"Birthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wasted on him, and have repreved [denied, rejected] thereof one ten thousand times his better! God assoil [forgive] my blindness!—for mine eyes be opened now. But you, Sire,—you ask of me that I shall sign away mine own honourable name and my child's birthright, and as bribe to bid me thereunto, you proffer me my lands! What saw you ever in Custance of Langley to give you the thought that she should thus lightly sell her soul for gold, or weigh your paltry acres in the balances against her ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... friends with her friends and to beware of her enemies, if she has any reason to fear them. Through the bitter struggle of the last few years Belgium has conquered what other nations might consider as their birthright—the right to be herself, the master of her fate, the captain of ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... lived under the yoke of the oppressor. Too long have our old been buried in paupers' graves afther lives of misery no other counthry in the wurrld can equal. Why should it be the lot of our people—men and women born to a birthright of freedom? Why? Are ye men of Ireland so craven that aliens can rule ye as they once ruled the negro?" ("No, no!") "The African slave has been emancipated and his emancipation was through the blood and tears of the people who ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... misfortune to lose them when he was but a child. "Little is known of his father, but we understand that he was a retired military officer in easy circumstances. The mother was a canny Scotchwoman of lowly birth, conspicuous for her devoutness even in a land where it is everyone's birthright, and on their marriage, which was a singularly happy one, they settled in London, going little into society, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, and devoting themselves to each other and to their two children. Of ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... our life is centred round our flesh-pots. On the altar of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind. For a mess of pottage we sell our birthright. ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Kings prisoners in one year. This reign is also memorable for the institution of the most noble Order of the Garter, and for the title of Duke of Cornwall being first conferred upon the Black Prince, and continued as a birthright to the Prince ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... The Medes and Persians were the natural inheritors of Assyrian civilization, but they did not improve their birthright. The Medes soon lost their power. Cyrus conquered them, and established the powerful Persian monarchy upheld for two hundred years by Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes. Substantially the same conditions surrounded the Persians ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... institutions; nor shall I neglect to apply the same unbending rule to those of my own appointment. Freedom of opinion will be tolerated, the full enjoyment of the right of suffrage will be maintained as the birthright of every American citizen; but I say emphatically to the official corps, "Thus far and no farther." I have dwelt the longer upon this subject because removals from office are likely often to arise, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... easiest thing in the world for Mervale, on returning from his Continental episode of life, to settle down to his desk,—his heart had been always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright, a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make this establishment first-rate was an honourable ambition,—it was his! He had lately married, not entirely for money,—no! he was worldly rather than mercenary. He had ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... said, "from morn till night With bleeding hands and blinded sight For gold, more gold! They have betrayed The trust that in their souls was laid; Their fairy birthright they have sold For little disks of mortal gold; And now they cannot even see The gold upon the greenwood tree, The wealth of coloured lights that pass In soft gradations through the grass, The riches of the love untold That wakes the day from grey to gold; And howsoe'er the moonlight weaves Magic ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... me his hand and swore he had no more hearts but one, and I should haue halfe of it, in that I so inhanced his obscured reputation. One thing, quoth he, my sweete Jacke I will intreate thee (it shalbe but one) that though I am wel pleased thou shouldest be the ape of my birthright, (as what noble man hath not his ape & his foole) yet that thou be an ape without a clog, not carrie thy curtizan with thee. I tolde him that a king could do nothing without his treasury, this curtizan was my purs-bearer, my countenance and supporter. ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into the dawn of civilization, when Friend Penn cheated him out of his birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He showed both analogy and contrast between this specimen of our kind and others equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and the cultured,—the Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of primogeniture has obviously affected national morals, though it has not otherwise altered national character. For a peculiar mental attitude is evolved by the constant domination of an elder brother, whose birthright gives him precedence and authority second only to that of the father. In countries where the right of unrestricted testamentary bequests is still maintained, family morals are very different from those ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... thy children claim Their honored birthright by its humblest name Cold are thy skies, but, ever fresh and clear, No rank malaria stains thine atmosphere; No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil, Scarred by the ploughshares of unslumbering toil. Long may the doctrines by thy sages taught, Raised from the quarries where their sires ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... entrance of Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to be returning from labour—do you mean to say that they are washerwomen and charwomen? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken. I assure you they stand in a far higher rank; for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... order and in might: The rest were long to tell; though far renowned Th' Ionian gods—of Javan's issue held Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth, Their boasted parents;—Titan, Heaven's first-born, With his enormous brood, and birthright seized By younger Saturn: he from mightier Jove, His own and Rhea's son, like measure found; So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in Crete And Ida known, thence on the snowy top Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air, Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, Or in Dodona, and through all the ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... doth pine, Where'er one man may help another,— Thank God for such a birthright, brother,— That spot of earth is thine and mine! There is the true man's birthplace grand, His ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... old parchment, I gathered that there had been a pretty dirty job done, away back in the years. It seems that King Alzof and King Ernore had been enemies by birthright, as you might say truly; but that nothing more than a little raiding had occurred on either side for years, until Dian Tiansay made the Song of Foolishness upon King Ernore, and sang it before King Alzof; and so greatly was it ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... Dear, 'midst smiles and tears, I gleaned that she had once adorned the stage, pursued always by the jealousy of her less-talented sisters. Heaven knows she couldn't help the gifts of Nature which had come to her through no effort of her own—her birthright. The de Dears were all that way, as far back as Sir Something-or-the-other de Dear who came over with the Conqueror—and her mother's first cousin went to the Philadelphia Assembly—how could she help it? Noblesse Oblige! All the girls were jealous—the cats! Anyhow, she had quit the scene of her ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... well as poor!" Hamar went on. "Lying is woman's birthright. She lies about her age, her looks, her clothes—everything. With a lie she sends callers away, and when she is in the mood, entertains them with lies. Women are born liars, but they are not the only liars. In these days of keen competition every one lies—every editor, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Roy, being a man of courage and prudence, was left Tutor by his brother to Sir Kenneth, his own brother-uterine, Duncan being of better hands than head. This Hector, hearing of Sir Kenneth's death, and finding himself in possession of an estate, to which those only now had title whose birthright was debateable, namely, the children begot by Kenneth the third, on the Lord Lovat's daughter, with whom he did at first so irregularly and unlawfully cohabit." The objection of illegitimacy could not apply to Duncan, or to his son Allan, and it is difficult ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... to "fickle affection" means literally that selfish affection of the parent, which would retain the fleeting joy of a few short earthly years of companionship, while the larger and more perfect love would bid the child seek its birthright of godhood. The word "fickle" here would more properly ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... many, to Imperial dignities; Which, won by character and quality In those who now enjoy them, will become The birthright of ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... long to tell, though far renown'd, Th' Ionian Gods, of Javans Issue held Gods, yet confest later then Heav'n and Earth Thir boasted Parents; Titan Heav'ns first born 510 With his enormous brood, and birthright seis'd By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove His own and Rhea's Son like measure found; So Jove usurping reign'd: these first in Creet And Ida known, thence on the Snowy top Of cold Olympus rul'd the middle Air Thir ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... feel that he had a natural right to wander on Egdon: he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these. Colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... in their selections, and will not always be right when they feel sure. A good degree of reliability in these respects is something that has to be acquired by long training. But the spirit of self-reliance is a child's birthright, and if it is lacking in his study it is because his nature has been undermined. Teachers, therefore, should take great pains to avoid a dogmatic manner toward children; they should impress upon them ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... You are my father. And is it true then, as Clotaldo swears, 'Twas you that from the dawning birth of one Yourself brought into being,—you, I say, Who stole his very birthright; not alone That secondary and peculiar right Of sovereignty, but even that prime Inheritance that all men share alike, And chain'd him—chain'd him!—like a wild beast's whelp. Among as savage mountains, to this hour? ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... impossible. {204} At one time the young prince had believed that Louis the Fifteenth would find him the men and lend him the money, but in 1745 any such hope had entirely left him. He knew now that Louis the Fifteenth would do nothing for him; he knew that if he was ever to regain his birthright he must win it with his own wits. It is impossible not to admire the desperate courage of the young aspirant setting out thus lightly to conquer a kingdom with only a handful of men at his back and hardly ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... secure, in your smug egotism. But the end is in sight. Your petty despotism is doomed. You have hoodwinked the authorities, bribed the police, connived with the Hudson Bay Company, bullied and browbeaten the Indians, cheated them out of their birthright of land and liberty, and have forced them into a peonage that has ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... said his mother, impatiently, "this is not selling but giving away one's birthright. Where is the advantage of birth if breeding is not supposed to go along with it? Where the parents have had intelligence and refinement, do we not constantly see them inherited by the children? and in an increasing degree from generation ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... superior, absorb considerable bodies of immigrant settlers with a quickness unknown to the ancient world, where the original citizens of a commonwealth always believed themselves to be united by kinship in blood, and resented a claim to equality of privilege as a usurpation of their birthright. In the early Roman republic the principle of the absolute exclusion of foreigners pervaded the Civil Law no less than the Constitution. The alien or denizen could have no share in any institution supposed to be coeval with the State. He could not have the benefit ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... sense—at least he has it if he be endowed with a little imagination—of the immense pleasure which life gives to most wild animals. That instinctive, and in its foundations utterly irrational and animal joy which men have, or should have, in their day, is part of the birthright of all sentient beings. As yet we have not recognized that this privilege of enjoyment should be confessed. We do not hesitate to slay or maim for mere sport. It is true that some of the ancient forms of this sport, such as bull-baiting and cock-fighting, have been ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... views on the mental differences between man and woman. Woman is more tender and less selfish than man, whose ambition "passes too easily into selfishness," which latter qualities "seem to be his natural and unfortunate birthright." Woman's powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man. Yet the chief pre-eminence of man he considers to consist in attaining greater success in any given line than woman, by reason of greater energy, patience, &c. "In order that woman ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... barbarians. Titus said of them: "Their bodies are, indeed, great, but their souls are greater." Caesar had a remarkable method of eulogizing his own generalship by praising the valor and strength of the vanquished foes. "Liberty," wrote Lucanus, "is the German's birthright." And Florus, speaking of liberty, said: "It is a privilege which nature has granted to the Germans, and which the Greeks, with all of their arts, knew not how to obtain." At a later period Montesquieu was led to exclaim: "Liberty, that lovely thing, was discovered in the wild ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... treasures of the world. Hermann Ball was acting and choosing as Moses did in the crisis of his history, while he, George Muller, was acting and choosing more like that profane person Esau, when for one morsel of meat he bartered his birthright. The result was a new renunciation—he gave up the girl he loved, and forsook a connection which had been formed without faith and prayer and had proved a ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill!—ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to my human birthright, if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... for beheading, was set in all the chief market-places, and hundreds were put to death on the charge of "conspiring against the nation." Louis XVI. was executed early in 1793; and it was enough to have any sort of birthright to be thought dangerous and ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... precocious in assurance, because, in addition to being unprincipled, he was in a manner ordained by election and birthright to rule over Kensington. His father had been one of those strong-willed, clear-visioned, intelligent young Eastern divinity students who brought to a place of more voluptuous and easy burgher society the secular vigor ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... this name, setting forward as he so earnestly did the peace of the Church, resolved as he was, so far as in him lay, to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. [Footnote: We cannot adduce St. Columba as another example in the same kind, seeing that this name was not his birthright, but one given to him by his scholars for the dove-like gentleness of his character. So indeed we are told; though it must be owned that some of the traits recorded of him in The Monks of the West are not columbine at all.] The Dominicans were ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... President is engaged in dispensing liberty to conquered peoples instead of allowing them to enjoy liberty as a birthright. He is dispensing to them such education as he thinks they ought to have, instead of allowing them to decide for themselves as to the education which may be agreeable or useful for them. He dictates for them the "free institutions" which in his opinion are best ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... can ever forgive you for having killed the faith, the joy of life that was in me! You have spoiled for me for ever my rightful share of the joyous and the good. My heart is sixty though my body is not twenty. How dared you rob me of all that was my birthright, of all that was my life, and give me nothing—nothing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... what I'd make it. What is the good of young men of leisure if they don't do anything for the country? Too fine to do what Hamilton did and Jay did! I wish you could have heard my father talk about it. Abdicate their birthright for a four-in-hand!" ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as Southerners we wish to see the power of the State retained, yet as women we are equally determined to secure, as of paramount importance, the right which is the birthright of an American citizen. We, therefore, appeal to you gentlemen vested with the power largely to shape conditions to confer with us and influence public opinion to adopt woman suffrage through State action. Failing to accomplish this, the onus of responsibility ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... whole we feel that the childhood of Mill could hardly have been a happy one. The joy of physical achievement, the free-hearted abandonment of the young barbarian at his play, the power to do as well as to know—these are the birthright of every child. But while we may pity him for his lack of these joys, we dare not forget that to have lived the life or done the work of John Stuart Mill is no small thing. And perhaps this life could not ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Quaker, mature and manly for his years, took hold of business as if it had been his birthright. Perhaps it had come to him with the resemblance to his uncle. And when Philemon Nevitt decided to take back his father's name, Polly ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... declare it as freely yours as mine. Every act of genius proclaims that the highest gift is no monopoly or singularity, no privilege of one, but the birthright of the race. Shakspeare knows well that we shall easily see what he sees; he considers it no secret. We are always feeling beforehand for every right word now about to be spoken in the world; many men give tokens of the general habit of thought before he is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... intention of standing also in the pillory, if his friend was subjected to that indignity, and of thus encouraging the storm of popular indignation, that, without any such encouragement, would probably have led to consequences which the Government, already hated by all Englishmen who loved their birthright, dared not brook. But the unworthy vengeance of his persecutors was amply satisfied in other ways. He had already suffered more than most men. "Neglect," he said, "I was accustomed to. But when an alleged offence was laid to my charge, in which, on the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... led to inevitable revolt against association with their much-despised and wholly misunderstood Jewish fellows. Now we see, and our younger brothers of the Menorah fellowship have caught the vision, that no Jew can be truly cultured who Jewishly uproots himself, that the man who rejects the birthright of inheritance of the traditions of the earliest and virilest of the cultured peoples of earth is impoverishing his very being. The Jew who is a "little Jew" is ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... in unimportant matters. Such a reputation tells against him when he has to put his foot down over big things. To have invaded the senior day-room and stopped a conventional senior day-room 'rag' would have been interfering with the most cherished rights of the citizens, the freedom which is the birthright of every ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... her conscious intelligence and the traditional prejudice which had in no wise diminished since Martial included, in his picture of a domestic menage, "a wife not too learned..." She is not willing to lose a woman's birthright of love and devotion, but is not quite sure how far it might be affected by her ability to detect a solecism. Hence, she offers a great deal of subtle flattery to masculine self-love. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... world The same this hour and ever. Thence he deems Of his own lot; above the painted shapes That fleeting move o'er this terrestrial scene Looks up; beyond the adamantine gates Of death expatiates; as his birthright claims Inheritance in all the works of God; Prepares for endless time his plan of life, And counts ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... common story amongst the Wasuahili at Zanzibar, in regard to the government of that island, was, that the Wakhadim, or aborigines of Zanzibar, did not like the oppressions of the Portuguese, and therefore allied themselves to the Arabs of Muscat—even compromising their natural birthright of freedom in government, provided the Arabs, by their superior power, would secure to them perpetual equity, peace and justice. The senior chief, Sheikh Muhadim, was the mediator on their side, and without his sanction no radial changes compromising the welfare of the land could take place; ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... which he had learned to trust completely, that in the years to come, he would never reach a greater height of artistic success than he had done just then. One such experience could justify many a year of halting indecision. Puritan to the core, he yet had proved true to his Slavonic birthright. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... elaboration has ruined that blessing. Goodwill? Had she seen any example of it in the hordes of purchasers? Or in herself. She had failed to respond to this invitation merely because it was a little queer and imaginative—she, whose birthright it was to nourish imagination! Better to have accepted, to have tired themselves a little by the journey, than coldly to reply, "Might I come some other day?" Her cynicism left her. There would be no other day. This shadowy woman would never ask ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... frequent when the parents die during the child's infancy. Similarly, moral tendencies are transmitted, and the Bible gives us many examples of the fact. The luxury-loving Isaac, who must have his savoury food, just as his son, Esau, who would sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, Rebekah, who, like her brother Laban is shrewd and cunning, sees her tendency repeated in her son Jacob, who needed a life of discipline and prayer to set him ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... moment the sole heir to the throne of Norway. Now for the first time he realized that during all that past time, when he had been living as a poor and wretched bondslave in Esthonia, he had held this glorious birthright. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... entered into his birthright. As a strategist he was superb, the best of his time. What his eye took in his mind snapped up—like a steel gin. And his eye was the true soldier's eye, comprehending by signs, investing with life what was tongueless ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the reckless fearlessness which was her birthright, she laughed at him coolly, laughed as the two stood against the sky-line, upon the barren ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... and so first drive them into cities, and then starve them. Or, perhaps, you will be a lawyer, and learn how to darken language into obscure terms, by which a simple, honest man may be made to sell his birthright without knowing what he is doing. Or a doctor, fighting madly against the decree of the Omnipotent, daring to try to stem the flowing tide of death. If your eyes were but opened, how gladly would you cast off ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... compunction and pity. The child looked even more pathetic than when seen from above, and the young girl involuntarily stooped in passing, and touched the wan little cheek. Whereupon one of those ineffable smiles which are the birthright of Italians lighted the little face, and the small hand was lifted with so captivating a gesture that Blythe, clasping it in her own, dropped on her knees ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... slave of his own fears, the slave of his own love of bodily comfort. Such a man does not dare serve God. He dare not obey God, when obeying God is dangerous and unpleasant. He dare not claim his heavenly birthright, his share in God's Spirit, his share in Christ's kingdom, because that would bring discomfort on him, because he will have to give up the sins he loves, because he will have to endure the insults and ill-will of wicked men. Thus cowards can never be free, for it is only where the Spirit ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... man," put in Bulstrode, "as being entitled to lead the lady of the house to the table, in virtue of his birthright. So much for being the fourth son of an Irish baron! Do you know Harris's ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... how I lay and sobbed In my poor cradle—deeply, deeply cursing The rich man's pampered bantling, who had robbed My only birthright—an attentive nursing! Sometimes in hatred of my foster-brother, I gnashed ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... thus sacrificing his heritage, he only followed the path that had led him from the beginning. Boston was full of his brothers. He had reckoned from childhood on outlawry as his peculiar birthright. The mere thought of beginning life again in Mount Vernon Street lowered the pulsations of his heart. This is a story of education — not a mere lesson of life — and, with education, temperament has in strictness nothing to do, although ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... gentled, mellowed, strengthened Elijah reappears in the man who received the birthright portion of his spirit. We know the new Elijah by the spirit that swayed Elisha. The old spirit, fiercely denouncing, calling down fire, slaying the priests, but with no grief-broken heart under these stern needful things,—this we think of ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... sneering voice on the winter's eve so long ago; her mother's tears! As he had sown so should he reap, and her hands would help to gather in the harvest. Through him they had been exiled all these years from the home that was their birthright. The husband of her early womanhood might have been spared if only they could have nursed him back to health under the cool shade of those grand old trees instead of languishing in the hot city. Help this man? This incarnation of cruel selfishness? Not she;—his boy should suffer the ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Soana Molopo was the elder brother of Katema, but that he was wanting in wisdom; and Katema, by purchasing cattle and receiving in a kind manner all the fugitives who came to him, had secured the birthright to himself, so far as influence in the country is concerned. Soana's first address to us did not savor ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... he could not repel the attacks of neighboring tribes, alone he could not go forth to conquer new lands or increase the number of his herds. But why he should associate with others and so limit the freedom which was his birthright, for other purposes than those of attack and defense, of electing a leader for war, or getting his allotment of land in peace, was altogether beyond the horizon of his comprehension. He was sufficient unto himself for all the purposes of his daily life; to the product of his own ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... mother's womb. They come to light, the elder lively and vigorous, the younger gentle and prudent. The former becomes the father's, the latter the mother's, favorite. The strife for precedence, which begins even at birth, is ever going on. Esau is quiet and indifferent as to the birthright which fate has given him: Jacob never forgets that his brother forced him back. Watching every opportunity of gaining the desirable privilege, he buys the birthright of his brother, and defrauds him of their father's blessing. Esau is indignant, and vows his brother's ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... popular entertainer. He is broad-minded and progressive in his views, inheriting from both father and mother a hatred of oppression in any form. Taking his mother as a standard, he believes the franchise is a birthright which should appertain to intelligence and education, rather than to sex. It is his public career that lends an interest to his private life, in which he has been a devoted and faithful son and brother, a kind and considerate husband, a loving and generous father. "Only the ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... any hope of obtaining distinction and eminence in the annals of their country, and reduced to the one narrow pursuit of "making money." Are the free burgesses of London prepared thus to sacrifice their birthright to gratify the whim or envy of a ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... confession might still be made concerning a section of English-speaking Canadians, who seem to consider it a personal grievance that French Canadians should speak the French language. Lord Durham would probably have reminded them that conquest does not mean that birthright, language, and custom, spirit and racial pride, are spoils and confiscations of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... against his conscience, and, as soon as the opportunity comes, he will make atonement for them in the way suggested by such faith as he has, the way approved by public opinion. His religion, strictly defined, is an ineradicable belief in his own religiousness. As an Englishman, he holds as birthright the true Piety, the true Morals. That he has "gone wrong" is, alas, undeniable, but never—even when leering most satirically—did he deny his creed. When, at public dinners and elsewhere, he tuned his voice to the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... marriage fell through by fault of the girl. But to provide against this, they made another part to the instrument for her to sign, in which they made her solemnly promise and covenant to marry Peters, and none else; otherwise she was to forfeit her birthright in her father's estate. This they somehow or other at last induced her to sign and seal thus binding herself hand and foot forever, with but one single advantage, which, it seems, she had the wit to get added to the contract before she would sign it; and that was, that the time of fulfilling ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of Siam (his birthright wrested from him, and his life imperilled) took refuge in a Buddhist monastery and assumed the yellow garb of a priest. His father, commonly known as Phen-den-Klang, first or supreme king of Siam, had just died, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... here on the sofa instead of out there in the rain? The war? But he was too inherently honest to blame the war. It was, perhaps, responsible for the present state of his sciatic nerve but not for the selling of his birthright of sturdy youth. The causes of that lay far behind the war. Had he not refused himself to youth when youth had called? Had he not shut himself behind study doors while Spring crept in at the window? The ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... perplexities, {601} and had like to have made him abandon the work of God. But the Lord, whose will he consulted by earnest prayer, supported him, and comforted him by a vision; so that he persevered in his resolution. He forsook his family, sold, as he says, his birthright and dignity, to serve strangers, and consecrated his soul to God, to carry his name to the end of the earth. He was determined to suffer all things for the accomplishment of his holy design, to receive ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... will do much. Your claim to interfere is a part of your birthright, and it is inalienable. You will have the countenance, doubtless, of your father's head-clerk, and confidential friends and partners. Above all, Rashleigh's schemes are of a nature that"—(she ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not simply to allow the successful man to punish his enemies and reward his friends, but it also furnished the training in the actual conduct of political affairs which every American claimed as his birthright. Only in a primitive democracy of the type of the United States in 1830 could such a system have existed without the ruin of the State. National government in that period was no complex and nicely adjusted machine, and the evils of the system were long in making themselves ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... her virtues. She was a very large woman dressed loosely in black, but she carried herself with an air of complete, if somewhat sleepy, dignity, and it was evident that her beauty had been great. Her full face had lost its contours, but time had spared the fine Roman nose and the white skin, that birthright of the high-bred Castilian. Arguello presented his family ceremoniously as the guest of honor rose and bowed with ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... every American is, without any special training, by mere gift of birthright, competent to any task that may be set him, is commonly said to have come in with Andrew Jackson; and President Eliot, of Harvard, has dubbed it a "vulgar conceit."[68:1] It is undoubtedly a dangerous doctrine to become established as a tenet of national belief and least of all men can ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... of self-government; therefore let none stand idle spectators now. When every hour is big with destiny, and each delay but complicates our difficulties, it is high time for the daughters of the Revolution, in solemn council, to unseal the last will and testament of the Fathers—lay hold of their birthright of freedom, and keep it a sacred trust for all coming generations. To this end we ask the Loyal Women of the Nation to meet in the church of the Puritans (Dr. Cheever's), New York, on Thursday, the 14th of May next." This was ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... country," said Alice; "what would I give to see it?—so ancient and venerable, and yet so amazingly young and vigorous. It seems like a waste of existence for a man to stay here tending sheep, when his birthright is that of an Englishman: the right to move among his peers, and find his fit place in the greatest empire in the world. Never had any woman such a noble destiny before her as this young lady who has ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... God, with a scheme always in the works. Athos is the dignified, retired nobleman, whose only concerns are debts left unpaid and the launching of his son into the world. Porthos is a great baron, ever ready to help, ever seeking another title, ever seeking the noble airs that were not his birthright, but to which he came upon his wife's death. And D'Artagnan is a hardened soldier, casting a cynical eye everywhere, still loyal, but somewhat embittered, trading in his customary "mordioux!" for the "bah!" more ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... nationality; at the best they think he is sheltering himself in a walled garden; at the worst they think he has closed on himself an iron door: and shackled himself with foolish chains and sold his birthright for a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... not to be thus denounced by an anonymous enemy?" he cried. "This is not the justice which every Frenchman claims as his birthright!" ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... Champion keen Of man's one holy birthright! dear grey head, Laurell'd with blessings!—Hath my country bred Lips, to her shame, in unregenerate spleen Profaning heaven's own air with words unclean Against thy sacred name?—Th' august pure Dead In calm of glory sleep:—like them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... haggard and weary, as if they had seen a great evil long and had sickened of it at last, and were haunted by it. Gilbert looked at him who had murdered his father and had brought shame to his mother, and who had robbed him of his fair birthright, and he saw that something of the score had been paid. Gradually, too, as Sir Arnold gazed, a look of something like despair settled in his face, a sort of horror that was not fear,—for he was no coward,—but was rather a dread of himself. He made a ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... stubborn desert that appears sterile and is not, it was a sprawling, ungainly, ill-begotten thing. In the night it came; in the dawn it grew; during the first day it assumed lustiness and an insolence that was its birthright. And, like any welcome child, there was a name awaiting it. Men laughed as the unceremonious christening was performed. A half-drunken vagabond from no one knew where had staked out his claim and drained his bottle. 'Here's lookin' at ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... one that the ancient barony of the Talbots would be revived by the king; and the gratitude of a free and grateful country, with the consciousness of having materially aided in acquiring that independence which should be the birthright of every Englishman, was eloquently portrayed by the other. When to the last plea was added the personal preference of Katharine Wilton, the balance was overcome, and the hopes of the mother were doomed ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Adam. God created man, male and female created He them, and called their name Adam. A blush, so becoming on the countenance of feminine beauty, is generally deemed a sign of weakness when visible upon a man's face. But if the above interpretation be correct, a blush is a man's birthright, which no sense of false shame should prevent him from modestly claiming. Red, as signifying perfection, dominion, fruition, was appropriately the name of our first parents, whether we regard the account ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... here and there a personal example of spiritual infidelity ([Greek: pornos]) to the Lord, of that radically "secular" ([Greek: bebelos]) spirit (ver. 16) of which Esau is the type, to which some "mess of meat," some material advantage, proves overwhelmingly more momentous than the unworldly "birthright" given by the promise of God? Let them all watch as for their life against such symptoms. It is a matter of eternal import. The ancient Esau found too late that he was an outcast, irrevocably, from the great blessing, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... beating out the rhythmical hammer-song of The Ring. There is real physical joy in the rise and swing of the arm, in the jar of a fair stroke, the split and scatter of the quartz: I am learning to be ambidextrous, for why should Esau sell his birthright when there is enough for both? Then the rest-hour comes, bringing the luxurious ache of tired but not weary limbs; and I lie outstretched and renew my strength, sometimes with my face deep-nestled in the cool green grass, sometimes on my back looking up into the blue sky which no wise ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... far removed from the utilitarian conservatism of the present day. Charles I was a saint and a martyr, the claims of rank and birth were admitted with a childlike simplicity, the high functions of government were the birthright of the few, and the people had nothing to do with the laws, except to obey them. Mr. Gladstone was a Tory. The political views he held upon leaving Oxford had much to do with his recall from abroad and his running for a seat in the House of Commons. Of these opinions held by him ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... illustration given us of this, is the case of Esau. Esau came from the hunting-field worn and hungry; the only means of procuring the tempting mess of his brother's pottage was the sacrifice of his father's blessing, which in those ages carried with it a substantial advantage; but that birthright could be enjoyed only after years—the pottage was present, near, and certain; therefore he sacrificed a future and higher blessing, for a present and lower pleasure. For this reason Esau is the Bible type of worldliness: he is called in Scripture a profane, that is, not a distinctly vicious, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... from Cleveland on the train Nyoda had watched men who had scarcely taken their eyes from Hinpoha. The guardian sighed as she reflected on the problem, for she knew how difficult it would be for Hinpoha to live out the happy normal girl life which was her birthright. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... I would answer that I would not sell myself to the devil of the flesh and of this present world. What! Barter my birthright of immortality for the mess of pottage of a few brief years of union? Pay out my high hopes to their last bright coin for this dinner of mingled herbs? Drain the well of faith dug with so many prayers ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... son of Jahdai, call me as I have instructed thee to speak of me—call me Prince. At the same time I would have thee know that on my eighth day I was carried into a temple and registered a son of a son of Jerusalem. The title I give thee for my designation did not ennoble me. The birthright of a circumcised heritor under the covenant with Israel is superior to every purely ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... for my own personal opinions or ambitions. But I can now concede to nearly all those who so bitterly opposed me the same patriotic motives which I know inspired my own conduct; and I would be unworthy of my birthright as an American citizen if I did not feel grateful to my countrymen and to our government for all the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... this long agony, he suffered the fatal words to escape him, "Let him go, if he will." Then his misery became more fearful than ever. He had done what could not be forgiven. He had forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he had sold his birthright, and there was no longer any place for repentance. "None," he afterward wrote, "knows the terrors of those days but myself." He has described his sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos. He envied the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... worshippers coming and going have knocked the noses off the figures on the bronze doors of the Church of San Zeno at Verona, or that Christianity involves the cultivation of private vermin, because of the condition of Saint Thomas a Beckett's hair shirt.[12] To argue in that way is to give up one's birthright as a ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... by shrapnel bullets, after nights in the rain and broiling hot days, their faces grimy and unshaven, their clothes torn and spotted, they were still Australians who looked you in the eye with a sense of having proved their birthright as free men. Sometimes the old spirit incited by the situation got out of bonds. One night when a company rose up to the charge the company next in line called out, "Where are you going?" and on the reply, "We've orders to take that ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... have been tempted by preferment in the Russian army and the glitter of its epaulettes, by the honors of the parades at Tiflis, and even by the imperial champaign, and the sight of the ballet dancers of St. Petersburg, have disdained to sell a birthright of freedom inherited from a thousand generations in exchange for these high-flavored sops ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... the full corn in the ear; and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, "not to forget wisdom in teaching knowledge." If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits; if it be robbed by you its guardian of its birthright, or squandered like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this always before one's mind, that the young "idea" ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... quack nor a doctor, but an honest man and an apothecary, and the list of his patients is entirely hypothetical. This simple-hearted, benevolent man was persuaded by the proprietress of the coal-shed that she had been defrauded of her birthright by her kinsman, a man of fortune. Levett, then nearly sixty, married her; and four months after, a writ was issued against him for debts contracted by his wife, and he had to lie close to avoid the gaol. Not long afterwards his amiable wife ran away ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... there is little question of a boy's calling, if he only comes into the world with the proper number of fingers and toes; he swims as soon as he walks, knows how to drive a bargain as soon as he can talk, goes cook of a coaster at the mature age of eight years, and thinks himself robbed of his birthright, if he has not made a voyage to the Banks before his eleventh birthday comes round. There is good stuff in the Cape boys, as the South-Street ship-owners know, who don't sleep easier than when they have put ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Dueness. — N. due, dueness; right, privilege, prerogative, prescription, title, claim, pretension, demand, birthright. immunity, license, liberty, franchise; vested interest, vested right. sanction, authority, warranty, charter; warrant &c. (permission) 760; constitution &c. (law) 963; tenure; bond &c. (security) 771. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... true. We do think alike about so many things," said the Queen's Twin with affectionate certainty. "You see, there is something between us, being born just at the some time; 't is what they call a birthright. She 's had great tasks put upon her, being the Queen, an' mine has been the humble lot; but she's done the best she could, nobody can say to the contrary, and there 's something between us; she's been the great lesson I 've had to live by. She's been everything to me. ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... American youth in the confident belief that as they study the wonderful history of their native land, they will learn to prize their birthright more highly, and treasure it more carefully. Their patriotism must be kindled when they come to see how slowly, yet how gloriously, this tree of liberty has grown, what storms have wrenched its boughs, what sweat of toil and blood has moistened its ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... fall; Though thy bravest and thy strongest Are not there to man the wall. No, not yet! the ancient spirit Of our fathers hath not gone; Take it to thee as a buckler Better far than steel or stone. Oh, remember those who perished For thy birthright at the time When to be a Scot was treason, And to side with Wallace, crime! Have they not a voice among us, Whilst their hallowed dust is here? Hear ye not a summons sounding From each buried warrior's bier? "Up!"—they say—"and keep the ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... with hollow phrase, Or for the end-all of deep arguments Intone their dull commercial liturgies— I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! I will not hear the thin satiric praise And muffled laughter of our enemies, Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut; Showing how wise it is to cast away The symbols of our spiritual sway, That so our hands with better ease May wield the driver's whip and grasp the ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... eleven hundred acres, seven of which are the birthright of every Indian child; but it is not generally divided by fences, the cattle of the whole tribe grazing together in amicable companionship. Much of the value of the property lies in the cranberry-meadows, which are large ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... been admired and honored among all nations, especially among the Greeks. It was the handmaid of music and poetry when the divinity of mind was adored—perhaps with Pagan instincts, but still adored—as a birthright of genius, upon which no material estimate could be placed, since it came from the Gods, like physical beauty, and could neither be bought nor acquired. Long before Christianity declared its inspiring themes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... hateful to the successor. To prevent which, the commanders among them began to practise upon the levity and ambition of William the King's son. They urged the indignity he had received in being deprived of his birthright; offered to support his title by their valour, as they had done that of his father; and, as an earnest of their intentions, to remove the chief impediment by dispatching his rival out of the world, The young prince was easily wrought upon to be at the head of this conspiracy; time and place were ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Esau's pathetic story? He sold his birthright for one mess of lentils. Nor was he at all displeased with his bargain. At least that was true for a little while, but there came a time when he was sorry. There came a time when his foolish bartering broke his heart. And the story says that he found no place for repentance though he sought ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... against the late war—a testimony so rigorous as to render it altogether unlikely that one of so military a profession as Mainwaring practiced could hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but Lucinda could not have married one not a member of the Society of Friends without losing her own birthright membership therein. She herself might not attach much weight to such a loss of membership in the Society, but her fear of, and her respect for, her uncle led her to walk very closely in her path of duty in this respect. Accordingly she and Mainwaring met as they could—clandestinely—and the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... exist in the midst of the tendencies and conditions of metropolitan America. One of the most enthralling mysteries of life is that children will not come to highly evolved men and women who have turned back upon their spiritual obligations and clouded the vision which was their birthright." ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... is to a man from whom something valuable is about to be taken by violence, and who, that he may defend it without encumbrance, lays it on the ground, and stands over it with his weapon in his hand. Our birthdom, or birthright, says he, lies on the ground, let us, like men who are to fight for what is dearest to them, not abandon it, but stand over it and defend it. This is a strong picture ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... heathen ranks she stepped The forfeit throne to claim Of Christian souls who had not kept Their birthright ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... made a God. MEN have submitted to superior strength, to enjoy with impunity the pleasure of the moment—WOMEN have only done the same, and therefore till it is proved that the courtier, who servilely resigns the birthright of a man, is not a moral agent, it cannot be demonstrated that woman is essentially inferior to man, because she ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... condition high or low, the worthy occupant of it, by reason of the common humanity he shares with all above and all beneath and all around him, has a brother's birthright to brotherly treatment, to even-handed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various |
