"Selfless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that there is no such thing as a soul or self—is justly emphasized as a most important part of the Buddha's teaching and Buddhist ethics might be summarized as the selfless life. Yet there is a danger that Europeans may exaggerate and misunderstand the doctrine by taking it as equivalent to a denial of the soul's immortality or of free will or to an affirmation that mind is a function of the body. The universality ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Brah. Upanishad, VI. 20. "Having seen his own self as The Self he becomes selfless, and because he is selfless he is without limit, without cause, absorbed ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... her now that she could not define: the warmth of Love, the sense of protection and security—almost as if unseen arms, that were strong and devoted and selfless, held her closely, shielding her from evil and from the taint of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... ghostly company: Chilled, in the eerie air I felt myself bend over me, And point as with despair; And, horror-thrilled, I turned to see My body selfless there, ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... out of danger, he walked deep into the woods. The news had lifted such a load from his mind that he felt almost happy. But before he reached home again, his brain had begun to work at matters which, during the period of anxiety, it had left untouched. At first, in desperation, he had been selfless enough to hope that Schilsky would return, on learning what had happened. Now, however, that he had not done so, and Louise had passed safely through the ordeal, Maurice was ready to tremble lest ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Galilaee!' but—when now Bathed in that lurid crimson—ask'd 'Is earth On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god Wroth at his fall?' and heard an answer 'Wake Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.' And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West, And at his ear he heard a whisper 'Rome,' And in his heart ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... evening she was taken suddenly worse, and we lifted her into bed and telegraphed for the doctor. But now the end had come; her strength completely failed, and she felt that death was upon her; but selfless to the last, her only fear was for me. "I am leaving you alone," she would sigh from time to time, and truly I felt, with an anguish I dared not realise, that when she died I should indeed be alone ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... especial beauty and significance,—the crowded streets, the shop windows, the lights, the people,—her heart went out to all of them—rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; they were Michael's and they would be hers. He should have that oil of joy for his work, for his high, selfless purposes. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme — Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, By every godlike sense Transmuted from the four wild elements. Drawn to high plans, Thou lift'st more stature than a mortal man's, Yet ever piercest downward in the mould And keepest hold ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... for joy, and life beyond death finds an echo in many hearts, which yet can admire the grand altruism of "The Pilgrims" and the selfless spirit of the Impersonal Martyr. After considering all this clash of thought, it seems as if it all resolved itself into the individual temperament which settles and modifies and adapts to itself the forms of our philosophies and religions, our ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... of a philosopher) is rare: it distinguishes one work of art from among a thousand others. For, as a rule, artists are no better than the rest of the world, they are even worse—they misunderstand love. Even Wagner misunderstood it. They imagine that they are selfless in it because they appear to be seeking the advantage of another creature often to their own disadvantage. But in return they want to possess the other creature.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Even God is no exception to this rule, he is very far from thinking "What does it matter ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... that, despite his misfortune, he may one day minister to parental vanity. Finally he breaks away from Rita, for the first time "in all these ten years," goes up "into the infinite solitudes," looks Death in the face, and returns shrinking from passion, yearning towards selfless love, and filled with a profound and remorseful pity for the lot of poor maimed humanity. He will "help Eyolf to bring his desires into harmony with what lies attainable before him." He will "create a conscious happiness in his mind." And here the ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... be cherishing an ideal which extends over the whole of life and beyond; to have a natural love for every one, especially for the poor; to get rid, not of wit or good humour, but of frivolity and excitement; to live "selfless" according to the Will of God and not after the fashions and opinions of ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... snowflakes, as he replied, The Boons of Philosophy are of higher worth, than what you, O Alia, mean by Happiness. But I will not seem to evade the question—Am I the happier for my Philosophy? The calmer at least and the less unhappy, answered Constantius, for it has enabled me to find that selfless Reason is the best Comforter, and only sure friend of declining Life. At this moment the sounds of a carriage followed by the usual bravura executed on the brazen knocker announced a morning visit: and Alia hastened to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... real basis of happiness, is a favorite theme in Miss Montgomery's fiction. It is raised to the nth power in the story entitled, "In Her Selfless Mood," where an ugly, misshapen girl devotes her life and renounces marriage for the sake of looking after her weak and selfish half-brother. The same spirit is found in "Only a Common Fellow," who is haloed with a certain splendor by renouncing the girl he was to marry in favor of his old rival, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... even begin to fathom a woman's restraint—a woman's reserve. How can she offer when you are always demanding? As to her love, it is probably as infinitely great, as infinitely deep, as infinitely selfless, as yours is passionate, and fierce and insatiable. There are big possibilities in you, Piers; but you're not letting 'em grow. It would have done you good to have been kept waiting ten years or more. You're spoilt; that's what's the matter with you. You got your heart's desire ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... manners, of character, by its humour and its tenderness, by its manly "criticism of life," by its touches of poetry, so various, so inspired, as in Davie Gellatley with his songs, and Charles Edward in the gallant hour of Holyrood, and Flora with her high, selfless hopes and broken heart, and the beloved Baron, bearing his lot "with a good-humoured though serious composure." "To be sure, we may say with Virgilius Maro, 'Fuimus Troes' and there 's the end of an auld sang. But houses and families ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... fell. The elder babe was still fretful, and the mother's face had on it that most moving phenomenon of this world—the strange, selfless, utterly absorbed look, mouth just loosened, eyes off where we cannot follow, the whole being wrapped in warmth of her baby against her breast. And he, with the tiny placid baby, had gone off into another sort of dream, with his slightly frowning, far-away ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... healing of Rodney and Harding Powell; the healing of Bella. It had worked with a peculiar rhythm of its own, and always in a strict, a measurable proportion to the purity of her intention. To Harding's case she had brought nothing but innocent love and clean compassion; to Bella's nothing but a selfless and beneficent desire to help. And because in Bella's case at least she had been flawless, out of the three Bella's was the only cure that had lasted. It had most marvellously endured. And because of the flaw in her she had left Harding ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... Mrs. Foss, sympathetically. "There's no use in us women pretending we don't mind! Those who really and truly don't must be great philosophers or great fools, or else selfless to a degree that is ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... of his selfless love, he dared not even admit that it was love; feeling only the highest, he could not quite correlate his sweet and elevated passion with the common standards of what the World called love. The humility of a ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... who could not send the multitude away without bread, and compassed a miracle to give it to them,—the Man who wept for a friend's death,—who took little children in His arms and blessed them,—who pardoned the unhappy outcast and said, 'Sin no more,'—who was so selfless, so pure, so strong, so great, that even sceptics, while denying His Divinity, are compelled to own that His life and His actions were more Divine than those of any other creature in human shape that has ever walked ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... evidently did not, would not, understand, was, that when they did meet, he fell in love with her for herself! She was his mate, his ideal, the one woman in the world who had power to awake his best self; to make him selfless, and in earnest about life. He was overcome with shame at the remembrance of his own scheming. At one time he believed it to be his duty to punish himself by leaving her without saying a word, but his passion was too strong, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... this soldier of the Cross. What matter if his ideals of duty and religion seem fantastic to our modern minds? He gave his life for them; and so long as men admire the brave deeds of a fearless heart, so long as they reverence a pure and selfless purpose, so long will they honor the name and fame of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him—forgot himself, his interests, his property—was capable of almost anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... stole upon my inward sight. A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest, As though an infant's finger touch'd my breast. And one by one (I know not whence) were brought All spirits of power that most had stirr'd my thought In selfless boyhood, on a new world tost Of wonder, and in its own fancies lost; Or charm'd my youth, that, kindled from above, Loved ere it loved, and sought a form for love; Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan Of manhood, musing what and whence is man! Wild strain of ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... she done, and what was she going to do? She was playing with religion; and religion, if it was nothing more, was something which had made Bart Toyner look at her with such a strange smile of selfless hope and desire—hope that she would be something different from what she had been, desire that the best should come to her whatever was going to happen to him. That was the explanation of what had seemed inexplicable ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... thing in human life that God desires to end is Sin. There is not a pure joy or a sweet human relationship or a selfless ambition or a divine hope which He does not desire to continue and to be crowned and transfigured beyond all ambition and all hope. On the contrary, He desires only to end that one single thing which ruins ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... the cat is simple and easily comprehensible, whereas that of the dog with his conscience, his humor, his terror of loneliness, his capacity for devotion to a brutal master, or that of the bee with her selfless devotion to the hive, furnishes phenomena which no sophistry can assimilate without the aid of a fourth instinct. But little examination will show that the animals whose conduct it is difficult to generalize under the three primitive instinctive categories ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... reality. Even so, within each there reposes the Divine Image awaiting the master-hand of Faith and the chisel of Patience to bring it into manifestation. And that Divine Image is revealed and realized as stainless, selfless Love. ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... these last two years is a terrible thing. You go to war, you get up to it from your knees—God driving you to it—unable, yes, unable to do else. Your will is to do right, your cause is just, you are a united nation, a people convinced, glad, selfless, with hearts heroic and clean. And then war takes hold of it, and it all changes under your eyes; you see the heart of your people becoming fouled, getting hard, self-righteous, revengeful. Your cause ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... showed himself selfless in restraining his own opportunities for profit, but fearless in restraining the colonists' itch for land. A few months before his arrival, the Assembly had authorized settlement both on the north side of the York and in the ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... ideals, the fairest dreams, the subtlest reasoning, the finest ethics, contained in the writings of the mighty dead, meant nothing at all to Sir Timothy. His widow knew that she had never heard him utter one high or noble or selfless thought. But with, perhaps, pardonable egotism, she had taken it for granted that Peter must be different. Whatever his outward humours, he was her son; rather a part of herself, in her loving fancy, than a ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... first time in the last few days, the aunt began considering within herself the problem of her niece. Blanche had begun to like Donnington with a cordiality of liking which surprised herself. His selfless love for the girl touched her more than she had thought it possible for anything now to touch her worldly heart. And whereas she would naturally have considered a marriage between the penniless Donnington and brilliant, clever, popular Bubbles as being out of the question, ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... to see the consecrated Revisers, seated again at the long table, deep in the holy search of the Scriptures for the profound secrets of life which they hold. He saw with what sedulous care they pursued their sacred work, without trace of prejudice or religious bias, and with only the selfless purpose always before them to render to mankind a priceless benefit in a more perfect rendition of the Word of God. Why could not men come together now in that same generous spirit of love? But no, Rome would never yield her assumptions. But when the lad rose ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These penitential usages of age That expiate proud cruelties of youth, And bring thee to the last and perfect art, To love the lovely with a selfless heart? ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... his food, and his raiment, and his well-being, and never of her own—only, if she is wise she will hide all these things in her heart, for the average man cannot stand this great light of her sweetness, and when her love becomes selfless, his ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in physical rebirths. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... all have it in us to develop some of Sabre's qualities, but we must be equally independent of public opinion, equally tolerant and, above all, equally selfless ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... latter Parsifal presents a resemblance to the traditional representations of the Saviour; the idea being, we must think, to indicate, stamped on the exterior man, this soul's aspiration towards likeness with the Divine Pattern; or, perhaps, visibly to state that here, too, is a gentle and selfless lover of men, all of whose forces bent on a mission ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... raised her eyes and looked swiftly but deeply at her daughter. It was a look that left many hopes behind it. It was a look that armed other, and quite selfless, hopes, with its grave and watchful understanding. The understanding would not have been so clear had it not been fed by all the springs of baffled tenderness that only so could find their uses. Giving her daughter's hands a final ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... violent spiritual tempests which are created by the crowd when under the influence of certain climactic passages of dramatic song, that sudden bewildering ecstasy of the emotions, thoroughly honest and selfless—they were but echoes of his own experiences and sensations, and filled him with glowing hope for the greatest possible power and effect. Thus he recognised grand opera as the means whereby he might express his ruling thoughts; towards it his passions impelled him; his eyes turned ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... rest and freedom from pain; they have gone home, as the common saying is, and the cares of this world touch them no more. Secondly, we may imagine them as they were at their best and brightest, humbly fulfilling their daily round of duties—selfless, childlike, unaffected by the world; when the eye was single and the whole body seemed to be full of light; when the mind was clear and saw into the purposes of God. Thirdly, we may think of them as possessed by a great love of God and ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... returned gently, and then he kissed her cheek, and Anna stole away sadly to her own room. If she shed tears they were for him, and not for herself. Anna's affection for her adopted brother was perfectly unconscious and selfless; she never indulged in unwholesome introspection; she never asked herself why her heart ached that night, and a sense of loneliness and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thought deeply about herself, weighing her own individuality against others, to see what place she occupied in her own age, and how she stood with regard to the ages that had gone before; yet even this she seemed to have done in a selfless way, having apparently examined herself coolly, critically, fairly, as she might have examined any other specimen of humanity in which she felt an interest, unbiassed ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that I could not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I nevertheless finally struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment and down the stairs, never drawing breath till ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... I knew, Thy love of me; One only thing I know, Thy sacred same Love of me full and free, A craving flame Of selfless love of me which burns in Thee. How can I think of thee, and yet grow chill; Of Thee, and yet grow cold and nigh to death? Re-energize my will, Rebuild my faith; I will arise and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... when, in heaven, one of these selfless mothers is led in triumph to a solid gold throne, all lined with eider-down cushions, where she can take the rest she never had on earth. Won't she stagger back against the glittering walls of the New ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... constant factor in his mood all this while is his amazing humility. He seems to have forgotten his own existence. As a person with likes and dislikes, with personal hopes and fears, he has vanished. He is but an afflicted and perplexed mind, struggling desperately to save his country. A selfless man, he may be truly called through months of torment which made him over from a theoretical to a practical statesman. He entered this period a literary man who had been elevated almost by accident to the position of a leader in politics. After many blunders, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the cold, cynical delight in this fellow's doing his duty, such was his arrogant, overbearing attitude toward the helpless peasant prisoners, that I know my prayers for the end of the war were not motivated entirely by selfless considerations. I am hankering to get into the neighborhood of this fellow when he doesn't hold all the trump cards. In justice to Javert, I must say that he reciprocated my feeling magnificently, and, inasmuch as he was the cat and ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... called Life. I feel, I know that Fate is. But I cannot know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the I being duly blended with the We. I object to be a selfless man, which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. I am bound to take careful thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve or to repent ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... than those which give the stimulus of something definite to do. These need not feel themselves cut off from what is highest in woman's education, if they realize that the mind has a life in itself and makes its own existence there, not selfishly, but indeed in a peculiarly selfless way, because it has nothing to show for itself but some small round of unimpressive occupations; some perpetual call upon its sympathies and devotion, not enough to fill a life, but just enough to prevent it ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Paul Marat, has had his apologists. His friends have called him a martyr, a selfless and incorruptible exponent of social and political ideals. We may take it that Simonne Evrard loved him, for a more impassioned obituary speech was, mayhap, never spoken than the one which she delivered before the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... MS. Note-Books) begins with a sense of suppressed, half-articulate power in the language of a novel ecstasy. Some mystical experience, some great if not sudden access of intellectual power, some enlargement and clarifying of vision, some selfless throb of cosmic sympathy, has come to Walt Whitman. At first he can only ejaculate his wonder, and pray for the advent of a perfect man who will be worthy to communicate to the world this new vision of humanity. Then, like the prophet Isaiah, whose great book he is wont to ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the Bavarian officer, and why he had not hacked those two work-worn but nobly shaped hands of hers, to get at the French chasseur's throat. She seemed the incarnate spirit of the mother-woman, whose selfless courage no brute who had known a mother could resist. And her "No!" rang out deep and clear as a warning tocsin. I felt that the wounded boy must have been as safe behind those hands and that "No!" as if a thick though transparent wall of glass had ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... value and the glory of it. Then he contrasted with it the power which is only obtained by those who, completely unselfish, know not how to think of themselves. He enlarged on this theme, on the Kingdom which can belong only to those who are selfless. And then he drew to the end of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... weal or woe thou'rt mine for life. Those whom I hate thou hatest too; those whom I love thou lovest too. When good King Mark I followed of old, thou wert to him truer than gold. When I was false to my noble friend, to betray too thou didst descend. Thou art selfless, solely mine; thou feel'st for me when I suffer. But—what I suffer, thou canst not feel for me! this terrible yearning in my heart, this feverish burning's cruel smart,— did I but show it, couldst thou but know it, no time here wouldst thou tarry, to watch from ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... are willing to be emptied of self. He must have undivided possession. There is a vast amount of heartache, little one, in this old world, and self is at the bottom of it all, when we stop to analyze it. We want to be first, to be thought much of, to be loved best. No wonder that the selfless life seems impossible to most people. Think what a continuous self-sacrifice Christ's life was! So utterly alone and lonely among such uncongenial surroundings with people uncouth and totally foreign to his tastes. Ah! we don't ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... of power and passion, just touched with human ruth; Hector, the selfless, brave and gentle champion; Odysseus, victor in the long pilgrimage by fortitude and by wisdom,—these are the three ideal types of the early world, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... instinct, and by nature brave, Is he who risks his life a life to save; Who sees no peril, be it e'er so great, Where helpless human lives for succour wait; Who looks on death with selfless disregard; Whose sense of duty brings its own reward. Such are the Braves who now inspire my pen: Pride of the gods—and heroes among men. The warrior who, on glorious battle plain, Falls bravely fighting—dies to live again In fame hereafter: this he, falling, knows; And painless hence ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... daughter. That comfortable mother at home and daughter in an office, but with no suitors, no ambition beyond the one at home. They are all examples of the mother-and-daughter phenomenon, that most touching, most destructive example of selfless unselfishness, which robs all the generations to come, because mother has never been trained to endure the long, long thoughts of solitude; because she sees nothing by herself, and within herself hears no ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... to the distinguished deputy whose place I come so unworthily to fill, and it was unavoidable that I should refer to the event which has procured us this sad necessity. The deputy Lagron was a man of singular nobility of mind, a selfless, dutiful, zealous man, inflamed by the high purpose of doing his duty by his electors and by this Assembly. He possessed what his opponents would call a dangerous ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... organisation with himself as Commander-in-Chief, and with his driving power and the inspiration of his heroic example, those Officers went to every part of Great Britain and to something like fifty different countries and 'did exploits.' That system may work with a selfless Christian hero who is a born Caesar or Napoleon. The Salvation Army's severe testing time has now come, when it will be seen whether, after all, the more cautious Wellingtonian methods of Wesley laid ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... She did not feel that it was. And now she felt selfless. She was no more thinking of herself, was no longer obliged to concentrate her thoughts and her imagination upon herself and the one she loved best. She had passed beyond that, as she had passed beyond the Madonna della Rocca. She was the voice and the ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... in the fragile figure, lying day after day on a couch, to rouse a man's passion. Rather, Nan's utter weakness called forth all the solicitude and ineffable tenderness of which Peter was capable—such tenderness—almost maternal in its selfless, protective quality, as is only found in a strong man—never ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... is so noble and attractive in its selfless and manful simplicity that it gives us and leaves with us a more cordial sense of sympathetic regard and respect for his creator than we could feel if this gallant and homely figure were withdrawn from the stage of his invention. The female ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... must therefore be with Smith. Beyond this there was unnamed wonder at the unexplained influence that Smith held over her, and more curious thoughts, stretching out like the delicate tendrils of an unsupported vine, concerning Halsey, his prayers and warnings, and the strength of selfless devotion that she had ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... humble, so entirely selfless in his devotion, thinking only of her, that she was touched inexpressibly—tempted, even. Ah! If she could only put all the past aside, out of sight, and take this love that Robin offered her and hold it round ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... changed would be these features. Then, I suspect, Thou wouldst the humblest prove of loving creatures, And not object To do the very things I am declaring I'd undertake for thee, with selfless daring, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... one's neighbour, will be relieved of the hostile pressure of its arch-enemy, the anti-social instinct of selfishness,[21] and will therefore make rapid and vigorous growth. The sense of justice is, as might be expected, strongly developed in the selfless atmosphere of Utopia, where indeed it has helped, in no small degree, to evolve the wonderful social life of the school; and, that being so, there is no fear but what the Utopian will be sustained by ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... THE WHEEL? Awake it. See if you are sailing, or drifting. Set the compass of your Mind to new thoughts, fresh purposes, selfless desires, fill your sails with boundless hope, and let your daily voyage spell SERVICE in a big way. You are not a chip on the River of Life, you are a Supreme Master in a Universe of Facts. You think you are stuck in the harbor mud, but it is only that the tide is out. Command your ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... and disaster in a woman's life seem to have no sacredness for her women friends. Yet if that same friend whom she has run down is ill, the runner down will nurse her day and night with absolutely selfless devotion." ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... arose, he would declare impressively that his sacred duty was the making of Marmaduke into a scholar and a Christian. That duty accomplished, he would begin to think of himself. Mrs. Trevor accounted him the most devoted and selfless friend that woman ever had. He saw eye to eye with her in every detail of Marmaduke's upbringing. He certainly taught the boy, who was naturally intelligent, a great deal, and repaired the terrible gaps in Miss Gunter's system of education. McPhail had started life ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husband folk that fold in their tiny flocks on the honey leaf, and the virgin sister with the holy instincts of maternal love detached and in selfless purity, and not say in himself, Behold the shadow of approaching humanity, the sun rising from behind in the kindling morn of creation?" There is fancy here; but it is that sagacious fancy, vouchsafed to only the true poet, which has so often proved the pioneer of scientific ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... have said, was twice inarticulate; she had two spaces of silence, one when she, pure and selfless patriot, had heard her condemnation to death. Passing out of the court she beckoned to her friends, and signified to them her sentence "by a gesture." And again there was a pause, in the course of her last days, during which her speeches ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... wise, and sympathetic counsellor. It was she who shielded his sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life, answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him from all parts of the world. By her quiet sense of humour, by her selfless devotion, by ‘her faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,’ she helped him also to the utmost in the hours of his depression and ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and the pains of an evil dream seem real to the dreamer. Our life upon earth is a state of sleep. Yet we do not sleep utterly. There are gleams in our darkness,—faint auroral wakenings of Love and Pity and Sympathy and Magnanimity: these are selfless and true;—these are eternal and divine;—these are the Four Infinite Feelings in whose after-glow all forms and illusions will vanish, like mists in the light of the sun. But, except in so far as we wake to these feelings, we are dreamers indeed,— ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Green Valley only a few weeks the old life began to grow vague and unreal. The mother was real and near. But the splendid figure of his father was fading into a strange memory. He was a father to be proud of, that strong, cool, selfless man who had asked nothing of life but to take what ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... our stricken Soldiers! Nobler task, Or more ennobling, can our Sisters ask? Whilst stout hearts suffer, soft ones shall not fail In selfless readiness to soothe and save, Sharing the tribute rendered by the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... since you never have seen him, I don't know that I can hope to convey any right conception of Wilde's truly remarkable character. He is, to begin with, the best of men. Picture, if you can, a nature with a soul completely beautiful and selfless, and a nervous surface quite as pachydermatous and indiscriminating as that of an ox. Wilde accepts everybody's estimate of himself. Not only the quality of his mercy, but also of his admiration, is quite unstrained. So that he sees the friend of his youth not at all as ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... your mountain is not the only place which holds a Sunlight Patch! There is one everywhere," her hand, unconsciously placed against her breast, now pressed as she spoke. "In everyone there must be that same selfless desire to give the last horse and the last nine dollars to whomsoever it may carry to a higher goal, or mankind is a failure. Learn this now. Do not think because you were born in Sunlight Patch that any of its ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... of death-charged guns With murder in their hearts to prove their worth. The grandest heroes who have graced the earth Were love-filled souls who did not seek the fray, But chose the safe, hard, high, and lonely way Of selfless labour for a suffering world. Beneath our glorious flag again unfurled In victory such heroes wait to be Called into bloodless action, Peace, by thee. Be thou insistent in thy stern demand, And wise, great men shall ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... as I think, did for the Chinese was to publish the syntax and vocabulary of that ancient language; to make people understand how to take these grand protagonists of Tao; how to communicate familiarly with these selfless avatars of the Most High. Listen to this: the thought is close-packed, but I think you ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... fulfills that great opportunity, and becomes in spirit and in truth, as well as in outward seeming, the College Beautiful which her daughters see in their visions and dream in their dreams, it will be by the soaring, unconquerable faith—and the prompt and selfless works—of the daughter who said to a college in ruins, on that March morning, "The members of the college will report for duty on the appointed date after the spring vacation," and sent her flock away, comforted, high-hearted, expectant ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... save her from the necessity of answering, and walked to the far end of the verandah, leaving her alone with the strongest temptation she had yet experienced—the temptation to trample on her own imperious love, and to accept this man's selfless devotion in the hope that it might one day conquer ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the few cases where I had the chance to be kind." Why, Rachel Pitstone's life had been one continuous selfless offering to God and man, from her childhood to her last hour! He knew very well what he had owed her—what others had owed—to her genius for sympathy, for understanding, for a compassion which was also a stimulus. He missed her sorely. At that very moment, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... creeping populations, the soil riddled with the sluggish voluptuousness of worms; each tiniest creature a perfect expression of the idea of its essence, individualized by its conatus, its effort to persist in existence on its own lines, though in man alone the potentiality of entering through selfless Reason into the intellectual ecstasy of the love with which God loves Himself—to be glad of the strength of the lion and the grace of the gazelle and the beauty of the woman who belongs to another. Blessings on the happy lovers, blessings on all the wonderful creation, praise, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... words, he told her of West's abortive attempt to plunge a second time into the black depths from which he had so recently escaped, of the man's absolutely selfless devotion, of his rigid refusal to suffer even her love for him to move him ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... mountain-top. Dark, rich, earth-born, earth-fast, material, she looked down at Creed where he stood beside her, his hand on the sorrel's neck, his calm blue eyes raised to hers. Her gaze lingered on the fair hair flying in the March breeze, above a face selfless as that of some young prophet. Her eager, undisciplined nature found here what it craved. Coquetry had not availed her; it had fallen off him unrecognised—this man who answered it absently, and thought his own thoughts. And with the divine pertinacity ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... but he had rejected them for a course fantastic and fatal when looked at in the light of ordinary reason. A struggle between the East and the West was here to be fought out between two wills; between an intellectual libertine steeped in Oriental guilt and cruelty and self-indulgence, and a being selfless, human, and in an agony of remorse for a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would be fatal not to be wholly frank now. George will act toward you only as your long worship of him, your sacrifices—all the unseen little ones every day since he was born—will make him act. Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is the history of your own selfless and perfect motherhood. I remember saying once that what you worshipped in your son was the angel you saw in him—and I still believe that is true of every mother. But in a mother's worship she may not see that the Will in her son ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... American people in this matter has been monstrous. And this is not because of any lack of knowledge on the part of the government. It has been because of the petty natures of the men to whom this secret has been entrusted. Jealousies have dictated policy where selfless public service was of the ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... yielding, so selfless, so absolutely uncritical, that if any woman could marry late she was the woman. She could have lived with a monster of egotism without finding it out. Had she not devoted herself to two such monsters most of her life? And perhaps Mr. Kingston was not a monster. Aunt Emmy arranged ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the 'I' being duly blended with the 'We.' I object to be a 'selfless man,' which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. I am bound to take careful thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... working for unselfish ends; not one of us here present can say for a certainty whom the Augusta will choose for mate. Directly the tyrant is swept out of the way, we, who have brought about the great end, will ask her to make her choice. Thus our aims will have been pure and selfless; each one of us here will have risked all for the sake of an unknown. What say you friends? Shall we pledge our loyalty to the man whom not one of us here can name this day—a man mayhap still unknown to us: the future lord of Dea Flavia Augusta of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to be doing: the Eastern to be suffering. The perfect life would be a harmony between (selfless or non-attached) doing and suffering. Worship the terrible. Worship Death, for its own sake; despair for its own sake; pain for its own sake. Yet this is not the coward's or the suicide's or the weakling's morbid love of Death, but it is the cry of the philosopher who has sounded ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... husband, "do not." This was the place for Mildred Lorimer to fling her own why but her husband was too quick for her. "Because she is so much finer and sounder and saner and sweeter as she is. Mildred, I have never seen any living creature so selfless. What was the word they coined in that play about Mars?—'Otherdom?' That's it, yes; otherdom. That's Honor Carmody. She could have finished grammar school at twelve, but Jimsy needed ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... through all the successive ages of history, and a history of this growth is a history of its conflicts. No study of any Indian system is therefore adequate unless it is taken throughout all the growth it attained by the work of its champions, the commentators whose selfless toil for it had kept it living through the ages ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... people. His elders knew not what had come over him, although Elspeth Macfadyen was mysteriously apologetic, and in moments of sanity he despised himself. One day he came to a good resolution suddenly, and went down to see Rabbi Saunderson—the very thought of whose gentle, patient, selfless life was ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Lastly, his letter, so simple, so direct, and yet, to one who knew his quiet, reserved nature, so deeply charged with feeling, had brought the first small seed to a blossoming which quickened every pulse of her nature into ardent, sentient life. This woman, who had always been singularly selfless, far more interested in the lives of those about her than in ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... not know it was prayer; it was just a cry: "Do something—oh, do something! Do you hear me? She tried so hard to save Jacky. Make her get well!" So it was that, in his selfless cry for happiness for Eleanor, Maurice found all those differing realizations—Joy, and Law, and Life, and Love—and lo! they were one—a personality! God. In his frantic words he established a relationship with Him—not It, any longer! "Please, please make ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... delight in the flesh; it thrills the spirit with reverence. It glorifies into beauty commonplace things. It draws nearer in sickness and sorrow, and is not the sport of change. When a woman loves truly she has the passion of the mistress, the selfless tenderness of the mother, the dignity and devotion of the wife. She is all fire and snow, all will and frankness, all passion and reserve, she is authoritative and ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... a marvel, a miracle in the universe of mortal mind. With selfless love, he inscribes on the heart of humanity and transcribes on the page of reality the living, palpable presence—the might and majesty!—of goodness. He lives for all mankind, and [10] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... weapon in the war for plain truth. But, while he could not but uphold a theory so much in accord with his own knowledge and so fruitful in its promise of new knowledge, whether the author of it were his friend or not, admiration and affection for a man of such utter sincerity, such selfless respect for truth, and warm personality, led him, when those views were stupidly or maliciously attacked, to take more trouble in his defence and support, and to strike out much harder at his adversary than he would otherwise have done. Darwin's friends ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... ambition whatever for himself, but he would have toiled to succeed for her. It was his weakness to require someone to work for as he was working for the Boy; a purely personal ambition seemed to him a vexing, vain, and insufficient motive for action. All selfless people suffer from indolence when only their own interests are in question; they require a strong incentive from without to arouse them. Such incentive as the Tenor had was in itself a pleasure to him, a refinement of pleasure which might be coarsened, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Lebrun's. Not that she did not season the odd avowals of Donnegan with a grain of salt, but even when she had discounted all that he said, she retained a quivering interest. Somewhere beneath his words she sensed reality. Somewhere beneath his actions she felt a selfless willingness to ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... unexpected holes, and he was both warm and dishevelled when he reached the end of it and found himself out in the open within a short distance of what he recognized as beehives. It was not for some time that he was able to give that selfless attention to exterior objects which is the prowler's chief asset. For quite a while the only thought of which he was conscious was that what he needed most was a cold drink and a cold bath. Then, with a return to clear-headedness, ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... more willing and selfless service out of men if you are seen of them, known of them, and if, perhaps, you suffer with them ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... than politically ordained national objectives to challenge the best efforts of free men and women. A group of selfless and devoted individuals, outside of government, could effectively participate in making the necessary appraisal of the potentials of our future. The result would be establishment of national goals that would not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... if I had to choose a sphere where one could rediscover the central forces of Christian life and of Christian practise, I would lean toward the enlightened democracies which to-day are vibrant with the plea that the shepherdless multitudes shall have social ameliorations and new incentives and selfless leaders. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... undying element in human-nature, a shame-faced derogatory name for the romantic, self-immolating emotion woven from fancy, yearning and the infection of other's ardour. Love of this foam and flame quality, too tender to be mere aesthetic absorption in a beautiful object, too selfless to be sensual, too intense to be only absurd, rose up towards Madame Okraska and encompassed her from hundreds of hearts and eyes. The whole audience was for her one vast heart of adoration, one fixed face of half-hypnotized tenderness. And there ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and women who have this work in hand I have seen enough—in France and in my own country, at least—to know their worth, and the selfless idealism which animates them. Their devotion, courage, tenacity, and technical ability are beyond question or praise. I would only fear that in the hard struggle they experience to carry each day's work to its end, to perfect their ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy |
