"Birthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little or no success, and she turned them over to America with a sigh of relief. Perpetual warfare is the pastime of the Moro; it is his sport, his vocation; and the Mother Jungle hurls a livelihood at his feet. Food, clothing, shelter are his birthright. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... quickness unknown to the ancient world, where the original citizens of a commonwealth always believed themselves to be united by kinship in blood, and resented a claim to equality of privilege as a usurpation of their birthright. In the early Roman republic the principle of the absolute exclusion of foreigners pervaded the Civil Law no less than the Constitution. The alien or denizen could have no share in any institution supposed to be coeval with the State. He could not have the benefit ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... hash of sentiment which is the distinctive feature of a degenerate cosmopolitanism. Those sons who blushed for their fathers set themselves to abnegate their racial conscience: and they succeeded only too well. Having plucked out the soul that was their birthright, all that was left them was a mixture of the moral and intellectual values of other races: they made a macedoine of them, an olla podrida: it was their way of taking possession of them. The men who who were at that time in control of the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the golden locket the youth considered his birthright came to light. For the moment Horace Sumner paid no attention to it, but placed it on top of the ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... not so easily frightened," she asserted; adding, with a touch of the austerity which was her Puritan birthright: "Nor quite so ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... with the title and prerogatives of despot, which bestowed the purple ornaments and the second place in the Roman monarchy. It was afterwards agreed that John and Michael should be proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the buckler, but that the preeminence should be reserved for the birthright of the former. A mutual league of amity was pledged between the royal partners; and in case of a rupture, the subjects were bound, by their oath of allegiance, to declare themselves against the aggressor; an ambiguous name, the seed of discord and civil war. Palaeologus was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... "what would I give to see it?—so ancient and venerable, and yet so amazingly young and vigorous. It seems like a waste of existence for a man to stay here tending sheep, when his birthright is that of an Englishman: the right to move among his peers, and find his fit place in the greatest empire in the world. Never had any woman such a noble destiny before her as this young lady who has ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... will come on with its winter, though happiness hideth its snows; And if youth has its duty of labour, the birthright of age is repose: And thus from that love-sweetened toil, which the heavens had so prospered and blest, The old Campanaro will go to that vine-covered cottage to rest; But Paolo is pious and grateful, and vows as he kneels at her shrine, To offer some fruit of his labour ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... the witty, facile, popular dramatist; and he enters slowly on his birthright as the first in time, if not in genius, of English novelists. To this complete severance from the theatre belongs his own remark that "he left off writing for the stage when he ought to have begun." Arrived at a late ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... the prime in order and in might; The rest were long to tell, though far renown'd, Th' Ionian Gods, of Javans Issue held Gods, yet confest later then Heav'n and Earth Thir boasted Parents; Titan Heav'ns first born 510 With his enormous brood, and birthright seis'd By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove His own and Rhea's Son like measure found; So Jove usurping reign'd: these first in Creet And Ida known, thence on the Snowy top Of cold Olympus rul'd the middle Air Thir highest Heav'n; or on the Delphian Cliff, Or in Dodona, and through ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... heart of either of them to understand how necessary they had become to each other, and when they saw that all was over it was a sad awaking. For a little while it was with both as if they had madly thrown a birthright away; for, though they had faith, they were not yet perfect in it. Not soon did either see that this life had a blessing for them every day—new every morning, fresh every evening—and that from everlasting to everlasting are the mercies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... deaf ear to humanity's cries, slaughtered the friendly Indian, and drenched the soil with his innocent blood. And it is here, at this moment, slavery-fierce monster, threatening the peace of a happy people-runs riot in all its savage vicissitudes, denying man his commonest birthright. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... is never possessed of that familiarity of speech with those he serves, which the American negro waiter takes for granted is his birthright. It's all very well to have a cheerful-countenanced waiter bobbing about behind one's chair, indeed it's infinitely more inspiring than such of the old brigade of mutton-chopped English waiters as still linger in some of ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the field, and he was faint" (Gen. xxv. 29). Rabbi Yochanan said that wicked man committed on that day five transgressions:—He committed rape, committed murder, denied the being of God, denied the resurrection from the dead, and despised the birthright. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... to enter. The contract was recognised as null. Rattazzi was notoriously opposed to any cession of territory, and had he known how to play his game it is at least open to argument that the House of Savoy might have been spared losing its birthright as the Houses of Orange and Lorraine had lost theirs. But his weak policy landed Italian affairs in a chaos which made Napoleon once more master of ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... could be. Every inducement—every excitement, to the exertion and development of native talent and genius, is wanting in the slave.—Hence, to throw such a being, thus degraded, thus brutalized, upon society, and then expect him to exercise those rights which are the birthright of every son and daughter of Adam, with advantage to himself, or to the community upon which he is thrown, is to suppose that the laws established for the government of universal nature, should in this case be changed. As well might we expect ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... is immortal. There is, there can be no death! Receive the glad tidings, and cry it aloud! There is no death! Let all the earth hear, until there is none so base, so low, so poor, so ignorant, so sinful that he shall not be immortal. It is his birthright, for we are all ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... in such a manner as will bring the most glory to God. So train them and so live before them in the home that in after-years they will say with pleasure: "This precept was always taught me by my parents. Father and Mother's holy example has been a priceless birthright to me." ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... eldest son of Isaac, who sold his birthright to Jacob for a mess of lentils; led a predatory life, and was ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... my father. And is it true then, as Clotaldo swears, 'Twas you that from the dawning birth of one Yourself brought into being,—you, I say, Who stole his very birthright; not alone That secondary and peculiar right Of sovereignty, but even that prime Inheritance that all men share alike, And chain'd him—chain'd him!—like a wild beast's whelp. Among as savage mountains, to this hour? Answer if this ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... his feet, aside). Good! I begin to feel my courage return: my nerves are stronger. Courage, Sandy! (Aloud.) Be it so, Concho: there is my hand! We will help each other,—you to my birthright, I to your revenge! Hark ye! (SANDY'S manner becomes more calm and serious.) This impostor is NO craven, NO coyote. Whoever he is, he must be strong. He has most plausible evidences. We must have rigid proofs. I will go with you to Poker Flat. There ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... ourselves from the various dishes as we prefer. Abu Hanna wants you to try the "mejeddara," made of "oddis." It is like thick pea soup, but with a peculiar flavor. This is what Jacob made the pottage of, when he tempted Esau and bought his birthright. I hope you will like it, but I do not. After seventeen years of trying, I am not able to enjoy it, but Harry will eat all he can get, and the little Arab children revel in it. You make poor work with that huge wooden spoon. You had better try Abu Hanna's ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... come to their birthright, And crosier and crown pass away Like phantasms that flit o'er the marshes At the glance of the clean, white day. And then from the lava of AEtna To the ice of the Alps let there be One freedom, one faith without fetters, One ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... can be no morality without religion. But though religion, in a general sense, be recognized by the State, it has no authority to control or direct it. It must respect the conscience of an individual. This is his birthright, and cannot be voted away, whether to support Public Schools ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... colonists than he had been at home, and everywhere proclaimed that the Americans were right in resisting the unjust taxation claims of Great Britain. As he had always been ready to lay aside his British birthright and become some sort of a foreigner, he now determined to become an American; and to show that he was in earnest, he went down to Virginia and bought a ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... filled with jarring interests and keen parties; and, though I well knew his opinion to be the same with my own, he kept himself aloof at a very critical period indeed, when the Douglas cause shook the sacred security of birthright in Scotland to its foundation; a cause, which had it happened before the Union, when there was no appeal to a British House of Lords, would have left the great fortress of honours and of property ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... at this moment the sole heir to the throne of Norway. Now for the first time he realized that during all that past time, when he had been living as a poor and wretched bondslave in Esthonia, he had held this glorious birthright. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... wintry blast which rushed over her hot brow? And if it should be so? Beulah pressed her face closer to the window, and thought it was too inconceivable that she also should die. She knew it was the common birthright, the one unchanging heritage of all humanity; yet long vistas of life opened before her, and though, like a pall, the shadow of the tomb hung over the end, it was very ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of his birth has been kept from him until he has come to manhood, and the revelation of this secret by his mother is made in the first section of the trilogy, which is a single act, written in blank verse. Recognizing the futility of urging his birthright at this time, he starts off to win fame as a crusader, the sort of fame that haloed Sigurd Jorsalfar, then king of Norway. The remainder of the work is in prose, and was, in fact, written before this poetical prologue. The second section, ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... I hate you!" exclaimed Gerardin, turning round in his saddle, and shaking his clenched fist at the English lieutenant. "You have foiled me again and again. I know you, and who you are; you stand between me and my birthright; you shall not foil me again. I have before sought your life; the next time we meet we will not separate till ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... instructed thee to speak of me—call me Prince. At the same time I would have thee know that on my eighth day I was carried into a temple and registered a son of a son of Jerusalem. The title I give thee for my designation did not ennoble me. The birthright of a circumcised heritor under the covenant with Israel is superior to every purely ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... heritage, he only followed the path that had led him from the beginning. Boston was full of his brothers. He had reckoned from childhood on outlawry as his peculiar birthright. The mere thought of beginning life again in Mount Vernon Street lowered the pulsations of his heart. This is a story of education — not a mere lesson of life — and, with education, temperament has in strictness nothing to do, although in practice ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... work is very decided: he not only sheds a generous tear for the fate of Charles I., but conceals or glosses the villanies of Stuarts far worse than Charles. The liberties of England consist, in his eyes, of wise concessions made by the sovereign, rather than as the inalienable birthright of the English man. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the serene, haughty house, the repose of the well-ordered garden, still blooming with belated flowers, seemed at once to deride and to invite the young outcast plodding along the dusty road. "This is your birthright," whispered the clambering rose-trees by the gate; and the closed portals of carven bronze said: "You have sold ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... a very great Satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of Mankind in all Nations and Ages, asserting, as with one Voice, this their Birthright, and to find it ratify'd by an express Revelation. At the same time if we turn our Thoughts inward upon our selves, we may meet with a kind of secret Sense concurring with the Proofs of our ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... ancestors spoke an inflected tongue. That we should still be able to speak of "the baker's wife's dog" instead of "the dog of the wife of the baker" certainly should be regarded by English-speaking people as a precious birthright. Yet, there are increasing evidences of a tendency to discard this only remaining case-ending and to replace its powerful backbone with the comparatively limp and cartilaginous preposition. This tendency has not yet appeared so much ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... And I am then in such a beatific state of mind that I would share with all mankind my sack of lentils and my pipkin of olive oil. I wonder not at Esau's extravagance, when he saw a steaming mess of it. For what is a birthright in comparison?" ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... only eight years of age, and his father died when he was no more than eleven years, before the plans for his education were put into action. But no stroke of outward calamity, or loss—however severe, could annul Raphael's birthright of universal favour. His step-mother, the uncles who were his guardians, his clever, perverse, unscrupulous master, all joined in a common love of Raphael and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... of secondary importance. Equity of birth and wealth were the chief considerations. The choice of the Athenian citizen was limited to Athenian maidens; only in that case were the children entitled to full birthright, the issue of a marriage of an Athenian man or maiden with a stranger being considered illegitimate by the law. Such a marriage was, indeed, nothing but a form of concubinage. The laws referring to this point were, however, frequently evaded. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... had said that people ought to overhaul themselves, and she did not want to overhaul herself; she did not know it was done. Honest orthodoxy Cecil respected, but he always assumed that honesty is the result of a spiritual crisis; he could not imagine it as a natural birthright, that might grow heavenward like flowers. All that he said on this subject pained her, though he exuded tolerance from every pore; somehow the Emersons ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... well as of qualities doomed to undergo, the infection of evil. While, therefore, I resigned myself to recognize the existence of the hereditary maternal taint, I firmly believed in the counterbalancing influences for good which had been part of the girl's birthright. They had been derived, perhaps, from the better qualities in her father's nature; they had been certainly developed by the tender care, the religious vigilance, which had guarded the adopted child so lovingly in the Minister's household; and they had served their purpose until time brought ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... ambitions, no interests in common with these schemers, whose sole idea lay in party patronage, in manipulating every political opportunity—in short, in reaping where they had sown. The question now confronting him was this: was he prepared to sell his political birthright for the mess of ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... an old, old food. We read of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of red pottage, or a mess of red dal. Then later we read of the Hebrew children refusing to eat the king's meat, and growing rosy and fat on ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... observed that the millions in both hemispheres who are now rejoicing in the triumph of liberal principles, should unite in erecting a monument to perpetuate the memory of ROGER WILLIAMS, the first governor who held liberty of conscience, as well as of person, to be the birthright ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... faith We proclaim thee as our prince here). King Basilius, thy father, Fearful of the Heavens fulfilling A prediction, which declared He would see himself submitted At thy victor feet, attempts To deprive thee of thy birthright, And to give it to Astolfo, Muscovy's duke. For this his missives Summoned all his court: the people Understanding, by some instinct, That they had a natural king, Did not wish a foreign princeling To rule o'er them. And 'tis thus, That ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... that they had no liberties except such as the royal power saw fit to grant. Then the Commons drew up their famous Protest, in which they declared that their liberties were not derived from the King, but were "the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the people of England." In his rage James ordered the journal of the Commons to be brought to him, tore out the Protest with his own hand, and sent five of the members of the House to prison (S419). This rash act made the Commons more determined ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... was all true. We do think alike about so many things," said the Queen's Twin with affectionate certainty. "You see, there is something between us, being born just at the some time; 't is what they call a birthright. She 's had great tasks put upon her, being the Queen, an' mine has been the humble lot; but she's done the best she could, nobody can say to the contrary, and there 's something between us; she's been the great lesson I 've had to live by. She's been everything to me. ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... longer a young woman, being in her fifty-third year. In the eyes of the white man's law, it was required of her to give proof of her membership in the Sioux tribe. The unwritten law of heart prompted her naturally to say, "I am a being. I am Blue-Star Woman. A piece of earth is my birthright." ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... and has been helpful, to insist that man is an animal, but it is still more important to insist that he is a spirit as well. He is, so to say, an animal by accident, a spirit by birthright: and, however homely his duties may occasionally seem, his life is bathed in the light of a sacred transfiguring significance, its smallest acts flash with divine meanings, its highest moments are rich with 'the pathos of ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... had striven from the first to awaken thoughts of higher things, and turn remorse into repentance; but every attempt resulted in strange, sad wanderings about Esau, the birthright, and the blessing. Indeed, these might not have been entirely wanderings, for once he said, 'It is better this way, Bill. You don't know what you wish in trying to bring me round. Don't be hard on me. She drove me to it. It is all right now. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of cookery, and thus arose the art of making puddings. The porridge of the Scotch is nothing more than a species of hasty pudding, composed of oatmeal, salt, and water; and the "red pottage" for which Esau sold his birthright, must have been something similar. The barley-gruel of the Lacedaemonians, of the Athenian gladiators and common people, was the same, with the exception of the slight seasoning it had beyond the simplicity of Scottish ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... grasp the rope. But if Dick goes in after him, that's business. Bless the rascal! I wish his father could see him now. Sitting on the edge of my table and talking window-dressing to me as if he'd been born to it, which he was, only he wouldn't accept his birthright, the proud beggar! Talking about moving one of our show-windows up there bodily for a white-goods sale in February; date a trifle late for Kendrick & Company, but advance trade for Eastman, undoubtedly. Says he knows they can start every mother's daughter of 'em sewing for ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... weariness, to be returning from labour—do you mean to say that they are washerwomen and charwomen? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken. I assure you they stand in a far higher rank; for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and answer to ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... separation from the mass of organized, created beings. These experiences are the rare awakenings of the soul to the realization and use of its own native powers which flow from its divine paternity and origin, and which constitute its birthright and ultimate inheritance. At times, the gifts and powers of certain beings burst into bloom and fruition when least expected, and cast a radiance and a halo around the personality, which mark and award it a place among its fellow men, altogether superior to ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... them to sell a person a piece of straw for the price of a pint of beer and then give them the beer! So rooted had this habit become under the laxity of the old system that many persons, I believe, deluded themselves with the belief that somehow or other they were only exercising their birthright conferred by charter in ages that are gone! Charters did sometimes grant some curious things, but I believe I am right in saying that the charters conferred upon the monks, who were the original governors of Royston, contain no such easy way of evading the licensing laws ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... booth? Cannot we have that sense and tradition of equal opportunity for all who are born into this world, that generous and complete acknowledgment of the principle of promotion from the ranks that is the precious birthright of the American, without the political gerrymandering, the practical falsification, that restricts that general freedom at last only to the energetic, and that subordinates quality to quantity in every affair of life? It is evident that for the New Republican ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... majority of mankind with a birthright of normal physical efficiency. It is the duty of those who aspire to be known as social workers each to do his share in confirming his fellow beings in ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... the change wuz not a bad one. I guess she looked forward to the time when a still grander race should look down into her shinin' face, a race of free men, and free wimmen; sons and daughters of God, who should hold their birthright so grandly and nobly that they will look back upon the people of to-day, as we look back upon the dark sons and daughters of the forest, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... 29-34. And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... whatever you tell me, Chief," I answered; "I am only too ready to believe. You know I come of a superstitious race, and all my association with the Palefaces has never yet robbed me of my birthright to believe ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... and female created He them, and called their name Adam. A blush, so becoming on the countenance of feminine beauty, is generally deemed a sign of weakness when visible upon a man's face. But if the above interpretation be correct, a blush is a man's birthright, which no sense of false shame should prevent him from modestly claiming. Red, as signifying perfection, dominion, fruition, was appropriately the name of our first parents, whether we regard the account of the creation to be literally understood, as the old theologians believe, or spiritually ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... by his brother to Sir Kenneth, his own brother-uterine, Duncan being of better hands than head. This Hector, hearing of Sir Kenneth's death, and finding himself in possession of an estate, to which those only now had title whose birthright was debateable, namely, the children begot by Kenneth the third, on the Lord Lovat's daughter, with whom he did at first so irregularly and unlawfully cohabit." The objection of illegitimacy could not apply to Duncan, or to his son Allan, and it is difficult to understand on what ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... his son, am here to-day atonement fall to bring. Count, ye did a craven business and I call ye COWARD here! Behold, if I await you, think not I come with fear, For Diego Laynez wrought me well set in his own mould, And while I prove my birthright I your baseness shall unfold. Your valor as a crafty blade will not avail ye more, For to my needs I bring a sword and charger trained to war." Thus spake to Count Lozano Spain's champion, the Cid, (Ere long he won the title ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... pale of this religion has his social, as his religious, status fixed unchangeably for him before his birth; and woe be to him who tries to shake off this bondage, or even in a small degree to kick against the pricks. No better system than this has been devised under heaven to rob man of his birthright of independence and self-respect. And the population of India bears, in its character and conduct, ample testimony to ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... continent. And it was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her anchor and the landing of her passengers—a kind of amphibious prophecy that the new-born nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the sea and over the land. [Great applause.] There, also, was Rose Standish, whose name is a perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds. And there, too, was Mrs. Winslow, whose name is even more than a fragrance; it is a ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... which they coveted, they sold themselves and their services to the white colonists, content to take care of those herds which had once been their own, and to lead them out to pasture on the very lands which had once been their birthright." ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... surely marriage ought not to suffer derogation and disgrace by denial of the common right of citizenship as its penalty; the soldier, sailor, policeman, government-official, and any other class which may now be deprived of their birthright by law or custom, should certainly be admitted to the poll like other patriotic citizens; in short, manhood suffrage, it may be theoretically argued, is just and wise—manhood of course including womanhood, as suggested above; for even a wife either sides with her ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Gordon. "But it's plain enough. Some foreign ship of war has settled on this place as a coaling-station, or has annexed it for colonization, and they've sent a boat ashore, and they've made a treaty with this old chap, and forced him to sell his birthright for a mess of porridge. Now, that's just like those monarchical pirates, imposing upon a ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... home in this country. Nowhere, except in the West, could he have acquired the serene calm that shone out of his eyes; in no other part of the world could he have caught the easy assurance, the unstudied nonchalance, that seems the inherent birthright of the cowpuncher. ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Unitarians a new spiritual effectiveness. The same causes have led to the adoption of the rite of confirmation in a considerable number of churches. Gradually the idea has grown that what Rev. Sylvester Judd called "the birthright church" is the true one, and that it is desirable that all children should be religiously trained, and admitted to the church at the age of adolescence. Mr. Judd gave noble utterance to this conception of a church in a series of sermons ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... same discretion. She did do no gratuitous mischief. She did not take the wine-cellar key, which would have irritated the good father confessor; she took those keys only that belonged to her, if ever keys did; for they were the keys that locked her out from her natural birthright of liberty. 'Show me,' says the Romish Casuist, 'her right in law to let herself out of that nunnery.' 'Show us,' we reply, 'your right to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... birth That sprang from his fair spouse, prolific earth! Great Hesper, say what sordid ceaseless hate Impels thee thus to mar my elder state. Our sire assign'd thee thy more glorious reign, Secured and bounded by our laboring main; That main (tho still my birthright name it bear) Thy sails o'ershadow, thy brave children share; I grant it thus; while air surrounds the ball, Let breezes blow, let oceans roll for all. But thy proud sons, a strange ungenerous race, Enslave my tribes, and each fair world disgrace, Provoke wide vengeance ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... enslaved and driven by no unholy or inordinate ambition, by no lust for gold, by no desire for power or fame, by no fear of man, by no shame of worldly censure or adverse public opinion. He had power over the world, and this same power is the birthright of every converted man, and the present possession of every one who is wholly sanctified by the baptism with ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... misunderstood Jewish fellows. Now we see, and our younger brothers of the Menorah fellowship have caught the vision, that no Jew can be truly cultured who Jewishly uproots himself, that the man who rejects the birthright of inheritance of the traditions of the earliest and virilest of the cultured peoples of earth is impoverishing his very being. The Jew who is a "little Jew" is less ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... do not let these people, with their shallow talk and shallow books, rob you of your peace, cheat you out of your birthright. Look at the lives of these doubters, and then look at the lives of Jesus and His saints. See which example is the purer, the more noble. Which is better, to imitate the life of self-sacrifice which Jesus ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... good as that, it has entered many a tranquil, happy, pure, and hospitable home, and the author, while deeply grateful for this genial reception, ascribes it partly to the fact that his story contains no word or thought disloyal to its birthright in the fairest county ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... was, so far as in him lay, to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. [Footnote: We cannot adduce St. Columba as another example in the same kind, seeing that this name was not his birthright, but one given to him by his scholars for the dove-like gentleness of his character. So indeed we are told; though it must be owned that some of the traits recorded of him in The Monks of the West are not columbine at all.] The Dominicans were well ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... after the Civil War, which was also the end of the grand romantic period of the Pennsylvania wilderness. The mountaineer of Pennsylvania was of martial blood, his ancestors had fought in every state of Continental Europe—and the science of armorer was his birthright. David Lewis, the "Galloping Jack" or highwayman of Central Pennsylvania, used new pistols every year, and weapons which he is said to have carried are as plentiful as Ole Bull's violins. The frontiersmen of British origins always named their favorite rifles "My Friend," "My Brother," "Sure Shot," ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... character. We shall never leave our home. There are but two facts to be recognized. We are here. The white race is here. Both share the same rights; make and obey the same laws; struggle for progress under the same conditions. The logical conclusion of our birthright and of our proclaimed and perfected equality before the law is that we shall remain, and remaining strive with equal advantages with our white fellow citizens for our own good ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Poetry is the exclusive birthright of no age of people. The dirtiest Hindoo sings to his fetish the songs of the Brahmin muse, with as keen a relish as the most devout Christian does the hymns of Dr. WATTS. Melody comes of Heaven, and is a gift vouchsafed to all generations, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... vilest of mankind." And then on he goes, in a style of rhodomontade, but filled with living indignation, to declare his right to a political opinion, and his willingness to shed his blood for the political birthright of his sons. Poor, perturbed spirit! he was indeed exercised in vain; those who share and those who differ from his sentiments about the Revolution, alike understand and sympathise with him in this painful strait; for poetry and human manhood are lasting like the race, and politics, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so well, will realize that she has never till now had her birthright. You did your best for her, but both of you were bounded north, south, east and west by Walland Marsh. I wish you could see her now, beside me on the terrace—she is like a little finch in the sunshine of its first spring day. Her only trouble is her fear of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... chief crime of all had been the act resulting from Caleb Patten's abysmal ignorance. Nor now could she blame Norton that, embarked upon this flood of his life, he saw himself forced to make her his prisoner for a few hours. It was a man's birthright to protect himself, to guard his freedom. And her heart gave him high praise that toward her he acted with all deference, that with things as they were, while he was man enough to hold her here, ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... of volumes have been written about the glories of the Elizabethan age, the sublime period in our history. Then were Englishmen on fire to do immortal deeds. High aims and noble ambitions became their birthright. There was nothing they could not or would not do for England. Sailors put a girdle round the world. Every captain had a general's capacity; every fighting-man could have been a captain. All the women, from the queen downward, were ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... and myths of Greece and the grandeur and power of Rome. It is this race, broken-hearted and scattered, to which the Czar of all the Russias adds the enormities of his rule upon the victims of the ignorance and slander of the ages. The birthright of this race is thus despoiled; and, Sir, have we no word of protest? Struggling against adversities which no other people have encountered, do they not yet survive—the wine from the crushed ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... power vested in the Government by means of the Public Meetings Act has been a menace to Your Majesty's subjects since the enactment of the Act in 1894. This power has now been applied in order to deliver a blow that strikes at the inherent and inalienable birthright of every British subject—namely, his right to petition his Sovereign. Straining to the utmost the language and intention of the law, the Government have arrested two British subjects who assisted in presenting ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my son; your father's son! And have you no reproach for your mother, who so weakly, so criminally, concealed your birthright, till, alas! discovery may be too late? Oh! reproach me, reproach me! it will be kindness. No! do not kiss me! I cannot bear it. Boy! boy! if as my heart tells me, we fail in proof, do you understand what, in the world's eye, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fresh world in fancy, where all form has the same inner justification that all life has in the real world. As no insect is without its rights and every cripple has his dream of happiness, so no artistic fact, no child of imagination, is without its small birthright of beauty. In this freer element, competition does not exist and everything is Olympian. Hungry generations do not tread down the ideal but only its spokesmen or embodiments, that have cast in their lot with other material things. Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Strip my soul naked—dress it then thy way. Change for me all my rags to cloth of gold. Who would not poverty for riches yield? A hovel sell to buy a treasure-field? Who would a mess of porridge careful hold Against the universe's birthright old? ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... MacNair! You think yourself secure, in your smug egotism. But the end is in sight. Your petty despotism is doomed. You have hoodwinked the authorities, bribed the police, connived with the Hudson Bay Company, bullied and browbeaten the Indians, cheated them out of their birthright of land and liberty, and have forced them into a peonage that has filled your pockets ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the birthright of his youth, had him safe in its grasp. But sometimes, when Rosamund was alone in the room of the Hermes, learning her lesson, and he was among the ruins, or walking above the buried Stadium where the flocks were ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... when once she realized the nature and character of the man to whom she had given herself in marriage. Here in this stately mirror had she seen herself arrayed in the splendid clothes which were the poor price for which she had sold her birthright. He stood and looked at himself in the mirror, with an uncanny feeling that behind his own image there was that of the beautiful Bettina, whom once he had thought to protect forever by his love and strength and tenderness, and who now, with only a hired servant, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... faculties of the helpless young immortal may have due training and development,—that this development may not be left to chance, like that of a worthless weed, but may have the protection and guardianship which are the necessary birthright of every rational creature brought into being by the voluntary act of another. But God has ordained society also for this same end, among others, namely, that his rational creatures may have a competent agency, bound by the laws and necessities of its own welfare to make ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... credited at home, that all except the most reflecting people in the United States have, within the last five years, become really and seriously impressed with the notion that the whole continent of the New World is a part of their birthright, and that it is about to pass under their dominion, as a matter of course, as well as that all the powers of the Old World cannot hinder this consummation one day, or even exist themselves much longer, as a political millennium ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... when you find some indulgence of the flesh concerning which you say "I can't help it," there your body has vanquished you. It is absorbing your personality, robbing you of your divine birthright, in which you say, "I will," ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... confirmation of Juve's words?... How could Wilhelmine be entirely ignorant of this dreadful creature's character? How could Wilhelmine be wholly innocent of the terribly compromising actions of her daily companion? Did Wilhelmine lack intuition? Was she without that delicate sensitiveness which is the birthright of all nice women? How could a pure girl breathe the miasmic atmosphere which must emanate from the soul of this ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... long mustache hanging across his jaws showed a deep mahogany-red. Western ranchman one might have called him, rather than Southern planter. Scotch-Irish, generations back, perhaps, yet Southern always, and by birthright American, he might have been a war-lord of another land and day. No feudal baron ever dismounted with more assuredness at his own hall, to toss careless rein to a retainer. He stood now, tall and straight, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... blood dominated his tiny person? Only the exquisite soft, pale brown of his satiny skin called loudly and insistently that he was of a race older than the composite English could ever boast; it was the hallmark of his ancient heritage—the birthright ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... said Pluma, haughtily; "you would not rob me of my birthright. I shall be forced to submit to your pleasure—while you are here—but, thank Heaven, the time is not far distant when I shall be able to do as I please. 'The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine,'" ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... do cheerful obeisance, yet with the look of one who but half hides a happy secret in her heart that compensates for all she resigns. There is not a true-hearted woman alive who would give up her birthright to become—we ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... have been reared in luxury as he had been, to have seen only the pleasant side of society, which is so persistent and so deluding where money is concerned, to have been in the run of big affairs not because one has created them, but because one is a part of them and because they are one's birthright, like the air one breathes, could not help but create one of those illusions of solidarity which is apt to befog the clearest brain. It is so hard for us to know what we have not seen. It is so difficult for us to feel ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... ripen his possibilities into great harvests of realization, by superadding the one blessing of a dovelike religion; light is thickening apace, the horrid altars of Moloch are growing dim; woman will no more consent to forego her birthright as the daughter of God; man will cease to be the tiger-cat that, in the noblest chamber of Ceylon, he has ever been; and with the new hopes that will now blossom amidst the ancient beauties of this lovely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... who at any time may have to fight for his own. David, by persistent but most tactful questioning, has brought out two salient facts in his biography. Knudsen is first the son of an immigrant, talks Swedish in his home, has none of the American background which to David is a man's birthright. And second he is a college man, from Hobart. Over these two facts the boy is sadly perplexed. Legally, Knudsen is as American as the rest of us—but can he be? Socially he is also all right, since he is a college man—but after all can you call Hobart a college? ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... The letters of the paper reeled and wavered, and grew misty before his eyes; he lost all sense of the noisy, changing, polyglot crowd thronging past him; he, a common soldier in the Algerian Cavalry, knew that, by every law of birthright, he was now a Peer ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... nights when the very aspect of nature suggests thoughts of the Eternal and the Infinite; when the most untutored being, gazing up into the deep blue void, finds his mind struggle vainly to grasp the hidden secrets those depths conceal; when the soul seems to claim her birthright, and dreams of an existence boundless, illimitable, as the starry wastes around. Such were, perhaps, the ideas which animated the philosophers of the old heathen world when they placed their departed heroes amongst the constellations; such, perhaps, the thoughts which led the dying ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... his rank. By this action he wished to give emphasis to the accompanying words, in which he protested, that, sooner than fail in satisfying and doing justice to any the least of those who heard him and followed his fortunes, he would be content to part with his own birthright, and to forego his dearest claims. This was what he really said; but the outermost circle of his auditors, who rather saw his gestures than distinctly heard his words, carried off the notion, (which they were careful ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... honesty and uprightness and virtue, if you condone vice because the vicious man is smart, or if you in any other way cast your weight into the scales in favor of evil, you are just so far corrupting and making less valuable the birthright of your children. The duties of American citizenship are very solemn as well as very precious; and each one of us here to-day owes it to himself, to his children, and to all his fellow Americans, to show that he is capable of performing ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... mine attend thy care! This day my hand thy tender age shall shield, And crown with honors of the conquer'd field: Thou, when thy riper years shall send thee forth To toils of war, be mindful of my worth; Assert thy birthright, and in arms be known, For Hector's nephew, and Aeneas' son." He said; and, striding, issued on the plain. Anteus and Mnestheus, and a num'rous train, Attend his steps; the rest their weapons take, And, crowding to the field, the ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... those expressions of devotion to Her Majesty the Queen, which indicate the feelings which rise so truly in the hearts of every man, woman, and child in Canada, and which not only prove the natural impulses of all who enjoy the birthright of British citizens, but demonstrate the convictions of a people who, by the knowledge they have acquired of the political institutions of the world, cling with a tenacity and firmness never to be shaken, to the constitution ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... bolt and bar the portals, That none may worship at the Muses' shrine; Seal up the gifts bequeathed by our Immortals To be the birthright of their ancient line; At luxury if you would strike a blow, Let Art and Science be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... the only country where a living man has been made a God. MEN have submitted to superior strength, to enjoy with impunity the pleasure of the moment—WOMEN have only done the same, and therefore till it is proved that the courtier, who servilely resigns the birthright of a man, is not a moral agent, it cannot be demonstrated that woman is essentially inferior to man, because she ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... By birthright higher than myself, Though nestling of the self-same nest: No fault of hers, no fault of mine, But stubborn ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... many of them would undoubtedly have obeyed the call. This he could not do; and it was to no purpose that he offered to the chiefs of illustrious families seats in his new senate. They conceived that they could not accept a nomination to an upstart assembly without renouncing their birthright and betraying their order. The Protector was, therefore, under the necessity of filling his Upper House with new men who, during the late stirring times, had made themselves conspicuous. This was the least ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his birthright, sold thee at the impious play, And the wife falls with the husband, and ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... fishers had ceased to be;—lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, a king! How perfectly their voices married together!—they sang with passion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art which is the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbed out in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night opened its heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them. Still they sang; and the San Marco sped on through the soft ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... spared himself nothing, apologised for nothing, expressed no regret, asked for no palliation of judgment, forgiveness or even understanding. Quietly, apparently without emotion, he gave back to the other man the birthright he had robbed him of by his selfish and dishonorable connivance with a wicked old man now beyond the power of any vengeance or penalty. Dick Carson was no longer nameless but as he listened tensely to his cousin's ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... war—a testimony so rigorous as to render it altogether unlikely that one of so military a profession as Mainwaring practiced could hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but Lucinda could not have married one not a member of the Society of Friends without losing her own birthright membership therein. She herself might not attach much weight to such a loss of membership in the Society, but her fear of, and her respect for, her uncle led her to walk very closely in her path of duty ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... And they who possessed it—did it mean to them what it meant to him? They who had everything that life could offer—music and art, freedom and beauty and health—all the treasures of life as their birthright—had they never a thought of those who had nothing, and were set to slave in the galleys of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... then, Roger, you'll find These malarial mists clearing out of your mind. As a ship cuts the fog and is caught by the breeze, And swept through the sunlight to fair, open seas, So your heart will be caught and swept out to the ocean Of youth and youth's birthright of happy emotion. I'll wager my hat (it was new yesterday) That you'll fall in love, too, in a serious way. Our girls at Bay Bend are bewitching and fair, And Cupid lurks ever ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... having a birthright citizenship—natural claims upon the country—claims common to all others of our fellow citizens—natural rights, which may, by virtue of unjust laws, be obstructed, but never can be annulled. Upon these ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... one of the mightiest epochs earth has ever seen, an epoch which will live in history hereafter side by side with the Athens of Pericles, the Rome of Augustus, the Florence of Lorenzo, the England of Elizabeth. Don't throw away your birthright by ignoring the fact. Live up to your privileges. Gaze around you and know. Be a conscious partaker in one of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... position and environment involves the strongest temptation to immorality. He is poor, life offers him no charm, almost every enjoyment is denied him, the penalties of the law have no further terrors for him; why should he restrain his desires, why leave to the rich the enjoyment of his birthright, why not seize a part of it for himself? What inducement has the proletarian not to steal! It is all very pretty and very agreeable to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the "sacredness of property" asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out of itself. Money ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... the trial. Do not tempt The Fates. I am not cruel, as they say, But shun the yoke of Man's despotic sway. In virgin freedom would I live and die; The meanest hind may claim this boon,—shall I, The daughter of an emperor, not have That birthright which belongs to all? Be slave To brutish force, that makes your sex our lord? Why does my hand such tempting bait afford? The gods have made me beauteous, rich, and wise, Presumptuous man considers me his prize. If nature dowered ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... altogether thrown off. The river, for example, is emblematic of death; and we are told that every human being must pass through the river. But Faithful does not pass through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's birthright, and about his own convictions of sin, as Bunyan might have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels at the House Beautiful catechise Christiana's boys, as any good ladies might catechise any boys at a Sunday School. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... had not possessed a feeling for art, he would have been a monster. To have been born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired with a spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored lands and in that golden age, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have been able to realize present blessings. The perusal of one of Mr. Fletcher's letters has been of service to me; also the recollection of what my father used to say; 'I ask in faith, and bring the blessing away with me.' Surely this is our Christian birthright. Faith honours God, and 'without faith it is impossible to please God.' Thanks be unto Thee, I can now live by faith; but I want to lose myself in Thee, Thou vast unfathomable sea of love! Covered with imperfections, I want to be plunged in the precious blood of Jesus. ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... State! with horrors still to strive: Thy Hugo dead, thy Boulanger alive; A Prince who'd govern where he dares not dwell, And who for power would his birthright sell— Who, anxious o'er his enemies to reign, Grabs at the scepter and conceals the chain; While pugnant factions mutually strive By cutting throats to keep the land alive. Perverse in passion, as in pride perverse— ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... riddles and catches, and really good ones into the bargain, and it was only after fifteen minutes had elapsed that Jill retired from her post beneath a hurricane of applause. Happy Jill, it was her birthright to charm! It seemed impossible that she should ever do the ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... months since. He polled 1,017 votes, against 1,070 by Mr. Cardwell; and was thus again saved by his good fortune from attempting to fill a situation in which he would not have shone. There are, no doubt, many to whom a seat in Parliament comes almost as the birthright of a well-born and well-to-do English gentleman. They go there with no more idea of shining than they do when they are elected to a first-class club;—hardly with more idea of being useful. It is ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... de Villerai. Your friends have brought to trial a perfectly innocent man—they have allowed him, for several months, to remain under the intolerable vexations of the ban of society, and to stand deprived of his birthright as a gentleman—have destroyed him at Court—have almost blighted his career—have forced him to expose his life to the ocean, to take far-off and highly perilous journeys to collect his defences—and have compelled him more than once to brave mortal combat. They have done all this, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... followed petition, and delegation delegation. "The excitement in the colony over the Convention of 1857 was most intense and widespread; the British flag was hoisted half-mast; other excited citizens flew American flags; everywhere there was burning indignation over this proposal to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage.[40] The resolute attitude of those interested elicited from Mr H. Labouchere, then Colonial Secretary, the welcome expression of a great ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... interfered very little with their private affairs. To this general statement of the case we agree; but we may point out that in terming our aristocracy a privileged class one material distinction has been passed over. For whereas the French noblesse constituted a caste partly exempted by birthright from the general taxation, and vested with certain vexatious rights to which no duties corresponded, the English aristocracy possessed legally no privileges at all. It was not an exclusive order, but ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... examination of the Evidences of Infidelity. When the Infidel tells us that Christianity is false, and asks us to reject it, he is bound of course to provide us with something better and truer instead; under penalty of being considered a knave trying to swindle us out of our birthright, and laughed at as a fool, for imagining that he could persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... guarded, supported, and secured by the Monroe doctrine. The narrow fringe of States along the Atlantic seaboard advanced its frontiers across the hills and plains of an intervening continent until it passed down the golden slope to the Pacific. We made freedom a birthright. We extended our domain over distant islands in order to safeguard our own interests and accepted the consequent obligation to bestow justice and liberty upon less favored peoples. In the defense of our own ideals and in the general cause of liberty we entered the Great War. When ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... broke silence—I have no patience, said she, to find myself a slave, a prisoner, in a vile house—Tell me, Sir, in so many words tell me, whether it be, or be not, your intention to permit me to quit it?—To permit me the freedom which is my birthright as an English subject? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... litter'd under a roof Neither wind nor water proof— That's the prose of Love in a Cottage— A puny, naked, shivering wretch, The whole of whose birthright would not fetch, Though Robins himself drew up the sketch, The bid of "a mess ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... been in effect a declaration that Galt could hold {150} any views he pleased about the future of the Empire. He accepted the K.C.M.G. and worthily wore it to the end of an honourable and public-spirited career. Thus was vindicated the freedom of speech which is the birthright of every British subject. But Galt, in exercising it, showed lack of stability and a tendency to take an erratic course, which crippled his influence in the young state he had done so much ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... birthright was not given by human hands: Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields, While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him, To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, And teach the reed to utter simple airs. Thou by ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... arbitrary proceeding. This was pronounced to be such an alarming attack on the liberty of the prisoners, that every freeman in the prison ship was called upon to rise up and resist the daring encroachment on the birthright of an American. A strong party was at once formed in favor of the man who was imprisoned without a trial. On this occasion the names of Hamden, Sidney, and Wilks, were echoed from all quarters of our prison. The liberty of the citizen, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the time," went on the thick, boyish voice. "Yet as things seem to have gone rather well for us, I cannot blame you, especially as I see that you hold fast her who has usurped my birthright." ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... than once been made to those formidable partisans of the patriot cause, the marine outlaws. Cheated of half their birthright by nature, and now driven forth from their narrow isthmus by tyranny, the exiled Hollanders took to the ocean. Its boundless fields, long arable to their industry, became fatally fruitful now that oppression was transforming a peaceful ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in slavery with the first lesson in A B C; and are not their minds thereby prostrated, so as never to rise again, but ever to bow to despotism, to cringe to rank, to think and act by the precepts of others, and to tacitly disavow that sacred equality which is our birthright? No, sir, without they can teach without resorting to such a fundamental error as flogging, my boy shall never ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... exploits of the gallant men who composed the American Navy, beginning with the Revolution and ending with the story of their wonderful deeds in our late war with Spain. You can never read a more interesting story, nor one that will make you feel prouder of your birthright. While our patriot armies have done nobly, it is none the less true that we never could have become one of the greatest nations in the world without the help of our heroic navy. Our warships penetrated into all waters of the globe, and ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... but for no one else. And the personal rights and privileges guarantied to citizens of this new sovereignty were intended to embrace those only who were then members of the several State communities, or who should afterwards by birthright or otherwise become members, according to the provisions of the Constitution and the principles on which it was founded. It was the union of those who were at that time members of distinct and separate political communities into one political ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... fear the Lorde eke, who is merciful and just: And loth would I be his majesty to offend; But by me (I doubt not) to work he doth intend. Assay, if thou canst at some one time or other, To buy the right of eldership from thy brother: Do thou buy the birthright, that to him doth belong, So may'st thou have the blessing, and do him no wrong. What thou hast once bought, is thine own of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... laureate (who gives us to understand that, if he had not been purified by holy matrimony into a mystical type, he would have died a virgin,) is another sublime gentleman of the same genus: he very much astonished some persons when he sold his birthright for a pot of sack; but not even his Sosia has a grain of respect for him, though, doubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his criticopoeticopolitical tomahawk, and sets up his Indian yell for the blood of his old friends: but, at best, ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... had not sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish I had a home that I had a perfect right to go and live in forevermore. I wish my mother was ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Lord's—and none the less holy that the voice of the priest may have left it without his consecration. Surely if ever the Lord laughs in derision, as the Psalmist says, it must be when the voice of a man would in his name exclude his fellows from their birthright. O Lord, gather thou the outcasts of thy Israel, whom the priests and the rulers of thy people have cast ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... colonies, which on the 4th of July, 1776, asserted their independence, were British colonies, governed by British laws. Our ancestors in their emigration to this country brought with them the common law of England as their birthright. They adopted its principles for their government so far as it was not incompatible with the peculiarities of their situation in a rude and unsettled country. Great Britain then having the sovereignty over the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... abandon that is worse than idolatry—as only women ever love. And you? You are grand and noble, a milor Inglese, and you take her love—her crazy worship—as a demi-god might, with uplifted grace, as your birthright; and she is your pretty toy of an hour. And then careless and happy, you are gone. Sunny Spain, with its olives and its vineyards, its pomegranates and its Zenith the Gitana, is left far behind, and you are roaming, happy and free, through La Belle France. And lo! Zenith the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... that the childhood of Mill could hardly have been a happy one. The joy of physical achievement, the free-hearted abandonment of the young barbarian at his play, the power to do as well as to know—these are the birthright of every child. But while we may pity him for his lack of these joys, we dare not forget that to have lived the life or done the work of John Stuart Mill is no small thing. And perhaps this life could not have been lived had his ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... to it," answers Floyd, in a tone not to be mistaken, since it implies the young man would dispose of his birthright any day for a ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... declare it as freely yours as mine. Every act of genius proclaims that the highest gift is no monopoly or singularity, no privilege of one, but the birthright of the race. Shakspeare knows well that we shall easily see what he sees; he considers it no secret. We are always feeling beforehand for every right word now about to be spoken in the world; many men give tokens of the general habit of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the term, it sounded so delightfully haughty—had obtained possession of one whose birthright would place her in a station so far above his own, she had not decided. But she was convinced that, although poor and peculiar and incapable of comprehending the temperament and necessities of the nobly born, he was, in his limited way, a worthy fellow. And she had long ago resolved ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... first. Who can help liking you? You seem to draw affection from all living things, as the trees draw the moisture from the ground. It comes to you as it were your birthright. Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert thought there was nobody like you. The sun rose and set in you. They thought I was the luckiest girl alive to win the love of a man like you. 'For it looks very much like it,' Uncle Robert used to say, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... that in soul and mind he was entirely his mother's child, with nothing—or an imperceptible little—of his father. As his mother's nature had been, so was Justin's—joyous. But Everard's training of him had suppressed all inborn vivacity. The mirth and diablerie that were his birthright had been overlaid with British phlegm, until in their stead, and through the blend, a certain sardonic humor had developed, an ironical attitude toward all things whether sacred or profane. This had been helped on by culture, and—in a still greater measure—by the odd ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... has to put his foot down over big things. To have invaded the senior day-room and stopped a conventional senior day-room 'rag' would have been interfering with the most cherished rights of the citizens, the freedom which is the birthright of ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... slave doth pine, Where'er one man may help another,— Thank God for such a birthright, brother,— That spot of earth is thine and mine! There is the true man's birthplace grand, His ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... wealth and position and high personal qualities. It was hinted by one that the ancient barony of the Talbots would be revived by the king; and the gratitude of a free and grateful country, with the consciousness of having materially aided in acquiring that independence which should be the birthright of every Englishman, was eloquently portrayed by the other. When to the last plea was added the personal preference of Katharine Wilton, the balance was overcome, and the hopes of the mother ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady |
