"Birthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attending her son in his illness, she treated her with such a chilling haughtiness of demeanour, that the Indian slunk away into the servants' quarters, and there tried to drown her disappointments with drink. It was not a cheerful picture that which George gave of his two months at home. "The birthright is mine, Harry," he said, "but thou art the favourite, and God help me! I think my mother almost grudges it to me. Why should I have taken the pas, and preceded your worship into the world? Had you been the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ennobles the world. He stands in eternal bronze in a hundred cities. And why? Because he had a heart to feel; because to him all men had been brothers of equal blood and birthright; and because he had had ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... famine of the operatives, the grinding poverty of the peasants, the desecration of their wives and daughters, the degradation of the race through unjust laws and debasing and brutal prejudices—from all this agony spring my new formulas, the creed which I am determined to establish: 'Man has a birthright of happiness.' These thoughts are my god, a god which will give bread, rest, bliss, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that there is something significant in the facts: (1) that the man who most vividly brought the spirit or outcome of classic culture into touch with the general European intelligence, in the age when the modern languages first decisively asserted their birthright, learned his Latin as a living and not as a dead tongue, and knew Greek literature almost solely by translation; (2) that the dramatist who of all of his craft has put most of breathing vitality into his pictures ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... have been the cradle of humanity, the Temperate Zone has been the cradle and school of civilization. Here Nature has given much by withholding much. Here man found his birthright, the privilege of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... won, in the insight into the working of the forces of nature, which it has acquired and applied to industry, in the arts which ennoble and support human action; in short to participate in the spiritual treasures which are, as it were, the birthright of those born under a luckier star. This desire, which opens to the diligent the way to material prosperity and inner contentment, seems for society as a whole an important incentive to industrial progress, ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... few old names still left in Massachusetts,— Jingleberry Hill and Chillyshally** Brook sound as if they once meant something; Spot Pond, named by Governor Winthrop, has not lost its birthright; Powder-Horn Hill records its purchase from the Indians for a hornful of powder—probably damp; Drinkwater River is a good name,—Strong Water Brook by many is considered better. It is well to record ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... documents are some of them in my valise, at your ladyship's service. Others are at my hotel in London, ready for the inspection of your ladyship's lawyers. I do not think you will desire to invite a public inquiry, or force me to recover my birthright in a court of justice. I believe that you will take a broader and nobler view of the case, and that you will restore to the wronged and abandoned son the fortune stolen ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... will not have to give you to another, that I may keep you to myself. For I cannot comprehend how so great a joy could come to me. And whether I would have the right to take your sweet young life, that should be replete with the joys of youth, with the gladness that is its proper birthright." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... proposition more clearly than the opinions of the ancients respecting their slaves. The most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece were never able to reach the idea, at once so general and so simple, of the common likeness of men, and of the common birthright of each to freedom: they strove to prove that slavery was in the order of nature, and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything shows that those of the ancients who had passed from the servile to the free condition, many of whom have left us excellent writings, did themselves ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a grimly humorous twinkle in his eyes, but through the smears of perspiration and the charcoal grime Deringham now recognized the expression of quiet forcefulness and the directness of gaze which was his birthright. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... and reveled in lands and goods, yet he has never identified his essence with these possessions, but rather with the personal superiorities, the courage, generosity, and pride supposed to be his birthright. To certain huckstering kinds of consideration he thanked God he was forever inaccessible, and if in life's vicissitudes he should become destitute through their lack, he was glad to think that with his sheer valor he was all the freer to work out his salvation. "Wer nur ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of Tarsus. I have referred to him elsewhere as a man who went as far as man could go in crime. But he was arrested and saved in a moment. And mark you, he was not coerced. No violence was done to his perfect freedom. Every man is free; that is his birthright; in Saul's case he was not asked to surrender an iota of it. Yet by some mysterious divine power he changed in a moment of time. Henceforth he was a new man, with a new heart, new ideals, new hopes, new ambitions, a ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... color as suddenly, till it was as pale as any of the ivory he carved. The letters of the paper reeled and wavered, and grew misty before his eyes; he lost all sense of the noisy, changing, polyglot crowd thronging past him; he, a common soldier in the Algerian Cavalry, knew that, by every law of birthright, he was ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... rigorous as to render it altogether unlikely that one of so military a profession as Mainwaring practiced could hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but Lucinda could not have married one not a member of the Society of Friends without losing her own birthright membership therein. She herself might not attach much weight to such a loss of membership in the Society, but her fear of, and her respect for, her uncle led her to walk very closely in her path of duty in this respect. Accordingly she and Mainwaring met as they could—clandestinely—and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... ses sujets sont rules, et si la ley ne fuit, nul roy et nul inheritance sera."[55] And in the Petition of Right Parliament makes the appeal that the subjects have inherited their freedom through the laws.[56] The laws, as the Act of Settlement expresses it, are the "birthright ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... to marry off your daughters very young, though in my opinion they are none of them beauties. Your sons seem to be able to support themselves. You have contrived to sell your birthright to an oil trust and to lift the mortgage on Chatsworth. Your servants stay with you until they die on your hands; and your friends vie with each other in ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... be almost morbidly on the look-out for evidence which might go to prove that this cotton-wool existence was stealing from the child the birthright of courage which was his from both his parents. Much often depends on little things, and, if Bill had replied in the affirmative to the question, it would probably have had the result of sending Kirk there and then raging through the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... in great measure, too, from her brave position there between the mountains and the sea, a city of precious stone in an amphitheatre of noble hills. Nothing that Genoa could build, steal, or win could even be so splendid as that birthright of hers, her place among the mountains on the shores of the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the dignified, retired nobleman, whose only concerns are debts left unpaid and the launching of his son into the world. Porthos is a great baron, ever ready to help, ever seeking another title, ever seeking the noble airs that were not his birthright, but to which he came upon his wife's death. And D'Artagnan is a hardened soldier, casting a cynical eye everywhere, still loyal, but somewhat embittered, trading in his customary "mordioux!" for the "bah!" ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... developed as naturally as a wolf-whelp or a lynx-kitten, a savage breath of life in a savage world, waxing fat in snow-baths, arrow-straight in papoose-slings, a moving, natural thing in a desolation to which generations and centuries of forebears had given it birthright. But Melisse was like her mother. In the dreams of the two who were planning out her fate, she was to be a reincarnation of her mother. That dream left a ray of comfort in Cummins' breast when his wife died. It stirred happy visions within Jan. And it ended with a serious shock when Maballa ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Prometheus, rebellious and defiant to the last, with a world exultant at his fall; a hopeless and impressive fall, since it broke for fifty years the charm of military glory, and showed that imperialism cannot be endured among nations craving for liberties and rights which are the birthright ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... they never happened—they were wildly unlikely to happen—in the world of her own limited experience. But in the society to which the boy belonged by his gentle manners and his trick of speech, which could only come as a birthright—in that rarefied world where the ladies wore low gowns, with diamonds around their necks, and the gentlemen dined in fine linen with wide shirt-fronts—all life moved upon the machinery of romance. The books said so; and after that romance she had been pursuing, by degrees more consciously, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... period who made an even more direct assault upon the "citadel of thought." A remarkable school of workers had been developed in Germany, the leaders being men who, having more or less of innate metaphysical bias as a national birthright, had also the instincts of the empirical scientist, and whose educational equipment included a profound knowledge not alone of physiology and psychology, but of physics and mathematics as well. These men undertook the novel task ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... relax in nothing which can 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
... a rumbling noise as of fire, and a cry of some tormented, and that they smelt the scent of brimstone. Then said Christian, What means this? The Shepherds 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, with 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 ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... held Despair at bay. It was the bravest stand that thou hast ever made. And now, if thou hast lived through this one day, why not another? 'Tis only one hour at a time that thou art called on to endure. Come! By the bloodstone that is thy birthright, pledge me anew thou'lt keep thy oath until the going down ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hereditary claims upon the sympathy and consideration of Christians. The time is surely at hand, when the badge of ignominy shall be removed from them—at least in Britain—where, but for the exception to which we refer, Freedom is the birthright of every native of the soil. Cromwell knew their value to a state; and had he lived a few years longer, the Jew would have been at liberty to cultivate his own lands, and manure them (if it so pleased him) with his own gold, any where ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... feet, aside). Good! I begin to feel my courage return: my nerves are stronger. Courage, Sandy! (Aloud.) Be it so, Concho: there is my hand! We will help each other,—you to my birthright, I to your revenge! Hark ye! (SANDY'S manner becomes more calm and serious.) This impostor is NO craven, NO coyote. Whoever he is, he must be strong. He has most plausible evidences. We must have rigid proofs. I will go with you to Poker Flat. There is one man, if he be living, ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I have heard somewhere of a man who sold his birthright for gold, and when the gold was in his hands, then it changed to withered leaves and brown moss: I was thinking, eh? that the world is much like ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... things will not people risk their lives? So Smith and I crossed the Rangitata. So Esau sold his birthright. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... his views on the mental differences between man and woman. Woman is more tender and less selfish than man, whose ambition "passes too easily into selfishness," which latter qualities "seem to be his natural and unfortunate birthright." Woman's powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man. Yet the chief pre-eminence of man he considers to consist in attaining greater success in any given line than woman, by reason of greater energy, patience, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... and artificial heat. Art is our common inheritance, not the property of a favored few. The wide world we love is full of it, and each of us in his humble way is an artist when with a full heart he communicates his delight and his joy to another. Tolstoi has given us back our birthright, so long withheld, and crowned with his aged hands the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... artificial restraints and laws he has laid upon himself, but there remains within him still that primitive nature that knows nothing, and never will learn anything of those laws, and which leaps up suddenly after years of its prison-life in overpowering revolt, and says, "Joy is my birthright. I will ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Forgetting her birthright from God, Set nation to warring with nation And scattered dissension abroad. Dear creeds have made men kill each other, Fair faith has bred hate and despair, And brother has battled with brother Because of a ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... victory which speaks in every line of this opening monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin, feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of characterization is his exclamation to St. Olaf when he hears that he ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that we have read in a great grief—the taste of that last dish that we have eaten before a duel, or some such supreme meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the Bagnio was a rude picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of Esau's birthright. The ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of conceit of which pimples and a high collar are the outward and visible sign. No, not that at all. He had cast that off with his frock coat, and in its place had grown the inherent pride which is the birthright ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... from my mother, she reveal'd To you her history, and did make known The mark by which I might be recognised— That mark, so oft the theme of idle wonder In the convent. Before I took my vows You therefore must have known my station, The rank I held by birthright, and the name Which I inherited. Why did you press me then To take those vows? It was a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... his sword but from his Gargantuan laughter. In Mr. Snaith's romance there are many delightful characters—a Spanish lady who dictates to armies, a French prince of the blood who has forsaken his birthright for the highroad. But all are dominated by the immense Sir Richard, who rights wrongs like an unruly Providence, and ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Mr. Coolidge wrote: "Vermont is my birthright. Here one gets close to Nature, in the mountains and in the brooks, the waters of which hurry to the sea; in the lakes that shine like silver in their green setting; in the fields tilled, not by machinery, but by the brain and hand of man. My folks are happy and contented. They belong to ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... feeling at the bottom of his soul, as if a good piece of his manhood had been scooped out of him. His hollow aching did not explain itself in words, but it grumbled and worried down among the unshaped thoughts which lie beneath them. He knew that he had been trying to reason himself out of his birthright of reason. He knew that the inspiration which gave him understanding was losing its throne in his intelligence, and the almighty Majority-Vote was proclaiming itself in its stead. He knew that the great primal truths, which each successive revelation only confirmed, were fast becoming ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tell thee"—for with him she always drifted into the sweet speech which was hers by birthright and his for all his life—"shall I tell thee how it seems to me, as if thee had learned every single lesson life and God has had to teach. Thee has had poverty and sorrow, and endured the wrong that others have done thee. Thee has seen thy kindred go away and leave ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... success of his beloved son,—in spite of the weeping and lamentation of the Egyptians at his death,—in spite of his splendid funeral, winding from the city by the pyramid and the sphinx,—in spite of all these things, I would rather have been the hunter Esau, with birthright filched away, bankrupt in the promise, rich only in fleet foot and keen spear; for he carried into the wilds with him an essentially noble nature—no brother with his mess of pottage could mulct him of that. And he had a fine revenge; for when Jacob, on his journey, heard that his brother ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... This he could not do; and it was to no purpose that he offered to the chiefs of illustrious families seats in his new senate. They conceived that they could not accept a nomination to an upstart assembly without renouncing their birthright and betraying their order. The Protector was, therefore, under the necessity of filling his Upper House with new men who, during the late stirring times, had made themselves conspicuous. This was the least happy of his contrivances, and displeased all parties. The Levellers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... angels stoop to soothe their woe He gazed, till fond regret and pride Thrilled to a tear, then thus replied: 'Loveliest and best! thou little know'st The rank, the honors, thou hast lost! O. might I live to see thee grace, In Scotland's court, thy birthright place, To see my favorite's step advance The lightest in the courtly dance, The cause of every gallant's sigh, And leading star of every eye, And theme of every minstrel's art, The Lady of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the birthright of his youth, had him safe in its grasp. But sometimes, when Rosamund was alone in the room of the Hermes, learning her lesson, and he was among the ruins, or walking above the buried Stadium where the flocks were at pasture, he recalled the great contests of the Athletes of ancient ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... now," he said, "and if after this I hear of a single perversion, woe be unto that pervert, for it is better for his miserable soul that he had never been born. Is there a man here base enough to sell his birthright for a mess of Mr. Lucre's pottage? Is there a man here, who is not too strongly imbued with a hatred of heresy, to laugh to scorn their bribes and their Bibles. Not a man, or, if there is, let him go out from amongst us, in order that we may know him—that we may avoid his outgoings and ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... to their birthright, And crosier and crown pass away Like phantasms that flit o'er the marshes At the glance of the clean, white day. And then from the lava of AEtna To the ice of the Alps let there be One freedom, one faith without fetters, One republic ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet "pauper" is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the "pauper"—oh, inexpressibly wicked word!—it is the well-to-do, who are the criminal classes. It matters not ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the summons be on that very wintry blast which rushed over her hot brow? And if it should be so? Beulah pressed her face closer to the window, and thought it was too inconceivable that she also should die. She knew it was the common birthright, the one unchanging heritage of all humanity; yet long vistas of life opened before her, and though, like a pall, the shadow of the tomb hung over the end, it ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... is finally to culminate in its marked individuality, and separation from the mass of organized, created beings. These experiences are the rare awakenings of the soul to the realization and use of its own native powers which flow from its divine paternity and origin, and which constitute its birthright and ultimate inheritance. At times, the gifts and powers of certain beings burst into bloom and fruition when least expected, and cast a radiance and a halo around the personality, which mark and award it a place among its fellow men, altogether superior to the general trend and outworkings ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... harsher, and with a ring of defiance in it. 'And no cutting off the entail, my Lord Kilgobbin! no escape from that cruel necessity of an heir! I may carry my musket in the ranks, but I'll not surrender my birthright!' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... birthright, as I may say, yet she had not lived years enow to pretend to so much experience as to exempt her from the necessity of sometimes altering her opinion both of persons and things; but, when she found herself obliged to do this, she took care ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... 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 copy ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... Pacha, of whom the reader may take note, since, aside from his reappearances in these pages, he is a genuine historic character. To further acquaintance with him, it may be added that he was truly a veteran in public affairs, a member of the great family to which the vizierat descended almost in birthright, and a friend to the Greeks, most likely from long association with Amurath, although he has suffered severe aspersion on their account. Kalil advised Phranza to drop the stipend. His master, he said, was not afraid of Orchan, if the latter took the field as an open claimant, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... his father and of all his father's brothers he was himself at this moment the sole heir to the throne of Norway. Now for the first time he realized that during all that past time, when he had been living as a poor and wretched bondslave in Esthonia, he had held this glorious birthright. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... Roared is the accurate expression. He was not a large man, and his hair was sandy, and his eye mild blue. But undoubtedly his kinsmen were dumb and he had as birthright the voice for the entire family. It had been subsequently developed in the shouting after the wild cattle of the hills. Now his ordinary conversational tone was that of the announcer at a circus. But ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... a roof Neither wind nor water proof— That's the prose of Love in a Cottage— A puny, naked, shivering wretch, The whole of whose birthright would not fetch, Though Robins himself drew up the sketch, The bid of "a mess ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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
... have his head. God is leading him straight on the path of failure. It is this still-vague feeling, that he will never have power to add to the Prussian birthright, that makes him rush feverishly from one scheme to another; stirring up this question and that, ever testing, ever striving. It is this foreboding that has driven him to pursue fame, fortune and glory, and so to ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... an object of too serious desire and stern resolve to be personified, allegorized, and enshrined. They made no goddess of it, as the ancients did; they had no time nor inclination for such trifling; they felt that liberty was the simple birthright of every human creature; they called it so; they claimed it as such; they reverenced and held it fast as the unalienable gift of the Creator, which was not to be surrendered to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... child," said Pluma, haughtily; "you would not rob me of my birthright. I shall be forced to submit to your pleasure—while you are here—but, thank Heaven, the time is not far distant when I shall be able to do as I please. 'The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine,'" she ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... feel that the childhood of Mill could hardly have been a happy one. The joy of physical achievement, the free-hearted abandonment of the young barbarian at his play, the power to do as well as to know—these are the birthright of every child. But while we may pity him for his lack of these joys, we dare not forget that to have lived the life or done the work of John Stuart Mill is no small thing. And perhaps this life could not have been lived had his education been other ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the autobiography of this poor tormented soul," went on Malcolm—"this dumb poet, this crippled artist, to whom the birthright of failure has descended, who has to look on for a lifetime at other men's labours, and to whom the power of expression and creation is denied, who has been gifted with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... To have been reared in luxury as he had been, to have seen only the pleasant side of society, which is so persistent and so deluding where money is concerned, to have been in the run of big affairs not because one has created them, but because one is a part of them and because they are one's birthright, like the air one breathes, could not help but create one of those illusions of solidarity which is apt to befog the clearest brain. It is so hard for us to know what we have not seen. It is so difficult for us to feel what we have ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... forceful cries of gnawing hunger, And piteous, plaintive voice of misery (As if a slave was not a shred of nature, Of the same common nature with his lord); Now tame and humble, like a child that's whipp'd, Shakes hands with dust, and calls the worm his kinsman; Nor pleads his rank and birthright: Under ground Precedency's a jest; vassal and lord, 230 Grossly familiar, side by side consume. When self-esteem, or others' adulation, Would cunningly persuade us we are something Above the common level of our kind, The Grave gainsays the smooth-complexion'd flattery, And with blunt truth ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... upstairs she looked into the parlor, and saw Alice sitting with her head bowed upon her hand. Her first impulse was to go in and try to justify herself in the eyes of this girl, with whom she knew that Mr. Sawyer was in love; but no, she was but a waif, with no name, no birthright, no heritage; that woman had cut her off from her people. Truly, she had ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... words? There never can be peace Till Ireland is set free. One might as well Expect the great Arch-angel rest in Hell And genuflect to Satan's blasphemies, As Erin's spirit that, for centuries, Has been aloft with God in virtue, sell, Like Esaw, her birthright, and not rebel, But to her home's invaders, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... striven from the first to awaken thoughts of higher things, and turn remorse into repentance; but every attempt resulted in strange, sad wanderings about Esau, the birthright, and the blessing. Indeed, these might not have been entirely wanderings, for once he said, 'It is better this way, Bill. You don't know what you wish in trying to bring me round. Don't be hard on me. She drove me to it. It is all right now. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... clamour. You, the freemen of England, are the basis of that excellent constitution which hath long flourished the object of envy and admiration. To you belongs the inestimable privilege of choosing a delegate properly qualified to represent you in the High Court of Parliament. This is your birthright,—inherited from your ancestors, obtained by their courage, and sealed with their blood. It is not only your birthright, which you should maintain in defiance of all danger, but also a sacred trust, to be executed ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... intelligence of the creature we reach towards Him but do not attain, for with it we are unable to penetrate the veil. Therefore, who would know the joys of contemplation must come to them by love, for love is the only means by which the creature can attain. The soul attains God as her birthright, but the creature by adoption and redemption, and this through love. By love the creature dies and is reborn ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... mighty grip the little human atoms. It had borne him up to the stars, and in a few hours it would roll him back, down into the gulf, from which no effort of his will could take him. With this hunger, which was his human birthright, he must labor on, unappeased. It was given him merely to know what would recreate living for him, what would make of the days joy instead of pain, and it was not to be his, except for this ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... had a bright, cheerful, intelligent face, and was exceedingly active, keeping up with the horses at their trot, and inciting them to better speed when they lagged. I conceived a great respect for this poor boy, who had what most Italian peasants would consider an enviable birthright in those two club feet, as giving him a sufficient excuse to live on charity, but yet took no advantage of them; on the contrary, putting his poor misshapen hoofs to such good use as might have shamed many ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... purple—read in the degradations which he traversed as some fiery furnace (yet not unsinged), the inevitable curses which await nations who sacrifice, for a momentary convenience of bread, sacrifice for a loaf, the charter of their supremacy! This is literally to fulfil the Scriptural case of selling a birthright ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... quickness unknown to the ancient world, where the original citizens of a commonwealth always believed themselves to be united by kinship in blood, and resented a claim to equality of privilege as a usurpation of their birthright. In the early Roman republic the principle of the absolute exclusion of foreigners pervaded the Civil Law no less than the Constitution. The alien or denizen could have no share in any institution supposed to be coeval with the State. He could not have the benefit of Quiritarian ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... in one little scene. The scene is changed—and, like their fleeting-fame, The fickle world adores another name. They knew the price at which its praise was bought; The glittering bauble was not worth a thought; Yet, Esau like, a better birthright sold, And for ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... your life, I want you to remember then, that, as one of the race for whom Christ died, you have as high a citizenship in that spirit land as any creature there: that you are your own soul's warden, and that neither principalities nor powers can rob you of that your birthright." ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... decision. The lot pronounced against them. I do not believe that it had entered the heart of either of them to understand how necessary they had become to each other, and when they saw that all was over it was a sad awaking. For a little while it was with both as if they had madly thrown a birthright away; for, though they had faith, they were not yet perfect in it. Not soon did either see that this life had a blessing for them every day—new every morning, fresh every evening—and that from everlasting to everlasting are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Louis Dumant, the Swiss Protestant minister and author, is of the opinion that coffee (and not lentils, as others have supposed) was the red pottage for which Esau sold his birthright; also that the parched grain that Boaz ordered to be given Ruth was undoubtedly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... trust completely, that in the years to come, he would never reach a greater height of artistic success than he had done just then. One such experience could justify many a year of halting indecision. Puritan to the core, he yet had proved true to his Slavonic birthright. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... the old ground first. It says Alvarez has given the richest birthright of his country to aliens—that means the mines and Langham—and has put an alien in command of the army—that is meant for me. I've no more to do with the army than you have—I only wish I had! And then it says that the boundary aggressions of Ecuador and Venezuela have ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... mellowed, strengthened Elijah reappears in the man who received the birthright portion of his spirit. We know the new Elijah by the spirit that swayed Elisha. The old spirit, fiercely denouncing, calling down fire, slaying the priests, but with no grief-broken heart under these stern needful things,—this we think of familiarly ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... who stood before them had a natural right and legal claim to the throne of his father; that he had been educated with a view to it, and was qualified to adorn it by his disposition and talents; that he wished however to found his pretensions neither upon his birthright nor the strength of the party attached to him, but upon the general voice of his subjects calling him to the sovereignty; that if such was their sentiment he was ready to undertake the arduous duties of the station, in which he himself ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... is engaged in dispensing liberty to conquered peoples instead of allowing them to enjoy liberty as a birthright. He is dispensing to them such education as he thinks they ought to have, instead of allowing them to decide for themselves as to the education which may be agreeable or useful for them. He dictates for them the "free institutions" which in his opinion are best adapted ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... he look for a companion? No, no, don't think it. He doesn't know he is alone; Isolation is his birthright, This atom. ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... honest men. Our immaculate laureate (who gives us to understand that, if he had not been purified by holy matrimony into a mystical type, he would have died a virgin,) is another sublime gentleman of the same genus: he very much astonished some persons when he sold his birthright for a pot of sack; but not even his Sosia has a grain of respect for him, though, doubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his criticopoeticopolitical tomahawk, and sets up his Indian yell for the ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... pillory, if his friend was subjected to that indignity, and of thus encouraging the storm of popular indignation, that, without any such encouragement, would probably have led to consequences which the Government, already hated by all Englishmen who loved their birthright, dared not brook. But the unworthy vengeance of his persecutors was amply satisfied in other ways. He had already suffered more than most men. "Neglect," he said, "I was accustomed to. But when an alleged offence was laid to my charge, in which, on the honour of a man now on the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... a slave, or deny that I am his slave, or if my children and children's children unto the end of all time should refuse to do him service, if only a single day of the week; or if I should act inimically toward him on account of this contract, as Esau did toward Jacob after selling him his birthright; in all these cases, a beam of wood is to be plucked out of the house of the recalcitrant, and he is to be hanged upon it. I, Haman, the son of Hammedatha of the family of Agag, being under no restraint, do hereby consent with my own will, and bind myself to be slave in perpetuity to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... any circumstances, by any other individual not having a status defined by this Act, and as the uncles of the Queen, and the hereditary Earl Marshal of England, occupy their respective steps in the ladder of precedence, by the self-same title, there would be no greater violation of birthright in placing an individual without a status before the Duke of Sussex, than there would in placing him before the Duke of Norfolk; if there be any injustice at all, the difference would not be in the principle, but in ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the fire, the chaplain came along and wanted to sample it. He was pretty hungry, but I wasn't running a free boarding house for chaplains any more, and I told him he must go forage for himself. He said he would give his birthright for a pocket full of corn. I told him I didn't want any birthright, unless a birthright would stay a man's stomach, but if he would promise to always love, honor and obey me, I would tell him where he could get some corn. He swore by the great bald headed ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... which to proceed. You are a multi-millionaire trained in the fine art of juggling corporations. In all probability you approached my father with an offer to buy the ranch and he declined. He was old and he was sentimental, and he loved me and would not sell me out of my birthright. You had to have that ranch, and since you couldn't buy it you decided to acquire it by foreclosure. To do that, however, you had to acquire the mortgage, and in order to acquire the mortgage you had to ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... have accepted him had she not loved him. But it is so hard to keep the heart fresh among all the grandeurs of high rank; and it is harder for a girl to do so who has not been born to it, than for one who has enjoyed it as her birthright." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... forced into action by some of the strongest emotions, and maintaining its position indefeasibly through the limitations of the intellect. This it does, however, with a certain nobleness, for while it wraps the unknown in sacred mystery, it proclaims man one in nature with the Highest, by birthright a son of the gods, of an intelligence akin to theirs, and less than they only in degree. Through thus presenting at once his strength and his feebleness, his grandeur and his degradation, religion goes beyond philosophy or utility in suggesting motives for exertion, stimuli to labor. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... private before the public good. For as [492]he said long since, res privatae publicis semper officere. Or whereas they be illiterate, ignorant, empirics in policy, ubi deest facultas, [493]virtus (Aristot. pol. 5, cap. 8.) et scientia, wise only by inheritance, and in authority by birthright, favour, or for their wealth and titles; there must needs be a fault, [494]a great defect: because as an [495]old philosopher affirms, such men are not always fit. "Of an infinite number, few alone ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... before the time," went on the thick, boyish voice. "Yet as things seem to have gone rather well for us, I cannot blame you, especially as I see that you hold fast her who has usurped my birthright." ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... There is, there can be no death! Receive the glad tidings, and cry it aloud! There is no death! Let all the earth hear, until there is none so base, so low, so poor, so ignorant, so sinful that he shall not be immortal. It is his birthright, for we are all born ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... sitters of years had made dark brown, a phonograph, and signed photographs of friends and visitors who had said farewell to Tahiti. There were paintings of flowers by Lovaina, showing not a little talent and much feeling. All these were the pride of her birthright—"Murricaine" fashion, as the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... of losing that than all my fortune. It was the certificate of my honour and my son's birthright. I knew that if the Duke Waldemar once got it into his possession he could demand any price from me ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... specific provisions all classes in the colony at the time heartily united. And thus was secured and guaranteed to every good citizen that full, rightful, and precious religious freedom which is the birthright of all Americans, for which the oppressed of all the ages sighed, and which had to make its way through a Red Sea of human tears and blood and many a sorrowful wilderness before reaching its place ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... breathed Alicia. Her sympathy was instantly with Richard. That is exactly like Alicia, who is sorry for the fatted calf, and the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea, and Esau swindled out of his birthright; had she been one of the wise virgins she would have trimmed the lamps of all the foolish ones and waked them up ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... 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 about their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Sovereignty. In the lull which succeeded the election, Mr. Buchanan had leisure, at Wheatland, to draft a programme for his incoming administration. His paramount idea was to gag the North and induce her to forget that she had been robbed of her birthright, by forcing on the attention of the country other questions of absorbing interest. One of the most obvious of these was supplied by the condition of affairs in Utah. It had been satisfactorily established, that the Mormons, acting under the influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... our guide! No sword we draw, We kindle not war's fatal fires; By union, justice, reason, law, We claim the birthright of our sires! And thus we raise from sea to sea, Our sacred ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... remnants of one, conquered and nearly extirpated, fled to the mountains, and occupied a locality from necessity and for safety that they would not otherwise have chosen. Afterwards when a new generation arose they looked on the pine-clad hills as their home and birthright. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... from its despised corner of indignity, slowly and painfully finding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man. It is like the imprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall, and sending out its eager branches into freedom, to prove that darkness is not its birthright, that its love is for the sunshine. In the time of the Buddha the individual discovered his own immensity of worth, first by witnessing a man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures, in all worlds, through the power of a love ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... separated entirely from the will of the nation, formed the basis of Venetian polity. Authority, though divided, was not less a birthright than in those governments in which it was openly avowed to be a dispensation of Providence. The patrician order had its high and exclusive privileges, which were guarded and maintained with a most ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... might not be corrupted by marrying a Canaanite. Between his two sons, Esau and Jacob, there was again a choice; for God had prophesied that the elder should serve the younger, and Esau did not value the birthright which would have made him heir to no lands that would enrich himself, and to a far-off honour that he did not understand. So despising the promises of God, he made his right over to his brother for a little food, when he was hungry, ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of Sinclair was the eldest son of Henry, seventh Lord Sinclair, and the representative, therefore, of an honourable family. But it was his fate to forfeit his birthright, not so much by his adherence to an ill-fated cause, as by the violence and brutality of his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... limited, the ocean grey-hound, the Atlantic cable, and the voice-bearing telephone have made all nations kin, and bid fair to amalgamate society. Even the newly created species condescends to swap her birthright for a coronet. ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... for the fate of Charles I., but conceals or glosses the villanies of Stuarts far worse than Charles. The liberties of England consist, in his eyes, of wise concessions made by the sovereign, rather than as the inalienable birthright of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... habit of body; his complexion was ruddy and sun-colored, and the long mustache hanging across his jaws showed a deep mahogany-red. Western ranchman one might have called him, rather than Southern planter. Scotch-Irish, generations back, perhaps, yet Southern always, and by birthright American, he might have been a war-lord of another land and day. No feudal baron ever dismounted with more assuredness at his own hall, to toss careless rein to a retainer. He stood now, tall and straight, a trifle rough-looking ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... grant a man an inheritance of fighting blood, and then deny him the opportunity to exercise his birthright, was a sort of grim joke which he ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... state alone. They claimed liberty of speech. The King asserted that they had no liberties except such as the royal power saw fit to grant. Then the Commons drew up their famous Protest, in which they declared that their liberties were not derived from the King, but were "the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the people of England." In his rage James ordered the journal of the Commons to be brought to him, tore out the Protest with his own hand, and sent five of the members of the House to prison (S419). This rash act made the Commons ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... may come short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up may make trouble and by it many be defiled, [12:16]that no one may be a fornicator or unholy person like Esau, who for one meal sold his birthright. [12:17]For you know that afterwards, wishing also to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for a change of mind, though he sought it with tears. [12:18]For you have not come to a mountain that may be touched, and to a burning fire, and blackness and darkness ...
— The New Testament • Various
... said, "to become the pupil of her pleasure, as if I were still a child?—I, whom even my envious mates allowed to be superior in those exercises which they took most pains to acquire, and which came to me naturally, as if a knowledge of them had been my birthright? This may not, and must not be. I will be no reclaimed sparrow-hawk, who is carried hooded on a woman's wrist, and has his quarry only shown to him when his eyes are uncovered for his flight. I will know her purpose ere it is proposed to ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... birthright higher than myself, Though nestling of the self-same nest: No fault of hers, no fault of mine, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... success, and I'm going to tell you why. No one else is likely to, and I'm just mischievous and frank enough. You're one of those American women—I've always been curious to meet one in all her glory—who believe that they are born in the complete panoply of flawless womanhood; that they are by birthright consummate house-wives, leaders of the world's thought and ethics, and peerless society queens. All this by instinct, by heritage, and without education. That's what you believe, isn't it? And now you are offended because you haven't been invited to become a leader ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... gathered that there had been a pretty dirty job done, away back in the years. It seems that King Alzof and King Ernore had been enemies by birthright, as you might say truly; but that nothing more than a little raiding had occurred on either side for years, until Dian Tiansay made the Song of Foolishness upon King Ernore, and sang it before King Alzof; and so greatly was it appreciated that ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... age, and his father died when he was no more than eleven years, before the plans for his education were put into action. But no stroke of outward calamity, or loss—however severe, could annul Raphael's birthright of universal favour. His step-mother, the uncles who were his guardians, his clever, perverse, unscrupulous master, all joined in a common love of Raphael and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler |
