"Self-sacrifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adapts to their wants. The medium of constitutional monarchy or hereditary presidentship recommends itself under existing circumstances to the more advanced peoples, and with good reason; we nowhere find a prevalence of those manly virtues, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice to the "respublica," which rendered the endurance of ancient republics possible. Rome could hardly have ruled the world for centuries had her merchants supplied Carthage with improved triremes or furnished the Parthians with the latest style of weapons. We must be wise and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... One who still sits over against the Treasury, watching the gifts cast into it, and impartially weighing their worth, estimating the rich man's millions and the widow's mites, not by the amount given, but by the motives which impel and the measure of self-sacrifice accepted ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... baptism in the desert, with the only drop of water they had to drink, seemed to me the very acme of religious fervor and sacred self-sacrifice. I wonder what I should think of the book were I to read it now, which Heaven forefend! The really powerful impression made upon my imagination and feelings at this period, however, was by my first reading of Lord Byron's poetry. The day on which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... been bombarded, he has persuaded himself that he is eating, drinking, and sleeping under the fire of the enemy. "Human nature is a rum 'un," said Mr. Richard Swiveller; and most assuredly this is true of French nature. That real civil courage and spirit of self-sacrifice which the Parisians have shown, in submitting to hardship and ruin rather than consent to the dismemberment of their country, they regard as no title to respect. Nothing which does not strike the imagination has any value in their eyes. A uniform does not make a soldier; and although ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... should do this for us," said Hal; "but we appreciate your self-sacrifice more than we can ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... who encountered her charity and self-sacrifice, there were few who had a good word for Lola Montez in her character as a Magdalen. People who had fawned upon her in the days of her success now jeered and sneered and affected to doubt the reality of her penitence. "Once a sinner, always a sinner," they declared; and "Lola in the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... inner life. Sir John Lubbock in one of his lectures says of Napoleon, that he was a man of genius, but not a hero. Now, while Gordon was essentially a genius, he was even more essentially a hero. True heroism is inseparably associated with self-sacrifice. A man may be as brave as a bulldog, yet be entirely wanting in all that goes to make him a hero. The dictionary definition by no means embraces all that the word implies. Lord Wolseley in a magazine article remarked that he had met but two heroes in his eventful life; one of them was ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Sakya Muni's life is the strongest bulwark of his religion. As long as the human heart is capable of being touched by tales of heroic self-sacrifice, accompanied by purity and celestial benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was the son of the king of Kapilavastu—a mighty sovereign whose opulence enabled him to give the heir of his house every luxury ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... and heart. With a lover's insight, David read the secret hopes set by the mother and sister on Lucien's poet's brow; and knowing their blind devotion, it was very sweet to him to draw nearer to his love by sharing her hopes and her self-sacrifice. And in this way Lucien came to be David's chosen brother. As there are ultras who would fain be more Royalist than the King, so David outdid the mother and sister in his belief in Lucien's genius; he spoiled Lucien as a ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... that is, in a summary way, without appeal, and by experts (317 ff). All the relations of property should be determined by the decision arbitrale des chefs d'industrie (326). Bazard everywhere insists that the reign of genius and of self-sacrifice on the one hand, and on the other of confidence and obedience, is the only true policy (330). Saint Simonism was nearly related ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... a rich fruit of generosity, loyalty, and earnest endeavor, from the seed of self-sacrifice and charity which she herself had shown in faith and hope. And this, too, in ground which the on-lookers had judged to be so hardened and stony that no harvest was to be gathered therefrom. Oh, my Milly, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... want time. I want not to lose the self-control I have won for myself by years of renunciation and self-sacrifice, and was so proud of. But it won't obey me when you speak to me. Your words possess me in spite of myself. If there is any happiness on earth, it is to find one's every thought faultlessly understood. But that happiness brings a pain with it—for me, at any rate. ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... hostility in this letter than of that spirit of self-sacrifice to which Roger intended to train himself; and so he himself felt after the letter ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... that human nature has undergone or will undergo any radical transformation. Rather am I asserting that it will not undergo any; that the intention of the man of the tenth century in Europe was as good as that of the man of the twentieth, that the man of the tenth century was as capable of self-sacrifice—was, it may be, less self-seeking. But what I am trying to hint is that the shrinking of the world by our developed intercommunication has made us all ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... charitable institutions which make our own age illustrious, had their birth in the last. The military genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a political philosopher of the calibre of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... unrest, this grasping at the comfort of life on the one hand, and the patience, the justice, the tolerance, with which such claims are viewed by many possessors on the other, is because there is a spirit of sympathy growing up, which has not yet become self-sacrifice, but is on its ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... temptations of human nature in great collisions of religious belief, the excitement and passion of the time, the mixed character of all religious zeal, the natural inevitable anger which accompanies it when resisted, the fervour which welcomes self-sacrifice for the truth; and when we think of all this kept aglow by the continuous provocation of unfair and harsh dealing from persons who were scarcely entitled to be severe judges; the wonder is, human nature being what it is, not that so many went, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... years an A.M.A. teacher, but now a bed-ridden invalid, pledges $100 to the work of the Association. What can we not do when there is so much of Christian self-sacrifice in ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... "This is a dress you will weave for yourself, Mary, out of the finest threads of your own nature—out of courage and devotion and self-sacrifice." ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... monasteries had let themselves lose their missionary character, and become mere large farms, inhabited by celibate gentlemen and their attendants, or by the superfluous daughters of the nobles and gentry. Such devotion as led Esclairmonde to the pure atmosphere of prayer and self-sacrifice had well- nigh died out, and almost every other lady of the time would have regarded her release from the vows made for her its her babyhood a ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the look of defiance from her eyes, the pride had vanished and all the joy of life; no thought was left in the young mind now save an overwhelming sense of loyalty, no feeling lingered in the heart save the desire for self-sacrifice. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... authors speak of so pompously in their books as LAWS, PRINCIPLES, and THEORIES, in spite of their incoherence and inconsistency, had to be gathered up with scrupulous diligence, and described with strict impartiality. The fulfilment of this task called for more genius perhaps, certainly for more self-sacrifice, than will be demanded by the future progress of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... she loved him, was it right that she should wed Grail? Obligations, forsooth! Was it not his first duty to save her from a terrible self-sacrifice? What could overrule love? There was time to intervene; four days more, and it would be too late for ever—for ever. What hideous things might result from conscientiousness such as he was now striving ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... by her magnetic consciousness of all that he was thinking and feeling than by the literal acceptance of any thing or all things which he said. She seemed to herself to be already one with him in all his trials, burdens, perplexities; in his renunciation; in his self-sacrifice; in his loyalty of reticence; in his ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a nail under the eaves and she did not notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford such self-sacrifice. The lantern was lit, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... She looked on the terrified children, the youngest only five years old, and who clung weeping to her knees, as her father threatened to turn her out of doors, never to see them again; and she thought of her mother's last words—her decision was made; and with a heavy heart she performed the self-sacrifice. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... but he was commonly frustrated by her old beast of a mother, who, when the girl's answers did not suit, would beat her unmercifully. So he took to meeting Feodora on the highway, and giving her coppers carefully marked. For months he kept this up with wonderful self-sacrifice—the girl being a mere uninteresting angel. He met her daily in the roads and forest. His patience never wearied, his vigilance never flagged. Her most careless glances were conscientiously noted, her lightest words treasured up in his memory. Meanwhile ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... 'Toinette resented the point of view equally, preferring Sally to any one of the other girls, and also it was her idea that the good things of this world are created only for the young. There was no measure to her own self-sacrifice. ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... disappointment or by hope deferred,—angular, envious, busybodies in other women's matters; or they are comically odd, self-ridiculing, and unrestful; or, worst of all, they have become morally attenuated by a thwarted love or a long course of dismal and absurd self-sacrifice and are so resigned, colorless, and impassive, that, like Naaman, we are tempted to go away in a rage. But where shall we find another Clara,—beautiful, attractive, radiant, serenely living her happy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... profoundest anxiety, and it was not his fault if the feud between the grandfather and the grandson refused to be healed. His efforts to bring that disgraceful and disastrous quarrel to an end involved great self-sacrifice and wrecked his career. For the counsels he addressed to Andronicus III. gave mortal offence, and when the young emperor entered the capital and took up his quarters in the palace of the Porphyrogenitus ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... asserted itself, and asserted itself successfully. It had been enabled to do so by Sir Charles's action. To him the matter represented the mere carrying out of a bargain; but friends were, as is natural in such a case, remonstrant, and he was accused of "needless self-sacrifice," of "Quixotic conduct," of "self-abnegation," of "your usual disinterestedness in politics," and the bargain was much criticized. A letter from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, congratulating Sir Charles on the stand he had made, added: "Not that I am ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... won't let you out. Your mamma's communications with my papa had the effect you indicate, and he took me into his confidence the same evening. He too questions the purity of your motives in marrying me, alleging that they are vitiated by a spirit of self-sacrifice, tainted by the baneful influence of unselfishness. He is alive to the possibility that you hate me ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... much about myself," said Mrs. Crawford, in a tone of self-sacrifice, "but I should not like to have Peter thrown upon ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... too was the picture he painted of the life of self-sacrifice and high endeavour that lay open to her sex. She would like to lead that higher life, being in truth a good-hearted little thing full of righteous impulses; only unfortunately she did not know how, for her present mild and tentative efforts had been ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... glances—he included them in his anathema. He extended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and the rest. They were all of a breed, a bigoted breed; all dull, blind worms, insensible to the beauty of self-sacrifice, or the purity of affection. All, self-sufficient dolts, as far removed, as immeasurably divided from her whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below the clear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted his eyes ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... its vileness, that was, in spite of her unconscious attempts to struggle against the facts, burning into her life the impression that would in the end either transform her into a woman of rare love and self-sacrifice for the world, or a miserable enigma to herself and ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... were called the "stupid couple." Little did these same passengers know the true character of that gentleman and lady. An incident that occurred on board soon proved the bravery and heroism of the one, and the gentleness and self-sacrifice of the other. The captain had with him his only son, a boy of some eight summers, a great favorite of all on board from fore to aft. The little fellow, climbing on the side of the ship, somehow fell overboard. ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... in a condition of great physical misery; but the occasion demanded energy and self-sacrifice. He staggered down to the slip, loosed the mooring rope of Brannigan's dilapidated punt and drove her slowly down the harbour, waggling one oar over ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... whatever pains might be the price of it, a life that didn't derive from him; that was, at the core of it, her own? Yet here, right at the beginning of her pilgrimage, she'd have turned down the by-path of self-sacrifice; have begun ordering her life with reference to Rodney, rather than herself, if John Galbraith ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... life, the grandest of all forces on earth is the love of Christ. This she felt, and it was to her a divine revelation. From the feeble starlight of natural sympathies she had passed into the clear day of Christian affections, and she now knew the secret joy and power of self-sacrifice. A hundred lessons and practical illustrations given her by both her parents were suddenly lighted up with a new meaning, and clothed with a beauty she had not heretofore seen, and a power she had not hitherto felt. All she had learned before ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... had been employed by the Mexican President, with really splendid energy, in raising a new army and in fortifying the approaches to the city. It was almost pitiful to see with what patriotism and self-sacrifice the Mexican people rallied for their last hopeless struggle with superior power. It was not, however, that they were to contend with superior numbers, for the forces under Santa Anna were at least three times those under General Scott. The difference was ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... territory is national safety. National safety is as dominant in the life of a nation as self-preservation is in the life of an individual. It is even more so, as nations do not respond to the impulse of self-sacrifice. With national safety as the primary object to be attained in territorial settlements, the factors of the problem assume generally, though not always, the following order of importance: the strategic, ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... the Royal Geographical Society, after a copious notice of his life, summed it up in these words: "As a whole, the work of his life will surely be held up in ages to come as one of singular nobleness of design, and of unflinching energy and self-sacrifice in execution. It will be long ere any one man will be able to open so large an extent of unknown land to civilized mankind. Yet longer, perhaps, ere we find a brighter example of a life of such continued and useful ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... patriotism, they staked their all upon the single venture of the war. It was as the throw of a gambler playing for his soul with the Evil One. Yet the faith of these materialists waxed heroic withal, like their self-sacrifice. And in the fiery ardor of their enthusiasm, hard concrete facts were dissolved and set floating as illusions in the ambient mist. Their wishes became thoughts and their fears were dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... she can almost see the choristers within the little building; and she listens to the silver-clear song; and her heart is filled with a strange new gladness and trust. What must she do to keep it there for ever? By what signal self-sacrifice—by what devotion of a whole life-time—by what patient and continuous duty—shall she secure to herself this divine peace, so that the storms and terrors and trials of the world may sweep ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... physically perfect, grand in character, and true to the instincts of his conscience—than any other race of beings, civilized or uncivilized. Where do we hear such noble sentiments or meet with such examples of heroism and self-sacrifice as the history of the American Indian furnishes? Where shall we go to hear again such oratory as that of Black Hawk and Logan? Certainly the records of our so-called civilization do not furnish it, and the present century ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... stretched hand, and with his long white hair falling over his thin livid face that was almost sublime in its calmness. I divined at once the reason of this voluntary offer; I knew that it was the father's devotion in self-sacrifice that led him to ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... the tree, draping it like a yellow moss. It was of no value, he said, but in the course of ages it had taken the place of the offering of actual gold in forest worship: a once universal custom of adorning the tree with everything most precious to the giver in token of his sacrifice and self-sacrifice. Even in Jeremiah is an account of the lading of the sacred tree with gold and ornaments. Herodotus relates that when Xerxes was invading Lydia, on the march he saw a divine tree and had it honored ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... than her fears for her own happiness. One kiss from him would be payment for it all. But all his love, all his sweetness, all his truth, all his eloquence should avail nothing with her towards overcoming that spirit of self-sacrifice by which she was dominated. Though he should extort from her all her secret, that would be her strength. Though she should have to tell him of her failing health,—her certainly failing health,—though ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the two brothers started the Examiner, and Leigh Hunt edited it with a great deal of courage for fourteen years. He threw away for this the only piece of solid preferment that he ever had, a clerkship in the War Office which Addington gave him. The references to this act of recklessness or self-sacrifice in the Autobiography are rather enigmatical. His two functions were no doubt incompatible at best, especially considering the violent Opposition tone which the Examiner took. But Leigh Hunt, whatever faults he had, was not quite a hypocrite; and he hints ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a relief. He was now safe from bullets, anyway. And yet—this enteric was a virulent disease! The Times was full of deaths therefrom. Why could he not be lying out there in that up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his boy; but no such personal motive was influencing them. He could only think that it marked the decline of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the entrance of Mobile Bay, is a buoy which marks the spot of a deed of purest heroism. A few fathoms below that buoy lies the monitor Tecumseh, sunk by a torpedo at the beginning of the battle, as we have seen, and the buoy commemorates, not the sinking of the ship, but the self-sacrifice of her ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... development. He made acquaintance with interesting persons, such as Harriet Martineau, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs. Gaskell, and William Edward Forster, then known as a young Quaker who had devoted himself, in the true Quaker spirit of self-sacrifice, to relieving the sufferers from the Irish famine. Besides Manchester friends, Froude imbibed Manchester principles. He had been half inclined to sympathise with the socialism of Louis Blanc and other ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... at this new proof of fidelity and self-sacrifice, yet not a little amused withal at the droll shape in which it came, Mrs. Reynolds rejoined: "Well, Burl, you can do as you please, but so far as my will and wishes can make you free, free you are from this day forth, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... his face in the growing light. It was haggard and set for a face so young, but there was still in the eyes, which stared unseeingly across the desert, the warm, generous light that had once convinced her of the man's heroic capacity for self-sacrifice. "He is one who always gives," she thought. And something within her said that Stanton was not of those. He was one born not to give, but to take. Yet how glad every one must be, as she was, to ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Scotchmen, and a comparatively new arrival, Rev. Samuel M. Stewart, a missionary of the Church Mission Society of England. Of Mr. Stewart, who did much to relieve the monotony of our several weeks' sojourn at Fort Chimo, and his remarkable self-sacrifice and work, I shall ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... occasionally, when she thought herself unobserved, he saw a troubled and almost fearful look come into her eyes, as if something were present to her imagination that inspired the strongest dread. At such times he was mastered by impulses of self-sacrifice that would have seemed very absurd if put into plain words. He kept his thoughts, however, to himself, and with an instinctive reticence sought to disguise even from his mother the feelings that were so new, and so full of delicious ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... that her mother needed her this instant. She broke the regular thumping rhythm of her climb, dashed up, cried out at the seconds wasted in unlocking the door. She tiptoed into the bedroom—and found her mother just as she had left her. In Una's low groan of gladness there was all the world's self-sacrifice, all the fidelity to a cause or to a love. But as she sat unmoving she came to feel that her mother was not there; her being was not in this wreck upon ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... nature, antecedent to and independent of experiences of utility. Where free play is allowed to the relations between man and man, this feeling attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice, which are the products of our affections and sympathies, and which we term moral; while it may be, and often is, perverted, to give the same sanction to acts of narrow and conventional utility which are really immoral,—as when the Hindoo will tell a lie, but ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... being left in peace to regain the strength which had become exhausted through the terrible wounds which Montrevel and the Duke of Berwick had dealt her. For sixty years petty ambition had taken the place of sublime self-sacrifice, and disputes about etiquette succeeded mortal combats. Then the philosophic era dawned, and the sarcasms of the encyclopedists withered the monarchical intolerance of Louis XIV and Charles IX. Thereupon the Protestants resumed their preaching, baptized their children and buried their ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bee: and I wish I were as worthy in my place as that bee is in hers. I wish I could act up as well as she does to the true wisdom, which is self-sacrifice. For whom is that bee working? For herself? If that was all, she only needs to suck the honey as she goes. But she is storing up the wax under her stomach, and bee-bread in her thighs—for whom? Not for herself only, or even for her own children: but for the children of another ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... erst der Meister," says Goethe. Male resignation, this also is the motto of those who are masters of the art of life; "manly," that is to say, courageous, active, resolute, persevering, "resignation," that is to say, self-sacrifice, renunciation, limitation. Energy in resignation, there lies the wisdom of the sons of earth, the only serenity possible in this life of struggle and of combat. In it is the peace of martyrdom, in it too the promise ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... indisputable form, products and signs of civilization. This doubt cannot be much affected by abstract arguments, no matter how delicately and convincingly woven together. Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently, through summer and winter, sunshine and shadow, by self-sacrifice, by foresight, by honesty and industry, we must re-enforce argument with results. One farm bought, one house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the largest tax payer or has the ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... and of having judged rightly—what an awful admission do unbelievers require us to make, when they bid us think that all these ages and countries have gone astray to the imagining of a vain thing. All the self-sacrifice of the holiest men for sixty generations, all the wars that have been waged for the sake of Christ and His truth, all the money spent upon churches, clergy, monasteries and religious education, all the blood of martyrs, all the celibacy of priests and nuns, all the self-denying lives ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... my mind that you were the man we wanted. Yes, sir, the man we want. A man who knows how to deal with the situations of to-day, with the vices of a great city, that is what we want. I consider tact, and broad-mindedness and self-sacrifice no small qualities for a minister of the gospel; and a combination of those qualities, as in you, I consider exceptional. So I went to this vestry meeting primed, and I told them we had got to have you, sir—and we've got ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... rich people in England, you don't know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don't know how to live - you don't even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... it. What thoughts flashed through him, like the lightning bolt, at that blessed sign of infinite self-sacrifice, I say not; let those who know it judge for themselves. But in another instant he had spurned from him the poor deluded maiden, whose idolatrous ecstasies he saw instantly were not meant for himself, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... extreme of self-sacrifice, and she went on: "This book—it is a story—is all one picture of such a nature. There is a girl who's been brought up as the ward of a young man. He educates her, and she expects to be his wife, and he turns out to be perfectly false and unworthy in every way; but ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... alone. The effort of forcing himself—not to affect but honestly to feel—an interest in Reckage's conversation had proved successful. He had indeed put aside his own thoughts, and followed, with the exaggerated earnestness of a mind determined on self-sacrifice, every word his companion had uttered. The spirit invisible wears the laurel of mental victories, but the body has to bear the exhaustion, the scars, and the soreness. He was tired, but he stirred himself again to consider Sara's note. In the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... inferior ethics of the coloured races, and a hundred other lofty topics, warming our coat-tails at the glow of our own virtue? 'T is the fault of language which enables arrant scoundrels to use fine words that they have never felt. Humility, self-sacrifice, noble-mindedness, are phrases easily picked up by people for whom their only meaning is in the dictionary, and who know it is the correct thing to admire them. They are like students of chemistry who babble of H2SO4 and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... exquisite as that which may be obtained in a variety of other ways. The mere circumstance of there being invariably included in a just or generous action more or less of self-denial, self-restraint, or self-sacrifice, must always sober down the gratification by which virtue is rewarded, and make it appear tame beside the delirium of gladness caused by many things with which virtue has nothing to do. We will charitably suppose that the occupant of a dukedom, who should secretly light upon conclusive ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... self-sacrifice and unparalleled heroism is contained in the account of the attack upon the torpedo boat Cassin by a German submarine, while on patrol duty off the coast of Ireland. The following is the story briefly related in the official report ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... flat country, deep in mud, and absolutely devoid of cover against well-constructed and well-planned trenches, manned by a brave and stubborn enemy, approximately their equal in numbers. They showed a spirit of endurance and self-sacrifice of which their country may well ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the work of self-sacrifice for the salvation of Russia, was not disposed to leave that work half accomplished. All knew that the infamous Alexis would shrink from no crime, and there was ample evidence of his treasonable plots. The father now deliberately resolved ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the judgment, while at the same time it remained personal, and liable to love. The written word and established church prevented a degeneration into ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary impulses of benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The world was loved 'in Christ alone.' The brethren were members of his mystical ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... incredible self-denial and devotion of Strap as merely his due. Prince Charles could not have taken the devotion of Henry Goring, or of Neil MacEachain, more entirely as a matter of course, involving no consideration in return, than Roderick took the unparalleled self-sacrifice of his barber friend and school-mate. Scott has remarked on this contemptuous and ungrateful selfishness, and has contrasted it with the relations of Tom Jones and Partridge. Of course, it is not to be assumed that Smollett would have ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... far successful that you are bringing the ascetic idea into discouragement and, with the younger folk, into contempt."[109] Welcome to the new joy of living, all honour to the old ascetics, and may a still nobler self-sacrifice take their place! ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... lot out of it in the end, didn't she? And what do selfish people get? I'm one of them. I live absolutely for myself. There isn't a person except Flora who gets anything of service or self-sacrifice out of me. I came down here because she wanted me, but I hated to come. The modern theory is that unselfishness weakens. And the modern psychologist would tell you that little Dorrit was all wrong. She gave herself for ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... transferred from the navy to organize the refugee loyalists into regiments, was a native of the same region. It was at the Watauga that the neighboring opponents of secession had given the first example of daring self-sacrifice in burning the railway bridge. For this they were hanged, and their memory was revered by the loyal men about them, as was Nathan Hale's by our revolutionary fathers. East Tennessee was full of such loyalty, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... inclined to believe that courage, physical and moral fortitude, self-denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every sort of comfort, the faculty of self-sacrifice and the power of facing death belonged only to the more primitive, the less happy, the less intelligent nations, to the nations least capable of reasoning, of appreciating danger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadful abyss that ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... out, sir, but remember how great my devotion to Mlle. Julie is. Remember that my self-sacrifice and unselfishness are equal to my ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... to discuss without laughter the suggestion of marrying on a hundred-and-fifty a year a curate that she positively hated. There would come a time when wealth would be indifferent to her, when her exalted spirit would ask but for the satisfaction of self-sacrifice. But that time had not arrived. The emotions it would bring with it she could not in her present state even imagine. Her whole present being craved for the things of this world, the things that were within her grasp. To ask her ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome
... physical and social consequences, we get rid of the burden of self, which otherwise we should drag for ever. But surely in this there is a confusion of self with selfishness. Selfishness is another name for vice. Self is merely consciousness. Without a self, how can there be self-sacrifice? How can the most unselfish motive exist if there is nothing to be moved? "He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that loseth his life, shall find it," is not a doctrine of selfishness, but it implies a self. We have been rebuked in the words of Frederick to his ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... candidate. He failed at Chicago because of the overwhelming popularity of McClellan; he succeeded at Albany by his friends seizing a moment to nominate him when the convention was in a delirium of enthusiasm at his apparent self-sacrifice in persisting to decline."—New York ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... reform for a generation," lost sight of the true philosophy, that justice is always in order, and the fact that "universal suffrage" was the one reform that belonged specifically to the period of reconstruction. But women educated to self-sacrifice and self-abnegation readily accepted the idea that it was divine and beautiful to hold their claims for rights and privileges in abeyance to all orders and classes of men. They forgot that the highest patriotism, and the best interests of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... thoughtful humor, flowing from a genius as healthy as it is inventive, have drawn more closely the ties which bind man to his brother man, and have given us a new sense of the wickedness of injustice, the deformity of selfishness, the beauty of self-sacrifice, the dignity of humble virtue, and the strength of that love which is found in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... when, in each other's arms, the words of love, so long implied, were spoken. He said that she must come with him; that she must leave it all and come. She fought against herself and against him in refusing, grasping at pale memories of duty, honour, self-sacrifice; he knew too well the inner treachery that denied her words. But, looking back, trying not to flinch before the scorching memory, she did not know how he had won her. The dreadful jostle of opportune circumstance; ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... much self-sacrifice," said Angela, looking him full in the face with her dark-lashed, slate-gray eyes. "I'm not alone. I have my maid. I ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and propped it all around, brick by brick, with the Beatitudes —wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortify an evil one; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached (to the commoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner, always to the commoner) patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance under oppression; and she introduced heritable ranks and aristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations of the earth ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and others for several years, in repayment of the grants, although the plan of repayment to the government was, that only half the amount advanced should be refunded. Many private individuals, both in Ireland and in Great Britain, exhibited a noble generosity; and the heroic self-sacrifice of clergymen, medical men, and others, in the midst of the famine and plague-stricken people, cannot be too much commended. The liberality and exertions of the Irish residents in England and Scotland was much ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... They say she is showing herself a prodigy of benevolence round her husband's magnificent seat already: she married him that she might have the power to do good with his immense wealth. There must always be some self-sacrifice in a lofty ambition, but hers is a sacrifice that few ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... than exaction and want, in order that the late-won sense of human right should not be swept from the earth by the arms of privilege and caste. It was a time of high-wrought hope, of generous and pathetic self-sacrifice; a time that left a deep and indelible impression upon those who judged it as eye-witnesses. Years afterwards the poet Wordsworth, then alienated from France and cold in the cause of liberty, could not recall without tears the memories ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... that perished before relief came. Does not the fact that so many young children survived the disaster refute the charges of parental selfishness and inhumanity, and emphasize the immeasurable self-sacrifice, love, and care that kept so many of the little ones alive through that ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... present atrophy certain finer tendencies? I think that it unavoidably does, for the simple reason that, under existing conditions, the moral and mental powers are overtasked by its requirements. All that wonderful national spirit of duty, of patience, of self-sacrifice, anciently directed to social, moral, or religious idealism, must, under the discipline of the higher training, be concentrated upon an end which not only demands, but exhausts its fullest exercise. For that end, to be accomplished at all, must be accomplished in the face of difficulties that the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... his death in 1879, and she remained, in his old home several years after his death. During this period, she accomplished much for the education of the Indians around her and she kept up an extensive and helpful correspondence with native Christian workers. All the time she kept up the work of self-sacrifice for the good of others. In 1881 she met a poor Indian woman, suffering extremely from intense cold. She slipped off her own warm skirt and gave it to the woman. The result was a severe illness, which caused her partial paralysis and total blindness ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... her again as she was. He would fight Nature for once and try if pure intellect was strong enough to get the face he wanted on to the canvas without the gratification of his flesh and blood. In which determination glimmered something almost approaching to self-sacrifice in such a man. He did not answer Joan's last remark, but rose and went to his picture, and she, thinking herself snubbed by his silence after her avowal, grew hot ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... noble a life for so worthless an object as a cowardly native. It had been well cared for by the kind hands of the missionaries and was protected by thorn bushes laid around it, but I fear it will be neglected now that the mission has fallen into unholy hands. It is a pitiable sight to witness the self-sacrifice that many noble men have made in these frightful countries without any good results. Near to the grave of Baron Harnier are those of several members of the mission, who have left their bones in this horrid land, while not one ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... strength? Is her nature so spotless that self-sacrifice is her highest joy? Wilfrid, I could have asked pardon at her feet; ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... in men. Whether through stoicism, which is the beautifying of the individual soul, or through divine and all-embracing love, which is the primal social virtue, Galds worked in a spirit of the purest self-sacrifice for the betterment of his nation and of humanity. He had grasped a truth which Goethe knew, but which Ibsen and his followers overlooked—that the price of advance, either in the individual ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... critical voices of the world agreed in pronouncing "Euryanthe" to be the starting point of Wagner, and, as the latter's works grew in appreciation, "Euryanthe" shone with ever-growing refulgence. No opera was ever prepared at the Metropolitan with more patience, self-sacrifice, zeal, and affection than this, and the spontaneous, hearty, sincere approbation to which the audience gave expression must have been as sweet incense to Mr. Seidl and the forces that he directed. But "Euryanthe" is a twin sister in misfortune to "Fidelio"; ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... believe that she had sinned heinously when she had simply neglected an opportunity for self-sacrifice. When other people applauded their own benevolence if they said, "How the soldiers must suffer! Poor fellows!" Charity felt ashamed if her sympathy were not ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... have a sturdy morality, and you can always rely upon them in great moral crises. They are patriotic and public-spirited; they have not so many, or so enslaving, selfish interests. They have always been trained to self-sacrifice and the endurance of hardship; and heroism is natural to them. They have a strong will, cultivated by the battle of daily life. And among them ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... in life," he says, "when moral beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating, than intellectual beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as the river that seeks in vain for the sea." But for unnecessary self-sacrifice, renouncement, abandonment of earthly joys, and all such "parasitic virtues," he has no commendation or approval; feeling that man was created to be happy, and that he is not wise who voluntarily discards a happiness to-day for fear lest it be taken from him ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to devising treats for other people's children, or sewing garments for the poor? It made her feel sick and dismal to think of it. Besides, their circumstances were not similar. Her aunt, fortified by the spirit of self-sacrifice, had resigned what she loved, but she had the reward of being the most necessary member of her circle. Henrietta had had no scope for self-sacrifice, for she had never had anything to give up. In fact she envied her aunt, for she realized ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... consists in the eloquence, vividness, and sincerity with which a given problem in human life or character is presented. Human nature is made up of all sorts of traits—selfishness, cupidity, self-sacrifice, courage, loyalty. All life is made up ... of a compromise between elements in the struggle for happiness. These elements make for the story, happiness being the chief factor for which ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... Douglas! His friends resisted; he had distinguished himself sufficiently as a "retiring man" in letting Baker get the seat over his head. But he was terribly bent on this stroke of victory. He gave up the reins and, in his great self-sacrifice, passionately exclaimed: ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... John, "which appeals above all to the senses, and lives on the emotions, and fosters jealousy and vanity and backbiting, and develops duplicity, and exists on lies, and does nothing to encourage self-sacrifice or to help suffering humanity, is a bad profession and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... instances where persecution proved successful. It is a hackneyed saying that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church;" and it is true that lofty virtues have been generally developed by self-sacrifice and martyrdom, and that only through great tribulation have permanent blessings been secured. The Hollanders, by inundating their fields and fighting literally to the "last ditch," preserved their liberties and secured ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... stronger than human love, or the soul's fidelity, had overmastered self-sacrifice and the heart of a woman. This woman had opened her eyes upon the world again, only to find it all night, all strange; she was captive of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
