"Aspire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do, however, draw certain lines of character and manners and occupation. You see the sort of people we are. Of course we have no prejudice against color, and we regard all labor as honorable, provided a man does the best he can. But we must have standards that will give our people something to aspire to." ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... make use. Some anachronisms may be noted. Wherever they occur, they have been admitted, as aiding in the development of the story, and will probably be considered as of little importance in an unpretending volume, which does not aspire to ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... this difficulty, he could not afford to exasperate his debtors; as they could have so easily retaliated by accusing him of Christianity. The wealthy disciple could not accept the office of a magistrate, for he would have thus only betrayed his creed; neither could he venture to aspire to any of the honours of the state, as his promotion would most certainly have aggravated the perils of his position. Our Saviour had said—"I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... don't know it!" said Magsie Clay breezily. June was coming in, and Magsie was leaving town for the Villalonga camp. She told Rachael that she was "crazy" about Kent Parmalee, and Rachael's feeling of amazement that Magsie Clay could aspire to a Parmalee was softened by an odd sensation of relief at hearing Magsie's plans—a relief she ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... looks, good birth, good-humor, and good assurance will do much; but the want of one or more of these will not invalidate the election, nor the union of all four insure it. It must be very pleasant to serve in the compagnie d'elite. They have privileges to which the Line may not aspire. It does not much matter what they do. Their victories make them no enemies, and their defeats raise them up hosts of sympathizers and apologists. When they err gravely, if you hint at the misdemeanor, a "true believer" looks at you indignantly, not to say contemptuously, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... old rascal of a sexegenarian an excuse to bring his gray whiskers very near to the blooming visage of a girl whose charming modesty is shrined in colors more delicate than the blush on the cheek of a magnum-bonum plum. Sixty must not aspire after such fruitage; but in an omnibus, where's the harm? But we have a remark to make on nosology, or the noses of the group. So spicy a variety of folk cheek-by-jowl (Parthians and Elamites, Medes, Jews and Persians,) begets contrast. Nose-bridges of all styles show their peculiar architecture, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... animation of my countenance, and promising exterior, if not absolutely silly, I was a lad of very little sense, and without ideas of learning; in fine, very ignorant in all respects, and if I could arrive at being curate of some village, it was the utmost honor I ought ever to aspire to. Such was the account he gave of me to Madam de Warrens. This was not the first time such an opinion had been formed of me, neither was it the last; the judgment of M. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... plighted fair one first a ring—a rich and rare one - Next a bracelet, if she'll wear one, and a heap of things beside; And serenely bending o'er her, to inquire if it would bore her To say when her own adorer may aspire to call her bride! ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... desire to increase the reserve of military manhood formed a motive for colonisation. In the first place, the surplus manhood of a nation was lost to it if it was allowed to pass under an alien flag by emigration. Those continental states from which emigration took place on a large scale began to aspire after the possession of colonies of their own, where their emigrants could still be kept under control, and remain subject to the obligations of service. Germany, the state which beyond all others measures its strength ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... allowed a place in the bazaar;[1] he cannot engage in commerce. And in the mechanic arts, he cannot aspire higher than the position of a mason or carpenter; which, of course, is not to be compared to the standing of the same trades among us. When our missionaries went to Oroomiah, a decent garment on a Nestorian was safe only as ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... with my voting on that day," the bishop declared, with grim emphasis. "We must dispose of this fellow's pretensions once for all. It is preposterous that a professional baseball player and street-car conductor should aspire to become mayor of Warwick. An orator? Nonsense! Just a paltry gift of the gab. Balaam's is n't the only ass whose mouth the Lord in his inscrutable wisdom has ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: 15 I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; 20 And when he falls, he falls like ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... somewhat noted as a militia officer in Massachusetts, was vain enough to aspire to the command ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... stand there in right of the decayed merit of their ancestry look down with scorn upon their fellow-beings who toil below, and too often view with jealousy and repugnance, the endeavours of those who aspire to that eminence, of which they themselves are so vain and ostentatious. Elevation from an humble condition to conspicuity and rank, bespeaks superior personal merit; and to many of those who figure in, what ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... superior, he was ready to leave his pillar; nor did he consider this undertaking as any thing great or singular, by which he should appear distinguished from others. By humility he looked upon himself as justly banished from among men and hidden from the world in Christ. No one is to practise or aspire after virtue or perfection upon a motive of greatness, or of being exalted by it. This would be to fall into the snare of pride, which is to be feared under the cloak of sanctity itself. The foundation of Christian perfection is a love of humiliation, a sincere spirit of humility. The heroic practice ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... is carried to the fore like a toucan's crest. Some, by way of coquetterie, trace upon the scalp a complicated network, showing the finest and narrowest lines of black wool and pale skin: so the old traveller tells us "the heads of those who aspire to glory in apparel resemble a parterre, you see alleys and figures traced on them with a great deal of ingenuity." The bosom, elaborately bound downwards, is covered with a square bit of stuff, or a calico ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... engenders cheerful goodwill and loving sincerity. By its help we make others happy, and ourselves blest. We elevate our being and ennoble our lot. We rise above the grovelling creatures of earth, and aspire to the Infinite. And thus we link time to eternity; where the true Art of Living has its ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... hundred years in the county of Suffolk, and produced an eminent and wealthy serjeant-at-law, Sir Gregory Edgar, in the reign of Henry the Seventh. Of the sons of Robert Gibbon, (who died in 1643,) Matthew did not aspire above the station of a linen-draper in Leadenhall-street; but John has given to the public some curious memorials of his existence, his character, and his family. He was born on Nov. 3d, 1629; his education was liberal, at a grammar-school, and afterwards in Jesus ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... employing symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade and from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind, striving morally to ennoble themselves and others, and thereby to bring about a universal league of mankind, which they aspire to exhibit even now ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... if you love dancing and aspire to make it a career, you possess an innate sense of rhythm. You feel the swing of music and love to move your body to the strains of a lilting melody. The first great possessions of the successful stage ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... surprise ran through the crowd, and sharp censure followed fast. What! a cibolero,—a poor devil, of whom nothing was known, aspire to the smiles of a rico's daughter? It was not a compliment. It ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... has inherited a most beautiful suite of hangings of "applique work;" silks of many kinds are laid on a white brocade ground with every possible variety of stitch, forming richly and gracefully designed patterns; and showing to what cut work can aspire. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... America we believe in virility; we like a man to expand. But we believe in brotherhood too. We draw the line at niggers; but we aspire. Social barriers and distinctions ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; 210 Give back the need to worship, that still pours Down to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... woman, the greatest woman in the world. But lemme give you piece 'vice—pah! still drunk. They water my vinegar. [He shakes himself; clears his throat; and resumes soberly.] If Catherine takes a fancy to you, you may ask for roubles, diamonds, palaces, titles, orders, anything! and you may aspire to everything: field-marshal, admiral, ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... that lieth, sublime, Out of Space—out of Time. Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms and caves and Titan woods, 10 With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, 15 Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their still waters, still and chilly With the snows ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... done a little sailoring myself—as much as a woman can aspire to, you know. This is the Bay of ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... faults, they also have suffered the punishment. I will fuller shew the infelicity of these armes. The mercenary Captains are either very able men, or not: if they be, thou canst not repose any trust in them: for they will alwaies aspire unto their own proper advancements, either by suppressing of thee that art their Lord, or by suppressing of some one else quite out of thy purpose: but if the Captain be not valorous, he ordinarily ruines thee: and in case it be answered, that whoever shall have ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... you will vouchsafe me an Audience of Quarter of an Hour; I shall look upon it as the greatest Condescension in you, and as the greatest Honour done me. I told him he mistook my Title, and gave me one I never did aspire to; but that I was very ready to hear and serve him, for I had seen him often at Court offering Petitions, which were always rejected, and I had a ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... treason]," write these amiable Christians,[283] "we allow their lives out of special royal mercy—for they ought really to be put to death along with their fathers—but they are to receive no inheritances. Let them be paupers forever; let the infamy of their father ever follow them; they may never aspire to office; in their lasting poverty let death be a relief and life a punishment. Finally, any one who tries to intercede for these with us is also to be infamous."[284] However, to the daughters of the condemned ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will, Those quivering wings composed, that ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... of Phoebus' chariot, Phaeton, Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone, He could not rule his father's car of fire, Yet was it much, so nobly to aspire." ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... In general they are due to Locke's sensationalism, Hume's skepticism, a new emphasis upon reason as opposed to revelation and the self-sufficiency of the individual. If conscious life is nothing but sensation worked over and built up, then pleasurable sensations are the best we can aspire to, happiness is the end of the quest. So Utilitarianism defined goodness in terms of happiness and gave to conduct generally a grasping, greedy quality for which we have paid over and over again in the disappointments and disillusionments ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... stood behind her counter, sorting silks. Not rich piece silks that are made into gowns; Mrs. Duff's shop did not aspire to that luxurious class of goods; but humble skeins of mixed sewing-silks, that were kept tied up in a piece of wash-leather. Mrs. Duff's head and a customer's head were brought together over the bundle, endeavouring to fix upon a skein of a particular shade, by the help of the one gas-burner which ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... brave men, had won the esteem and confidence of her father, and, above all, had been listened to by him when he told him the secret of his love. As to the gaining of knighthood, in such stirring times it was no great matter for a brave squire of gentle birth to aspire to that honor. He would leave his bones among these Spanish ravines, or he would do some deed which would call the eyes of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The upper boughs have reached at once the light and their natural term of years. They are content to live, and little more. The central trunk no longer sends up each year a fresh perpendicular shoot to aspire above the rest, but, as weary of struggling ambition as they are, is content to become more and more their equal as the years pass by. And this is a law of social forest trees, which you must bear in mind whenever I speak of the influence ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Acts of Parliament by commission.[1120] Another innovation was introduced into the Act of Attainder, whereby it was declared treason for any woman to marry the King if her previous life had been unchaste; "few, if any, ladies now at Court," commented the cynical Chapuys, "would henceforth aspire to such an honour".[1121] The bill received the royal assent on the 11th of February, Catherine having declined Henry's permission to go down to Parliament and defend herself in person. On the 10th she was removed to the Tower, being dressed in black ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... whole heart; she was a beautiful woman, a noble woman, a wealthy woman. With her as his wife, love, riches, power might all be his. What more could the warm, warm feelings of youth desire? what more could the ambitions of youth aspire to? Yesterday, it is true, he had felt some rising of that noble pride which scorns to receive so much and give so little. He had formed a wild, almost passionate determination to obtain his brief before he obtained his bride, but Mr. Harman had soothed that pride to ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... said Girofle. "And the hand of a Princess is an honour to which I do not aspire, since I am ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... hold the happier specimen,— It may be, through that artist-preference For work complete, inferiorly proposed, To incompletion, though it aim aright. Morally, no! Aspire, break bounds! I say, Endeavour to be good, and better still, And best! Success is nought, endeavour's all. But intellect adjusts the means to ends, Tries the low thing, and leaves it done, at least; No prejudice to high thing, intellect Would do and will do, only give the means. Miranda, in my picture-gallery, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the painter sees, not what he conceives, which is presented to you. Herein he is distinguished from his preceptor VELASQUEZ. That great master, by his courtly habits of intercourse, contracted a more proud and swelling character, to which the simple and chaste pencil of MURILLO never sought to aspire. A plain and pensive cast, sweetly attempered by humility and benevolence, marks his canvass; and on other occasions, where he is necessarily impassioned or inflamed, it is the zeal of devotion, the influx of pious inspiration, and never the guilty passions which he exhibits. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... so nicely, To know how to avoid inevitable woe; Or how, in future times, our fate will go; To make us, in the midst of pleasure, sad, Or with predicted evil, drive us mad, Convert all blessings into curses dire? Is this the knowledge to which we aspire, Is it an error or a crime thus to believe That future destiny can thus be known? In place of star-gazing above our head, Let us confide ourselves to the Great One. The firmament exists, the stars ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... it seems to them, is an enormous field for the energy of the reformer. Here are many noble goals attainable by many of those paths up the Hill Difficulty along which great spirits love to aspire. Unhappily, the hill will never be climbed by Man as we know him. It need not be denied that if we all struggled bravely to the end of the reformers' paths we should improve the world prodigiously. But there is no more hope in that If than ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... It was a street of livery stables, gambling dens, drinking houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its sidewalks. The more pretentious canaille of the city harbored there to prey on the hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance acquaintance of gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this street, just as the evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset, he saw something pass which made his heart start to his throat and fastened him to the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... exercise him. He was too fundamentally religious to think much about God. He lived in God; he had no need to believe in Him. That is well enough for the weak and worn, for those whose lives are anaemic. They aspire to God, as a plant does to the sun. The dying cling to life. But he who bears in his soul the sun and life, what need has he to seek ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the uncultivated whom Dickens moved, and the cultivated he failed to move; between the power that so worked in delft as to stir the universal heart, and the commonness that could not meddle with porcelain or aspire to any noble clay; the pitiful see-saw is continued up to the final sentence, where, in the impartial critic's eagerness to discredit even the value of the emotion awakened in such men as Jeffrey ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... distorted the finest feelings of their nature that they might view with complacency the eternal torments of the damned. They really believed, or tried to believe, that such was God's feeling and attitude; and to that divine ideal they felt that they must aspire. It was surely hard work, and would naturally issue in a degree of sanctimoniousness and unreality. Yet it was necessary, if the doctrine of eternal torment were true. But the moment that doctrine is seen to be untrue, what a change of ideal! Then it is discerned that all this hardening ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... Englishman, had, like me, indulged in dreams of going back to England to fill some great railway post, but he had reached his sixties and his dreams were over. Often, when we talked familiarly together, he would say: "Joseph, if you aspire to be a general manager in England you ought never to have come to Ireland. They don't think much on the other side of Irish railways or Irish railway men." This, I daresay, was true, though he, well known, liked and admired as he was, ought to have been considered an exception, ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... merely nominal, while that of the beys had increased to such an extent that the government of Egypt became a military oligarchy. The weakness of the Turks left the way open for the rise of any adventurer of ability and ambition who might aspire to lead the Mamluks to overthrow ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... style—and they are many—recall to us the Shakespearian writers and the matchless riches of their verse, so do its faults—which are few—reflection that the author was unsuccessful because the critic was great. All critics, however, do not aspire to create, but all poets sooner or later attempt to criticise. Baudelaire, "the illustrious poet, the faultless critic," as Swinburne calls him, went still further. He said: "Tous les grands poetes deviennent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... try to!" said Yancy reassuringly. "Sunday's a day of rest at Scratch Hill. So are most of the other days of the week, but we all aspire to take just a little mo' rest on Sunday than any other day. Sometimes we ain't able to, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the Vendome, to-day our support. The princes, my sons, give promise of virtues as excellent, and will be worthy to aspire to destinies as noble. It is my desire and my duty to give no thought to my private griefs begotten of an ill-assorted marriage. May the King ever be adored by his people; may my children ever be beloved and cherished ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... happy to know that you are not indifferent to me, apart from the fact that I aspire to be your son-in-law. I am sure you will understand that I mean no offence when I say that while I admire Miss Gussie I should not care to make her my wife; ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... friend of those who do aspire To build a nation from these many isles; His mind doth ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... teeth away in gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on the point of touching your sceptre, fling her back to the ground, quite gently and with infinite grace, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... is, Can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... inwardly expressed intention,—it was the simple instinctive movement to subjugate the strongest of the other sex who had come in her way, which, as already said, is as natural to a woman as it is to a man to be captivated by the loveliest of those to whom he dares to aspire. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... certain missionaries sent by the archbishops of Saltzburg.[10] Henry, a virtuous nobleman, being appointed by Charlemagne Duke of Friuli, and governor of that country which he had lately conquered, St. Paulinus wrote for his use an excellent book Of Exhortation, in which he strongly invites him to aspire with his whole heart after Christian perfection, and lays down the most important rules on the practice of compunction and penance: on the remedies against different vices, especially pride, without which he shows ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... are millions that do—he is not a vicar of the divine, he is himself divine, a god in a tenement of flesh who, as such, though he die, immediately is reincarnated; a god therefore always present among his people, whose history is a continuous gospel. In contemporaneous Italy, a peasant may aspire to the papacy. In the uplands of Asia, men have loftier ambitions. There they may become Buddha, who perhaps never was, except ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... Lieutenants, eight sergeants, twenty corporals, one hundred and seventeen "first-class policemen," and one hundred and sixteen "policemen" (West Indian negroes without exception, though none but an American citizen could aspire to any white position); not to mention five clerks at headquarters, who are quite worth the mentioning. "Policemen" wore the same uniform as "first-class" officers, with khaki-covered helmet instead of "Texas" hat and canvas instead of leather leggings, drew one-half the pay of a white ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... continued he, "of the temerity of my wishes, but if a crown be wanting to deserve her, let me flatter myself with the hope that this sword, already successful over your enemies, may one day, enforced by love, make my fortune worthy of the glory to which I aspire." The joy which appeared in the face of the Count at this demand, would be impossible to represent: he raised Thibault, and again tenderly embracing him, "My son," said he, "for so henceforth I call you, I pray heaven to dispose my daughter to receive your vows as favourably as I shall ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... been of other great artists, to introduce into his early writings incidental sketches which serve as studies for further work of a later period. In much the same manner the varied, but at times uncertain, melody of the early love comedies seems to aspire towards the full sonority and magic of lyric feeling and ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... yet, sire, we have among us no Jacobins or Jesuits who wish for your life, or Leaguers who aspire to your crown. We have never presented, instead of petitions, the points of our swords. We are rewarded with considerations of state. It is not yet time, they say, to grant us an edict. And yet, after thirty-five years of persecution, ten years of banishment by the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... knows it better. I have known what it is to be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what it is to dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them perish—to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire by the wild-beast powers of my life. I know what is the price that a working-man pays for knowledge—I have paid for it with food and sleep, with agony of body and mind, with health, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... regret, the Deputy Commissioner was down the river, and I did not see him. He is regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.—there seems, indeed, to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service. I could not but envy the position ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... characters. One thing only she demanded of all her friends,—that they should have some "extraordinary generous seeking,"[C] that they should not be satisfied with the common routine of life,—that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier, than they had now attained. Where this element of aspiration existed, she demanded no originality of intellect, no greatness of soul. If these were found, well; but she could love, tenderly and truly, where they were not. But for a worldly ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... way into the pages of far more pretending works than this of mine, in some form or other, with more or less of fidelity to the truth, and real events, and real motives; while the humbler matters it will be my office to record, will be entirely overlooked by writers who aspire to enrol their names among the Tacituses of former ages. It may be well to say here, however, I shall not attempt the historical mood at all, but content myself with giving the feelings, incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting them no farther with ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... slain at the battle where they took me." (3) This is a flourish, if you will, but it is something more. His spirit would sometimes rise up in a fine anger against the petty desires and contrarieties of life. He would compare his own condition with the quiet and dignified estate of the dead; and aspire to lie among his comrades on the field of Agincourt, as the Psalmist prayed to have the wings of a dove and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. But such high thoughts came to Charles ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to make use of such information for this edition. Many readers have called my attention to local and American survivals of words and meanings described as obsolete. This is a subject on which a great deal could be written, but it lies outside the plan of this book, which does not aspire to do more than furnish some instruction or entertainment to those who are interested in ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... would wait with the symbol until I had chosen a name. And I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry about it, either. Take time to look about you and make your name express something that you like to do better than anything else, or something that you earnestly aspire to do or be. Then choose your symbol in keeping with ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... openly place the high tiara on his head, but shall wear it on his heart (feeling like a king if not looking like one), that he purposely uses the language "the better to blind Klearchus," and make him think that if the Greeks will aid him with their arms, he will revolt and aspire to become ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... read an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands). It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness, much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away. English novels are nothing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... combinations into which the pieces will be shifted. There is, in fact, a certain band of words, the Praetorian cohorts of poetry, whose prescriptive aid is invoked by every aspirant to the poetical purple, and without whose prescriptive aid none dares aspire to the poetical purple; against these it is time some banner should be raised. Perhaps it is almost impossible for a contemporary writer quite to evade the services of the free-lances whom one encounters under so many ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... of the present pacifist argument in favor of non-violence is based rather upon its expediency. Here, we are told, is a means of social action that works in achieving the social goals to which pacifists aspire. Non-violence provides a moral force which is more powerful than any physical force. Whether it be used by the individual or by the social group, it is, in the long run, the most effective way of overcoming evil and bringing about the triumph of good. The literature ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... jocosely of this word. It is "that indication of perfect scholarship to which none but Freshmen aspire, and which is never attained except by accident."—Sophomore Independent, Union College, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... latter can only be achieved through arduous and persevering endeavour. Without a genuinely divine element—without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator—we could not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... from the Muses' well. Frost-fearing myrtle shall impale my head, And of sad lovers I be often read. Envy the living, not the dead, doth bite! For after death all men receive their right. Then, when this body falls in funeral fire, My name shall live, and my best part aspire. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... to a service," she continued, her pale face flushing with enthusiasm, "to which nobles and kings, the proudest and noblest of earth, might aspire. Do thy devoir, and incalculable will be thy reward; fail therein, and the doom of Judas were heaven ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... ray is TRUTH. Oh, soul, aspire To bask in its celestial fire; So shalt thou quit the glooms of clay, So ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... they always bad? What's the use of caging up fifty little imps and making 'em learn the multiplication table when they don't even aspire to the alphabet? Why should I have to teach 'em to read and write when they're determined not to learn? Why do I have to grow grapes when it would be the greatest joy of my life to know that I'd never have ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... are a fisherman, and aspire to the study or conquest of the big game of the sea, go to Catalina Island once before it is ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... power in the gloom of hell To quench those spirits' fire; There is no power in the bliss of heaven To bid them not aspire; But somewhere in the eternal plan That strength, that life survive, And like the files on Lookout's crest, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... own weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities." In the short contributions to periodicals on which he tried his 'prentice hand, such addresses and conversations were natural and efficacious; but in a larger work of fiction they cause an absence of that dignity to which even a novel may aspire. You feel that each morsel as you read it is a detached bit, and that it has all been written in detachments. The book is robbed of its integrity by a certain good-humoured geniality of language, which causes the reader to be almost too much at home with his author. There ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... of a work calculated to elevate the mind and ennoble the ambitions of mankind could aspire to a higher climax; no writer of a series of admonitions, in escaping "a lame and impotent conclusion," could rest more calmly than he who, having built his tower upon the solid duties of to-day, peers out with ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... the greatest empire existing, (and perhaps, all things considered, that ever did exist,) obscure and a stranger as I was, I considered myself as raised to the highest dignity to which a creature of our species could aspire. In that opinion, one of the chief pleasures in my situation, what was first and-uppermost in my thoughts, was the hope, without injury to this country, to be somewhat useful to the place of my birth and education, which in many respects, internal and external, I thought ill ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... stab without an apparent flinch. He had even laughed and declared that Mr. Poe was right. That he himself knew he was no poet—he did not aspire to be a real one, but only dropped into verse now and then by way of pastime. The lie had slipped easily from his tongue, but his eyes drooped ever so little more than usual as it did so, their shifty gleam glanced ever ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... not been in the heart of Islamism a strong germ of esoteric teaching, Sufism could never have sprung from it. The Sufis are the saints of Mohammedanism, they are those who aspire after the union of the individual "I" with the cosmic "I," of man with God; they are frequently endowed with wonderful powers, and their chiefs have ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... you thought I had no right which you need respect and I would tamely submit to whatever you chose to do. You forgot that in my veins run the best blood of Earth and the proudest blood of Jupiter. Hortan was a Mildash of Jupiter, a rank to which you could never aspire. I restricted your efforts and proved to you a thing which I long have known, that, man to man, I ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... Phoebus' chariot, Phaethon, Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone. He could not rule his father's car of fire, Yet was it much so nobly to aspire. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to body,—the right of a man to himself. Both are condemned; but their relative condemnation must be measured by their relative characters. As Freedom is more than property, as Man is above the dollar that he owns, as heaven, to which we all aspire, is higher than earth, where every accumulation of wealth must ever remain, so are the rights assailed by an American Congress higher than those once assailed by the British Parliament. And just in this degree must ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... our adventure with that Brunner, who had the audacity to aspire to marry Cecile? His father was a German that kept a wine-shop, and his uncle is ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... grown and the summer frosts make potato and turnip crops precarious, so that the tops of the latter are practically all the green food to which we can aspire—except for the few families who remain at the heads of the long bays all summer, far removed from the polar current. Furthermore, until some one invents a way to extract the fishy taste from our fish oils, we must ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... loveliness entire In form and thought and act; and still must shame us Because we ever acknowledge and aspire, And yet let slip the shining hands ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... and having for its object the enlarging of the bargaining power of the wage earner in the sale of his labor. Its opportunism was instrumental—its idealism was home and family and individual betterment. It also implied an attitude of aloofness from all those movements which aspire to replace the wage system by cooperation, whether voluntary or subsidized by government, whether greenbackism, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... conquering foe, And in calm torpor watch'd each new o'erthrow! Yon troop of peasants, ignorantly gay, Who waste in careless sports the passing day, Soon shall behold the waving sheets of fire, Sent from their peaceful domes, to heaven aspire. Each year, each month, new towns with ruin smoke, And province after province feels the yoke. Already on our conquer'd castle's height The Danish watchfires redden all the night, Soon, soon, their inroads ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... you to be troubled about it, I fear you can do nothing to improve it. But my fate in this world I yearn to lay in your hands. I love you very dearly, Annunciata, and all I need to make me what I aspire to be is to have you give me a little affection in return. What do you say, Annunciata? do you think you could? Would you be my wife, and go with me to my own country and share my life, whatever ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... darkling race; save for that doubt, I stood at first where all aspire at last To stand: the secret of the world was mine. I knew, I felt (perception unexpressed, Uncomprehended by our narrow thought, But somehow felt and known in every shift And change in the spirit,—nay, in every pore Of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... general, that in all our pursuits, there is a termination of trouble, and a point of repose to which we aspire. We would remove this inconvenience, or gain that advantage, that our labours may cease. When I have conquered Italy and Sicily, says Pyrrhus, I shall then enjoy my repose. This termination is proposed in our national, as well as in our personal exertions; and, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... best in him. She developed in him a quickness of perception, a depth of thought and emotion, a facility of speech which he had never known. She stimulated every faculty, and gave him new incentive—a new and firmer resolve to aspire and fight for all that ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... all her charms, could not aspire to become one of the Forest set, though she had hopes she might be reckoned a descendant from the famous Roses so well known in the reigns of some of our Henrys, Edwards, and Richard III., though she assuredly was of a very different extraction; indeed, it was said that she was bred up in a cottage ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the subject is of very little importance in art—it is the expression that matters. Genre pictures, plots of novels, incidents of plays—they are all rather elementary things. Flaubert looked forward to a time in art when there should be no subjects at all, when art should aspire to the condition of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drinking, only excites it the more. I have suppressed many details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... passion, and nearly drove him from his proprieties as host. The young ensign was unacceptable to him upon every account. First and foremost, he wasn't "Grim," Then he was an Israelite. And, lastly! horror of horrors! he was a British officer, and dared to aspire to the hand of Edith. It was in vain that his wife, the good Henrietta, tried to mollify him; the storm raged for several days—raged, till it had expended all its strength, and subsided from exhaustion. Then he called Edith and tried to talk the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... patient; in prayer, persevering; (13)communicating to the necessities of the saints[12:13]; given to hospitality. (14)Bless those who persecute you; bless, and curse not. (15)Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. (16)Be of the same mind one toward another. Aspire not to things that are high, but condescend to the lowly. Be not wise in your own conceits. (17)Recompense to no one evil for evil. Provide things honorable in the sight of all men. (18)If it be possible, as far as depends on you, be at peace with all men. ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... before me; one of those simple-hearted men who think that to be good and kind is the first step towards doing God's work; but who are too modest, too ignorant, and sometimes too indolent to aspire to any second step, or even to inquire what the second step may be. The poor in his parish loved him and preyed upon him. He gave and gave, even after he had no more that he had ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... subtlest arguments of its enemies cannot impeach. That one grand, rounded life, full-orbed with intellectual and moral glory, is worth, as the product of Christianity, more than all the dogmas of all the teachers. The youth of America who aspire to promote their own and their country's welfare should never cease to gaze upon his great example, or to remember that the brightest gems in the crown of his immortality, the qualities which uphold ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... punishments is hung perpetually over his head. In return for all this his University takes a keen interest in him. She pats him on the back if he succeeds. Prizes and scholarships, and fine fat fellowships are thrown plentifully in his way if he will gird up his loins and aspire to them. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shewn so perfect a regard; but to say I think him, or almost any other man in the world, worthy of yourself, is not within my power with truth. And since you force the confession from me, I declare, I think such beauty, such sense, and such goodness united, might aspire without vanity to the arms of any monarch ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... I ramble on like this it'll be a real book after all. Calgary is the big cow-town of the West, just beginning to aspire to higher—or lower (there's a real question there)—civilization, and mixing schaps and silks on its streets in a strange struggle between the past and the future. But my stay there was short, as I was able to catch my branch train with little delay, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... of Mr. Vice Crispin, was informed that he had made the suit of clothes for a figure of Lord Marr, that was burned after the rebellion. I hope now you don't hold me too presumptuous for pluming myself on the reduction of Martinico. However, I shall not aspire to a post, nor to marry my Lady Bute's Abigail. I only trust my services to you as a friend, and do not mean under your temperate administration to get the list of Irish pensions loaded with my name, though I am ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... fourth in nature and grace. Some have diligence and comeliness, but they want majesty. They can express a human form in all the graces, sweetness, and elegancy, but, they miss the authority. They can hit nothing but smooth cheeks; they cannot express roughness or gravity. Others aspire to truth so much as they are rather lovers of likeness than beauty. Zeuxis and Parrhasius are said to be contemporaries; the first found out the reason of lights and shadows in picture, the other ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... costs at least twenty-five francs per head—BECAUSE I have credit at Procope—BECAUSE I have not a sou in my pocket—and BECAUSE, milord Smithfield, I aspire to the honor of entertaining your lordship on the present occasion!" replied Mueller, punctuating each clause of his ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... leading to? What does this heroism aspire to? This force of will, bitter and strained, grows faint when it has reached its goal, or even before that. It does not know what to do with its victory. It disdains it, does not believe in it, or grows tired ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... next age is the Heroic, in which the world began to aspire toward better things; but OVID omits this altogether, and gives, as the fourth and last, the Iron Age, also called the Plutonian Age, full of all sorts of hardships and wickedness. His description of it ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of a little skill; but as it is, the courage of the men is expected to obviate all difficulties. I must confess that so long as I see such incompetency, there is no grade in the army to which I do not aspire." ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... "'He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed, She, drinking his warm sweat, will soothe his need, Not ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... prematurely called away from our duties. And I bring it as serious charge against modern systems of education, that they tend to degenerate mankind, to impair the constitution and to shorten life. That we should not submit to this, but should all aspire to live a century or longer, if we have a fair opportunity, I seriously maintain, and that my readers may be inspired with a like determination, I take ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... youngest should consent to yield her up to their elder brother. As he found them positively obstinate, he sent for them all together, and said to them: "Children, since for your good and quiet I have not been able to persuade you no longer to aspire to the Princess, your cousin, I think it would not be amiss if every one traveled separately into different countries, so that you might not meet each other. And, as you know I am very curious, and delight in everything that's singular, I promise my niece in marriage ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... by thy quiet fire, And hear'st of others' harms, but fearest none: And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire, Who fall, who rise, who triumph, who do moan. Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost inquire Of my restraint, why here I live alone, And pitiest this my miserable fall; For pity must have ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... him. I have not loved a Roman, not to know What should become his wife; his wife, my Charmion! For 'tis to that high title I aspire; And now I'll not die less. Let dull Octavia Survive, to mourn him dead: My nobler fate Shall knit our spousals with a tie, too strong For Roman laws ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... nation became economically independent and economically great, and since they could not be developed by the State it is not strange that private initiative was stimulated by offering men great and immediate rewards. These rewards have encouraged individuals and associations of individuals to aspire to a quick achievement of great economic power, and their aspirations have been realized. Such achievements have been a dominating feature of our business life, and we have regarded them as an index ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... find fault with a physician for making his profession, no matter how exalted, a means of earning an honest livelihood and a decent competency; but to ambition this career solely for its pecuniary remuneration would be to degrade one of the most sublime vocations to which man may aspire. There is unfortunately too much of this spirit abroad in our day. There are too many who talk and act as if the one highest and worthiest ambition of life were to make as large a fortune in as short a time and in as easy a way as possible. If this spirit of utilitarianism should ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... contest for Italian freedom! The situations were essentially much alike, but so much grander for the Italian statesman, Italy's odds being so immeasurably longer! But still the likeness came out, and the future chancellor could in no way aspire to be an initiator. The end was still a gigantic one, and one to which no true, brave patriot dared be false as an ideal,—but how as to the execution? As to the practical means of carrying out conceptions that might daily be ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... philology. The conversation consisted entirely of compliments till just before we separated, when the future editor inquired of me whether I had ever read Quintilian; and, on my replying in the negative, expressed his surprise that any gentleman should aspire to become a critic who had never read Quintilian, with the comfortable information, however, that he could supply me with a Quintilian at half-price, that is, a translation made by himself some ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... for almost any base proposal save this one. She knew that his cupidity and insolence stopped at nothing, but never did she imagine he would have the wild presumption to aspire to Madeleine's hand. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... chosen path," says M. Haureau, "the more the enterprise pleased us. This species of labour, which is called bibliography [investigations of authorship, principally from the point of view of pseudepigraphy], could not aspire to the homage of the public, but it has a great attraction for those who devote themselves to it. Yes, it is doubtless a humble study, but how many others are there which so often compensate the trouble they give by affording us opportunity ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Demorest has become a leader of fashion, teaching women to make up what Stewart imports; and she has a branch establishment in every large city in the Union clear to Montana. I do not know but some of those ladies cutting out garments, and setting the fashions of the day, might aspire to the Presidential chair; and perhaps they would be quite as capable as the present ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is different. There's a different bottom at which black and white young men should begin, and by a logical sequence, a different top to which they should aspire. However, Mr. Featherton, I'll ask you to hold your offer in abeyance. If I can find nothing else, I'll ask you to speak to the ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the thicket my heart's bird!' Slight and small the lovely cry Came trickling down, but no one heard; Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie, Jarred horrid notes, the jangling jay Ripped the fine threads of song away; For why should peeping chick aspire To challenge their ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... arises from an excellent disposition. I thank you. Be well assured, I aspire to more than gratitude! I am convinced that, when arrived at the summit, you will judge me still more worthy to be your friend; and then, monseigneur, we two will do such great deeds, that ages hereafter shall ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... entreat not: I will rather die Than sue for life unto a paltry boy. K. Edw. Third. Hence with the traitor, with the murderer! Y. Mor. Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel There is a point, to which when men aspire, They tumble headlong down: that point I touch'd, And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher, Why should I grieve at my declining fall?— Farewell, fair queen: weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, Goes to discover countries yet unknown. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend and aspire. Music, then, and not poetry, as is so often supposed, is the true type or measure of perfected art. Therefore, although each art has its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its unique mode of reaching the "imaginative reason," yet the arts ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... man, "they all aspire to the honour of attending you while you bathe; you have only to choose which it shall be. Half-a-crown will pay for the bath, the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in at 6:30 last night, and found me in an evening gown, starting for a dinner at Mrs. Livermore's house. He mildly observed that Mrs. Lippett did not aspire to be a society leader, but saved her energy for her work. You know I'm not vindictive, but I never look at that man without wishing he were at the bottom of the duck pond, securely anchored ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... essential constituents of a devotional frame that the bulk of nominal Christians are defective. This they freely declare (secretly feeling perhaps some complacency from the frankness of the avowal) to be a higher strain of piety than that to which they aspire. Their forgetfulness also of some of the leading dispositions of Christianity, is undeniably apparent in their allowed want of the spirit of kindness, and meekness, and gentleness, and patience, and long suffering; and above ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... makes demands. And, in the case of Mexico, the products of the tropics, such as rubber, are increasingly necessary to the industrial powers of the temperate zone. On the other hand, if the exploiting nation aspire to self-government, the imperialistic method of obtaining these products by the selfish exploitation of the natural and human resources of the backward countries reacts so powerfully on the growth of democracy at home—and hence on the growth of democracy throughout ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... quite right in seeking independence," replied Nalini, "and I shall be glad to help you. But lower-grade teachers are miserably paid, and their prospects are no better. It is only graduates who can aspire to ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... collection of every decoration that the rulers of four great empires had to bestow upon a man for heroism, contempt of death, and high merit. There was no honor left for the Victor of —— still to aspire to. And only eleven short months of war had cast all that at his feet. It was the harvest of but a single year of war. Thirty-nine years of his life had previously gone in the service in tedious monotony, in an eternal ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... at the close of the sixteenth century or at the beginning of the seventeenth century, from Flanders, was one of the most distinguished of the town. It had even counted among its illustrious members a Seville Veinticuatro, and no one who was unable to present proof of noble lineage could aspire to that distinction.[1] ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... our minds will dazzle with brightness, As our thoughts forever aspire, For a mantle of perfect whiteness, Shall cover the ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... from him and walked to the other end of the garden. He had never meant to aspire to the Judean throne! He had simply written so determinedly to Costobarus, that the merchant of Ascalon would have no hesitancy in giving him two hundred talents! In these past days, she had learned enough that was blameworthy ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... thank you!" exclaimed Voules, highly delighted. "Your lordship will allow me to remind you of your promise, whenever Lord Reginald obtains a step in rank. I do not aspire to be promoted before him, and shall be glad to serve in any ship to which he is appointed, until we are both eligible ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... Tenderness and Imagination, which, in the sense he used Imagination, was not the characteristic of Shakspeare, but which Milton possessed in a degree far exceeding other Poets; which union, as the highest species of poetry, and chiefly deserving that name, "he was most proud to aspire to;" then illustrating the said union by two quotations from his own second volume (which I had been so unfortunate as to miss.) First specimen; A father ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... himself in his bounty to others." While he was recounting these undoubted facts, the people by a great majority elected him king. The same ambition which had prompted Tarquin, in other respects an excellent man, to aspire to the crown, followed him whilst on the throne. And being no less mindful of strengthening his own power, than of increasing that of the commonwealth, he elected a hundred into the fathers, who from that time were called Minorum Gentium, i. e. of the younger families: ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... the road to usefulness and honor, the University course being only the first stage of the public training. So Lincoln, at twenty-one, had just begun his preparation for the public life to which he soon began to aspire. For some years yet he must continue to earn his daily bread by the sweat of his brow, having absolutely no means, no home, no friend to consult. More farm work as a hired hand, a clerkship in a village store, the running of a mill, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... he dare to aspire again, and in his fancy it was Margaret's spirit that floated on and on for ever, her fragrance immanent in the songs he ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... is no such easy matter, Harmonides, to become a public character, or to gain the prestige and distinction to which you aspire; and if you propose to set about it by performing in public, you will find it a long business, and at the best will never achieve a universal reputation. Where will you find a theatre or circus large enough to admit ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... excellent hearts. In Paris, where the clergy of the parishes are so mixed, they are at the top of the basket of the priesthood, and, as may be imagined, they form a community, live in cells, do not dine out; and as the Sulpician rule forbids them to aspire to honours, or places, they do not run the chance of becoming bad priests by ambition. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain." [Footnote: James, Talks to Teachers, pp. 67-70. See also ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... aspire to the second prizes; to be a profound interpreter and commenter, to be a sharp champion and defender, to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is the unfortunate succession of wits ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... to tempt me—when she herself displays the matchless store of her countless fascinations for my attraction—when she honors me by special favors and makes me plainly aware that I am not too presumptuous in venturing to aspire to her hand in marriage—what can I do but accept with a good grace the fortune thrown to me by Providence? I should be the most ungrateful of men were I to refuse so precious a gift from Heaven, and I confess ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... while he builds, the gaudy vassals come, And crowd with sudden wealth the rising dome; The price of boroughs and of souls restore; And raise his treasures higher than before. Now bless'd with all the baubles of the great, The polish'd marble and the shining plate, [gg]Orgilio sees the golden pile aspire, And hopes from angry heav'n another fire. [hh]Could'st thou resign the park and play, content, For the fair banks of Severn or of Trent; There might'st thou find some elegant retreat, Some hireling senator's deserted seat; ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Into the heart of the fire! To the innermost core of the deathless flame I ascend—I aspire! Under me rolls the whirling Earth, With the noise of a myriad wheels that run Ever round and about the Sun,— Over me circles the splendid heaven, Strewn with the stars of morn and even, And I, the queen Of my soul serene, Float with my rainbow wings ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... thus at last learned the truth of that ancient and profound maxim, that "he who would aspire to govern, should first ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... friends to fight, More studious to divide than to unite; And grace and virtue, sense and reason split, With all the rash dexterity of wit. Wits, just like fools, at war about a name, Have full as oft no meaning, or the same. Self-love and reason to one end aspire, Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire; But greedy that, its object would devour, This taste the honey, and not wound the flower: Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... breath. Ah, the aspiration, the aspiration, like a hope, like a yearning constant and unfailing with which we take in breath. When we breathe, when we take in breath, it is not as when we take in food. When we breathe in we aspire, we yearn towards the heaven of air and light. And when the heart dilates to draw in the stream of dark blood, it opens its arms as to a beloved. It dilates with reverent joy, as a host opening his doors to an honored guest, whom he delights to serve: opening ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... man a listless hand. He couldn't forgive Herr Lippheim. That he should ever, under whatever encouragements from Karen's guardian, have dared to aspire to her, was a ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... obey her? The imperative mandates of our own hearts? But what if our hearts are at war with our heads? Are we to follow no higher law than the blind instinct that moves the house-fly? Or will we aspire to the indomitable soul of the mocking-birds that feed their young in captivity until they see they are prisoners for life, and then bring them poisonous spiders that they may die rather than live under such conditions? Shall we give ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... ambition has been to produce one which might deservedly stand along side of the Port-Royal Latin and Greek Grammars, or of the Grammaire des Grammaires of Girault Du Vivier. If this work is unworthy to aspire to such rank, let the patrons of English literature remember that the achievement of my design is still a desideratum. We surely have no other book which might, in any sense, have been called "the Grammar of English Grammars;" none, which, either by excellence, or on account ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... When they were exterminated by the government, the head of their chief, with its dangling queue, was mounted on a pole near-by, and preserved in a cage from birds of prey, as a warning to all others who might aspire to the same notoriety. In this lonely spot we were forced to spend the night, as here occurred, through the carelessness of the Kuldja Russian blacksmith, a very serious break in one of our gear wheels. It was too late in the day to walk back the sixteen miles ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... so to aspire Above our brethren, to ourselves assuming Authority usurped from God, not given. He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation: but man over man He made not lord—such title to himself Reserving, human ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... Plato, [47] that the government of our flocks and herds is always committed to beings of a superior species; and that the conduct of nations requires and deserves the celestial powers of the gods or of the genii. From this principle he justly concluded, that the man who presumes to reign, should aspire to the perfection of the divine nature; that he should purify his soul from her mortal and terrestrial part; that he should extinguish his appetites, enlighten his understanding, regulate his passions, and subdue the wild beast, which, according to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... very souls. But how dare to reveal their affection? Bernardo, although of noble lineage, and in himself every thing that the fondest father could desire for his daughter, had his fortune yet to win by his good sword; and Inez was heiress to broad lands, and might well aspire to a princely alliance. But love scorns all such distinctions: humble thoughts of herself, and proud thoughts of her Bernardo, filled the heart of Inez, and as she plighted her troth to him, she vowed she would wed ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins |
