"Self-denying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unpleasant reflections. Let us, however, before sitting in judgment upon her, put ourselves in her place, and consider if we would have done half as well (morally) under the circumstances. Although a disobedient daughter, she has proved herself a true wife till shamefully deserted, and a self-denying and tender-hearted mother, who, though giving herself up to shame for their sake, kept her children from every breath of even scandalous report, and placed them as well-educated and respectable members of society. At such a one let only he who is without ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... of civic government and the battle-ground of many a hard-won fight for civil and religious liberty, was built anew by the self-denying efforts of a generation of London citizens just five hundred years ago. This great work took ten years and more in building, and, like its sister edifices of still earlier days, the Tower of London, London Bridge, and Westminster Hall, ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... amusements in which he was ever known to indulge were physical exercises; and he was acknowledged one of the best j[u]jutsu (wrestlers) in the empire. The heroism of his death, at the age of thirty-six, had much less to do with the honors paid to his memory than the self-denying heroism of his life. ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... came, the pangs of hunger assailed the self-denying youth with terrible power, and a horrible thought occurred to him. He opened a large clasp-knife, and, creeping towards the body, removed the tarpaulin. A faint smile rested on the dead lips—the same smile that had moved them when Dominick promised to carry the boy's last loving message ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... he had befriended for so many years could not bring themselves to regard him as an enemy. He never hurt their feelings; and almost as soon as the war began he set about that work which has been done by self-denying Christians of all ages,—the relief of suffering. He visited with comfort the widow and the fatherless, and many a night in the hospital he sat through beside the dying, Yankee and Rebel alike, and wrote their ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with the simple meaning of overseer— 'must be blameless.' It seems to me, however, that in the progress of society in the West we have come to think less of the power of example in many departments of state than we ought to do. It is thought of too little in the army and the navy. We laugh at the 'self-denying ordinance,' and the 'new model' of 1644, but there lay beneath them the principle which Confucius so broadly propounded,— the importance of personal virtue in all who are in authority. Now that Great ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... kept himself alive. Is such a course of action habitual with male hummers? If so, had our seemingly widowed or deserted mother a husband, who somewhere, unseen by us, was standing sentry after the same heroic, self-denying fashion? These and all similar questions I must leave to more fortunate observers, or postpone to a future summer. Meantime, my judgment as to the male ruby-throat's character remains in suspense. ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... to me long ago, 'I love you, but I am a wife; my husband is an honest soldier, absent, and fighting for France: I am the guardian of his honor and my own; be just, be generous, be self-denying; depart and love me only as angels love'? Perhaps this might have helped me to show you that I too am ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... no purpose of seeking dominion, but circumstances had forced dominion upon us. With dominion had come the recognition of the great responsibilities which it involved, and having imposed upon India our own rule of law we imposed it also upon the agencies through which we then exercised dominion—a self-denying ordinance for ourselves, for Indians a pledge of justice. Dominion pure and simple made room for dominion regarded as a great trust. But when we introduced Western education, we placed upon our trusteeship a new and wider construction. We invited Indians to enter into intellectual ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... him to do anything for the captain, you might give him a thousand pounds and he would never be the better for it: but that fourth, boy, Ulick, is without exception the nicest fellow I ever saw in my life—so devoted to his mother, so much more considerate and self-denying than any of the others, and very clever. Maurice examined him and was quite astonished. We did get him sent to St. Columba for the present, but whether they will keep him there no one can guess, and it is the greatest ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Franciscans held their second general Chapter. It was evident that they were taking the world by storm; evident, too, that their astonishing success was due less to their preaching than to their self-denying lives. It was abundantly plain that this vast army of fervent missionaries could live from day to day and work wonders in evangelizing the masses without owning a rood of land, or having anything to depend ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Vere was indeed a noble-hearted man. Generous, kind, and self-denying, he found his chief pleasure in doing others good, and he had written both to Maude and J.C. just as the great kindness of his heart had prompted him to write. He did not then know that he loved Maude Remington, for he had never fully analyzed the nature ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... present Gem to Uncle Will. She told him she did not think he was a good dog for the city; and therefore she gives him to Uncle Will to keep in the city. Uncle Will's emotion at such self-denying generosity almost overcame him. Gem is really a very nice small bow-wow, but Mother found that in this case possession was less attractive than pursuit. When she takes him out walking he carries her along as if she ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... could give in a warm climate. The ground through which it wound its way was beautifully broken by the appearance of temples, churches, and kiosks, and here and there a fountain distributed its silver produce, like a benevolent individual, who, self-denying to himself, is liberal to all others who are in necessity. The distant sound of the martial music still regaled their way; and, at the same time, as it detained the populace on the high-road, prevented the strangers from becoming ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... disquieted the devout rector. She liked Mr. Candish, although she did not hesitate to jest at his unpolished manners and rather unprepossessing person, and it was inevitable that she should be unable to appreciate his self-denying devotion. On one or two occasions she had found him to have a will not inferior to her own; and although she resented whatever balked her pleasure, she was yet a woman and respected power in ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... of the early and self-denying workers among the Freedmen. They were ostracised at the South, and were scarcely appreciated at the North. Many of them have laid down their lives in the service, others were compelled to return home on account of ill-health, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... will, then! Though it's going to play hob with my book.—No time like the present. I'll go back with you to-day, Morty, and put my things together.—It 's been the best time of my life!" he sighed, already beginning to dramatize himself as the self-denying Spartan. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... for your money, sir," said Vesta. "Yet I have heard of Love doing as much as that, relieving the anguish of its object, and finding sufficient joy in the self-denying deed." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... prohibition. It is not desirable ordinarily that a man should stay in office twelve consecutive years as President; but most certainly the American people are fit to take care of themselves, and stand in no need of an irrevocable self-denying ordinance. They should not bind themselves never to take action which under some quite conceivable circumstances it might be to their great interest to take. It is obviously of the last importance to the safety of a democracy that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... them are earnest Christian women, who have carried their native uprightness and devoted industry over into the new life. The annual reports of the missionaries show large sums, running into the thousands of dollars, raised by the self-denying labor of the native women for the support of their ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... the evidence, and Mrs. Morton, though she had listened all along to Ida's grumbling, was perfectly appalled at the notion of bringing such a ridiculous accusation against the brother-in-law, against whom she might indeed murmur, but whom she knew to be truthful and self-denying. She ventured to represent that it was impossible to go upon this statement without ascertaining whether the Grantzen child was alive, or really dead and buried at Ratzes, and that the hostess of the inn would have been ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was not the act of a brave, self-denying man to let his young son go with him into that awful place to try and remove the powder. I am not going to set up as his judge. He thought as a true man thinks, as a soldier, one of the thousands of true men we have had, who, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... loved and worked and suffered like this one. The face answers in part our first question. A woman like this is capable of mothering great sons. Industrious, patient, self-sacrificing, she would spare herself nothing to train them faithfully. And the life of which her face speaks—a life of self-denying toil, ennobled by high ideals of duty—is the stuff of which heroes are made. Some of the great men of history had ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... new battle-ground on which she now stood, and at first John hardly comprehended the hard, self-denying conflict she was waging. One day he was peculiarly struck with an act of self-denial which also involved for Jane a slight humiliation, that he could not but wonder at her submission. He looked at her ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... what am I to think? My fears would tie my tongue; but, either I am deluded or hope brightens upon me, and I want the self-denying resolution of silence. Yes, Oliver, I must repeat, there is such sweetness in her countenance, when she speaks to me, such a smile, so inviting, so affirmative, that I am incessantly flattering myself it cannot but have a meaning. I have several times ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and fulness of the grace of God. There is no fear of excess or surfeiting here. Grace makes no man proud, no man wanton, no man haughty, no man careless or negligent as to his duty that is incumbent upon him, towards either God or man. No; grace keeps a man low in his own eyes, humble, self-denying, penitent, watchful, savory in good things, charitable: and makes him kindly affectioned to the brethren, pitiful and courteous ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... capacity of carrying on through the mud to which Sir Harry was wont to allude; but good blood will bring no man back to honesty. The two things together, no doubt, assist in producing the highest order of self-denying man. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... near to the old idea of a saint as America ever produced. Self-denying, stern, of an exalted piety, and intensely religious, he lived in a world of his own, and was regarded with no little awe and trembling. That he was a power for good cannot be doubted, and his sermons are ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... do not conceive that Wordsworth could have been an amiable boy; he was austere and unsocial, I have reason to think, in his habits; not generous; and above all, not self-denying. Throughout his later life, with all the benefits of a French discipline, in the lesser charities of social intercourse he has always exhibited a marked impatience of those particular courtesies of life. . . . Freedom,—unlimited, careless, insolent freedom,—unoccupied ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... no especial vocation to the career of a missionary; but his duties had become less irksome than at the beginning, if not absolutely pleasant. His own position, however, was such that he could not afford to continue in his self-denying occupation. Easelmann was one of the first to congratulate him upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... has only to read his works with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their defects, and he will find, ready to hand, more adverse suggestions than are likely ever to have suggested themselves to his own sharpness, without Mr. Darwin's self-denying aid. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... May 9, the Jacobites in Paris show a letter from Oxford inviting Charles to the opening of the Radcliffe, 'where they assure him of better reception than the University has had at Court lately.' {53a} Mann (May 2) mentions the Radzivil marriage, arranged, in a self-denying way, by the Princesse de Talmond. On May 17, Yorke hears from Puysieux that the French ambassador in Saxony avers that Charles is in Poland, and that Sir Charles Williams has remonstrated with Count Bruhl. On May 1, 1749, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote from Leipzig to the Duke of Newcastle. He ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... time it was apparent that the self-denying ordinance of the veterans was not really necessary, and the Executive, loath to lose the stimulation of Shaw's constant presence, devised a scheme to authorise the elected members to co-opt as consultative members persons who had already held office for ten years and had retired. The Executive ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilising. American fancy played long this pattering part of youth. The New-Englander hastened to assure you with so self-denying a face he did not wear war-paint and feathers, that it became doubly difficult to communicate to him that you had suspected him of nothing wilder than a second-hand dress coat. And when it was a question not of rebuke, but of praise, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... Prince and his fortunes might have taken the direction of the newly-discovered Western hemisphere. A religious colony, planted by a commercial and liberty-loving race, in a virgin soil, and directed by patrician but self-denying hands, might have preceded, by half a century, the colony which a kindred race, impelled by similar motives, and under somewhat similar circumstances and conditions, was destined to plant upon the stern shores of New England. Had they directed their course to the warm and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cases where entirely new companies were raised, it had been by the enthusiastic efforts of some energetic volunteers who were naturally made the commissioned officers. But not always. There were numerous examples of self-denying patriotism which stayed in the ranks after expending much labor and money in recruiting, modestly refusing the honors, and giving way to some one supposed to have military knowledge or experience. The war in Mexico in 1847 was the latest conflict with a civilized people, and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... vain. They were dead, and not till then did the family appreciate the beautiful, self-denying, heroic disposition ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... difficult to fix by Rule, than Charity. First Consideration;—Object for which we are placed in this World. How to be perfectly happy. Self-denying Benevolence. Important Distinction. Second Consideration;—Natural Principles not to be exterminated, but regulated and controlled. All Constitutional Propensities good, and designed to be gratified. Their Abuses to be guarded ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... was confronted with the official ultimatum and sine qua non, and have subsequently learnt that the cause of this self-denying ordinance is due to the uncontrollable enthusiasm of British Public for works of art, which leads them to signify approbation by puncturing innumerable orifices by dint of sticks or umbrellas in the process of pointing out tit-bits of painting, and on account of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... select there is no choice; 220 He cannot say, This will I do, or that, For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends in pawn, And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold stern Of destiny's first-born, for smoother fields That yield no crop of self-denying will; A hand is stretched to him from out the dark, Which grasping without question, he is led Where there is work that he must do for God. The trial still is the strength's complement, And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales 230 The sheer heights of supremest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... this darkest season of the state one hope was left to Rome—one safeguard. The united worth of Cicero and Cato! The statesmanship, the eloquence, the splendid and unequalled parts of the former; the stern self-denying virtue, the unchanged constancy, the resolute and hard integrity of the latter; these, singular and severally, might have availed to prop a falling dynasty—united, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... their self-denying ordinance, and the putting by most of their old generals, as Essex, Waller, Manchester, and the like; and Sir Thomas Fairfax, a terrible man in the field, though the mildest of men out of it, was voted to have the command ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... consequence of the immense power acquired by some king, giant, or demon, by superior acts of austerity and piety. For here, as elsewhere, extreme spiritualism is often divorced from morality; and so these extremely pious, spiritual, and self-denying giants are the most cruel and tyrannical monsters, who must be destroyed at all hazards. Vischnu, by force or fraud, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... generous-hearted speaker, suggested that the soldiers at Valley Forge would find it difficult to get on such stockings and shoes as the Blue Hill boys had to bestow. So that scheme failed. But it shows what stuff those lads were made of. It shows what kind, generous, noble, self-denying hearts beat in ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... on faithfully doing what they believe to be right, accomplishing thus two things at once: Witnessing for the truth and helping the needy. All honor to this noble band of self-denying, principle-maintaining men and women. They are standard-bearers of our advancing Christianity. They are where, as standard-bearers, they ought to be, at the front, the post of sacrifice and danger, but they are leading in a cause that is sure ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... she knew how to doctor them rightly: but, was it pill or doctrine, she administered one or the other with equal belief in her own authority, and her disciples swallowed both obediently. She believed herself to be one of the most virtuous, self-denying, wise, learned women in the world; and, dinning this opinion perpetually into the ears of all round about her, succeeded in bringing not few persons ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unlimited money and plenty of friends to push you on—if you think that because of these things you can dispense with the fear of God, and the daily obligations of duty, and make pleasure and self-indulgence your main ends, and do without honest, persevering, self-denying toil, you will be miserably disappointed. God has some hard things to say to you before you get far on in years. It does not matter how promising one's beginnings, if there is no steady, conscientious ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... cold, grave, and stern towards the wicked old king, she loved his wife, and was gentle towards the young boy, who was blameless of his father's sin, and gave her all his heart for his whole life. He cared for nothing so much as to hear from her of Agis, his brave, self-denying ways, and noble plans; and thus did they live, after the untimely death of Agis, strengthened by the study of the Stoic philosophy, which taught that virtue was the highest good, and that no suffering, not even death, was to be shunned in pursuit ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of human nature is remarkable. Some poets, either intentionally or unintentionally, paint one type of men accurately and distort all the rest. Chaucer impartially portrays the highest as well as the lowest, and the honest man as well as the hypocrite. The pictures of the roguish Friar and the self-denying Parish Priest, the Oxford Scholar and the Miller, the Physician and the Shipman, are painted with equal fidelity to life. In the breadth and kindliness of his view of life, Chaucer is a worthy predecessor of Shakespeare. Dryden's verdict ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... would not have it understood that I, in any way, disparage the moral efforts made by total abstainers who, years ago, amid good report and evil report, stood in the front of the battle to war against the multitude of evils occasioned by strong drink;—all praise be due to them for their noble and self-denying exertions! Had it not been for the successful labors of these moral giants in the great cause of temperance, presenting to the world in their own personal experiences many new and astounding physiological facts, men of science would, probably, never have had their attention drawn ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... wonders in this way, notably the late Dr. John Henderson, a medical missionary to China, who actually lived on half-a-crown a week, while attending medical classes in Edinburgh. Livingstone followed the same self-denying course. If we had a note of his house-keeping in his Glasgow lodging, we should wonder less at his ability to live on the fare to which he was often reduced in Africa. But the importance of the medical qualification had taken a firm hold of ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... were made the subject of a public confession, and everything in his power was done to prevent their circulation. The death of one who had done so much for him, and whose last days, devoted with the most self-denying benevolence to the welfare of her species, had taught him a most salutary lesson, could not but be deeply felt. He had just left the house of his deceased benefactress, never again to enter it, when he met M. d'Hervart in the street, who eagerly said to him, "My dear La Fontaine, I was looking ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... others by his instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more strongly in proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body; and making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. So that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the presence, or for the honour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... an air of divine inspiration to the projects of fraud, murder, and ambition. By such a perversion of public worship, joined with an affectation of disinterested purity, that celebrated preparative for military despotism, the self-denying ordinance was introduced into the Commons. After numerous prayers and sermons, intreating Providence to strengthen the hands of the faithful, by choosing new instruments to carry on the godly work, an agent of Cromwell's inferred, that the Lord had ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... grief and shame of the very low standard of Christian excellence considered requisite by many at home who profess, and probably have a wish, to be religious. Often and often I have wished that I could paint to them in their true and vivid colours the self-denying, laborious lives of the devoted missionaries, and the humble, zealous, faithful, truth-searching behaviour ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... salvation of souls was at stake, for which object I would be overjoyed to give my life." Shaking them by the hand, one by one, as they approached to bid him farewell, as they thought, for the last time, he turned his back upon safety and peace, and departed upon his self-denying pilgrimage. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother's dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the odious selfishness of mankind in such a repulsively vivid light as the treatment, in all classes of society, which the Single people receive at the hands of the Married people. When you have once shown yourself too considerate and self-denying to add a family of your own to an already overcrowded population, you are vindictively marked out by your married friends, who have no similar consideration and no similar self-denial, as the recipient of half their conjugal ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... a more handsome person? I could point to a dozen men between here and the railroad, whose clean, self-denying life has set a stamp on them that Gregory will never wear. To descend to perhaps the lowest point of all, has he more money? We know he wasted what he had—probably in indulgence—and there is a mortgage on his farm. Has he any sense of honour? He let Sally ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... not read much, she never showed any lamentable deficiency; she was good-humoured, as a rule, and could on occasions be very soft and winning. People who had known her long would sometimes say that she was selfish; but with new acquaintance she was forbearing and self-denying. ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... elements enter into the composition of each. Yet so it is; they are portrayed as equally wise, gracious, virtuous, fair, and young; we perceive in both the same exalted principle and firmness of character; the same depth of reflection and persuasive eloquence; the same self-denying generosity and capability of strong affections; and we must wonder at that marvellous power by which qualities and endowments, essentially and closely allied, are so combined and modified as to produce a result altogether different. "O Nature! O Shakespeare! ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... hopeless failure. During the year 1775 imports fell from, L2,000,000 to L213,000; and after the non-exportation agreement became effective, business stagnation produced profound discontent and diminished the resources necessary for carrying on war. So drastic a self-denying ordinance could not be maintained, for "people will feel, and will say, that Congress oppresses them more than Parliament." Unable "to do without trade," they were "between Hawk and Buzzard"; and on April 6, 1776, the ports of America were opened to the world. "But ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... secular clerk, bound by none of the vows of monastic orders; and therefore, though he led a strictly pure and self-denying life, he did hot consider himself obliged to abstain from worldly business or amusements, and in the year 1150 he was appointed Chancellor by Henry II. He was then in his thirty-eighth year, of great ability and cultivation, graceful in demeanor, ready ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... from the truth are called "white lies;" but there is really no such thing as a white lie. The whitest lie that was ever told was as black as perdition. No inventory of public crimes will be sufficient that omits this gigantic abomination. There are men, high in Church and State, actually useful, self-denying, and honest in many things, who, upon certain subjects, and in certain spheres, are not at all to be depended upon for veracity. Indeed, there are multitudes of men who have their notions of truthfulness so thoroughly ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... collected relics of her family, over which on the anniversaries of their deaths she wept and prayed. In her daily drives through Paris she scrupulously avoided the spot on which they had suffered; and the memory of the past seemed to rule all her sad and self-denying life, both in what she did and what ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own premises, a dozen souls a year in the cigars with which he muddles his brains. But as for the good and true and intelligent men whom we see all around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful,—men who know that the active mind of the century is tending more and more to the two poles, Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may by accident stand ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... through wise organization, to form themselves into a lever by means of which the whole tone of the social status may be elevated, and the good and highest happiness of the helpless many be attained through the self-denying exertions of the powerful ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... Such a life and death is not for pity! Not in the riches of omnipotence is the chief glory of God; but in self-denying, suffering love! And blessed are the men whom he calls to fellowship with him, bearing their cross after him with patience. Of such it is written, "Blessed are they that mourn, for ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... one of those rare occasions. Mrs. Coombe was very pleasant, of course, but Miss Milligan missed something, a certain cordiality which might have tempted her to prolong her stay. She was not offended, for if she considered that her self-denying journeys to the post office were meeting with less than their just deserts, she was not a woman to insist upon gratitude where gratitude was not freely given. She stayed therefore no longer than the fiction of dress-fitting required ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... dear little friend, you will be pleased that your self-denying act has given pleasure to so many suffering children, and that they think of you with gratitude. ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... "No mother's self-denying love," pursued the Phantom, "no father's counsel, aided ME. A stranger came into my father's place when I was but a child, and I was easily an alien from my mother's heart. My parents, at the best, were of that sort whose ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... religion must be the base of a successful commune. Mr. Greeley agreed with him. I believe that religion must be the foundation of every human society which is to be orderly, virtuous, and therefore self-denying, and so far I do not doubt that they are right. But if it is meant, as I understand them, that in order to success there must be some peculiar religious faith, fanatically held, I do ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... give you a precious hard time of it too, I should say, and does not altogether appreciate your self-denying and wonderfully ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... shocking to be true, and I fancy the whole tale was hatched in the City. Certainly Mr. Cassall was scandalously unjust to the missionaries—an injustice which would have vanished had he personally known the glorious results for God and humanity achieved by self-denying missionaries and their devoted wives who carry the gospel of Christ to far-off heathen lands—but then where is the man who has not his ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... mothers' faces, among the outcast and the criminal. The second half was a defence of woman. The sins of the world against women were the most crying wrongs of the time. Had they ever reflected on the heroism of women, on their self-denying, unrewarded labour? Oh, why was woman held so cheap as in this immoral London of to-day? There had been scarcely a breach of the law of Nature by women, and not one that men were not chiefly to blame for. Men tempted them by love ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... make the most of friendship, emulating Plato in his love for his noble teacher. He asks each to love industry, emulating Peabody, whose generosity gushed like rivers. He asks each to make the most of courage and self-reliance, emulating Livingstone in self-denying service. He bids each emulate and look up to Jesus Christ, as Dante, midst the pitchy night, looked up toward the star. He bids each move heaven and earth to achieve for himself a worthy manhood. For thus only can earth ever be ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... great cause of Foreign Missions by some remarks of Rev. Mr. Simeon on the work of Carey in India, but more particularly by reading the memoir of David Brainerd, who preached with apostolic zeal and success to the North American Indians, and who finished a course of self-denying labors for his Redeemer with unspeakable joy at the early age of thirty-two. Henry Martyn's soul was filled with holy emulation, and after deep consideration and fervent prayer he was at length fixed in a resolution to imitate his example. ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... obeys the word of command. I too will descend. (He does so.) Before you, O King, are the groves where the holiest hermits lead their self-denying life. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... and fervour of this self-denying spirit among them as contrasted with the "healthy individual egotism" of the Allies constitutes one of the most disquieting phenomena of the struggle. Austria has been scoffed at for her abject submissiveness to Germany. But there is another ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of me, thought I, by this time. Ever since I had been back with him he had been for ever worried either with my health or my debts or my office rows. I was half tempted to ask him not to come, but I could not bring myself to be sufficiently self-denying. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... conduct, and the romantic devotion of the poor retainer's daughter, made really quite a pretty story, and was firmly believed in by Lady Russell and Lilias. Mr. Wilton, however, had his doubts. "Ermie in the role of the self-denying martyr is too new and foreign for me," he muttered. "There's something at the back of this. Basil in disgrace (which he well deserves, the impudent young scoundrel), and Ermengarde the friend and support of the suffering poor! these things ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... trying; but it is now seven days since the boatswain took his haul of fish, and during that period we had eaten nothing; even Andre Letourneur finished yesterday, the last morsel of the biscuit which his sorrowful and self-denying father had in- trusted ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... supported by female delegates from the other states of Hellas, determine to take matters into their own hands and force the men to stop the War. They meet in solemn conclave, and Lysistrata expounds her scheme, the rigorous application to husbands and lovers of a self-denying ordinance—"we must refrain from the male organ altogether." Every wife and mistress is to refuse all sexual favours whatsoever, till the men have come to terms of peace. In cases where the women must yield 'par force majeure,' then it ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the art of making the Buckingham or pillow-lace by hand, with the object of effecting the same motions by mechanical means. It was a long and laborious task, requiring the exercise of great perseverance and ingenuity. His master, Elliot, described him at that time as inventive, patient, self-denying, and taciturn, undaunted by failures and mistakes, full of resources and expedients, and entertaining the most perfect confidence that his application of mechanical principles would eventually be ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... frequently made. Those who have made it appear to be laboring under the illusion that the Monroe Doctrine was wholly altruistic in its aim. As a matter of fact, the Monroe Doctrine has never been regarded by the United States as in any sense a self-denying declaration. President Monroe said that we should consider any attempt on the part of the European powers "to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." The primary object of the policy outlined ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... voluntary and natural union, and to secure that we should not hesitate to make our educational institutions broad enough to include the education of the most fundamental relations of the individual to society. We want neither a "healthy egoism" nor a morbid self-denying spirit that is only a step removed from slavery—neither instinctive independence nor an artificial and enforced social organization. We must not be deceived either by a vague and false idea of liberty or by the equally vicious ideal of militarism with its superficiality ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... summer, preferring to deprive herself of many of the comforts of life, rather than have her daughter forego the advantages of a tolerable education. Mary, though her little hands were too feeble to work much, felt that she was a burden to her toiling, self-denying parent; and though she could not persuade her to let her stay at home and help her, used all her time out of school in taking care of little Richard, then only three years old. By constantly striving to be useful, and ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... way of life; His self-denying actions, too, Enforc'd the truth, where all was rife With wrongful rites ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... her maidenhood, and Paulina thought of her at every hour of her life. It was for her sake that she had been baptized and devoted her existence to a series of painful sacrifices. She strove with all her might to be a good Christian—for surely she, the self-denying woman who had taken up the cross of her own free will, the suffering creature who loved stillness and who had made her country-house, which she visited daily, a scene of unrest, could not fail to win Heaven, and there she hoped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tender, loving, self-denying, and honest, trying to fashion our frail life after that of the model man of Nazareth? Then, though our pockets are often empty, we have an inheritance which is as overwhelmingly precious as it is ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the eyes of all than was Las Casas, the great "Apostle of the Indies." Not only as a missionary, but as an historian, a philanthropist, a man of business, a ruler in the Church, he towers above even the notable men of that most remarkable time. His noble, self-denying, heroic life, spent in untiring service to God and man, is an inspiration and an example much needed in this materialistic, money-getting, ease-loving age. ALICE J. KNIGHT. HOOD ...
— Las Casas - 'The Apostle of the Indies' • Alice J. Knight
... of their high calling. They have worked hard for small earthly compensation. They have been the most learned men the country had to show, when learning was a scarce commodity. Called by their consciences to self-denying labors, living simply, often half-supported by the toil of their own hands, they have let the light, such light as shone for them, into the minds of our communities as the settler's axe let the sunshine into their log-huts ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 'True kindness, considerate self-denying kindness, is not in his nature,' returned Mr Cheeryble. 'Such kindness as he knows, he regards her with, I believe. The mother was a gentle, loving, confiding creature, and although he wounded her from their ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... there is such a thing as her being too sensible, too self-denying! While he could not now take life on the old terms and be tormented daily and hourly by foolish caprices, is there not some middle ground for youth? Are there too many years ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... never relaxed his endeavours to make his sister happy, she on her part either resented his kindness, or at the best took it as a matter of course, preferring—and not caring to conceal her preference—a smile or word or two from Walter to the most patient and self-denying study of her tastes and wishes on the part of her elder brother. The old man grieved over this conduct in his darling Miss Julia, and gave her a hint on the subject in his own simple way, which to his surprise and mortification she resented most ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... proof against the fair, Nor hands against the touch of gold. Fidelity is sadly rare, And has been from the days of old. Well taught his appetite to check, And do full many a handy trick, A dog was trotting, light and quick, His master's dinner on his neck. A temperate, self-denying dog was he, More than, with such a load, he liked to be. But still he was, while many such as we Would not have scrupled to make free. Strange that to dogs a virtue you may teach, Which, do your best, to men you vainly preach! This dog of ours, thus richly fitted out, A mastiff met, who wish'd ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... but she was pleased; for when we renounce the pomps and vanities of this world, we are pretty sure to find them in some other, —if we are women. She, good and pure soul, whose whole life was given to self-denying toil, had yet something angelically coquettish in her manner, a spiritual-worldliness which was the clarified likeness of this- worldliness. O, had they seen the Hotel Dieu at Montreal? Then (with a vivacious wave of the hands) they would not care to look at this, which by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my mysterious employer." And so he dreamed that night that he was an assistant presiding genius of the great pig Golgotha, where Phineas Forbes was the monarch of the meat ax. "Right smart girls, and you bet they can take care of themselves," was the last encomium of their self-denying parent which rang in Alan Hawke's ears as he wandered away ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... that I could not enter into the depths of her feelings, but I comprehended her haughty bearing and scornful glances; for the neighbors looked at us pitifully, and Gabrielle writhed beneath it: child as she was, there was something awful and grand in her lonely majesty of demeanor. Her self-denying, constant devotion toward me—often ailing and pining as I was—I repaid by an affection which I am sure is quite different from that entertained by sisters happily placed for each other: Gabrielle was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... this game is that it truly, when well played, determines who is the best man;—who is the highest bred, the most self-denying, the most fearless, the coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. You cannot test these qualities wholly, unless there is a clear possibility of the struggle's ending in death. It is only in the fronting ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Ayesha was immovable. Instigated thereto by Leo, and I may add my own curiosity, when we were alone I questioned her again as to the reasons of this self-denying ordinance. All she would tell me, however, was that between them rose the barrier of Leo's mortality, and that until his physical being had been impregnated with the mysterious virtue of the Vapour of Life, it was not wise that she ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... say, if Christians were sober, watchful, and of a more self-denying temper, they need not put the Lord Jesus to that to which for the want of these things they do so often put him. I know he is not unwilling to serve us, but I know also that the love of Christ should constrain us to live not to ourselves, but to him that loved us, that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... French were chiefly engaged in traffic with the Indians. This trade, and the operations of the Jesuit missionaries, who were usually the self-denying pioneers of commerce in its penetration of the wilderness, gave the French great influence over the tribes of a vast extent of country lying in the rear of ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... Here meat, groceries, and other articles of daily domestic consumption are sold at low prices, and of the best possible quality: the membership, of course, being the privilege of the thrifty and the self-denying, who belong to the Association by payment. I did not ask if intoxicating drinks were sold on the premises, for such an inquiry would have been gratuitous. The cheerful, tidy, healthful looks of the population proclaimed their sobriety, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... called "Old Lady Pingree" because of her pride and black lace turban. She lives by herself in the lower part of the old Pingree house, and is so poor that to give an egg to the lodgers above stairs is an act of self-denying generosity. She has money and burial-clothes laid away for her funeral, yet when the neighbor upstairs dies, Nancy "lends" it to the daughter to keep her mother out of the Potter's field. A sudden rise in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Sabbath-school; and he has had that need supplied in no small measure from the consideration of the facts now before his readers. He hopes that the effect which these facts have had upon his mind, will be produced upon the minds of all who may peruse these pages. If such be the case—if but one devoted, self-denying teacher derive encouragement—his end will be ...
— The Village Sunday School - With brief sketches of three of its scholars • John C. Symons
... are some in Christ and some out of Him. [1]. They that are in Him have their sins forgiven, and they themselves made new creatures, and have the Spirit of the Son, which is a holy, living, self-denying Spirit. And they that are thus in Jesus Christ are so far off from delighting in sin, that sin is the greatest thing that troubleth them; and O how willing would they be rid of the very thoughts of it (Psa 119:113). It is the grief of their souls, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cowardice: or there is mediocrity, that cannot rise above the common herd—that dares not dare—that may pass unnoted in prosperity, but whose powers rise not in adversity. Such should not be throned in woman's heart! He is not worthy woman's tender, self-denying love, whom a sneer will change—a laugh will part—he will be found wanting—he will stand aloof when the faint heart turns to him for consolation. Wo to you! wo to you, especially if you trust such. You cannot always tread on flowers; choose one who can and will smooth down ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... order of the place. "The fire-irons bright, though small—the paper chosen with judgment—everything needful, though there is little to spare—each article in its proper place, and neat and good of its kind." Oh, how delightful to Nelly was the praise which she had fairly earned by self-denying labour! ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... at Manzanita; five days of ecstasy, of perfect communion, bought from the rapacious years at the price of his broken word. For that he was willing to pay any price exacted, asking only that he might pay it alone, that the woman of his long and self-denying love might not be called upon to meet any smallest part of the debt. She walked with him under the pines: he read to her: and there were long hours together over the piano. It was then that there was born, out of Camilla Van Arsdale's love and faith and coming abnegation, her holy and ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... tickets: to make the most out of their money. But there are many who subscribe from nobler motives—real lovers of art, whose only object is to lend a helping hand to its interests, and to show a generous sympathy in the struggles and self-denying endeavors of all whose souls are so wrapt up in its pursuit that they scarcely arrive at the knowledge requisite to a charge of their own pecuniary and worldly affairs. This latter class of subscribers believe ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... them for purposes of religious instruction. Hundreds, rescued from death through cold and hunger, were thus brought to repentance on the path which the Church prescribes. A great impression in favor of the Jesuit fathers was made upon all classes by this course of conduct. In humanity, self-denying assiduity, and Christian zeal they had immeasurably surpassed any who might have pretended rivalry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... promulgate what modest silence may recommend to higher purposes. There are other records than those of newspapers, and lists of subscribers; records in which to see one fair action, one virtuous exertion, one self-denying sacrifice entered, may bring to its author, that peace which the world cannot give, and a joy more refined than even the ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... Doctor was very far from taking offence at the old physician's freedom of speech. He knew him to be honest, kind, charitable, self-denying, wherever any sorrow was to be alleviated, always reverential, with a cheerful trust in the great Father of all mankind. To be sure, his senior deacon, old Deacon Shearer,—who seemed to have got his Scripture-teachings out ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Arend were with some difficulty restrained from pursuing them. There was an opportunity for an exciting chase; and to remain inactive and see the giraffes disappear over the plain, required a strong self-denying effort. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a point where she was the weakest. One of her generous temperament and self-denying habits could scarce entertain the wish of exacting that from another which she was not willing to undergo herself, and the hope that had just been reviving in her heart was nearly extinguished by ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... but her power is nevertheless prodigious. We copy and imitate her in all things. We are pinned to her apron-string. We are obedient at her bidding. We are indolent and complaisant, and fear to provoke her ill-word. "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" quells many a noble impulse, hinders many a self-denying act. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... leave the other undone." Every woman who has tried to do her whole duty in the family, tried faithfully to make home a foretaste of heaven, with its abounding peace and love, tried with a mother's prayers, a mother's tears, a mother's unselfish, self-denying love, to train her darlings for the skies—every such woman deserves the gratitude of humanity, and that sweetest of rewards to a mother's heart, viz; that "her children shall rise up, and call her blessed;" while every woman who superadds to this unselfish devotion to home ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... think anything about Bigley Uggleston in these days, only that he was overgrown and good-tempered, and never ready to quarrel; and it did not seem to strike either of us that he was about the most unselfish, self-denying slave that ever lived. I know now that we were perfect tyrants to him, while he, amiable giant that he was, bore it all with the greatest of equanimity, and the more unreasonable we were, the more patient ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... world, and never shall be on any other occasion—by paying some qualified person of your own sex and age, so many (or rather so few) contemptible shillings, to come here, certain nights in the week, and give you certain instruction which you wouldn't want if you hadn't been a self-denying daughter and sister. You know that it's good to have it, or you would never have so devoted yourself to your brother's having it. Then why not have it: especially when our friend Miss Jenny here would profit by it too? If I proposed to be the teacher, or to attend the lessons—obviously ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... historical Christ, his theology in the strict sense of the word does not revert to it: but springing over the historical, it begins with the pre-existent Christ (the Man from heaven), whose moral deed it was to assume the flesh in self-denying love, in order to break for all men the powers of nature and the doom of death. But he has pointed to the words and example of the historical Christ in order to rule the life in the Spirit. (8) Deductions, proofs, and perhaps also conceptions, which in point of form betray the theology ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... these the occupant was concealed only to the waist when she stood up at the reading of the Gospel; some allowed only their heads to appear; and others of the fair owners were at once so devout, so cruel, and so self-denying as to shut out the eyes of the world entirely and at all times. But instances of this remorseless mortification of the flesh, seem to have been exceedingly rare. Queer enough these structures were, and sufficiently gratifying to the pride and provocative ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various |
