"Avow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history. In the present case, it is scarcely necessary to do more than refer to the almost unique relations that subsisted between Henry V. and his prisoner, James I. of Scotland; who lived ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dickens disliked each other cordially. Having been asked his opinion of the young novelist, Wordsworth answered: "Why, I'm not much given to turn critic on people I meet; but, as you ask me, I will cordially avow that I thought him a very talkative young person—but I dare say he may be very clever. Mind, I don't want to say a word against him, for I have never read a ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... the receipt of three twopenny post non-paids in a week. Therefore, after this, I condemn my stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to write to lords. Lest those raptures in this honeymoon of my correspondence, which you avow for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after passing through certain natural grades, as Love, Love and Water, Love with the chill off, then subsiding to that point which the heroic suitor of his wedded dame, the noble-spirited Lord Randolph in the play, declares to be the ambition ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... for German blood. We make a war of stilettos, we wish the destruction of all Germany. But for us answers the admiration of all Italy, of all Europe, even the evidence of your own people whom we are constrained to hold prisoners or hostages, who will unanimously avow that we have shown heroic courage in the fight, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "borne with you in all your rigorous manner of speaking, both against myself and against my uncles; yea, I have sought your favors by all possible means. I offered unto you presence and audience, whensoever it pleased you to admonish me, and yet I cannot be quit of you. I avow to God I shall be anes [once] revenged." And with these words scarcely could Marnock, her secret chamber-boy, get napkins to hold her eyes dry for the tears; and the owling, besides womanly weeping, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... Rodney Gray, angry as he undoubtedly was? The latter, quick-tempered and impatient of discipline as he was known to be, when he found himself backed by nearly all the boys in his class and company might avow a determination to take ample vengeance upon his captors; and if he so much as suggested the thing, the students were in the right mood to help ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... impart the information. He must not be assured that my heart is his, previous to the tender of his own; but he must be convinced that it has not been given to another; he must be supplied with space whereon to build a doubt as to the true state of my affections; he must be prompted to avow himself. The line of delicate propriety; how hard it is, not to fall short, and not to ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... made known, they caused many secret marvellings and murmurings. Corkscrew and Felix were disconcerted, and dared not openly avow their discontent; and they treated Franklin with the greatest seeming kindness ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... being secretly convinced of the justice of these remarks, but was not willing to avow it openly, even to his most intimate friend. He was a sufficiently accomplished swordsman himself to appreciate de Sigognac's wonderful prowess, and he knew that it far surpassed his own much vaunted skill, though it enraged him to ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... though minute; but, as Nuttie found, her father did not like to avow how little available were his eyes. He could write better than he could read, but he kept her over his correspondence for the rest of the morning, answering some of the letters of condolence for him in her own name, writing those of business, and folding ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I avow it? Why should I not, Wilhelm? She would have been happier with me than with him. Albert is not the man to satisfy the wishes of such a heart. He wants a certain sensibility; he wants—in short, their hearts do not beat in unison. How often, my dear friend, ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... in Kansas, but in reference to our common interest in a better and heavenly country. I do not know that I indicated my political proclivities, in any word or allusion, on any such occasion, But I did, in private conversations with my neighbors, avow my intention to vote for Kansas to be a free State, and gave my reasons for so doing. This ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... that they in kinder wise Intreat the jewels where their comfort lies. We, as their messengers, beseech ye all On their behalfs to pity all their smarts. And for ourselves (although the worth be small) We pray ye to accept our humble hearts, Avow'd to serve with prayer and with praise Your honours, all ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... been said, had educated its children to understand painting as a language. Now that the passions men dared to avow were no longer connected with happiness in some future state only, but mainly with life in the present, painting was expected to give voice to these more human aspirations and to desert the outgrown ideals of the Church. In Florence, the painters seemed unable or unwilling to make their ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... would be expected to ask Miss Skipwith leading questions, as the Captain was doing. It was all very well for him, who was to spend only one day at Les Tourelles; but Vixen made up her mind that she would boldly avow her indifference to all creeds and all theologians, from Confucius to Swedenborg. She might consent to live for a time amidst the dullness and desolation of Les Tourelles, but she would not be weighed down and crushed by Miss Skipwith's appalling hobby. The mere idea of the horror of having ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... interrupted, with deep emotion, "cease, I pray you, to agitate yourself with causeless fears. Why should I hesitate to avow a feeling that I fear I have already permitted to appear all too plainly. If you are quite sure that you really wish it, I will be your wife; and never was there a truer or more devoted ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... point of revising and considerably altering, for republication in England, an edition of such amongst my writings as it may seem proper deliberately to avow. Not that I have any intention, or consciously any reason, expressly to disown any one thing that I have ever published; but some things have sufficiently accomplished their purpose when they have met the call of that particular transient occasion in which they arose; and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... where fish in forms pellucid play; Smooth lies the lawn, swift glide the hours away. No mean dependence here on summer skies, This spot rough winter's roughest blast defies. Yet here the government is curs'd with change, Knaves openly on either party range, Assault their monarch, and avow the deed, While honour fails, and tricks alone succeed; For bold decemvirs here usurp the sway; } Now all some single demagogue obey, } False lights prefer, and hate the intruding day. } Oh, shun the tempting shore, the dangerous coast, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... although you are too courteous to avow the knowledge, you have had many opportunities of learning that I am a vain show. Only last night we heard it very clearly stated. You see the shadow flitting on this hard rock? Prince Otto, I am afraid, is but the moving shadow, and the name of the rock is ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... implored to come and kneel before the altars. Royalty and nobility and military, judges and stockbrokers and working men—above all, a surging, thrilling, ecstatic mass of women—will gather round the clergy, and will avow that they see the finger of God in this glorious consummation. The relation of the war to God will then become the supreme consideration for the Christian mind. It may be more instructive to consider ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... pledged ourselves that if either got possession of a lover, we should manage after a while to share him between us. Your description of Charlie Roberts has brought this pledge most vividly to my recollection. I am sure my dear Lizzie will not be angry or jealous when I avow that I long to participate with her in the possession of that darling boy; and if my Lizzie is as of old, I feel certain she will rather indulge and cultivate this propensity than otherwise. Think how easy it will be for us both to ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... estimated that a revenue of one hundred thousand dollars might be derived from the tax, a sum sufficient to replace the tax on pepper and medicines. Angry charges and counter-charges were made,—e.g., that Georgia, though ashamed openly to avow the trade, participated in it as well as South Carolina. "Some recriminations ensued between several members, on the participation of the traders of some of the New England States in carrying on the slave trade." Finally, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... many things therein as strange as any you have heard today. For myself, I have little doubt that old Peter Sanghurst, who has spent years of his life amongst the heathen Moors, and is, as all men avow, steeped to the lips in their strange and unchristian lore, has himself the art of thus gaining the mastery over the minds and wills of others, and that it was no demoniacal possession, but just the wicked will of the old man exercised upon that of his helpless ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... great plainness and directness upon this great matter and to avow my convictions with deep earnestness. I have tried to know what America is, what her people think, what they are, what they most cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer passions are in my own heart,—some of the great conceptions and desires which gave ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... step would be the issuing of rations, and that would mean the ultimate degradation and extinction of the natives. When the question is stated in its baldest terms, is the writer perverse and barbarous and uncivilised if he avow his belief that a race of hardy, peaceful, independent, self-supporting illiterates is of more value and worthy of more respect than a race of literate paupers? Be it remembered also that many of these "illiterates" can read ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... joy in the world." The little poet coloured with delight at the flattery. "You have saved me, I avow, from the forge and anvil of Hephaestus. What a vulgar mob! Do stand apart; then I can try to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... separation between their offspring, and the offspring of the unfortunate convict. They would establish distinctions which may serve hereafter to divide the colonists into castes; and although none among them dares publicly avow that future generations should be punished for the crimes of their progenitors, yet such are their private sentiments; and they would have the present race branded with disqualifications, not more for the sake of pampering ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... fell when she heard her father bluntly avow the treasonable communication of which she had thought him incapable— she dropt the hand by which she had dragged him into the chapel, and stared on the Lady Eveline, with eyes which seemed starting from their sockets, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... went, ye should repent; For in the forest now I have purvayed me of a maid, Whom I love more than you; Another more fair than ever ye were, I dare it well avow; And of you both each should be wroth With other, as I trow: It were mine ease to live in peace; So will I, if I can; Wherefore I to the wood will go, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... concerning the mutability of species; and I think the reader, so far from agreeing with M. Isidore Geoffroy that Buffon began his work with a belief in the fixity of species, will find, that from the very first chapter onward, he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his belief in it. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... including Pershal and Miss Pray, laughed inordinately, gazing out into the sweet Basin night; and indeed I was even ready to avow with my life that it was a joke of the extremest savor. Even had all Uncle Coffin's sins been known, he would have ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... control of the Will. And it is true that these three, the Spirit, Will, and Body, though each is given a distinctive personality, each a memory distinct from the memory of the others, are all but the component parts of one man. Mrs. Sharp does not, however, anywhere avow directly a belief in the possession of a real dual personality by her husband, and she definitely contradicts Mr. Yeats for his expression of belief that "William Sharp could not remember what as 'Fiona Macleod' he had said to you ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... course, the modern poet can hem himself within no such narrow bounds as this. The artistic value of these various incidents is priceless, and Morris has lingered upon them lovingly and long. He spreads the story over forty pages, or a thousand lines, and I avow, after a third reading of these three sections of the poem, that I would spare no line of them. How we love this Sigurd of the poet's painting! And what a noble gospel he proclaims to ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... Athens, are made in almost every Assembly about the hostilities of Philip, hostilities which ever since the treaty of peace he has been committing as well against you as against the rest of the Greeks; and all, I am sure, are ready to avow, though they forbear to do so, that our counsels and our measures should be directed to his humiliation and chastisement: nevertheless, so low have our affairs been brought by inattention and negligence, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... stands—each youthful Jehu's dream The jointed tandem, ticklish team! And there in ampler breadth expand The splendors of the four-in-hand; On faultless ties and glossy tiles The lovely bonnets beam their smiles; (The style's the man, so books avow; The style's the woman, anyhow); From flounces frothed with creamy lace Peeps out the pug-dog's smutty face, Or spaniel rolls his liquid eye, Or stares the wiry pet of Skye,— O woman, in your hours of ease So shy with ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... avow myself in the beginning of my story as that anomalous creature—a woman who loves her own sex, and naturally inclines to the study of their individual peculiarities and histories, in order to get at their collective ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... rage, and scattered it about his study. Towards evening, like another Medea lamenting over the members of her own children, he and his secretary passed the night in uniting the scattered limbs. He then ventured to avow himself; and having pretended to correct this incorrigible tragedy, the submissive Academy retracted their censures, but the public pronounced its melancholy fate on its first representation. This lamentable tragedy was intended to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sort of reversion, in our complicated life, to the type of woman in the old societies (we like to believe there was such a type as the poets love, the Nausicaas), who were single-minded, as frank to avow ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... communities. People talked theology, and people talked politics, who had till then only felt silently on these subjects. In loquacious families Bradlaugh caused dissension and division, more real perhaps than apparent, for not all Bradlaugh's supporters had the courage to avow themselves such. It was not easy, at any rate it was not easy in the Five Towns, for a timid man in reply to the question, "Are you in favour of a professed Freethinker sitting in the House of Commons?" to reply, "Yes, I am." There was something shameless in that word 'professed.' ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... nothing to talk about; but what does it matter if the mind is empty when the heart is full, and when the tender emotions of nature can move it without being excited by artifice or constrained by a false decorum? When the girls of the Cape fall in love, they artlessly avow their feelings, but they insist on choosing their own husbands. The lads show the same frankness. The good faith which the young persons of each sex keep towards each other generally results in a happy marriage. Love with them is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... holy mother, I believe she herself would speak thus, and avow herself among my enemies, if she were not my wife!" cried the king, in whose heart rage began already to seethe like lava in ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... said Leila, calmly, and rousing herself to the necessary effort, "I am deeply and sincerely grateful for the interest you express —for the affection you avow. But you deceive yourself. I have pondered well over the alternative I have taken. I do not regret nor repent—much less would I retract it. The earth that you speak of, full of affections and of bliss to others, has no ties, no allurements for me. I ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... we may presume that, about the year 1568, he had placed himself at the head of the Stratford community. Afterwards he continued for some years to descend from this altitude; and the question is, at what point this gradual degradation may be supposed to have settled. Now we shall avow it as our opinion, that the composition of society in Stratford was such that, even had the Shakspeare family maintained their superiority, the main body of their daily associates must still have been ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... thrown amid the actors' train, You keep your native dignity of thought; The plaudits that attend you come unsought, As tributes due unto your natural vein. Your tears have passion in them, and a grace Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, That vanish and return we know not how— And please the better from a pensive face, And thoughtful eye, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... by feeling of the pulse, unlesse they know, that according as the bloud changeth its nature, it may by the heat of the heart be rarified to be more or lesse strong, and more or lesse quick then before. And if we examine how this heat is communicated to the other members, must we not avow that 'tis by means of the bloud, which passing the heart, reheats it self there, and thence disperseth it self thorow the whole body: whence it happens, that if you take away the bloud from any part, the heat by the same means also is taken a way. And although ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... difficult to form any very intelligible idea of the nature and extent of Kepler's astrological opinions, and of the degree of credit which he himself placed in the opinions that he did avow. In his Principles of Astrology, published in 1602, and in other works, he rails against the vanity and worthlessness of the ordinary astrology. He regards those who professed it as knaves and charlatans; and maintains ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... harsh and severe. He had since considered them, but he could not prevail upon himself to retract them; because, if any gentleman, after reading the evidence on the table, and attending to the debate, could avow himself an abettor of this shameful traffic in human flesh, it could only be either from some hardness of heart, or some difficulty of understanding, which he really knew ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... conduct of the female peasantry in the eastern counties of England, who unblushingly avow their derelictions from the paths of virtue. The crime of infanticide, so common there, is almost unknown among the Irish. If the priest and the confessional are able to restrain the lower orders from the commission of gross crime, who shall say that they are without their use? It is true that the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... it was well light, and at a time when brisk youth and slow age were seeking the place of confession, Henry Witherspoon went to the priest, not to acknowledge a sin, but to avow a deep gratitude. The journey was begun early; it was in July. The morning was braced with a cool breeze, the day was cloudless, and night's lingering gleam of silver melted in the gold of morn. Young Witherspoon's impressive ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... be thought a very profane person, I dare say, by the friends and apologists of Mr. Jowett, if I avow that the passage with which he concludes his Essay, instead of sounding in my ears like the plaintive death-song of departing Genius, sounds to me like nothing so much as the piteous whine of a schoolboy ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... my queen," said he. "I know my little Essie better than she knows herself. I know her true heart is mine, only she dares not avow it to herself; and when hearts have so met, Esther, they owe one another a higher duty than the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... great concourse of the Reformed from the two shires assembled there, and among them many of those to whom he was specially sent. They had come to go with their ministers before the Queen Regent's counsel at Stirling, determined to avow their adherence to the doctrines of which those pious men were accused. And it being foreseen that, as they went forward others would join, my grandfather thought he could do no better in his mission than mingle with them, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... concealed my sentiments nor my opinions. I know that a Roman lady was sent to the scaffold for lamenting the death of her son. I know that, in times of delusion and party rage, he who dares avow himself the friend of the condemned or of the proscribed exposes himself to their fate. But I have no fear of death. I never feared any thing but guilt, and I will not purchase life at the expense of a base subterfuge. Woe to the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... above sum, it was furthermore agreed that Louis should pay Charles a pension of 200,000 pounds a year from the date when the latter should openly avow himself a Roman Catholic. Later (1671), Charles made a sham treaty with Louis XIV in which the article about his avowing himself a Catholic was omitted ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... species of gambling. He had also a strong passion for painting, and made a little collection. As he had sense enough to feel that a younger brother's fortune would not last long under the expenses of a good stud and a rare collection of chef-d'oeuvres, he used to avow his intention to spend his patrimony, about L10,000, and then again to make his fortune by the law. The first he soon accomplished. But the law is not a profession so easily acquired, nor did Frank's talents lie in that direction. His passion for painting ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... occasionally lapses into truth. We thought it possible M. Libri might have played the trick to show how easily the French are deceived; but with our present information, our minds are at rest on the subject. We see M. Chasles does not like to avow the real source of information: he will not ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... question of the Church, the more intelligent laymen of the Irish National party openly avow their wish to alienate the property of the Church, on the ground that its existence forms a barrier to the union of Irish Protestants with the Catholic majority in the formation of a truly National Irish party. It is asserted, and apparently ...
— University Education in Ireland • Samuel Haughton
... pulling himself together, and he loathed himself. During this crisis he had somewhat neglected the Abbe Gevresin, to whom he dared not avow his foulness, but since certain indications warned him of new attacks, he took fright, and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... glory would burst upon them with such unquestionable splendour, that every tongue would applaud, while she took her hero by the hand, and asked her father to rescind the injunction which forbade her to avow her unchangeable affection. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... merely to face the world, but to face one's own conclusions. We know the cost. It must be endured. Let each who has thought and felt for himself, ask himself first what he does not believe, and then, if wise or needful, avow it. Next let him ask himself what he does believe, and pursue it to its true and full conclusions. Neither loose accommodation nor sonorous principles will long give them rest. It is of as little use to surrender the more glaring contradictions ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... observes that the imperial (Agaricus caesarius, Scop.), grows in great quantities in oak forests, and may be obtained by the cart-load in its season; but to his taste, and that of his family, it is the most unpalatable of fungi, nor could he find any of the most passionate mycophagists who would avow that they liked it. There is a disagreeable saline flavour that they could not remove nor overlay. In addition to these, the same authority enumerates Agaricus russula, Schaeff., Agaricus hypopithyus, Curt., and Agaricus consociatus, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... announce, state, declare, affirm, aver, asseverate, allege, assert, avouch, avow, maintain, claim, depose, predicate, swear, suggest, insinuate, testify>. (With this group compare the Speak ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... market when we meet, We'll dare make no avow, But, 'Dame, how does my gay goss-hawk?' 'Madame, how does ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... perilous to meet a black mare, still more perilous, as you start for a journey, to hear yourself accosted by one who knows not whither you are going; and he called himself a dealer in superstitions. He used to say: "There is one difference between me and the Archbishop of Canterbury: I avow what I am." Hence it was that the archbishop, justly indignant, had him one day before him; but Ursus cleverly disarmed his grace by reciting a sermon he had composed upon Christmas Day, which the delighted ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... spirit, and resolutely proceeding on our determination to avow our obligations to the authorities we have consulted, we frankly say, that to the note-book of Mr. Snodgrass are we indebted for the particulars recorded in this and the succeeding chapter—particulars which, now that we ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... be subject to the mere municipal laws of that nation, wherein he is to exercise his functions. If he grossly offends, or makes an ill use of his character, he may be sent home and accused before his master[e]; who is bound either to do justice upon him, or avow himself the accomplice of his crimes[f]. But there is great dispute among the writers on the laws of nations, whether this exemption of embassadors extends to all crimes, as well natural as positive; or whether it only ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... disclaims all "intention." The book has been written neither to aid the Abolitionist nor glorify the planter. The author does not believe that by such means he could benefit the slave, else he would not fear to avow it. On the other hand, he is too true a Republican, to be the instrument that would add one drop to the "bad blood" which, unfortunately for the cause of human freedom, has already arisen between "North" and "South." No; he will be the last man to aid ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... true—but, doctor, let us wave all that— Say, if you had your wish, what you'd be at?" "Excuse me, good my lord—I won't be sounded, Nor shall your favour by my wants be bounded. My lord, I challenge nothing as my due, Nor is it fit I should prescribe to you. Yet this might Symmachus himself avow, (Whose rigid rules[5] are antiquated now)— My lord; I'd wish to pay the debts I owe— I'd wish ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... falsehood? To hide it might have spoke some little tenderness, And shown thee half unwilling to undo me: But thou disdain'st the weakness of humanity. Thy words, and all thy actions, have confess'd it; Ev'n now thy eyes avow it, now they speak, And ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... Earl of Essex. This woman was a person of violent passions, and lost to all sense of shame. Her husband was in her way, and to be freed from him she instituted proceedings for a divorce, on grounds which a woman of any modesty or delicacy of feeling would die rather than avow. Her scandalous suit was successful, and was no sooner decided than preparations on a scale of the greatest magnificence were made for her marriage ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... inferiority of woman to subsist, they have done all they could to raise her morally and intellectually to the level of man; and in this respect they appear to me to have excellently understood the true principle of democratic improvement. As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that, although the women of the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is in some respects one of extreme dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... is wholly unconnected with action. No one but the child is aware of its occurrence, and he never speaks of it to others. Yet to that child it marks an epoch. So intensely individual does it seem that the boy is afraid to avow it, while in reality so universal is it that probably no human being has escaped its influence. Though subjective purely, it has more vividness than any external event; and though strictly intrinsic to life, it is more startling than any accident of fate ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... no hole-and-corner business about this; he must die, and when his murder had been accomplished she would boldly avow to her lover what she had done and take the consequences, believing in her power over him to come scatheless out of the adventure. In those days, when human life was so cheap, she might have asked for the death of almost any one, and her ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Athens of Syria, dispersed a crowd of missionaries inflamed by the double zeal of religion and revenge. And the rigid unity of the Monophysites, who, under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, had invaded the thrones of the East, provoked their antagonists, in a land of freedom, to avow a moral, rather than a physical, union of the two persons of Christ. Since the first preaching of the gospel, the Sassanian kings beheld with an eye of suspicion a race of aliens and apostates, who had embraced the religion, and who might favor the cause, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... me, ye climes! which poets love to laud; Match me, ye harems of the land! where now I strike my strain, far distant, to applaud Beauties that ev'n a cynic must avow;[ct] Match me those Houries, whom ye scarce allow To taste the gale lest Love should ride the wind, With Spain's dark-glancing daughters—deign to know, There your wise Prophet's Paradise we find, His black-eyed maids of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... as certainly held by Chalmers and Dr. Pye Smith, as by Dr. Kurtz and the author of this treatise; nay, it has been recognized by not a few of their opponents also. Granville Penn, for instance, does not scruple to avow his belief, in his elaborate "Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies," that both sun and moon were created on the first day of creation, though they did not become "optically visible" until the fourth. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Christ's interest, what to avow or amend There, eyes them, heart wants, care haunts, foot follows kind, Their ransom, their rescue, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... against which Christians of the present day need to be warned. It is the idea that the full revelation of the New Testament supersedes in a great measure the necessity of studying the previous revelation contained in the Old Testament. Few will openly avow this, but too many inwardly cherish the delusion in a vague and undefined form; and it exerts a pernicious influence upon them, leading them to undervalue and neglect the Old Testament Scriptures. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... fair one, she selects the young man who is to her fancy, and then her father proposes the match to the sire of the lucky youth" (Schoolcraft, IV., 86). Among the Dariens, says Heriot (325), "it is considered no mark of forwardness" in a woman "openly to avow her inclination," and in Paraguay, too, women were allowed to propose (Moore, 261). Indian girls of the Hudson ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... these:[2] That the manuscript fell into the hands of men, who, whatever they might have been by the generality deemed, were by the Dean believed to be of his party, though they did not, after his death, judge it prudent to avow his principles, more than to deny them in his lifetime. These men, having got their beavers, tobacco-boxes, and other trifling remembrances of former friendship, by the Dean's will, did not choose publicly to avow principles, that had marred their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... neither of these two had any other design, in thus seeking out the unfortunate admiral, than to perform what each believed to be a duty. As soon as the fate of Caraccioli was decided, both were willing to return to their old position in life; not that they felt ashamed to avow their connection with the dead, but because they were quite devoid of any of that worldly ambition which renders rank and fortune necessary ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in the remainder of my picture, for I have studied myself sufficiently to know myself well; and I will lack neither boldness to speak as freely as I can of my good qualities, nor sincerity to freely avow that I ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... "master's" story of his foreign amours is not pleasant. Her two avowals to Edward Rochester—one before he had declared his love for her, and the other on her return to him—are certainly somewhat frank. Jane Eyre in truth does all but propose marriage twice to Edward Rochester; and she is the first to avow her love, even when she believed he was about to marry another woman. It is indeed wrung from her; it is human nature; it is a splendid encounter of passion; and if it be bold in the little woman, it is redeemed by her noble defiance of his tainted suit, and her desperate flight ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... editorial fashion in this "we," for at that time Mr. Ramsey was half proprietor of the Freethinker, and his consent had of course to be obtained before I could undertake such a dangerous enterprise. I gladly avow that he showed no hesitation; on the contrary, he heartily fell in with the project. He frankly left the editorial conduct of our paper in my hands, despised the accusation of Blasphemy, and defied its law. His half-proprietorship of the Freethinker has terminated, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... was to check public licentiousness, and to expose libellers to odium. Lord B. had mentioned his conversation with Mavrocordato[1] to show that the Prince was not hostile to the press. I declared that I knew him to be an enemy to the press, although he dared not openly to avow it. His Lordship then said that he had not made up his mind about the liberty of the press in Greece, but that he thought the experiment ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that this convert was only the first of an abundant harvest. In the autumn of the same year, two more men requested baptism, but this time the rite had to be performed privately, for the Viceroy had begun openly to avow himself hostile to Christianity. Dark rumours of persecution were heard, and one inquirer was summoned before the authorities and warned to beware of what he did. So serious did matters become that public preaching had for a time to be abandoned, and many inquirers ceased ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... unfortunate as to become attached to one of the most dissolute and dissipated of His Majesty's Regiments." The secretary was about to proceed when he was interrupted by Captain Douglas. "Strong terms, Howe. Your case would in some instances demand redress but I repeatedly avow not if considered in the light of reason." Mr. Howe saw in the strange light of Sir Howard's eye that His Excellency would now give, in a few words, his decision with unerring judgment. "Gentlemen," said he, ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... to avow his ignorance, the fat creature mopped his brow and continued with a gasp—"Ah, your excellency, what is fame? From glory to obscurity is no farther than from one milestone to another! Not eight years ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the act of bending forward to prevent him—but suddenly paused. Her position was horrible. She must either avow her crime, or suffer her husband to poison himself. She cast a quick retrospective glance along her past life; she saw that she had exhausted all the pleasures of the world, and attained to all its glories; her decision was rapid—as rapid as on that day when she had fled from Venice with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... strike in with, close in with; echo, enter into one's views, agree in opinion; vote, give one's voice for; recognize; subscribe to, conform to, defer to; say yes to, say ditto, amen to, say aye to. acknowledge, own, admit, allow, avow, confess; concede &c (yield) 762; come round to; abide by; permit &c 760. arrive at an understanding, come to an understanding, come to terms, come to an agreement. confirm, affirm; ratify, appprove, indorse, countersign; corroborate ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... customs of the trade, that not a man bestows two thoughts on the utility or honourableness of his pursuit. I would say less if I thought less. But looking to my own reason and the right of things, I can only avow that I am a thief myself, and that I passionately suspect my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sentiment on his part. These things set him to thinking as he had never thought before. The scales fell from his eyes, and from the kindly gentle Southern man of knightly instincts and gallant achievements was born—the "pestiferous Radical." He did not hesitate to avow his conviction, and from that moment there was around him a wall of fire. He had lost his rank, degraded his caste, and fallen from his high estate. From and after that moment he was held unworthy to wear the proud appellation, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... our politics became embroiled with those of Russia, the post of Brune became of more importance; but the obstacles thrown in his way augmented daily, and he was forced to avow that Russia and England had greater influence and more credit than the French Republic and its chief. When Bonaparte was proclaimed an Emperor of the French, Brune expected that his acknowledgment as such at Constantinople would be a mere matter of course ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... papers of both parties in consideration of an agreement on their part to defend transportation abuses and exert their influence against progressive railroad legislation. The vilest means were often resorted to by these sheets to obtain their end. Public men who had the courage to avow their opposition to existing railroad abuses or to favor a more perfect system of State control of railways were misrepresented, ridiculed, traduced and denounced as demagogues and socialists by hypocritical ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Swann had never yet taken offence, at all seriously, at Odette's demonstrations of friendship for one or other of the 'faithful,' he felt an exquisite pleasure on hearing her thus avow, before them all, with that calm immodesty, the fact that they saw each other regularly every evening, his privileged position in her house, and her own preference for him which it implied. It was true that Swann had often reflected ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and station. I would have told her that I was Bardelys, and to the woman that I had expected to find there had been no difficulty in making the confession. But to Roxalanne! Had there been no wager, I might have confessed my identity. As it was, I found it impossible to avow the one without the other. For the sweet innocence that invested her gentle, trusting soul must have given pause to any but the most abandoned of men before committing a vileness ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... that they have power of life and death. In peace there is no common magistrate, but the chiefs of provinces and cantons administer justice and determine controversies among their own people. Robberies which are committed beyond the boundaries of each state bear no infamy, and they avow that these are committed for the purpose of disciplining their youth and of preventing sloth. And when any of their chiefs has said in an assembly "that he will be their leader, let those who are willing to follow give in their ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... stooped to take shelter under the generous interposition of his wife, and abandoned her, in return for her kindness, to the resentment of the Queen. He had already raised his head with the dignity of a man of honour to avow his marriage, and proclaim himself the protector of his Countess, when Varney, born, as it appeared, to be his master's evil genius, rushed into the presence with every mark of disorder on his face ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of the American people in no wise materially differ from those of the people of any other country, and denying the rectitude or feasibility of building ourselves up at their expense by an exclusive policy, obstructing the natural flow of material exchanges, I avow myself to be a radical free trader, even to the extent of desiring the abolition of all custom-houses, as now constituted, throughout the world. That event is far distant, undoubtedly, but I believe it will come with the freedom ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... visit his native land of Britain, where Constantius had just been proclaimed emperor and had defeated the wild Caledonians. The excuse given was that Constantius was in bad health and needed his son; but not until the young man was actually in Britain would his anxious father avow that he ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... neighborhood, being bound to it by a thousand links of love for its sweeping and soft landscapes. At this farm I was unknown to the world, far removed from everything, but in close proximity to the soil, the good, healthy, beautiful and green soil. And, must I avow it; there was something besides curiosity which retained me at the residence of Mother Lecacheur. I wished to become acquainted a little with this strange Miss Harriet, and to know what passed in the solitary souls of those ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... happened: the latter was killed at Bosworth, and the friar was dead too. But why was no enquiry made after Greene and the page? Still this silence was not so impudent as the pretended confession of Dighton and Sir James Tyrrel. The former certainly did avow the fact, and was suffered to go unpunished wherever he pleased—undoubtedly that he might spread the tale. And observe these remarkable words of lord Bacon, "John Dighton, who it seemeth spake best the king, was forewith set at liberty." ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... cloud became her judge's brow, And stern the threats he thundered forth. "What dost thou dare avow? Retract thy words, or, by the Gods! I swear that thou shall die!" Unmoved she met his angry frown—his fierce and flashing eye: "Nay, I have spoken—hasten now, fulfil thy direful task, The martyr's bright and glorious crown is the sole ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... holds his wife as a spy, but I could not part without taking you into my confidence to a certain extent, though I presume it is not necessary to tell you how useless it would be for you to use this knowledge to my disadvantage unless I myself should avow it. You know I have told you the truth, but you could not prove it to any other, and—well, I think that is all." She was replacing the book in the case when Gertrude entered from the hall. Judithe only ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... put in, "you must accomplish some feat the which each one of us three shall avow to be ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... that men are accustomed to lose their hearts under such an influence," said Mildred, laughing; "but I did not know before, that they were ever frank enough to avow it!" ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Harry, my lad. I've often grumbled; but I avow it—I am past service, gouty as I am; but you were never ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... as if they were noxious animals—yesterday at Venice, the day before that at Pola, to-day at Rieka. Englishmen and Americans, your Allies, receive your 'sincere and fraternal hand' which holds a dagger. As a method of pacific penetration you will avow that this is rather rudimentary and that the laws of Romulus did not teach you such fraternity. We have also seen you striking women in the street and disembowelling a child. What are we to think of that, fratelli d'Italia? Excuse us, but we are not accustomed to such incidents. Is ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... there were but two women—his mother and Maria Ward. While his lips were closed on the subject of his love, he did not hesitate to avow his misery. "I too am wretched," he would say with infinite pathos; and after her death, he spoke of Maria Ward as ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... ye went, ye should repent; For in the forest now I have purveyed me of a maid Whom I love more than you: Another more fair than ever ye were I dare it well avow; And of you both each should be wroth With other, as I trow: It were mine ease to live in peace; So will I, if I can: Wherefore I to the wood will go, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... stand the Queen: and the voucher for her promises, Hammonius, knows that I have good cause for saying so. What she promised, indeed, were all things of the learned sort and suitable to my character—such as I could avow even in a public meeting. As for Sara, besides finding him to be an unprincipled rascal, I also found him inclined to give himself airs to me. I only saw him once at my house. And when I asked him politely what I could do for him, he said that he had come in hopes of finding ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... discussing the efficacy of spiritual self-chastisement with a person who closes her lips into a thin line and looks at you out of blank, uncomprehending eyes! Common sense, right, and logic were all arrayed on Miranda's side. When poor Rebecca, driven to the wall, had to avow the reasons lying behind the sacrifice of the sunshade, her aunt said, "Now see here, Rebecca, you're too big to be whipped, and I shall never whip you; but when you think you ain't punished enough, just tell me, and I'll make out to invent a little something more. I ain't so smart ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... room. She has a soul that fears so much to trouble, with a tear or with a simple movement of her eyelids, the happiness of those about her, that I shall never know if she, as I, surprised that wretched kiss. But I know what she has the power to suffer. I shall not ask you anything you cannot avow to me, but I would know if you had any secret design in following Palomides under the window where you must have seen us. Answer me without fear; you know beforehand ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... not addicted to abandoning any thing, Sir to which my title is just and legal. But you speak in enigmas. If you are acquainted with the place where my niece is secreted, avow it frankly, and permit me to take those ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... "love must still find its way; and so thy gallant swain hath dared the wrath of thy great father and majestic uncle, and lays his heart at thy feet, O beauteous Bertrade, knowing full well that thine hath been hungering after it since we didst first avow our love to thy hard-hearted sire. See, I kneel to thee, my dove!" And with cracking joints the fat baron plumped ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a question always arises; of the prophetic sort; which cannot now be answered. Suppose Mirabeau, with whom Royalty takes deep counsel, as with a Prime Minister that cannot yet legally avow himself as such, had got his arrangements completed? Arrangements he has; far-stretching plans that dawn fitfully on us, by fragments, in the confused darkness. Thirty Departments ready to sign loyal Addresses, of prescribed tenor: King carried out of Paris, but only to Compiegne and Rouen, hardly ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle |
