which the sense of being ugly, or even plain-looking, generally ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... you would imagine, the pit of utter self-abasement yawned for Winton, and he plunged headlong, holding the bill of fare wrong side up when the waiter asked for his dinner order, and otherwise demeaning himself like a man taken at a hopeless disadvantage. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... letter, with its wild expressions of self-abasement and despair and regret that you were in the world, where, you seemed to believe, you had no right to be, I could not help picturing to myself the dull face and disagreeable personality of your half-sister, the ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Maggie saw nothing of Martin's weaknesses, his suspicions and dreads, his temper and self-abasement. The nobility that Martin had in him was true nobility, his very weaknesses came from his sharp consciousness of what purity and self-sacrifice and asceticism really were, and that they were indeed the only things for man to live by. During those ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... which she had not noticed at the time. She brushed the vision aside haughtily, as she would have done had the man himself intruded. But she could not stem so easily the wave of self disgust that swept her back from this other man, a prince of Europe. And when she smothered that self-abasement, it was a matter of will. She recalled her interview with the Sphinx in the Tuileries. She recalled her country, and the empire she meant to win, a gift to France, worthy of Napoleon, of the Great Napoleon. Then her will became ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... doctrinal dissertations have at least the merit of sincerity. They were put forth in behalf of what he regarded as truth; and the success which they met with, while it called into exercise his profoundest gratitude, only served to deepen the humility and self-abasement of their author. As the utterance of what a good man believed and felt, as a part of the history of a life remarkable for its consecration to apprehended duty, these writings cannot be without interest even to those who dissent from their arguments ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... moreover, that to readers unfamiliar with the peculiarities of professing Christians, whether Puritans or of other denomination, the expressions of humility and self-abasement which Cromwell frequently makes use of have appeared to be plain symptoms of hypocrisy. They are nothing but the habits of the sect. Such expressions are supposed to have been employed to blind men to his ambitious projects, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... selfishness. It is pride, which makes us jealous of inferiors; never does humility. Observe the manners of her who is infected with this spirit. Does that lofty carriage, do those averted eyes, and that sullen lip, speak of self-abasement? Woman, dwelling in and for her affections, is prone insensibly to indulge the risings of jealousy. A female writer says, "Our sex are apt to be more aristocratic than men." The aristocracy of claiming attention, friendship, promptly ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... thinks too meanly of himself, when we see him from excessive fear of shame refusing to do things which others, his equals, venture. We can, therefore, set down as a contrary to pride an emotion which I will call self-abasement, for as from self-complacency springs pride, so from humility springs self-abasement, which I will accordingly ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... needs others. He must be capable of attachment to the leader or his institution; he must possess that quality called loyalty. Loyalty is the transference of the ego-feeling to the group, an institution or an individual. It has in it perhaps the self-abasement principle of McDougall, but perhaps it is just as well to say that admiration, respect and confidence are basic in it. Loyalty differs from love only in that there is a sort of inferiority denoted in the first. If you feel yourself superior to the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... muttered to himself a minute later with a feeling of self-abasement, "of course, all these infamies can never be wiped out or smoothed over... and so it's useless even to think of it, and I must go to them in silence and do my duty... in silence, too... and not ask forgiveness, and say nothing... for all is ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... incompatible with a lofty consciousness of our own dignity. Modesty in the latter signification of the term, is that soberness of mind which teaches a man not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, and should be distinguished from humility, because humility is a kind of self-abasement. A modest man often conceives a great plan, and tenaciously adheres to it, conscious of his own strength, till success gives it a sanction that determines its character. Milton was not arrogant when he suffered a suggestion of judgment to escape him that proved a prophesy; nor was General Washington ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... grand comprehensive sentiment of civic gratitude, patriotic love, or human admiration—or the utterance of some elementary principle most essential in the constitution of true virtue;—or a declaration touching that pious humility and self-abasement, which are ever most profound as minds are most susceptible of genuine exaltation—or an intuition, communicated in adequate words, of the sublimity of intellectual power;—these are the only tribute which can here be paid—the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of adversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance, its sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to self-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... for the Enthusiast, Faith could not hear his wild avowal without pain, notwithstanding it was stamped with all the honesty of conviction, and her own creed taught that such a degree of spiritual elevation might be attained; while her father listened with a sad admiration, not unmixed with self-abasement and ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... grief and self-abasement touched the tender heart of Catharine; for she was kind and dove-like in her disposition, and loved Louis, with all his faults. Had it not been for the painful consciousness of the grief their unusual absence would ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... help smiling at the depth of Sahwah's self-abasement. "Cheer up, sister," she said kindly, "it's not as bad as all that. You were thoughtless, that was all, for I will not believe that you were slighting ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... soul that that voice was never silent. Whatever else he was, he was not unscrupulous. Rather, his scruples deepened with his desires; and he could satisfy his most exorbitant ambitions in a profundity of self-abasement. And so now he vowed to Heaven that he would SEEK nothing— no, not by the lifting of a finger or the speaking of a word. But, if something came to him—? He had vowed not to seek; he had not vowed not to take. ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... in her divine face—no more than he could have entertained for one horrible instant the thought of sullying what God had made so white. He had a bitter scorn of that word security, so soon as it had flashed unspoken through his mind; he cursed his own soul for the contemptible thought. And in his self-abasement, he was heroic, unconsciously, as heroes are. He was to die, but it was for honour's sake, and not for any foul wrong done to ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... degradations, the impulse manifestly came not from above, but from the mistaken imaginings of an over-wrought mind encased in a frail and delicate frame; and these morbid fancies were based on her intense passion for self-abasement. We must remember that at this critical time, when she most needed counsel, she had really no one to guide her—no one, that is, who possessed spiritual wisdom and ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Expunging resolution? Is it to appease the wrath and to heal the wounded pride of the Chief Magistrate? If he be really the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all grovelling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject, with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the Secretary of the Senate ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... at least to obey, not from a hard necessity, but from a willing heart. The bondage in which they really lived was ennobled by that conventional code of honor which dictated and enforced it. They prostrated themselves before their fellow-man with no sense of self-abasement, and the chivalrous homage with which they gratified him, was considered as imparting ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of their great progenitor, the Babylonians and Assyrians became a most pious race, constantly rendering to their gods the glory for everything which they succeeded in bringing to a successful issue. Prayer, supplication, and self-abasement before their gods seem to have been with them a ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... long since announced that he was superior to plain virtues, and the list of his paramours was daily growing longer and better known. But all this self-abasement on the part of Josephine and all the self-indulgence of Napoleon could not do more than postpone the judgment day. "My enemies," the Emperor was accustomed to cry out—"my enemies make appointments at my tomb." He could ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of the last two centuries, after the self-abasement of the people, and the apparent extinction of all spirit of national pride, the French invasion and domination, under the stern rule of Bonaparte, was a rude awakening. Old boundaries were swept aside, old ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! Would thou have me to believe, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better—can be more for God's glory, or man' welfare—than God's own truth? Trust me, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... adoration, that, indeed, he could not be happy under it. If either was to serve the other, it was he; he asked nothing better than to put his hands under her feet. But he could neither coax her nor laugh her out of her absorption: she had the will to self-abasement; and she remained unsatisfied, waiting for the word ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... I'll go," said the man, with a soft chuckle intended for self-abasement. "I go, thou goest, he goes. 'I'll skedaddle,' as the felleh says. And yit it do seem to me sorter like,—if my moral sense is worthy of any consideration, which is doubtful, may be,—seems to me like it's sort o' jumpin' ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... manners and conduct, humility without self-abasement, give the truly kingly quality to men, the queenly to women, the winning to children, whatever the rank or the station may be. The life dominated by this characteristic, or rather these closely allied characteristics, is a natural well-spring of joy to itself and sheds a continual benediction ...
— Thoughts I Met on the Highway • Ralph Waldo Trine
... homes lies beside the Bible in the most honored place, and this inn, humble though it might be, was not without a copy of this great Bible of society. This Miss Plympton procured, and at once set herself to the study of its pages. It was not without a feeling of self-abasement that she did this, for she prided herself upon her extensive knowledge of the aristocracy, but here she was deplorably ignorant. She comforted herself, however, by the thought that her ignorance was the fault of Sir Lionel, who had lived a somewhat quiet life, and had never thrust ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... the ingratitude, how pitiful the hypocrisy, manifested in our conduct as a people, toward our colored population! Every cheek should wear the blush of shame—every head be bowed in self-abasement! ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... the thought of him that obsessed her. A liar, always. Why not now? Men of his kind were unusual to women of hers, but even in the midst of his confession—as near self-abasement as a man of his type could come, the note of egotism rang clear above the graceful phrases—too graceful to be anything but manufactured in that ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... great man justice, though tardily. Not even its hero's temporary self-abasement could put it out of conceit with him. One of the many curious surprises in Ralegh's history is the manner in which a sudden change in his demeanour seemed to give the lie to the general admiration. Almost a worse grievance against the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... her, sitting at her right hand, serving her with wine. Yes, unhoped-for joy! I touched her dress, I ate her bread. At the end of three hours my life had mingled with her life! That terrible kiss had bound us to each other in a secret which inspired us with mutual shame. A glorious self-abasement took possession of me. I studied to please the count, I fondled the dogs, I would gladly have gratified every desire of the children, I would have brought them hoops and marbles and played horse with them; I ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... hush—oh, hush!" she sighed in weeping voice. But in the extremity of my self-abasement, I knelt to kiss her hands, the hem of her dress, her slender, pretty feet. "Peregrine dear, your—your mistake was very natural; ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the ship's company for my praiseworthy exertions, and I was gazed on by all as an object of interest and admiration; but if others thought so of me, I thought not so of myself. I retired below to my berth with a loathing and contempt, a self-abasement, which I cannot describe. I felt myself unworthy of the mercy I had received. The disgraceful and vicious course of life I had led, burst upon me with horrible conviction. "Caelo tonantem credidimus Jovem regnare," says Horace; and it was only by the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... has always condemned himself," rejoined Herriot, with an air of deep self-abasement. "But I thank God for giving me the means, and the will, for making ample restitution to such as remain of my injured brother's family, or of my own. Harry, I am that uncle. I ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... piety, knowledge, perseverance, diligence, and success in the ministry, as of a vessel filled with grace, and ordained to honour. Still, when he spoke of himself as man, he used the strongest terms of self-abasement. He had no doubt he should be able to foil Dr. Beaumont in argument, and convince him that the Anglican church was really anti-christian. His benevolence and liberality urged him to undertake this office at this time, in hopes that, since the Doctor's subsistence depended ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... If it were simply to grovel in the dust before him it should be done. If humiliation would suffice,—or any self-abasement that were possible to me! But I should be false if I said that I look forward to any such possibility. How can he wish to have me back again after what he has said and done? I am his wife, and he has disgraced me before all men by his own words. And what have I done, that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... and that was Agatha. The others had their heads turned aside, and I thought, or rather the passing fancy took me, that they shrank from meeting her gaze with something of the same shame and dread I myself felt. But she! Can I ever hope to make you realise her look, or comprehend the pang of utter self-abasement with which I succumbed before it? It was so terrible that I seemed to hear her utter words, though I am sure she did not speak; and with some wild idea of stemming the torrent of her reproaches, I made an effort at explanation, and impetuously cried: ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... But in his self-abasement Frank failed to take into the accounting the stupendous effect which the New York influences and the handling of great affairs had had upon his own character. Day by day he had learned more plainly the lessons of responsibility, of continued and concentrated action, and even McDermott ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... The King confided in her, and yet distrusted her. Otherwise he would not have had her accompanied by the pretty doll, with her baby face, whose office it was to ensnare the licentious Charles. Henrietta was compelled to take her over to England, and, in fact, to chaperone her. For such self-abasement the King had handsomely rewarded the compliant maid-of-honour, promising to give her an estate, and so much per head for each bastard she might ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... love should triumph; and it should triumph by his voice, by his work, by his blood. In moments of ecstatic contemplation, doubtless, the sense of self melted in the sense of the Unspeakable, and in that part of his experience lay the elements of genuine self-abasement; but in the presence of his fellow-men for whom he was to act, pre-eminence seemed a necessary condition ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... canvass has always seemed to me (and not least clearly when I was the candidate) to sink beneath the level of humanity. To beg for votes, as if they were alms or broken victuals, is a form of mendicancy which is incompatible with common self-respect, and yet it is a self-abasement which thirty years ago custom imperatively demanded. "If my vote ain't worth calling for, I suppose it ain't worth 'aving" was the formula in which the elector ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... but because the main set and current of the life was evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and conquered by strenuous effort. Better a life of Godward aspiration and straining after purity, even if broken by such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in heaven preferred against thee by the accuser of the brethren; wherefore then thou must have recourse to Christ as advocate, to plead before God thy Judge against the devil thine adversary for thee. And as to the badness of thy cause, let nothing move thee save to humility and self-abasement, for Christ is glorified by being concerned for thee; yea, the angels will shout aloud to see him bring thee off. For what greater glory can we conceive Christ to obtain as advocate, than to bring off his people when they have sinned, notwithstanding Satan's so charging ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... moisture sprang to his eyes as he did so. He had caught a glimpse of the face on the pillow and the changes made in a week were very apparent. Always erect, his father had towered above them then even in his self-abasement, but he looked now as though twenty years, instead of a few days, had passed over his stately head and bowed his incomparable figure. And not that alone. His expression was different. Had Oliver not seen him in his old likeness for that one terrible half-hour, he would not know these ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green |
