"Blessedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these wild dreams, in which my soul delighted, I was sometimes tempted to rise up a prophet, preach salvation to the poor, and confound the wise. Persecution I must expect, but in that I should glory: it was the badge of blessedness, the mark of election, the signing of the covenant. Elevated to these celestial heights, with what contempt did I look down on the doctors, proctors, and preachers of Baal (for such were all the unenlightened) and on their dignities, paraphernalia, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... actually asks a girl to marry him in these days of bachelor comforts and the deification of single-blessedness, she has a revelation of human unselfishness that stands as the eighth ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... time: And I must needs confess (if I may speak so much) like a Nazianzen, I am so desirous of a share in them, that if, being thrown overboard, were needful to allay the Storm, I should think Dying, a Trifle to be undergone, for so great a Blessedness. ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... course, for such a young girl to live with an old spinster and go to a village school. Her books bore testimony to this; for there was a look of sadness in the faces she drew, and a sense of weariness and longing for some imaginary conditions of blessedness or other, which began to be painful. She might have gone through this flowering of the soul, and, casting her petals, subsided into a sober, human berry, but for the intervention ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... jester, "the joys of the Prophet's Paradise are nothing to be compared with the blessedness of your Majesty's happy reign. Yet men say that where there ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... welcome for Winter! If far from the days All the lilies have gone from the violet ways, There is joy that will dance o'er the meadows and sing, Where the carols of plenty their blessedness bring. ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... after which the pastor reviewed and explained the meaning of the different exercises of the evening, and what they were intended to teach about the origin and truth and blessedness of Christianity. A prayer was offered, and the services closed with that noble hymn, beginning "All hail the power of Jesus' name," sung to that noble old ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... my heart was dumb With praise no language could express; Longing in vain for him to come Who had breathed such blessedness. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... independently of any faith, or hope that might be entertained as to their ulterior tendency. In this way, the true aesthetic culture would be realisable as a new form of the contemplative life, founding its claim on the intrinsic "blessedness" of "vision"—the vision of perfect men and things. One's human nature, indeed, would fain reckon on an assured and endless future, pleasing itself with the dream of a final home, to be attained at some still remote date, yet with a conscious, delightful home-coming ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... and even startling to Oowikapun. He had lived all his life in a land dark with superstition and paganism. The Gospel had as yet never been proclaimed there. The name of Jesus had never been heard in that wild north-land, and so as none of the blessedness of religion had entered into the hearts of the people, so none of its sweet, losing, elevating influences had begun to ennoble and bless their lives and improve their habits. So he pondered over what he witnessed and heard, and was thankful when the ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... dropped her head on his shoulder, sobbing. The sobs passed unnoticed by the dying girl, even as her brother's arrival had done. She lay there perfectly immovable. Only when the viaticum had been administered, when the priest's voice promised her eternal blessedness, her marble lips appeared to live again, and she murmured in a feeble but ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... found himself enabled to add considerably to his paternal fortune. He had only two sons, of whom, as we have hinted, the present laird was the younger, and two daughters, one of whom still flourished in single blessedness, and the other, who was greatly more juvenile, made a love-match with a captain in the Forty-twa, who had no other fortune but his commission and a Highland pedigree. Poverty disturbed a union which love would otherwise have made happy, and Captain M'Intyre, in justice to ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... out of the darkness a bright and shining angel in white apparel and with radiant wings descended upon him. And out of the silence were heard these words, "O, Son of Man, sanctify the Father's will! Look upon the blessedness which will proceed from thy struggles. The Father has laid it upon thee to become the sacrifice for sinful man. Carry it through to the end. The ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... earnest under this banner, will be men after God's own heart. Such were the martyrs: kind, patient, self-sacrificing, passionately in love with Christ, and laboring diligently to bring others into the same sphere of blessedness. They were strong, heroic, and unconquerable; affectionate, intelligent, filled with veneration for God, and aflame with zeal for His House. Those Covenanters knew that they were redeemed, and gloried in their relation and obligation to the Lord Jesus Christ, their ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... mew'd, To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon, Thrice blessed they that master so their blood, To undergo such maiden pilgrimage; But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd Than that which withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness." ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... gold and sapphires blue: The gold doth show her blessedness, The sapphires mark her true; For blessedness and truth in her Were livelily portrayed, When gracious God with both his hands Her goodly substance made. He framed her in such wondrous wise, She was, to speak without disguise, The fairest thing in ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... And that great blessedness You first reap'd of me: till you taught my nature Like a rude storm to talk aloud, and thunder, Sleep was not gentler than my soul, and stiller; You had the Spring of my affections: And my fair fruits I gave you leave to taste of: You must expect: the winter of mine anger: ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... tragic woman, who modelled herself on the portraits of the late Mrs. Siddons. Peter, on the contrary, was a small, meek, light-haired, short-sighted man, who had never done anything in his unromantic life, save accumulate a fortune as a law-stationer. For many years he lived in single blessedness, but when he retired with an assured income of three thousand a year, he thought he would marry. He had no relatives, having been brought up in a Foundling Hospital, and consequently, found life rather lonely in his ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... learning, as the natural and necessary result of our experiences in knowing and in serving, that just in so far as we know the laws of God, just in so far as we obey the laws of God, just in so far as we help others to know and obey, just in so far there comes into our lives the blessedness of ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... truths in harmony with itself, and a longing to conjoin them to itself, has been made clear also by the fact that some who were simple-minded in the world were taken up into heaven, and yet when they were with the angels they came into angelic wisdom and heavenly blessedness, and for the reason that they had loved what is good and true for its own sake, and had implanted it in their life, and had thereby become capacities for receiving heaven with all that is ineffable there. But those who are in love of self and of the world ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of private citizens. Her wood work was shining and glossy, her steel shone like mirrors, and she was cool as Paradise. Out of the smoke, and turmoil, and suffocation of battle these wretched men had emerged, to enjoy the blessedness, unappreciated before, of shelter, and free air and cleanliness. There was ice in abundance on board, and savory lemonade lay glassily around in great buckets. Women flitted from group to group with jellies, bonbons, cigars, and oranges, and the grateful eyes of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... out of it. Full of fun, he loves above all the dance, the song, the merry laugh, and good cheer—and the uncorking of a bottle would be for him a supreme delight, if this excellence itself was not superseded, by the far greater blessedness ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... their curses against the OLD MAID, who had the credit of having brought the scourge upon earth, by praying for something to fill up the leisure of her single blessedness." And if, as the author observes, "the tormentors would confine themselves to nunneries and monasteries, the world might see something more of the fitness of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... intercourse then is more delightful and blessed is, that when conjugial love becomes of the spirit, it becomes more interior and pure, and consequently more perceptible; and every delightsomeness grows according to the perception, and grows even until its blessedness is discernible in its delightsomeness."(1b) Such love, however, he says, is rarely to be found ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... After this, the Sixth Company, which was the second from the southern quarter, with a loud voice spoke as follows: "The joy of heaven and its eternal happiness consist solely in the perpetual glorification of God, in a never-ceasing festival of praise and thanksgiving, and in the blessedness of divine worship, heightened with singing and melody, whereby the heart is kept in a constant state of elevation towards God, under a full persuasion that he accepts such prayers and praises, on account of the divine bounty in imparting blessedness." Some of the company added further, that ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the words of Peverell; "I only asked him to keep the grave open till to-morrow, and he denied me! Only till to-morrow—for then, said I, the cold earth can cover us both. But he denied me! So I fell upon my knees, beside my Marian's grave, and prayed that he might never lose a child, to know that blessedness of sorrow which lies in the thought of soon sleeping with those we have loved and lost! It was very wrong in me, I know, to wish to call down such affliction on him—but he denied me—and I had to hear the rattling dust fall upon her coffin—ay, and to see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... stormy day of life for Margaret. But there was yet to be a serene and glowing hour before the sun went down. Angelo grew strong and lively once more; rest and peace restored her elasticity of spirit, and extracts from various letters will show in what tranquil blessedness, the autumn and winter glided by. After a few weeks' residence at Rieti, the happy three journeyed on, by way of Perugia, to Florence, where they arrived at the end ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Felice instructs Fra Puccio how to attain blessedness by doing a penance. Fra Puccio does the penance, and meanwhile Dom Felice has a good ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... all winter in Paris. As is always the case, they had lost sight of each other after leaving school, and had met again when they were old and gray-haired. One of them had married, but the other had remained in single blessedness. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... is an old bachelor elf who successfully resists all efforts of scheming fairy mammas to marry him to young and beautiful fairies, persisting in single blessedness even in exile from his kind, being driven off as a punishment for his heterodoxy on matrimonial subjects. This is one explanation of the fact that Leprechawns are always seen alone, though other authorities make the Leprechawn solitary by preference, he having learned the hollowness ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... cut to civilization. We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change. Nor do I see a final state of blessedness. The world's end will surely find us still engaged in answering riddles. This changing focus in politics is a tendency at work all through our lives. There are many experiments. But the effort is half-conscious; only here and there does it rise to a deliberate purpose. To make it an avowed ideal—a ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... name shall we call this beautiful twilight, this night of the soul, so starry with heavenly mysteries? Not happiness,—but blessedness. They who have it walk among men "as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing,—as poor, yet making many rich,—as having nothing, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... I suppose. Horrid, but inevitable, since there are so many superfluous women,' answered a lively lass, too pretty to fear single blessedness ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... as oceanic surf on the shores of my soul. The panoramic spheres finally melted in a sea of bliss. I lost myself in ever-surging blessedness. When I returned hours later to awareness of this world, the master gave me the technique ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... some grave respects, defective. The absolute dominion and overruling providence of God are always present to his mind, and he urges as the ground of all virtuous effort the Character and Example of Christ. But the notion of Atonement finds no place in his thought. The virtuous will attain to eternal blessedness, and the vicious will perish in their vices. The free pardon of confessed sin—access to happiness through a Divine Mediation—in a word, the Doctrine of the Cross—seems, as far as his recorded utterances go, to have been quite alien from his system of religion. The appeal to personal ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... undervalue earthly bliss? No! I enhance it when I make it the sacrament of a higher union! Will not this thought give more exquisite delight; will it not tear off the thorn from every rose; and sweeten every nectar cup to perfect security of blessedness in this life, to feel that there is more in store for us—that all expressions of love here, are but dim shadows of a union which will be perfect if we but work here, so as to work out ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... here conveyed is that of the continuance in one part of the world of that original blessedness which prevailed in the golden age. To afford a conception of the happy condition of the southern Kurus it is said in another place (M.-Bh, i. 4346.) 'The southern Kurus vied in happiness with the northern Kurus and with the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Catherine relates that on a day she received from the hand of an angel a resplendent crown and placed it on the head of the Empress of the Romans. This crown was the symbol of eternal blessedness.[2244] Jeanne, who had been brought up on this legend, said that the same thing had happened to her. In France she had told sundry marvellous stories of crowns, and in one of these stories she imagined herself ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... so filled with this new perception of blessedness, that he would fain have left the gay company, that he might pour out the beautiful thought that possessed him, to gladden the heart of Rosa; and when he looked his wish to her, she smiled, and whispered to him, "Eternity is ours, and we are not to live for ourselves ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... live far from here. I beg of you to show me the way to his dwelling." The wood-chopper replied: "It is not far from here. This mountain is known as the Mountain of the Heart. In it is a cave where dwells a saint who is called 'The Discerner.' The number of his disciples who have attained blessedness is countless. He still has some thirty to forty disciples gathered about him. You need only follow this path which leads to the South, and you cannot miss his dwelling." The Ape King thanked the wood-chopper and, sure enough, he came to the cave which the latter had described ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Browning declared, he would not buy another thing for the house.[139] Returning from his walks on the Lido or wanderings through the little calli, he showed that unwise half-disdain, which an unenlightened masculine Herakles might have shown, for the blessedness of five o'clock tea. At dinner he was in his toilet what Mr Henry James calls the "member of society," never the poet whose necktie is a dithyramb. Good sense was his habit if not his foible. And why should we deny ourselves here the pleasure of imagining Miss Browning at these pleasant ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... appears to itself to possess, by which it rules the body and the vices in order that it may obtain and guard the objects which it desires, being undirected to God, are rather vices than virtues. For as that which makes flesh to live is not flesh but above it, so that which enables man to live in blessedness is not of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... afraid of nothing any more. She did not need to defend herself again. She had been taken out of all her misery, and placed in the safe shelter of a good man's love. What had she done to deserve such blessedness? What could she do to show her recognition of the same? She could only weep, poor child! and feel like a child, whom the Great Father has ceased to punish—forgiven, and taken ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and chaste, and abstain from eating any sort of flesh; and thus weaning themselves from all the pleasures of the present life, which they account hurtful, they pursue, even by the hardest and painfullest methods possible, that blessedness which they hope for hereafter; and the nearer they approach to it, they are the more cheerful and earnest in their endeavours after it. Another sort of them is less willing to put themselves to much toil, and therefore prefer a married state to a single one; and as they do not deny themselves ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... bounds, up the stairway to the second terrace. It was he! she saw him! In her eyes he was everything in physique and virile beauty that a maiden of the Republic could desire! The bitterness and waiting of months were worth the blessedness of the instant. Cornelia never knew what Drusus said to her, or what she said to him. She only knew that he was holding her in his strong arms and gazing into her eyes; while the hearts of both talked to one another so ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.[57]" That this knowledge of God, and the assurance of blessedness which it brings, is the reward of righteousness and purity, is the chief message of the great prophets and psalmists. "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously, and speaketh ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... declares "blessed are the meek," every heart which considers what meekness is, feels the truth of that blessedness. It may smooth the way, and prevent impediments, which a different temper raises to temporal felicity: it certainly assures that Heaven which is within: and is a pledge and anticipation ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... asked to hear no more. Surely she was at the gates of pale spirits within an hour of her interview with Ukleet, and there was no blessedness for her save in death, the stiffer of ills, the drug that is infallible. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It contradicts the Word of God, which declares that there is no condemnation to the believer in Christ Jesus; that he hath eternal life; that for him to depart is to be with Christ, to enjoy unalloyed, unending blessedness. Protestants, therefore, hold that "the souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... mothers,—these were the joys of our Saturday nights in our underground diggings. We were absolutely happy. And we never tried to measure our happiness in those days, or gauge it, or flay it to see if it be dead or alive, false or real. Ah, the blessedness of that supreme unconsciousness which wrapped us as a mother would her babe, warming and caressing our hearts. We did not know then that happiness was a thing to be sought. We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a supreme joy, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... eventide draws on. A little while, such a little while, just time enough to do His work, and then the end shall come. And when we reach that other home, next to seeing the Saviour, next to having the old ties re-united, will be the comfort and the blessedness of meeting some one whom we ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... joy of Paradise shall last, Our love shall shine around that raiment, bright As fervent; fervent as, in vision, blest; And that as far, in blessedness, exceeding, As it hath grace, beyond its virtue, great. Our shape, regarmented with glorious weeds Of saintly flesh, must, being thus entire, Show yet more gracious. Therefore shall increase Whate'er, of light, gratuitous imparts The Supreme Good; light, ministering aid, The better to disclose ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Thyself art Thy greatness and beauty; but a body is not great or fair in that it is a body, seeing that, though it were less great or fair, it should notwithstanding be a body. But it was falsehood which of Thee I conceived, not truth, fictions of my misery, not the realities of Thy blessedness. For Thou hadst commanded, and it was done in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns to me, and that in the sweat of my brows I should eat ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... earth Jupiter; for the inborn disposition of the inhabitants is known from the spirits, since every one carries his own life with him from the world, and lives it when he becomes a spirit. It was observed that they had a state of still more interior blessedness or happiness. This was observed by its being perceived that their interiors were not closed, but open to heaven; for the more open to heaven the interiors are, the more capable are they of receiving Divine good, and with it blessedness and interior ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... progressive human spirit, since only by producing better things can he affirmatively elevate himself above his past. This active acknowledgment of the necessity of freedom as the determining principle of destiny gives the highest satisfaction to which practical religious feeling may arrive, for blessedness develops itself in it—that blessedness which does not know that it is circumscribed by finitude and transitoriness, and which possesses the immortal courage to strive always anew for perfection with free resignation at its non-realization, so that happiness and misery, pleasure and ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... a step toward the girl who continued to stare at her, fascinated. She was now all wholesome. The memory of her own wrongs surged in her during this moment only to make her more appreciative of the blessedness of seemly life. She was moved to a divine compassion over this waif for whom she might prove a beneficent providence. There was profound conviction in the emphasis with which she ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... blessedness, delight, gladness, pleasure, bliss, ecstasy, gratification, rapture, cheer, enjoyment, joy, rejoicing, comfort, felicity, merriment, satisfaction, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... you, and more than praise And thankfulness, for some things done; And blessedness, and length of days As long as earth shall last, or sun! You first among the peoples spoke Sharp words and angry questionings Which burst the bonds and shed the yoke That made your men the slaves ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... offspring until the tale reached one dozen. It was then that Ginx affectionately but firmly begged that his wife would consider her family ways, since, in all conscience, he had fairly earned the blessedness of the man who hath his quiver full of them; and frankly gave her notice that, as his utmost efforts could scarcely maintain their existing family, if she ventured to present him with any more, either single, or twins, or triplets, or otherwise, he would most assuredly drown him, or ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... moment! No angel hand, no reporter even for the New York papers could exaggerate the blessedness of that time, much as they knew about exaggeration. Tears of pure joy ran down both our faces, and all the sorrows of the past seperation seemed to dissolve in a golden mist that settled down on everything round us and before us. The land looked good, the water looked ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... others who can only say that they have not had it; and the witness to spiritual renewal, reinforcement, replenishing received in prayer—to the entering in of a Presence when the doors were thrown open; to a peace and blessedness which were not of the world's giving—this witness is so strong and so uniform that we have no choice but to pronounce it decisive. In every such case something had been "genuinely transacted"; not only ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... yellow-jacket asked me if I would have my boots blacked. It was at the Salt Lake House the morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he blacked them. Then I handed him a silver five-cent piece, with the benevolent air of a person who is conferring wealth and blessedness upon poverty and suffering. The yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be suppressed emotion, and laid it reverently down in the middle of his broad hand. Then he began to contemplate it, much as a philosopher contemplates ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in parochial ministry is. If large congregations may be counted; many communicants taken into reckoning; with frequent services, and schools full of children—we certainly had these. But above all, we had a continual ingathering of souls, who will testify throughout eternity of the blessedness and reality of the work of God during the time I ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... people are the effects of sickness and an aberrant brain. There is no doubt that the contrast between a pure, incorporeal soul and a body has been almost set aside. Who now believes in the immortality of the soul! Everything connected with blessedness or damnation, which was based upon certain erroneous physiological assumptions, falls to the ground as soon as these assumptions are recognised to be errors. Our scientific assumptions admit just as much of an interpretation ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... consequence of the principles which we have just laid down is that happiness is the object of our existence. Created by goodness, we can have no other end than blessedness. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... the Hall, and that Mr. Erminstoun had forgiven his son. Mr. Erminstoun was a widower, and had five daughters by a former marriage—Gabrielle's husband being the only child of his second union: the Misses Erminstoun were all flourishing in single blessedness, and were known throughout the country-side as the "proud Miss Erminstouns." These ladies were tall, and what some folks call "dashing women;" wearing high feathers, bright colors, and riding hither and thither in showy equipages, or going to church ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Radiant and exquisitely beautiful beings, fair miniatures of mortals, inhabited this charming region, wherein was assembled all that had power to inebriate the soul with pure and rapturous felicity, and imbue it with an intense perception of its immortality and blessedness. Now stole the faint, delicious sound of very distant bells—clear, silvery, and sweet—upon mine ear, as the tones of a well-touched harp: sad were they—luxuriously sad; and their unearthly melody infused into my bosom a repose unknown to mortality. As I listened with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... first produced by the first good, in consequence of being connascent with it, do not recede from essential goodness, since they are immovable and unchanged, and are eternally established in the same blessedness. They are likewise not indigent of the good, because they are goodnesses themselves. All other natures however, being produced by the one good, and many goodnesses, since they fall off from essential goodness, and are not immovably ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... for you are, that it will please God to restore you to your affectionate flock; and after as many years of life as shall be for his service, and to your own comfort, give us a happy meeting in those regions of blessedness, which you have taught me, as well by example, as by ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... in Me, though he die, yet shall he live," and also the word of the Apostle Paul, "For ever with the Lord." Yes, for ever with the Lord, separated from us for a little while, but not for ever. Here the short time of warfare apart, there the long eternity of victory and blessedness together. What a glorious hope ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen
... it is, we apprehend, of little consequence what they study or under whom. It would be more amusing, to be sure, and more reputable, if they would take up the old republican cant and declaim about Brutus and Timoleon, the duty of killing tyrants and the blessedness of dying for liberty. But, on the whole, they might have chosen worse. They may as well be Utilitarians as jockeys or dandies. And, though quibbling about self-interest and motives, and objects of desire, and the greatest ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her cheeks burning, her eyes sparkling, in an agony of impatience and anxiety lest something should have happened to delay Susie at this supreme moment. At the window end of the room she stopped each time she reached it and looked eagerly up and down the street, the flower-women and the blessedness of selling daffodils having within an hour become profoundly indifferent to her. At the other end of the room, where a bureau stood, she came to a standstill too, and snatching up a pen began a letter to Peter in Devonshire; but, hearing wheels, threw it down and flew to the window ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... practices of Friends at more length than I ever remember to have done before; after which the glad tidings of the gospel flowed freely, and the people were invited to come to Christ and partake of the full blessedness of his teaching by the Holy Spirit. A precious solemnity prevailed, and the serious attention of the company was great. A good many soldiers, and some officers, were present; but the expression of our dissent from all wars and fightings had not displeased them, ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... stand-point of the universe he has the sympathy only of that wisdom whose essence is self-destruction. And this truth is mediated by the imagination of divine sympathy, for the Blessed One remains as the perpetual incarnation of his own blessedness. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... only those boys can understand who have never been away from home until they have suddenly gone upon a long and comfortless journey, and who then begin to realize, as never before, all the loving care of their parents, the kindness of brothers and sisters, and the blessedness of the dear old nest from ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... mist Of moonlight, with a wild and raven pall Flung round him. Is he mortal man at all? For, by the meagre fire-light that is under Those eyelids, and the vizor shade of wonder Falling upon his features, I would guess, Of one that wanders out of blessedness! Julio! raise thee!—By the holy mass! I wot not of the fearless one would pass Thy wizard shadow. Where the raven hair Was shorn before, in many a matted layer It lieth now; and on a rock beside The sea, like merman at the ebb of ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... before the possible God in an agony of weeping. All complaint of my own doom had vanished, now that I began to do her the justice of love. Why should I be blessed—here and now at least—according to my notions of blessedness? Let the great heart of the universe do with me as it pleased! Let the Supreme take his own time to justify himself to the heart that sought to love him! I gave up myself, was willing to suffer, to be a living pain, so long as he pleased; and the moment ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... give up eating because he destroys his appetite in the act of gratifying it? Is a field idle when it is fallow? Can the Commander expend his hellish energy here without accumulating heavenly energy for his next term of blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the Learned (for he does not seem to have been by any means very wise) much more is of course known, though the saying about the blessedness of having no history is not falsified in his case. But his titular enjoyment of the empire, his difficulties with his sons, his death, practically dethroned, and the rest, do not concern us: nor does even his famous and rather wickedly wrested saying (a favourite with Carlyle) ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction stronger than reason tells her that she does not: her love is like a religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted her thoughts is forever before her; to despair would be a crime,—it would be to cast herself away and die. The faith of her affection, combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things possible makes them so. It could say ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... all other lands, and is blessed and hallowed of the precious body and blood of our Lord Jesu Christ; in the which land it liked him to take flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, to environ that holy land with his blessed feet; and there he would of his blessedness enombre him in the said blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, and become man, and work many miracles, and preach and teach the faith and the law of Christian men unto his children; and there it liked him to suffer many reprovings and scorns ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... no will of my own, save this, that God's will is to be my will. Here is safety,—here is happiness. Fearlessly follow the Guiding Pillar. He will lead you by a right way, though it may be by a way of hardship, and crosses, and losses, and privations, to the city of habitation. Oh! the blessedness of thus lying passive in the hands of God; saying, "Undertake thou for me!"—dwelling with holy gratitude on past mercies and interpositions—taking these as pledges of future faithfulness and love—hearing His voice ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... Church which is reached through death. The choir tells us of the worship and the "joy and felicity" of the "Church expectant." The sanctuary tells us of that for which the Church in Paradise is waiting in expectation. It represents heaven, into whose blessedness the Church shall enter as the "Church triumphant" at the second coming ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... her, or despised her? Did she hear the song of the mornin', the spring time of life? Did the song of a lark come back to her, a lark flyin' up through the sweet mornin' sky over the doorway of a home, a lark watched by young eyes, two pairs of 'em, that made the seein' a blessedness? Did a baby's first sweet blunders of speech, and happy laughter come back to her, as she sot there a drawin' out with her wrinkled hands them miserable sounds from the groanin' instrument? Did home, love, happiness sound out to her, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... young Walter McLaren and his lovely bride, Eva Mueller, whom we had heard several times on the suffrage platform. We rallied her on the step she had lately taken, notwithstanding her sister's able paper on the blessedness of a single life. While here we visited Dean Stanley's birthplace; but on his death the light and joy went out, and the atmosphere of the old church whose walls had once echoed to his voice, and the house where he had spent so many useful years, seemed sad and deserted. But the day was bright and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... one else better than—than those we were married to, it would be no use"—poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language brokenly—"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear—but it murders our marriage—and then the marriage stays with us like a murder—and everything else is gone. And then our husband—if he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... was that of most true blessedness? Garret twisted his hands nervously together as this flood of thought came surging ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... views on managing the domestic budget as Miss Emma Roberts should not have remained long in single blessedness. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of the Christian is a beautiful triumph over the fears of life. In Him who conquered death, and led captivity captive, he finds the fruition of his being, the eternal blessedness promised to him in the Gospel, which places him beyond the wants and woes of time. The death of such a man should be celebrated as a sacred festival, not lamented as a dreary execution,—as the era of a new birth, not the extinction ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... friend Nancy Goodrich was married to William Ellsworth. Emily Webster is soon to plight her faith to his brother Henry. Miss Mary Ann Woolsey thinks of consummating the blessedness of a Mr. Scarborough before the expiration of the summer. He is a widower of thirty or thirty-five with one child, a little girl ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive as the river's flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be terrible—but afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered Gerty's words: "I know him—he will help you"; and her mind clung to them as a sick person might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if he really understood—if he would help her to gather up her broken life, and put it together in some new semblance in which no ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... self-dependent, and the only Being who is such; moreover, that He is without beginning or Eternal, and the only Eternal; that in consequence He has lived a whole eternity by Himself; and hence that He is all-sufficient, sufficient for his own blessedness, and all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, has the Supreme Good, or rather is the Supreme Good, or has all the attributes of good in infinite intenseness; all wisdom, all truth, all justice, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... my love! why did you come here? Did you hope for pity or help in his heart? And what can I do Davie, but suffer with you?" But she drew his face down and kissed it with a solemn tenderness that taught the wretched man, in one moment, all the blessedness of a woman's devotion, and all the misery that the indulgence of his ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... sudden and unexpected satisfaction or after a period in which the hopes of the individual have been momentarily raised by some unforeseen circumstance. It is by no means certain that hope is of itself a good thing. The wise and mournful soul prefers the blessedness of that non-expectancy which shall not be disappointed, to the exhilarating pleasures of an anticipation which may prove empty. In this matter lies one of the great differences between the normal moral state of the heathen and that of the Christian. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... gush up into everlasting life, within your now unloving and hostile heart? There is no answer to this question of questions, but in the Person and Work of the Holy Ghost. If God shall shed abroad His love in your heart, by the Holy Ghost which is given unto you, you will know the blessedness of a new affection; and will be able to say with Peter, "Thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." You are shut up to this method, and this influence. To generate within yourself this new spiritual emotion which you have never yet felt, is utterly ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... ruin thus supprest Expell'd the seat of blessedness and rest, Look'd back and saw the high eternal mound, Where all his rebel host their outlet found Restor'd impregnable: The breach made up, And garrisons of Angels rang'd a top; In front a hundred thousand thunders roll, And lightnings temper'd to transfix a soul, Terror of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... could scarcely at that time come as news to her that her son was dead, but it did come as a gladsome surprise that her wilful Willie had not only found the Saviour himself—or, rather, been found of Him—but that he had spent his latter days in striving to bring others to that great Source of blessedness. ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... And then, oh, blessedness of the winter, the revival came; and both she and William, strangely stricken together with the realisation of their sins, fell ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... one knows how largely the idea of rest has entered into our common conceptions of the future. It is indeed a pathetic commentary on the weariness and restlessness of life that with so many rest should almost have come to be a synonym for blessedness. But rest is far from being the final word of Scripture concerning the life to come. Surely life, with its thousandfold activities, is not meant as a preparation for a Paradise of inaction. What can be the meaning and purpose of ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... here and then carrying there, for it is nothing else and nothing less than the divine nature itself; it is the divine nature incarnate, incorporate, and made manifest in man. And it is, therefore, immortal with the immortality of God, and blessed for ever with the blessedness of God. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... higher walks of life, the blessedness of doing good, and the paths of usefulness and enjoyment, are drawn out with beautiful simplicity, and made attractive and easy in the attractive pages of this author. To do good, to teach others how to do good, to render the home circle and the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... cried Rosie, drawing a long breath and lifting her hands with a gesture of alarm and despair; "what shall I do? Would you recommend single blessedness—you who have twice tried laying hold of the other ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... the enumeration of their presumable blessedness. It was Nan's face that stopped him. It had paled out into a gravity surprising to him: a weariness he had often expected to see on it after her work abroad, but had not yet ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... lords, earls, and governors; chance, only, had made them acquainted. She had been very kind. No, he must not presume upon her graciousness and tell her that his heart had gone out to her in a wonderful way. Many men had proffered their love, but had been rejected. It was blessedness unspeakable to be permitted to walk by her side, to hear her voice, to enjoy her ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... all calculated the ages of the respective parties, making him out younger than he was and her a great deal older. But neither he nor she ever knew what was said, and they would not have cared if they had, for both were supremely happy and thankful for the peace and blessedness which had crowned their later life. Fifty and even sixty is not so very old, at least to those who have reached it, and Hannah neither looked nor felt old when in her becoming traveling dress of seal brown she stood up in the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... substance of his mother, and that without spot of sin, to show that man need not be sinful, that man was meant by God to be holy and pure from sin, and that by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ we, every one of us, can become pure from sin. This is the blessedness of Christmas-day. That one man, at least, has been born into the world spotless and free from sin, that He might be the firstborn of many brethren. This is the good news of Christmas-day. That now, in Christ's light, and for Christ's sake, our ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... in such blessedness. One thereof had He made so strong, so mighty in his intellect; to him did He grant great sway, next to Himself in the Kingdom of Heaven. So bright had He made him, so beautiful was his form in ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... contrition will whisper, "Father; forgive me, for I knew not what I did when I murmured at thy dealings." Then a solemn hush will follow—a holy twilight of the soul,—as if the sorrows of earth were blending with the joys of heaven, the pains of mortality with the blessedness of the angelic bards. Oh, these are the flowers for a sickroom! How dreary and desolate does it seem without them! The strong and healthy may live on, careless and irreligious, but what would become of the poor, grief-stricken, despairing Soul if she could not repose quietly in the bosom her Beloved, ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... young friend, there is yet time; listen even now to my fatherly warning, before it is too late. Do not deceive yourself, as so many, even without number, have done already; be on your guard, and watch over your soul. Are you then at your age thus beforehand aweary of your peace and future blessedness? would you requite your Saviour's love by becoming a runagate from him, and denying him, and taking up arms as ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Is there any ordinance of the universe that thou shouldst be happy? Art thou nothing but a vulture screaming for prey? Canst thou not do without happiness? Yea, thou canst do without happiness, and, instead thereof, find blessedness." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... circumference, at which all future travellers that way might drink with gladness. That was the man on whom the blessing rested as a condition, not as a wish. Look at the word, and get the right meaning of it. It is [HEBREW WORD], not [HEBREW WORD]; it is a blessedness, not a benediction. It means a permanent reality of happiness, like that of Obededom, not a cheap "I thank you!" or "the Lord bless you!" from here and there a man or ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt |
