"Aspiration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... please don't let it be that way!" The aspiration was the nearest she dared come to putting into words the terror that shook ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... criticise nothing. To some extent, their attitude to the universe is that of children: and because this is so, they participate to that extent in the Heaven of Reality. According to their measure, they have fulfilled Keats' aspiration, they do live a life in which the emphasis lies on sensation rather than on thought: for the state which he then struggled to describe was that ideal state of pure receptivity, of perfect correspondence with the essence of things, of which all artists have ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... must have been the most extraordinary religious service in all their experience. Softly, Margaret began to play the old hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee!" The men, accepting it as a signal, rose to their feet and began to sing, and with these great words of aspiration ringing through their hearts they passed out into ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... compeers in all respects, except in his own opinion; one of Nature's gentlemen, in short, who are to be found, not numerously perhaps, but certainly, in almost every land, with unusual strength of intellect, and breadth of thought, and power of frame, and force of will, and nobility of aspiration. Such men in free countries, become leaders of the good and brave. In despotic lands they become either the deliverers of their country or the pests of society—the terror of rulers, the fomentors of national discord. Doubtless, in many cases, where right principles are brought to bear on them, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... the past." Columbus on the quays of Genoa; Zinzendorf forming among his little companions the order of the "Grain of Mustard-Seed"; the poets who "lisped in numbers"; the boy statesmanship of Cromwell; and the early aspiration of nearly every great leader of mankind—all showed the current of the life-stream, and it is the current alone that knows and prophesies the future. When Abraham Lincoln fell, the world uncovered its head. Thrones were sorrowful, and humanity ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... advisable to take her from school before she graduates. If Annette were indifferent about her lessons and showed no aptitude for improvement I should say as she does not appreciate education enough to study diligently and has not aspiration enough to keep up with her class, find out what she is best fitted for and let her be instructed in that calling for which she is ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant betterment for himself—straighter living, perhaps straighter thinking—the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even aspiration—or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others which ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... bear in mind the one aspiration of commencing religious thought, to wit, the attainment of a wish, to see that whatever action arose therefrom must be directed to that purpose. Hence, when we analyze the rude ceremonies of savage cults, the motive is extremely apparent. They, like their prayers, all point to the securing ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... sincere, noble aspiration is a prayer; hence, she prays without ceasing in obedience to the admonition of the Apostle. And, let it be said in reverence, she helps to answer her own prayers. Her spirit yearns out toward higher and wider attainments every hour of the day, not morbidly but exultantly. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... his confidants "Shack" and Loring during the years at college show his aspiration to become a poet. He reports from time to time his progress in verse making and comments more or less favorably on his "effusions." This writing of pottery—as it pleased him to call it—continued with more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... exaltation. Marriage is here as with us, and love holds its deathless sway among the white and noble Martians as on earth, while the affection of friendship seems to weave every atom of society to every other atom in a social texture over which only moves the refining powers of thought and aspiration. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... the Yakkho chiefs who shared in these enterprises. They assigned a suburb of the capital for their residence[2], and on festive occasions they were seated on thrones of equal eminence with that of the king.[3] But every aspiration towards a recovery of their independence was checked by a device less characteristic of ingenuity in the ascendant race, than of simplicity combined with jealousy in the aborigines. The feeling was encouraged and matured into a conviction which prevailed to the latest ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... shall I say of the mind? What of the spirit, the resident divinity of so fair a temple? Vanity, vanity, all was vanity; a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration, one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful without, but dark and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it in gauze? How could she look so ethereal while her eyes drooped so murderously? Those almost wanton glances seemed to give promise of untold languorous delight, while by an ascetic's sigh of aspiration after a better life the mouth appeared to add that none of those promises would be fulfilled. Ingenuous youths (for there were a few to be found in the Guards of that day) privately wondered whether, in the most intimate ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... could be more easily combined than in our days of ruthless specialism. It is dedicated in very courtly language to the Prince Elector Palatine. Wilkins looks forward to the Prince's restoration to his dominions—a curious aspiration to be professed by a man who did not, then at least, put his trust in princes. But he did not foresee what was to come, both ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... hand the Norman barons would fain rise a step in the social scale answering to that by which their duke had become a king; and they aspired to the same independence which they had seen enjoyed by the counts of Southern and Eastern France. Nor was the aspiration on their part altogether unreasonable; they had joined in the Conquest rather as sharers in the great adventure than as mere vassals of the duke, whose birth they despised as much as they feared his strength. William, however, was wise and wary as well as strong. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... with the following beautiful description of the Established Church:—"It is a bloated, unsightly mass of formalities, hypocrisy, bigotry, and selfishness, without a single charitable impulse or pious aspiration." After this touching display of genuine American feeling, he draws the picture of a clergyman in language so opposite, that one is reminded of a certain mysterious personage, usually represented with cloven feet, and who is said to be very apt at ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... heart and her aspiration to share all with her husband that the exigences of his busy life deprived him of any knowledge of this newly-opened well of sweet waters, that he had nothing from his parenthood but an amused, half ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... as good, and as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word 'heir,' which I contended was pronounced like 'air'; he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir at Law,' a comedy; but that in the law courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a counsel pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he 'would consult Serjeant Wilde,' who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water; sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... not, all at once, and be a girl too—a girl of sixteen, a little off the key physically, not having come to a woman's repose of movement; a little stridulous mentally, but pulsing with life's dumb music of aspiration; as intense as her mother in feeling, without her mother's power to throw off ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... noble horsemanship, for one has no firm seat even when mounted on a vicious pony—before he could bring the saddle to a level and gain his equilibrium, was fairly pitched over the side of the road. Mule having now achieved that glorious libertà , the instinctive aspiration of Corsican existence, whether man, mule, or moufflon, started forward alone, my friend following, I have no doubt, in rather ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... strengthened,—meeting the desire of the trained and cultured man, as once it had the impassioned aspiration of youth. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... and if, in his studies, he did not take leading rank, nor become enraptured over analytics, calculus, and binomials, he was esteemed a spirited, heartsome lad of good stock and promise, bred to honorable purpose and aspiration, with seemingly marked aptitude for the noble profession, which, more than any other, calls for a heroism that never hesitates, a courage that never falters; for, aside from its special work of upholding and defending the flag, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... and taste," says Kullak, "with his lifting of the entire technique to the spiritual aspiration of the idea, elevate him as a virtuoso to a height unanimously conceded by the public, by connoisseurs, and by artists capable of judging. Clementi declared that he had never heard any one play so soulfully ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... activity in thy streets!" (No remark could be extracted from Steadfast. It was necessary to proceed.) "And now, Steadfast, my inestimable friend, that I may find my father and my Caroline well and happy, is the dearest, the sole aspiration of my heart!" Steadfast stared and staggered, then suddenly exclaiming gutturally, "Amen!" reeled from the stage, quickly followed by Henry Moreland, amid the derision and hisses of the spectators. "Treat you cruelly!" ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... shall give account of himself to God." In our consciousness of sin, in our penitence, in our faith, others may stimulate and inspire us, may point the way saying, "Behold the Lamb of God," may go with us in a common confession of guilt and a common aspiration towards the Most High, but we are hardly conscious of their fellowship; it is the living God with whom we ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... larger conceptions, fuller ideas, deeper sympathies, higher aspirations than is possible where you follow the ordinary routine of the ordinary, mediocre, self-contented man. Thank God for the spark of discontent, of ambition, of aspiration, of desire to see beyond, to know more, to climb higher, to solve the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... evolution of life, manifested in thought and action; strengthened by all the achievements of the past, and advancing from age to age towards a less imperfect expression of that idea. Our earthly life is one phase of the eternal aspiration of the soul towards progress, which is our law ascending in increasing power and purity from the finite towards the infinite; from the real towards the Ideal; from that which is, towards that which is to come. In the immense storehouse of the past evolutions ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... members, not numbering amongst its adherents the most learned and the most mighty of the earth, made up of very mediocre, average people, not the great leaders of the civilisation of the day; but in them all, else would they not be members of the Theosophical Society, is the dawning aspiration after a nobler condition, and some willingness to sacrifice themselves in order that the coming of that condition may be quickened upon earth. That is the justification of our Society now. We are like the nutrient material that surrounds ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... shadowy vagueness; but his love for Isabelle had undergone no change; it had neither diminished nor grown cold; it was as passionate and all-absorbing as ever; it was his very life; yet rather like an aspiration of the soul than a real passion, since with it all he knew that the angelic being who was its object, and whom he worshipped from afar, could never, never be his. The wheels of his chariot, which for a brief space had turned aside into a new track, were back in the old rut again, and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... all of us, that gentleness and abnegation of self which is the only token and assurance of a love aught but animal—Sylvia's fears and doubts melted away, as the mists melt in the beams of morning. A young girl, with passionate fancy, with honest and noble aspiration, but with the dark shadow of her early mental sickness brooding upon her childlike nature, Marriage made her a woman, by developing in her a woman's trust and pride in the man to whom she had voluntarily given herself. Yet by-and-by ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... was once a desperate venture is now a lucrative business. What was once a martyrdom is now its own reward. What once had saintly unearthliness is now a powerful motor among worldly interests. What was once the fatality of genius is now the aspiration of fools. The people have turned to reading, and have become a more liberal patron than even the Athenian State, monastic order, or noble lord. No longer does the literary class wander about the streets, gingerbread in its coat-pockets, and rhymes written on scraps of paper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... redolent of the sixties, Seventy-nine Hall, brick-red and arrogant, Upper and Lower Pyne, aristocratic Elizabethan ladies not quite content to live among shopkeepers, and, topping all, climbing with clear blue aspiration, the great dreaming spires of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the soundness of the whole nation. How would it suit the prosperity of the United States, how would it suit business, to have a people that went every day sadly or sullenly to their work? How would the future look to you if you felt that the aspiration had gone out of most men, the confidence of success, the hope that they might improve their condition? Do you not see that just so soon as the old self-confidence of America, just so soon as her old boasted advantage of individual liberty and opportunity, is taken away, ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... arrived at the termination of this volume, I have only to add that, if a war is forced upon Great Britain by the United States, the British dominion here will be sustained without flinching; and that the old English aspiration of ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... above her head in a wild aspiration. And all in a moment it surprised her to feel her eyes wet ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had a hundred thousand pounds." ("Voulentiers serais pauvre avec dix mille escus.") But in nearly all his verse, whether joyous as in the "Chant de vin et vie," or gloomy as in the "Ballade des Treize Pendus," there is a curious recurrent aspiration towards a warm fire, a sure and plentiful supper, a clean bed, and a long, long sleep. Whether Jean Francois moped or made merry, and in spite of the fact that he enjoyed his roving career and would not have exchanged it ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... a wonderful dancing repertoire, with acrobatic dancing, musical comedy work and the tap and step dancing. When you add our ballet course to that, then you are ready for any call that may come to you in your lifetime. This is my aspiration for you. We are trying to realize ideals. When you have finished here you will be accomplished dancers, not mere machines going through a bunch of set exercises. Add the spiritual touch to your work now as you start on ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... had seen the walls before, and was in no analytical mood; synthesis was enough for me. I took in with my delighted eyes a roofless dome worthy to be a temple of some sort, even if it were not, a blue roof that bettered mere human aspiration, debris testifying to earthly incompleteness, a broken column with its memento mori all these were simmering in my vision and my judgment. I half dozed until the voices of the lunchers began to interest me. They were doing the rounds rather hastily, lunch ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Scriptural recollection which prompts her at another time in the novel to exclaim, in regard to the Ankworks package, "'I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do,' appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in that mysterious aspiration,"—by observing at this point, "Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye. That is my comfort, and I hope I knows it." One whole chapter of "Martin Chuzzlewit," with the exception of the merest fragment ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... some days after on that pious aspiration of her grandfather's old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return upon her. Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong. She told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this dwindling flame, it was a lot ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... landed property sufficiently large to warrant his leading the life of a leisurely country gentleman,—the highest aspiration of a Virginian aristocrat in the period of entailed estates,—it was necessary for him to choose a profession, and only that of a lawyer could be thought of by a free-thinking politician,—for such he was from first to last. Indeed, politics ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the ropes of nations," still sways mind and fancy, but the romance of the world continues, though the progress of Humanity varies the pictured page. In the warm heart of the tropical Archipelago, Nature, triumphing in eternal youth, seems to mock the transient phases of aspiration and achievement, which vanish by turn into the misty past. The great Mother chants her "Song of Songs" throughout the myriad changes of Time, in terms so similar to the imagery of the Divine Epithalamium that, from a human standpoint, it seems swept by the spice-laden breezes ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... when his child may marvel at what to him must seem a mere arbitrary or even unkind refusal of an innocent desire. That hapless man of genius, the late John Davidson, condensed the truth into one illuminating phrase when he spoke of prayer rightly uttered as {215} "submissive aspiration"; it would be difficult to devise another form of words equally brief yet containing so much of the essence of the matter. Even short of actual fulfilment, it is an immeasurable privilege simply to speak to God about all the things that weigh on our minds, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... not pronounced are derived from the Latin. If that were the general rule, which, however, it is not, as in habit, herb, &c., still, where h precedes u, it would be pronounced according to the universal rule for the aspiration of u. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it,—motives eminently such as are called social,—come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for us as a symbol of heroic deeds; Demosthenes as a symbol of the convincing powers of oratory and Pericles as the crystallization of Grecian life in its totality of beauty, learning and social and civic life. Greece is a type, is an attitude, is a protest against oppression, is an aspiration towards beauty, is an inspiration and a guide for men who live in the higher planes of feeling and thought. But Greece is not all that as a people; Greece is all that through men converted ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... seen to be in fuller accord with the whole cycle and development of the Grail legends, and at the same time gives the nobler story. It is a consummate parable of the contending passions and the heavenly aspiration, the ineffable pity and the mystic glory, of the human heart. It portrays an intensely human and heroic life, imaginatively identified with ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... organs, maybe differently alter'd according to their various resemblances, so the letter H. carrys not only the resemblance of a gutturall as it is pronounc'd by the assistance of the muscles of the throat, but also as an Aspiration besides the regard it hath to the whispers of the tongue, and the 6. Aspirates of the Lips, Teeth, and Palate. However if the precipitance or forwardnesse of any, hath by chance brought into use, other methods of altering sounds, as they have not so certain a foundation in reason, ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... he was so situated at that time that he couldn't possibly encourage the—'but it's of no use talking about it!' he adds, interrupting himself. 'She has got over it now, and I firmly hope and trust is happy.' With this benevolent aspiration he nods his head in a mysterious manner, and whistling the first part of some popular air, thinks perhaps it will be ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... echo and aspiration. He finds his theme and illustration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him: his lute is always by his side. Following the "Steps of the Temple," a graceful tribute to Herbert, we have ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... his intellectual experience, yet none has effaced the deep impression made upon him by these lectures. Coming as they did at a favorable moment, and answering many a positive question and many a vague aspiration of youth, they exercised a decisive influence over his thought; they were to him an important step in that continuous initiation which we call life, they filled him with fresh intuitions, they brought near to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... most usually met with is the monogram of Christ. The other symbols generally in use are the ship, the emblem of the church; the fish, the emblem of Christ, the palm, the symbol of martyrdom. The anchor represented hope in immortality; the dove, peace; the stag reminded the faithful of the pious aspiration of the Psalmist; the horse was the emblem of strength in the faith; the hunted hare, of persecution; the peacock and the phoenix stood for signs of the resurrection. Christ, as the good pastor, was also introduced in the epitaph. Even personages of the Pagan ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... manhood. And with it came ineffable longings—longings to live, and to feel; to do, and to be. The vague wish to avoid the indignity of corporal punishment threw off its cloak and showed itself to be Aspiration. There, outside the baths, the AEsthetic awoke in me. The sensation, infinitely sad and yet pleasing, was so complete that it left ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... understand the Sea, until He knows all passions of the senses; all The great emotions of the heart; and each Exalted aspiration of the soul. Then may he sit beside the sea and say: 'I, too, have flung myself against the rocks, And kissed their flinty brows with no return; And fallen spent upon unfeeling sands. I, too, have gone ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... "The Pleiades." Throughout this long period, French literature has been chiefly under the sway of that spirit of classicism in style which the reaction against Ronsardism, led first by Malherbe and afterwards by Boileau, had established as the national standard in literary taste and aspiration. But Rousseau's genius acted as a powerful solvent of the classic tradition. Chateaubriand's influence was felt on the same side, continuing Rousseau's. George Sand, too, and Lamartine, were forces that strengthened this component. Finally, the great personality of Victor ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the veins of nature swell, Eternal recompense to human toil. And when the sunset's final shades depart The aspiration to completed birth Is sweet and silent; as the soft tears start, We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the passions of our bleeding heart That vex the ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... conclusion. So his doubting friends could only wish him good fortune. Graham said, 'If your hand be destined to lay the foundation of a Greek empire on the ruins of the Ottoman, no hand can be more worthy, no work more glorious. Recidiva manu posuissem Pergama was a noble aspiration;[375] with you it may ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Horace and the reasons for their appeal to many generations of men. These were the crown of the personality and work of the ancient poet, and admiration of them has through successive ages always been a token of aspiration and of a ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... myself and thought, reclining in rapt thought, full of aspiration, steeped to the lips of my soul in desire. I did not then define, or analyses, or understand this. I see now that what I laboured for was soul-life, more soul-nature, to be exalted, to be full of soul-learning. Finally I rose, walked half a mile or so along the summit of the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... head work, apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain,—and as work I offer it to the public, feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration; but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some protection ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... the highest class of phonetic utterance. With the most brilliant colouring, they thus harmonized all these arts Into one great whole, unsurpassed by anything the world has seen during the thirty centuries of struggle and aspiration that have elapsed since the brilliant days of the great kingdom ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... uttered as he—or what he had once been—sat in the old-time parlour in the mellow half light of faded brocades and rosewood, repeating to a child the programme of his future. Lofty aim and high ideal, the cultivated endeavour of good citizenship, loyalty to aspiration, courage, self-respect, and the noble living of life; they had also spoken of these things together—there in the golden gloom of the old-time parlour when she was fourteen and he master of his fate ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... seemed to her that she had forfeited both the confidence of her husband and the respect of her daughter. Months ago she had meant by force of some initiative to regularise this idyll which by its stealthiness wounded the self-respect of all concerned. Vain aspiration! And now the fact that Fred Ryley had begun to call at Church Street appeared to indicate between him and Uncle Meshach a closer understanding which could only be detrimental to the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... absolutism and the inauguration of freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but created the force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one supreme sphere, to reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased to be an aspiration of patient reasoners, and was made the perpetual charge and care of the most energetic institution and the most universal association in the world. The new law, the new spirit, the new authority, gave to liberty a meaning and a value it had not possessed in the philosophy or in the constitution ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... myself apart from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her—there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the history of some devout seekers after God, of sincere aspiration, in some cases of beautiful thought and life. This deepest blot is acknowledged and condemned by its better members. Yet in countless temples, under the brightness of the Indian sun, the iniquity, protected by vested interests, ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... new synthesis, not only speculative, but practical. Before it rose perpetually the haunting vision of another palace of faith—another church or company of the faithful, which was to become the shelter of human aspiration amid the desolation and anarchy caused by the crashing of the old! How many men and women must have gone through the same strait as itself—how many must be watching with it through the darkness for the rising of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to give effect to this general workshop aspiration for bringing the workman into closer unity with the conditions which determine that part of his life which is the bread-winning part, for which he has to turn out in the morning early and often return home late in the evening? ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... spent their lives underground, breathing foul air and becoming dwarfed in body and soul. He flung the book from him and dropped his head upon his arms. Life seemed a great, inexorable machine, setting at naught human aspiration, human endeavor. What was the good of fighting it? What was the sense in believing in a divine order, in ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... demand for sincerity does not go beyond asking for a state of the soul, and that the state of soul expressed in the work of art be a desire or an action. It is altogether indifferent to Aesthetic whether the artist have had only an aspiration, or have realized that aspiration in his empirical life. All that is quite indifferent in the sphere of art. Here we also find the confutation of that false conception of sincerity, which maintains that the artist, in his volitional or practical life, should be at one with his dream, or with his ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... of my own sheltered progress from Dorset village to school, from school to University, and thence to my present street-bound routine in London. His views were clearly no less opposite to that vague tumult of resentment, protest, and aspiration which represented my own outlook upon life. Indeed, his speech that day was an epitome of the sentiment and opinions which I had chosen to regard ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... extortion no equivalent is received. No representation, no utterance, for tongue or pen are alike proscribed; no share of public honors, no office, no emolument. The industry of the people is crippled, their intercourse with other nations is hampered in every conceivable manner, and every liberal aspiration of the human soul stifled in its birth. Can good morals and Christian lives be expected of a ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Life is not a vague effort after righteousness—an ill-defined, pointless struggle for an ill-defined, pointless end. Religion is no dishevelled mass of aspiration, prayer, and faith. There is no more mystery in Religion as to its processes than in Biology. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... and his assertion of the grandeur of the human will. But for his greatest pleasure and best discipline he was now indebted to Wordsworth, whom he esteemed next to Shakspeare, and whose 'Excursion' came to him like a revelation. With Wordsworth's mingled piety and heroism, humanity and earnest aspiration, with his all-vivifying imagination, recognizing greatness under lowliest disguises, and spreading sweet sanctions around every charity of social life, and with his longings to see reverence, loyalty, courtesy, and contentment established on the earth, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... of the Creator. Sahib the Sufi declares that the secret of man's soul (i.e. its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh declared himself god; and Al-Ghazali sees in his claim the most noble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human spirit. (Dabistan, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... human aspiration Somebody who had a Bright Mind got the notion that in order to get his own way without fighting the crowd all he had to do was to educate the "Great Common Pee-pul" to his way of thinking and by sowing enough seed in public places up would come whatever kind of crop he wanted. Thus, by making ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... on in a more serious strain to sketch the history of superstition and ends with an eloquent aspiration for ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... pre may enjoy it as light and entertaining reading, but when the resurrecting angel shall stir the dust of young Theophilus with his foot, and sing out "get up, Dobbin," we think that sprightly youth will whimper three times for molasses gingerbread before he will signify an audible aspiration for the Bible. A sweet-tooth is often mistaken for early piety, and licking a sugar archangel may be easily construed as ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... say, may resumption be perpetual. To wish otherwise is to hope for war, danger, and national peril, calamities to which our nation, like others, may be subject, but against which the earnest aspiration of every patriot will ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... increase the pupil's interest in these poems. In the lessons on art, there are studies of pictures that suggest feelings and thoughts characterized by universality, permanency, and nobility—pictures that stir men to nobler thought and higher aspiration. Often, such pictures are the painter's method of expressing in colours, thoughts that the poet has expressed in words. Lessons such as Dandelions, Bob White, and The Sandpiper require a preliminary acquaintance with ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... high and pure principles of action, in hedging up the way of sin, and opening the path of wisdom, to any—if it drops but a single good seed into the heart of each of its readers, and awakens the slightest aspiration to morality, usefulness, and religion—it will not have been prepared in vain. With a prayer to God that he would protect and bless the youth of our common country, and prepare them to preserve and perpetuate the priceless legacy ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... grown double their size In the natural fog of the good man's mind, Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps, Haloed about with the common's damps? Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover; The zeal was good, and the aspiration; And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, Pharaoh received no demonstration, By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, Of the doctrine of the Trinity,— Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, Apparently his hearers relished it With so unfeigned a gust—who knows if They did ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... despatch, he saw nothing in it of which he could disapprove, as a reasoning being animated with a true love of his country. "Experience has too clearly proved to us that the offspring of slaves, who willingly kiss the rod of tyrants, will have no higher aspiration than their parents. In allowing them to escape, we should only create difficulties for our own patriot children. Hitherto the servants of the Convention have scotched the snake, but have not killed it; and the wounded viper has thus become more furiously venomous than ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... felt now—that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it was to George Forsyte, always a wag, that Val's christening was due. It so happened that Dartie, dining with him a week after the birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this aspiration of Winifred's. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... satisfaction. It was an extension of duty, of the exercise of the more recondite virtues; but neither Mr. Wentworth, nor Charlotte, nor Mr. Brand, who, among these excellent people, was a great promoter of reflection and aspiration, frankly adverted to it as an extension of enjoyment. This function was ultimately assumed by Gertrude Wentworth, who was a peculiar girl, but the full compass of whose peculiarities had not been exhibited before they very ingeniously found their ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... eyes, his historian is bound to confess that his anxiety for Sibyll did not entirely distract his attention from interest or ambition. To become the head of his class, to rise to the first honours of his beloved city of London, had become to Nicholas Alwyn a hope and aspiration which made as much a part of his being as glory to a warrior, power to a king, a Eureka to a scholar; and, though more mechanically than with any sordid calculation or self-seeking, Nicholas Alwyn repaired to his ware in ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... where the lordly curfew quenched the lights in castle and cot from beneath a very extinguisher of a roof. Now, as, in the natural growth of the human mind, the heart became more and more impregnated with the beauty of holiness, and the prayers of men ascended with somewhat of purer aspiration to heaven, so did they build their tower-roofs higher and higher into the air, till at length the spire was born. In one of those quaint antique towers of Normandy, Coutances, it was first fully developed; and it is curious to see how in this instance its roof-origin was still remembered: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... young things, with their rhodomontade and exuberant animation and spirits, from him in whom all the sparkle and aspiration of ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dined with him at New. York; and I have grateful memory of the almost palatial splendour wherewith a rich publisher entertained his guest at his castle under Arthur's Seat; but in every case (and I might name others) my heart's aspiration has been, "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." Mr. Vanderbilt was not happy with his millions; neither probably is poor Jack without a shot ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... his ear like a spirit of consolation, speaking of peace, of love which needs no reward save its own sweetness, of aspiration which looks forever beyond the thing of the hour to find attainment in that which is eternal. So insidiously did it whisper these things, so delicately did the simple and perfect melodies creep upon the spirit—that ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... There I find adventure and jest whatever the squalor; the marks of the primitive struggle through dirt and darkness towards release. Those horrible lines of moody, complacent streets represent not struggle, but the achievement of a worthless aspiration. The houses, with their deadly similarity, their smug, false exteriors, their conformity to an ideal which is typified by their poor imitative decoration, could only be inhabited by people who have no thought or desire for ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... downfall. There are the voices of nature, in sky, and sea, and storm; the voices of childhood and of early youth; the voices of playfellows and companions,—voices long stilled, it may be, in death; the voices of lover and beloved; the voices of ambition, of sorrow, of aspiration, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... can not be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women is born into the world who, while they lack no womanly attribute, are the peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It will be impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happen to be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she happen ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... sentences; maxims as full of glittering truth as a winter night of stars; an incessant spray of fine fancies like the November shower of meteors; and the same intellectual and moral exaltation, expansion, and aspiration, were the characteristics ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... friendship with his Catholic lords and introducing himself into these negotiations; whereas Philip had no idea of stirring a finger to help James to the English succession: and the Scottish Catholic lords themselves were by no means ready to relinquish the national aspiration to seat a Scots king on the throne of England. So that while these intrigues caused some perturbation in the English court, and led Elizabeth to lecture her young kinsman and disciple with a fine show of pained indignation, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... call religious feeling. The uncompromising stiffness of Zeno or Chrysippus is softened and transformed by passing through a nature reverent and tolerant, gentle and free from guile; the grim resignation which made life possible to the Stoic sage becomes in him almost a mood of aspiration. His book records the innermost thoughts of his heart, set down to ease it, with such moral maxims and reflections as may help him to bear the burden of duty and the countless annoyances ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... reform is not born of human wisdom: it does not draw its life from human organizations. I find it only in Christianity. "Thy kingdom come!" There is a sublime and pregnant burden in this prayer. It is the aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the spirit of Reform. For what is the significance of this prayer? It is a petition that all holy influences would penetrate, and subdue, and dwell in the heart of man, until he shall think, and speak, and do good, from ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to describe the productions of my female correspondents in detail. Suffice it to say, that most of them contain a smaller proportion of useless information, and a larger proportion of sentiment, vague aspiration, and would-be-picturesque description, than those of the men who pay postage on my behalf. They are longer, and sometimes crossed; it is therefore a greater task to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... midst of this huge unrest, and an abiding, unshaken, immovable principle of good guiding this vanishing world of fluctuating atoms, in whose eternal permanence of nature we largely participate, and our tendency toward and aspiration for whose perfect stability is one of the very causes of the progress, and therefore mutability, of our existence. Perhaps the most painful of all the forms in which change confronts us is in the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... know it's contrary to the doctrine laid down in the 'History of Fifty Years' Misrule.' I am only trying to be sensible. But my sense seems always to give you cause for offence. Have I startled you very much with this perfectly reasonable aspiration?" ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... pure love of a people; and yet in that instant, so long, so passionately desired, the doom of all genius was hers. There was the stealing pain of a weary unrest amid the sunlit and intoxicating joy of satisfied aspiration. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... convictions took root in Miss Anthony's heart. Hers is, indeed, a sincerely religious nature. To be a simple, earnest Quaker was the aspiration of her girlhood; but she shrank from adopting the formal language and plain dress. Dark hours of conflict were spent over all this, and she interpreted her disinclination as evidence of unworthiness. Poor little Susan! As we look back with the knowledge ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the Isles of Bliss sooner than another. Sensual faith in the upper glories is something. "Let us remember," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "that Nature, though heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool of the Highest. She is not all dust, but a living portion of the spheres. In aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting that through Nature only can we ascend. Cherished, trained, and purified, she is then partly worthy the divine mate who is to make her wholly so. St. Simeon saw the Hog in Nature, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to occupy the highest realm of knowledge attainable by man, hence will not attract those who have no aspiration toward such knowledge. No brief notice would convey a good idea of the worth of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... individual liberty and toward a new way of thought, a conspicuous agency has been the advance of knowledge. Connected with the advance of knowledge has been an improvement of the actual conditions of human life. Meantime the ethical sense and the spiritual aspiration of mankind have asserted themselves, sometimes as slow-working, permanent forces, sometimes in revolutionary upheaval. With change both of material condition and of ways of thought, new forms of sentiment and aspiration have appeared,—a ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... man's great and high destiny, that it heightens his consciousness of his true moral nature in relation to God; and as morality depends on our relation to God, prayer is the very life-blood of morality.'[32] The steadfast aspiration of the soul to God, whose will is our law and whose blessing is granted to whatsoever is done in His name, is the habitual temper of the Christian life. But prayer must also be particular, definite, and expectant. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... mourning and toiling there, but instead the old year has whispered to the child the beautiful mystic tales of great souls doing noble deeds, of heroes who died that men might live and love, of beauty and of harmony too deep for any words of his that throb in him and stir depths in his soul to high aspiration. It has all gone through his ears; for his eyes see little that is beautiful. There is, of course, the beauty of the homely hours he spends with those who love him best, hours spent at school and joyous hours spent by the murmuring creek, and there is what the grand ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... serve—the stern, self-conquering asceticism of a Saint Dominic, and the exquisite, radiant visions which Saint Cecelia saw when heavenly music was vouchsafed her. Or, if one has time to fancy further, the nave is the epic of its great religion; the choir, a song which is the expression of most delicate aspiration, most tender worship. On Sunday, when to this beauty of the godly habitation is added all the beauty of worship, the music of the oldest organs in France, slow-moving priests in gorgeous vestments, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... Protestant canton ends and a Catholic canton begins, you might separate two perfectly distinct and different conditions of humanity, by drawing a line with your stick in the dust on the ground. On the Protestant side, neatness; cheerfulness; industry; education; continual aspiration, at least, after better things. On the Catholic side, dirt; disease; ignorance; squalor; and misery. I have so constantly observed the like of this, since I first came abroad, that I have a sad misgiving, that the religion of Ireland lies ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the prayers of the past, any of them, the most objectionable types, are not made up only of petition; they are not all begging, teasing for things. There enter into their composition gratitude, adoration, reverence, aspiration, a sense of communion with the spiritual Being, a longing for higher and finer things; a sense of refuge in time of trouble, a sense of strength in time of need, a sense of hope, uplift, and outlook as we glance towards the future. A prayer, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... awakened ideas and thoughts took the form of a definite aspiration on the day I graduated from the grammar school. And what a day that was! The girls in white dresses, with fresh ribbons in their hair; the boys in new suits and creaky shoes; the great crowd of parents and friends; ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... conduct; it is the searching after goodness,—after a higher life than the mere satisfaction of individual desires. All animals seek for fulness of life; but in civilized man this craving has acquired a moral significance, and has become a spiritual aspiration; and this emotional tendency, more or less strong in the human race, we call religious feeling or religion. Viewed in this light, religion is not only something that mankind is never likely to get rid of, but it is incomparably ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... We who have survived the enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, and who have suffered from its reactive impulses, can scarcely comprehend the vivid faith and young-eyed joy of aspiration which sustained Shelley in his flight toward the region of impossible ideals. For he had a vital faith; and this faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible—faith in the duty and desirability of overthrowing idols; ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Kate— Your fondest aspiration! Who knows the solemn laws of fate, That govern all creation? Who knows what lot awaits your boy— Of happiness or sorrow? Sufficient for to-day is joy, Leave ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... boyish feeling; do not attribute to the circumstance of my youth alone the warmth of the attachment I profess,—for I swear to you, by every hope that I have, that in my heart of hearts my love to you is the source and spring of every action in my life, of every aspiration in my heart; and when I cease to love you, I ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... intimate circle felt—Stepan Trofimovitch more acutely than any of us—that her son had come to her almost, as it were, as a new hope, and even as a sort of new aspiration. Her passion for her son dated from the time of his successes in Petersburg society, and grew more intense from the moment that he was degraded in the army. Yet she was evidently afraid of him, and seemed ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... swift, straight lines that shot up to the upper end of the paper and seemed to continue invisibly toward an altitudinous nowhere. This is all he drew, and yet as he worked there was in his face the set of stubborn purpose, and in his eyes the glow of aspiration. He tried to make each line beautiful and firm and swift and pure. When he succeeded, he felt within him the bubbling of a sweet contentment. This would be followed by dissatisfaction, renewed yearning—and ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... posterity with divine honours. There is nothing so monstrous but we can believe it of ourselves. About ourselves, about our aspirations and delinquencies, we have dwelt by choice in a delicious vagueness from our boyhood up. No one will have forgotten Tom Sawyer's aspiration: "Ah, if he could only die temporarily!" Or, perhaps, better still, the inward resolution of the two pirates, that "so long as they remained in that business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing." Here we recognise the thoughts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people may still consistently believe in prayer as a form of inward aspiration, but it is difficult to take literally the assurance given by Jesus of practical accomplishments by means of prayer ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... purpose. The Glamour of Symbolism, Rapture of Music, and Ideal of Art, which come to us in later years, had their beginnings when to the child every blade of grass was a fairy tale and a grass plot a marvellous fairy forest. The great aspiration of the Human Race is to gain a knowledge of the Reality, the Noumenon behind the phenomenon; but the fact that from infancy we have been accustomed to confine our attention wholly to the objective, believing that to be the reality, has surrounded us with a ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... her witchcraft passion, that he is in some way to be her savior too; yet, womanlike, she conceives of her salvation as possible only in union with him. Yet was this the very crime to which Klingsor would drive her for the ruin of Parsifal. Strange confusion of thought, feeling, aspiration, longing—struggle of irreconcilable elements! How shall she reconcile them? Her intuition fails her not, and her tact triumphs. She will win by stealing his love through his mother's love. A mother's love is holy; that love she tells him of. It can never more be his; but she will replace ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... among the firs until the stars came out, and they talked of many things. She had kept her freshness of soul and her ideals untarnished. In the peace of the old valley she had lived a life, narrow outwardly, wondrously deep and wide in thought and aspiration. Her native hills bounded the vision of her eyes, but the outlook of the soul was far and unhindered. In the quiet places and the green ways she had found what he had failed to find—the secret of happiness and content. He knew that if this woman ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... spaciousness of all experiences into our reasoning and would fain put the Infinite itself into our love, it isn't, as some writer has remarked, "It isn't women's doing." Oh no. They don't care for these things. That sort of aspiration is not much in their way; and it shall be a funny world, the world of their arranging, where the Irrelevant would fantastically step in to take the place of the sober ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Mediterranean power, the one great nation on the inland sea with a long coast line and a number of ports. Her hope of the future lay along the Mediterranean shore, but her national unity was gained almost too late to enable her to realize the aspiration of African colonies. It was the disappointment of obtaining possessions in Tunis by the establishment of French control there in 1881 that found expression in the Triple Alliance. Her antagonism against Austria and the Hapsburgs was still unmitigated, but as a practical matter of statesmanship ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... possible to forget an engraving of Duerer's, even though seen but once? I can see her proud and noble head resting thoughtfully upon one hand, her long hair falling in disheveled tresses upon her shoulders; her folded wings emblematic of that impotent aspiration which directs her gaze towards heaven; a book, closed and useless as her wings, resting upon her knee. Nothing can be more gloomy, more penetrating, than the expression of this figure. From the peculiar ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of a crisis in sexual conditions, has liberated energies that are themselves the motors of any reform. In England and America voting has become the symbol of an aspiration as yet half-conscious and undefined. What women want is surely something a great deal deeper than the privilege of taking part in elections. They are looking for a readjustment of their relations to the home, to work, to children, to men, to the interests of civilized ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... every effort be made to give back to him his manhood." "There is no greater mistake in the whole compass of penal discipline, than its studied imposition of degradation as a part of punishment. Such imposition destroys every better impulse and aspiration. It crushes the weak, irritates the strong and indisposes all to submission and reform. It is trampling, where it ought to raise, and is therefore as unchristian in principle as it is unwise ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... [Footnote: L'Energie spirituelle, p. 27 (Mind-Energy).] Bergson indicates slightly his views on SOCIAL evolution—c'est a la vie sociale que l'evolution aboutit, comme si le besoin s'en etait fait sentir des le debut, ou plutot comme si quelque aspiration originelle et essentielle de la vie ne pouvait trouver que dans la societe sa pleine satisfaction. He seems inclined to turn his attention to the unity of life, not simply as due to an identity of original impulse but to a common aspiration. There is involved a process of subordination ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... dear, precisely! You intend to be true to yourself, whatever happens. The aspiration does you infinite honor, and I shall try to help you. Now I have noticed that every woman is most truly herself," says Jurgen, oracularly, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... I don't blame them for wanting them—I hope they get them—but I don't know that I see it as very promising that they regard it as the most important thing in life. To do less and get more is not what you'd call a spiritual aspiration, is it?" she laughed. "This is what I mean—it's not the end, ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... they did not know what they were. Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might know the benefits of the Christian religion. "I have to say, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... lowest depths. Sir Mammon is the host who invites his boisterous guests to the riot of his festive night. The witches arrive on broomsticks and pitchforks; singing, not without significance, the warning of woe to all climbers—for here aspiration of any sort is a dangerous crime. The Crane's song reveals the fact that pious men are here, in the Blocksberg, united with devils; introducing the same cynical and desperate disbelief in goodness which Nathaniel Hawthorne has told in similar fashion in his tale of Young ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... power of suspending the course of nature, and producing miraculous phenomena. But in so numerous a body there must have been some whose pretensions were of a more moderate nature, and others who displayed a loftier aspiration. The more ambitious we find designated in their native language by the name of Jogees, [144] of the same signification as the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... large towns in the state relatively lost their individual position, and became somewhat analogous, as compared with the kingdom at large, to that formerly held by bourgeois in the cities. Friendly ties arose between provinces; and distinct and rival interests were effaced by the general aspiration towards common objects. The towns were admitted to the states general, and the citizens of various regions mixed as representatives of the Tiers Etat. Three orders thus met, who were destined to struggle for predominance ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... "Aspiration," by Leo Lentelli, is suspended - as is all aspiration - over the main entrance ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... were Arabians." Now in another copy it is said that this word does not denote Kings, but, on the contrary, denotes Captive Shepherds, and this on account of the particle Hyc; for that Hyc, with the aspiration, in the Egyptian tongue again denotes Shepherds, and that expressly also; and this to me seems the more probable opinion, and more agreeable to ancient history. [But Manetho goes on]: "These people, whom we ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... hence, will present a narration of those adventurous spirits—of the exploits of those who may fairly be considered its first conquerors, and by whose peaceful triumphs an empire had been added to the parent state. I cannot close this brief address without indulging in an aspiration for the safety and success of one now engaged in an enterprise similar to that from which you hate earned so much honour. I allude to Sir T. Mitchell. To enter upon any eulogium of the character or abilities ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... passion and shamed it with the purity of Mary Magdelen; that dragged from the despair of old Job the uttermost poison-drop of doubt and answered it with the noble problem of organized existence; that teems with murder and mistake and glows with all goodness and honest aspiration—that is the Book of Books. There hasn't been one written since that has crossed the boundary of its scope. What would that book be after some goody-goody had expurgated it of evil and left it sterilized in butter ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... Life is not mean. It spreads itself in aspiration, it has possession through its hope. It inhabits all remoteness that the eye can reach; it inherits all sweetness that the ear can prove; always bereaved of the whole, it yet looks for a whole; always ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... and haste, even when he had full leisure to think of posterity. If he occasionally subjected himself to stricter rules, we owe it more to his ambition, and his desire to be numbered among the classical writers of the golden age, than to any internal and growing aspiration after the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... for the man of letters when such facility is the only thing he has acquired,—when it has been, perhaps, the only thing he has striven to acquire. Such miscalculation of ways and means suggests vulgarity of aspiration, and a fatal material taint. In the life in which this error has been committed there can be no proper harmony, no satisfaction, no spontaneous delight in effort. The man does not create,—he is only desperately keeping up appearances. He has at once become "a base mechanical," ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... which it embodied popular imaginations,—it was false and shocking. The proposal to hold by the words evacuated of the old meaning is a concession of the whole case to the unbeliever, and a substitution of sentiment and aspiration for a genuine intellectual belief. Explaining away, however dexterously and delicately, is not defending, but at once confessing error, and encumbering yourself with all the trammels of misleading associations. The more popular method, therefore, at the present day ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... memoirs of Rousseau and St. Augustine, "modes of impassioned prose, ranging under no precedents that I am aware of in any literature." What De Quincey attempted was to clothe in words scenes from the world of dreams,—a lyric fashion, as it were, wholly in keeping with contemporary taste and aspiration, which under the penetrating influence of romanticism were maintaining the poetical value and interest of isolated and excited ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... into something thrilling and passionate, not to be described even by a tongue more facile than hers. Letty had a vivid nature, capable of responding to those delicate influences which move to spiritual issues. There were throes of love within her, of aspiration, of an ineffable delight in being. She never tried to understand them, nor did she talk about them; but then, she never tried to paint the sky or copy the robin's song. Life was very mysterious; but one thing ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Jewish interests. This accusation of Geiger's has since been repeated frequently. But a rift is appearing in the cloud. To-day as never before our intelligenzia as defined by university training and education is identifying itself more and more with Jewish life and aspiration in our country. And I feel that due credit should be given the Menorah movement in our colleges for this change of attitude of Jewish students and professors. This movement, still young, has accomplished much in bringing together the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... a drug clerk in Austin, being filled with literary aspiration, bought the press and the name of The Iconoclast for $250; but O. Henry's Iconoclast after two issues also ceased to flutter. Later, when Brann again accumulated the necessary funds to permit him to throw off the hireling's yoke, he asked for and received back from O. Henry the legal right ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... composite of the rhetorician. He thought he had a passion for religion; what he took for religion was little more than mental decorum. We do not mean that he was insincere, or that he was without a feeling for high things. But here, as in all else, his aspiration was far beyond his faculty; he yearned for great spiritual emotions, as he had yearned for great thoughts and great achievements, but his spiritual capacity was as scanty and obscure as his intelligence. And where unkind Nature thus unequally yokes lofty objects ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... productiveness of the age, and wish that there might not be more than one new book each week. And the omnivorous reader, anxious to keep up with the literature of the day, might fairly re-echo the aspiration. Who, indeed, can hope to turn over a tithe of the new leaves which are issued daily? Nor can an unlimited consumption of them be recommended. Mr. Lowell is to a certain extent justified ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... and one's dislikes should coincide with that of foreign and native birth. The very word "foreign" rings false in this connection. It is often easier to recognise a brother in a New Yorker than in a Yorkshireman, while, alas! it is only theoretically and in a mood of long-drawn-out aspiration that we can love our alien-tongued European ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... with vague aspiration. The aspiration seemed to disengage her from herself, and from this earth, which had nothing more to offer her. Ah! how far away was now the time when she had entered churches, full of happiness and hope, to offer a candle that her prayer might be granted, which she felt sure ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... pledge of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of freedom and of man-kind; and on the last, extended on the bed of death, with but sense and sensibility left to breathe a last aspiration to Heaven of blessing upon their country, may we not humbly hope that to them too it was a pledge of transition from gloom to glory, and that while their mortal vestments were sinking into the clod ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... practical affair—as valuable as water-cisterns to people whether they had or had not systems of water-pipes and water-supply." Indeed, in one outburst of panegyric the shrewd physicist remarked that he saw in it "a realization of the most ardently and increasingly felt scientific aspiration of his life—an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... unwise. Not one of them had discerned any particular promise in the boy. Nor were they unreasonable. He was without other distinctions than of being a strong toiler, good-natured, and having a knack with horses. He had no aspiration for the career of a soldier, in fact never intended to stick to it. Even after entering West Point his hope, he has said, was to be able, by reason of his education, to get "a permanent position in some respectable college,"—to become Professor ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... was a reality. To him, it was an inconceivable power, the absurdity of which he sought to demonstrate by comparing the magnitude claimed for it with the capacities of man. He remained silent for a moment, as though seeking an answer. He found none, and what he said expressed an aspiration and not ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... The aspiration of our author, so warmly expressed in 1850, that the German Episcopate should, in mind and action, be one body in the nation, acting and suffering together, appears, in these later days, to have been realized. It was also his firm conviction that it behooved them to labor to obtain ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... garth, for once gave no lift to his spirit. The great central tower rose against a sky of clearest blue, strong and foursquare as on the day when its Norman builders took down their scaffolding. White pigeons hovered or perched on niche and corbel. But fortitude and aspiration alike had deserted Mr. Simeon for the while. Life—hard life and poverty—had subdued him to be one of the petty, nameless crowd this Cathedral had seen creep to their end in its shadow. . . . "What should such creatures as I do, crawling ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pensioners), and if invited to drink as the guest of another, he would drain tumbler after tumbler continuously, until his entertainer stopped him, and would appear no further over-seas at the end than at the outset. There was something pathetic in his comparative sobriety, like an unfulfilled aspiration. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... youth thinks is aspiration for the ideal, particularly for the ideal love, is a large element of craving for place and interest. After her marriage, at least, Bessie might have had enough of both; but the obvious purpose was too limited to appeal to her. Now two appetites and the four seasons supplied motive enough ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... is he who has the noblest companion. God alone fills the deep craving of the heart for a congenial and helpful presence, and Enoch "walked with God." The words imply regular, unbroken, well-sustained communion with Him. With a sublime and lofty aspiration Enoch had risen above shadows, idols, and pretences, and with simple, manly faith had grasped the unseen substance and reality, the personal God, the ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... once more. It was not Wilson who failed there, but humanity itself. It was not the statesmen that failed so much as the spirit of the peoples behind them. The hope, the aspiration for a new world order of peace and right and justice—however deeply and universally felt—was still only feeble and ineffective in comparison with the dominant national passions which found their expression in the peace treaty. Even if Wilson had been one of the great demi-gods of the human race, ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... out to something better. Our finest knowledge is but the consciousness of limitation and the longing that it may be removed. Our best moral effort is but a slow advance towards something better. Our sense of the difference between good and evil, our penitence, our aspiration, all this moral freight with which our souls are laden, is a cargo consigned to an unseen country. Our bill of lading reads, "To the immortal life." If we must sink in mid-ocean, then all is lost, and the voyage of ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke
... transfigures that toil and exalts that purpose with his everlasting gospel of moral sublimity. Here is our threefold criterion, by which every nation must stand or fall. The Anglo-Saxon is what he is through unceasing industry, perpetual aspiration, and moral strength. The Central African is what he is through inbred sluggishness, total lack of purpose, and almost ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... after that they tell the mind little or nothing. But here was actually assembled the Jewish people, coming in swarms from all the world, for the feast; here was Judaism at its most pious; here was the pilgrim centre with all it meant of aspiration and blindness, of simple folly and gross sin. The sight of the city—the doomed city, as he foresaw—the thought of his people, their zeal for God and their alienation from God—it all comes over him at once, and, with a sudden rush of feeling, he apostrophizes Jerusalem—"If thou ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... on this is that Britain is derived from the Greek word Prytania, which, according to Suidas, "doth," with a circumflexed aspiration, "signifie metalles, fayres, and markets." "Calling the place by that which came out of it, as one would say, hee went to market, when he goeth to Antwarpe," &c. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... dishonour lay at its door of being the wickedest city in the world. Side by side with the development of mechanical science lifting men to the power and position of angels, there was a moral degeneration degrading them to the level of beasts. With an apparent aspiration after social and humanitarian reform, there was a corruption of the public conscience and a hardening of the public heart. London was the living picture of this startling contrast. Impiety, iniquity, impurity, and injustice ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... turned to fighting uses in King Richard's latter years, found him a habitable fortalice.' With the best reasons in life for the reflection, he might have said it more simply; for it is simply true. Deserted by his allies, balked of his great aspiration, within a day's march of the temple of God, yet as far from that as from his castle of Chinon; eaten with fever; having death, lost purpose, murmurings, fed envy reproach, upon his conscience—he yet fought ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett |
