"Abasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... His very 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. Now she sat quite still by his side, now rose and wandered about the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... of course it wasn't true, I hope no harm is done, it is only his incorrigible——' Oh, to hear that woman's voice in that deep abasement! Lyon had no nefarious plan, no conscious wish to practise upon her shame or her loyalty; but he did say to himself that he should like to bring her round to feel that there would have been more dignity in a union with a certain other person. He even dreamed of the hour when, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... self-abasement passed between them. It was as though a great stream bore them on its breast; an awful and majestic power enwrapped them, and made each word, each kiss, wonderful, sacramental. He drew himself away at last, holding her hair back from her brow and temples, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has hitherto been called holy, good, intangible, or divine; to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value, would already practically imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enough appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on earth, and alongside of all past solemnities ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... he says, “is so visible, that some have conceived that man must have two souls—a simple subject appearing to them incapable of such and so sudden variations; an immeasurable presumption on the one hand, a horrible abasement on the other. In spite of all the miseries which cleave to us, and hold us, as it were, by the throat (nous tiennent à la gorge), there is within us an irrepressible instinct which exalts us. The greatness of man is ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... suffering and sense of abasement passed, Truedale discovered that life in his little apartment was not only possible, but also his salvation. All the spiritual essence left in him survived best in those rooms. As time went by and Nella-Rose as an actuality receded, her memory remained unembittered. ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... couldn't say any more. And the father, smiling at her, thought he understood the emotions which tied her tongue, which underlay her fervent good night kiss. But he could never have guessed all the love, gratitude, repentance, self-abasement and high resolves at ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... The King confided in her, and yet 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 by ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the floor of the convent church, with his lips upon the lowest step of the altar, in an indescribable state of terror, misery, penitence, and self-abasement; through all of which struggled gleams of joy that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... to himself, 'I am rich today, just as was proper; and I only wonder how I endured life so long in abasement and misery. I must confess, too, that I do not know whether I can increase this immense property, for I need no more now, and I shall not have ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... between them was almost fantastic so strongly did the arrogance of the one emphasize the deep abasement of the other. Dacre was of large build and inclined to stoutness. He had the ruddy complexion of the English country squire. He moved with the swagger ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... there was at least nothing left for her to be or do—no choice between sackcloth and ashes and the livery of sin. The beatified penitents of the early Christian Church spoke another lesson—spoke divinely of hope for the fallen, hope without self- abasement or defiance. We, in these days, acknowledge no such saints; we have even done our best to dethrone Mary Magdalene; but we have martyrs—"by the pang without the palm"—and one, at least, among these who has not died without lifting up a voice ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... first of Jerusalem; but who without abasement can inhabit with infidels? Then Hagion Oras, the Holy Hill, occurred to me; the same argument applied against it as against return to the convent of Irene-I would be in reach of the Emperor's displeasure. One can study his own heart. Holding mine off, and looking at it alive with desires holy ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... 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 his actions, and to feel something of the same coldness ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... expressed great pain and profound self-abasement—"when I promised to marry you—someday, you will remember that I never said I loved you. I thought that I should learn to love in time. And so I ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and, with bare feet, join the religious in the regular exercises, in order to imitate their evangelical life!" A lively and enlightened faith, a solid and fervent piety, and a superior mind, convinced him that since the time of the abasement of the Son of God, humiliation is honorable, and adds to the splendor of the highest dignities; a truth which is not understood by persons of little faith, by the proud, the indevout, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... piety, while equally 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 fervor, invariably recalls to mind that pretty story ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... concealment, as has already been explained, was that of her intended husband, who, with the subterfuge of an interested spirit, had hoped to mislead the little circle of his own acquaintances and gratify his cupidity at the cheapest possible rate to himself. But there is a point of self-abasement beyond which the perfect consciousness of right rarely permits even the most timid to proceed. As the bride moved up the lane of human bodies, her eye grew less disturbed and her step firmer,—for the pride of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the feet was spiritual, and served as a species of absolution. Peter, in his zeal, saw nothing in it but too great an act of abasement on the part of his Master; he knew not that to save him Jesus would the very next day humble himself even to the ignominious ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... class; and shall I take merit to myself, because God has 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, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... is to pursue; they demand every effort on her part to prevent America from being reduced to the British domination, her commerce, and those sources of wealth being restored to the tyrant of the European seas, the ancient rival of France; but on the contrary, the abasement of this rival, and the establishment of a faithful ally, united by all the ties of gratitude, affection, and the most permanent mutual interests. To those invaluable purposes give me leave to repeat to your Excellency, that the decisive measures in ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... and barren speculations; to persistently withdraw our thoughts from the unknowable, the inevitable, and the irreparable; to concentrate them on the immediate present and on the nearest duty; to waste no moral energy on excessive introspection or self-abasement or self-reproach, but to make the cultivation and the wise use of all our powers the supreme ideal and end of our lives; to oppose labour and study to affliction and regret; to keep at a distance gloomy thoughts and exaggerated ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... 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 To villain-bonds ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... himself up obstinately in his isolation, like Marsa in her solitude; and he did not consider himself ridiculously absurd or foolishly romantic, when he remembered that his countrymen, the Hungarians, were the only people, perhaps, who, in the abasement of all Europe before the brutality of triumph and omnipotent pessimism, had preserved their traditions of idealism, chivalry, and faith in the old honor; the Hungarian nationality was also the only ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... last, for all that I knew she loved me, in passionate self-abasement, white and a-tremble. She was staying with the Rockleys at Woking, for Shena Rockley had been at Bennett Hall with her and they had resumed a close intimacy; and I went down to her on an impulse, unheralded. I was kept waiting for some minutes, I remember, in a little ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... happiness really 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 ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... philosophical race—the English: Bacon represents an ATTACK on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself; it was Locke of whom Schelling RIGHTLY said, "JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in the struggle against the English mechanical stultification ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... impressed itself on the baby soul. There was English fortitude and courage, the endurance born of faith, and the higher evolution from English obstinacy, but there was for all of them, deep self-distrust and abasement; a sense of worthlessness that intensified with each generation; and a perpetual, unhealthy questioning of every thought and motive. The progress was slow but certain, rising first among the more sensitive natures of women, whose ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... dedicated. And yet Bertram was kind, she felt that, though dimly feeling, too, that her old image of him had grown tarnished. But her mind was far from Bertram and the mitigations he offered. She was fixed on that radiant figure, her husband, her knight, who had stooped to her in her abasement, her agony, and had lifted her from dust and darkness to the air where she could breathe,—and ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... thrice touch the ground, or the honored feet, with both his hands, which immediately he lays upon his forehead; and there are occasions of peculiar humiliation which require the profound prostration of the sashtangam, or abasement of the eight members, wherein the suppliant extends himself face downward on the earth, with palms joined above ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... that which I cannot credit!—You have not confidence in the power of my affection, or you would never have done this thing to save me pain. What pain can be so great to me as the thought of my husband's reputation suffering abasement?—Do you think that, in comparison with this, I, your wife, could put the loss of a service of plate, or house in town, or equipage, or servants, or such baubles as these?" added she, her eyes glancing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Great one day said to his friend Hephaestion, that "the business of eating and drinking compelled him to remember, and with a sense of abasement, his mortal nature, although he ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... vice, and dark lairs abound, where sailors, laborers, and crowding criminals lurk, ready for their human prey. Their female accomplices are only the sirens watching these great strongholds of brazen vice. A greater luxury only gilds a lower form of human abasement. The motley horde, wallowing on the "Barbary Coast" and in the mongrel thieves' haunts of "Pacific Street," the entrenched human devils on "Telegraph Hill" are but natural ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical instances, the whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced in and in upon the matter in hand from every point of the compass, and from every degree of mental elevation and abasement—these are the material with which talk is fortified, the food on which the talkers thrive. Such argument as is proper to the exercise should still be brief and seizing. Talk should proceed by instances; by the apposite, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... xxviii. 18, where a list is given of the towns wrested from Judah by the Philistines. The delight felt by the Philistines at the sight of Judah's abasement seems to be referred to in the short prophecy of Isaiah (xiv. 29-32), wrongly ascribed to the year ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to lay hold of her—by the arms, by the shoulders, by the throat. Conquering this impulse, he stood motionless, passing his hands through his hair. She dropped her eyes and hung her head. Their abasement in each other's eyes was complete. He was ashamed before her, she was ashamed before him. One moment they faced each other thus, in silence, in pitiless and awful silence, and then slowly, very slowly, stupefied and crushed, he turned away and crept ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... took me, that they shrank from meeting her gaze with something of the same shame and dread I myself felt. But she! Can I ever hope to make you realise her look, or comprehend the pang of utter self-abasement with which I succumbed before it? It was so terrible that I seemed to hear her utter words, though I am sure she did not speak; and with some wild idea of stemming the torrent of her reproaches, I made an effort at explanation, and impetuously cried: "It was ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... must be noted, in passing, that the studied abasement of the Tiers Etat had already begun to bear some fruit that should have alarmed every patriotic heart. It was, as we have seen, impossible to obtain good French infantry except from Gascony and some other border provinces. The place that should have been held by natives was filled by Germans ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... that 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 ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... time since the death of King Louis XIV., her history finds once more a centre, and henceforth revolves round a single man. For fifteen years, victorious or vanquished, at the summit of glory, or in the depths of abasement, France and Europe, overmastered by an indomitable will and unbridled passion for power, were compelled to squander their blood and their treasure upon that page of universal history which General Bonaparte claims for his ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... the man turned, and strolled slowly past us, with that ineffable insolence which is the other side of the flunkey's insufferable self-abasement. He cast a glance at us as he went by, a withering glance of brazen effrontery. We knew him now, of course: it was that variable star, our old acquaintance, Mr. Higginson ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Once, indeed, I lifted an accusing arm to heaven. It was as if I had pulled the string of a douche-bath. Heaven flooded the fool with gratuitous tears; and the fool sat in the puddle of them and knew his folly. But heaven at the same time mercifully veiled that figure of abasement: and I will lift but a corner ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Dido makes, it has been said, "an irredeemable poltroon of him in all honest English eyes." Dryden can only save his character by a jest, and Rousseau damns it with an epigram. Mr. Keble supposes that in the interview among the Shades the poet himself intended the abasement of his hero, and Mr. Gladstone has capped this by a theory that Vergil meant to draw his readers' admiration, not to AEneas ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... any rate, that he should never have shown it. He would have preferred that Darius should have accepted his help nonchalantly, grimly, thanklessly, as a right. And if through disease, the old man could not cease to be a tyrant with dignity, could not become human without this appalling ceremonial abasement—better that he should have exercised harshness and oppression to the very end! There was probably no phenomenon of human nature that offended Edwin's instincts ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... government which supported it, and the common people possessed no individuality, no power, and hardly any rights. Such, then, was the condition of the towns at the time of the Lombard invasion, a condition of such abasement and such degradation as literally to have no history; a condition which indeed can truthfully be said to ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... upon me a look of keen observation, not unmixed with surprise. It might mean one thing; it might mean another; how could I tell? He always impressed me so with his superiority that even in that moment, when my honor and life's happiness were at stake, I was conscious of a feeling of abasement and guiltiness that I dare accuse him to his face. Perhaps, he saw that I was frightened at my own temerity; at all events he was not ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Job in utter abasement offered her a limp paw. She touched it, and he scampered back to his former place with an air of relief, and turning his back to her lay down again. It cannot be said that his enforced obedience made her feel ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Bigot, you never wore me next your heart, although you said so! You wear the lady of Beaumanoir next your heart. You have opened your heart to her after pledging it to me! If I was the pearl of price, you have adorned her with it—my abasement is her glory!" Angelique's tall, straight figure stood up, magnified with fury ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... been the least offence, and entreating him never to think of the matter again. "He said that he was a fool, but he was God's fool," Holmes quoted from the letter, with a true sense of the pathos and the humor of the self-abasement. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... but I know one was a rock and the other a whirlpool, though I cannot state, with any definiteness, which was which.) I may be as humble and deprecating as I choose, but it will not avail me. A very agony of self-abasement will be no armor against the poisoned shafts which assumed superiority will hurl against me. Yet I press the arrow to my bleeding heart, and calmly reiterate, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... freedom,—hearts, like theirs, which had caught inspiration from the heroes and martyrs of liberty,—good right arms, like theirs, which wielded the implements of war as readily as the implements of labor, all scouted the very thought of such unutterable abasement. By the patriotism which abhors treason, by the fortitude which endures privation, by the intrepidity which faces death, they proved themselves worthy of the great continent they inhabit by showing themselves capable of upholding the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... to France, had aroused and disseminated against the memory of Richelieu. This feeling was universal—among the great families he had decimated or despoiled;—in the Church, too firmly repressed not to be unmindful of its abasement;—in the Parliament, strictly confined to its judicial functions, and aspiring to break through such narrow limits. The same feeling was still alive in the Queen's bosom, who could not have forgotten the deep humiliation to which Richelieu had subjected her, and the fate ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... backward in astonishment at any familiarity advanced by a passing stranger. The oak that assumes an attitude of pride and self-importance; the oak that approaches a superior neighbour with an air of humility and abasement, listening subserviently to his commands. The shrinking oak in dread of an enemy, and the oak prepared to offer a stout resistance. The hopeful oak in the prime of life, and the oak that totters in desolate and crabbed old age. The ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... sing the song of Sigurd and the face without a foe, And they sing of the prison's rending and the tyrant laid alow, And the golden thieves' abasement, and the stilling of the churl, And the mocking of the dastard where the chasing edges whirl; And they sing of the outland maidens that thronged round Sigurd's hand, And sung in the streets of the foemen of the war-delivered land; And they tell how ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... my child," he said gently, "would you not rather see your grandfather—an honorable, high-minded gentleman—acquitted of an unjust accusation, even at the expense of some abasement and perhaps heart- aches on your part, rather than allow him to continue to suffer disgrace in order to shield you from ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... 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 ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... would speak of them. That she should show here After the late events, betokens much! Abasement in so proud a woman's heart [His voice grows tremulous.] Is not without a dash of painfulness. And I beseech you, sire, that you hold out Some ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this singular behavior to arise ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Simpleton is troubled in his heart and in the humility of this affliction he discovers "all at once" a secret door, which shows him the entrance into the mystical life. The door is on the surface of the earth, in abasement, as the third feather determined it in advance. As Simpleton discreetly obeyed it, he strolled along the path that the door opened for him. Three steps, three fundamental forces. So Christ had to descend before ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Scotland," cried Davies, roguishly. "Mr. Johnson" (said I), "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression "come from Scotland," which I used in the sense of being of that country; and as if I had said that I had come away from ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... love him devotedly still, in spite of my pretended indifference. On such occasions I have sometimes been startled by a subtle, fiendish suggestion inciting me to show him the contrary by a seeming encouragement of Hargrave's advances; but such ideas are banished in a moment with horror and self-abasement; and then I hate him tenfold more than ever for having brought me to this!—God pardon me for it and all my sinful thoughts! Instead of being humbled and purified by my afflictions, I feel that they are turning my nature into gall. This must be my fault as much ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... a bad name, and the girls of her organization were forbidden to so much as walk in that direction. It took her a long time to understand, and she suffered horribly when she did. There were depths of wickedness, then, and of abasement like that in the world. It was a bad world, a cruel, sordid world. She did not want to live ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his hands, to his mother he urg'd his petition:— "Since I was born of thee, mother, with fewness of days for my fore-doom, Surely Olympian Zeus, who is heard in the thunder of AEther, Owed me in honour to live; but to-day he decrees my abasement. Open contempt is my portion—for now wide-ruling Atreides Tramples upon me himself, and has seiz'd and possesses my guerdon." Thus amid tears did he speak, and the mother majestical heard him, Sitting afar in the deep by her father the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... for nothing more; yet at the end, before life left him, one strange last change came over him. Both his rough passion and the terrible abasement of defeat seemed to leave him, and his face became again the face of a well-bred, self-controlled man. There was a helpless effort at a shrug of his shoulders, a scornful slight smile on his lips, and a look of recognition, almost of ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... was disarmed, Laramie was not through with Stone. Sullen and obdurate, he was ordered to face away, while Bradley from behind searched his pockets. And the crown of his abasement was reached when Bradley drew from a hip pocket a full flask of whisky. The material advantage of the find was not great, but the tactical advantage was enormous. Behind Stone, Bradley silently but jeeringly held it up as an exhibit for the thirsty Texas men; and to show it was full, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... Davies, 'Don't tell where I come from.'—'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expence of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression 'come from Scotland,' which I used in the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had said that I had come away ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Lowly, penitent, sincere, Worthiest of adoration, God, the Holy One is here!— Here, while through the open casement Gently beams the rising day, While, in contrite self abasement, Rev'rently we kneel ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... down, downstairs. abandonar to abandon. abastecer to purvey, supply. abasto provisions. abatimiento abasement, dejection. abatir to throw down. abdicar to abdicate. abeto fir. abierto (from abrir) open. abismar to engulf, plunge. abismo abyss. abogado advocate, lawyer. abono manure, fertilizer. abrazar to embrace. abrazo embrace. abreviar ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... geological strata. Masses of experience, anecdote, incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical instances, the whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced in and in upon the matter in hand from every point of the compass, and from every degree of mental elevation and abasement - these are the material with which talk is fortified, the food on which the talkers thrive. Such argument as is proper to the exercise should still be brief and seizing. Talk should proceed by instances; ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rejoiced to have Tannhaeuser amongst them, and 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. Elisabeth has "nothing to do with the case." However, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... have felt exalted to the proudest height that human nature was capable of attaining. But Solomon had not only heard of God by the hearing of the ear, but by internal communion had seen and conversed with him. He could say with Job, when he had been restored from the deepest abasement to an elevated position, 'Mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' Thus, in Solomon's beautiful prayer on the dedication of this gorgeous temple, he humbly inquires, 'Will God in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Principles of Morals the most vital of his works. It may be true, as the mordant insight of Mark Pattison suggested, that "those periods in which morals have been represented as the proper study of man, and his only business, have been periods of spiritual abasement and poverty." Certainly no one will be inclined to claim for the eighteenth century the spiritual idealism of the seventeenth, though Law and Bishop Wilson and the Wesleyan revival will make us generalize with caution. But the ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... superior person. The man was tall and gaunt, self-contained—a little aloof—he asked for nothing, and realized his own worth. He commanded respect because he respected himself—there was neither abnegation, apology nor abasement in his manner. Once I saw him walking in the Strand, and I noticed that the pedestrians instinctively made way, although probably not one out of a thousand had any idea who he was. No one ever affronted him, nor spoke ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... abasement.] You are a good man, Billy. [Billy shows that he believes it.] And I am ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... of Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV. with some of those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement. Fenelon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law, had written his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the palace of the king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne. The political philosophy of Christianity, that insurrection of justice in ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... one trait in a gentleman. Sidney Carton is of the same sort, save that the hero element stands more apparent. His is a larger field, a more attractive background, thus throwing his figure into clearer relief. Deacon Phoebe was the self-abasement of humility, Sidney Carton is the supreme surrender of love; but the end of both is service. There ought to be a gallery in our earth from which men and women might lean and look on nobilities like Sidney Carton. That beatified face; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... length, after more entreaty and self-abasement on my part, she opened the door. The room was dark. We sat down together on the window-seat, and all at once she relaxed and her head fell on my shoulder, and she began weeping again. I held her, the alternating moods still running ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... those who have been favourites of fortune, even though worthy of the smiles in which they basked; but those who rose superior to fortune, who could not frown them down. Nor have they withheld their homage from the unfortunate in this world of chance and change, if, in abasement of condition, by doing its duties they upheld the dignity of their own nature, and looked round them on their honest brethren in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... She did not wish to go in to her work just yet, for calm as she had appeared during the interview her emotions were running full tide. Love Ed Sorenson? Marry him? She groped for and dropped into a wicker chair, her head sinking in shame and self-abasement. Never—never! ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... the Saint had often read their most 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 ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... I was," said he weakly, his shaken mind incapable of comprehending things as they were, his abasement over the breach that he had committed being so profound. She withdrew her hand. When it was gone out of his, he remembered how warm it was with the tide of her young body, and how soft for his own work-roughened fingers to ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... very abject to talk and feel thus, and I don't believe that God approves of it," I said, indignantly. "He gives us self-respect, and commands us to cherish it. Such abasement is unworthy of Christian souls. It is very bitter to die, as young as we are; but, if we have done our best to serve Him, we need—we ought not to be afraid to ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... their clothes and wear only the most filthy rags; women, particularly the widows, take off ornaments and almost all dress; their faces are painted white with chalk, their heads are shaven, and they sit crouched on the earth in the house, in the attitude of abasement, the hands resting on the shoulders, palm downwards, not crossed across the breast, unless they are going ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in the firmament of the churches,[329] that spiritual pride was his easily besetting sin, and that he needed the thorn in the flesh, lest he should be exalted above measure. A sense of this weakness probably led him to peculiar watchfulness against it. His self-abasement was neither tinctured with affectation, nor with the pride of humility. His humble-mindedness appeared to arise form his intimate communion with Heaven. In daily communion with God, he received a daily ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... had no money of their own, were supported in prison by their majas and amigas, females of a certain class, who form friendships with robbers, and whose glory and delight it is to administer to the vanity of these fellows with the wages of their own shame and abasement. These females supplied their cortejos with the snowy linen, washed, perhaps, by their own hands in the waters of the Manzanares, for the display of the Sunday, when they would themselves make their appearance dressed a la maja, and from the corridors ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to seek business, he must find his employment in lower and still lower grades; and will soon come to verify and illustrate the remark of Lord Bolingbroke, that "the profession of the law, in its nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind, is in its abuse and abasement, the most sordid ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... those cheerful depths where there is no social or artistic status to maintain; so low as to be expected to do, or attempt to do, whatever might be asked of them, even though failure plunged them, if possible, in deeper depths of abasement. There was nothing beneath them except the Artichokes; and it was seldom, very seldom, an ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... 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. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... sin, and He wills that we should come with broken and contrite hearts, and like the king of Israel wail out our confessions and supplications—'Have mercy upon me, O God! according to Thy loving-kindness.' But, like him, we should even in our lowliest abasement, when our hearts are bruised, be able to say along with our contrition, 'Open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.' Our sorrows are never so great that they hide our mercies. The sky is never so covered with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... painfully startled; "What sudden change has taken place in you?"—"Because for an hour I forgot my proper worth," Radbot's daughter continues violently, "do you think that I am fit only to crawl before you? I will take measures to wipe out my abasement. That which is due to me I am determined to receive!"—"Woe's me!" complains Elsa, "Was I duped by your feigning, when you stole to me last night with your pretended grief? And do you now haughtily demand precedence of me, you, the wife of a man ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Yea and Nay, between Willy and Nilly. Serenely, serenely, you will drift to your grave, and never once know what it is to be consumed, harried, driven by a deep, inextinguishable, unassuageable craving to write a song. You 'll never know the heartburn, the unrest, the conscience-sickness, the self-abasement that I know when I 'm not writing one, nor the glorious anguish of exhilaration when I am. I can get no conception of your state of mind—any more than a nightingale could conceive the state of mind of a sparrow. In a sparrowish way, it must be rather blissful—no? ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... his nobles were deeply affected by the sight of his distress. Many of them, coming from a distance, and not having realised what was taking place in the capital, were filled with astonishment on beholding the voluntary abasement of their master, whom they had reverenced as the all-powerful lord of the whole country. His will, they told him, was their law now as ever, and if he thought the sovereign of the strangers was the ancient lord of their country, they were willing ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... thing! 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 ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... reaching a conclusion which tallies with our rarest moments of super-normal insight we discover that we have reached a conclusion which tallies with our moments of profoundest self-abasement. In these recurrent moods of humiliation it seems ridiculous to speak of the creative or the destructive energy of the mind. What presents itself to us in such moods is a world of forms and shapes that ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... thus far, to this degree of disorder and abasement, that a noble people had been dragged downwards in the course of years, sinking constantly deeper, abandoning, one by one, its guarantees, losing its titles to the esteem of other nations, approaching the abyss, seeing the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... instant Larry continued to gaze at Maggie's slender, trembling figure. But something approaching a miracle—a very human miracle—had just happened. All those doubts, fears, indecisions, unexpressed desires, agonies of self-abasement, which might have delayed their understanding and happiness for weeks and months, had been swept into nothingness by the incisive kindliness of Miss Sherwood. In one minute she had said all they might have said ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... a spurious appearance of piety and religion. Although abasement is the opposite to pride, yet is he that abases himself most akin ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... endured for the human nature which in his savage youth he had betrayed. Yet out of his supreme and endless striving to undo, to make reparation, to give his life, to find God, had come, it seemed to Wade in his abasement, only a ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... high-blown pride at length breaks under him." Trent's smile suddenly returned. "I could have borne everything but that last revelation of the impotence of human reason. Cupples, I have absolutely nothing left to say, except this: you have beaten me. I drink your health in a spirit of self-abasement. And you shall pay for ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... works, he thus confesses his poverty and distress, and forms the valley of humility. And because he is humble and in need, and because he confesses his need, he makes his plaint to the kindness and mercy of God. He is conscious of the sublimity of God, and of his own abasement. ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... does not, like the great oriental religions, 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 ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Tho[mon]d(66) and Will: all [the] party is so broke up at present that they are au desespoir. The Bedfords are in extraordinary good humour; that elevation of spirit does them no more credit than their precedent abasement; the equus animus seems a stranger to them. G. Greenv.(67) is certainly [befouled] as a Minister, but he is so well manured in other respects that he cannot be an object ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... into the depths of self-abasement. I spared no harsh details. I told of the shampoo, and the candy on the window-ledge, the magazine under the bed. Religiously I itemized every article on my person, giving every one her proper due. Then I excused myself and went up-stairs. I sneaked into my own room, removed ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... nowhere more, I think, than on the part of certain persons who had never read a word of him, or assuredly had never spent a shilling on him, and who hung for hours over the other attractions of the newspaper that announced his abasement. So much asperity cheered me a little—seemed to signify that he might really be doing something. On the other hand I had a distinct alarm; some one sent me for some alien reason an American journal (containing frankly more than that source ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... the author of Hydriotaphia as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in search of materials for humiliation and abasement, he will find in the history of witchcraft in this country, from the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, large and abundant materials, whether it affects the species or the individual. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... 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 ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... o' navigation, Cap'," said the boatswain, who felt keenly my abasement, and was loth to "step into ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and without, utter humiliation, self-accusation, and abasement filled his soul. Jim sank to the ground by the little girl, and wept in an ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had combined to stimulate with multiplied adulation, with all the glory and ravishing delights of the world, as it were, forced upon him—to see him thus assailed with the savage execrations of all those vile things who exult in the fall of every thing that is great and the abasement of every thing that is noble, was indeed a spectacle which might have silenced malice ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... individual learned and powerful in the Gospel, all others to be insignificant and useless, he would willingly do it; he would be glad could he alone be regarded as Mister Smart. At the same time he affects deep humility, great self-abasement, and preaches of love and faith. But he would take it hard had he, in practice, to touch with his little finger what he preaches. This explains why the world is so filled with fanatics and schismatics, and why every man would master and outrank all others. Such as these are haughtier than those ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... [497:2] Bodily mortification was mistaken for holiness, and celibacy for sanctity. [497:3] Other errors of an equally grave character became current, for the penitent was described as making satisfaction for his sins by his fasts and his outward acts of self abasement, [497:4] and thus the all-sufficiency of the great atonement was openly ignored. Thus, too, the doctrine of a free salvation to transgressors could no longer be proclaimed, for pardon was clogged with conditions as burdensome to the sinner, as they were alien to the spirit of the New ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... tell him where I come from." "From Scotland," cried Davies roguishly. "Mr. Johnson," said I, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as a light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky, for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression, "come from Scotland!" which I used In the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had come ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... freedom—not only for the freedom of the Boers, but for the freedom of all the nations of South Africa. Its results we leave in God's hands. Perhaps it is His will to lead our nation through defeat, through abasement, yes, and even through the valley of the shadow of death, to the glory of a nobler future, to the light of ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... affections from the things of this world, a healing of controversies and animosities, a confession of wrongs, a breaking down before God, and penitent, broken-hearted supplications to Him for pardon and acceptance. It caused self-abasement and prostration of soul, such as we never before witnessed. As God by Joel commanded, when the great day of God should be at hand, it produced a rending of hearts and not of garments, and a turning unto the Lord with fasting, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... and moral filth, and the mental abasement, in our great Christian cities, where new churches are constantly built for the worship of God, where Bibles are circulated by the million, and where hundreds of sleek gentlemen flourish on the spoils of philanthropy. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... remorse. Now, too, that conscious of having fallen in all but the positive commission of the deed, he saw that the unsuspecting American regarded him merely as one whom accident or intrigue had made an unwilling witness of the deadly act of a desperate woman, his feelings were those of profound abasement and self disesteem. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... her 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 ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford |
