"Worldly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to tears; but she saw nothing in my situation so hopeless as I had depicted it. Brought up in a convent, she knew nothing of the world, its wants, its cares;—and, indeed, what woman is a worldly casuist in matters of the heart!—Nay, more—she kindled into a sweet enthusiasm when she spoke of my fortunes and myself. We had dwelt together on the works of the famous masters. I had related to her their histories; the high reputation, the influence, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... any delight in seeing it. An uncle is different from a father,—an uncle who has never had a child of his own. He wanted deference,—what he would have called respect; while Harry was at first prepared to give him a familiar affection based on equality,—on an equality in money matters and worldly interests,—though I fear that Harry allowed to be seen his own intellectual superiority. Mr. Prosper, though an ignorant man, and by no means clever, was not such a fool as not to see all this. Then had come the persistent refusal to hear ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... entrusted the worldly welfare of little Zeno, and to the notary the responsibility of his education, and both of these people not only fulfilled their duties, but gave the child a large share of their love, so that the orphan throve both in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Church, in fact, sanctions the family, and the Holy Fathers of the Church, in fact, blessed the family; but the highest perfection really demands the renunciation of worldly advantages. ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... Pascal's statements. "Can it really be you who are talking in this strain?" cried the baron. "You, a practical, worldly man, give way to such a burst ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... walls and towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity would supply: and the pious labor of four years was animated in every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was tempered with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was trod by the bishop and his clergy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... "There is no life more splendid and lofty than that of the monk who denies and suppresses all the lower, worldly and transitory feelings in order to let the eternal develop the more freely. But it requires a good deal to consecrate yourself wholly to Jesus, Vico dear. If only you are strong enough ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... Though worldly wise say it cannot be That there's a heaven for thee and me; Though logic's banner they have unfurled And by its cold light now view the world, Calling High God to the courts of man To be judged by human reason's span, And failing ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... my days run free, With slender thought for worldly things: A little toil sufficeth me; I live the life of bird and bee, Nor fret for what ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... had seen in the pit, standing high outside the building on a rocky flat, standing bright and silvery, like a phantom finger pointing to the inky heavens, sleek, smooth, resting on polished tailfins, like an other-worldly bird poised for flight— ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... that, Scuddy," said Larry, "and, Scuddy," he added, imparting a bit of worldly wisdom, "campaigns are not won in a single battle, and, Scuddy, remember too that the whistling fisherman catches the fish. So cheer up, old boy." But Scuddy only glowered ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... looked innocent, bright, and contented as usual. "If God be at peace," he would say to himself, "why should not I?" Once he said this aloud, almost unconsciously, and was overheard: it strengthened the regard with which worldly church-goers regarded him: he was to them an irreverent yea, blasphemous man! They did not know God enough to understand the cobbler's words, and all the interpretation they could give them was after their kind. Their long Sunday faces indicated ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Judge, "to your definition of undesirability. If you mean worldly circumstances, you needn't fear for Bertram Chester. He resigns ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... in the highest, weightiest, gravest, grandest of all labours,—that of studying to turn the human soul from darkness to light. Now that he found himself in his own country again, he felt far behind most men in worldly conversation though very far beyond them, not only in religious, but in practical, useful, and general knowledge; such knowledge, I mean, as would be suited to the improvement, not merely of savages, but of the wild, lawless bushmen, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... principle on which the fraternity are, at this day, acting in this country. The rule is, perhaps, sometimes, and in some places, in abeyance. A few lodges, from an impolitic desire to increase their numerical strength, or rapidly to advance men of worldly wealth or influence to high stations in the Order, may infringe it, and neglect to demand of their candidates that suitable proficiency which ought to be, in Masonry, an essential recommendation ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... cane. He caught the edge of the wall and was quickly on top. When Archie hung back the Governor grasped him by the arms and swung him up and dropped him into a dark corner of the garden. The house at the street end of the deep lot was a large establishment that argued for the prosperous worldly state of the aunt of the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... the one hand the taste for worldly welfare is perpetually increasing, and on the other the government gets more and more complete possession of the sources of that welfare. Thus men are following two separate roads to servitude: the taste for their own welfare withholds them ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... and I were well acquainted; Time was when we walked ever hand in hand; A saintly youth, with worldly thought untainted, None better loved than I in all the land! Time was, when maidens of the noblest station, Forsaking even military men, Would gaze upon me, rapt in adoration - Ah me, I was ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... lustly I obiect, In the defence of each beloued mayde, Virginity, is life of chast respect, No worldly burden thereupon is layd: Our syngle life, all peace and quiet bringes, And we are free from carefull ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... Pope, or even the Archbishop of Canterbury, occupies the place he does in politics and society. Yet this same agnostic Japan is teaching us at this very hour how religions are sometimes manufactured for a special end—to subserve practical worldly purposes. ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... stopped by the Sheriffe. Then he drew out his paper of notes, and begun to tell them first his life; that he was born a gentleman; he had been, till he was seventeen years old, a good fellow, but then it pleased God to lay a foundation of grace in his heart, by which he was persuaded, against his worldly interest, to leave all preferment and go abroad, where he might serve God with more freedom. Then he was called home; and made a member of the Long Parliament; where he never did, to this day, any thing against his conscience, but all for the glory of ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... with better success. The marriage was a little inroad of good luck into his career; for the new wife was thrifty and industrious, with the ambition and the capacity to improve the squalid condition of her husband's household. She had, too, worldly possessions of bedding and furniture, enough to fill a four-horse wagon. She made her husband put a floor, a door, and windows to his cabin. From the day of her advent a new spirit made itself felt amid the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... is, and will be as long as the world lasts— perfectly true, if the possession be accompanied with God's blessing. But Mr Webster did not even pretend to look at the thing in that light. He scorned to make use of the worldly man's "Oh, of course, of course," when that idea was sometimes suggested to him by Christian friends. On the contrary, he boldly and coldly asserted his belief that "God, if there was a God at all, did not interfere in such matters, and that for his part he would be quite satisfied to let ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... hurly-burly, revolving privately a case of conscience. He would take no hand in the deed, because he had a private spite against the victim, and "that action" must be sullied with no suggestion of a worldly motive; on the other hand, "that action," in itself, was highly justified, he had cast in his lot with "the actors," and he must stay there, inactive but publicly sharing the responsibility. "You are a gentleman - you will protect me!" cried ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gold-seekers. It was simply the thought of a man who knows far more of the world than he cares to remember. He felt that in all honesty he should point out the duties of a man to himself in these days when advancement alone counts, and manhood, without worldly position, goes for so very little. He was not quite sure that Buck didn't perfectly understand these things for himself. He had such a wonderful understanding and insight. However, his duty was plain, and it was not his way ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... as in the World, competition and self-assertion are tempered by abundant friendliness and generosity; and at school if not in the world, there are an increasing number of individuals who have so much spiritual power that they never need to exercise the more worldly power that clashes with the Beatitudes. Of this power boys seldom talk, except to some specially sympathetic ear at some specially heart-opening moment, but many are dumbly aware of it and they cultivate it, ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men from custom or fashion, or any worldly motive profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and, being no longer honest in their own minds, they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others. It is from the influence of this vice, hypocrisy, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the youth of our age finds so wearisome. There, grown more old, you stand at the altar of a beautiful lost faith, a faith that told of hope and peace beyond the grave, and by you stands your blushing bride. No hard fate, no considerations of means, no worldly-mindedness, come to snatch you from her arms as now they daily do. With her you spend your peaceful days, and here at last we see you old but surrounded by love and tender kindness, and almost looking forward ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... almost a stereotyped remark, that the women of the more fashionable and worldly class, in America, are indolent, idle, incapable, and live feeble and lazy lives. It has always seemed to me that, on the contrary, they are compelled, by the very circumstances of their situation, to lead very ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... is not the easiest thing in the world to banish, on the Sabbath, all concern in regard to business. Most persons engaged in trade, no matter how religiously inclined, have experienced this difficulty. Brother Adkin's case did, not prove an exception; and so intrusive, often, were these worldly thoughts and cares, that they desecrated, at times, the pulpit, making the good man's voice falter and his hands tremble, as he endeavoured, "in his feeble way," to break the ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... him. My brother was scarcely twenty years old, and while he had a loving father, he had a severe one, who had brought him up with such strictness that this little breath of freedom proved too much for him. The young German, with no worldly experience whatever, was enticed into a circle where play ran high, and where, as was afterwards proven, cheats and gamblers plied their vocation. Eugen in his ignorance saw nothing of all this; he lost considerable ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... years ago from the Gabriella who released herself calmly from the appalling clasp of the casual and business-like old man. To the Gabriella who had loved George such an episode would have appeared as an inconceivable horror. Now, with her worldly wisdom and her bitter knowledge of love, she found herself regarding the situation with sardonic humour. The stupendous, the incredible vanity of man!—she reflected disdainfully. Was there ever a man ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... under her light touch, his eyes on hers, till their inmost thoughts felt for and found each other, as they still sometimes could, through the fog of years and selfishness and worldly habit; then he dropped his face into his hands, hiding it from her with the instinctive shrinking ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... dreamt once that he had dreamt it often? That dubious night is entangled in repeated visions during the lonely life a child lives in sleep; it is intricate with illusions. It becomes the most mysterious and the least worldly of all memories, a spiritual past. The word pleasure is too trivial for such a remembrance. A midwinter long gone by contained the suggestion of such dreams; and the midwinter of this year must doubtless be preparing for the heart of many an ardent young child a like legend and a like antiquity. ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... they are so near us as I know them to be," Edith pursued; "but I tell him, if only he would allow himself, he would perceive their presence just as I do. He says this scene is so worldly it would frighten them; but I answer that they cannot be frightened; they are incorruptible, so that there is nothing for them to fear for themselves—but they may fear for us, and when they do, we know that it is then that they are nearest to us. They ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Yehuda Halevi, and still not long enough, for we have not yet spoken of his claims to the title philosopher, won for him by his book Al-Chazari. But now we must hurry on to Moses ben Ezra, the last and most worldly of the three great poets. He devotes his genius to his patrons, to wine, his faithless mistress, and to "bacchanalian feasts under leafy canopies, with merry minstrelsy of birds." He laments over separation from friends and kin, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... But if you want a direct answer—yes, I will, if my uncle will let me, which he won't, as you have quarrelled with him, or at any rate two years hence, when I am five and twenty and my own mistress; that is if we have anything to marry on, for one must eat. At present our worldly possessions seem to consist chiefly of a large store of mutual affection, a good stock of clothes and one Yellow God, which after what happened last night, I do not think you will get another chance ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... influenced by appearances. Blinded by their bias, they saw only two well-defined camps in Judaism—the moderns, indifferent to all that constitutes Judaism, and the bigots, opposed to what savors of knowledge, free-thinking, and worldly pleasure. They made their reckoning without the Jewish people. The humanist propaganda was not so empty and vain as its later promoters were pleased to consider it. The conservative romanticism of a Samuel David Luzzatto and the Zionist sentiments of a Mapu had planted a germinating seed in the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... She was looking very lovely, in an elusive frock of some ephemeral material veiling a delicate prismatic undertone of colour. She always dressed rather wonderfully, every detail perfect. There was a kind of frail, worldly charm about her clothes—the sort of charm you never find in the clothes of a thoroughly good and virtuous woman, as Lady Susan ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... is over forever! The father need now no longer instruct the son in cynicism lest he should fail in life, nor the mother her daughter in worldly wisdom as a protection from generous instinct. The parents are worthy of their children and fit to associate with them, as it seems to us they were not and could not be in your day. Life is all the way through as spacious and noble as it seems to the ardent child ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... nothing we could do, or think, or devise, that she did not pounce upon and punish us for. Some were detained, some were set to impositions, some were flogged, some were reduced to bread and water, some had most if not all of their worldly goods confiscated. Even Hawkesbury shared the general fate, and for a whole week all Stonebridge House groaned as it had never ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of abuse. Finally, he would assume an ironic tone, extol the virtues of a certain family, become facetious, and praise its representative then present. This man would then question the Janta on all points regarding his own family, his connections, worldly goods, and what gods he worshipped, ask who was the witch, who taught her sorcery, and how and why she practised it in this particular instance. But the witch-doctor, having taken care to be well coached, would answer everything correctly and fix the guilt ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... by and left me to the old dull pain of memory. I called in anguish upon Kwan-yin, and she did not hear my prayer. The painted smile upon her lips but mocked me, and in despair I said, "There are no Gods," and in my lonely court of silent dreams I lost the thread of worldly care until my tiny bark of life was nearly drifting ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... appearances; he looked upon the world as a mixture of corruption and rascality of every sort. If he admitted exceptions, he condemned the mass; he put no belief in any virtue—men did right or wrong, as circumstances decided. His worldly wisdom was the work of a moment; he learned his lesson at the summit of Pere Lachaise one day when he buried a poor, good man there; it was his Delphine's father, who died deserted by his daughters and their husbands, a dupe of our society and of the truest affection. Rastignac ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... to follow the rotten example of the fellows who sacrifice the whole community to their own beastly greed—who strike like a herd of sheep because a few damned traitors urge 'em to it—who fling duty and honour to the winds on the chance of grabbing a little worldly advantage—in short, if you're not going to observe the rules of the game, I've done ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... 697 lines from his mimes (unconnected and alphabetically arranged), acollection made in the early Middle Ages, and much used in schools. As proverbs of worldly wisdom, and admirable examples of the terse vigour of Roman philosophy, they are ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... sign when here, and quotes it in part in a recent book.[11] It still hangs, as we see it now, two years after his visit, still pathetically but vainly invoking the spirit of a worldly present. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... at him again, and a pang of pity pierced her heart. She did not know it was so bad a case as this. It struck her too that she was doing a foolish thing, from a worldly point of view. The man loved her and was very eligible. He only asked of her what most women are willing enough to give under circumstances so favourable to their well-being—herself. But she never liked him, he had always repelled her, and she was not a woman to marry a man whom she did not like. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... war, says Robinson, "and at his grave a solemn convention was made to avenge his death." Smith, in the funeral sermon, reverted to his old tactics, attributing the Mormon losses to the Lord's anger against his people, because of their unbelief and their unwillingness to devote their worldly treasures ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... with hot sausages and even ham rashers. "To have the stomach of an ostrich must be a privilege indeed," she had once assured her friend; "though to be sure it tells on the complexion, forcing the blood to the face; so that (from a worldly point of view) at a distance a different construction might ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... usual actor's play. In the door he paused, in his long frock coat, shining with its silk lapels, with a glistening opera hat, which he held with his arm in the middle of his chest, like an actor portraying in the theatre an elderly worldly lion or a bank director. And approximately these persons he ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... faculty, which he possesses. Nay, he will go farther; he will spend honor, conscience and manhood, in an eager search for gold. He will change his heart into a ledger on which he will write tare and tret, loss and gain, exchange and barter, and he will succeed, as worldly men count success. He will add house to house; he will encompass the means of luxury; his purse will be plethoric but, oh, how poverty stricken his soul will be. Costly viands will please his taste, but unappeased hunger ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... copying Holy Writ, the devil, in a fit of rage, extinguished their candles; they, however, were promptly lighted again by a Breath of the Holy Spirit, and the good work went on! Salvation was supposed to be gained through conscientious writing. A story is told of a worldly and frivolous brother, who was guilty of many sins and follies, but who, nevertheless, was an industrious scribe. When he came to die, the devil claimed his soul. The angels, however, brought before the Throne a great ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... ago that seems, and what a change has since come over my conceptions of the power of love! I believe it still, yet in so different a way. Now I would surrender gladly all ambition, all dream of worldly success, merely to fee alone with the man I love, and bring him happiness. That—that is all I want; ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... your tongue. And know, the less he has, The better cause have we to honour him. His poverty is honest poverty; It should exalt him more than worldly grandeur, For he has let himself be robbed of all, Through careless disregard of temporal things And fixed attachment to the things eternal. My help may set him on his feet again, Win back his property—a fair estate He has at home, ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... this, a boat arrived with orders for my companion, Mr Anderson, to pack up his worldly goods and start for Tadousac. The same day he bade me adieu and set sail. In a few minutes the boat turned a point of land, and I lost sight of one of the most kindly and agreeable men whom I have had the good fortune to meet in ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... ones of feeding She met unfaltering from that hour; She taught them thrift and honest breeding, Her virtues were their worldly dower. To seek employment, one by one, Forth with her blessing they departed, And she was in the world alone— Alone ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Garhasthya, proceed, with or without his wife, to the woods for adoption of the mode called Vanaprastha. Having studied the scriptures called Aranyakas, having drawn up his vital fluid and having retired from all worldly affairs, the virtuous recluse may then attain to an absorption with the eternal Soul knowing no decay. These are the indications of Munis that have drawn up their vital fluid. A learned Brahmana, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... he came to—that he must tell her plainly he loved her. The thing was only right, though of course ridiculous in the eyes of worldly people, said the far from unworldly poet. True, she was the daughter of an earl, and he the son of a farmer; and those who called the land their own looked down upon those who tilled it! But a banker, or a brewer, or the son of a contractor who had wielded the spade, might marry an earl's ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... others, nor can he do justice to that inner self whose demands are not satisfied even by philanthropic activity. If, then, self-recollection is essential, let us make daily provision for it. Some interest we should have—even worldly prudence counsels this much—as far remote as possible from our leading interest; and beyond that, some book belonging to the world's great spiritual literature on which we may daily feed. The Bible used to be in the ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... Rufus found Amelius resolute to move into his new abode, and eager for the coming life of study and retirement. Knowing perfectly well before-hand how this latter project would end, the American tried the efficacy of a little worldly temptation. He had arranged, he said, "to have a good time of it in Paris"; and he proposed that Amelius should be his companion. The suggestion produced not the slightest effect; Amelius talked as if he was a confirmed recluse, in the decline of life. "Thank you," he said, with the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... father, smiling sadly; 'but Castle Blanch training might make the mischief more serious. It is a gay household, and I cannot believe with Kit Charteris that the children are too young to feel the blight of worldly influence. Do not you think with me, Nora?' he concluded in so exactly the old words and manner as to stir the very depths of her heart, but woe worth the change from the hopes of youth to this premature fading into despondency, and the implied farewell! She did think with ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flutterings; And here the little gleaming face and round, Our second fruit, maddened us with pure joy! As the unhoped return of a longed friend, Here we received one day into our bosom The transitory child beyond compare, The third one, who transformed the worldly air About us into flowing wine for gods, An offering unto the gleaming light Of high Olympus, dwelling of ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the brilliant exploits of Turenne, and of Conde, on the other, led them to the camp. It was merely the difference of dress between the two that constituted the distinction: the soldier might be as pious as the priest, the priest was sure to be as worldly as the soldier; the soldier might have ecclesiastical preferment; the priest ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Miss Curtis argued that to take any steps to protect her fortune would show a want of faith in the honesty of the man she loved, so went to the altar and reversed the marriage service by endowing Mr Randolph Villiers with all her worldly goods. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... in contact with it can be so absolutely blameless as you and Mary, nor can our relation together be rendered in the very smallest degree less or more a blessing by the addition or the subtraction of worldly wealth. I have abundant comfort now in the thought that at any rate I am the means of keeping a load off the minds of others; and I shall have much more hereafter when Stephen is brought through, and once more firmly planted in the place of his fathers, provided I can conscientiously ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... noticed that my companion was observing our fellow-visitors with a kind of horrified curiosity, which she strove, however, and not unsuccessfully, to conceal; and certainly the appearance of the majority furnished eloquent testimony to the failure of crime as a means of worldly advancement. Their present position was productive of very varied emotions; some were silent and evidently stricken with grief; a larger number were voluble and excited, while a considerable proportion were quite cheerful and even inclined ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... been impelled, by misfortune and misery, to the vice that has degraded them. The ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those they loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes, but will not break the heart, has driven them wild; and they present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by their ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... who lived not far from the terrible Giant's castle, a poor man, his only worldly wealth consisting in a large potato-field and a cottage in front of it. But he had a boy of twelve, an only son, who rivaled the Princess Ariadne Diana in point of fatness. He was unable to have a body-guard for his son; so ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... sovereign; Waller was awed into silence, by the rigour of the puritanic spirit; and even the muse of Milton was scared from him by the clamour of religious and political controversy, and only returned, like a sincere friend, to cheer the adversity of one who had neglected her during his career of worldly importance.[14] ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... inestimable possession. Lady Marney had great knowledge of society, and some acquaintance with human nature, which she fancied she had fathomed to its centre; she piqued herself upon her tact, and indeed she was very quick, but she was so energetic that her art did not always conceal itself; very worldly, she was nevertheless not devoid of impulse; she was animated and would have been extremely agreeable, if she had not restlessly aspired to wit; and would certainly have exercised much more influence in society, if she had not been so anxious to show it. Nevertheless, still ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... him, a sweetness, and left him standing there with a delicate; thin recollection of something wild and splendid, something he had known before, and forgotten again. He walks home in silence, says no word of it, makes no boast of it, 'twas not for worldly speech. And it was but Sivert from Sellanraa, went out one evening, young and ordinary as he ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... admit; but I took in the situation at once." And then more affectionately he added: "I was very proud of you, Phil. You and Marjie made a picture I shall keep. When you want my blessing, I have part of it in the strong box in my safe. All I have of worldly goods will be yours, Phil, if you do it no dishonor; and as to my good-will, my son, you are my wife's child, my one priceless treasure. When by your own efforts you can maintain a home, nor feel yourself dependent, then bring a bride to me. I shall do all I can to give you an opportunity. I hope ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... it is more reason, for the entertainment of the time, that ye ask me questions, than that I ask you." We answered, that we humbly thanked him, that he would give us leave so to do. And that we conceived by the taste we had already, that there was no worldly thing on earth more worthy to be known than the state of that happy land. But above all (we said) since that we were met from the several ends of the world, and hoped assuredly that we should meet one day in the kingdom of ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... round the room as though there was scarce enough comfort for his notions of worldly necessity. Yet though not luxurious, the antechamber and the room half-revealed beyond it seemed to furnish all that could be needed by an individual of moderate fortune and desires. And an eye more romantic and poetic than that of the worthy medico might have found ample atonement ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... end to the arbitrary power of the decemviri. But if we lay aside our prepossessions for antiquity, and examine these actions without prejudice, we cannot but acknowledge, that they are rather the effects of human weakness and obstinacy than of resolution and magnanimity. Lucretia, for fear of worldly censure, chose rather to submit to the lewd desires of Tarquin, than have it thought that she had been stabbed in the embraces of a slave; which sufficiently proves that all her boasted virtue was founded upon vanity, and too high a value for the opinion ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Amy was not capable. On the generous young fellow, whose intentions were good, this fact would have very great influence, and in preserving her supremacy Miss Hargrove would also be able to employ not a little art and worldly wisdom. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... true, sir. Education is well finished, for all worldly purposes, when the head is brought into the state whereinto I am accustomed to bring a marrow-bone, when it has been set before me on a toast, with a white napkin wrapped round it. Nothing trundles along the high road of preferment so trimly as a well-biassed ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... sad refrain, "vanity of vanities, all is vanity", and shows how a man under the best possible conditions sought for joy and peace, trying at its best every human resource. He had the best that could be gotten, from human wisdom, from wealth, from worldly pleasure, from worldly honor, only to find that all was "vanity and vexation of spirit." It is what a man, with the knowledge of a holy God, and that He will bring all into judgment, has learned of the emptiness of things "under the sun" and of the ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... to be sure. I remember. We were both engaged in the serious business of croquet at the time—and it was doubtful which of us did that business most clumsily. Well, here is the opportunity; and here am I, with all my worldly experience, at your service. I have only one caution to give you. Don't appeal to me as 'the head of the family.' My resignation is in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... careful not to appear too exacting; they demanded little, condemned no one; and the representative of the Holy Father, the cardinal legate, pleased all, except perhaps a few dissatisfied old priests, by his indulgence, the worldly grace of his manners, and the freedom of his conduct. This prelate was entirely in accord with the First Consul, and he took great pleasure in conversing ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... perfectly calm with her—cool, affectionate, sensible, and worldly, as it is right and proper for parents to be. She told them they were wrong-headed, old-fashioned, and unintelligent; but as long as they hadn't made scenes and talked loud she found that she couldn't help loving them almost as ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... we realize that far beyond the individual triumphs for love that may be achieved, there is a field that can be won only by the corporate faithfulness to the ideal of the group. The individual may lose by all the worldly standards, and his life may seem an ineffectual protest or gesture, but it is the type of losing in which the soul is found and which sooner or later wins out for the group over the entrenched ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... resting-spots of reflection, from which, as from some eminence, we look back upon the road we have been treading in life, and cast a wistful glance at the dark vista before us! When first we set out upon our worldly pilgrimage, these are indeed precious moments, when with buoyant heart and spirit high, believing all things, trusting all things, our very youth comes back to us, reflected from every object we meet; and like Narcissus, we are ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... but, in these days, are we not surely justified in sometimes using the arms that are incessantly turned against us? If we are reduced to such steps by the injustice and wickedness of men, we may console ourselves with the reflection that we only seek to preserve our worldly possessions, in order to devote them to the greater glory of God; whilst, in the hands of our enemies, those very goods are the dangerous instruments of perdition ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... they actually were; they did their best, out of sympathy, to moderate the leaping, joyous vitality that was in them,— and did not succeed very well. They were fine, they were touching—but they were also rather deliciously amusing—as they concentrated all their resources of solemnity and of worldly experience on the tragic case of the woman whom life had defeated. Hilda's memory rushed strangely to Victor Hugo. She was experiencing the same utter desolation—but somehow less noble—as had gripped her when she first realized the eternal picture, in Oceana Nox, of the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the vain parlance of the world, I did not talk of the 'honour of your acquaintance' without a true sense of honour, indeed; but I shall willingly exchange it all (and now, if you please, at this moment, for fear of worldly mutabilities) for the 'delight ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... man is indeed by God called righteousness; but it must be understood as spoken in the dialect of the world. The world indeed calls it righteousness, and it will do no harm, if it bear that term with reference to worldly matters. Hence worldly civilians are called good and righteous men, and so, such as Christ, under that notion, neither died for, nor giveth his grace unto; Rom. v. 7, 8. But we are not now discoursing ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... when that perilous power and opportunity, which is given by wealth and worldly success, largely passed from the British Empire to the United States, I have applied exactly the same principle to the United States. I think that Imperialism is none the less Imperialism because it is spread by economic pressure or snobbish fashion rather than by ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... loftier plane, "is Sally. Our Sally. For three years our Sally has flitted about this establishment like—I choose the simile advisedly—like a ray of sunshine. For three years she has made life for us a brighter, sweeter thing. And now a sudden access of worldly wealth, happily synchronizing with her twenty-first birthday, is to remove her from our midst. From our midst, ladies and gentlemen, but not from our hearts. And I think I may venture to hope, to prognosticate, that, whatever lofty sphere ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... was the child of Friends, or Quakers. The author tells Primrose's experiences among very strict Quakers, and then among worldly people. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his, and not hers, because she has not been doing any of those things for which the money has been received. But is this way of thinking just? By the marriage vow, the husband endows the wife with all his worldly goods; and not a bit too much is this, when she is giving him the command and possession of her person. But does she not help to acquire the money? Speaking, for instance, of the farmer or the merchant, the wife does not, indeed, go to ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... long been dead; he had no worldly ties: he loved only his calling, and the studies belonging to it; and he did not wish to think of foolish and forbidden things. His extraordinary beauty—the beauty of a living idol—was only a misfortune. Wealth was offered him under conditions that he could ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... an old prophecy, "out of the mouths of babes shall come much worldly wisdom." Mr. K. has two boys whom he dearly loves. One day he gave each a dollar to spend. After much bargaining, they brought home a wonderful four-wheeled steamboat and a beautiful train of cars. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... would advise to remove to the Place I have been treating of, where they may enjoy their Liberty and Religion, and peaceably eat the Fruits of their Labour, and drink the Wine of their own Vineyards, without the Alarms of a troublesome worldly Life. If a Man be a Botanist, here is a plentiful Field of Plants to divert him in; If he be a Gardner, and delight in that pleasant and happy Life, he will meet with a Climate and Soil, that will further and promote his Designs, in as great a Measure, as any ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... the school the pleasant bustle which precedes this holiday vacation. Recitations were gone through by the hardest. Meals were eaten in indigestible haste; devotional exercises were filled with "wandering thoughts and worldly affections." ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it is an error to suppose that our great forefathers—though accustomed to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to me like that!' Once more she approached him. 'If you only knew—I can't bear it—I've always been a worldly woman, but you are breaking my heart, Horace! My dear, my dear, if only out of ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... at her through the rain-streaked dark. This was the most astonishing young person he had met in his twenty-three years of worldly experience. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... my worldly experience had profoundly impressed upon me, and that was, the necessity of always assuming an air of easy unconcern in every circumstance of doubtful issue. There was quite enough of difficulty in the present ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... how the new type of secondary schools was naturally associated with court and nobility and men of large worldly affairs, and how in consequence the new secondary education became and for long continued to be considered ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... port or haven to us after our long voyage and a place of rest. And the Virtuous Man who dies thus is like the good mariner; for, as he approaches the port or haven, he strikes his sails, and gently, with feeble steering, enters port. Even thus we ought to strike the sails of our worldly affairs, and turn to God with all our heart and mind, so that one may come into that haven with all sweetness ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... "Dearest Lisbeth, what are you doing? God has blessed me with wife and children and worldly goods; am I today for the first time to wish that it were otherwise?" He sat down gently beside his wife, who at these words had flushed up and fallen on his neck. "Tell me!" said he, smoothing the curls away from her forehead. "What shall I do? Shall I give up my case? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... no stones, no corn, no spice, No cloth, no wine, of Love can pay the price; Divine is Love, and scorneth worldly pelf, And can be bought with ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... step in the mental training is to become the master of external things. He who is addicted to worldly pleasures, however learned or ignorant he may be, however high or low his social position may be, is a servant to mere things. He cannot adapt the external world to his own end, but he adapts himself to it. He is constantly employed, ordered, driven by sensual objects. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... She will think that I am silent for that reason. I have determined that that shall not keep me silent, and, therefore, I have come here. I may, perhaps, be able to bring comfort to her in her trouble. As regards my worldly position,—though, indeed, it will not be very good,—as hers is not good either, you will not think yourself bound to forbid me to see ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... of d'Artagnan's worldly ambition—apart, be it well understood, from his desire of finding Mme. Bonacieux—he ran, full of joy, to seek his comrades, whom he had left only half an hour before, but whom he found very sad and deeply preoccupied. They were assembled in ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my dearest husband that no considerations of worldly advantage will make you neglectful of the precepts of humanity and of the duties of religion. Be persuaded to return to me at once; for you can gain nothing in Florida which can repay me for the sorrow and anxiety I feel in your absence. Nor ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... chiveying me about—living one year like ambassadors and the next like paupers? Who are they, any way, and what are they? I've thought of all that—I've thought of a lot of things. They're so beastly worldly. That's what I hate most—oh, I've seen it! All they care about is to make an appearance and to pass for something or other. What the dickens do they want to pass for? What do they, ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... subscription raised 1200l. to recompense Gay for not being suffered to please the mob with his immorality. And, lastly, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry took this child of nature by the hand—the duke to manage his worldly substance, and the duchess to soothe his insatiable vanity—and so he died at the early age of 45, and has a very pretty tomb, with "Queensberry weeping o'er his urn," in Poets' ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... hath been said, he was preparing to return to the University for his last term before taking his degree and entering into the Church. He had made up his mind for this office, not indeed with that reverence which becomes a man about to enter upon a duty so holy, but with a worldly spirit of acquiescence in the prudence of adopting that profession for his calling. But his reasoning was that he owed all to the family of Castlewood, and loved better to be near them than anywhere else in the world; that he might ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fame, or, power - burdened, as they always are, with ambitions, blunders, jealousies, cares, regrets, and failing health - to match with this enjoyment of the young, the bright, the bygone, hour? The wisdom of the worldly teacher - at least, the CARPE DIEM - was practised here before the injunction was ever thought of. DU BIST SO SCHON was the unuttered invocation, while the VERWEILE DOCH was ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... not inherited poverty nor had he, after all, exactly embraced it, but had as it were naturally drifted into it through indifference to worldly gain, the indifference which men of single and fixed purpose have for all irrelevant matters. The elder Samuel Adams was a merchant of substance and of such consequence in the town of Boston that in Harvard College, where students were named ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... and paying the lamas and they will win salvation for you." So rich and poor vied in giving their best to the holy wayfarers, and sought not to intrude on the meditations or privacy of lama and chela, and welcomed the cheery company of the more worldly lay brother who could crack a joke or empty a mug with any man and pitch the stone quoits or shoot an arrow in the archery contests better than ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the night she called to them, as she stole silently out of the house, that for their kindness she left them all the worldly possessions she had, namely her white cow. This they were in no wise grateful for, because they could scarcely afford to feed it and it was too poor to sell or to hope to draw ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... feverish, impatient faces. The multitude of candles, and the seven-and-eighty lamps of the Confession paled to such a degree that they seemed but glimmering night-lights in the blinding radiance; and everything proclaimed the worldly gala of the imperial Deity ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... evidence, and that far inferior in degree, you have never hesitated to act, when your own temporal interests were concerned. You never feared to commit the bark of your worldly fortunes to that fluctuating element. In many cases you believed on the testimony of others what seemed even to contradict your own senses. Why were you so much more scrupulous ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... family lived more comfortably in prison than they had done for a long time out of it. They were waited on still by the maid-of-all-work from Bayham Street, the orphan girl of the Chatham workhouse, from whose sharp little worldly and also kindly ways he took his first impression of the Marchioness in the Old Curiosity Shop. She also had a lodging in the neighborhood, that she might be early on the scene of her duties; and when Charles met her, as he would do occasionally, in his lounging-place ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... siesta, the canoe, which contained the whole of the hunter's worldly wealth, was run on the beach near to the spot where dwelt his father-in-law with ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... Paul was anxious that Hay—whom he regarded as a clever man-of-the-world—should see the old man, and, as our trans-Atlantic cousins say, "size him up." Norman's manner and queer life puzzled Paul not a little, and not being very worldly himself he was anxious to have the advice of his old school friend, who seemed desirous of doing him a good turn, witness his desire to buy the brooch so that Paul might be supplied with money. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... with sweet music in the air, I saw another vision there: A Shepherd in whose keep A little lamb—my little child! Of worldly wisdom ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... invested with all the fascination which beauty of face, simplicity of mind, purity of soul, sweetness of disposition and joyousness of spirit can impart. Yet she is, and feels herself to be, entirely bourgeoise, longing for no ideal heights, worldly or spiritual, ready for all ordinary duties, content with simple and innocent pleasures, rinding in the life, the thoughts, the occupations and enjoyments of her class all that is needed to make the current of her life run smoothly and to satisfy the cravings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Democritus saith) with fresh thoughts for each new day, as if newly born again, they fall to their worldly concerns with noisy and effectual contrivances. And upon this account, Ibycus oppositely calls the dawning [Greek omitted] (from [Greek omitted], TO HEAR), because then men first begin to hear and speak. Now at night, all things being at rest, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... humanitarianism. It is difficult to analyze a living thing; the analysis is at best imperfect. Many more motives may blend with the three trends; possibly the desire for a new form of social success due to the nicety of imagination, which refuses worldly pleasures unmixed with the joys of self-sacrifice; possibly a love of approbation, so vast that it is not content with the treble clapping of delicate hands, but wishes also to hear the bass notes from toughened palms, may ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... politely sinister, prolonged glance of inquiry, I overheard Dona Rita murmuring, with some confusion and annoyance, "Vous etes bete mon cher. Voyons! Ca n'a aucune consequence." Well content in this case to be of no particular consequence, I had already about me the elements of some worldly sense. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... felt bewildered and almost terrified, everything was so new, so strange, so noisy, and so brilliant. The dress she wore made her feel unlike herself; the books they gave her were full of pictures and stories of worldly things of which she knew nothing. Her carriage was brought to the door and she went out with her governess, driving round and round the park with scores of other people who looked at her curiously, she did not know ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr Cargill's limbs till the blude sprang; and Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country and king. There was the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god. And there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks, streaming down over his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... heroes and warriors, mighty in battle, illustrious in worldly honour, zealous soldiers of Christ, that spread his name far and near, wherever they came. For even as our Lord and his twelve Apostles subdued the world by their doctrine, so did Charles, King of the French and Emperor of the Romans, recover Spain to the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... retire, And in himself possess his own desire: Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; And therefore does not stoop nor lie in wait For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state; Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall Like showers of manna, if they come at all. 'Tis finally the man, who, lifted high, Conspicuous object in a nation's eye, Or left unthought of in obscurity, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... in College. Mrs. Winthrop has thus far attended herself to the education of her two daughters. Along with many other useful lessons, she often seeks to impress upon their minds the sin and folly of treating with contempt and scorn those who may be less favored than themselves in a worldly point of view; and to impress the lesson more strongly upon their young minds, she has more than once spoken to them of her own early history, and of the trials to which she was subject in her youthful days. But what ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... brought on a second attack of brain fever, which exhausted his failing strength. After tossing for several weeks in delirium he regained sense only to feel assured that the end of all worldly ambition was fast approaching. Then he remembered the Brahman's curse, and knowing that it was the cause of all his misfortunes he endeavoured to make some reparation; but the holy man was not to be found. One evening ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... by profession, who had sailed his ship from the Elbe some years before for the last time, and left his wife to bring up her fatherless boys by the sweat of her brow and her own exertions; for Captain Dort had left but little worldly goods behind him, his all being embarked with himself in his ship, which was lost, with all hands on board, in the North Sea. Fritz and Eric had both been too young at the time to appreciate the struggles of their mother to support herself and them, until ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it is bearing—bearing up under the full weight; and the long bent spring is the slower in rebounding in proportion to its inherent strength. Poor lad, what protracted endurance it has been! There is health and force in his face; no line of sin, nor sickness, nor worldly care, such as it makes one's heart ache to see aging young faces; yet how utterly unlike the face of one and-twenty! I had rather see it sadder than so strangely settled and sedate! Shall I speak to him again? Not yet: those green hill-sides, those fields and cattle, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Lord," he wrote to the Countess of Huntingdon, "and He comforts, encourages, and teaches me. The devil, my friends, and my heart have pushed at me to make me fall into worldly cares and creature snares . . . but I have been enabled to cry, 'Nothing but Jesus and the service of His people,' and I trust the Lord will keep ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... of September king James expired at St. Germain's, after having laboured under a tedious indisposition. This unfortunate monarch, since the miscarriage of his last attempt for recovering his throne, had laid aside all thoughts of worldly grandeur, and devoted his whole attention to the concerns of his soul. Though he could not prevent the busy genius of his queen from planning new schemes of restoration, he was always best pleased when wholly detached from such chimerical projects. Hunting was his chief diversion; but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... arts; and great cities sprang up where he had trodden, and every land through which he passed was blessed because one of the gods had come down to men. But many men and women followed Odin himself, giving up all their worldly possessions and ambitions; and to these he promised the gift of eternal life. All these people were good and noble and unselfish and kind; but the best and noblest of them all was a youth named Ving; and this youth was beloved by Odin above all others, for his beauty ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dictates of her own heart, and using what after all was only a little running over of her great wealth to secure the comfort of the people round, was neglecting what she had once thought the great duty of her life as entirely as if she had been the most selfish of worldly women. Her life had been so entirely changed—swung, as one might say, out of one orbit into another—that the burdens of the former existence seemed to have been taken from her shoulders along with its habits and external circumstances. Her husband thought of these ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... are always welcome. Did we not campaign together? Did we not—shoot these very falls together on our way to Kaskaskia?" He had to raise his voice above the roar of the water. "Faith, well I remember the day. And you saved it, Davy,—you, a little gamecock, a little worldly-wise hop-o'-my-thumb, eh? Hamilton's scalp hanging by a lock, egad—and they frightened out of their five wits because it was growing dark." He laughed, and suddenly became solemn again. "There comes a time in every man's life when it grows dark, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... assumed a passing emerald tint. There was a depth to those apparently superficial glances. It seemed to Claudius that one had singled him out, and he fancied, as his eyes became fastened on this vision of concentrated worldly bliss, that it was for him that she stretched her plump neck, waved her arms in long gloves, undulated her waist and murmured—though to others she was but repeating her ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... hung against the wall, and after each glance she turned defiantly away with something like sullenness about her lips. Elizabeth Burton, the mother, and Hannah Burton, the spinster aunt, went about their accustomed tasks with no thought more worldly than the duties of the moment. It never occurred to Aunt Hannah to complain of anything that was. If her life spelled unrelieved drudgery she accepted it as the station to which it had pleased God to call ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... longer, and Kennedy showed a zeal which deserved to meet with better success. He brought before his audience with talent every possible reasoning in favor of orthodoxy; but his audience, composed of young men, were far too engrossed with worldly occupations to be caught by the ardor of their master's zeal. Disappointed at not seeing Lord Byron again among them, they all deserted Kennedy's lectures just at the time when he was going to speak of miracles ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... mortals than that of their riches. How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting. How many were those who lived in scarcity of worldly goods in order to grow rich in virtue; and as far as virtue exceeds wealth, even in the same degree the desire of the poor man proved more fruitful than that of the rich man. {9} Dost thou not see that wealth in itself confers no honour on him who amasses ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... firm a belief. Werner then spent two years in the study of theology, visited Our Lady's Chapel at Loretto in 1813; was ordained priest at Aschaffenburg in 1814; and preached at St. Stephen's Church, Vienna, on the vanity of worldly pleasures, with fastings many, with castigations and mortifications of the flesh. The younger Voss declared that Werner's religion was nothing but a poetic coquetting with God, Mary, the wounds of Christ, and the holy ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... in Keith's face which told of honesty, and inspired confidence. Miss Maclaire's worldly experience had given her deep insight into the character of men, and somehow, as she looked into the clear gray eyes, she felt impelled to answer, a vague doubt of the unknown ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... read like a story book and be both entertaining and instructive. But he found out his mistake soon after we began it. Benjamin Franklin was much too business-like a person. The narrowness of his calculated morality disgusted my father. In some cases he would get so impatient at the worldly prudence of Franklin that he could not help using strong words of denunciation. Before this I had nothing to do with Sanskrit beyond getting some rules of grammar by rote. My father started me on the second Sanskrit reader at one bound, leaving me to learn the declensions as we went on. The advance ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... answered. 'A few surface unlikenesses only just mask an underlying identity. Their features are the same; but his are plump; hers, shrunken. Lady Georgina's expression is sharp and worldly; Mr. Ashurst's is smooth, and bland, and financial. And then their manner! Both are fussy; but Lady Georgina's is honest, open, ill-tempered fussiness; Mr. Ashurst's is concealed under an artificial mask of obsequious politeness. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... industrious man whom his illustrious son never tires of praising. In one place he says of him, "He had a great reputation with many who knew him, for he led an honorable Christian life, was a patient man, gentle, in peace with everyone and always thankful to God. He had no desire for worldly pleasures, was of few words, did not go into society and was a God-fearing man. Thus my dear father was most anxious to bring up his children to honor God. His highest wish was that his children should be pleasing to God and man; therefore he used to tell us ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... pan, so brilliant that it served nicely for a pier-glass, and such of the portly black bugs as preferred a warmer climate than the rubbish hole afforded. Two arks, commonly called trunks, lurked behind the door, containing the worldly goods of the twain who laughed and cried, slept and scrambled, in this refuge; while from the white-washed walls above either bed, looked down the pictured faces of those whose memory can ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... at the plantation of Noah Lyon, who had inherited the property under the will of his elder brother. The raising of hemp and horses had made the deceased brother, Colonel Duncan Lyon, a rich man, as worldly possessions were gauged in this locality. His property had been fairly divided among his heirs. The plantation had been given to his younger brother, greatly to the dissatisfaction of ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... little evergreen from the next grave stretches out its green fingers to make a show—there rests a very unhappy man; and yet, when he lived, he was in what they call a good position. He had enough to live upon, and something over; but worldly cares, or to speak more correctly, his artistic taste, weighed heavily upon him. If in the evening he sat in the theatre to enjoy himself thoroughly, he would be quite put out if the machinist had put too strong a light into one side of the moon, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... youths I ever saw None were so wicked, vain, or silly, So lost to shame and Sabbath law, As worldly ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... distinction and honor of the family, he began to see an admirable fitness in things as they were. Everett was, after all, better suited for the career that lay before him, in which he trusted he would not need that knowledge of mankind and judgment on worldly matters that were indispensable to those who had to carve their own way in life. "It is better as it is," thought the father, unconscious that he was echoing such an unsubstantial philosophy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... no speeches nor songs; men acting men's parts, and women the women's, with variety of representations and dances. The whole design was to show the vanity and folly of all professions and worldly things, lively represented by the exact properties and mute actions, genteelly, without the least ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... this world about that age when most men think they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was not strange unto mine, who have so often observed that many, though old, oft stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus's oxen, backward with great struggling and reluctancy unto the grave. The long habit of living makes mere men more hardly to part with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... rock elevated above the valley and overhung with foliage. We are told that a pious baker lived in the town of Derby who was noted for his exemplary life: the Virgin Mary, as a proof of his faith, required him to relinquish all his worldly goods and go to Deepdale and lead a solitary life in Christ's service. He did as he was told, departed from Derby, but had no idea where he was to go; directing his footsteps towards the east, he passed through a village, and heard a woman instruct a girl to drive some calves to ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... so," said she. And in those seemingly insignificant words, all was said. The Baron du Chatelet had spoken the language of worldly wisdom to a woman of the world. He had made his appearance before her in faultless dress, a neat cab was waiting for him at the door; and Mme. de Bargeton, standing by the window thinking over the position, chanced to see the elderly dandy ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... trifle different; one would have said of him that he was of the world, worldly, albeit there was that in his attire which attested a certain fellowship with the organisms of his environment. His coat would hardly have passed muster in San Francisco; his foot-gear was not of urban origin, and the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce |
