"Nobleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that spirit of self-assertion, which lies so deep in what may be called the religion of literature, to that wide-spread tendency to regard all reform of the individual man as being an evolution of some hidden nobleness, or an appeal to a perfect internal light or law, together with what may be called the worship of genius, the habit of nourishing all hope on the manifestation of the divine, by gifted individuals. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... it escapes. And no one is scandalized at this, for the same universal Father who gave its fierceness, its talons, and its jaws to the tiger, gave cunning to the fox, swift feet to the hare, poison to the viper, diminutiveness to the mosquito, and its inky fluid to the squid. And nobleness or ignobleness does not consist in the weapons we use, for every species and even every individual possesses its own, but rather in the way in which we use them, and above all in the cause ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... depth, charm of feeling or nobleness of instinct, beauty, or shade, it does not ask for, but it does ask for olives—olives that shall round off its dessert, and flavour its dishes, and tickle its sated palate; olives that it shall pick ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... government. The Duke returned an evasive answer in public, but privately, both at Dublin and London, the Catholics were assured that, as soon as the new Premier could convert the King—as soon as he was in a position to act—he would make their cause his own. No doubt Fox, who had great nobleness of soul, intended to do so; but on the 13th of September of the same year, he followed his great rival, Pitt, to the vaults of Westminster Abbey. A few months only had intervened between ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... not have His Cross? Is there no appeal to you to-day from that hill side, without the city wall? Does it not speak to you of the power, the sweetness and nobleness of a life of service, of sacrifice for others, of toil for His world. Has it no message for you of victory over sin and death, of life from the dead—life, abundant life, in the Blood of the Son of Man! Believe me, unless you accept His Cross, He will prepare for you a coffin. "The wages ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... with a touch of nobleness, despite Their error, upward tending all though weak; Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, But dream of him, and guess where he may be, And do their best to climb and get ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... majesty! I? Never! All my life through have I maintained that kings are above all other men, not only from their rank and power, but from their nobleness of heart and their true dignity of mind. I never can bring myself to believe that my sovereign, he who passed his word to me, did so with ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the dearest old ladies of my acquaintance," replied Mr. Ingram. "Beatrice owes a great deal of her nobleness of heart and singleness of purpose to her mother. Mrs. Bertram, I have never heard that woman say an unkind word. I have heard calumny of her, but never from her. Then, of course, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... insurgents. The ladies being of opinion that such persons as stay loitering at home, when the important calls of their country demand their military services abroad, must certainly be destitute of that nobleness of sentiment, that brave, manly spirit, which would qualify them to be the defenders and guardians of the fair sex. The ladies of the adjoining county of Rowan have desired the plan of a similar association to be drawn up and ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... nobleness expressed in every line in his face, would have disarmed a murderer. For a moment the mysterious stranger, who had brought an element of excitement into lives of misery and resignation, gazed at the little group; then he turned to the priest and ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... whined and indulged in sharp "yaps" of protest against hope deferred. When they saw their mistress advancing with a heaped-up plate of food, both gave reins to their joy, and jumped and barked around her with delight. Pocahontas loved animals; the nobleness and fidelity of their instincts, harmonized with the large ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... masked in hypocrisy and lies; now a virgin, now a harlot; an imperial queen, and a tinselled actress. Clearly, she is of earth, not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill, the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and tenderness, that battle in the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... them. Where before it had always been her husband, now, ever since the night of Jim Thorpe's going, he was rarely out of her thoughts. Now, even more than at the time when she first understood the sacrifice he was about to make for her. And the nobleness of it appealed to her simple woman's mind as something sublime. He was a branded man before, but now, so long as he remained in Barnriff, or wherever he met a man who had lived in Barnriff at this time, so long ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... will not keep up: therefore, for the sake of our spirits, even more than of our bodies, we must live by faith. If we wish to be loving, pure, wise, manly, noble, we must ask those excellent gifts of God, who is Himself infinite love, and purity, wisdom and nobleness. If we wish for everlasting life, from whom can we obtain it but from God, who is the boundless, eternal, life itself? If we wish for forgiveness for our faults and failings, where are we to get it but from ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... partner in the concern; and, we venture to say, will never forfeit his trust. About Maria there is an air of self-command-a calmness and intelligence of manner, and a truthfulness in her devotion to Tom, that we can only designate with the word "nobleness." And, too, there is a sweetness and earnestness in her face that seems to bespeak the true woman, while leaving nothing that can add to the happiness of him she now looks up to and calls ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... manner. This is the outgrowth of kindness of heart, of nobleness, and of courage. But in some persons we find an abundance of courage, nobleness and kindness of heart, without kindness of manner, and we can only think and speak of them as not only impolite, but even rude and gruff. Such a man was Dr. Johnson, whose rudeness secured for him the nickname of ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... In her torn heart could she find a nobleness sufficient for this occasion? Seymour's eyes, the terrible eyes of affection, which require so much and which sometimes, because of that, seem to be endowed with creative power, forcing into life that which they long to see, were surely upon her, watching ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... of nature is not an assured ground of condemnation. Its presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart, though by no means an evidence of moral practice. In proportion to the degree in which it is felt, will probably be the degree in which nobleness and beauty of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... too, physically stronger than a man. Her physique excels man's. Look at her torso, at the size, the fulness, the rounded firmness, the depth of the chest. There is a nobleness about it. Shoulders, arms, limbs, all reach a breadth of make seldom seen in man. There is more than merely sufficient—there is a luxuriance indicating a surpassing vigour. And this occurs without effort. She needs no long manual labour, no exhaustive ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... have we found his obiter dicta on the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture; for example, when he says of the Tuscan palaces that "in their large dependence on pure symmetry for beauty of effect, [they] reproduce more than other modern styles the simple nobleness of Greek architecture." And we would note also what he says of the Albani Antinoues. It must be a nimble wit that can keep pace with Mr. James's logic in his aesthetic criticism. It is apt to spring airily over the middle term to the conclusion, leaving something in the likeness of a ditch across ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... that the being common to brutes, or peculiar to man, can alone be no rational test of inferiority, or dignity in pleasures. We must not assume that man is the nobler animal, and then deduce the nobleness of his delights; but we must prove the nobleness of the delights, and thence the nobleness of the animal. The dignity of affection is no way lessened because a large measure of it may be found in lower animals, neither is the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Guerande after reading this history you cannot fail to quiver when you see that blazon. Yes, the most confirmed republican would be moved by the fidelity, the nobleness, the grandeur hidden in the depths of that dark lane. The du Guaisnics did well yesterday, and they are ready to do well to-morrow. To DO is the motto of chivalry. "You did well in the battle" was the praise of the Connetable par excellence, the great ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... traditional instincts were outraged by the wreck of its institutions, its good sense by the effort to enforce godliness by civil penalties, its self-respect by the rule of the sword. Never had England shown a truer nobleness than when it refused to be tempted from the path of freedom even by the genius of Cromwell, never a truer wisdom than when it refused to be lured from its tradition of practical politics by the dazzling seductions of the Puritan ideal. And not only did the nation stand aloof from Cromwell's ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... man was esteemed in his own time. To us, in ours, it has been given still more to know the noble son of 'that giant brood,' whose name will be loved and held in honour as long as people live to honour nobleness, simplicity, and genius; those things which give life to ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... sought relief from my favorite books, those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... to say: thus, with the most graceful generosity, and a nobleness of mind truly peculiar to himself, was he pleased to act: and what could Mrs. Jervis or I say to him?—Why, indeed, nothing at all!—We could only look upon one another, with our eyes and our hearts full of a gratitude that would not permit either of us to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... sculptured capitals, and fragments of what were once magnificent entablatures, have been used to construct plain walls, or laid in obscure and neglected pavements—all, however, still retaining, notwithstanding their present degradation, unequivocal marks of the nobleness of their origin. The quarries where the ancient Parian marble was obtained were situated on this island, not very far from the town. They remain to the present day in the same state in which ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of deeds often lies less in the commission than the hero the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it himself and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident." And, we may add, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... flatter myself that Lord Orville would, indeed, be sensible of your worth, and act with a nobleness of mind which should prove it congenial to your own, then would I leave my Evelina to the unmolested enjoyment of the cheerful society, and increasing regard, of a man she so greatly admires: but this is not an age in which we may trust ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... fate, could not be witnessed without the highest admiration; and however much we must detest the blood-thirstiness of his executioners, we must still acknowledge, that there is something closely allied to nobleness of sentiment in the inflexible perseverance, with which they pursued the murderer ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... begging letter, and I should loathe to write it, under the circumstances, to any man but such a one as you. For I am going to ask a great deal of you and to appeal to that nobleness of character for which I have always admired you and which made you poor Dam's hero from Lower School days at Wellingborough until you left Sandhurst (and, alas! quarrelled with him—or rather with his memory—about ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... our memory and helps to shape our characters; and thus children brought up among beautiful sights and sweet sounds will most likely show the fruits of their nursing by thoughtfulness and affection and nobleness of mind, even by ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... study the book it is full of interest. It shows us their conceptions of the Supreme Being and his relation to the world; it enables us to see what they admired in character as virtue, heroism, nobleness, and beauty; it discloses their mythology and their notions of religious worship; in a word, it bears witness to the fact that the various families of mankind are all of "one blood," so far, at least, as to ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... hear of rumours flying through your court. Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife, Should have in it an absoluter trust To make up that defect: let rumours be: When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust That you trust me in your own nobleness, I may not well believe that ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and yet time hath his revolution, there must be a period and an end of all temporal things, finis rerum, an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... probability, and the search itself rewards the pains. But there are many degrees of probable, some nearer to the truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our judgment. And besides the nobleness and pleasure of the studies, may we not be so bold as to say that they are no small help to the advancement of wisdom and morality?—HUYGHENS, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... is properly a staff to lean upon; and that as a crown or diadem is first a binding thing, a 'sceptre' is first a supporting thing, and it is in its nobleness, itself made of the stem of a young tree. You may just as well learn ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... discretion and latitude wherever their own orders have not marked a distinction. I shall therefore go on with the more cheerful confidence, not only for the reasons that I have stated, but for another and material reason. I know and am satisfied, that, in the nobleness of your judgment, you will always make a distinction between the person that gives the order and the organ that is to execute it. The House of Commons know no such thing as indiscretion, imprudence, or impropriety: it is otherwise with their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was obliged to go." A great many of the guests were come: all were looking for the hero of the evening—we had seen him only as part of a show, now we wanted to hear him converse. At length he entered. The nobleness of his figure and simplicity of his manners produced a most agreeable impression on us. His pride, as it ought, has nearly the grace of timidity. Mme de Stael, impressed by a style and manner so little like that of our countrymen, said: "He carries his glory as if it were a nothing." ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... delightful character is dwelt upon by all his biographers; his genuine nobleness of soul, which raised him far above interest, rivalship, or jealousy, the gentleness of his temper, the suavity of his manners, the sweetness of his disposition, the benevolence of his heart, which rendered him so deeply loved and admired, even by those who ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature. How many men as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of death, would have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot out the silent evidence of animosity ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... his rambles it was with a mind that, casting off the burdens of the past, looked serenely and steadily on the obstacles and hardships of the future. We have seen that a scruple of conscience or of pride, not without its nobleness, had made him refuse the importunities of Gawtrey for less sordid raiment; the same feeling made it his custom to avoid sharing the luxurious and dainty food with which Gawtrey was wont to regale himself. For that strange man, whose wonderful ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... openness of temper betray us in early life into improper connexions; and the very constancy, and nobleness of nature, which characterize the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus? What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian? The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger, That honourable war ne'er taught a nobleness Nor worthy circumstance show'd what a man was? That never heard thy name sung but in banquets And loose lascivious pleasures? to a boy That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness No study of thy life to know thy goodness?... Egyptians, dare you think your high ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... anywhere. He has saved my life twice—once at the imminent peril of his own, when with the wilfulness of a spoiled child I would ride a horse which he told me I could not manage. Oh! you know not half his nobleness," and tears moistened the bright ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... Stockton pronounced Sohrab and Rustum the noblest poem in the English language. Another critic has said that "it is the nearest analogue in English to the rapidity of action, plainness of thought, plainness of diction, and nobleness of Homer." Combining, as it does, classic purity of style with romantic ardor of feeling, it stands a direct exemplification of Arnold's poetic theories, as set forth in the preface of his volume of 1853. Especially ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to your eye, are endowed with a singular character of beauty. Her fancy is impressed by what she thus hears and sees; and impressed the more because, by a coincidence not very uncommon, a face like that which she beholds has before been presented to her in a dream or a revery. In the nobleness of genuine, confiding, reverential love, rather than impute to your beloved a levity of sentiment that would seem to you a treason, you accept the chimera of 'magical fascination.' In this frame of mind you ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she said, "when dear Mr. S—— preaches those saintly sermons to us about our baptismal vows, and the nobleness of an unworldly life, and calls on us to live for something purer and higher than we are living for, I confess that sometimes all my life seems to me a mere sham,—that I am going to church, and saying solemn words, and being wrought ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... said Christian to the two terrified and retreating men. Now, every true venture is made against risk and uncertainty, against anxiety and danger and fear. And it is just this that constitutes the nobleness and blessedness of faith. Faith sells all for Christ. Faith risks all for eternal life. Faith faces all for salvation. When it is at the worst, faith still says, Very well; even if there is no Celestial City anywhere in the world, it is better ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... compassionately, with a touch of youthful sentiment affecting me.—"Poor man! Working himself into his very grave, and with never a sign or murmur of complaint—worn and weighed down with the burden of his work, and yet with a nobleness of spirit and resolve that still conceals behind glad smiles and laughing words the cares that lie ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... On this occasion he was thoroughly like himself. There was a kind of rightness and nobleness in what he did; but it was in the wrong place. If he had only been as prompt inside Gethsemane to do what he was bidden as outside it to do what he was not bidden! How much better if he could have drawn the spiritual sword and cut on the ear which was ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... But while they talked, above their heads I saw The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought My book to mind: and opening this I read Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, And much I praised her nobleness, and 'Where,' Asked Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay Beside him) 'lives there such a ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... though it has many fine possibilities about it, and attracts liking, is really of a low type, and may very easily slide into depths of degrading sensualism, and be dead to all nobleness. Enterprise, love of stirring life, impatience of dull plodding, are natural to young lives. Unregulated, impulsive characters, who live for the moment, and are very sensitive to all material delights, have often an air of generosity and joviality ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... women are by far more numerous than those of men,[134] it is not from forgetfulness of their services, for I credit them with all sincerity of motive, and nobleness in the wish for our enfranchisement. I have given, as briefly as possible, the two decades from 1850 to 1870. I have set down nothing in malice, and what is omitted must be charged to want of space and time. When the full history of this work is written, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I must say, was nobleness itself, in spite of the quarrel between himself and Sir Howard. He refused to give up either of us, and was on the point of fighting for us when in came the Cadi with your most amusing and delightful letter, captain, and bundled ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... because we cannot so use our legs,—but by slow climbing, is, we may presume, the object of all teachers, leaders, legislators, spiritual pastors, and masters. He who writes tales such as this, probably also has, very humbly, some such object distantly before him. A picture of surpassing godlike nobleness,—a picture of a King Arthur among men, may perhaps do much. But such pictures cannot do all. When such a picture is painted, as intending to show what a man should be, it is true. If painted to show what men are, it is false. The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... only one, in which such a deed can be said to have been by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, and that is that God did not interfere to save Jesus from the last dread ordeal. He allowed wickedness to do its worst, and thereby made the disinterested nobleness of the character of Jesus all the clearer. In such a time as that in which Jesus lived such a life as His was sure to end on a Calvary of some kind, unless He ran away from it, or God supernaturally intervened to save Him. Neither event happened. If Jesus had shrunk from the full ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... as President of the Royal Geographical Society, after a copious notice of his life, summed it up in these words: "As a whole, the work of his life will surely be held up in ages to come as one of singular nobleness of design, and of unflinching energy and self-sacrifice in execution. It will be long ere any one man will be able to open so large an extent of unknown land to civilized mankind. Yet longer, perhaps, ere we find a brighter example of a life of such continued and useful self-devotion ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... guard. I told with tears the story of my woe; He listened to me with a thoughtful face, And sadly sighed; and thus I won his ruth, And then I told him how my life was lost;— How earth had nothing more for me but pain; Not e'en a friend. At this, he took my hand, And said, out of his nobleness of heart, That I should have an honest friend in him; On which I bowed my head upon his arm, And wept again, as if my heart would break With the full pressure of his gratitude. He put me gently off, and read my face: I stood ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... an equerry, and the tutor of her younger son. She has a numerous train of domestics, and it is among them that the traces are still observable of bygone pretensions, long since abandoned by the true nobleness of their mistress. The former queen, the daughter of Napoleon, the mother of the Imperial heir-apparent, has returned quietly to private life with the perfect grace ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... was so great honour to thee, is deprived of all the nobleness which was wont to come into ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... to that question depends all the success or the failure; all the nobleness or the unworthiness of the individual life. No one can estimate too ardently, or too earnestly, the spiritual salvation of keeping faith ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... worth and nobleness of soul on your part, if esteem and tenderest affection on mine, were all which that dignity which offends you requires, how should I crave the blessing of such a daughter! how rejoice in joining my son to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... foremost of these men, "I, Baldwin de Oyley, squire to the redoubted Knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert, make offer to you, styling yourself, for the present, the Disinherited Knight, of the horse and armour used by the said Brian de Bois-Guilbert in this day's Passage of Arms, leaving it with your nobleness to retain or to ransom the same, according to your pleasure; for such is the law ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... opened to me a view of his character. I saw, too, by his love increasing with his esteem, the solidity of his understanding, and the nobleness of his nature. He went deeper and deeper into my mind, till he came to a spring of gratitude, which rose and overflowed, vivifying and fertilising the seemingly barren waste. I believe it to be true that, after the first great misfortune, persons ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... almost my only friend! You cannot, do not think I intended to say that!" interrupted Mabel, almost breathless in her haste to relieve his mortification. "If courage, truth, nobleness of soul and conduct, unyielding principles, and a hundred other excellent qualities can render any man respectable, esteemed, or beloved, your claims are inferior to those of no other ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and distinguished soldier, who had fought under Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he became the object of persecution and abuse at the hands of the magistrates and the populace. None bore the indignities of the mob with greater patience and nobleness of soul than this once proud gentleman and soldier. One of his friends, on an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lamented that he should be treated so harshly in his old age who had been so honored before. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... kissed the hand of the King, my father, and left him, wondering at his nobleness who could show such a road to his only child, though its treading would mean woe to him and mayhap the ruin of his hopes. Still that road is an old one among the women of my people, and why should I not walk it, as thousands have ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... ever seen give change for a five-franc piece. She was a large quiet woman, who would never see forty again; of an intensely feminine type, yet wonderfully rich and robust, and full of a certain physical nobleness. Tho she was not really old, she was antique, and she was very grave, even a little sad. She had the dignity of a Roman empress, and she handled coppers as if they had been stamped with the head ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... asked for a little bread and water for his poor child and for himself. The superior of the convent, Juan Perez de Marchena, gave hospitality to the unfortunate traveller. He questioned him, and was surprised by the nobleness of his language, but still more astonished was he, by the boldness of the ideas of Columbus, who made the good Father the confidant of his aspirations. For several months the wandering sailor remained in this hospitable convent; some of the monks were learned men, and interested themselves about ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... mayors, officers, professors, magistrates, administrators, seated or standing around a table, feasting and conversing, of life size, most faithful likenesses, grave, open faces, expressing that secure serenity of conscience by which may be divined rather than seen the nobleness of a life consecrated to one's country, the character of that strong, laborious epoch, the masculine virtues of that excellent generation; all this set off by the fine costume of the time, so admirably combining grace and dignity; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from external taint from generation to generation, become temples of which the very walls breathe nobleness, whereas the very birthplace of genius itself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, and garnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will still cling about its ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... what a fine painting, if the artist had known how to make mountains at the foot of which the Virgin had passed; if he had known how to make the mountains very steep, escarped, majestic; if he had covered them with moss and wild shrubs; if he had given to the Virgin simplicity, beauty, grandeur, nobleness; if the road that she follows had led into the paths of some forest, lonely and remote; if he had taken his moment at the rise of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Alone, but in our good King George's name, For act so kind achieved. Knew he your care For his brave men—I speak for those around— Of whom some fought for him at Copenhagen, He would convey his thanks, and the Queen's, too— Who loves all nobleness—in better terms Than I, his humble servant. Affliction Leaves him in our hands to do him justice; And justice 'tis, alike to him and you, To thank you in his name, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... see me. I confess I was irritated, that I was ready to decline to see her, but my curiosity, coupled with my desire not to offend her, led me to receive the unexpected guest. Assuming the expression of majestic nobleness with which I usually greet my visitors, and softening that expression somewhat by a smile in view of the romantic character of the affair, I ordered my ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... interested in every circumstance of it. What signify the silly, idle gewgaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of greatness! When fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense are they not EQUALS? And if the bias, the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Art of Life, viz. Prudence or Policy, and Taste; and their standard when found would serve for Morality as well. The true standard, or general principle, is, the promotion of the happiness of ALL sentient beings. This is not the sole end; for instance, ideal nobleness of will or conduct should be pursued in preference to the specific pursuit of happiness; but all ends whatsoever must be justified and ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... terrible selfishness and conceit, while her heart was throbbing even painfully with humility and gratitude. "You have done me a great honour, and if you would not be disappointed—if you would bear with me—if you are not deceiving yourself in your nobleness—I should be so happy ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... her presence falls Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her Loses discountenanced, and like Folly shows; Authority and Reason on her wait, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally; and, to consummate all, Greatness of mind and Nobleness their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelick placed. To whom the Angel with contracted brow. Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine; and be not diffident Of Wisdom; she deserts thee not, if thou Dismiss not her, when most ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... as elsewhere in their glory and beauty. And not so much their meanness and weakness, as that of those who have distorted these innocent servants of truth to become tools of falsehood and the abject instruments of the extinction of all honesty and nobleness. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... window, she could perceive that Christie of the Clinthill was attended on the present occasion by a very gay and gallant cavalier, who, from the nobleness of his countenance and manner, his rich and handsome dress, and the showy appearance of his horse and furniture, must, she agreed with her new friend, be a ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... while, like the other warlike chieftains of those days, his life was devoted to deeds of rapine and murder, there was in his demeanor toward those with whom he was at peace, and toward enemies who were entirely subdued, a certain high-toned nobleness and generosity of character, which, combined with his undaunted courage, and his extraordinary strength and prowess on the field of battle, made him one of the greatest lights of chivalry of ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... extinction. Without such a hope, how could they have endured the existence they had? True, there are in our day men who profess unbelief in that future, and yet lead an enjoyable life, nor even say to themselves, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;" but say instead, with nobleness, "Let us do what good we may, for there are men to come after us." Of all things let him who would be a Christian be fair to every man and every class of men. Before, however, I could be satisfied that I understood the mental ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... with the idea of benefiting only himself. Mankind was always in his mind, and perhaps there is no better demonstration of his fulfilment of the character of the monk than this constant solicitude to benefit others by every bit of investigation that he carried out. For him, with medieval nobleness of spirit, "the first part of every work must be the invocation of God, and the last, though no less important than the first, must be the utility and fruit for mankind that can be derived ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself—then your lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief. That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual acknowledgment, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... which is in Santa Croce, is one of his earliest works, and is full of grace and nobleness (Fig. 84). He made some beautiful groups of dancing children, which are now in the Uffizi Gallery; but he considered his David, which is in the same gallery, as his masterpiece. He was so proud of it that he swore by it, saying, "By the faith ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... that can suggest the necessity of conforming to the expensive customs of the world. May we, in heaven, find one of these souls saved through our instrumentality, and we can afford to forego all we shall lose by a want of conformity. There is a nobleness in taking an independent stand on the side of economy, and saving something to benefit dying souls. There is a heavenly dignity in such a course, infinitely superior to the slavish conformity so much contended for. It is an independence ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... the eleventh century, Robert, called "The Magnificent," the fifth in succession from the great chieftain Rollo who had established the Northmen in France, was duke of Normandy. To the nickname he earned by his nobleness and liberality some chronicles have added another, and call him "Robert the Devil," by reason of his reckless and violent deeds of audacity, whether in private life or in warlike expeditions. Hence a lively controversy amongst the learned upon the question of deciding ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... contrary, everything contradicts the idea. Every man in seeking his material interests becomes the rival and antagonist of every other man. To gain his bread he must sacrifice friendship, generosity and even honor. He must keep his convictions of nobleness and justice for a beautiful and holiday idea; he must consign them to the keeping of religion; and she, like the gentle wife at home, has careful instructions not to show her beautiful face in the market place. It is hard; since in the market place mankind are ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the first speech, expatiating on the power of his chief, the richness of his tribe, and the beauty of Chaf-fa-ly-a. This was followed by an Ogallalla, who dwelt at length upon the power of his chief, his rank, and age, and upon the nobleness, bravery, and skill of Souk. Several other speeches were made on each side, in which the young man and woman were alternately praised, and the glory of their fathers extolled to the skies. The council ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... could live in peace and comfort; there grim poverty was unknown; there the widow and orphan were free from carking care; and there men and women of humble rank had learned the truth that when men toil for the common good there is a perennial nobleness in work.78 ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... almost always the spirit of improvement, dooming themselves to ignorance, if not to vice, for a vain show. Is this evil without remedy? Is human nature always to be sacrificed to outward decoration? Is the outward always to triumph over the inward man? Is nobleness of sentiment never to spring up among us? May not a reform in this particular begin in the laboring class, since it seems so desperate among the more prosperous? Cannot the laborer, whose condition calls him so loudly to simplicity of taste and habits, take his stand against ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... brought us, for our dearth Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. Honour has come back, as a King, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage; And Nobleness walks in our ways again; And we have come ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the statesman whose upright patriotism, moderation, and nobleness of purpose thus breathed through every word spoken by him in public or whispered to friends was already held up by a herd of ravening slanderers to obloquy as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... novelist—the description of Jem's toilette. I had forgotten to say that a black pilot coat with velvet collar, red silk handkerchief, etc., was a veritable Nessus shirt to Jem. So passionately fond of work was he, and so high an idea had he conceived on the sacredness and nobleness of work, that integuments savoring of Sabbath indolence were particularly intolerable to him. He moved about stiffly in them, was glad to shake them off, and resume his white, lime-stained, patched, and torn, but oh! such luxuriously easy ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... dismal panic, and Uncle Silas—polished, mild—seemed unaccountably horrible to me. Then it was no longer an accidental fascination of electro-biology. It was something more. His nature was incomprehensible by me. He was without the nobleness, without the freshness, without the softness, without the frivolities of such human nature as I had experienced, either within myself or in other persons. I instinctively felt that appeals to sympathies or feelings could no more ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the noblest cavaliers of Venice—but nobleness, as we know, is not always, perhaps not often, the credential in behalf of him who seeks a maiden from her parents. He certainly was not the choice of Francesca's sire. The poor girl was doomed to the embraces of one Ulric Barberigo, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... ever read it? For if they have done so, I pity them if they have not found it, in spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and pious a book as man need look into: and wish for no better proof of the nobleness and virtue of the Elizabethan age, than the fact that "Euphues" and the "Arcadia" were the two popular romances of the day. It may have suited the purposes of Sir Walter Scott, in his cleverly drawn Sir Piercie Shafton, to ridicule ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... examples of Gothic, both early and late, in the north, (but late, I think, exclusively, in Italy,) in which the minor features of the architecture were composed of small models of the larger: examples which led the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life, strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic,—abuses which no Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine, nor Italian of the earlier ages would have endured for an instant, and which strike me with renewed surprise whenever I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century Northern Gothic, associated ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... little hut, in a glow of patriotism and enthusiasm. "Manuela," she cried, "did you ever see such nobleness, such lofty yet gracious courtesy? Ah! I knew he was a man to die for. How happy we are, to be here at last, after dreaming of it so long! I thrill; I burn with sacred fire—what is the matter, Manuela? you look the spirit of gloom. ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... exclaimed, impatiently, "it is not that I think highly of myself, as you well know; you well know with what anguish I have deplored our wants; it is pretension I despise, and rise above; talent, and learning, and virtue, and nobleness, that I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... also reached Luther of the troubles and distress of his other friends, he repeatedly sent to them at Augsburg fresh words of encouragement, comfort, and counsel, which remain to attest, more than anything else, the nobleness of his mind and character. He speaks, as from a height of confident, clear, and proud conviction, to those who are struggling in the whirl and vortex of earthly schemes and counsels. He has gained this height, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... vision. She was essentially incorruptible, and she took this pernicious conceit to her bosom very much as if it had been a dogma revealed by a white-winged angel. Even after experience had given her a hundred rude hints she found it easier to believe in fables, when they had a certain nobleness of meaning, than in well-attested but sordid facts. She believed that a gentleman with a long pedigree must be of necessity a very fine fellow, and enjoyment of a chance to carry further a family chronicle begun ever so far back must be, as a consciousness, a ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... nobleness that lives In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... art the type of those meek charities Which make up half the nobleness of life, Those cheap delights the wise Pluck from the dusty wayside of earth's strife: Words of frank cheer, glances of friendly eyes, 50 Love's smallest coin, which yet to some may give The morsel that may keep alive A starving ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... not chill the ardor of his early Anglomania, and in this, as in everything, she wished to humor him to the utmost. No one could have realized more than she his essential fineness, his innate nobleness. Marriages are what the parties to them alone really know them to be, but from the outside I should say that this marriage was one of the most perfect. It lasted in his absolute devotion to the day of her death, that delayed long in cruel suffering, and that left ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... intellect. He laughs out of his own bitterness rather than to amuse his fellow-men. As Mr. Whibley says, he is not a cynic. He is not sufficiently indifferent for that. He is a satirist, a sort of perverted and suffering idealist: an idealist with the cynic's vision. It is the essential nobleness of Swift's nature which makes the voyage to the Houyhnhnms a noble and not a disgusting piece of literature. There are people who pretend that this section of Gulliver's Travels is almost too terrible for sensitive persons to read. This is sheer affectation. It can ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... historian guides us rightly in urging us to dwell on the virtues of our ancestors with emulation, and to cherish our sense of a common descent as a bond of obligation. The eminence, the nobleness of a people, depends on its capability of being stirred by memories, and for striving for what we call spiritual ends—ends which consist not in an immediate material possession, but in the satisfaction of a great feeling that animates the collective ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... true, too. But not as he represented it, all its tragic beauty, all the nobleness which tempered and, in a measure at least, discounted the great wrong of it, stripped away—leaving it naked, torn from its setting, without context and so without perspective. Against this not only her tenderness, but sense of justice, passionately fought. He made it monstrous and, in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... most skill in planting will take most pleasure in being watched by others; and so too the most skilful sower. Ask any question you may choose about results thus beautifully wrought, and not one feature in the whole performance will the doer of it seek to keep concealed. To such height of nobleness (he added), Socrates, does husbandry appear, like some fair mistress, to conform the soul and disposition of ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... toil, may seem to have no claim to beauty as the word is commonly understood. Sleepless nights, perchance, have dimmed her eyes, suffering and sacrifice have seamed and marked her face, but those to whom she has given herself see only the great nobleness of her nature, the royalty of her soul. For the beauty of the spirit may transfigure its earth-bound temple, as some vast and grey cathedral with light streaming from its stained glass windows, and eloquent with chimes and singing, may breathe incense ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... having made his Minna and Brenda beings such as the daughters of a Shetland Udaller, nearly a century and a half ago, were not likely to have been;—we blame him not because in his Rebecca, that most charming production of an imagination rich with images of nobleness and beauty, he has exhibited qualities incompatible with the real situation of the daughter of that most oppressed and abject being, a Jew of the twelfth century. It is plain that if Minna or Rebecca had been drawn with a strict ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... Grant more than to any man belongs the honour of the triumph of the Federal armies. But Grant was strong because of the innate nobleness of the men he commanded, and the magnificent steadfastness of the people who supported him. That support was given with a liberal hand. Probably never since the days when the people of Israel stripped themselves of their jewels to ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... great fault in appearing in the public roads without it, so as possibly to scandalise the passers by, and be taken for one who mocked the holy garb of religion. But as these thoughts passed in her mind, there met her a man, the surpassing beauty and nobleness of whose countenance revealed him to be her Lord. He carried in his hand the veil she had just given away; and throwing it over her head,—" Henceforth," He said, "My spouse, shalt thou have the poverty thou desirest, and shalt live for ever on alms, and as a pilgrim ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... contented themselves with shooting at the cattle, and then retreated; and Mr. Joseph Chevront, who lived hardby, hearing the report of the guns and the loud cries of Carder, sent his own family to a place of safety, and with nobleness of purpose, ran to the relief of his neighbor. He enabled Carder to remove his family to a place of greater security, although the enemy were yet near, and engaged in skinning one of the cattle that they might take with them ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... theme, no rhetorical exposition, no fanciful embroidery, no sweetness of melodic cadence, in his masculine art of poetry. Brusque, rough, violent in transition, leaping from the sublime to the ridiculous—his poems owe their elevation to the intensity of their feeling, the nobleness and condensation of their thought, the energy and audacity of their expression, their brevity, sincerity, and weight of sentiment. Campanella had an essentially combative intellect. He was both a ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... have delivered me, I thank you, and with your nobleness prevented danger, their tongues might utter, we'll all ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... go in, and are alone in a private room. I take off my mask, and out of politeness she must put down the hood of her mantle. A large muslin head-dress conceals half of her face, but her eyes, her nose, and her pretty mouth are enough to let me see on her features beauty, nobleness, sorrow, and that candour which gives youth such an undefinable charm. I need not say that, with such a good letter of introduction, the unknown at once captivated my warmest interest. After wiping away a few tears which are flowing, in spite of all her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... nobleness is lacking in her; when the season comes, the plants will spring and the garden bloom. But we cannot expect to understand her fully; she is ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... tumult, clamour, and singing, interrupted by frequent discharges of musketry, which the hand of a monster or a bungler might so easily render fatal, I saw the Queen preserving most courageous tranquillity of soul, and an air of nobleness and inexpressible dignity, and my eyes were suffused with tears of admiration and grief.—"Memoirs of ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... right sort, is not only allowable but commendable. He who gave life intended it to be a joy. To be always seeking after pleasure, however, exercises a dissipating and debilitating influence on the mind, and prevents the acquirement of true nobleness and worth of character. And would a creature, which is the highest workmanship of Infinite Excellence with which we are acquainted, yield himself to this, if given to the consideration of the fact the ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... think, gentlemen will stand aloof from politics—I mean, gentlemen who have received in their blood and in their training those notions of graciousness, sweetness, and nobleness which flow from centuries of piety and learning. Only here and there will such a man accept the odious conditions of our public life, inspired by a sense of duty, and prepared to endure the intolerable ugliness and dishonesty of politics ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... at the same time an illiterate Scribler, an auspicious Ideot of their own (with whose Nonsense they are never sated) shall be extoll'd to the Skies: Herein, if a Man has all the Qualifications necessary in Poetry, as an Elegance of Style, an Excellency of Wit, and a Nobleness of Thought; were Master of the most surprizing Turns, fine Similies, and of universal Learning, yet he shall be despis'd by the Criticks, and rang'd amongst the damn'd Writers of ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... incidentally stated in the preceding chapter,—namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which the effort of the painter is addressed. We cannot say that a painter is great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because he generalizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because he disdains it. He is great if, by ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the mysterious power that he possesses? His power is too great to spring from an honorable source. Sabine is sacrificing herself to this man for some reason or other, and he, like a dastardly cur, is ready to take advantage of the nobleness of ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... for a moment, as if unbelieving, and then, as though satisfied, made obeisance like a fellow well used to ceremonial. "I trust my lord, in his infinite strength, will pardon my sin in not knowing him by his nobleness before. But truth to tell, I had looked to see my lord ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... moved by the nobleness of his niece, and reproved his daughter more harshly than he had ever done before, for the feebleness that created so strong and unjust a passion. This had the contrary effect to what he had hoped for: she did not hesitate to say that her cousin had endeavoured to rob her both of the affection ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... overcome Octavianus, but was himself conquered and banished; for Octavianus, was a kindly man, who never shed blood if he could help it, and, now that he was alone at Rome, won every one's heart by his gracious ways, while Antonius' riots in Egypt were a scandal to all who loved virtue and nobleness. So far was the Roman fallen that he even promised Cleopatra to conquer Italy and make Alexandria the capital of the world. Octavia tried to win him back, but she was a grave, virtuous Roman matron, and coarse, dissipated ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... loveableness of real, true, uncompromising regard for right, and right alone, if she had been by one touch made to partake of the horror Marian felt of any failure in faith, then all the innate strength and nobleness of her character might have been awakened, and she would have clung to "the right" at any cost, supported, carried through by Marian's approval and sympathy, keeping her up to feel that ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "Nelson's nobleness of mind was a prominent and beautiful part of his character. His foibles—faults if you like—will never be dwelt upon in any memorandum of mine," he declares, and goes on— "he whose splendid and matchless ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... erect and lofty. The spirit of his genius awakened all his features. His countenance shone with a nobleness and grandeur which it had never before exhibited. There was a lightning in his eye that seemed to rive the spectator. His action became graceful, bold and commanding; and in the tones of his voice, but more especially in his emphasis, there was a peculiar charm, a magic, of ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... blessing of the Gods, which Oedipus carried with him, is secured to Athens, and denied to Thebes. The craft of Creon and the prayers of Polynices alike prove unavailing. Then the man of many sorrows, whose essential nobleness has survived them all, passes away mysteriously ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... good thoughts, an existence of tender cares, an eternity of youthful devotion spoke in that rapt, momentary, eloquent gaze, and imprinted on his expression a character ineffably beautiful and calm—a nobleness above the human, and approaching the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... recorded of Henry of Monmouth at this period, strongly marking the kindness and generosity and nobleness of his mind, was the removal of the remains of Richard II. from Langley to Westminster. Without implying any consciousness, or even suspicion of guilt, on the part of his father as to Richard's death, we may easily suppose Henry ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... so effectual that he withdrew in the end, at the command of Tiberius, with advantage on his side, and, returning to Rome, enjoyed a triumph (A.D. 17). His name is preserved in history, alike for his military talents and services, for his attainments in literary pursuits, and his nobleness of mind. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Was ever woman's nobleness of character so exemplified as in your life? Be comforted, Zoe, that in all my black sorrow I cling desperately to my pride in your strength. I long to shout abroad what you did and why you would never marry me, to tell all the gaping world that when you died ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work, were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... fashion, exhibiting many varieties of symptoms, and gradually undermining his strength. As he was now on his death-bed, the most distinguished of the citizens and his surviving friends collected round him and spoke admiringly of his nobleness and immense power, enumerating also the number of his exploits, and the trophies which he had set up for victories gained; for while in chief command he had won no less ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... been wise enough to understand and possess it as his own. In his father he had a pattern of things in the heavens; a life in which law and freedom meant the same thing; in which the harmony between his own will and the will of God gave unity, harmony, and nobleness to life and life's work. The teaching of the old Loyalist's life was the ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... imagined. Beauty and simplicity have so great a share in the composition of a great style, that he who has acquired them has little else to learn. It must not, indeed, be forgot that there is a nobleness of conception, which goes beyond anything in the mere exhibition, even of perfect form; there is an art of animating and dignifying the figures with intellectual grandeur, of impressing the appearance of philosophic wisdom or heroic virtue. This can only be acquired ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... at the second or even the third rank. For in the poets there is room not only for Homer (to confine myself to the Greeks), or for Archilochus, or Sophocles, or Pindar, but there is room also for those who are second to them, or even below the second. Nor, indeed, did the nobleness of Plato in philosophical studies deter Aristotle from writing; nor did Aristotle himself, by his admirable knowledge and eloquence, extinguish the zeal in those ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... deprived even of these. They shall receive them back in return for their former goodness to me." So he spoke, and the Hellenes, even those who had been out of heart at the thought of marching up the country, when they heard of the nobleness of Cyrus, were happier and more eager to ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... rising and standing before her, "your answer is painful to me. I had anticipated the winning of your hand and heart. It had not occurred to me that I should fail. I appreciate what you have said. A loftier ideal of the nobleness of true womanhood has come to me. My honor, respect, and love for you are deeper than ever, but I see that what I desired cannot be. I bid ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... thoroughly, all Omar's complete integrity—without any sort of mention of it—his self-denial in going ragged and shabby to save his money for his wife and child (a very great trial to a good-looking young Arab), and the equally unostentatious love he has shown to me, and the delicacy and real nobleness of feeling which come out so oddly in the midst of sayings which, to our ideas, seem very shabby and time-serving, very often I wonder if there be anything as good in the civilized West. And as Sally most justly says, 'All ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... done, a different conclusion from such phrases as that after death we are a shadow and mere dust, "pulvis et umbra sumus!" or from Horace's bewildered cry (Odes, I. 24), when a friend of signal nobleness and purity is suddenly struck down—"Ergo Quinctilium perpetuus sopor urget?"—"And is Quinctilius, then, weighed down by a sleep that knows no waking?" We might as reasonably argue that Shakespeare ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... cannot blame them. They showed that the crowded city life can bring out human nobleness as well as human baseness; that to be crushed into contact with their fellow-men, forced at least the loftier and tender souls to know their fellow-men, and therefore to care for them, to love them, to die for them. Yes—from one temptation the city life is free, to which the country ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... unfriendly either to virtue or religion. But it was the religion of sentiment, and the virtue of the natural heart; of which it must be confessed we find far more in fictitious tales, than in real life. When we consider the nobleness of the motive that led her to seek a popular path to favor and emolument—to increase the comforts of her excellent and honored mother—our censure, were we disposed to indulge any, is disarmed and almost changed ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... the truth of the nation, Ye that are met to remember the man Whose valor gave birth to a people's salvation, Honor him now; set his name in the van. A nobleness to try for, A name to live and die ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop |
