"Self-abasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glass of stiff brandy and water that some commiserating friend had administered to her for her support, rocking herself piteously to and fro, and, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, uttering between sobs and sips, in utter self-abasement, her peccavi in the form of oaths and imprecations of the finest Billingsgate vernacular (all, however, addressed to herself), that would have made a dragoon shake in his shoes. The original form of which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... features and using his body, writing the note that he had written. When dismembered words and phrases from that note came to his mind on the play-ground, the quaver of terror that rose in Piggy's whoop was not dissembled. Sometimes fear froze his vitals, then a flush of self-abasement burned him with its flames. And all the time he knew that the Pratt girl had that note. He almost hoped that an earthquake would swallow her with it before she could deliver it. When Piggy came straggling in, hot, sweaty, and puffing, just as the teacher ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... called upon to lament, in the language of penitence and self-abasement, his father's opposition to the work of God and to the solemn league and covenant, which had caused the blood of the Lord's people to be shed, and the idolatry of his mother, the toleration of which in the king's house ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... were made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... self-violence and self-abasement!" Pao-yue interposed. The other day, I was outside the garden, consulting with the gentlemen about paintings, and, when they came to hear that we had started a poetical society, they begged of me to let them have the rough copies to read. So I wrote out several stanzas, and gave ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... you!—There are other women more favored than I. There are women to whom you say, 'I love you.' To me you have never said more than 'You are a good girl.' Certain speeches of yours, though you do not know it, gnaw at my heart. Clever men sometimes ask me what I am thinking.... I am thinking of my self-abasement—the prostration of the poorest outcast in ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... fervent, does not give one the same idea of self-abasement in the sight of the Almighty. It would be unfair to compare him to that other personage of the parable, namely, the Pharisee, for the latter was obviously lacking in sincerity; but at the same time, William in his moments of religious ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... was easy enough after the habit was formed. Twentieth-century civilization is decently peaceable, and it isn't especially difficult to dodge the personal collisions. I have succeeded in dodging them, for the greater part, paying the price in humiliation and self-abasement as I went along. God, Stuart, you don't know what that means!—the degradation; the hot and cold chills of self-loathing; the sickening misery of having your own soul turn upon you to rend and tear ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... footsteps of their great progenitor, the Babylonians and Assyrians became a most pious race, constantly rendering to their gods the glory for everything which they succeeded in bringing to a successful issue. Prayer, supplication, and self-abasement before their gods seem to have been with them a duty and ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... every time he throws the lead. There is nothing to be frightened at. This is a manly world we live in. Our reverence is good for nothing if it does not begin with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from that as its basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of climate. Whether the questions which assail my young friend have risen in my reader's mind or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... herself. In this, as in the rest of her self-imposed tortures and degradations, the impulse manifestly came not from above, but from the mistaken imaginings of an over-wrought mind encased in a frail and delicate frame; and these morbid fancies were based on her intense passion for self-abasement. We must remember that at this critical time, when she most needed counsel, she had really no one to guide her—no one, that is, who possessed spiritual wisdom and ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... 'omnino indignus', or any other positive self-abasement before God, I can understand; but how an express avowal of unworthiness, comparatively superlative, can consist with the Job-like integrity and sincerity of profession especially required in a solemn address to Him, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... not know how to think of her, in connection with himself; but he experienced an inward indefinable feeling of deep regret, a gnawing sorrow, and unconquerable depression of spirits, and also a species of self-abasement that he—he Mr Arabin—had not done something to prevent that other he, that vile he, whom he so thoroughly despised, from carrying off ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... put the last touch to her self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... though he could still hear her; but after her laugh there came a few moments of overwhelming bitterness that sent her on her knees by the side of the couch in self-abasement. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... most selfish motives, as he was able to take care of me. I find that sea-sickness develops the worst part of one's character with startling rapidity, and, as far as I am concerned, I look back with self-abasement upon my callous indifference to the sufferings of others, and apathetic absorption in ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... to the place where Peter denied Him. Was that Christ's leading? Praise God, it was. The Holy Spirit had not yet come in His power; Peter was yet a carnal man; the Spirit willing, but not able to conquer; the flesh weak. What did Christ do? He led Peter on until he was broken down in utter self-abasement, and humbled in the depths of sorrow. Jesus led him on, past the grave, through the Resurrection, up to Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit came, and in the Holy Spirit Christ with His divine life came, and then it was, ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... called father. The young man unfastened the flap of his tent nervously, and took himself in out of the drenching mist, which seemed in some way to have got into his brain. He was angry with himself for his interest in these people, as he styled them in his lofty self-abasement. They were ungrateful, unworthy. His eye fell upon two letters propped up on his table in a manner so conspicuous as to suggest a knowledge of his preoccupation—as if some one were calling him out of his reverie in an offensively loud voice. He turned the address downward, and busied himself ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather than to anything else. She saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... long to tell, and sad to trace, Each step from splendor to disgrace: Enough—no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell; Yes! self-abasement paved the way ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... interest of the Romish penances, satisfactions, and work-righteousness. Says Luther in the Smalcald Articles: "Here, too, there was no faith nor Christ, and the virtue of the absolution was not declared to him, but upon his enumeration of sins and his self-abasement depended his consolation. What torture, rascality, and idolatry such confession has produced is more than can be related." (485, 20.) The chief parts of Christian doctrine but little taught and nowhere correctly taught,—such was the chief hurt of ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... shamelessness, his pensiveness, his elegance, I felt that somehow our national triumph was not complete in him,—that there were yet more finished forms of self-abasement in the Old World, till one day I looked out of the window and saw at a little distance my veteran digging a cellar for an Irishman. I own that the spectacle gave me a shock of pleasure, and that I ran down to have a nearer view of what human eyes have seldom, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... wine. Yes, unhoped-for joy! I touched her dress, I ate her bread. At the end of three hours my life had mingled with her life! That terrible kiss had bound us to each other in a secret which inspired us with mutual shame. A glorious self-abasement took possession of me. I studied to please the count, I fondled the dogs, I would gladly have gratified every desire of the children, I would have brought them hoops and marbles and played horse with them; I was even provoked that they ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... No, her whole family might forsake her, but her mother was always her very own. Her mother could never, never have been so cruel as merely to adopt her. Next, as always, came contrition, and deep self-abasement. She stopped crying and lay still, wondering why it was she could never be good like Annie, or even Jean. Then there was Constance Holworth, the lonely girl in the Sunday-school library book. She never got into a temper. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... depths of self-abasement when I heard a sound behind me. It was a long breath, quite audible, that ended in a groan. I gripped the parapet and listened, while my heart pounded, and in a minute ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... appease the wrath and to heal the wounded pride of the Chief Magistrate? If he be really the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all grovelling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject, with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the Secretary of the Senate will preserve the pen with which he may ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... nautically and spiritually. Whatever view we take of this tale (storms being frequent, and fervent prayers of the righteous availing much), the historic peep into King Henry's mind is worth our notice. The simplicity and self-abasement of his ejaculation shew a more religious mind than ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... and self-abasement crept into the letter to Ted, together with a passionate remorse for having doubted him and her even more vehement regret for having gone out with Willis Hubbard. The whole complex story of her emotional reactions ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... head dejectedly, his lips working in a sort of spasmodic silence. Dodge eyed him with a curious, new-born commiseration. The boy's self-abasement, his misery, his flouting of his own weakness were not altogether the result of maudlin reaction. He presented a combination of manliness and effectiveness that perplexed and irritated Simeon Dodge. He did not want to feel sorry for him and yet he ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... list of possibilities. According to him man, in a lifetime, is characterized by the following tendencies: Fear, anger, sympathy, affection, play, imitation, curiosity, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, self-assertion (leadership), self-abasement, rivalry, envy, jealousy, pugnacity, clannishness, the hunting and predatory instincts, the migratory instinct, love of adventure and the unknown, superstition, the sex instincts, which express themselves in sex-love, vanity, coquetry, modesty; and, closely ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... how we could. I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters. Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the gloom of Hamlet's aunt. The dinner was very ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of gentlemanly etiquette at watching the distress of the distraught girl sobbing wildly at the little table between them. There is a wide difference between pampered beauty in distress and a female prisoner in self-abasement. So he waited composedly enough until she lifted her head and regarded him with dark wistful eyes through a glitter ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... phenomenon, involving associations from sympathy, from love, and still more from fear; from the recollections of childhood, and of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally even self-abasement. This extreme complication is an obstacle to our supposing that it can attach to other objects than what are found at present to excite it. The binding force, however, is the mass of feeling to be broken through in order to violate our standard of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... cast down my pride with this blow. I was insolent in my arrogance, and the scorn of this man was necessary to my self-abasement. Could I be more humbled or more resigned than I am now? Don Luis is right: I am not worthy of him. However great the efforts I might make, I could not succeed in elevating myself to him and comprehending him, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... would permit any woman to treat him. She knew her self- respect should have kept her from treating him thus, even if he, in his ignorance of her world and awe of it, would permit. But more than from shame at vain self-abasement her chagrin came from the sense of having played her game so confidently, so carelessly, so stupidly that he had seen it. She winced as she recalled how shrewdly and swiftly he had got to the very bottom of her, especially of ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... distrusted her. Otherwise he would not have had her accompanied by the pretty doll, with her baby face, whose office it was to ensnare the licentious Charles. Henrietta was compelled to take her over to England, and, in fact, to chaperone her. For such self-abasement the King had handsomely rewarded the compliant maid-of-honour, promising to give her an estate, and so much per head for each bastard she might have ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... feature to the splendour of the season. The dreary Lenten time was over, with its vigils and fasts, its self-abasement and penitence. The dread Holy Week had gone, with its plaints and laments, its confession of sins and cries for mercy, its darkened windows and stripped altars, its quenched tapers and hushed bells, its fourteen stations of that ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... God's Love is made manifest as well in a simple soul which does not resist His grace as in one more highly endowed. In fact, the characteristic of love being self-abasement, if all souls resembled the holy Doctors who have illuminated the Church, it seems that God in coming to them would not stoop low enough. But He has created the little child, who knows nothing and can but utter feeble cries, and the poor savage who has only ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... mentality is focused on getting you inside a shop. Once you are there, he stations himself close behind you, reenforcing the combined importunities of the shopkeeper and his assembled staff with gentle suggestions. The depths of self-abasement to which a shopkeeper in Europe will descend in an effort to sell his goods surpasses the power of description. The London tradesman goes pretty far in this direction. Often he goes as far as the sidewalk, clinging to the hem of your garment and begging you to return for one more ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... reproaching him, for Rivers, an old friend, had not failed to give him a little spice of his mind; but he was just in that irritable condition where repentance is almost impossible, and when self-abasement only leads a ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... reckless, worldly, and epicurean; ambitious of greatness, and feverishly athirst for the pomps and vanities of life. It seems I had no "devouement," no "recueillement" in my character; no spirit of grace, faith, sacrifice, or self-abasement. Feeling the inutility of answering these charges, I mutely continued the correction of a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... am absolutely, feelingly certain my abilities are inadequate to support me; and too surely do I see that time when the same tide will leave me and recede, perhaps as far below the mark of truth. I do not say this in the ridiculous affectation of self-abasement and modesty. I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy; and however a friend or the world may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my own opinion in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of property. I mention this to you once for all to disburden my mind, and ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Manning's soul that that voice was never silent. Whatever else he was, he was not unscrupulous. Rather, his scruples deepened with his desires; and he could satisfy his most exorbitant ambitions in a profundity of self-abasement. And so now he vowed to Heaven that he would SEEK nothing— no, not by the lifting of a finger or the speaking of a word. But, if something came to him—? He had vowed not to seek; he had not vowed not to take. Might it not be his plain duty to take? ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... he, "that has been for myself, Miss Mollie, not for my people. What am I to my race? Aye," he continued, with a glance at his withered limbs, "to the least one of them not—not—" He covered his face with his hands and bowed his head in the self-abasement which hopeless affliction ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... groaned in self-abasement, and beat his chest with his great fists. But Grom, who would allow no dissensions ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Tannhaeuser himself has much to say on finding himself free of the Hoerselberg nightmare, and in familiar, homely, human scenes once more. The anger of the nobles in the second, Elisabeth's grief and intercession for her lover, her self-abasement—it is part of the drama to make us feel these things and time is required. The finale of the last act I give up altogether. Nor can I understand why Elisabeth's prayer should be so long drawn out. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... such humble adoration, that, indeed, he could not be happy under it. If either was to serve the other, it was he; he asked nothing better than to put his hands under her feet. But he could neither coax her nor laugh her out of her absorption: she had the will to self-abasement; and she remained unsatisfied, waiting for the word he would ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... grandfather at the same age, from 1767 till 1776, barring the battle of Bunker Hill, and even as late as 1846, the battle of Bunker Hill remained actual. The tone of Boston society was colonial. The true Bostonian always knelt in self-abasement before the majesty of English standards; far from concealing it as a weakness, he was proud of it as his strength. The eighteenth century ruled society long after 1850. Perhaps the boy began to shake it off rather earlier than most ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... was quite obdurate. No, he would not go to the Brookes' again, since Ethel had once objected to his going. And on this pinnacle of austere virtue he remained, thereby reducing Ethel to a state of self-abasement, which spoke well for his chances of mastery in the married life which ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... self-abasement he acknowledged the errors into which blind passion had led him. With what anguish he reflected on the disgraceful charge he had brought against me. Yes; even with tears, he owned his injustice and madness, and begged me ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... admirable; now it flamed before her in a mental revelation that she was a sycophant who sought the reward of an assumed virtue. With the reward had come the knowledge—she had found both in Nicholas's eyes; and as she felt the thrust of self-abasement, she felt also that for the sake of that look she would have kissed a dozen ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Popery. By exalting Christ and his sufferings, and renouncing all claim to independent merit in ourselves, it was calculated to become popular, and coincided with those principles of panegyric and of self-abasement which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... mother's words, absolutely, helplessly foolish. It is difficult for a genie in a bottle to look contrite or stricken with anything deeper than astonishment; nor is it practicable in such a situation to fall upon one's knees,—if a genie were to feel such an impulse of self-abasement. It was perhaps a comfort to all concerned, including a new-comer, that Imogen should be reduced to the silence of sheer stupefaction; and as Sir Basil appeared among them it was not at him, after her first wide glance, that ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the education she must have had, and the accomplishments she must possess, the soul of Hill became abject within him. She had spoken to him first over a difficulty about the alisphenoid of a rabbit's skull, and he had found that, in biology at least, he had no reason for self-abasement. And from that, after the manner of young people starting from any starting-point, they got to generalities, and while Hill attacked her upon the question of socialism—some instinct told him to spare her a direct assault ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... just as what I call Salvation is its widest, most extensive form. We cast aside our reserves, our secrecies, our defences; we open ourselves; touches that would be intolerable from common people become a mystery of delight, acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with symbolical pleasure. We cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our imprisoned egoism looks out through this window, forgets its walls, and is for those ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Smith, for instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have come out of the mill a finished little product, clever, adaptable, and not a gawky, under-nourished, over-strenuous bumpkin like himself. In the depths of his self-abasement, Scott Brenton did not hesitate to ply himself with ugly adjectives. Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards the removal of his ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... truth must be confronted, the better to be combated;—the truth that she loved him—with everything in her—with every thought, every instinct of soul and body. Nay, more, in the very teeth of her shame and self-abasement, she knew that she was glad and proud to have loved him, and no lesser man, even though the fair promise of her womanhood were doomed to go ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... go," said the man, with a soft chuckle intended for self-abasement. "I go, thou goest, he goes. 'I'll skedaddle,' as the felleh says. And yit it do seem to me sorter like,—if my moral sense is worthy of any consideration, which is doubtful, may be,—seems to me like it's sort o' jumpin' the bounty for you to go and go back on an arrangement that's ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... all ages, and amongst all peoples, the spy has been held in marked abhorrence. In the amnesties of war there is for him alone no quarter; in the estimate of social life no toleration; his self-abasement excites contempt, not compassion; his patrons despise while they encourage; and they who stoop to enlist the services shrink with disgust from the moral leprosy covering the servitor. Of such was the witness put forward to corroborate the informer, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... attentive care. "He is continually at the hospital," wrote Mother Mary of the Incarnation, "in order to help the sick and to make their beds. We do what we can to prevent him and to shield his health, but no eloquence can dissuade him from these acts of self-abasement." ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... blue veins might be traced beneath the sallow skin; the cheek-bones were high, and there was something in the face that spoke of self-mortification; while the thin livid lips, closely compressed, and the austere and sinister expression of his countenance, showed that his self-abasement, if he had ever practised it, had scarcely prostrated the demon of pride, whose dominion might still be traced in the lines and furrows of his haughty physiognomy. The father looked at Mrs. Mowbray, and then glanced suspiciously at Eleanor. The ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... press may protect him. If, however, he and other influential wizards of the broad sheet, succeed in making loyalty not a rational principle, but a mania—if, day by day, and week by week, they insist upon deifying poor infirm humanity, exalting themselves in their own conceit, in their very self-abasement—they may escape an individual accusation in the general folly. When we are all mad alike—when we all, with the editor of the Athenaeum, take our half-day's watch at the little Prince's cradle—when every man and woman throughout the empire believe themselves making royal pap and airing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... read your letter, with its wild expressions of self-abasement and despair and regret that you were in the world, where, you seemed to believe, you had no right to be, I could not help picturing to myself the dull face and disagreeable personality of your half-sister, the child whom you no doubt believe has a greater ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with an aching heart struggling in his breast, and an agony of wounded spirit tempting him to cast away all such studied pretences, and to throw himself upon her mercy, and meanly beg for even the slightest return of her former affection. But gradually, as he perceived how vain would be such self-abasement, and how its display would rather tend to add contempt to her indifference, his pride came to rescue him from such a course; and he began more and more to tune the temper of his mind to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... meant than she ever had before. What a wonderful thing is the love of a woman in its simplicity and strength, and how it gilds all the poor and common things of life and even finds a joy in service! The prouder the woman the more delight does she extract from her self-abasement before her idol. Only not many women can love like Jess, and when they do almost invariably they make some fatal mistake, whereby the wealth of their affection is wasted, or, worse still, becomes a source of misery or shame to ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... I think that shyness and that disbelief are common with either man or woman, if, however conscious of superiority in the prose of life, he or she recognizes inferiority in the poetry of it. And yet this self-abasement is exceedingly mistaken. The poetical kind of genius is so grandly indulgent, so inherently deferential, bows with such unaffected modesty to the superiority in which it fears it may fail (yet seldom does fail),—the superiority of common-sense. And when we come to women, what marvellous truth is ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... low cry his head fell upon his breast in extreme self-abasement, then he slowly lifted his eyes and seeing in her face a full knowledge of his sin, murmured in overwhelming ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... product of an honest and earnest mind, his doctrinal dissertations have at least the merit of sincerity. They were put forth in behalf of what he regarded as truth; and the success which they met with, while it called into exercise his profoundest gratitude, only served to deepen the humility and self-abasement of their author. As the utterance of what a good man believed and felt, as a part of the history of a life remarkable for its consecration to apprehended duty, these writings cannot be without interest even to those who dissent from ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you go from my presence never to return. Hold! not just yet, I have a parting word to say before you leave. I confess, with self-abasement, that I once loved you, and with deep humiliation, amounting to agony, that that love was the cause of my ruin. The vail is now torn from my eyes, and I behold you as you are, a corrupted, debased, unfeeling demon, in the human ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... little man, sideling nigher to his companion, and producing his tablets with an air in which exultation struggled, strangely, with an affectation of self-abasement. "No, no, Ellen, I am any thing but unfortunate. Unless, indeed, a man may be so called, whose fortune is made, whose fame may be said to be established for ever, whose name will go down to posterity ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... self-abasement made his plea more strong. Still, she did not yield too suddenly. True, she too, was under the spell, but she resisted it. As he found his voice, and his eloquence filled the room a restlessness possessed her. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... of places, too, and of happenings in them, from Westchurch to Constantinople, from a nautch at Singapore to a country fair at Farley Row. But, recurrent through all his wanderings, were allusions, unsparing in revolt and in self-abasement, to a woman whom he had loved and who had dealt very vilely with him, putting some unpardonable shame upon him, and to a man whom he himself had very basely wronged. The name, neither of man nor woman, did Katherine learn.—Madame de Vallorbes' name, for which she could ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... lies beside the Bible in the most honored place, and this inn, humble though it might be, was not without a copy of this great Bible of society. This Miss Plympton procured, and at once set herself to the study of its pages. It was not without a feeling of self-abasement that she did this, for she prided herself upon her extensive knowledge of the aristocracy, but here she was deplorably ignorant. She comforted herself, however, by the thought that her ignorance was the ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... effect which a sudden death, a grievous accident, or in recent years the declaration of war, has exercised upon all except the most lethargic or the most determined minds. Secondly, he experienced the profound self-abasement or mental annihilation caused by the near conception of a being of a superior order. In the presence of an existence wearing, indeed, the human form, but of attributes widely different from and superior to his own, he felt the combined reverence ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... is a mere lump of vanity," said the count, after waiting a moment for Oscar's excuses. "A proud man humiliates himself because he sees there is grandeur in a certain self-abasement. I am afraid that you will never make ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... veiled and motionless, yet instinct with glad life, every vein throbbing with love and thankfulness—to the arms of her husband, more joyful, and at the same time, in the middle of his joy, more full of yearning sorrow and self-abasement than ever ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... pain, notwithstanding it was stamped with all the honesty of conviction, and her own creed taught that such a degree of spiritual elevation might be attained; while her father listened with a sad admiration, not unmixed with self-abasement ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... N. humility, humbleness; meekness, lowness; lowliness, lowlihood^; abasement, self-abasement; submission &c 725; resignation. condescension; affability &c (courtesy) 894. modesty &c 881; verecundity^, blush, suffusion, confusion; sense of shame, sense of disgrace; humiliation, mortification; let down, set down. V. be humble &c adj.; deign, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... making or singing psalms, but because the main set and current of the life was evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and conquered by strenuous effort. Better a life of Godward aspiration and straining after purity, even if broken by such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... picture up before a girl's eyes, framed in fiery retribution—for an object lesson and a terrible example—so will I, benevolent, if not middle-aged, put before the eyes of my sisters a certain experience of mine. I expect my little act of self-abasement for the instruction of my sex to have this merit: the picture I will show you is not dim with age, and not cut and cramped to fit the frame of a special case. The colours are hardly dry, and both picture and tale are ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... submission to his secret wishes. Though he rarely prayed, Harry Mulford was far from being an unbeliever, or one altogether regardless of his duties and obligations to his Divine Creator. On the contrary, his heart was more disposed to resort to such means of self-abasement and submission, than he put in practice, and this because he had been taught to believe that the Anglo-Saxon mariner did not call on Hercules, on every occasion of difficulty and distress that occurred, as was the fashion with the Italian and Romish seamen, but he put his ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... difficult to understand, than many things that philosophy has discovered in the natural world. Yet, even infidels do not think of disputing facts conclusively proved by philosophy, because they cannot understand them. It becomes us, then, with the deepest humility and self-abasement, to submit our reason to the ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... tame personality by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of adversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance, its sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to self-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance is ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... shown me, a little earlier perhaps than to them, somewhat more of the true duties and destinies of The Many? Oh, that they could see the depths of my affection to them! Oh, that they could see the shame and self-abasement with which, in rebuking their sins, I confess my own! If they are apt to be flippant and bitter, so was I. If they lust to destroy, without knowing what to build up instead, so did I. If they make an almighty idol of that Electoral Reform, which ought to be, and can be, only a preliminary ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... signs of self-abasement (it could be nothing else where a Wrandall was concerned), and smiled inwardly. The new idol of the Wrandalls was in love, selfishly, insufferably in love as things went with all the Wrandalls. They hated selfishly, and so they loved. Her husband had been their king. But their king ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... good enough to be your wife!" said Diana, sinking her head. And her secret self-abasement was ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... pouncing upon such a treasure as had never come within his reach before, met his first defeat. His fire proved unable to melt that ice. His coarse mind was benumbed by the exquisiteness of his antagonist. Now, instead of terror and self-abasement, he met scorn—the cold contempt of a being rarefied, and raised above him by centuries of gentler thought and living. When he laid his paws on her shoulders he felt that he held there a pale, soft shell empty of her incomprehensible ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... brushed the vision aside haughtily, as she would have done had the man himself intruded. But she could not stem so easily the wave of self disgust that swept her back from this other man, a prince of Europe. And when she smothered that self-abasement, it was a matter of will. She recalled her interview with the Sphinx in the Tuileries. She recalled her country, and the empire she meant to win, a gift to France, worthy of Napoleon, of the Great Napoleon. Then her will became as a master outside of self, and horrid ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... them. This was her design and her consolation, even while she read and re-read them with a devouring eagerness. She never paused to ask herself why this was. She avoided any investigation into her feeling for Horace. It was enough that, in spite of all the self-accusation and self-abasement which she carried in her heart, this being who knew the very worst of her could still think her worthy of kindness and respect. When she thought of this she felt as if she could go on her knees ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... of his love and rage and self-abasement. He had failed; he was too weak to do the deed. But God—Would God permit that evil should ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... self-sacrifice seems best, then we should practice that; while if self-assertion seems best, then we should assert ourselves. The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self-abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe subjection is woman's duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or to many men. Women have the right of independence, of conscience, of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... eyes he saw for the first time the self-abasement he had dreaded, yet perhaps expected, to see there before. For in her first question to him there had been no real doubt of him; it had been the natural humility of wounded love that cries out, expecting the reply that ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man. He had been familiar with grief, he had been dull to enjoyment; sad and bitter memories had consumed his manhood: but pride had been left him still; and he had dared in his secret heart to say, "I can defy Fate!" Now the bolt had fallen; Pride was shattered into fragments, Self-abasement was his companion, Shame sat upon his prostrate soul. The Future had no hope left in store. Nothing was left for him ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... some reason he had no objection whatever to servility in a nice-looking maid—indeed, rather enjoyed it. But now, in the person of Joseph, he saw that there were human or half-human beings born to self-abasement, and that, if their destiny was to be fulfilled, valetry was a necessary institution. He had no pity for Joseph, no shame in employing him. He scorned Joseph; and yet his desire, as a man-about-town, to keep Joseph's esteem, was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... net broke. They had to call another boat to their aid, and both began to sink from the overload of fishes. But the great marvel of it wrought on the mind of Simon as every wonder tends to operate on the mind of an honest man: it brought his sinfulness before him. In self-abasement he fell down at Jesus' knees. Whether he thought of any individual sins at the moment, we cannot tell; but he was painfully dissatisfied with himself. He knew he was not what he ought to be. I am unwilling however ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... of the last two centuries, after the self-abasement of the people, and the apparent extinction of all spirit of national pride, the French invasion and domination, under the stern rule of Bonaparte, was a rude awakening. Old boundaries were swept aside, old traditions ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... had long since announced that he was superior to plain virtues, and the list of his paramours was daily growing longer and better known. But all this self-abasement on the part of Josephine and all the self-indulgence of Napoleon could not do more than postpone the judgment day. "My enemies," the Emperor was accustomed to cry out—"my enemies make appointments at ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... with feelings of timorous self-abasement, he ventured to remonstrate with his friend, but the effort was repelled. Possibly the thought of another reproof from Phil was the cause of Aspel's decision not to look him up on the ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... deprecation, petition, &c. Ascription of honour and praise to the peerless, supreme Majesty of Heaven, and confession and deprecation, are to be uttered with all that humility of looks and gesture, which can exhibit the most profound self-abasement, and annihilation, before One; whose superiority is infinite. The head is a little raised, but with the most apparent timidity and dread; the eye is lifted, but immediately cast down again, or closed for a moment; the eyebrows are drawn down in the most respectful manner; the features, and the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... If it were simply to grovel in the dust before him it should be done. If humiliation would suffice,—or any self-abasement that were possible to me! But I should be false if I said that I look forward to any such possibility. How can he wish to have me back again after what he has said and done? I am his wife, and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... every party— 1. Puritans. (80-84.) a. They excited contempt. However b. They were no vulgar fanatics; but c. They derived their peculiarities from their daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. d. Thus the Puritan was made up of two men,—the one all self-abasement, the other all pride. e. Resume of character of Puritans. 2. Heathens were passionate lovers of freedom. (85.) 3. Royalists had individual independence, learning, and polite manners of the Court. B. But he alone fought the battle for the freedom of the mind. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... purity, and love should triumph; and it should triumph by his voice, by his work, by his blood. In moments of ecstatic contemplation, doubtless, the sense of self melted in the sense of the Unspeakable, and in that part of his experience lay the elements of genuine self-abasement; but in the presence of his fellow-men for whom he was to act, pre-eminence seemed a necessary ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... was a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weil as he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words; yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him, as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... of her cousin's grief and self-abasement touched the tender heart of Catharine; for she was kind and dove-like in her disposition, and loved Louis, with all his faults. Had it not been for the painful consciousness of the grief their unusual absence would ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... ascetic Durvasa, following the bent of his own will, arrived at the city of the Kurus with ten thousand disciples. And seeing the irascible ascetic arrived, Duryodhana and his brothers welcomed him with great humility, self-abasement and gentleness. And himself attending on the Rishi as a menial, the prince gave him a right worshipful reception. And the illustrious Muni stayed there for a few days, while king Duryodhana, watchful of his imprecations, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... moral imperfection and guilt,—and that humility and devout self-abasement which arise out of it. This must be a prominent feeling in every one who views his own conduct, and his mental emotions, in reference to the purity of God. It naturally leads to supplication for his mercy ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... companion unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit-promise, so great was his self-abasement. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... marriage vow—the solemn promise before God to love, honour, and obey, daily and hourly violated,—her unjust hatred of her only son,—her want of charity towards others,—all her duties neglected,—swayed only by selfish and malignant passions,—with bitter tears of contrition and self-abasement, she acknowledged that her punishment was just. With streaming eyes, with supplicating hands and bended knees, she implored mercy and forgiveness of Him to whom appeal is never made in vain. Passion's infuriate reign was over—her heart ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... politeness restrains the throng of men; they are all armed and in the flush of physical power; they dash their thousands against impregnable and exciting gambling combinations at the tables. With no feeling of self-abasement, leading officials, merchants, bankers, judges, officers, and professional men crowd the royal El Dorado. Here they relax the labors of the day with every ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... I'm a beast!" groaned Manley, with the exaggerated self-abasement which so frequently follows close upon the heels of intoxication. "She'll never forgive a thing like that—the best thing I can do is ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... with me, still follow me. O sir, will you not picture that dear lady's life? Her years how few, her error thus irreparable, what henceforth can be her portion but remorse, the consciousness of self-abasement, the shame of knowing that her trust was ill-bestowed? To think of it: this was a queen among women; and this—this is George Austin's work! Sir, let me touch your heart: let me prevail with you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... transient, so enervating, corroding, and damaging both to the intellectual powers and the capacity for permanent enjoyment; and nothing so repulsive either in its details, its self-centred egotistical exaltation, and the self-abasement which arrives with that final sense of satiety which she perceived to be inevitable. That part of her nature had never been roused into active life, partly because it was not naturally strong, but also because the more refined and delicately sensuous appreciation of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... 2: As stated (ad 1), humility, in so far as it is a virtue, conveys the notion of a praiseworthy self-abasement to the lowest place. Now this is sometimes done merely as to outward signs and pretense: wherefore this is "false humility," of which Augustine says in a letter (Ep. cxlix) that it is "grievous pride," since ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... have been her glory and her pride, was at this hour an insupportable shame. She had experienced her moments of emotional exaltation wherein she was lifted above self-abasement, but now she crouched in the lowest depths of self-suspicion. The rising storm seemed the approach of the remorseless judgment-day, the howl of the wind, the voice of devils, ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... he muttered to himself a minute later with a feeling of self-abasement, "of course, all these infamies can never be wiped out or smoothed over... and so it's useless even to think of it, and I must go to them in silence and do my duty... in silence, too... and not ask forgiveness, and say nothing... for all is ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... struck him down to a lower depth of self-abasement. "My poor child," he felt like answering, "the shame of it is that I've never thought of you at all!" But he could only uselessly repeat: "I'll do anything I ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Christ. Call on him continually with all thy heart, and all thy soul, to give thee strength, and be strong in thy weakness; and what Christ doth not see good to relieve thee from, suffer in hope. It may be better for thee to be kept humble and in self-abasement. The thorn in the flesh may remain and yet the grace of God through Christ prove sufficient for thee. Only cling to Christ, and do thy best. In all love and well-doing gird thyself up to improve and use aright what remains free in thee, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... neglect, he had lost his charge, and almost ruined his employers. The world—with what degree of truth cannot now be told—had charged the loss upon intoxication. A storm of obloquy and reproach arose. The man, bowed down with self-abasement and sensitiveness, had yielded to the blast, and attempted no defence; and, after awhile, obtaining, through some friendly influence, the custody of the Beacon Light, he had fled, with his child, to that obscurity, leaving no trace behind him, and caring ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... that the girl would find relief in self-abasement, so he relaxed his arms, and she sank to her knees upon the dungeon floor. She wept softly for a moment, and then throwing back her head with her old impulsive manner looked ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... damsel, albeit nobly enthusiastic: too fair, too gentle to be stationed in any corner of the conflict at hand. Partly abased by the remembrance of his brainless intercessions then, and of the laughter which had greeted them, and which the signora had recently recalled, it was nevertheless not all in self-abasement (as the momentary recognition of a splendid character is commonly with men) that he perceived the stature of Vittoria's soul. Remembering also what the Chief had spoken of women, Ammiani thought 'Perhaps he has known one such ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Otaheitans, we know, are not historians. Probably, then, they have been favoured by their priests with some good orthodox doctrine, as to divine appointment on the subject. Indeed, the case of these islanders is one in which the necessary effect of that consciousness of impotence and self-abasement, is scarcely in any degree counteracted by other principles. We see it literally exemplifying the description ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... in her cousin's power. She could not modulate out the key of self-abasement in which she had started. Neither of them referred again to her suggestion that she should speak to George and settle the matter, ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Protestant, I ought to say to our religion; but, this my own knowledge of Protestant vices rejects. Then to say fortune would be an exceeding self-abasement—one, that between us, is not needed; and I believe I must impute it to skill. As plain seamen, I do believe we are more expert than most of our neighbours; though I am far from being positive we have any great advantage over them in tactics. If any, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... make others share its great good-fortune. Hence we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves," ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... part, united, as clever women in love so often do, with a woman's more utter self-abasement a larger measure of critical penetration. The "poor tired wandering singer," who so humbly took the hand of the liberal and princely giver, and who with perfect sincerity applied to herself his ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... treacherous solace to their consciences, one of my vocation has not to learn. Our chief task is to show the delusion of those, who, while condemning their own sins by words of confession and self-abasement, make a merit of humility; but, Doge of Venice, there is still a virtue in the sacred rite I have this evening been required to perform, which can overcome the mounting of the most exalted spirit. Many attempt to deceive themselves at the confessional, while, by the power ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ensure—whether you would have the kindness" It seemed out of all human power to gulp it down. The draught grew more and more abhorrent. To proclaim one's iniquity, to apologize for one's wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg a favour of the offended party—that was beyond the self-abasement any Feverel could consent to. Pride, however, whose inevitable battle is against itself, drew aside the curtains of poor Tom's prison, crying a second time, "Behold your Benefactor!" and, with the words burning in his ears, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sentiment of civic gratitude, patriotic love, or human admiration—or the utterance of some elementary principle most essential in the constitution of true virtue;—or a declaration touching that pious humility and self-abasement, which are ever most profound as minds are most susceptible of genuine exaltation—or an intuition, communicated in adequate words, of the sublimity of intellectual power;—these are the only tribute which can here be paid—the only offering that upon such an altar ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Menelaus; and I will go as Paris." I doubt not that my voice showed a good deal of self-scorn at the moment; but there was a kind of luxury in self-abasement before him. "Your wife, I know, intends to go as Helen of Troy. It is all mumming. Let it stand so, as Menelaus and Helen and Paris before there was any Trojan war, and as if there never could be any—as if Paris went back discomfited, and the other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of her debt to Garth drove her before it, beating her into the very depths of self-abasement, but, even so, her pride of name, and the mother-love which yearned to shield her son from all that it must involve if she should now confess the sin of her youth, urged her to let the present still keep the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... of him that obsessed her. A liar, always. Why not now? Men of his kind were unusual to women of hers, but even in the midst of his confession—as near self-abasement as a man of his type could come, the note of egotism rang clear above the graceful phrases—too graceful to be anything but manufactured in that clear inventive brain ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... homewards, he knew with an inward tremor of heart that the next great step of the way was practically taken. For there by the gliding river, and in view of the distant Oxford spires, which his fancy took to witness the act, he had vowed himself in prayer and self-abasement to the ministry of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our temper, and are taking a mental retrospect of the occasion when we very foolishly lost it, it was in vain that she tried to justify herself by repeating his sneering words. Remembering the look that followed them, she said, in self-abasement, "I had no right to judge him," and in her humiliation avoided meeting him so successfully that for several days after her cousin's departure she neither saw nor heard of him, until at last she heard with relief that he had gone away for a short ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... innocent by force of self-accusation and self-abasement, suffer at once the torment of the victim and ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... herself, that he regarded the conversation as argumentative, rather than positive, and that he was still without any active suspicion that her feelings were seriously involved in the issue. At first, she felt offended; then she saw the injustice of making the self-abasement and modesty of the hunter a charge against him, and this novel difficulty gave a piquancy to the state of affairs that rather increased her interest in the young man. At that critical instant, a change of plan flashed on her mind, and with a readiness of invention that is peculiar ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... reception-room and stood for an instant looking at Olga. He showed that he, too, had suffered during the night. His face was white and drawn. When he saw Olga standing there, a mute statue of despair, he was filled with pity for her and self-abasement. He stepped quickly to her side, caught her hands and kissed ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... kind, any kind of revenge. Cynthia, he dared not approach personally; even his evil thoughts dared not rest upon her directly. He had nothing with which to lure her; not even a decent approach could be made. The girl was always on guard; he could make no apology; he could hope from no self-abasement to win her faith. To harm her brutishly would be to secure his own death, for well he knew that the subtle force that was coming into life in The Hollow was making the men remember they were men and the women to realize it also. Then, too, the factory ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... uncontrolled, beast-like, was making life more repulsive. The pain of her motherhood never approached the agony of her wifehood, when she knew, while the pride of fatherhood was utterly submerged in the poignancy of his self-abasement, when he realized. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... three weeks Maggie saw nothing of Martin's weaknesses, his suspicions and dreads, his temper and self-abasement. The nobility that Martin had in him was true nobility, his very weaknesses came from his sharp consciousness of what purity and self-sacrifice and asceticism really were, and that they were indeed the only things for man to live by. During those weeks he ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to cry out from the page that holds their misery. We are placed face to face with a dread aspect of life, and the remorseless artist paints his own pitiable case as though he longed to save his fellow-creatures even at the expense of his own self-abasement. All these afflicted creatures sought the wrong remedy for the exhaustion and the nameless craving that beset them when they were spent with toil. The periodic drinker takes his dive into the sensual mud-bath just at the times when eager exertion has brought ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... vows he had never yet dared utter. Nevertheless lonely and disappointed as was Sarah Libbie, Jack was a thousand times more miserable. To-night, especially, as he tramped the coast in the teeth of the gale, he thought of Willie Spence's ridicule and one of his periodic moods of self-abasement came upon him. What a wretched cur he was! How lacking in nerve! Any woman, he muttered to himself, was better off without such a feeble-willed, ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... queen, entirely of everything in the shape of clothes, I did not well see under what new mantle of simplicity the heads of the church could take refuge! Perhaps they shaved off all the hair from their bodies in sign of supereminent self-abasement, leaving themselves naked to the cuticle, that they might prove, by ocular evidence, what a poor ungainly set of wretches they really were, carnally considered; or perhaps they went on all-fours to heaven, in sign of their unfitness ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he has always condemned himself," rejoined Herriot, with an air of deep self-abasement. "But I thank God for giving me the means, and the will, for making ample restitution to such as remain of my injured brother's family, or of my own. Harry, I am that uncle. I am the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... his duty to be resigned to the will of God. "Prayer is the only key that will open the door of difficulty." The king fasted for a whole week and was assiduous in his devotions. One night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than the sun and the envy of a pert. He clasped her in his embrace, exclaiming, "There is no strength, no power, save in God!" and he felt assured ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... utterance in the cry of the psalmist, and the rejoicing soul found in his words full expression for the most triumphant and joyful praise. They who after many wanderings were coming back to their first love, and they who had never come before, alike took his words of self-abasement as their own. So full and appropriate and sufficient did they prove, that at last old and experienced Christians could gather from the psalm chosen what were the exercises of the reader's mind; ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... secret thoughts, the miracles they saw her perform, and the admirable tenour of her life, in which the most active virtues were combined with the deepest humility, and supernatural favours received with the most profound self-abasement, were to them a warrant of the genuineness of her revelations, the substance of which, condensed and reduced into a series of rules, are to this day observed by the Oblates of ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... comrade thus gave the reins to his fine fancy, it was a treat to listen, and therefore I never interfered; but, with the planters, sat in mute admiration before him. This apparent self-abasement on my part must have been considered as truly indicative of our respective merits; for, to my no small concern, I quickly perceived that, in the estimate formed of us, Long Ghost began to be rated far above myself. For aught I knew, indeed, he might have ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... evident that something had gone wrong with him. His face wore a look of hot, flurried excitement, and his manner was one of abject, cringing self-abasement. ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... world inspires in him no pleasing hope. He displays no trace of the faith in the supernatural which accompanies the Christian hope of happy immortality. He contains none of the expressions of yearning for communion with the divine, of self-abasement in the presence of the eternal, which belong to Christian poetry. The flights of his muse rarely take him into the realm of a divine love and providence. His aspirations are for things achievable in this world: for faithfulness in friendship, for enduring courage, for irreproachable patriotism,—in ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... great man justice, though tardily. Not even its hero's temporary self-abasement could put it out of conceit with him. One of the many curious surprises in Ralegh's history is the manner in which a sudden change in his demeanour seemed to give the lie to the general admiration. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... this state of mind. His life had been without great troubles, but with many mortifications; he had never been long satisfied with himself or his pursuits, his ardour had only been the prelude to vexation and self-abasement, and in his station in the world there was little incentive to exertion. He had a strong sense of responsibility, with a temperament made up of tenderness, refinement, and inertness, such as shrank from the career set before him. He had seen just enough of political life ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... emotions of the heart. 3. Wealth may seek us but wisdom must be sought. 4. The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. 5. Occidental manhood springs from self-respect Oriental manhood finds its greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. [Footnote: In this sentence we have a figure of speech called Antithesis, in which things unlike in some particular are set over against each other. Each part shines with its own light and with the light reflected from the other ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... in the vaulted "gun-room." Montague strolled through it, and his eye ran down the wall, lined with glass cases and filled with every sort of firearm known to the hunter. He recalled, with a twinge of self-abasement, that he had suggested bringing his ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Zulus. To encounter death, or the danger of death, for the sake of duty—when the choice is there; but duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which shall bring with it self-abasement—that is grand. When I hear that a man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If it be that he has chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was Catiline's ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... ingratitude, how pitiful the hypocrisy, manifested in our conduct as a people, toward our colored population! Every cheek should wear the blush of shame—every head be bowed in self-abasement! ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... help smiling at the depth of Sahwah's self-abasement. "Cheer up, sister," she said kindly, "it's not as bad as all that. You were thoughtless, that was all, for I will not believe that you ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... captain thanked me in the presence of the ship's company for my praiseworthy exertions, and I was gazed on by all as an object of interest and admiration; but if others thought so of me, I thought not so of myself. I retired below to my berth with a loathing and contempt, a self-abasement, which I cannot describe. I felt myself unworthy of the mercy I had received. The disgraceful and vicious course of life I had led, burst upon me with horrible conviction. "Caelo tonantem credidimus Jovem ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... mind. He was just as good a Churchman as ever—why not? Just as fond of his own ideal of what a parish and a Church Service ought to be—why not? But the only thought which did rise in his mind was one of utter self-abasement. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... never hoped to see such days again. He realized that monarchy was essential to peace, and that the price of freedom was violence and disorder. He had no illusions about the senate. Fault and misfortune had reduced them to nerveless servility, a luxury of self-abasement. Their meekness would never inherit the earth. Tacitus pours scorn on the philosophic opponents of the Principate, who while refusing to serve the emperor and pretending to hope for the restoration of the republic, could contribute nothing more useful than an ostentatious suicide. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... fervent indications of uncontrollable bitterness. "Oh, my illustrious sire, at whose venerated feet this unworthy person now prostrates himself with well-merited marks of reverence and self-abasement, has the errand upon which an ignoble son entered—the every memory of which now causes him the acutest agony of the lost, but which nevertheless he is pledged to Tung Fel by the Unutterable Oath to perform—has this unnatural and eternally cursed ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah |
