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More "Aspire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And what is power without recognition? Nothing. If the prettiest of women were left alone in a corner of a drawing-room, she would droop. Put her in the very centre and summit of social grandeur, she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts—often because it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest creatures extant—the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit; it was ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... despatches, as we have said, contained the wish that Mary Stuart should espouse Leicester; but this proposal could not be taken seriously. Leicester, whose personal worth was besides sufficiently mediocre, was of birth too inferior to aspire to the hand of the daughter of so many kings; thus Mary replied that such an alliance would not become her. Meanwhile, something strange and tragic ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... passion, or opinion. The character we mean to indicate achieves this [249] perfect life by a happy gift of nature, without any struggle at all. Not the saint only, the artist also, and the speculative thinker, confused, jarred, disintegrated in the world, as sometimes they inevitably are, aspire for this simplicity to the last. The struggle of this aspiration with a lower practical aim in the mind of Savonarola has been subtly traced by the author of Romola. As language, expression, is the function of intellect, as art, the supreme expression, is the highest ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... these superficial students aspire to become opera singers, after a couple of seasons' study. Of course they all cast eyes at the Metropolitan, as the end and aim ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... his brother Toby. Who shall set bounds to the everlasting variety of nature, as she has recorded her creations in the heart of man? Most of these instances are recent, and sufficiently shew that the enterprising adventurer, who would aspire to emulate the illustrious men from whose writings these examples are drawn, has no cause ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Roman conceded many privileges and recognized many rights among women, he never went so far as to think that a woman of great family could aspire to the right of choosing her own husband. Custom, indeed, much restricted the young man also, at least in a first marriage. The choice rested with the fathers, who were accustomed to affiance their sons early, indeed when mere boys. The heads of two friendly ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... desires of the great aspire high. (He walks about and speaks to some one not visible.) Ancient Shakalya, how is Marichi's holy son occupied? (He listens.) What do you say? That he is explaining to Aditi, in answer to her question, the duties of a faithful wife? My matter must await a fitter time. (He ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... are not of the same stature, so their minds differ in the means of accepting knowledge, or entertainment, and to please every one is a difficult thing. To hope, therefore, that I should afford amusement to all who read these pages, would be to aspire for that which has not fallen to the lot of any one; but if out of the incongruity of opinions I have expressed, be they ever so weak, or opposed to each other, instruction may be taken, then I shall not have striven without a result. For me, I have no moral lesson to teach; ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Church is not sufficient for my wants or I have not seen it in its glory. I hope it may be the latter. I do not want to say it, but I must own that it fills me no more. I contemplate it, I look at it, I comprehend it. It does not lead me to aspire. I feel that either it has nothing to give, or that what it has is not that for which my soul is aching. I know it can be said in reply that I cannot know what the Church has until I am in communion with it; that it satisfies natures greater ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... said, "I aspire to be thought a man of the world—it is a failing of youth; but, then, I am young. As a man of the world, I cogitated a pretty good long time before I set out for Paris ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... race, there must be a great amount of pride about a race, there must be a great deal of faith on the part of a race in itself. An individual cannot succeed unless he has about him a certain amount of pride,—enough pride to make him aspire to the highest and best things in life. An individual cannot succeed unless that individual has a great amount ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... mittens were of dye, not of silk; and they had been paid for, not in money, but the cooked flesh of men. It came in my mind with a clap, what she could think of it herself, and whether at heart, perhaps, she might not regret and aspire after the barbarous and stirring past. But when I asked Stanislao—'Ah!' said he, 'she is content; she is religious, she passes all ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of stories, people had acquired the habit of remaining in the condition in which they were placed; they were not irritated by being obliged to stay in it; the soldier who enlisted did not aspire to become an officer; the young officer of the lower noblesse and of small means did not aspire to the post of colonel or lieutenant-general; a limited perspective kept hopes and the imagination from fruitlessly launching forth into a boundless future: ambition, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life as a drummer. Public life and the Church offer honourable careers; and both of them have traditional affinities with literature. So has the Law, still in England a profession and not a trade. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... ensigncy. I will myself write at the first opportunity, the first express, to Lieutenant-Governor Bull, who is acquainted with my family connections in England. It is very praiseworthy, very laudable indeed, that you should aspire to a commission in the military service,—the provincial forces. I honor you for your readiness to fight—although, to be sure, being Irish, you can't help it. Still, it is to your credit that you are Irish. I am very partial to the Irish ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... called upon to assume, but that he had every prospect of being employed. As a captain of an Indiaman, he was aware that reception into society, wealth, and consideration awaited him; and, what made his heart to swell with gratitude and exultation, was the feeling that soon he would be enabled to aspire to the hand of one to whom he had so long been ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... all exalted are, when thou art styled their sire: None else the title dares accept, of all that men admire. Lord of the radiant brow, whose light dispels the mists of doubt From every goal of high emprize whereunto folk aspire, Ne'er may thy visage cease to shine with glory and with joy, Although the face of Fate should gloom with unremitting ire! Even as the clouds pour down their dews upon the thirsting hills, Thy grace pours favour on my head, outrunning my desire. With liberal hand thou casteth forth thy ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... the Basis has been often misunderstood. It is not a confession of faith, or a statement of the whole content and meaning of Socialism. It is merely a test of admission, a minimum basis of agreement, acceptance of which is required from those who aspire to share in the control of a Society which had set out to reconstruct our social system. The most memorable part of the discussion was the proposal of Mr. Stuart Glennie to add a clause relating to marriage and ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... passion of the father of Emilius. It had prompted him to aspire to every distinction granted to the successful by the state, but it had not gifted him with the powers requisite to turn his aspirations in any instance into acquisitions. He passed through existence a disappointed man, planning but never performing, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the subject from the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend and aspire. In music, then, rather than in poetry, is to be found the true type or measure of perfected art. Therefore, although each art has its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its unique mode of reaching the "imaginative reason," yet the arts may be represented ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... point to them, as they will to me, and say, 'See, what a ghastly failure! See how feeble after all, are these pretentious women of the new order, who begin by denying the sufficiency of the life assigned them, by common consent, and end by failing in that and in the other which they aspire to. What has become of all the talent and all the theories and resolves?' And so the next girl who dares to have ambitions, and dares to scorn the role of adventuress that society allots to her, will have the harder fate because of my attempt. Now nothing in the whole ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... idle vein is in full flow I fling aside the pen and rush gladly into the open air, seeking high and low for the children, who (delightful thought) will be sure to help me toward that state of frivolity to which the sunshine outside has tempted me to aspire. ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... struggle of manly labor against adverse fortune—a struggle in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which are now as common to us as air and sunshine, have come from that law of our nature which makes us aspire toward indefinite improvement, enriches each successive generation by the labors of the last, and, in free countries, often lifts the child of the laborer to a place among the rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Renan says in his posthumous work, that there will always be materialists and spiritualists, inasmuch as it will always be observable on the one hand that there is no thought without brain, while, on the other hand, instincts of man will always aspire to higher beliefs. But this is just what ought to be if religion is true, and we are in a state of probation. And is it not probable that the materialistic position (discredited even by philosophy) is due simply ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... the days we sought new Indies in the Sparwehr. According to my tale first told in Court, he was the only free man in my following. The rest of the cunies, being considered my slaves, could not aspire to office of any sort under the crown. But Johannes could, and did. The sly old fox! I little guessed his intent when he asked me to make him governor of the paltry little province of Kyong-ju. Kyong-ju ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... think the most rational line I can take is to continue resolutely this struggle for the Vote. With the Vote must come the opening of Parliament to women. I'm not too old to aspire to be some day Secretary of State for Home Affairs. Because the General Post Office has already become interested in my correspondence, and because this is really a "pivotal" letter I am not trusting it to the post ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... notus factus, &c.; namely, by the report of his distinguished services in the war, which, in the assembly of the people, was communicated by one person to another. [339] Ad id locorum, 'until then,' 'until that time,' as in chap. 72: post id locorum. See Zumpt, S 434. Marius did not venture to aspire to the consulship; for appetere is not the same as petere, the latter denoting the actual suit or canvass. His ambition had not yet been directed to that highest of all offices, until religious ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... masterpiece. We have, therefore, judged the novel by an impracticable standard, by a comparison with the highest aims rather than the usual attainments of other branches of literary art. Human weakness makes poetry, philosophy, and history imperfect in execution, though they aspire to absolute beauty and truth; human weakness suggested the novel, which is imperfect in design, written as an amusement and relief, in despair of sounding the universe. A novel is in its nature and as a matter of necessity an artistic failure; it pretends ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... "Now we all know what Nick is, and few fellows like to play in a game where he has any part; but remember that he is one of the high-school students, and on that account has just as much right to aspire to a place on the representative ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... indeed, such matters depend much on men's complexions [Note 1], and some find it a deal easier to control them than other. And after all, Edith, there is a sense wherein no man can ever be fully satisfied in this life. We were meant to aspire; and if we were entirely content with present things, then should we grovel. To submit cheerfully is one thing: to be fully gratified, so that no desire is left, is an other. We shall not be that, methinks, till we ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... stories and short stories. On a perusal of those that Mr. RICHARD DEHAN has collected in volume form under the title of The Cost of Wings (HEINEMANN), I am bound to record my conviction that most of them are profoundly unworthy of the author of The Dop Doctor. Few of them even aspire to anything beyond "first serial" quality; and though there is often present a certain easy flippancy of phrase it impressed me only as the crackling of thorns in a pot-boiler. Perhaps the best is the first or title tale, which tells of a young wife goaded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... secret cabin there he held * * * * * Then home he suffred her for to retyre, For ransome leaving him the late borne childe; Whom till to ryper yeares he gan aspire, 200 He noursled up in life and manners wilde, Emongst wild beasts and woods, from ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... my lord," said Varney—"that is, in the case supposed, if such be her disposition; since you think you cannot aspire to become her husband. Her favourite you are, and may remain, if the lady at Cumnor place continues in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... verse! and don't abuse A bashful Maiden's ear with news Of her own virtues. She'll refuse Praise sung so loudly. Of that same goodness, you admire, The best part is, she don't aspire To praise—nor of herself desire To ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... this country is undone. I desire to be reckoned of the last age, and to be thought to have lived to be superannuated, preserving my senses only for myself and for the few I value. I cannot aspire to be traduced like Algernon Sydney, and content myself with sacrificing to him amongst my lares. Unalterable in my principles, careless about most things below essentials, indulging myself in trifles by system, annihilating myself ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... us superhuman persons. On the strength of his decoration and color alone he would hardly have survived his own death twenty years; and even his design would have had only an academic interest; but as a painter of prophets and sibyls he is greatest among the very greatest in his craft, because we aspire to a world of prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never heard of radioactivity nor of electrons dancing in vortices of inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone explain the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise than as a musical picture of these whirling electrons? ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... at present without much profit. When the Chinese government requires a vast quantity of copper the order is sent to the United States. Japan cannot be considered as a producer of minerals of sufficient importance to aspire to a profitable career through them, for the yearly aggregate value of all minerals, including gold from the Formosa mines, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... for himself, were not altogether indispensable qualifications, even under a Venetian constitution, in an individual who aspired to a post so eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and mitres and official seals, which were periodically apportioned to them, the Marney family did not aspire to the somewhat graceless office of being their distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in their order; and promotion to the highest class. They observed that more than one of the other great "civil and religious liberty" families,—the families who in one century plundered ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... canvas bags, which he conceived would fit his needs, and an ambition. This last was nothing less than to strike it rich and set himself up among the eminently bourgeois of London. It seemed that the situation of the wealthy English middle class, with just enough gentility above to aspire to, and sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, appealed to his imagination, though of course he did not put ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... see their folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that Union, which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of obtaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire. A. Jackson. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... and never, by system, put into action; but, repeatedly indulged, they were practised by casual occurrences; and the dear-bought experiment of being loved in spite of her faults, (a glory proud women ever aspire to) was, at present, the ambition ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... I aspire to no such elevated and difficult situation. I declare myself not only undesirous of it, but deeply conscious of a constitutional unfitness for it. Age and hygienic necessities bind me to a somewhat anchoritic life in pure air, with abundant ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the baton of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of Kings—a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne—our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... would scarcely do the ark much harm. They have not the explosive power of Ibsen's. There are in every age men who, unable to achieve the fame of Dinocrates, who built the temple of the Ephesian Diana, aspire to that of Herostratos, who destroyed it. To admire these men is as compromising as to ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... chariot, Phaeton, Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone, He could not rule his father's car of fire, Yet was it much, so nobly to aspire." ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... (nay, though to all was added the company of Sporus, whom he immediately sent for while Nero's body was yet burning on the pile, and treated as his consort, with the name of Poppaea,) but he must also aspire to the empire. And at Rome he had friends who took measures for him secretly, as well as some women and some members of the senate also, who worked underhand to assist him. And into Spain he dispatched one of his friends, named Gellianus, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... three hundred a year. In the golden days of the Plot he had been allowed three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in the palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He clamoured for an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even impudent enough to aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and thought it hard that, while so many mitres were distributed, he could not get a deanery, a prebend, or even a living. He missed no opportunity of urging his pretensions. He ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seem to forget, Nelly, that I saw one wedding all through, and, indeed, bore as prominent a part in it as one of my downtrodden sex could aspire to; and as the Frenchman said, who went on an English fox-chase, "Une fois, c'est assez; I am ver' satisfy." The marriage service I can read in ten minutes whenever I need its solace; rich morning-dresses are to be seen by scores in the Academy of Music at every matine, as garnish to Verdi's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... shading often being produced in the needle-darning as in modern Ghent and Limerick. Point de Gaze is costly, but it has the reputation of appearing "worth its money" to which few other laces of the present day can aspire. ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... obstructions from the paths through which Learning and Genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other authour may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... person to be judged—she was one of the unexplained incidents of existence. The hour has passed when the clearly moral can sum up the responsibilities of a creature born apparently without brain, or soul or courage. Those who aspire to such morals as are expressed by fairness—mere fairness—are much given to hesitation. Courage had never been demanded of Feather so far. She had none whatever and now she only felt panic and resentment. She had no time to ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... favours such as these Unworthy to aspire; Thy feet to tickle were enough For one so mean ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Miss Temple, said Edwards quickly; there is none who has a right to aspire to you, and I know that you will wait to be sought by your equal; or die, as you live, loved, respected, and admired ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... queer little pumpkin, a jolly fat fellow, Stood close to his mother so rotund and yellow. "What a stupid old place! how I long to aspire," Cried he, "I was destined for ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... have forgiven her any common frailty;—of course it was natural that the girl should have been seduced by the all-conquering charms of her son;—but aspire to marriage with their house!—pretend to be her son's wife! Since the time of Judas had such treachery ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... become natural to him since his illness began; "my love for you proved too strong to be restrained just now: but believe me, I had fully made up my mind never to open my lips to you on the subject; for what right have I, a helpless, and, I fear, hopeless, invalid, to dare to aspire—" ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... inflexible suitor, "when others aspire to your hand, there might come one for whom your answer would be favorable. How then, if this suitor, when pausing to hear what ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the longed-for thing Which wanderers on the restless foam, Unsheltered beggars, birds on wing, Aspire ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... care of himself probably; in marriage things equalised themselves. She looked at the girl's thin cheeks and lack-lustre eyes, and pitied and hated her with that strange mixture of feeling which our victims aspire in us. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... out, is the most effective; not because the high ideal is high, but because so few are capable of carrying it out; and in that Western world success in aims proposed is the highest that a man can aspire to. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... one day tire Of fours and fights and iron shards, Will seize his pencil and aspire To court the Muse and match the fire Of us poetic cards; Then I shall mock his meagre strain And gaily make the moral plain, How barren is the soldier's brain Compared with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... chariot, Phaethon, Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone. He could not rule his father's car of fire, Yet was it much so nobly to aspire. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... doubt, the visit of the distinguished member of the Government of the United States shall make the peoples of the north and the south know one another better; if the era of Pan American fraternity takes the flight to which we should aspire; if these demonstrations of courtesy are to tend, therefore, toward the progress of the nations of the continent and the mutual respect and consideration of their respective governments, the satisfaction of having ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... reign, or heartless slaves obey. "Not unto chance must aught of power be given,— A country's genius is the gift of Heaven. What warms the poet's lays with generous fire, To which no toil can reach, no art aspire? Who taught the sage, with deepest wisdom fraught, While scarce one pupil grasps the ponderous thought? Nay, wherefore ask?—as Heaven the mind bestows, A Napier calculates and a Thomson glows. Now turn to ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... a small place," said Mr. Montgomery, modestly, "but my tastes are plain and unobtrusive, and I do not aspire to a more conspicuous post. However, that is not to the purpose. A lady parishioner, desiring to donate a portion of her wealth to the poor, has placed in my hand a diamond ring, the proceeds to be devoted to charitable objects. I desire to sell it, and, knowing the high reputation of your firm ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... these, forth issuing from its gulf, And diving back, a living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith Seem'd it unto me ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... once disputed the claim of its rival to the title of Queen of Flowers, and though it has never succeeded in taking the place of the latter in the estimation of the average flower-lover, it occupies a position in the floral world that no other flower dare aspire to. ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... feelings, and gratifying yours, by proposing the health of our distinguished, able, and high-minded representative, whose Congressional career proves that there is no office in the gift of a free and happy people to which he may not legitimately aspire. I have the honor and pleasure to propose, with three times three, the Honorable ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... yielding, rule by obeying, conquer by surrender, and put the crowning grace of joy and glory on her sex by ministering to the hurts and wants of humanity. Kindled by her example, and compensated by her smile, man will aspire to complete his highest destiny. Her destiny will be fulfilled with his, and in it; his in hers, and with it. They cannot be really separated; since woman as the inspirer and rewarder of man, in the most intense action at the top ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... if I gave him the chance! Do you know," the Governor interrupted himself with a pleasantly reminiscent laugh, "I was rather annoyed with Grace when she hinted that you had promised to back up Ashford—I told her you didn't aspire to distribute patronage. But she might have reminded me—if she'd known—that it was you who persuaded me to ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... again—a struggle the details of which were not even told her, and which she has no curiosity to hear. She is content to work on to the end, believing that it was God's will for her to do so. The lay sisters can aspire to none of the convent offices; they have none of the smaller distractions of receiving guests, and instructing converts and so forth, and not to have as much time for prayer as they desire is their penance. They ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... of military manhood formed a motive for colonisation. In the first place, the surplus manhood of a nation was lost to it if it was allowed to pass under an alien flag by emigration. Those continental states from which emigration took place on a large scale began to aspire after the possession of colonies of their own, where their emigrants could still be kept under control, and remain subject to the obligations of service. Germany, the state which beyond all others measures its strength by its fighting man-power, was ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... to preserve to the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the problem of ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... heart aspire To the gross home of wealth and pride; Nor be it to a hearth allied That vaunts ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... to-morrow to quit this city," Goliba said. "Hasten not thy decision, but what I will show thee secretly ere long will perhaps convince thee of the terrors of the Naya's reign. I have often counselled the queen to aspire to the virtues of truth, wisdom, justice and moderation, the great ornaments of the Emerald Throne, but my endeavours have been frustrated and the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... among the great singers of the age was no less assured than if she had queened it over the public heart for a score of seasons, and in her endowment as an artist was recognized a bounteous wealth of gifts to which none of her rivals could aspire. Her resources appeared to be without limit; she knew every language to which music is sung, every style in which music can be written with equal fluency. All schools, whether ancient or modern, severe or florid, sacred or profane, severely ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... Hastati, Principes, and Triarii ceased; the Velites disappeared, their work being done by the foreign mercenaries; the cavalry ceased to be part of the legion, and became a distinct body; and the military was completely severed from the rest of the state. Formerly no one could aspire to office who had not completed ten years of military service, but in the time of Cicero a man could pass through all the great dignities of the state with a very limited experience of military life. Cicero ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... tidings were received with astonishment and a joy that was dashed with reflections on the strength and mettle of colonists supposed already to aspire to independence. Pepperrell was made a baronet, and Warren an admiral. The merchant soldier was commissioned colonel in the British army; a regiment was given him, to be raised in America and maintained by the King, while a similar recognition was granted to the lawyer Shirley. [Footnote: To ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... drawn out is called Cunaxa, being about five hundred furlongs distant from Babylon. And here Clearchus beseeching Cyrus before the fight to retire behind the combatants, and not expose himself to hazard, they say he replied, "What is this, Clearchus? Would you have me, who aspire to empire, show myself unworthy of it?" But if Cyrus committed a great fault in entering headlong into the midst of danger, and not paying any regard to his own safety, Clearchus was as much to blame, if not more, in refusing to lead the Greeks against the main body of the enemy, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... prophetic vision and your seizure of occasion. The First Consul is a madman! He has sold to us an Empire! Empire! Emperor—Emperor of the West! The sound is stately. You laugh. We are citizens of a republic. Well! I am content. I aspire no higher. I am not Buonaparte. Your lilies are budding beneath the windows; the sweet williams are all in bloom. I have little news for you of town or country—Mrs. Randolph, doubtless, sends ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... altered for the better since he left me at London, neither could I conceive by which means he was enabled to appear in the sphere of a gentleman, to which, while I knew him, he had not even the ambition to aspire. But I was too much concerned in the affair to neglect further information, and therefore took the first opportunity of asking the porter if he knew the gentleman to whom the marquis spoke. The Swiss told me his name was Monsieur ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... never before had he seen it so dreamy—never before had he seen it so beautiful and so glorious, for never before had he so felt the use of this world as a place in which to attain to the good and to shun the evil, to overcome temptation and to aspire to life. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... soul may be the muse of Comedy. If Hawthorne and his kind are not your fashion, turn to models that have their feet on the earth always, yet successfully aspire. Key some of your intimate humorous scenes to the Dutch Little Masters of Painting, such pictures as Gerard Terburg's Music Lesson in the Chicago Art Institute. The thing is as well designed as a Dutch house, wind-mill, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... opponent's definition of man's reasoning power. His sole object was to show that, if one accepted this definition, one must not go as far as Hume in the application of this power. All that Kant could aspire to do was to protect the ethical from attack by the intellectual part of man, and to do this by proving that the former belongs to a world into which the latter has no access. For with his will man belongs to a world of purposeful doing, whereas the reason, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... endeavor to make our entrance into a glorious immortality so unutterably ghastly? Let us glide into the "fair shadowland" through a "gate of flowers," if we may no longer, as in the majestic olden time, aspire heavenward on ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... this strain for a long while, king Yudhishthira the just, filled with fear and grief, said these words unto Vasudeva: 'Through thy grace, O Govinda, my kingdom hath been reft of thorns! That which we could not in imagination even aspire to obtain hath now become ours, O thou of unfading glory! Before my eyes, O mighty-armed one, making the very hair stand on end, violent were the blows that thou hadst to bear, O delighter of the Yadavas! In the battle between the gods and the Asuras, thou hadst, in days of old, lent ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... only reply by a look. She had long worshipped Mr. Pickwick at a distance, but here she was, all at once, raised to a pinnacle to which her wildest and most extravagant hopes and never dared to aspire. Mr. Pickwick was going to propose—a deliberate plan, too—sent her little boy to the Borough, to get him out ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... shook his radiant head in warning. "I have spoken rashly," said he; "only this request I would fain deny. I beg you to withdraw it. It is not a safe boon, nor one, my Phaeton, suited to your youth and strength. Your lot is mortal, and you ask what is beyond a mortal's power. In your ignorance you aspire to do that which not even the gods themselves may do. None but myself may drive the flaming car of day; not even Jupiter, whose terrible right arm hurls the thunder bolts. The first part of the way is steep, and such as the horses when fresh ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... routs were given in the ensuing spring. Mr. and Mrs. Beaufort became persons of considerable importance. The rich man had, even when poor, been ambitious; his ambition now centred in his only son. Arthur had always been considered a boy of talents and promise; to what might he not now aspire? The term of his probation with the tutor was abridged, and Arthur Beaufort was sent at once ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... adverse criticism—ran, as he walked towards Government House, just about the same time as Mr. Kilshaw was also thinking of betaking himself thither. A great man (Mr. Coxon's reflections continued) can aspire to the hand of any lady—more especially when he depends not merely on intellectual ability (which is by no means everything), but is also a man of culture, of breeding, of a University education, and of a very decent income. He forbore to throw his personal ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... such few friends as my life has hitherto won to itself, to consider well the direct purport of this letter. If you, born in a grade so much higher than mine, feel that it is unwarrantable insolence in me to aspire to the hand of my patron's grandchild, say so plainly; and I remain not less grateful for your friendship than I was to your goodness when dining for the first time at your father's palace. Shy and sensitive and young, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strikes down through the bare branches, and the cold wind is fended off. The fleshy lances of the spring beauty have stabbed upward through the mulch, and a tiny cup, delicately veined with pink, hangs its head bashfully. Anemones on brown wire stems aspire without a leaf, and in moist patches are May pinks, the trailing arbutus of the grown-ups. As we carry home a bunch, the heads all lopping every way like the heads of strangled babies, we can almost hear behind us in the echoing forests a long, heart-broken moan, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... "'He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed, She, drinking his warm sweat, will soothe ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of birds on the ground that an egg has no feathers... Whatever M. France may believe, our concern is here with the conviction of M. Coignard that his religion is all-important and all-significant. And it is curious to observe how unerringly the abbe's thoughts aspire, from no matter what remote and low-lying starting-point, to the loftiest niceties of religion and the high thin atmosphere of ethics. Sauce spilt upon the good man's collar is but a reminder of the influence of clothes ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... if you love dancing and aspire to make it a career, you possess an innate sense of rhythm. You feel the swing of music and love to move your body to the strains of a lilting melody. The first great possessions of the successful stage dancer are a love of harmonious sounds and a sense of rhythmic ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... counter, sorting silks. Not rich piece silks that are made into gowns; Mrs. Duff's shop did not aspire to that luxurious class of goods; but humble skeins of mixed sewing-silks, that were kept tied up in a piece of wash-leather. Mrs. Duff's head and a customer's head were brought together over the bundle, endeavouring to fix upon a skein of a particular ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was in the minds of his colleagues. He, indeed, to be general of the Society of Jesus!—how strange and preposterous a supposition! Positively he could think of no such thing. What a life had he led before his conversion! How abounding in weaknesses had been his course since! How could he aspire to rule others, who so poorly could rule himself? Days of prayer must yet be devoted to the purpose of imploring the divine aid in directing the minds of all toward one who should indeed be qualified for so arduous an office. At the end of this term Loyola was a second time elected, and again ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... had, besides, a body of troops (which was not very numerous) levied from among their own citizens; and this was a kind of school, in which the flower of their nobility, and those whose talents and ambition prompted them to aspire to the first dignities, learned the rudiments of the art of war. From among these were selected all the general officers, who were put at the head of the different bodies of their forces, and had the chief command ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... meets me in the public throng: Her hair streams backward from her loose attire; She hath a trumpet and an eye of fire; She points me downward steadily and long— 'There is thy grave—arise, my son, be strong! Hands are upon thy crown; awake, aspire To immortality; heed not the lyre Of the enchantress, nor her poppy-song; But in the stillness of the summer calm, Tremble for what is godlike in thy being. Listen awhile, and thou shalt hear the psalm Of victory sung by creatures past thy seeing; And from far battle-fields there ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... meat by cutting myself the fat—no! I am a digger, but not only a digger, I aspire to the honor of being a captain of diggers; my claim ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... as it seems to them, is an enormous field for the energy of the reformer. Here are many noble goals attainable by many of those paths up the Hill Difficulty along which great spirits love to aspire. Unhappily, the hill will never be climbed by Man as we know him. It need not be denied that if we all struggled bravely to the end of the reformers' paths we should improve the world prodigiously. But there is no more hope in that If than in the equally ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... acted amid these beautiful objects, perhaps attending a reception in a Fifth Avenue mansion where the father of a beautiful New York society girl would tell him that he must first make good before he could aspire to her hand. And he would make good—out there in the great open spaces, where the girl would come to him after many adventures and where they would settle to an untroubled future in the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... bar you mentioned, yet made so great a secret of, is at last revealed, and I should be unworthy of the blessing I aspire to, if I were unable to surmount it. Cruel Louisa! you little know me, or the force of that passion you have inspired, to imagine that any difference which chance may have put between us, can make the least alteration in my sentiments!—It is to your ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... made it impossible for any of the leading churches to give recognition to the full meaning of the Protestant idea of the worth of the individual soul, and its right to communicate directly with God. It remained for the persecuted Baptists and Independents, too feeble and despised to aspire to state influence, to work out the Protestant principle to its full expression in the spirit of toleration, to declare for liberty of conscience, the voluntary maintenance of worship, and the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... "Nor could I aspire to such a position, my lord, until I have proved myself worthy of it. My uncle told me that he had suggested that I might be useful as a bearer of messages, and orders; and as I know every foot of the border, from ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... abundance of the materials which are presented to the mind for arrangement and definition, necessarily impart no inconsiderable difficulties in the choice of the form under p 9 which such a work must be presented, if it would aspire to the honor of being regarded as a literary composition. Descriptions of nature ought not to be deficient in a tone of life-like truthfulness, while the mere enumeration of a series of general results is productive of a no less wearying impression than the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... it is not difficult to avoid becoming a parent. The world is not dying for lack of parents. On the contrary we have far too many of them—ignorant parents, silly parents, unwilling parents, undesirable parents—and those who aspire to the high dignity of creating the future race, let them be as few as they will—and perhaps at the present time the fewer the better—must not refuse the responsibilities of that position, its pains as well ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... obscurantism, ignorance, a time-worn routine, and all that barred the way to culture. Since the government permitted the Jews to enter the social life of the country, and seeing that they might in the future aspire to a better lot, the Haskalah should and would work to prepare them for it and make them worthy ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... away from that, and rely merely on our system, or on methods, or our teaching, we cease just in that proportion to be true Salvationists. We aspire to rule men's hearts. We care nothing for the position of a church or sect; we care everything for a real control over the souls and conduct of living men and women, that we may lead them to God and use them for His glory. It is by tenderness we shall win it. By seeking ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... choice, Humphrey: we both aspire high, for two young foresters, do we not? However, they say 'Every dog has his day,' and Cromwell and his Parliament may have theirs. King Charles may be on his throne again now, long before you ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... money invested in mythical towns, which towns are to rival in their growth Toledo, Chicago or St. Louis. The dream is to do nothing and get rich. Land sharks, speculators, usurers and politicians who aspire to a notoriety they will never win—a station they will never occupy—swarm over the West thicker than frogs in Egypt, and more intrusive than were these squatting, crawling, jumping pests, when evoked from the river's slime ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... disliked Roscoe Conkling and all his ways. Conkling once said to him: 'If you will join us and act with us, there is nothing in the gift of the State of New York to which you may not reasonably aspire.' To which Wheeler replied: 'Mr. Conkling, there is nothing in the gift of the State which will compensate me for the forfeiture of my own self-respect.'"—Hoar, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... you will vouchsafe me an Audience of Quarter of an Hour; I shall look upon it as the greatest Condescension in you, and as the greatest Honour done me. I told him he mistook my Title, and gave me one I never did aspire to; but that I was very ready to hear and serve him, for I had seen him often at Court offering Petitions, which were always rejected, and I had a ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... of Methodism, and the civil interests of the country. I have never received one acre of land, nor one farthing from Government, nor of any public money. I have never written one line at the request of any person connected with the Government. I count it to be the highest honour to which I can aspire to be a Methodist preacher; and in this relation to the Church and to the world I shall count it my highest joy to ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... And, purged by pain, For aye endure! Let Felix sacrifice me to thine ire, Yea, let my rival captivate the soul Of her who now with Decius doth conspire To chain immortal hope to earthly goal; Let earth-bound men pursue the world's desire, Sense charms not him who doth to Heaven aspire! Hail pain! Disdain All Earthly love, To seek above A holier fire! Oh, Love that passeth knowledge be my stay, And fire my heart to beat alone for thee! Sun of my soul?—oh, flash one purest ray In that last hour supreme—to comfort me, So life's brief night shall merge in endless day! Come, Death! ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... With Chearful Lays, or Sweet Condoling Strains; Or with a Sonnet make the Vallies ring, To Welcome home the Goddess of the Spring? Or wou'd you in sublimer Themes engage, And sing of Worthies who adorn the Age? Or, with Promethean Boldness, wou'd aspire To Catch a Spark of the Celestial Fire That Crowned the Royal Conquest, and could raise Juverne's Boyn above Scamander's Praise? Drink, drink Inspiring TEA, and boldly draw A Hercules, a Mars, ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... hereafter aspire unto, thou mayest even now enjoy and possess, if thou doest not envy thyself thine own happiness. And that will be, if thou shalt forget all that is past, and for the future, refer thyself wholly to the Divine Providence, and shalt bend and apply all ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... Republics; but all of them had, at least, the saving grace of frankness. The aim and end of their policy was to arrive safely in Paris, with the contents of the national treasury as their baggage. They did not hunger after honours, such as knighthoods, or aspire to speak at Sunday afternoon gathering in pseudo-places of worship. Certainly, they told a number of flamboyant falsehoods before getting into office, but that was the only respect in which they ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... some form or other, with more or less of fidelity to the truth, and real events, and real motives; while the humbler matters it will be my office to record, will be entirely overlooked by writers who aspire to enrol their names among the Tacituses of former ages. It may be well to say here, however, I shall not attempt the historical mood at all, but content myself with giving the feelings, incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting them no farther ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... opinions, yet they may be persuaded out of them; they may be touched by the affecting earnestness of serious conversation, and allured by the attractive beauty of a consistently serious life. And while a young woman ought to dread the name of a wrangling polemic, it is her duty to aspire after the honourable character of a sincere Christian. But this dignified character she can by no means deserve, if she is ever afraid to avow her principles, or ashamed to defend them. A profligate, who makes it a point to ridicule everything ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... the forming of strong mental images important and useful, but when we come to consider the phenomena of the astral plane we begin to see what an important part is played there by strong mental images or visualized ideas. The better you know what you desire, wish or aspire to, the stronger will be your thought vibrations of that thing, of course. Well, then, the stronger that you are able to picture the thing in your mind—to visualize it to yourself—the stronger will be your actual knowledge and thought-form ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... when Freedom's ills I state, I mean to flatter kings, or court the great: Ye powers of truth that bid my soul aspire, Far from my bosom drive the low desire. And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel 365 The rabble's rage and tyrant's angry steel; Thou transitory flower, alike undone By proud contempt or favor's fostering sun, Still may thy blooms the changeful ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... and since they could not be developed by the State it is not strange that private initiative was stimulated by offering men great and immediate rewards. These rewards have encouraged individuals and associations of individuals to aspire to a quick achievement of great economic power, and their aspirations have been realized. Such achievements have been a dominating feature of our business life, and we have regarded them as an index of ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... over a hated husband, and possessing a handsome competency. Now she mingles in the best society. She associates with lords and ladies. She enjoys life in England, while I am an exile. No doubt she passes for a fine young widow. No doubt, too, she has lots of admirers. They aspire to her hand. They write poetry to her. They make love ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... suis," which is generally taken to mean that his whole family were received with him. We see from it, too, how earnest was the desire of the superiors of the monasteries to instruct the ignorant; how rich and poor alike in the C7 might aspire to the monastic life, the only passport being the honest desire to serve God ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... doubtless aware that there are at present, in and around Kabul, personages not destitute of influence, who themselves aspire to the sovereignty he seeks, and that the family of Yakub has still numerous personal adherents, who may possibly take advantage of the withdrawal of our troops to oppose the Sirdar's authority if he is not personally present ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... wide-eyed over the heads of guests, occasionally, when he was vehement, throwing his head up, shooting his words at the ceiling as if they had been Greek fire. Now, as he got up to leave her, his eyes dwelt earnestly on her. "It will be a pleasure, to which I shall aspire—that of meeting ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... should sacrifice his future to his present welfare; and in obtaining a power to which it has no claim, it risks that authority which is rightfully its own. When a religion founds its empire upon the desire of immortality which lives in every human heart, it may aspire to universal dominion: but when it connects itself with a government, it must necessarily adopt maxims which are only applicable to certain nations. Thus, in forming an alliance with a political power, religion augments its authority over ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... independence in the sixteenth century against the most formidable regular army in Europe, and also did their fair share of fighting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they have long ceased to aspire to the rank of a military Power. The separation from Belgium in 1830-31 put an end to the Orange policy of creating a powerful Netherland State from Lorraine to the North Sea which could hold its own with either France or Prussia, and since that period Holland has gradually sunk, and seemingly ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... baleful power, and convinced that the heart of this great, courteous, patient, longsuffering Slavic people is groping for expression of self-government, and that America is their ideal—a hazy ideal and one that they aspire toward only in general outlines. Their ultimate self-government may not take the shape of American constitutionalism, but Russian self-government must in time come out of the very wrack of foreign and internecine war. And every American soldier who fought the Bolshevik Russian in arms or ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... play; and, in a spirit of play, they contrive to copy to its last and least detail our work. If we play golf or tennis, they also play these games. Are we painters of pictures or writers of books, they too aspire to ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... not asking them to go up! George was excessively disappointed. He watched Miss Wheeler and Laurencine disappear into the rich and guarded interior with envy, as though they had entered a delectable paradise to which he could not aspire; and the fact that Miss Wheeler had vaguely invited him to call did not brighten him very much. He had assumed that he would see Lois ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... materials which are presented to the mind for arrangement and definition, necessarily impart no inconsiderable difficulties in the choice of the form under p 9 which such a work must be presented, if it would aspire to the honor of being regarded as a literary composition. Descriptions of nature ought not to be deficient in a tone of life-like truthfulness, while the mere enumeration of a series of general results is productive of a no less wearying impression than the elaborate accumulation ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... should capture beautiful maidens on purpose for him to rescue. Van Tiefel was but a stepping-stone; he was not made for the desk of a counting-house. No heights dazzled him; he saw himself being made a peer or a prince, being granted wide domains by a grateful monarch. He was not too low to aspire to the hand of a king's fair daughter; he was a hero, every inch a hero. Great is the power of beer. Avaunt! ye sallow teetotalers, ye ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... the Dalmatian seaboard that tempted Austria to occupy Bosnia, and so conversely the acquisition of Bosnia by Serbia would at once compel the latter, willy-nilly (quite apart from all racial affinities or sentiments), to aspire to ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... to me that if I were in your place—young, no cares or anxieties, with such a start, such influence, and such a prospect—I should not be able to contain myself for joy! I should, indeed, aspire to be the "bride of the Lamb," and to follow Him in conflict for the Salvation of poor, lost, miserable man. I pray the Lord to show it to you, and so to enamour you of Himself, that you may see and feel it to be your chief joy to win them for Him. I say I pray for this—yes, I groan for ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... does aspire To empire, whether truly great, His head, his heart, his hand, conspire To make him equal to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... were to be judge, I should find no one worthy of that honour. All the princes of the world would be too mean to aspire to you; the gods alone can pretend to you, and you would have from ...
— The Magnificent Lovers (Les Amants magnifiques) • Moliere
... her to marry him as the best way of being safe and respectable, to endeavour to procure an honest livelihood by following some humble occupation, and to forget the station to which their birth entitled them to aspire. He was almost hopeless of a speedy change of times. He feared the spirit of the nation was so broken that it would submit to the establishment of the usurping family. Policy would teach Cromwell to soften the terrors of his administration ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... mixed and the Martini shimmers in the first rays of the electric light, then I humanize and harmonize, For me gin is a tonic, rum a restorative, vermuth a balm. Once I am stocked up with ales, wines, liquors, and cigars, I become attuned to the nobler sentiments of life. I aspire. I make friends with lonely derelicts whose digestions have foundered on seas of vichy and buttermilk, and I show them the joys of alcoholism—without cost. We share each other's pleasures and perplexities, at my expense. They are ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... conundrums like these that have taxed human ingenuity and made of life such an alluring adventure. On the conquering of difficulties civilization has been built up. Well, man now attacked this problem of telling time. He did not aspire to narrow it down to any very fine point, for at that period of history one day was very like another, and he was a leisurely being with little to do but eat, sleep, fight or hunt. Notwithstanding this, however, he did want ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... version of the matter. And hence, although not so designed at first, this Diary will furnish more authentic data of many of the events of the war than the grave histories that will be written. Still, I do not aspire to be the Froissart of these interesting times: but intend merely to furnish my children, and such others as may read them, with reliable chronicles of the events passing under my ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... later book Boethius gives a clearer key to the objection. He postulates four mental faculties: sensation possessed by oysters, imagination possessed by higher animals, reason possessed by man, intelligence possessed by God. Consequently man should aspire towards God instead of indulging his faculties of sensation and imagination, which he shares ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... bring those who have produced this crisis to see the folly before they feel the misery of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... of a road is the pride of all its employees; all the trainmen aspire to a place on the flyer. It never starts out on any run without the good wishes of the entire force, and it seldom puffs out of the train-shed and over the maze of rails in the yard without receiving the homage of those who happen to be within ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... be. You must give them up—the idea and the girl. What! You, who contrive the father's dishonor, would aspire to the daughter's hand? It is not equable. Love her honorably, or not at all. The course you are following is base and wholly ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... sounds at his command. But for the dwarfs who live in the gloom of Niebelheim he chooses deep shades of red, the lowest vibrating colour of the solar spectrum. For it is in the nature of the spiritual part of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand, a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with their strange fight against all the laws of gravity, striving upward unceasingly, bring us something ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... distinguished services in the war, which, in the assembly of the people, was communicated by one person to another. [339] Ad id locorum, 'until then,' 'until that time,' as in chap. 72: post id locorum. See Zumpt, S 434. Marius did not venture to aspire to the consulship; for appetere is not the same as petere, the latter denoting the actual suit or canvass. His ambition had not yet been directed to that highest of all offices, until religious ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... had all those proper to five-and-twenty years of age; besides, the spirit of the times did not tend to melancholy, that is a modern sentiment, springing from the overthrow of fortunes and the weakness of man. In the eighteenth century it was rare to dream of abstract things, or aspire to the unknown: men went straight to pleasure, glory, or fortune, and all who were handsome, brave or intriguing could attain them. That was the time when people were not ashamed to be happy. Now mind governs matter so much that men dare not avow ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... voice which had become natural to him since his illness began; "my love for you proved too strong to be restrained just now: but believe me, I had fully made up my mind never to open my lips to you on the subject; for what right have I, a helpless, and, I fear, hopeless, invalid, to dare to aspire—" ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... glorious woman, the greatest woman in the world. But lemme give you piece 'vice—pah! still drunk. They water my vinegar. [He shakes himself; clears his throat; and resumes soberly.] If Catherine takes a fancy to you, you may ask for roubles, diamonds, palaces, titles, orders, anything! and you may aspire to everything: field-marshal, admiral, minister, what you ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... India. If my existence, either officially or corporeally, were prolonged twenty times longer than either of them is likely to be, a Parliamentary system in India is not at all the goal to which I would for one moment aspire. ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... I promise to make you as rich as the proudest in the land; rich enough to bend to your wishes the most powerful—even the daughter of Augustin Pena, for whom your passion has not escaped me. This day you may aspire to her hand without being deemed foolish; for I tell you, you are as rich as her own father. Swear, then, to pursue to the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the Portuguese, signifying to "command," to Chinese official functionaries, of which there are some nine orders, distinguished by the buttons on their caps, and they are appointed chiefly for their possession of the requisite qualifications for the office they aspire to. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Devonshire firm, who knew nothing of his antecedents, to take him into partnership, and also ingratiated himself with a clergyman, who accepted his drafts for a large amount. Thus supplied with ready money he returned to London, where he lived in splendid style, and even went so far as to aspire to a seat in the House of Commons. For a time all appeared to go well; but suspicions gradually arose with regard to his character and his resources, and he was declared a bankrupt. Deserting his wife and her two children, he fled from his creditors. For ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... situation ironical beyond any, grotesque beyond belief; and its development should be stupendously interesting. It attracted him irresistibly. That he should leave it to his own father to say whether a man born as he was born might aspire to marry his father's ward, had in it something that savored of tragi-comedy. It was a pretty problem, that once set could not be left unsolved by a man of Mr. Caryll's temperament. And, indeed, no sooner was the idea conceived than it quickened into ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... calamity! It must be avoided at all costs." "What counts above all here is commercial interest. All who live by it are, here as elsewhere, almost too pacific." "Under the economic conditions prevailing in Germany, the most glorious victory she can aspire to—it is a ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... shift below. Looking upon the tribes of earth, I have seen how the multitude are swayed, and tracked the steps that lead weakness into power; and fain would I be the ruler of one who, if abased, shall aspire ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... sottishness of others. They never dreamed that these pretended warriors, whose bloodless swords had rusted in their scabbards, would attempt to snatch the staff of command from the veteran generals of France; and that nobles who had grown old in sloth and ignorance would aspire to the direction of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... that unless Life which is very Man acted into that which in itself is not life, the formation of anything such as exists in man would be impossible, in whom are thousands of thousands of things that make a one, and that unanimously aspire to an image of the Life from which they spring, that man may become a receptacle and abode of that Life. From all this it can be seen that love, and out of the love the will, and out of the will the heart, strive unceasingly towards ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... one of those honest visionaries sometimes met in Ireland, said:—"For my own part, I confess that I aspire to complete independence. Then, and not till then, would the two countries be friendly. We in Ulster are ten times more patriotic than Irishmen elsewhere, for it is in Ulster that we have been most deeply wronged. The Hamiltons of Abercorn planted the country round here with Scotch settlers, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... fancy of the reader, more than to his judgment. My writings, therefore, may appear light and trifling in our country of philosophers and politicians; but if they possess merit in the class of literature to which they belong, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... now," he continued, "going to present to each one of you a set of rules, principles, guides—-call them what you will. On this paper each one of you will find laid down rules that should be burned into the memories of all young men who aspire to play football. Do not lose your copies of these rules. Read the rules over again and again. Memorize them! Above all, put ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... these basins was filled with pieces of gold, the other with precious stones of an inestimable value. Attalus, so long the sport of fortune and of the Goths, was appointed to lead the chorus of the hymeneal song; and the degraded Emperor might aspire to the praise of a skilful musician. The Barbarians enjoyed the insolence of their triumph; and the provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild influence of love and reason, the fierce spirit of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... at first a new and unknown man, whom all we who aspire to the same honors consider as a pattern to lead us on to industry and virtue, was undoubtedly at liberty to enjoy his repose at Tusculum, a most salubrious and convenient retreat. But he, mad as some people think him, though no necessity compelled him, preferred being tossed about ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... marriage and the marriages of many other members of the English aristocracy whose domestic lives have latterly seen the light of day—whether less of moral spirit and more of physical courage is not the great need among women who aspire to the peerage. Strong nerves and a martial spirit, if they could not secure peace, would at least place the combatants upon a more equal footing, and the world would be spared the spectacle of the mild-mannered and meek bullied ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... useful, and a hundredfold more remunerating. What matters it if Damascus guard jealously the secret of her fragrant clouded steel, when Sheffield can turn out efficient sword-blades at the rate of a thousand per hour? Suum cuique tribuito. Let others aspire to be popular: be it ours to remain irreproachably ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Nepthalim, you thought I had no right which you need respect and I would tamely submit to whatever you chose to do. You forgot that in my veins run the best blood of Earth and the proudest blood of Jupiter. Hortan was a Mildash of Jupiter, a rank to which you could never aspire. I restricted your efforts and proved to you a thing which I long have known, that, man to man, I am ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... excites it the more. I have suppressed many details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced me to undertake ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... activity of closely united men who, employing symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade and from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind, striving morally to ennoble themselves and others, and thereby to bring about a universal league of mankind, which they aspire to exhibit even now on a ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair, and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... really so the man had doubtless already received answers and chosen. There must be so many others looking like herself for a haven of safety, for deliverance from lives that were unendurable. Who was she that she should aspire to this thing? To such a man she could bring but health impaired, but the remnants of her former strength. In a bit of looking-glass she saw her dark-rimmed eyes and deemed that she had lost all such looks ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... be equivalent to desiring to be shelved, and I aspire to become a post-captain and to get my flag some day," answered Jack. "Our case is not worse than that of many others. Some friends of mine have been sent off to sea a few days only after they ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Let the watchword be "ASPIRE!" Noble Christian youth; Whatsoe'er be God's behest, Try to do that duty best, In the strength of ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the home, the tyrannical and sterile education of the rare centers of learning, that blind subordination of the youth to one of greater age, influence the mind so that a man may not aspire to excel those who preceded him but must merely be content to go along with or march behind them. Stagnation forcibly results from this, and as he who devotes himself merely to copying divests himself of other qualities suited to his own nature, he naturally becomes sterile; ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... no lack of holiday amusement; our puppets to admire, and greasy poles to climb for prizes by men who have been prudently required first to declare and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must be very useful. There are our water tournaments at St. Cloud and at Boulogne-sur-Seine; where they who have informed the police of their combative propensities, may thrust at each other with long-padded poles from boats which are being ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... therefore more lasting. One finds readily enough contemporary statements to the effect that, "Although there are no nobles in America, there is a class of men denominated 'gentlemen,' who, by reason of their wealth, their talents, their education, their families, or the offices they hold, aspire to a preeminence," but, the same observer adds, this is something which "the people refuse to grant them." Another contemporary contributes the observation that there was not so much respect paid to gentlemen of rank ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... reflection: and, without troubling himself about other people's affairs, went silently and properly about his own business; more solicitous to discharge his duty, than to recommend himself to notice, and not seeming to aspire to any higher office than that of a serving man. This old man would fix his eyes upon Edmund, whenever he could do it without observation; sometimes he would sigh deeply, and a tear would start from his eye, which he strove to conceal from observation. One ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... have succeeded are so apt to tell new aspirants not to aspire, because the thing to be done may probably be beyond their reach. "My dear young lady, had you not better stay at home and darn your stockings?" "As, sir, you have asked for my candid opinion, I can only counsel you ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... it under the dominion of the spirit. For that, a far higher quality of thought and action than is here indicated is necessary. The economist can provide the daily bread, but that bread of the coming day which Christ wished his followers to aspire to must come otherwise. That should be the labor of the poets, artists, musicians, and of the heroic and aristocratic characters who provide by their life an image to which life can be modeled. Therefore I beseech audience not only of the churches, but of the poets, writers, and thinkers of Ireland ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... or skies Burned that fire within thine eyes? On what wings dared he aspire? What the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... constitution, in an individual who aspired to a post so eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and mitres and official seals, which were periodically apportioned to them, the Marney family did not aspire to the somewhat graceless office of being their distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in their order; and promotion to the highest class. They observed that more than one of the other great "civil ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... him. He is regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.—there seems, indeed, to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service. I could not but envy the position of this young ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Nations that aspire to be free incur a prominent danger,—the danger of deceiving themselves on the question of tyranny. They readily apply that name to any system of government that displeases or alarms them, or refuses to grant all that they desire. Frivolous caprices, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... forth issuing from its gulf, And diving back, a living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... now. Genius, intellect, imagination, courage, pride, scorn, all the intensities of his nature, all that he supposed he possessed, all that lay hidden and unsuspected, arose in their might to overcome him now. He did not think, he did not aspire, or hope, or fear, or dream, or remember: he only felt, and bled, and moaned low, hopeless, helpless moans. If it is given to some natures to enjoy intensely, so such correspondingly suffer; and Bart, alone with ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... and most difficult labor to which an artist can aspire, to this branch of art Hunt has chiefly confined himself, and from this point of view he must be studied. We do not forget, in saying this, his angel with the flaming torch, strong and beautiful and of unearthly presence, nor the shadowy, half-portrayed figures which dart and flit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... were mere phantoms of the brain, and never, by system, put into action; but, repeatedly indulged, they were practised by casual occurrences; and the dear-bought experiment of being loved in spite of her faults, (a glory proud women ever aspire to) was, at present, the ambition of ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... us burns To see dark Ignorance aspire To move toward light a mind that yearns For knowledge that may lift it higher Upon the royal road of truth, While every word and act and thought Betrays an atmosphere so fraught With lack of common sense and ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... in municipal government. In the former the families reside for generations in the place of birth with increasing devotion to the town and all its surroundings. A father achieving the mayorship stimulates the son to aspire to it. That invaluable asset, city pride, is created, culminating in romantic attachment to native places. Councilorships are sought that each in his day and generation may be of some service to the town. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... can't endure this silence another week; What shall I do in order to make you speak? Shall I give you a trope In the manner of Pope, Or hammer my brains like an old smith To get out something like Goldsmith? Or shall I aspire on To tune my poetic lyre on The same key touched by Byron, And laying my hand its wire on, With its music your soul set fire on By themes you ne'er could tire on? Or say, I pray, Would a lay Like Gay Be more in your way? I leave it to you, Which am I to ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of our country is not to be altogether commended—that all men should aspire to book-learning; there is not a simpler animal, and a more superfluous member of a state than a mere scholar, a self-pleasing student. Archimedes, though an excellent engineer, when Syracuse was lost, was found in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... John L., we suppose that "Handsome Jim" Corbett is the only old time champion who can at all aspire to Sullivan's place ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... such was the inveteracy of the Jesuits against the Quietists, that within the space of a month upwards of two hundred persons were put into the inquisition; and that method of devotion which had passed in Italy as the most elevated to which mortals could aspire, was deemed heretical, and the chief promoters of it confined ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... to snuff then and began to clear a passage, kicking out to right and left and laughing when his victims protested. Before he had traversed fifty yards he had made himself more enemies than most men dare aspire to in a lifetime, and he seemed well pleased with the fruit ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Nor is this to be wondered at, when we consider the motive upon which those gentlemen do not deny their going to India. The fame of conquest, barbarous as that motive is, is but a secondary consideration: there are certain stations in wealth to which the warriors of the East aspire. It is there, indeed, where the wishes of their friends assign them eminence, where the question of their country is pointed at their return. When shall I see a commander return from India in the pride of honourable poverty? You describe the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... of the Messiah, tore a woeful rent in the back of my best black silk gown, and damaged an egregious pair of breeches. Mem.—never tumbled from a church window during service. Adieu, dear ——! do not remember me to any body:—to forget and be forgotten by the people of Southwell is all I aspire to." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... articles with a zeal honourable to literature and most useful to the public. They made this dictionary their commonplace book for all their curious acquisitions; every one competent to write a short article, preserving an important fact, did not aspire to compile the dictionary, or even an entire article in it; but it was a treasury in which such mites collected together formed its wealth; and all the literati may be said to have engaged in perfecting these volumes during a century. In this manner, from the humble beginnings ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... River the road improves sufficiently to enable me to take an occasional, admiring glance at the Bavarian and Tyrolese Alps, towering cloudward on the southern horizon, their shadowy outlines scarcely distinguishable in the hazy distance from the fleecy clouds their peaks aspire to invade. While absentmindedly taking a more lingering look than is consistent with safety when picking one's way along the narrow edge of the roadway between the stone-strewn centre and the ditch, I run into the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... passion ever speaks; and an ambition—the result of the highest tone of aristocratic influence upon society—prompted his desires to purposes and a position to which in other regions he is not often permitted to aspire. These influences were assisted by the peculiar location of our city—by its suburban freedom from all closeness; its innumerable gardens, the appanage of every household; its piazzas, verandahs, porches; its ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... with bonds to bind the morning light, As well on the four winds to spend your might, As well to strive against the streams that run; As well to bar the seasons, bid be done The rain which falls; as well to blindly fight Against the air, and at your folly's height Aspire to make all ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... if I meet with difficulty, I may not go backward, nor stand still, and fear to go forward. Unfold to me the depth and breadth of the ideal and beautiful, that I may not be content to succeed in the shallowness of life: but may I aspire to the height of the soul, even if I fail to ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... spoken rashly," said he; "only this request I would fain deny. I beg you to withdraw it. It is not a safe boon, nor one, my Phaeton, suited to your youth and strength. Your lot is mortal, and you ask what is beyond a mortal's power. In your ignorance you aspire to do that which not even the gods themselves may do. None but myself may drive the flaming car of day; not even Jupiter, whose terrible right arm hurls the thunder bolts. The first part of the way is steep, and such as the horses when fresh in the morning can hardly climb; the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... impatiently, and Aynesworth joined the outside of the circle of men who had gathered round Wingrave. He was answering their questions readily enough, if a little laconically. He was quite aware that he occupied in society the one unique place to which princes might not even aspire—there was something of divinity about his millions, something of awe in the tone of the men with whom he talked. Women pretended to be interested in him because of the romance of his suddenly acquired wealth—the men did not trouble to deceive themselves or anyone else. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said Mr. Montgomery, modestly, "but my tastes are plain and unobtrusive, and I do not aspire to a more conspicuous post. However, that is not to the purpose. A lady parishioner, desiring to donate a portion of her wealth to the poor, has placed in my hand a diamond ring, the proceeds to be devoted to ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... memory is a valuable contribution to our stock of material for emotional resuscitation in after years. It also aids in adorning our style, even although we may not aspire to compose in poetry. But the burden of holding the connection of a long poem should be eschewed. Children can readily learn a short psalm or hymn, and can retain it in permanence; but to repeat the 119th psalm from the beginning ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... themselves with those men who are fairminded and considerate of the man far down, and seek to embrace their many opportunities for economic progress, a foundation for political recognition, upon which the race must learn to build. Every race in the universe must aspire to becoming a factor in politics; but history shows that there is no short route to such success. Like other despised races beset with the prejudice and militant opposition of self-styled superiors, the Negroes must increase their industrial efficiency, improve their opportunities to ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... the Covent Garden Journal for June 2, 1752 (Works, x. 80), says of the difficulty of admission at the hospitals:—'The properest objects (those I mean who are most wretched and friendless) may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... haven't been idle—your newspaper and political friends, and Ormsby and I. You are ambitious; you want to succeed; and we have been laying the foundations for you. The next election would give you anything in the gift of the State that a man of your years could aspire to. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... care; the vanity of earthly things startles us suddenly, like a new truth; the friends we love drop away from our side into silence; desire fails; the grasshopper becomes a burden; until, at length, we feel that our only love is not here below,—until these tendrils of earth aspire to a better climate, and the weight that has been laid upon us makes us stoop wearily to the grave as a rest and a deliverance. We have, even through our tears, admired that discipline which sometimes prepares the young to die; ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... principal newspapers, in a crowd of less important ones, La Epoca, Conservative and dynastic ranks first; this is the journal of the aristocrats, of the "upper ten thousand," or those who aspire to be so, and it ranks as the doyen of the whole Press. Its circulation is not so large as that of some of the other papers, but its clientele is supposed to be of the best. El Nacional is also Conservative, but belonging to the party of Romero Robledo. What the exact politics of that ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Rogers had been reckon'd the Prince of Wits, but I suppose that now Mr. Hood has the better title to that appellation." To which I replied that Mr. R. had wit with much better qualities, but did not aspire to the principality. He had taken all the puns manufactured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and stupid earnest. One ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... What portent from the Gods is here? My mind is mazed with doubt and fear. How can I gainsay what I see? I know the girl Antigone, O hapless child of hapless sire! Didst thou, then, recklessly aspire To brave kings' laws, and now art brought ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... has existed, been the cause of freedom. If it is this principle, that has always prompted the princes and nobles of the earth, by every species of fraud and violence, to shake off all the limitations of their power; it is the same that has always stimulated the common people to aspire at independency, and to endeavour at confining the power of the great, within the limits ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... madness please; Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the bliss above. This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. When the full organ joins the tuneful quire, Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear; Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire, While solemn airs improve the sacred fire; And angels lean from Heav'n to hear. Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell, To bright Cecilia greater pow'r is given; His numbers rais'd a shade from Hell, Hers lift the soul ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... different boxes. The whole frame-work of society, both in Europe and America, is made up of various things which will not stand the scrutiny of any very ideal standard of morality. It's pretty generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world. Now, when any one speaks up, like a man, and says slavery is necessary to us, we can't get along without it, we should be beggared if we give it up, and, of course, we ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hie reuolue, Past hope, past thought, past reach of all aspire, Once more to moue him flie he doth resolue, And to that purpose tips his tongue with fier; Fier of sweete words, that easelie might dissolue And moisten flint, though steeld in stiffe attire, Had not desier of wonder praise, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... and of spoiling the pleasure of the most agreeable society. Neither the choice of his friends nor that of the dishes was made by vanity; for in everything he preferred the substance to the shadow; and by these means he procured that real respect to which he did not aspire. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... in me, and from thee good alone,—from myself and my own corrupted will all evil, and the consequences of evil,—with inward prostration of will, mind, and affections I adore thy infinite majesty; I aspire ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the earth minister those things which appertain to the Lord's priestly character, 308. What is the nature of ecclesiastical self-love, 264. They aspire to be gods, so far as ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... welcome her friend, none to be chilled by her unexpected presence. Among a small circle of intimate acquaintances she counted Millicent Jaques the best and truest. They had drifted apart; but that was owing to Helen's lack of means. She was not able, nor did she aspire, to mix in the society that hailed the actress as a bright particular star. Yet it meant much to a girl earning her daily bread in a heedless city that she should possess one friend of her own age and ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... trying to imagine, Burrell, how I should feel if you, I, and baby were coloured; I was trying to place myself in such a situation. Now we know that our boy, if he is honest and upright—is blest with great talent or genius—may aspire to any station in society that he wishes to obtain. How different it would be if he were coloured!—there would be nothing bright in the prospective for him. We could hardly promise him a living at any respectable calling. I think, George, we treat coloured people with ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... a certain monarch of the series died, leaving two children, Numitor and Amulius. Numitor was the eldest son, and as such entitled to succeed his father. But he was of a quiet and somewhat inefficient disposition, while his younger brother was ardent and ambitious, and very likely to aspire to the possession of power. The father, it seems, anticipated the possibility of dissension between his sons after his death, and in order to do all in his power to guard against it, he endeavored to arrange and settle the succession ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... imprudent warmth, "it is not the character of the aristocracy of this country to keep people down. They make way amongst themselves for any man, whatever his birth, who has the talent and energy to aspire to their level. That's the especial boast of the British ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... prince of Grenada, heir to the Spanish throne, imprisoned by order of the Crown for fear he would aspire to the throne, was kept in solitary confinement in the old prison at the Palace of Skulls, Madrid. After thirty-three years in this living tomb, death came to his release, and the following remarkable researches, taken from the Bible, and marked with an old nail on the rough walls of ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... what new qualifications I should aspire, I was summoned into the country, by an account of my father's death. Here I had hopes of being able to distinguish myself, and to support the honour of my family. I therefore bought guns and horses, and, contrary to the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Nino: "that I shall not desist from desiring the honour of marrying your daughter, if you refuse me a hundred times. I wish to put it to you whether with youth, some talent,—I speak modestly,—and the prospect of a plentiful income, I am not as well qualified to aspire to the alliance as Baron Benoni, who has old age, much talent, an enormous fortune, and the benefit of the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Many readers have called my attention to local and American survivals of words and meanings described as obsolete. This is a subject on which a great deal could be written, but it lies outside the plan of this book, which does not aspire to do more than furnish some instruction or entertainment to those who are interested in the curiosities ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... comprehend the genius and the full import of institutions so opposite to those of our own free republic, where every man, however humble his condition, may aspire to the highest honors of the state,—may select his own career, and carve out his fortune in his own way; where the light of knowledge, instead of being concentrated on a chosen few, is shed abroad like the light of day, and suffered to fall equally on the poor and the rich; where the collision ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... that was to press!), Mouse-Ear and Yarrow, Shepherd's Purse, Buttercups, and full-blown Dandelion, Succory, and Chickweed, and Gill-run-over-the-ground,—with their homeliest names written in sprawling characters, all down hill, beneath them. I did not aspire to botanical names in those days. I thought nothing was unfit for my new Herbarium. Such was my zeal, that I believe I should have filled it entirely in a few days, if I had not been counselled to make a judicious selection. I had a faculty for bringing home plants impossible to press, and insisting ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... they are of so unworthy a description as has clearly been made appear in the preceding narrative. That a river justly termed the Nile of New South Wales should fall into such hands is to be lamented. In process of time, however, their productive farms will have yielded them all that they aspire to, and may then fall into the possession of persons who will look beyond the mere gratification of the moment, and cause the settlements in New South Wales to stand as high in the public estimation as any colonies ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... and Boast of a false Gift. He would have us moreover to Thirst after Applause among others that may see Our Excellencies! and be impatient if we are not accounted some-body. He would have us furthermore, to aspire after such a Figure, as God has never yet seen fitting for us; and croud into some High Chair that becomes us not. Thus would the Devil Elevate us into the Air, above our Neighbours; and why so? 'Tis that we may be punished with such Falls, as may make us cry ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Stoddard, on October 6, 1850, "there is, to my mind, no English diction for your purposes equal to Milton's in his minor poems. Of course any man would be an intensified ass who should attempt to reach the diction of the 'Paradise Lost', or aspire to the tremendous style of Shakespeare. You must not confound things, though. A Lyric diction is one thing—a Dramatic diction is another, requiring the utmost force and conciseness of expression,—and Epic diction ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... using it as a stepping-stone to preferment rather than as a route to Nirvana. Official posts being practically monopolized by the aristocratic classes, those born in lowlier families found little opportunity to win honour and emoluments. But by embracing a religious career, a man might aspire to become an abbot or even a tutor to a prince or sovereign. Thus, learned and clever youths flocked to the portals of the priesthood, and the Emperor Saga is said to have lamented that the Court ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... time and of ours have thought of Byron, how he "strikes" them; but unless we are ourselves saturated with his thought and style, unless we learn to breathe his atmosphere by reading the books which he read, picturing to ourselves the scenes which he saw,—unless we aspire to his ideals and suffer his limitations, we are in no way entitled to judge his poems, whether they be good ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... to the allure of Valencia Van Tyle, admitting a finish of beauty to which mere youth could not aspire, all that was idealistic in him went out to the younger cousin whose admiration and shy swift friendship he was losing. His vanity refused to accept this at first. She was a little piqued at him because of ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... but the want of one or more of these will not invalidate the election, nor the union of all four insure it. It must be very pleasant to serve in the compagnie d'elite. They have privileges to which the Line may not aspire. It does not much matter what they do. Their victories make them no enemies, and their defeats raise them up hosts of sympathizers and apologists. When they err gravely, if you hint at the misdemeanor, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... industrial opportunity for those who believe themselves possessed of exceptional talent and aspire "to rise." ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... West, whose rivers are shallow and uncertain, the steamers are built to run on a heavy dew. Allowing for the joke, this is not more nice than wise. To be dexterous, fine-fingered, facile! How perfect is the response in all the petty personalities of politics! In this America, where all men aspire, and more men get office than one would think there were offices to get, what miracles of adroitness! It is one perpetual, Turn, turn again, Lord Mayor! If but half the genius were diverted from office-getting to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Childhood is too buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth—when its passions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are opening fresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade, young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspire to be saddened with the first failure—is the season when the seeds of disquiet and unhappiness are sown in the soul. And in the most gifted and sensitive souls these seeds are oftenest sown. Those of highly poetic temperaments, of delicate and ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... my primitive stuff, my "old man." And yet if some one will but give me a little love, will but penetrate a little into my inner feeling, I am happy and ask for scarcely anything else. A child's caresses, a friend's talk, are enough to make me gay and expansive. So then I aspire to the infinite, and yet a very little contents me; everything disturbs me and the least thing calms me. I have often surprised in my self the wish for death, and yet my ambitions for happiness scarcely go beyond those ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lodgings to be prepared for these ladies, and he made them great and hearty cheer, without showing particular affection to any one. Indeed, unless Parliament prays him to take another wife, he will not I think be in a hurry to marry; besides, few if any ladies now at Court would aspire to such an honour, for a law has just been passed, that should any King henceforth wish to marry a subject, the lady will be bound on, pain of death to declare if any charges of misconduct can be ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... barrister of Saintes, and was the leading lawyer in his town about 1833. This led him to aspire to legislative honours. M. Dufaure arrived in the Chamber with a provincial and cold-in-the-nose accent that was very queer. But he possessed a mind so clear that occasionally it was almost luminous, and so accurate that occasionally it ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... seemed less hedged about by sabbatical restrictions. Not that she wished her family to be of the questionable sort that went to El Campo or Shell Mound Park for Sunday picnics and returned in quarrelsome state at a late hour smelling of bad whisky and worse gin. Nor did she aspire to have sprung from the Teutonic stock that perpetrated more respectable but equally noisy outings in the vicinity of Woodward's Gardens. But she had a furtive and sly desire to float oil-like upon the surface of this turbid ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... But the intrigues, the intrigues!" I saw her little hand clenched on the closed fan. There were no bounds to his audacity. He wasted their wealth. "The audacity!" He had overawed her father's mind; he claimed descent from his Irish kings, he who——— "Senor, my English cousin, he even dares aspire to my person." ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... thou worthiest, best of men Particulo, for whom my pen Immortal honour will insure, Long as a rev'rence shall endure For Roman learning—if this strain Cannot your approbation gain, Yet, yet my brevity admire, Which may the more to praise aspire, The more our poets now-a-days Are tedious ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... saying that a man does not talk about his own sister. When he had declared, with so much affectionate admiration for his friend's prowess, that he might aspire to the hand of any lady, that one retiring, modest-browed girl had not been thought of by him. A man in talking to another man about women is always supposed to consider those belonging to himself as exempt from the incidents of the conversation. The dearest friends do not talk to each other ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... professor and his pupils preparing for their degree. For me, the outsider, to enter that tabernacle with my band of young imps would be most unseemly; the rightful occupant would never think of allowing it. I feel it myself: elementary teaching dare not aspire to such familiarity with the higher culture. Very well, we will not go there, so long as they will lend ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... benefactors who have raised us from the ground, Even as were raised from brutal dust our countrymen around; Now ignorance shall furl her wing, and while our hopes aspire, To all her native darkness she must in despair retire. Each nook will have its scholar craft, and high in learning's scale Will mount the inspirations of the language of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... navigation, with the favour of God, by shorter routes. I offer much, well do I see it, but I trust in almighty God with whose favour, I believe I can do what I say in your royal service. The talent which God has given me leads me to aspire to the accomplishment of these achievements, and does not demand of me a strict account, and I believe that I shall comply with what will be required, for never did I so wish to achieve anything. Your Majesty ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... imagination, which is generally somewhat worse; for if he knew how to imagine well or in a masterly manner in his fantasy, he could not have a hand so corrupt as not to show some part or indication of his good will. But no one has ever known how to aspire well in this science, except the mind which understands what good work is, and what he can make of it. It is a serious thing, this distance and difference which exist between the high and the low ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... impossible—left their son free to choose his own career; he might be a notary in Paris, king's-attorney in some district, collector of customs no matter where, broker, or post master, as he pleased. What fancy of his could they ever refuse him? to what position of life might he not aspire as the son of a man about whom the whole countryside, from Montargis to Essonne, was in the habit of saying, "Pere Minoret doesn't even know how rich ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful woman, a noble woman, a wealthy woman. With her as his wife, love, riches, power might all be his. What more could the warm, warm feelings of youth desire? what more could the ambitions of youth aspire to? Yesterday, it is true, he had felt some rising of that noble pride which scorns to receive so much and give so little. He had formed a wild, almost passionate determination to obtain his brief before he obtained his bride, but Mr. Harman had soothed ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... precursor of the delightful cold season, the advent of which is anxiously looked for by every Anglo-Indian. The little khunjunee makes his appearance in the early part of November, and departs as the hot season approaches—I think in March or April. The note of this little bird can hardly aspire to be called a song; I used, however, to think it a pleasing twitter. I paid particular attention to two khunjunees, which used to return every season and haunt our habitation: they would pick up insects from the pavement, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... with them to the house and opened the wrought-iron gate that guarded the entrance, and the massive front door. Honora had a sense of unreality as they entered, and told herself it was obviously ridiculous that she should aspire to such a dwelling. Yesterday, under the spell of that somewhat adventurous excursion with Mr. Cuthbert, she had pictured herself as installed. He had contrived somehow to give her a sense of intimacy with the people who lived ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the states of mind caused by him in the household, was the evoker of flutters in yet another female breast. The girl, Molly, had read toilsomely through "Pamela," and saw no reason why an equally attractive housemaid should not aspire to an equally high destiny on this side of the ocean. But, often as she artfully contrived that the black boy should forget some part of the guest's dinner, and timely as she planned her own visits with the missing portion, she found the officer heedless of her smiles, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... ourselves that at such and such a time and in such and such circumstances nature does not ask our leave; that we have got to take her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if we really aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even ... to the chemical retort, there's no help for it, we must accept the retort too, or else it will be accepted ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... you will not leave this field without pastors, where the gospel is being received as the greatest benefit to which the people can aspire for ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... unbought justice. It was the transition from an order of things in which everything belonged to individuals, to another in which everything was to belong to the nation. That night changed the face of the kingdom; it made all Frenchmen equal; all might now obtain public employments; aspire to the idea of property of their own, of exercising industry for their own benefit. That night was a revolution as important as the insurrection of the 14th of July, of which it was the consequence. It made the people masters of society, as the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... himself a servant of Jesus Christ. I supposed we all ought to be terrified at thoughts of this kind, and that none but the apostles might boast of such honor. But the fact is, we must all say to Christ: "Thou art my Lord and I am thy servant; for I believe on thee and aspire to be with thee and all the faithful and to possess thy Word and Sacrament." Otherwise Christ will ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... jolly covies, vot faking do admire, [1] And pledge them British authors who to our line aspire; Who, if they were not gemmen born, like us had kicked at trade, And every one had turned him out a genuine fancy ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Then begin men to aspire to the second prizes; to be a profound interpreter and commenter, to be a sharp champion and defender, to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is the unfortunate succession of wits which the world hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... temps cet homme nouveau du paradis maternel; encore un jour; demain a la bonne heure, mon Dieu! il sera bien temps; demain, il se courbera au travail, il rampera sur son sillon.... Aujourd'hui laissez-le encore, qu'il prenne largement la force et la vie, qu'il aspire d'un grand coeur l'air vitale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... looks, good birth, good-humor, and good assurance will do much; but the want of one or more of these will not invalidate the election, nor the union of all four insure it. It must be very pleasant to serve in the compagnie d'elite. They have privileges to which the Line may not aspire. It does not much matter what they do. Their victories make them no enemies, and their defeats raise them up hosts of sympathizers and apologists. When they err gravely, if you hint at the misdemeanor, a "true believer" ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... we both aspire high, for two young foresters, do we not? However, they say 'Every dog has his day,' and Cromwell and his parliament may have theirs. King Charles may be on his throne again now, long before—you ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... decrepit sottishness of others. They never dreamed that these pretended warriors, whose bloodless swords had rusted in their scabbards, would attempt to snatch the staff of command from the veteran generals of France; and that nobles who had grown old in sloth and ignorance would aspire to ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the young man a listless hand. He couldn't forgive Herr Lippheim. That he should ever, under whatever encouragements from Karen's guardian, have dared to aspire to her, was ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Lunenberg.[170] Vaughan arrived in due time at the elector's court, was admitted to audience, and delivered his letters. The prince read them, and in the evening of the same day returned for answer a polite but wholly absolute refusal. Being but a prince elector, he said, he might not aspire to so high an honour as to be favoured with the presence of an English ambassador. It was not the custom in Germany, and he feared that if he consented he should displease the emperor.[171] The meaning of such a reply ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... there be any instance of a State wherein the people, living neatly and plentifully, did not aspire to wealth? ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... beauty, or fashion, or dress, or frivolous accomplishments, may be guilty of this folly; but not the parent or the person who commends in a child those things which are really commendable, and after which it is his greatest glory to aspire. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... character would be gone for ever. No more perfumed tablets, full of vows and raptures. No more toying with fingers at the circus. No more evening walks along the Tiber. No more hiding in chests or jumping from windows. I, the favoured suitor of half the white stoles in Rome, could never again aspire above a freed-woman. You a man of gallantry, and think of such a thing! For shame, my dear Coelius! Do not let ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his hand. 'I told my landlord as much. Am I a Talmud-sage that I should thus aspire? Forgive and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Vendome, to-day our support. The princes, my sons, give promise of virtues as excellent, and will be worthy to aspire to destinies as noble. It is my desire and my duty to give no thought to my private griefs begotten of an ill-assorted marriage. May the King ever be adored by his people; may my children ever be beloved and cherished ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... struggle against Hume, Kant was not concerned to challenge his opponent's definition of man's reasoning power. His sole object was to show that, if one accepted this definition, one must not go as far as Hume in the application of this power. All that Kant could aspire to do was to protect the ethical from attack by the intellectual part of man, and to do this by proving that the former belongs to a world into which the latter has no access. For with his will man belongs to ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... many now, who are either drawn to him by his lyrics, which open an undreamed-of fountain of sympathy to many a silent and otherwise solitary heart, or who else are held spell-bound by his grand and eloquent poetical utterances of what the human race may aspire to. A being of this transcendent nature seems generally to be more the outcome of his age, of a period, the expression of nature, than the direct scion of his own family. So in Shelley's case there ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... my vanity a deadly thrust. Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation as a local editor of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire to a place on a big San Francisco daily some day." There's a comment on human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... whom I admire are particularly contagious, but I remain indifferent to the acts of those who are uninteresting. Acts showing a skill to which I aspire are immediately imitated, while acts representing stages of development from which I have escaped are less likely to be imitated. We imitate the acts of hearty, jovial individuals more than the acts of others. This point cannot be pressed too far since a surly and selfish individual often seems ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... strong, to live on very little, to give away nearly all, in order to re-establish primitive equality and bring back to life again the Divine institution: that is the religion I shall proclaim in a little corner of my own, and that I aspire to preach to my twelve apostles under the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... a fine thing to be a public character," observed her father; "but even I aspire to some notice from the True Blue next week in consequence of having old Nicholas for ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... our soul within us burns To see dark Ignorance aspire To move toward light a mind that yearns For knowledge that may lift it higher Upon the royal road of truth, While every word and act and thought Betrays an atmosphere so fraught With lack of common sense and lore, We plead for some ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... tirades against Americans, calling us Rascals, Robbers, Pirates, and saying he would like to burn us! Now I have railed at many of these ordinary women here, for using like epithets for the Yankees, and have felt the greatest contempt for their absurd abuse. These poor women do not aspire to Johnsonian wisdom, and their ignorance may serve as an excuse for their narrow-mindedness; but the wondrous Johnson to rave and bellow like any Billingsgate nymph! Bah! ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the aim of politicians is to appear constant and consistent, artists and literary men aspire to change. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... effect is to give the edifice an air of heavy grandeur. It seems to have been built before the best style of church architecture had established itself; so that it weighs upon the soul, instead of helping it to aspire. First, there are these round arches, supported by gigantic columns; then, immediately above, another row of round arches, behind which is the usual gallery that runs, as it were, in the thickness of the wall, around the nave of the cathedral; then, above all, another row of round arches, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... have their peculiar and insidious perils. I foresee that you will rise to distinction in your studies. But do not seek high things for yourself. Be not anxious to become what is called a great preacher, nor aspire to a 'brilliant settlement.' Sacrifice not conscience for place and power and the applause of sect. Keep humble. Keep Christ ever before you; and may he watch between me and thee while we are separated from each other;" and she kissed him a fond farewell. Tom ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized the existence of a SUPREME BEING, Deity has been considered as the beginning and end of all things, to which all aspire to be united. ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... traditions of the Northern peoples. And after three years of struggle, he was at last ready to break away from Egelykke. If he had not yet conquered his passion, he had so far mastered it that he could aspire ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... never yet was gain'd; You only lose a man that does not know How great the honour is which you bestow; Who dares not hope you love, or if he did, Your Greatness would his just return forbid; His humble thoughts durst ne'er to you aspire, At most he would presume but to admire; Or if it chanc'd he durst more daring prove, You still must languish and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... noon to-morrow to quit this city," Goliba said. "Hasten not thy decision, but what I will show thee secretly ere long will perhaps convince thee of the terrors of the Naya's reign. I have often counselled the queen to aspire to the virtues of truth, wisdom, justice and moderation, the great ornaments of the Emerald Throne, but my endeavours have been frustrated and the fruit ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Fie on lust and luxury! Lust is but a bloody fire, Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart, whose flames aspire, As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. Pinch him, fairies, mutually; Pinch him for his villany; Pinch him and burn him and turn him about, Till candles and star-light and moonshine ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... directly to nominate forty members in addition to the eighty prescribed by the constitution of 1799. Thus, by direct or indirect means, the Senate soon became a strict Napoleonic preserve, to which only the most devoted adherents could aspire. And yet, such is the vanity of human efforts, it was this very body which twelve years later was to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... my own countrymen to ask themselves if the freedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions. Is it merely a transferable commodity? Have they acquired a true love of freedom? Have they faith in it? Are they ready to make space in their society for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal of human dignity, unhindered ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... tableau, De mon trepas tu vois la cause; Au moins ne pense pas du neant du caveau, Que j'aspire a l'apotheose. Tout ce que l'amitie par ces vers propose, C'est que tant qu'ici-bas le celeste flambeau; Eclairera tes jours tandis que je repose, Et lorsque le printemps paraissant de nouveau. De son sein abondant t'offre les fleurs ecloses, Chaque fois d'un ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... alphabet. Your eyes will never see like Lynceus'; still You rub them with an ointment when they're ill: You cannot hope for Glyco's stalwart frame, Yet you'd avoid the gout that makes you lame. Some point of moral progress each may gain, Though to aspire ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the staminate bright yellow, tingeing all the branches and making the trees as they stand in the snow look like gigantic goldenrods. The branches, outspread in flat plumes and, beautifully fronded, sweep gracefully downward and outward, except those near the top, which aspire; the lowest, especially in youth and middle age, droop to the ground, overlapping one another, shedding off rain and snow like shingles, and making fine tents for birds and campers. This tree frequently lives more than a thousand years and is well worthy its place beside the ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the human race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... little feeling; but when the movement is inhibited, or when the thought meets with difficulties, we experience distress. It is only when the distress is upon us that we can be said to strive, to crave, or to aspire. When enjoying plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which we might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say anything about ourselves at such times, "I am sufficient ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... on purpose for him to rescue. Van Tiefel was but a stepping-stone; he was not made for the desk of a counting-house. No heights dazzled him; he saw himself being made a peer or a prince, being granted wide domains by a grateful monarch. He was not too low to aspire to the hand of a king's fair daughter; he was a hero, every inch a hero. Great is the power of beer. Avaunt! ye sallow teetotalers, ye manufacturers of ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... poor, accosted me in the Emperor's Garden. My Lord, said he, I beg you will vouchsafe me an Audience of Quarter of an Hour; I shall look upon it as the greatest Condescension in you, and as the greatest Honour done me. I told him he mistook my Title, and gave me one I never did aspire to; but that I was very ready to hear and serve him, for I had seen him often at Court offering Petitions, which were always rejected, and I ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... friend, take here my hand, Which is as much as if I swore by heaven, And call'd the gods to witness of my vow. Thus shall my heart be still combin'd with thine Until our bodies turn to elements, And both our souls aspire celestial thrones.— Techelles and Casane, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... thence into Germany, is a matter undecided; since they both still use the language, the same customs and the same laws. For, as of old they lived alike poor and alike free, equal proved the evils and advantages on each side the river, and common to both people. The Treverians and Nervians aspire passionately to the reputation of being descended from the Germans; since by the glory of this original, they would escape all imputation of resembling the Gauls in person and effeminacy. Such as dwell upon the bank of the Rhine, the Vangiones, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... Encouragment of the Fine Arts opens to-day, with a handsome entertainment in the Exhibition-room, as at Somerset House. It strikes me that the direction given by amateurs and professors to their proteges and pupils, who aspire to be artists, is upon a pedantic and false principle. All the Fine Arts have it for their highest and more legitimate end and purpose, to affect the human passions, or smooth and alleviate for a time the more unquiet feelings of the mind—to excite wonder, or terror, or pleasure, or emotion of some ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... portion of this illuminative reason and true philosophy is the highest state to which nature can aspire, in the way of intellect; it puts the mind above the influences of chance and necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and superstition, which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds are possessed with some one object, take exaggerated views of its importance, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... scandal. I am certain since that alliance they have moved in society into which they could not gain entrance before. Now, if you marry Stanley Ginsling, as he is first cousin to Lord Fitzjinkins, we will have the entree to society to which they dare not aspire; and then the airs of superiority can be ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... son. I know that it would be madness in us to dare hope to ally ourselves more nearly to the family of your royal highness. I know that the daughter of whom you have so good a right to be proud may aspire to a higher destiny. But I know, also, that you are the most tender of fathers, and that if you ever judged my son worthy of belonging to you, and of contributing to the happiness of the Princess Amelia, you would not be deterred by the grave ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... which wear their teeth away in gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on the point of touching your sceptre, fling her back to the ground, quite gently and with infinite ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... but, if not, we may at least console ourselves for its indefinite postponement, by reflecting that Omnipotence itself is, equally with ourselves, subject to the sort of necessity under which we are groaning; equally destitute of the sort of free-will to which we aspire. It is manifest that, since there cannot be omnipotence without boundless liberty, omnipotence must possess completest freedom of will. Yet even the Will of Omnipotence is subject to the despotism ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... their independence in the sixteenth century against the most formidable regular army in Europe, and also did their fair share of fighting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they have long ceased to aspire to the rank of a military Power. The separation from Belgium in 1830-31 put an end to the Orange policy of creating a powerful Netherland State from Lorraine to the North Sea which could hold its own with either France ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... inevitable between a State that has long held something like the first place in the world and a State that feels entitled in virtue of the number of its people, their character and training, their work and their corporate organisation, to aspire to the first place. The German nation by the mere fact of its growth challenges England for the primacy. It could not be otherwise. But the challenge is no wrong done to England, and the idea that it ought to be resented is unworthy of British ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... the sovereign passion of that lyre Which the stars hear and tremble with desire, The ninefold light Pierian is made one That here we see divided, and aspire, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in a very wonderful manner, sets forth the very central point of His work, even His death upon the Cross for us, as being the pattern to which our poor affection ought to aspire, and after which it must tend to be conformed. I need not remind you, I suppose, that our Lord here is not speaking of the propitiatory character of His death, nor of the issues which depend upon it, and upon it alone, viz., the redemption and salvation of the world. He is not speaking, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... wave With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire: No blast of all that blow Might bid the torch burn low That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre, Indomitable of storm, That now no flaws deform Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire, One light of godlike breath and flame, To write on heaven with man's most glorious names ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... or flat; you could detect and improve a unison that might be badly out, and you might produce an entire scale in which none of the chords would be unbearably rasping. But this is not enough. You should aspire to perfection, and not stop ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... to understand, than is the cognate profession of literature. The whole thing is done in great style. Music is introduced. The lecturer stands on a large raised platform, on which sit around him the bald and hoary-headed and superlatively wise. Ladies come in large numbers, especially those who aspire to soar above the frivolities of the world. Politics is the subject most popular, and most general. The men and women of Boston could no more do without their lectures than those of Paris could without their theaters. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... will at first, just like a beggar, crave One penny or one halfpenny to have; And if you grant its first suit, 'twill aspire From pence to pounds, and so will still mount higher To the whole ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... never morbid; tragic, if you like, but not without hope. We need not aspire too much; but we will not look at the stones in the road all the time. And the dunghills, in which those weird fowl, the pessimistic realists, love to rake, we will sedulously avoid. Cheer up, old fellow, and be thankful that you possess ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... almost touched her shoulder. "Lady Margot is pleased to be friendly and gracious, but she does not belong to my world. She is a star far above the head of a poor struggling barrister, even if he were fool enough to aspire to her, which he certainly would not do so long as there are inhabitants of his own sphere a hundred times more ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... heroes of antiquity, were not only the institutors or restorers of them, but thought it glorious to share in the exercise of them, and meritorious to succeed therein. These subduers of monsters, and of the common enemies of mankind, thought it no disgrace to them, to aspire to the victories in these combats; nor that the new wreaths with which their brows were encircled in the solemnization of these games, detracted from the lustre of those they had before acquired. Hence the most famous poets made ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... man, see things with his eyes, and feel our hearts beat with the emotions that stirred his. All our theories concerning him and his ways must therefore fall far short of certainty; the utmost we can aspire to in such matters is a reasonable ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... said to myself that it is unworthy of a man to allow himself to be subjected by love, unworthy to make a woman the mistress of his thoughts, of his desires; that a man should strive for higher aims, aspire to nobler things." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... the Parson with imprudent warmth, "it is not the character of the aristocracy of this country to keep people down. They make way amongst themselves for any man, whatever his birth, who has the talent and energy to aspire to their level. That's the especial boast of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... given to me, thank God! to know from direct speech what Jaffery thought of Adrian—for Jaffery is too splendid a fellow to have ever said a word in depreciation of his once living friend and afterward dead rival; but both I, who do not aspire to these Quixotic heights and only, with masculine power of generalisation, deduce results from a quiet eye's harvest of mundane phenomena, and Barbara, whose rapier intuition penetrates the core of spiritual things, could, with ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 15 —He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering—not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. 20 Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins; let him never come back to us! 25 There would be ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... to hear of those sweet, shy girls, poor things.[36] I suppose the sister they are now anxious about is the one that would live by herself on the other side of the Lake, and study Emerson and aspire to Buddhism. ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... commendable; godlinesse also and honestie shal become the more glorious. But on the contrary, if pastours of Churches be not answerable to their function, either in life or doctrine; if all men without respect or difference be admitted to the gouernment of the common wealth, who aspire thereunto by their owne rashnesse, ambition, or auarice, and desire of honour, yea though they be suspected or conuicted of crimes and dishonestie, or be protectours or vniust fauourers of such persons as are suspected and conuicted; then what will be thy state, oh Island? What ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... are honest, painstaking, thoroughly reliable, according to their lights. They do excellent journeyman work. But there lies the heart of the whole matter.—Are you content to do journeyman work only; or do you aspire to something greater?—If the former, then you had best forget me and all I have told you this evening as fast as possible. For it will prove a hindrance rather than a help, confusing the issues.—No—no—listen a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. (6. Mr. H. Sidgwick remarks, in an able discussion on this subject (the 'Academy,' June 15, 1872, p. 231), "a superior bee, we may feel sure, would aspire to a milder solution of the population question." Judging, however, from the habits of many or most savages, man solves the problem by female infanticide, polyandry and promiscuous intercourse; therefore it may well be doubted whether it would be by a milder ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... certain Union of Tenderness and Imagination, which in the sense he used Imagination was not the characteristic of Shakspeare, but which Milton possessed in a degree far exceeding other Poets: which Union, as the highest species of Poetry, and chiefly deserving that name, "He was most proud to aspire to;" then illustrating the said Union by two quotations from his own 2d vol. (which I had been so unfortunate as to miss). 1st ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Lays, or Sweet Condoling Strains; Or with a Sonnet make the Vallies ring, To Welcome home the Goddess of the Spring? Or wou'd you in sublimer Themes engage, And sing of Worthies who adorn the Age? Or, with Promethean Boldness, wou'd aspire To Catch a Spark of the Celestial Fire That Crowned the Royal Conquest, and could raise Juverne's Boyn above Scamander's Praise? Drink, drink Inspiring TEA, and boldly draw A Hercules, a Mars, ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... seat in the House of Commons to be regarded almost as a possession for life, and consequently enormously increased the influence of the patrons of boroughs, some of whom could return a number of members such as the mightiest borough monger in England could never aspire to equal.[125] The third difference, of scarcely inferior importance, was, that the Parliament only sat in alternate years. But, though these arrangements suited the patrons and the members of the House of Commons, it was not strange that the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of plain-dealing does more for the salvation ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... changes, and it is again a matter of opinion whether it is in its death-throes or in the pangs of a new birth. But we feel vaguely, yet insistently, that civilization is a state of the soul; it is the gentle life towards which we aspire. It is based on the gradual substitution of moral and spiritual forces for simple brute force. What is the exact relation of religion to civilization? The answer has been as variable as the purpose of the questioners. To some religion is civilization, to others it is merely a temporary weakness ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... friendship with his roommate, John Lothrop Motley. He studied law with Charles Sumner, in the office of Judge Story, a legal star of the first magnitude. He was counted one of the handsomest youths in Boston. There was nothing too bright or too hard for Wendell Phillips to aspire to, or hope for. At the critical moment, when he had to decide upon his future career, ambition sang to him, as to every noble youth. George William Curtis represents Phillips as sometimes forecasting the future, as he saw himself "succeeding Ames, and Otis and Webster, rising ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... whole affair with the shepherd boy. The Keeper of the Key was a little relieved to learn that his suspicions of a fresh conspiracy were unfounded, but filled with indignation that such a person as a shepherd should not alone aspire to but win the heart of his daughter. "What have we come to," he said, "when a wild thing from the hills of Sunnach comes down and dares to lay his hand on the all but perfect water nymphs on the golden knob of my door! Justice ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the chiefs of the eight petty states that compose the confederation of Boni, and he cannot decide on any public measure without their consent. In some of the states the office of chief is hereditary; in others any member of the privileged classes may aspire to the dignity, and it not infrequently happens that the state is governed by a woman. The Bugis have been Mahommedans since the 17th century. Their original form of nature-worship had been much affected by Hindu influences, and even now they retain rites connected with the worship ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... reason for his present attack upon Roosevelt, that he did not wish to give him (Roosevelt) an opportunity to plead that no defense of the Third Term tradition had been made in 1912 should he aspire to another term in 1916. Asked as to how he reconciled his act with the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," he replied that, "religion is the fundamental law of human order, but to kill to try and do a good thing, and to avenge McKinley's ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... culture of all noble social virtues, the sanctity of the household, and the elevation of the state. The thinker has found the largest problems raised and solved therein. The setting forth of a loftier morality, and the enthusiasm which makes the foulest nature aspire to and reach its heaven-touching heights, are found together there. To it poet and painter, architect and musician, owe their noblest themes. The good news of the world is the story of Christ's life and death. Let us be thankful for its form; let ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... indulged in dreams of going back to England to fill some great railway post, but he had reached his sixties and his dreams were over. Often, when we talked familiarly together, he would say: "Joseph, if you aspire to be a general manager in England you ought never to have come to Ireland. They don't think much on the other side of Irish railways or Irish railway men." This, I daresay, was true, though he, well known, liked and admired as he was, ought to have been considered ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... simple, straightforward, and honorable. It is to the man himself, in his crystal integrity, that my heart has bowed, and then—that was his chief power—he made me feel that I was not unworthy. He taught me to respect my own nature, and to aspire to all that ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... competency with which they can serve your Majesty, and that he honor, favor, and aid them in whatever else arises: the deserving men of that city cannot be prevented from expressing their resentment that, while there are so few rewards to which they can aspire, so many the occasions in which to serve, and so remote the qualification of their merits, that small part should be taken away from them, and that, in order to enjoy those offices, they should have to be bought. Moreover, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... march prospering—not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre: Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: 20 Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins: let him never come ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... above all names of heroes, higher Than song may sound or heart of man aspire, Rings as the very voice that speaks the sea To-day from ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... without giving us the least strength wherewith to do it. It condemns us for not doing right, even when we have no power to do anything but what is wrong. It shows us a great ideal of goodness to which we ought to aspire, and discourages us by the very loftiness of the standard. It tells us in the same breath that we are sinners, and that we ought to be angels. It seems at the same time to elevate and degrade us. It elevates us by giving a great object to life, and making it serious and earnest; but it degrades ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... favourable to our faith, but also that the particular maxims cast up against us as not being consistent with our Catechism are in reality consistent with it in a clearly conceived way.' I do not see that one has need of all that, unless one aspire to press reasoning as far as the how of the Mystery. When one is content to uphold its truth, without attempting to render it comprehensible, one has no need to resort to philosophic maxims, general or particular, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... and iron bars which prejudice had erected round the pulpit, the bar, and the bench. From the same cause there was very little encouragement to acquire property, to seek education, to labor for the graces of cultivated manners, or even to aspire to ordinary respectability, since not even the poor favor of social intercourse with the whites, of participating in the civilities and courtesies of every day ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... must see and do a great deal we do not ourselves like even to think of, but they should adopt some other profession unless they are prepared for this; they may even get inoculated with poison from a dead body and lose their lives, but they must stand their chance. So if we aspire to be priests in deed as well as name, we must familiarise ourselves with the minutest and most repulsive details of all kinds of sin, so that we may recognise it in all its stages. Some of us must doubtlessly perish spiritually in such ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... have grown tired of rapture and love's desire; Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire Till they cloud the soul in the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... conversation, he never lost the modesty and seriousness of the convent, nor drew ridicule upon himself by an affected imitation of fashionable life. To the same praise every man devoted to learning ought to aspire. If he attempts the softer arts of pleasing, and endeavours to learn the graceful bow and the familiar embrace, the insinuating accent and the general smile, he will lose the respect due to the character of learning, without arriving at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... man to let the grass grow under his feet when an object was to be gained. It was with a sure prescience that Mark Wylder's letter had inferred that Stanley Lake would aspire to the representation either of the county or of the borough of Dollington. His mind was already ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... vice, just as the bodies of wretched children are bent and their bones broken by jugglers when they train them. Bertrand himself felt an adoration for her surpassing ordinary human passion. When he reached the summit of a happiness to which in his wildest dreams he had never dared to aspire, the young count nearly lost his reason. In vain had his father, Charles of Artois (who was Count of Aire, a direct descendant of Philip the Bold, and one of the regents of the kingdom), attempted by severe admonitions to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the best result for the state. But the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... inheritance,—how he had become so indebted to Davis as to have to seek a new fortune out of England,—how he had bade farewell to Folking for ever,—and how impossible it was under all these circumstances that he should aspire to the hand ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... crime greater in princes," said Maximilian, "than to tyrannize over the consciences of their subjects. By shedding the blood of heretics, far from honoring the common Father of all, they incur the divine vengeance; and while they aspire, by such means, to crowns in heaven, they justly expose themselves to the loss of their ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... affecting earnestness of serious conversation, and allured by the attractive beauty of a consistently serious life. And while a young woman ought to dread the name of a wrangling polemic, it is her duty to aspire after the honourable character of a sincere Christian. But this dignified character she can by no means deserve, if she is ever afraid to avow her principles, or ashamed to defend them. A profligate, who makes it a point to ridicule everything which comes under the appearance ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... are paid, In the possession of this Royal Maid, To whom my guilty Heart durst ne'er aspire, But rather chose to languish in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in body he cannot come, and the like; let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is, immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Sertorius, as soon as they were put into a condition to hope that they were a match for the opposite party, and their fears were over, began to feel envious, and had a foolish jealousy of the power of Sertorius. Perpenna encouraged this feeling, being urged by the empty pride of high birth to aspire to the supreme command, and he secretly held treasonable language to those who were favourable to his designs. "What evil daemon," he would say, "has got hold of us, and carried us from bad to worse—us who did not brook to stay ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... up his room in the cabin to my mother and sister, and slept and lived with me. Most of all he cheered us by the lofty, spiritual words with which he bade us look with contempt upon the troubles of life and aspire after immortal happiness. Yes, Louis; ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... tease the little girl nearly so much, for she knew no matter how sweet and lovely and good a cat might be, it could only aspire to that honor in catland. She did so hate to hear Mr. Clay called old and poor when he was neither. To her he was brave Harry of the West, the ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... cried bitterly. 'You have set evil reports afloat against me, lest I stand in your light with the Mayor's daughter. What are you that you should dare to raise your eyes to her! A mere vagrant and masterless man, coming none know whence. Why should you aspire to pluck the flower which has grown up amongst us? What had you to do with her or with us? ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... press the grape; or crush out wrong. And strengthen right. Give me the man of sturdy palm And vigorous brain; Hearty, companionable, sane, 'Mid all commotions calm, Yet filled with quick, enthusiastic fire;— Give me the man Whose impulses aspire, And all his features seem to say, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... due regard for these "convenances" will ensure that sense of propriety in dress which will make everyone remember both her station and her means. The fine lady will not effect the simplicity of the village girl, nor the village girl aspire to be mistaken for the fine lady. Both will maintain their own positions, and will be respected ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... great glory of the nation is felt to be the works of its scientific and learned men of the past and present. Membership of one of the five academies of the Institute of France is counted among the highest honors to which a Frenchman can aspire. Most remarkable, too, is the extent to which other considerations than that of merit are set aside in selecting candidates for this honor. Quite recently a man was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences who was without either university or official position, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... dream of happiness had been realized. She was to go to the land of the red-headed stranger where she would be admired and courted, and where, in time, she might aspire to the ultimate honor of having her picture in a ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... next age is the Heroic, in which the world began to aspire toward better things; but OVID omits this altogether, and gives, as the fourth and last, the Iron Age, also called the Plutonian Age, full of all sorts of hardships and wickedness. His description of it ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the younger existed an almost passionate love. Tom watched over Fred with a woman's poignant attention and self-less care. Fred looked up to Tom as to something miraculous, that which he himself would aspire to be, were he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... not care to use this as an argument. I chose to win you by personal means alone, to have you give yourself to Tinoir Doltaire because you set him before any other man. I am vain, you see; but then vanity is no sin when one has fine aspirations, and I aspire ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... receive it, as I would the sentence of the gods, and which I will no more resist than I would the thunderbolts of Jove, or the revenge of angry Juno: for, madam, my immense passion knows no medium between life | and death, and as I never had the presumption to aspire to the glory of the first, I am not so abject as to fear I am wholly deprived of the glory of the last: I have too long lain convicted, extend your mercy, and put me now out of pain: you have often wrecked me to confess ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... number of various happenings in various tete-a-tetes; then to make a suitable match,—so as to enable the agreeable detrimentals to make love to us, with perfect safety—as you were doing just now, for instance. And after that, we develop into bulbous chaperones, and may aspire eventually to a kindly quarter of a column in the papers, and, quite possibly, the honour of having as many as two dinners put off on account of our death. Yes, it is very simple. But, in heaven's name," Stella demanded, with ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... is rich in resources for which advancing civilization continually makes demands. And, in the case of Mexico, the products of the tropics, such as rubber, are increasingly necessary to the industrial powers of the temperate zone. On the other hand, if the exploiting nation aspire to self-government, the imperialistic method of obtaining these products by the selfish exploitation of the natural and human resources of the backward countries reacts so powerfully on the growth of democracy at home—and hence on the growth of democracy throughout ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain." ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... and makes it a very easily applied, and very searching test, of our lives. Whatever we profess, that which we feel ourselves dependent on, that which we invest, erroneously or rightly, with supreme attributes of excellence, that which we aspire after as our highest good, that which shapes and orders the current of our lives, is our god. We call ourselves Christians. I am afraid that if we tried ourselves by such a test, many of us would fail to pass it. It would thin the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... certainly not moderate in their charges, they are at least more so than those of Bermuda. In a word, it is exactly such a town as one would expect to find holding the principal commercial rank in a colony where men's minds seldom aspire beyond the ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... the very blossom of civilisation triumphant and hopeful; it would fain lead men to aspire towards perfection: each hope that it fulfils gives birth to yet another hope: it bears in its bosom the worth and the meaning of life and the counsel to strive to understand everything; to fear nothing and to hate ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... successors. Ido not suggest the adoption, for present use, of an obsolete system. But, while I earnestly repudiate the acceptance and the maintenance amongst ourselves of a most degenerate substitute for a noble Science, Ido aspire to aid in restoring HERALDRY to its becoming rank, and consequently to its early popularity, now in our own times. This is to revive the fine old Heraldry of the past, to give to it a fresh animation, and to apply it ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... old office, wrote his resignation, and walked home meditating to what next step above he should now aspire to rise. 'Excelsior!' he still said to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... not, fair Dorset, I do not aspire, With notes so unhallowed as mine, To touch the sweet strings of thy beautiful lyre, Or covet the ...
— The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast • Mr. Roscoe
... influence everywhere, insinuating itself into our personal dispositions and insensibly communicating its spirit to our private transactions. The idea in his hands made for hope. Reform, or better still, abolish governments, and to what heights of virtue might not men aspire? We need not say with Rousseau that men are naturally virtuous. The child, as Helvetius delighted to point out, will do that for a coral or a doll which he will do at a mature age for a title or a sceptre. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... my dear people at home some idea of the beauties we have out here," exclaimed D'Arcy, who happened to look in the day Sophy had finished her sketch. "I should be so thankful if you could make a copy for me; still more so if I might aspire ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... For those who aspire to live in comfort and in a respectable neighborhood, and to occupy a whole house, the average is from five to six thousand dollars. With six thousand dollars a year, a family of five persons, living in a rented house, will be compelled ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Clerambault felt slightly dazed, and sat drinking in the strange happiness that the heart feels when, however unfortunate itself, it has been able to help another now or in the future. How profound is the instinct for happiness, the plenitude of being! All aspire to it, but it is not the same for all. There are some that wish only to possess; to others, sight is possession, and to others yet, faith is sight. We are links of a chain and this instinct unites us; from those who only seek their own good, or that ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... they whine and pine over certain abstract principles of equality and brotherhood, but which, alas, fade into impalpable air under the application of a concrete test. They sit in the shadow of the tree of liberty and boast of its protecting boughs, but must not aspire to partake of the fruit thereof. The undershrubbery purchases shade and protection at too dear a price when it sacrifices therefor the opportunity of the glorious sunlight of heaven. No healthy, vigorous breed ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... degenerated, you will measure yourself with young giants. You will see those who, in the Law, the Church, the State, or the still cloisters of Learning, are destined to become the eminent leaders of your age. To rank amongst them you are not forbidden to aspire; he who in youth "can scorn delights, and love laborious days," ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... constituents of a devotional frame that the bulk of nominal Christians are defective. This they freely declare (secretly feeling perhaps some complacency from the frankness of the avowal) to be a higher strain of piety than that to which they aspire. Their forgetfulness also of some of the leading dispositions of Christianity, is undeniably apparent in their allowed want of the spirit of kindness, and meekness, and gentleness, and patience, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... and ratified against French jealousy at Sedan. Costly has been the achievement; lavish has been the expenditure of German blood, severe the sufferings of the German people. It is the lot of all who aspire high—no man or nation ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... royal youth reject the artless praise, Which due to worth like thine the Muse bestows, Who with prophetic extasy surveys These early wreaths of fame adorn thy brows. Aspire like Nassau in the glorious strife, Keep thy great fires' examples full in eye; But oh! for Britain's sake, consult a life The noblest triumphs are too mean to buy; And while you purchase glory—bear in mind, A prince's truest ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... women were busy over the very beautiful work by which flowers and other devices were represented by inlaying different coloured marbles and semi-precious stones in black and white, so as to make tables, slabs, and letter-weights, and brooches for those who could not aspire to the most splendid and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fleury did not all at once aspire to all-powerfulness. Assured in his heart of his sway over the as yet dormant will of his pupil, he suffered the establishment of the Duke of Bourbon's ministry, who was in a greater hurry to grasp the power he had so long ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "While I so lingered where those rocks aspire, I saw a dwarf guide two of goodly strain; Whose coming added hope to my desire (Alas! desire and hope alike were vain) Both barons bold, and fearful in their ire: The one Gradasso, King of Sericane, The next, of youthful ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... I do not doubt, the visit of the distinguished member of the Government of the United States shall make the peoples of the north and the south know one another better; if the era of Pan American fraternity takes the flight to which we should aspire; if these demonstrations of courtesy are to tend, therefore, toward the progress of the nations of the continent and the mutual respect and consideration of their respective governments, the satisfaction of having promoted some of these benefits and the honor ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... higher part in the Republic than can be played by men of closed minds or of unthinking habits or by organized ignorance. We aspire again to a share in the constructive work of the government in these stirring days of great tasks at home ...
— The South and the National Government • William Howard Taft
... bringing about the perfect State. The man with broad views will, I think, see that both progressive individuals and a progressive State are necessary, that they are complementary one to the other. He will aspire after a free and self-reliant Ireland, and the first thing he will do in order to realize his aspirations will be to make himself self-reliant and free—free from everything that is shameful and ignoble, as he wishes to see his country free from the shame of foreign conquest and the ignominy ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... necessary, and for conference to succeed there must be a common vehicle of expression and a common plane of thought. It is for this essential preparation that theoretical study alone can provide; and herein lies its practical value for all who aspire to the higher responsibilities of the ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... was also his besetting weakness. He did not aspire,—he coveted. Though in a far higher social position than Frank Hazeldean, despite the worldly prospects of his old schoolfellow, he coveted the very things that kept Frank Hazeldean below him,—coveted ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lumley, with a sly look, "I am told that he has the presumption to aspire to the hand ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... offered for scalps on both sides." he observed, with a grim smile, as if he felt the force of the inducement, at the very time he wished to affect a superiority to earning money by means that the ordinary feelings of those who aspire to be civilized men repudiated, even while they were adopted. "It isn't right, perhaps, to take gold for human blood; and yet, when mankind is busy in killing one another, there can be no great harm in adding a little bit of skin ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the motive upon which those gentlemen do not deny their going to India. The fame of conquest, barbarous as that motive is, is but a secondary consideration: there are certain stations in wealth to which the warriors of the East aspire. It is there, indeed, where the wishes of their friends assign them eminence, where the question of their country is pointed at their return. When shall I see a commander return from India in the pride of honourable poverty? You describe the victories they have gained; they are sullied by the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... distinction? Because the apprehension of the Godhead is beyond the requirements of salvation and redemption, and the world and flesh were created for those purposes. Though there is no limit to the heights to which the soul may aspire, and all souls are invited eventually to behold the Face of God, if so be they shall be able to prepare themselves to endure Him, there are to a soul still in flesh the most terrible dangers in knowing the Fullness of God even so far as His Fullness may be Known to Flesh: ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... 7, 1862, that Lord Robert Cecil said in Parliament: "The plain fact is that the Northern States of America can never be our sure friends, because we are rivals politically, rivals commercially. We aspire to the same position. We both aspire to the government of the seas. We are both manufacturing people, and, in every port as well as at every court we are rivals of each other.... With the Southern States the case is entirely reversed. The people are an agricultural people. They furnish the raw ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... you love dancing and aspire to make it a career, you possess an innate sense of rhythm. You feel the swing of music and love to move your body to the strains of a lilting melody. The first great possessions of the successful stage dancer are a love of harmonious sounds and a sense of rhythmic motion. ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Old World meaning of the term there are no classes of society here. There is no condition of life, however low, from which a man may not aspire and rise to the highest honors and the most enviable distinction, provided that he has the requisite natural endowments, favorable opportunities, and the ability and foresight to grasp them. The materials of which our American population ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... impulse is possess'd; Unconscious of the other still remain! Two souls, alas! are lodg'd within my breast, Which struggle there for undivided reign: One to the world, with obstinate desire, And closely-cleaving organs, still adheres; Above the mist, the other doth aspire, With sacred vehemence, to purer spheres. Oh, are there spirits in the air, Who float 'twixt heaven and earth dominion wielding, Stoop hither from your golden atmosphere, Lead me to scenes, new life and fuller yielding! A magic mantle did ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the dusty chaff of empty pleasures, Yea, till His flail upon us He doth lay, To thresh the husk of this our flesh away; And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more, Till God shall make our very spirit poor, We shall not up to highest wealth aspire; But then we shall; and ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... acting and speaking with reference to the effect his acts and sayings may have had upon his claims for political preferment. If he should ever change his mind, however, no one has a better right than he has to aspire to anything within the gift of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... conviction, even in many of those in whom its existence is least apparent, that honourable and affectionate remembrance after death with a full and certain hope that it will be ours is the highest prize to which the highest calling can aspire. Few pass through this world without feeling the vanity of all human ambitions; their faith may fail them here, but it will not fail them—not for a moment, never—if they possess it as regards posthumous respect and affection. The world may prove hollow but a well-earned ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... did not especially aspire to Shakespearian production, he used the great bard's works as models for appraising other plays. "Shakespeare invented farce comedy," he once said, "and whenever I consider the purchase of such a thing I compare its scenes with the most famous of all farces, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... in his correspondence in order to command respect. Never use loose or slang expressions. The business man should be a gentleman. Indulge in no display of superior knowledge or education, but temper each paragraph with respect and deference to others. The learner who would aspire to write a good letter, should, after having finished his attempt, go over each sentence carefully and wherever the pronoun I occurs, modify the expression so ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all oppression and injustice practised upon her has been sure in the end to rebound upon himself. If there ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... improbable. But when he saw the ascendency that his wit and character had gained for him among rude and uncultivated settlers on the borders of civilization, then, being a born leader of men, as Jackson was, it was perfectly natural that he should aspire to be a politician. Politics ever have been the passion of Western men with more than average ability, and it required but little learning and culture under the sovereignty of "squatters" to become a member of the State legislature, especially in the border States, where population was sparse, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Troy, nor thus have I borne myself by thy side while following noble Aeneas to his utmost fate. Here is a spirit, yes here, that scorns the light of day, that deems lightly bought at a life's price that honour to which thou dost aspire.' ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... how she is situated," replied Victorine. "From infancy has Caliste been taught to aspire to the rose, every year has she ardently expected it; now this time her name is on the list, and her own sister, younger by three years, steps forward and takes it from her. Our parents, too, rejoice with the child that rejoices; they love one daughter equally with ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar and near, Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here; Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... good-morrows, and perpetual orators; which makes me verily think that the supremest height of heroic virtue described by Hesiod consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first degree in my commencement. Which dignity, though all human creatures seem to aim at and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties in the way and encumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harboured in the breast of everyone to be still creating ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... belong to every one to practise the sublime virtues of fortitude, magnanimity, endurance unto death, patience, constancy, and courage. The occasions of exercising these are rare, yet all aspire to them because they are brilliant and their names high sounding. Very often, too, people fancy that they are able, even now, to practise them. They inflate their courage with the vain opinion they have of themselves, but when put to the trial fail pitiably. They are ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... bags, which he conceived would fit his needs, and an ambition. This last was nothing less than to strike it rich and set himself up among the eminently bourgeois of London. It seemed that the situation of the wealthy English middle class, with just enough gentility above to aspire to, and sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, appealed to his imagination, though of course he did not put it ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... boys fell in love with her according to their natures, thus further complicating the situation. Hooliam, the ignorant savage, could not aspire to her hand, of course, but the young doctor courted her, and she looked kindly on him. I do not consider that she was ever in love with him, though apart from the dark strain he was worthy of it as men go, a manly ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... said Girofle. "And the hand of a Princess is an honour to which I do not aspire, since I am ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the Count Orlando and of Sacripant. She reproached herself too as with a weakness that she had ever thought of marrying Rinaldo; in fine, her pride grew so high as to persuade her that no man living was worthy to aspire to her hand. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... virtuous Lord, with gracious eyes— Those heavenly lamps which give the Muses light, Which give and take in course that holy fire— To view my Muse with your judicial sight: Whom, when time shall have taught, by flight, to rise Shall to thy virtues, of much worth, aspire. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... and go on thinking, and yet my thoughts are running ever in different directions. I hardly know whether or no we do lean more confidently than our fathers did on those high hopes to which we profess to aspire." ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... aspire, we resolve, we trust, When the morning calls us to life and light, But our hearts grow weary, and, ere the night, Our lives are trailing the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... for almost any base proposal save this one. She knew that his cupidity and insolence stopped at nothing, but never did she imagine he would have the wild presumption to aspire to ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... thee thousand kisses! Hoping what I most desire; Not a mother's fondest wishes Can to greater joys aspire! ...
— Grandma's Memories • Mary D. Brine
... contrast greater between the old world and the new than in municipal government. In the former the families reside for generations in the place of birth with increasing devotion to the town and all its surroundings. A father achieving the mayorship stimulates the son to aspire to it. That invaluable asset, city pride, is created, culminating in romantic attachment to native places. Councilorships are sought that each in his day and generation may be of some service to the town. To the best citizens this is a creditable object of ambition. Few, indeed, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... considered, that they are of so unworthy a description as has clearly been made appear in the preceding narrative. That a river justly termed the Nile of New South Wales should fall into such hands is to be lamented. In process of time, however, their productive farms will have yielded them all that they aspire to, and may then fall into the possession of persons who will look beyond the mere gratification of the moment, and cause the settlements in New South Wales to stand as high in the public estimation as any colonies in ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced me to undertake ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... reflect, the greater becomes our desire to know more of ourselves. Always more! Ever more! Never quite satisfied! Fortunately, the immortality of the wisdom loving human soul embraces all time, and all eternity! Therefore, through the law of eternal progression, we may naturally and rightfully aspire to the acquirement of all possible knowledge. In cultivating these aspirations, we may rest assured that we shall constantly gain new conceptions and new meanings for ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... much though I aspire You, and you alone, to please, I refrain from this desire, For 'twould set my heart on fire If I made my lady wheeze; I should well-nigh perish if Aught from me should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... the cardinal in the play—'In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such word as fail.' Without stopping to discuss the reliability of a lexicon that omits words in that careless manner, I must say that in the dictionary of fat men who aspire to gymnastics that word distinctly occurs. I had my misgivings, but was over-persuaded by my friends. They said gymnastics would develop muscular strength, thus enabling me to hold my flesh in case it attempted to run away. They added, as an additional incentive, that the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... seriousness and modesty he listened to the high eulogium upon his achievements which was pronounced, and then replaced. "I receive with sincere gratitude the wish to expressed by the Tribunate. I desire no other glory than having completely performed the task impose upon me. I aspire to no other reward than the affection of my fellow-citizens. I shall be happy if they are thoroughly convinced, that the evils which they may experience, will always be to me the severest of misfortunes; that life is ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... at Midsummer. You may commit a greater evil, to guard against a less which is merely contingent, and may never happen. You may do what you have done a century ago in Ireland, make the Catholics worse than Helots, because you suspected that they might hereafter aspire to be more than fellow citizens; rendering their sufferings certain from your jealousy, while yours were only doubtful from their ambition; an ambition sure to be excited by the very measures which were taken ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... face was beaming. Even Mrs. Carson's face had lost some of its tension. Sommers could watch her manner from his position in the upper hall. She was dismissing a minor guest with a metallic smile. 'To aspire to this!' he murmured unconsciously. 'This, the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... brought me a band for my neck, and gave me the following letter: "Spurn me, but respect my honour and the shadow of peace to which I aspire. No one from this house must confess to Father Mancia; you alone can prevent the execution of that project, and I need not suggest the way to succeed. It will prove whether you have some friendship ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... labours, my abstinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them. But those worthless men lend such a life of inactivity, as if they despised any honours you can bestow; whilst they aspire to honours, as if they had deserved them by the most industrious virtue. They lay claim to the rewards of activity, for their having enjoyed the pleasures of luxury. Yet none can be more lavish than they are in praise of their ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... eternal recurrence, a sorry counterfeit of immortality, and, full of pity for himself, he abominated all pity. And there are some who say that his is the philosophy of strong men! No, it is not. My health and my strength urge me to perpetuate myself. His is the doctrine of weaklings who aspire to be strong, but not of the strong who are strong. Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... incurred therein, since they began to be pacified (a work which still continues) without your Majesty's royal exchequer having any profit, cause your Majesty's very Christian zeal to be well understood, and that what you principally aspire to is the great service which is rendered to our Lord, in spreading His holy evangel in lands so remote, and among people so far removed from the true knowledge, by which, through His goodness and mercy, so many thousands of souls have been converted, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... Lovelace has been guilty of misleading attentions to others besides herself. If she is not the solitary object of his affections, let her at least be the solitary victim of his perfidy. And that Mrs. Porcher should aspire to share her role of betrayed one was, to Serena, a piece of unheard-of impertinence. She refused to bestow further attention upon Miss Hart, and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... liking for him. There was hardly an escape from the recognition of the fact that Mr. Janes, in his serious, romantic way, was in love with Gertrude, but it was evident that he had been held well in hand, and that with him the platonic path had strict barriers, beyond which he did not even aspire to pass. He made Paul his confidant when the two came to intimacy, as they very easily did; and from his simple talk the elder learned again a great deal of what he had learned already from Gertrude—how, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... justness of this character of Mr. Hampden, to whose brave stand against the illegal demand of ship-money we owe our present liberties; but I mention it to you as the character, which with the alteration of one single word, GOOD, instead of MISCHIEF, I would have you aspire to, and use your utmost endeavors to deserve. The head to contrive, God must to a certain degree have given you; but it is in your own power greatly to improve it, by study, observation, and reflection. As for the TONGUE TO PERSUADE, it wholly depends ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... indeed is the man to be found (who has the least share of due diffidence) that dares to look up to Miss Clarissa Harlowe with hope, or with any thing but wishes? Thus the bold and forward, not being sensible of their defects, aspire; while the modesty of the really worthy fills them with too much reverence to permit them to explain themselves. Hence your Symmes's, your Byron's, your Mullins's, your Wyerley's (the best of the herd), and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... but never morbid; tragic, if you like, but not without hope. We need not aspire too much; but we will not look at the stones in the road all the time. And the dunghills, in which those weird fowl, the pessimistic realists, love to rake, we will sedulously avoid. Cheer up, old fellow, and be thankful that you possess ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... depredations, and became at length so annoying that extraordinary measures were taken for their suppression. Pompey, then the most powerful man in Rome, was given absolute control over the Mediterranean. This was not done without opposition, for it was feared that he aspired to kingly rule. "You aspire to be Romulus; beware of the fate of Romulus," said some of the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... he would hardly have survived his own death twenty years; and even his design would have had only an academic interest; but as a painter of prophets and sibyls he is greatest among the very greatest in his craft, because we aspire to a world of prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never heard of radioactivity nor of electrons dancing in vortices of inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone explain the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise than as a musical picture of ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... a soldier or in the equally honorable province of letters. We may well believe, then, that amongst such a people as the Chinese, whose very breath almost is at the emperor's pleasure, such a distinction is the chiefest ambition of every man; for all may aspire to it. ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... in its train, cynicism, pessimism, the drying up of the very springs of life. "The body chilled, jaded and ruined, the cup of pleasure drained to the dregs, the senses exhausted of their power to enjoy, the spirit of its wish to aspire, nothing left but loathing, craving and rottenness." See Spedding in 'Edinburgh Review' for April, 1843. The poem concludes by leaving as an answer to the awful question, "can there be final salvation for the poor wretch?" a reply undecipherable ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... faith at second hand most of the rules on which we base our action and our thought, that each of us may not try to set some corner of his world in the order of reason, or that all of us collectively should not aspire to carry reason as far as it will go throughout the whole domain. In regard to the law, it is true, no doubt, that an evolutionist will hesitate to affirm universal validity for his social ideals, or for the principles which he thinks should ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... for the wings of a dove, that they may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away will not help us. "The Kingdom of God is WITHIN YOU." We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the bottom. Water rests only when it gets to the lowest place. So do men. Hence, be lowly. Pax Vobiscum, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... the offspring of mere concubines or foreign princesses, and possessed but a secondary rank in comparison with himself; but by his union with his sisters Nofritari Maritmut and Isitnofrit, he had at least half a dozen sons and daughters who might aspire to the throne. Death robbed him of several of these before an opportunity was open to them to succeed him, and among them Amenhikhopshuf, Amenhiunamif, and Ramses, who had distinguished themselves in the campaign against the Khati; and some of his daughters—Bitaniti, Maritamon, Nibittaui—by becoming ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... king doo please you, it is to be thought that you would take from him his crowne, and be called and taken for king your selfe, but you shall misse of your purpose surelie therein." The archbishop answered: "I do not aspire to the name of a king, rather would I knit three crownes vnto his crowne if it lay in ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... They knew that to educate him would be to make him dissatisfied with his lot at the bottom of the ladder. They knew that to educate him would introduce the leaven of divine discontent into his being. They knew that to educate him would cause him to aspire to something higher than hard labor or menial service. They knew that to educate him would cause him to know that robbing him of the ballot was reducing him to a pariah in American life and society and making him a political outcast. They ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... exacting and overbearing than he had been during the past week. He went back to London with a strong conviction that time would give him Elizabeth's heart as well as her hand; and that she would learn to forget the unprincipled scoundrel—so Percival termed him—who had dared to aspire to her love. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... years. Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive power, they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive appointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they are employed as captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of their services the third-floor lodging, the wife ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... at midnight parties, at gay suppers, at garish dances, where Gorgio ladies answered the amorous looks of the ambitious Romany with the fiddle at his chin. Because these young Romanys knew they dare not aspire, they were resentful; but Jethro, the head of the rival family and the son of the dead claimant to the headship, had not such compulsory modesty. He had ranged far and wide, and his expectations were extensive. He was nowhere ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... carried on at present without much profit. When the Chinese government requires a vast quantity of copper the order is sent to the United States. Japan cannot be considered as a producer of minerals of sufficient importance to aspire to a profitable career through them, for the yearly aggregate value of all minerals, including gold from the Formosa mines, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... say, if he will, that he may come— May come, my love, my longing, my desire; May come forgiven, shriven, to me his home, And make his happy peace; nay, and aspire To uplift Radha's veil, and learn at length What love ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... hankers after, the son of an emperor may be glad to mate himself with. Is it wonderful, then, that a Grand Duke of all the Russias should aspire to the first feminine genius of a free land, and to a certain modest ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... to ease intense desire With still more tears and windy words of grief, When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief To souls whom love hath robed around with fire? Why need my aching heart to death aspire, When all must die? Nay, death beyond belief Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief, Since in my sum of woes all joys expire! Therefore because I cannot shun the blow I rather seek, say who must rule my breast, Gliding between her gladness and her woe? If only chains ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... another reason may be given for his deficiency in those unremitting labors which the course of academical education, in the present times, is supposed to exact from those who aspire to its distinctions. In the first year of his residence at Cambridge, symptoms of disordered health, especially in the circulatory system, began to show themselves; and it is by no means improbable, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... ordinary planes is the forming of strong mental images important and useful, but when we come to consider the phenomena of the astral plane we begin to see what an important part is played there by strong mental images or visualized ideas. The better you know what you desire, wish or aspire to, the stronger will be your thought vibrations of that thing, of course. Well, then, the stronger that you are able to picture the thing in your mind—to visualize it to yourself—the stronger will be ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... intercourse. It engenders cheerful goodwill and loving sincerity. By its help we make others happy, and ourselves blest. We elevate our being and ennoble our lot. We rise above the grovelling creatures of earth, and aspire to the Infinite. And thus we link time to eternity; where the true Art of Living ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... fought fairly, slain unfairly by us?' Having reflected in this strain for a long while, king Yudhishthira the just, filled with fear and grief, said these words unto Vasudeva: 'Through thy grace, O Govinda, my kingdom hath been reft of thorns! That which we could not in imagination even aspire to obtain hath now become ours, O thou of unfading glory! Before my eyes, O mighty-armed one, making the very hair stand on end, violent were the blows that thou hadst to bear, O delighter of the Yadavas! In the battle between the gods and the Asuras, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... most part, at their election, aged men. Power was, therefore, incessantly passing into new hands. Every election was a revolution in prospects and expectations. In a community where all might rise, where all might aspire to all, it necessarily followed that every man was occupied in thrusting some other into the background. Though the population of the city at the inception of the Reformation had sunk to eighty thousand, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... stream, and these, forth issuing from its gulf, And diving back, a living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith Seem'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... times as useful, and a hundredfold more remunerating. What matters it if Damascus guard jealously the secret of her fragrant clouded steel, when Sheffield can turn out efficient sword-blades at the rate of a thousand per hour? Suum cuique tribuito. Let others aspire to be popular: be it ours to remain irreproachably ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... honesty, That, undesirous of a false renown, He ever wished to pass for what he was, One that swerved much, and oft, but being still Deliberately bent upon the right, Had kept it in the main; one that much loved Whate'er in man is worthy high respect, And in his soul devoutly did aspire To be it all: yet felt from time to time The littleness that clings to what is human, And suffered from the shame of ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Garden. My Lord, said he, I beg you will vouchsafe me an Audience of Quarter of an Hour; I shall look upon it as the greatest Condescension in you, and as the greatest Honour done me. I told him he mistook my Title, and gave me one I never did aspire to; but that I was very ready to hear and serve him, for I had seen him often at Court offering Petitions, which were always rejected, and I had a ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... that I am not a great actor," he achieved. "I can't come anywhere near doing it. I don't believe Irving ever did—or Coquelin. But perhaps it is one of my recommendations that I don't aspire to be great. At any rate people only ask to be amused and helped out just now. It will be a long time before they want anything else, ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... make! They imitate our play; and, in a spirit of play, they contrive to copy to its last and least detail our work. If we play golf or tennis, they also play these games. Are we painters of pictures or writers of books, they too aspire to paint ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... shall be all alone," the countess wrote to him, "and I hope you will have an opportunity of learning more of our ways than you have ever really been able to do as yet." This was bitter as gall to him. But in this world all valuable commodities have their price; and when men such as Crosbie aspire to obtain for themselves an alliance with noble families, they must pay the market price for the article which ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... sweet; Long tales their purposes defeat. Wherefore, thou worthiest, best of men Particulo, for whom my pen Immortal honour will insure, Long as a rev'rence shall endure For Roman learning—if this strain Cannot your approbation gain, Yet, yet my brevity admire, Which may the more to praise aspire, The more our poets now-a-days Are tedious ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... was perfectly indignant at such a proposal. It seemed to her the height of presumption and audacity for a mere general in the army to aspire to a connection by marriage with the imperial family, and to a transfer, in consequence, of the supreme power to himself and to his descendants forever. She resolved immediately to adopt vigorous ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... this nation at least, secure that, as long as the world lasts, there never would be any formidable commotion, or violent sudden changes. All those modifications of the national economy to which an improving people would aspire, and would deserve to obtain, would be gradually accomplished, in a manner by which no party would be wronged, and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... men are not of the same stature, so their minds differ in the means of accepting knowledge, or entertainment, and to please every one is a difficult thing. To hope, therefore, that I should afford amusement to all who read these pages, would be to aspire for that which has not fallen to the lot of any one; but if out of the incongruity of opinions I have expressed, be they ever so weak, or opposed to each other, instruction may be taken, then I shall not have striven without a result. For me, I have no moral lesson to teach; but by writing, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... method of preventing it entirely, and of spoiling the pleasure of the most agreeable society. Neither the choice of his friends nor that of the dishes was made by vanity; for in everything he preferred the substance to the shadow; and by these means he procured that real respect to which he did not aspire. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of loveliness entire In form and thought and act; and still must shame us Because we ever acknowledge and aspire, And yet let slip the shining hands ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... scarcely possible to describe the impotent ardour with which these malignant spirits aspire to the honour of being ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... earth's inhabitants, in a common contrition before a common redemption, tending as these inhabitants are, under a common sin and doom, to the same inevitable graves; but all of them invited, in the one name of one Christ, to aspire to the same heaven of endless and ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... and acknowledge it to be in me: but I speake to this ende, that seeking a farre of the originall of my griefe, you would helpe me to complayne, and thereby to take pitie vpon me. For to tell you the truthe, I am so intricated in the labarinthe of my vnbrideled will, as the more I doe aspire to the better (alas) the worsse I am. Haue not I good cause to complaine my Lorde, that after so manye famous victories achieued by Sea and Lande, wherewith I haue renowmed the memorie of my name in all ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... action that we may date the entry of this title into English history as a mark of rank in the baronage, more and more freely bestowed, a title of honour to which a family of great possessions or influence might confidently aspire. But it must be remembered that the earldoms thus created are quite different from those of the Anglo-Saxon state or from the countships of France. They carried with them increase of social consideration and rank, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... and the popular intellect, and the final result was inevitable. Once aware that they were insulted, once enlightened to the full consciousness of the scorn which trampled on them as intellectual and predestined Helots, even the mild-tempered Germans became fierce, and now began to aspire, not merely under the ordinary instincts of personal ambition, but with a vindictive feeling, and as conscious agents of retribution. It became a pleasure with the German author, that the very ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... self-assurance, partly reposing on the notion of being in a special sense God's chosen people, gives to these claims a certain inward foundation. In the consciousness of an alleged superiority of moral Kultur, the English aspire to rule the world.—PROF. R. SEEBERG, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... ready to leave his pillar; nor did he consider this undertaking as any thing great or singular, by which he should appear distinguished from others. By humility he looked upon himself as justly banished from among men and hidden from the world in Christ. No one is to practise or aspire after virtue or perfection upon a motive of greatness, or of being exalted by it. This would be to fall into the snare of pride, which is to be feared under the cloak of sanctity itself. The foundation of Christian ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... weigh, who does aspire To empire, whether truly great, His head, his heart, his hand, conspire To make him equal to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... sight begot in him a new desire, For that is restlesse alwaies in extreames, Nought but saciety can quench loues fire. Now throgh the christal casem[e]t Phoebus beames Dazled those twinckling starres that did aspire, To gaze vpon his brightnesse being a louer. Tasting her petulans in waking dreames, To hide her from the ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the dignity of anything that human genius can aspire to." Mr. Hastings was calling upon himself, and raising his mind to the dignity of what tyranny could do, what unrighteous exaction could perform. He considered, he says, how much Sujah Dowlah would have exacted, and that he thinks would not be too much for him to exact. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... while I eulogize, There is another claims a prize And puts to shame all gone before; I mean this humble Yankee boar! What lowly hog did yet aspire To ribboned fame as ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... great John L., we suppose that "Handsome Jim" Corbett is the only old time champion who can at all aspire to Sullivan's place in ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... there was nothing to be undone: no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please God, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler way upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey, I might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than he had thought me when I found some favour in his ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... I at a distance, Ayesha, but to come too near to it I do not aspire. If I did perhaps I ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curved point,—what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Beloved,—where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... bitterness was also extended to the secretary of state himself, whom he had been induced to consider as his personal friend, and who had, he said, "initiated him into mysteries which had inflamed his hatred against all those who aspire to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... with "gentleman" that it needs explaining, for, despite the similarity of derivation, no two words can be more distinct. The French gentilhomme must be of noble blood: he must be of ancient and distinguished race, for no nouveau parvenu can ever aspire to be cited as a vrai gentilhomme, while the qualifications necessary for sustaining the character seem to be wholly confined to the one virtue of generosity. Whenever you hear it said of a man, "Il s'est conduit en vrai gentilhomme," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... have? That she should be called by some other more specious name? By that of some quality to which writers and other men do aspire, and under the semblance of which Dulness is actually found to mask itself—as Gravity, Dignity, Solemnity? Why, two losses would thus be incurred. First, the whole mirth of the poem, or the greater part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart beats with accentuation in her presence; and when I come to her some day and clasp her in my arms, as I aspire to do, I trust that her lips may not turn away from mine and that she may be more glad because I am so near and that her stainless heart may sound an echoing chime. For, with a great and troubled adoration, I love her as I have ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... greatness of this man's behaviour! What a presumption was it in your Harriet, ever to aspire to call such a ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... like a king if not looking like one), that he purposely uses the language "the better to blind Klearchus," and make him think that if the Greeks will aid him with their arms, he will revolt and aspire to become ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... not especially difficult to acquire. This being the case it may be hoped that the requisite training to enable them to handle these tests may be included, very soon, as a part of the necessary pedagogical equipment of those who aspire to administrative positions in ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... much in his line. He was interested in them; he had opinions about them; he occasionally intervened in them. But he made no mark on the political work of his time; nor, so far as one can judge, did he aspire to do so. Of the man of letters in the field of politics, he said: "He is in truth not on his own ground there, and is in peculiar danger of talking at random." In politics, as in all else that he touched, he was critical rather than constructive; and in politics, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... Inch Long, and put it into a good Vial full of Spring water, so as the upper part of the Mint was above the neck of the Glass, and the lower part Immers'd in the Water; within a few Dayes this Mint began to shoot forth Roots into the Water, and to display its Leaves, and aspire upwards; and in a short time it had numerous Roots and Leaves, and these very strong and fragrant of the Odour of the Mint: but the Heat of my Chamber, as I suppose, kill'd the Plant when it was grown to have a pretty thick Stalk, which with the various and ramified ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... merely by the authority of great names, and expect to find those charms in tranquillity which have allured statesmen and conquerors to the shades: these likewise are apt to wonder at their disappointment, for want of considering, that those whom they aspire to imitate carried with them to their country-seats minds full fraught with subjects of reflection, the consciousness of great merit, the memory of illustrious actions, the knowledge of important events, and the seeds of mighty designs to be ripened by future meditation. Solitude was ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... her charms, could not aspire to become one of the Forest set, though she had hopes she might be reckoned a descendant from the famous Roses so well known in the reigns of some of our Henrys, Edwards, and Richard III., though she assuredly was of a very different extraction; indeed, it was said that she was bred ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... "His son Geronimo might aspire to the crown," interrupted Granvelle. "He expressed the same doubts to me also. What I heard of the child induced me to plead that he might be allowed to grow up in the world untrammelled. If any ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... de Cleves is a novel of human virtue purely, and teaches that true virtue can find its reward in itself and in the austere enjoyment of duty accomplished. "It is a work that will endure, and be a comfort as well as a guide to those who aspire to a high morality ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... humble his origin, anyone of the male sex was eligible to compete in the examinations which were based upon literary knowledge and memory of the classics. Proficiency in handwriting was a natural result. The successful candidate might aspire to any post in the empire, as official positions were bestowed through literary merit. During three days and two nights at the time of examination the candidate was not allowed to leave his tiny box-like cell, lacking even space to lie down. ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... lest haply she take some coin therefrom and expend it upon her household. O my lords, I am certified of your goodness and graciousness, but poverty and penury are writ in my Book of Fate; how then can I aspire to possessions and prosperity? Withal, never while I breathe the breath of life, shall I be forgetful of this your generous favour." Quoth Sa'di, "Meseemeth I have disbursed four hundred Ashrafis to no purpose in giving ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... system the assumption of a priori principles. Descartes, Leibnitz, Comte, and, as an exceptional English thinker, even Mr. Spencer, receive commendation from him on this account. It is clear, however, that his respect for this talent was of the sort which does not aspire to imitate ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... in your own guilt, and the certainty of your fate; such charges would be regarded as a paltry subterfuge, and no one would credit them. Go, fellow—the bat cannot consort with the eagle, nor can such as you aspire to even the most distant familiarity with persons of my rank. Depart, instantly; and to-morrow you shall receive a pecuniary reward that will amply compensate you for ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... tin plates, knives and forks were preserved as precious relics: the sumpter mules as friends. His faithful servant Oscar, who had accompanied him through all his difficulties, always received high marks of his favour. As to honours, Gen. Marion did not aspire higher than to a seat in the senate, which he continued to fill as long as he pleased, as a member for St. John's. In May, 1790, he was a member of the convention for forming the state constitution; after which he declined all public ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... things to do with the "Ballad Poetry of Ireland"? Much every way. It is the result of the elements we have named—it is compounded of all; and never was there a book fitter to advance that perfect nationality to which Ireland begins to aspire. That a country is without national poetry proves its hopeless dulness or its utter provincialism. National poetry is the very flowering of the soul—the greatest evidence of its health, the greatest excellence of its beauty. Its melody is balsam to the senses. It is the playfellow of childhood ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... blemishes which have been gathered from the experience of the past, our feelings are most holy: we love to identify with the persons of our natural friends all those qualities to which we ourselves aspire, and all those virtues we have been taught to revere. The confidence with which we esteem seems a part of our nature; and there is a purity thrown around the affections which tie us to our kindred that after life can seldom hope to see uninjured. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner, who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, would have been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... battle for their seats, and trusted they were safe in the haven for half a dozen good years to come. Those who were moved by professional ambition, those whose object was social advancement, those who thought only of upright public service, the keen party of men, the men who aspire to office, the men with a past and the men who looked for a future, all alike found themselves adrift on dark and troubled waters. The secrets of the Bill had been well kept. To-day the disquieted ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... married her. The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female followers of Muhammad. This lady died, but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... virtue or a vice according to its direction; but assuredly more of the former, as it is a grand stimulus to officers to avoid reproach, and aspire to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... people. They cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... now has left me, Weary, and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: 15 I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; 20 And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... each other. The Mikado and his ministers, naval and military officers and men, the whole of the civil officials and the police, wear European clothes, as well as a number of dissipated-looking young men who aspire to represent "young Japan." Carriages and houses in English style, with carpets, chairs, and tables, are becoming increasingly numerous, and the bad taste which regulates the purchase of foreign furnishings is as marked ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... latter can only be achieved through arduous and persevering endeavour. Without a genuinely divine element—without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator—we could not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... establishment. They prove their claim to this high consideration, by the zeal with which they improve their minds and cultivate their manners, in order to fill creditably the places to which they confidently aspire. ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... appointed by Charlemagne Duke of Friuli, and governor of that country which he had lately conquered, St. Paulinus wrote for his use an excellent book Of Exhortation, in which he strongly invites him to aspire with his whole heart after Christian perfection, and lays down the most important rules on the practice of compunction and penance: on the remedies against different vices, especially pride, without which he shows that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of love uses a vast amount of evangelical phrases in the service of the Devil. Passion is martyrdom. Both parties aspire to the Ideal, to the Infinite; love is to make them so much better. All these fine words are but a pretext for putting increased ardor into the practical side of it, more frenzy into a fall than of old. This hypocrisy, a characteristic of the times, is a gangrene in gallantry. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... ready, America can win the race to the future—and we shall. The American dream is a song of hope that rings through night winter air; vivid, tender music that warms our hearts when the least among us aspire to the greatest things: to venture a daring enterprise; to unearth new beauty in music, literature, and art; to discover a new universe inside a tiny silicon chip or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is current; here 'tis in my hand Will make me happy in my second choice: And I may freely challenge as mine own, What I am now enforc'd to seek by stealth. Love is not much unlike ambition; For in them both all lets must be remov'd 'Twixt every crown and him that would aspire; And he that will attempt to win the same Must plunge up to the depth o'er head and ears, And hazard drowning in that purple sea: So he that loves must needs through blood and fire, And do all ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... of the matter. And hence, although not so designed at first, this Diary will furnish more authentic data of many of the events of the war than the grave histories that will be written. Still, I do not aspire to be the Froissart of these interesting times: but intend merely to furnish my children, and such others as may read them, with reliable chronicles of the events passing under my ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Fuzl Allee, the prime minister for fifteen months, during which time he made a fortune of some thirty or thirty- five lacs of rupees, twelve of which Hamid Allee's wife got. He was persuaded by Gholam Allee, his deputy, and others, that he might aspire to be prime minister at Lucknow if he took a few districts in farm, to establish his character and influence. In the farm of these districts he has sunk his own fortune and that of his wife, and is still held to be a defaulter to the amount of ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... of its proofs extend so far. It takes the dimensions and proportions of figures justly; but roughly, and with some liberty. Its errors are never considerable; nor would it err at all, did it not aspire to ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... into the Act of Attainder, whereby it was declared treason for any woman to marry the King if her previous life had been unchaste; "few, if any, ladies now at Court," commented the cynical Chapuys, "would henceforth aspire to such an honour".[1121] The bill received the royal assent on the 11th of February, Catherine having declined Henry's permission to go down to Parliament and defend herself in person. On the 10th she was removed to the Tower, being dressed in black velvet and treated with "as much honour as ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... to which thriving nations aspire, and which they in some measure attain, mankind having laid the basis of safety, proceed to erect a superstructure suitable to their views. The consequence is various in different states; even in different orders of men ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... said, contained the wish that Mary Stuart should espouse Leicester; but this proposal could not be taken seriously. Leicester, whose personal worth was besides sufficiently mediocre, was of birth too inferior to aspire to the hand of the daughter of so many kings; thus Mary replied that such an alliance would not become her. Meanwhile, something strange ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... intercourse with the whites. They are not suffered to become, so far as I know, members of any secret society, association or organization, whatever. Beside the white man at the hospitable board, they cannot, they dare not sit; and to a seat in the white man's parlor, and social converse, they dare not aspire. The carpet of the white man was not spread for them, and around his cheerful hearth, before his crackling fire, there is no place for them. They are not suffered to participate in any of the festivities or amusements of their more highly favored ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... considerable breeze, and Mr. Taynton paused for a minute or two beside a windmill that stood alone, in the expanse of down, watching, with a sort of boyish wonder, the huge flails swing down and aspire again in the circles of their tireless toil. A little farther on was a grass-grown tumulus of Saxon times, and his mind was distracted from the present to those early days when the unknown dead was committed to this wind-swept tomb. Forests of ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... actions. But wherewith to be achieved? Great acts require great means of enterprise; Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth, A carpenter thy father known, thyself Bred up in poverty and straits at home, Lost in a desert here and hunger-bit. Which way, or from what hope, dost thou aspire To greatness? whence authority deriv'st? What followers, what retinue canst thou gain, Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude, 420 Longer than thou canst feed them on thy cost? Money brings honour, friends, conquest, and realms. What raised Antipater the Edomite, And his ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... nation, boastful of its strength, has thought itself invincible, but the ruins of these mistaken and misguided nations line the pathway along which the masses have marched to higher ground. Despotism has in it the seeds of death; the spirit that leads a nation to aspire to a supremacy based on force is the spirit that destroys its hope of immortality. Only those who are unacquainted with the larger influences can place their sole reliance on the weapons used in physical warfare. They see only the things that are ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... lift me higher, Josephine! From the Eternal Hills hast thou not seen How I do strive for heights? but lacking wings, I cannot grasp at once those better things To which I in my inmost soul aspire. Lean ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the baton of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of Kings—a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... confined its membership principally to free negroes, as those who were yet in physical bondage were supposed to have aspirations for nothing higher than being released from chains, and were, therefore, not prepared to eagerly aspire to the enjoyment of the highest privileges of freedom. When the War of Secession was over and all negroes were free, the society began to cautiously spread its membership among the emancipated. They conducted ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... conduct was open, her mind superior to deceit; and to be ignorant of this would be to shew myself unworthy of her. The lover should disdain to excite his mistress to any action which he would disapprove in a wife; and this was a rule not to be infringed, by him who should aspire to the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... word 'despise,' or I shall suppose you think me a monster. Beauty seduces me. I aspire to its possession, and it is only when it is given me from other motives than love that I despise it. How should I despise one who loved me? I should first be compelled to despise myself. You are beautiful and I worship you, but you ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... merchants who thought they could write well enough to aspire to this high dignity wrote one after another what they thought fit. After they had done, I advanced, and took the roll, but all the people cried out that I would tear it or throw it into the sea, till they saw how properly I held the roll, and made a sign that I would write in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... well-spent life,—pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often shall I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... calmed, he told him Renton had not the fortune able to bear out the rank of a Chancelor. Burnet replied, Renton had a better fortune then ever Chancelor Hay[606] had. Lauderdale could never be pleased with him therafter for offering to aspire so hy. He was also at another disadvantage, my Lord Hume offered to compromit the difference betuen them to my Lord Lauderdale. Renton shifted it. He was a most peremptor man to his inferiors or aequalls, but a slavish fearer of any whom he supposed to ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... proscription, and courageously raising his single voice in the Senate against the illegal execution of Catiline's partisans (B.C. 63). Clearly seeing the necessity for personal government, at a time when his own services and distinctions were not such as to entitle him to aspire to it, Caesar did his best to secure it for Pompey, then far the foremost man in Rome, by strenuously supporting measures which virtually placed the empire at his absolute disposal for an indefinite period. A fairly good soldier, but a most vain, unreliable, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the lute beneath a lady's window. But if you will believe me, I am not without business knowledge. Gentleman as I am, I have long cherished an ambition to become a merchant prince (it is well to aspire high),—a genuine merchant-prince, however, and not the counterfeit article who accumulates millions for his children to squander. I have views upon the subject. I am an idealist, as I have told you, and there was ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... can trample them under her feet and make of me nothing more than man clamoring for woman's love! What a wild world it is! What a strange Force must that be which created it!—the Force that some men call God and others Devil! A strange, blind, brute Force!—for it makes us aspire only to fall; it gives a man dreams of ambition and splendid attainment only to fling him like a mad fool on a woman's breast, and bid him find there, and there only, the bewildering sweetness which makes everything else in existence poor and tame in comparison. Well, well—my ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... inherited a most beautiful suite of hangings of "applique work;" silks of many kinds are laid on a white brocade ground with every possible variety of stitch, forming richly and gracefully designed patterns; and showing to what cut work can aspire. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... have been the best result for the state. But the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... are so apt to tell new aspirants not to aspire, because the thing to be done may probably be beyond their reach. "My dear young lady, had you not better stay at home and darn your stockings?" "As, sir, you have asked for my candid opinion, I can ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... in "Sisters of Charity at Home and Abroad," has collected accounts from history and biography of many Romanist orders of sisters, besides vindicating and putting forward Miss Nightingale and her companions as examples. She would not for the world that the woman should aspire to be the man, and aim at a masculine independence for which she was never meant; and we thank the noble champion of Protestant sisterhoods for disclaiming connection with any who want her to take part in the public ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... vnfurnishing of their own Countrey of the forces which should haue preserued the same in her perfection: a thing which hindred them much more, then aduanced them to the possession of the vniuersal monarchy, whereunto their intention did aspire. For it came to passe that their Colonies here and there being miserably sacked by strange people did vtterly ruin and ouerthrow their Empire. The brinks of the riuer of Rene are yet red, those of Danubius are no lesse bloody, and our France ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
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