FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Self-denial' Quotes from Famous Books

... plains of the great Department of the Nord, and in its crowded busy towns and cities, this Catholic faith is everywhere to be seen and felt—to be felt rather than to be seen in its fruits of charity, self-denial, and devout self-sacrifice. ...

— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... sat waiting, every word spoken in the next room sounded like a moan from the injured man. Mrs Winthorpe's face appeared to be that of a woman ten years older, and her agony was supreme; but like a true wife and tender mother—ah, how little we think of what a mother's patience and self-denial are when we are young!—she devoted her whole energies to administering comfort ...

— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... to speak to the band of little girls, who had eagerly gathered around her; thus was she wont to teach them lessons of wisdom in a sprightly, gay, happy-hearted way, as if generosity, unselfishness and self-denial were the most natural traits imaginable, and the whole world fair because it is God's world, and we are all His children. Was it this spirit of joyousness which attracted young people especially to her, and gave her ...

— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... the volcano beneath, and only little spats of smoke and dying bits of ashes in evidence! Even the message of his Chief about her not getting a new bonnet all summer seemed a godsend under the circumstances. Had there been any basis for her self-denial he would not have told her, knowing how much anxiety she had suffered an hour before. But there was no real good reason why she should economize either in bonnets or in anything else she wanted. McGowan, of course, would be held responsible; for whatever damage had been done he would ...

— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... morning meal. They were not very palatable, and Crane sighed for the breakfasts of old, the memory of which at this moment was very tantalizing. But he comforted himself with the thought that he had the means of making up for his enforced self-denial ...

— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... surfeit of the fancy,—as that well—known passage beginning, 'Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance,' sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial. ...

— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... Dysart, which, she believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an average ...

— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... the fields and the song of birds, or the enjoyment of other people's brain-work, has glued himself to his desk for long hours, can say or imagine that his task is, or has been, aught else than hard and distasteful work, demanding unrelaxing self-denial and industry. And however fine the frenzy in which the poet's eye may roll while he builds the lofty line, the work of putting some thousands of them on the paper when built must be as irksome to him as the penny-a-liner's task is to him—more so, in that the mind of the latter does not ...

— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... among the Greeks of Cassandra, in that region, was traceable to him. Though suffering from bodily infirmity in the later years of his life, his labors were unceasing for the salvation of souls, and for the edification of the church. He was noted for his humility and self-denial, and his piety was a steady glow of light. His views of the gospel method of salvation were clear, and his manner of presenting it exceedingly happy. He was eminently a peacemaker in the church, and his good sense was in constant demand in the settlement ...

— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... of India, who, for the first time in history, formulated the true principles of freedom and devoted themselves to the holy quest of truth and the final assessment and discovery of the ultimate spiritual essence of man through their concrete lives, critical thought, dominant will and self-denial. ...

— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... the money away in her purse, conscious that it meant self-denial on the lad's part, but knowing that she would hurt his pride irreparably did she refuse to ...

— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... Scipio had never given into the fashionable debaucheries and excesses to which the young people at Rome so generally abandoned themselves. But he was sufficiently compensated for this self-denial of all destructive pleasures, by the vigorous health he enjoyed all the rest of his life, which enabled him to taste pleasure of a much purer and more exalted kind, and to perform the great actions that reflected ...

— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... at the hands of a powerful and jealous race. Here was no place for indolence and luxurious ease. Only by the most persevering and painful labors could the bleak hills and gorge-like valleys be made to yield the fruits of life. Only by unremitting energy and the most patient self-denial could starvation be kept from his door, while constant watchfulness and never-flinching courage were required to ward off the many dangers that beset his path. Nature herself seemed pitted against him to contest every inch of his progress. But his nature was as stern ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... it upon myself to say, that in no country in the world, upon either continent, can there be found a body of ministers of the Gospel who perform so much service to man, in such a full spirit of self-denial, under so little encouragement from government of any kind, and under circumstances almost always much straitened and often distressed, at the ministers of the Gospel in the United States, of all denominations. ...

— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... grave and solemnn, and demand as much Strictness and Observance as any other Virtues. Why lenioribus then; but that they are more mild and gentle in the Restrain they lay upon our Inclinations, and that the Self-denial they require is more practicable and less mortifying than that of Virtue itself, as it is taken in it proper and genuine Sense? To be Just or Temperate, we have Temptations to encounter, and Difficulties to surmount, ...

— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... up. I almost thought that I ought to refuse you because I can do nothing,—nothing to help you. But there will always come a limit to self-denial. I couldn't ...

— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... residents had a small chapel of their own which was well sustained by them. There was one missionary who commanded my especial respect and admiration. I refer to the Rev. Mr. William C. Burns, a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman. He led a life of consecrated self-denial, living exclusively with the natives and dressing in the Chinese garb which, with his Caucasian features and blond complexion, caused him to present the drollest appearance. Only those who have resided in China can understand the repugnance with which anyone accustomed to the amenities of ...

— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... difficulty. Joy's father always supplied her bountifully with spending money; Gypsy's stock was small. When Joy wanted to make a present, she had only to ask for a few extra dollars, and she had them. Gypsy always felt as if a present given in that way were no present; unless a thing cost her some self-denial, or some labor, she reasoned, it had nothing to do with her. If given directly out of her father's pocket, it was his gift, ...

— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... woman who had sacrificed herself to his selfishness, and the independence he had won turned out to be only a morose solitude after all. "Money," he was fond of saying, "is freedom," but he never learned that self-denial is freedom with the addition of self-respect. With a hearty contempt for the ordinary objects of human ambition, he could yet bring himself for the sake of them to be the obsequious courtier of three royal strumpets. How should he be happy who had defined happiness to be "the perpetual ...

— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... stern a ruler of the Church as William was of the State. He was an uncompromising champion of the Cluniac reforms (see p. 67). His object was to moderate the cruelty and sinfulness of the feudal warriors of Europe by making the Church a light to guide the world to piety and self-denial. As matters stood on the Continent, it had been impossible for the Church to attain to so high a standard. The clergy bought their places and fought and killed like the laymen around them. The Cluniac monks, ...

— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... smile suddenly cast a rich glow of warm colour over the long, grey road of Sir Archibald's youth of self-denial and struggle. The mild indulgences of his early years, under the transforming influence of that same arch and accusing smile, took on for Sir Archibald such an aspect of wild and hilarious gaiety as to impart a tone of hesitation to his voice ...

— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... of Bata is one of the most beautiful character-drawings in the past. The self-denial and sweet innocence of the lad, his sympathy with his cattle, "listening to all that they said," and allowing them their natural wishes and ways, is touchingly expressed. And those who know Egypt will know that ...

— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... creature of thirty-one years of age, whose life, with the exception of two years, had been spent on the bleak and dreary moorlands of Yorkshire, and for the most part in the narrow confines of a grim gray stone parsonage. There she had lived a pinched and meagre little life, full of sadness and self-denial, with two sisters more delicate than herself, a dissolute brother, and a father her only parent,—a stern and forbidding father. This was no genial environment for an author, even if helpful to her vivid imagination. Nor was it a temporary condition; it was a permanent ...

— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... life long, with constancy, moderation, and wonderful tact, Livia fulfilled her mission. She succeeded in resolving into the admirable harmony of a long existence that contradiction between the liberty conceded to her sex and the self-denial demanded of it by man as a duty. She was assuredly one of the most perfect models of that lady of high society whom the Romans in all the years of their long and tempestuous history never ceased to admire. Even and serene, completely mistress of herself and of her passions, endowed with ...

— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... say, Who sins and I am not ashamed? And if He thus enters into a living sympathy with us, shall not we enter into sympathy with Him, and go without the camp bearing His reproach, which, indeed, is ours; striving, though it cost us much shame and self-denial, to enter heartily into His feelings at our sins, and not letting our union to Him be a mere name or an inoperative tie which effects no real assimilation in ...

— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods

... what he would say to the bishop, and what he hoped the bishop would say to him, and Nan had rejoiced almost as much as the boy himself as, week by week, the sum in her hands grew toward the desired amount. Even Nan did not know all the hard work and stern self-denial that had made it possible for Theodore to put by that money out of ...

— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... it back," he said. "It's all right." He smoked in silence for a minute; then went on. "Why, 'content' is hardly the word for it. When I think what it was I wanted and what you've given me instead ...! It wasn't self-denial or any other high moral principle that kept me from flaring up when you took hold of me just now. It's because I've got a better thing. Something I wouldn't trade for all the love in the ...

— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... Venetian scholar seated in his comfortable, bright library, in the midst of his books, with his little shelf of bric-a-brac running along the wall. There is nothing in his look or surroundings to speak of a life of self-denial or of arduous devotion to the problems of sin and redemption. Even the "Presentation of the Virgin," which offered such a splendid chance for a pageant, Carpaccio, in one instance, turned into the picture of a simple girl going to her first communion. In other words, Carpaccio's quality is the quality ...

— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... who was appointed, ever found in Big Tom a wise and judicious counsellor and friend. I was thrilled by the address and the spirit manifested. How few white men in like circumstances would have had grace and self-denial enough to have acted in ...

— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... one of his recreations to spread them on one of the flat, grey stones and count the silver pieces as they glittered in the sun. He knew well what he meant to do with them when the pile grew large enough; but its growth was a very slow one, and required much self-denial on Geordie's part, seeing that the component parts of each shilling were generally gathered in a stray penny now and then, which he earned by holding a market-going farmer's cob; and if, by a rare chance, a sixpence happened to be the unexpected result of one such service, ...

— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... crane takes the place of other devotional music; and in which the worship of Mammon or Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the ...

— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... him not to handle it carelessly, but found that this caution only made him the more eager to handle it, since the prospect of an accident found an irresistible attraction. I would not let it go out of my own hands, however; and the Kohen, whose self-denial was always most wonderful to me, at ...

— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... here is passable. I've got no outside outlay. The main thing I have to mind is to make provision for a year's necessary expenses. If I launch out into luxuries, I have to suffer hardships, so I must try a little self-denial and manage to save something. It's the custom, besides, at the end of the year to send presents to people and invite others; but I'll thicken the skin of my face a bit, (and dispense with both), and have done. I'm not like ...

— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... arose among them concerning personal precedence in the kingdom which their Master should soon set up. In this rapid reaction from unbelief to faith the disciples seem to have forgotten the lesson of self-denial recently given them (Mark viii. 34, 35). In Peter's confession the corner-stone of the church was laid; but the superstructure was yet far out of sight. Although his own soul, taking its way down into the valley of shadows, might rightly have asked for sympathy and complained ...

— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... children to the habit of obedience. It is true that it was only a first lesson. It was a beginning, but it was a very good beginning. If, on the following day, Mary had given the children a command which it would be irksome to them to obey, or one which would have called for any special sacrifice or self-denial on their part, they would have disregarded it. Still they would have been a little less inclined to disregard it than if they had not received their first lesson; and there can be no doubt that if Mary were to continue her training in the ...

— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... disposed to believe that his motives are good, and that he is really desirous of aiding in the compromise which is about to take place, and promoting the great work of Irish pacification, not probably without some personal views and objects; and if the present Government remains in, his present act of self-denial will be 'reculer pour mieux sauter,' and find its reward in the Chief Justiceship whenever Lord Chief Justice Bush retires, of which ...

— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... way, for obtaining a knowledge of goods). Week by week our income came to fifteen shillings, out of which three people had to be kept. My mother managed so that I put by three out of these fifteen shillings regularly. This made the beginning; this taught me self-denial. Now that I am able to afford my mother such comforts as her age, rather than her own wish, requires, I thank her silently on each occasion for the early training she gave me. Now when I feel that in my own case it is no good luck, nor merit, nor talent,—but simply the ...

— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that the proportion of pregnancies which end in miscarriage is quite formidable. But this should not be true, as the accident is frequently preventable, and many of these accidents could be avoided by the cooperation of patients. As self-denial and personal inconvenience are often essential, it is only fair to explain their value. Furthermore, the, patient who appreciates the reason for certain directions the physician gives becomes responsible to herself, and is much more likely to carry ...

— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... very virtuous self-denial in regard to the Duke of Savoy did not prevent a secret but well developed ambition at the expense of the Elector of Brandenburg. For after all it was well enough known that the Elector was the really important and serious candidate. Henry knew full well that Neuburg was depending on the Austrians ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... his own side of the house, and especially by his friend and disciple, Charles Fox; but on the ministerial side of the house a profound and ominous silence prevailed. As Fox observed, it was evident there was not sufficient virtue in the house, or rather self-denial, to carry such a plan ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... found that Rosamond was fulfilling the doctor's predictions and getting well by leaps, she was not sorry for her self-denial. ...

— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... an idea. His idea happens to be one which, granting that it ought to be adopted by everybody, is still one which is very difficult of adoption by anybody,—peculiarly difficult in his own case. And it is an uncomfortable theory of self-denial which very few people like to have preached to them in any form. Add to this that his philosophical expositions of his theory lack the clearness which generally—not always—results from a course of strict preparatory training, and we have more than sufficient foundation for the reports of ...

— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... so does love, for that much is forgiven. And what matter can be found in the soul for humility to work by so well, as by a sight that I have been and am an abominable sinner? And the same is to be said of patience, meekness, gentleness, self-denial, or of any other grace. Grace takes occasion, by the vileness of the man, to shine the more; even as by the ruggedness of a very strong distemper or disease, the virtue of the medicine is best made manifest. 'Where sin abounded, ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... times, though purblind to things in common, gifted with an eye of instinct for espying any action that he thought merited reprehension; for all at once, looking fixedly on Mr. Greville, who without much self-denial, the night being very cold, kept his station before the chimney-piece, he exclaimed:—"If it were not for depriving the ladies of the fire, I should like to stand upon the hearth myself." A smile gleamed upon every ...

— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... countries," says an old author, "I fall in with a man too helpless for a Frenchman, too ceremonious for an Englishman, too pliable for a Spaniard, too lively for a Dutchman, too cordial for an Italian, too modest for a Russian—a man pressing towards me with oblique bows, and doing homage with ineffable self-denial to all that seems of rank; then my heart, and the blood in my face, says, 'that is thy countryman.'" How true! and how often have I lighted on ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various

... Major's secret, Mrs Shepherd had given up all friends, all acquaintance. She had not known a woman-friend for years, and the affinities of sex drew her to accept the sympathy with which she was tempted. The reaction of ten years of self-denial surged up within her, and she felt that she must speak, that her secret was being dragged from her. Ethel's eyes were fixed upon her—in another moment she would have spoken, but at that moment Nellie appeared climbing up the steep bank. 'Is that your little girl? Oh, what a pretty child!' ...

— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... weather, and was wrapped to the chin in a long fur overcoat, which he wore that night as a duty to his family, with a conscience against taking cold and alarming them for his health. He now practised another piece of self-denial: he let the cabman drive rapidly past the interesting spectacle, and carry him to the house where he was going to fetch away the child from the Christmas party. He wished to be in good time, so as to save ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... religion and his spirit approach nearer to Christianity than any other oriental faith, and doubtless his influence was great for the uplifting of the race, though it cannot be classed as technically educational. "Self-denial, virtuous life, suppression of all self-seeking, love for fellow-men," said he, "are cardinal virtues which bring blessedness to mankind." T. W. Rhys Davids says, "Buddha did not abolish castes, ...

— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... save himself; I don't mean too fast, but scarcely fast enough; and the General says, that Lord Frederick Cavendish, your friend, is safe; the thing he seems to have thought of most, except a little vain parade of his own self-denial on his nephew. I shall not be at all surprised if, to show he was not in the wrong, Mr. Pitt should get ready another expedition by the depth of winter, and send it in search of the cannons and colours of these twelve battalions. Pray Heaven your letter don't put it in his ...

— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... now so happily assembled; but she hoped she should always have virtue enough to postpone any interested consideration, when it should happen to clash with the happiness of her friends. Finally, such was her modesty and self-denial that she industriously informed those whom it might concern, that she was no less than three years older than the bride; though had she added ten to the reckoning, she would have committed no mistake in ...

— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... bring our ship to anchor," observed Marie. Father Jogues and his donne, eating with the habitual self-denial of men who must inure themselves to hunger, still spoke with Van Corlaer about their mission. But during all his talk he ...

— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... and wise management would, doubtless, have ere long led to a return of confidence, a reappearance of money and a resumption of business; but these involved patience and self-denial, and, thus far in human history, these are the rarest products of political wisdom. Few nations have ever been able to exercise these virtues; and France was not then one of these ...

— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... not given up so much, I thought. Perhaps in her self-denial there was method, and her simple garb became her best. Even a prayer-cap might frame her face the fairest; but she must know. And I had seen that in the flash of her eye and the toss of her head that told me that a hundred Luther Wardens, a hundred Dunkard preacher uncles, ...

— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... life, this ambition, akin to what we see taking quite another form among ourselves, Zola does not sufficiently realize. Shocking indeed were the miserliness and materialism of such existences but for the element of self-denial, this looking ahead for those to follow after. How differently, for instance, the farm-house and its group must have appeared, but for the evident pride and hopes centred in nos Parisiens, who knows?—perhaps youths destined to ...

— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... made him pay for her public concession by the private disregard of his wishes; and if something of this sort had actually resulted, his sense of fairness told him that it was merely the natural reaction of a soft nature against the momentary strain of self-denial. At first he had been hardly aware of this consequence of his triumph. The joy of being able to work his will at Westmore obscured all lesser emotions; and his sentiment for Bessy had long since shrunk into one of those shallow pools of feeling which a sudden tide might fill, ...

— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... and which her painfully awakened energy had helped to buy. In time she told her secret, and thanked them for that ten minutes' gossip. In time, too, sons and daughters came and found a mother prepared by self-denial for the ...

— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... older I began to be a greater comfort. This is what she writes in 1876: "Even Therese is anxious to make sacrifices. Marie has given her little sisters a string of beads on purpose to count their acts of self-denial. They have really spiritual, but very amusing, conversations together. Celine said the other day: 'How can God be in such a tiny Host?' Therese answered: 'That is not strange, because God is Almighty!' 'And what does Almighty mean?' ...

— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... is to be one of the hardest work and all the necessary self-denial. It must be a disciplined and sustained effort for excellence and victory. Those who cannot accept these principles in full are urged not to enroll in the squad ...

— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... away to try and get somewhere quite alone to sit down and think. For I was beginning to waken to the fact of how much I cared for the great kind-hearted, patient fellow, who had all along devoted his life to our service, and in the most utter self-denial offered that ...

— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... religion and unscrupulous ambition modified by patriotism: in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy," to purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to noble steadfastness: and in Constance's, in "In a Balcony," to self-denial. Of these plays, "The Return of the Druses" seems to me the most picturesque, "Luria" the most noble and dignified, and "In a Balcony" the most potentially a great dramatic success. The last is in a sense a fragment, but, though ...

— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... taking any, which I sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or corner in aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway robbery, treasures of conscientiousness and self-denial. ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... might one day become better, far better than my evil, wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit and warm to the flesh, will now permit me to be. I often plan the pleasant life which we might lead together, strengthening each other in that power of self-denial, that hallowed and glowing devotion, which the first saints of God often attained to. My eyes fill with tears when I contrast the bliss of such a state, brightened by hopes of the future, with the melancholy state ...

— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... necessary, either for the child's own welfare, physical or mental, or by circumstances beyond the parent's control. The word "necessary" is a very authoritative one; conscience, if left free, soon narrows down its boundaries; inconvenience, hindrance, deprivation, self-denial, one or all, or even a great deal of all, to ourselves, cannot give us a shadow of right to say that the pain of the child's disappointment is "necessary." Selfishness grasps at help from the hackneyed ...

— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... interest with the ambitious, and indeed with the public in general. We have, therefore, enlarged the power, and the term of holding it, and make him who would attain it, purchase it by previous exertion and self-denial: and we farther compel those who favour him, to lose as well as gain. We array the love of money against the love of power; or rather, one love of power to another. Moreover, as it is only by the civic virtues that our citizens ...

— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... patience, and smilingly keeping aloof from all participation at first hand in the scene which would have helped to amuse her indeed, but interfered with the fulfilment of her role. But she had internal happiness enough to make up to her for her self-denial. She would order that set of pearls for Bice and the emerald pendant for herself which had tempted her so much, to-morrow. And the Duchess was to present her, and probably this evening Montjoie would propose. Was it possible to expect in this ...

— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... will be fully understood. The parents of both bride and groom being abundantly able to provide everything necessary or desirable, why should distant relatives and friends assist in it, perhaps at the cost of embarrassment or self-denial?" ...

— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley

... on with such confused ideas as these had it not been for the hypothetical other man. He haunted me. The hypothesis became a fact. It found embodiment in Boller of '89. When after three interminable days of self-denial I presented myself one evening at the president's house, a look of annoyance with which Gladys greeted me seemed connected in some way with the presence of Boller. In my state of mind I should have suspected any octogenarian who smiled on Gladys ...

— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... good, so charitable, so compassionate to the suffering. This was the cause of the Cure's great anxiety, of his great solicitude. His friend Reynaud, where was he? Where was he? Then he called to mind the noble life of the country doctor, all made up of courage and self-denial; he recalled his death, above all his ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... becomes himself God. Of all the incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of self-denial and self-annihilation." ...

— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... poverty was staring the deserted family in the face. Debts had accumulated, and though Mrs. Hamilton had done all that could be done to meet the emergency, though she had labored incessantly, and borne fatigue and self-denial, with a brave and cheerful spirit, it had been found necessary to leave the home so dear to her,—the home where she had been brought a fair and youthful bride; where she had spent many happy years, and which was endeared to her by so many sweet and hallowed, ...

— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous

... honor, to show that he stood in need of no strengthening at her hands; and it seems legible enough, between the lines, that he had rather to resist the pull of her weakness, or her interest, than to look for encouragement in the path of hardship and self-denial. It is certain, too, that some days before Blackwood arrived, Nelson understood that he might be wanted soon, and avowed his entire willingness to go, while not affecting to conceal his hope that circumstances ...

— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... first to teach the French the use, and we must add the abuse, of advertisements. We fear the Presse, during these early days of the gentle Emile and Granier Cassagnac, was neither a model of virtue, disinterestedness, nor self-denial. Nor do we know that it is so now, even under the best of Republics. There are strange tales abroad, even allowing for the exaggeration of Rumor with her hundred tongues. One thing, however, is clear; that the Presse was a liberal paymaster to its feuilletonistes. To Dumas, ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... dependent on her, and she sold these baskets for him so successfully that he was gradually making quite a little trade of them. Poor child! for she was not much more than a child—what a bright face she had!—glorified by the self-denial and courage of her everyday life. No wonder she had won the sympathy of the warmhearted and impulsive Neapolitans—they looked upon her as a heroine of romance; and as she passed through the streets, leading her blind husband tenderly by the hand, there ...

— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... relapse of his disease; but the impetus of flight had carried Sidonie away so swiftly and so far that her return was impossible. At all events, it was a relief for him to be able to live without lying; and the new life he was leading, a life of hard work and self-denial, with the goal of success in the distance, was not distasteful to him. Luckily; for the courage and determination of both partners were none too much to put the house ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... she smiled sweetly at him as she made the promise—she would endeavour to do nothing that would offend him; and then she added that on that evening she would dance with him any dances that he liked. Maurice, with a self-denial that was not very wise, contented himself with engaging her for ...

— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope

... themselves to the harsh discipline of a rigid necessity. With us, labor and frugality, the parents of riches, are spared, and wisely too. The moment men cease to augment the common stock, the moment they no longer enrich it by their industry or their self-denial, their luxury and even their ease are obliged to pay contribution to the public; not because they are vicious principles, but because they are unproductive. If, in fact, the interest paid by the public had not thus revolved again into its own fund, if this secretion had not ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... week these cafes do an immense business; it is the harvest of their year. People who can hardly afford three meals a day pinch themselves and suffer much self-denial that they may have money to spend in carnival week. The public masquerade balls, which then take place, allure all classes. The celebrations of the occasion culminate in a grand public masquerade ball given in the Tacon Theatre. The floor of the parquette is temporarily raised ...

— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... fully realized the effect that this time of waiting and uncertainty might have upon her, in the solitude to which he had left her, and which he had at first supposed would be altogether occupied by Peter. Her letters—infrequent as he, in his self-denial, had suggested—were characterized by a delicate reserve and a tacit refusal to take anything for granted in their relations to each other, which half charmed and half tantalized John; but scarcely enlightened him regarding the ...

— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... Taylor, then dramatic critic of the Times, at the famous first night at the Lyceum, in 1874, when Henry put his fortune—counted, not in gold, but in years of scorned delights and laborious days, years of constant study and reflection, of Spartan self-denial and deep melancholy—when he put it all to the touch "to win or lose it all." This is no exaggeration. Hamlet was by far the greatest part that he had ever played or ever was to play. If he had failed—but why pursue it? He ...

— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... love Ziza Cattley. I knew her first as a fairy, I know her now as a woman who is worthy of a place among the angels, for none but those who know her well and have seen her fighting the battle of life can have the least idea of the self-denial, the perseverance under difficulties, the sweetness of temper, and the deep-seated love of that devoted girl. She goes every night, after the toil of each day, to the door of the theatre, where she waits to conduct her father safely past the gin-palaces, ...

— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... with the characteristic behaviour of 'Tommy Atkins' to these men; even to the extent of sharing his rations with them, and handing out his 'fags,' which was an act of real self-denial. ...

— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester

... bad, I am so wake—oh, I do fale so bad,' she used to say. 'I wish some wan would take me by the ear and lade me round to the ould shebeen, and set me down, and fill a noggen of whusky and make me dhrink it—whether I would or no!' Whether I would or no I have to drink the cup of self-denial," Crozier continued, "though Bradley and his gang have closed every door against me here, and I've come back without what I went for at Aspen Vale, for my men were away. I've come back without what I went for, but I must just grin and bear it." ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... involves considerable self-denial and patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern life must be ...

— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... it cannot be too clearly perceived that there is nothing in the disinterestedness, and in the obligation to render public service characterizing professional life that amounts to unnatural self-denial or painful renunciation,—unless in some extreme and individual cases. On the contrary, professional life at its best offers a great advantage in so far as it permits a man to think first of the work he ...

— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw

... continually prattle of the noble precepts of virtue, which they feel not in their hearts; who only abstain from evil because it is accompanied by danger, and from doing good because it requires courage and self-denial; who traffic with religion, and, like avaricious Jews, lay out their capital at interest, for the purpose of securing a comfortable berth for their miserable souls; and who worship God from fear, and tremble before ...

— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... pride of his heart, he deemed exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, forgetting, either deliberately or stupidly, that the presence of Mary rendered that otherwise dull cavern the most delightful of sick chambers, and that her attendance was ample compensation and reward for any amount of pain or self-denial. ...

— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... attention of Congress for the last five years. To turn from the consideration of armies and navies, victories and defeats, to the array of figures which exhibits the debt, expenditure, taxation, and industry of the nation requires no little courage and self-denial; but to these questions we must come, and to their solution Congress and all thoughtful citizens must give their best efforts ...

— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... society among the old as well as the young, and in both cases most dishonest means are had recourse to sustain those appearances, which are all the world looks to. It is possible, therefore, that little efforts have been made to initiate youth, prior to entering the universities, in that path of self-denial and high-mindedness which are the safeguard from vicious prodigality. They bring with them the vices of their caste, whatever that caste may be. Youth is imitative, and seldom a clumsy copyist, of the faults of its elders, provided those faults are fashionable faults, however ...

— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... twelve millions, which we shall offer to pay immediately. He is ready to order reductions in the budget of the army, the opera, the ballet, and the extraordinary pensions. He himself sets an example of self-denial and economy. He will reduce further his household, and retain only the most indispensable servants. Notwithstanding my protestations, he insists on refusing to accept the civil ...

— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... about an hour and a half. This was doing nobly, and Jessie felt more self-respect than she had ever felt before. She was certainly doing battle in real earnest with her old enemy, the little wizard, as Uncle Morris facetiously called him. And she had her reward for all her self-denial in the glad feelings which bubbled up in her heart like springs of water in some cosy ...

— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... of farming and the burden of taxes. The latter soon gathered that there was not much profit to be derived from a small moorland estate and his host was far from rich. It looked as if it had cost him, and perhaps his family, some self-denial to send the money that had once or twice enabled Lawrence, and Foster with him, ...

— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... Robert Summers was turned over to me as my first lieutenant. We grumbled almost incessantly at our hard lot in not being allowed to render our valuable assistance more directly to the work in hand, but the reward for our enforced self-denial was nearer at hand than either ...

— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... to feeling and stimulates the growth of that series of great emotions that make so large a part of character. It may excite ambition and a thirst for power or wealth or give an impulse to labor and self-denial; it may teach us sympathy and love for our fellow-men, or arouse anger, hatred and defiance; it may give us a keener discrimination of right from wrong and lead us far on our search for truth, even into ...

— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... Pretender's army at Culloden, and had a son, Angus, who settled in Aberdeen. When AEneas MacKenzie, my grandfather, was born, his family moved south and settled in Newcastle-on-Tyne. A local biographer writes of him: "A man who by dint of perseverance and self-denial acquired more learning than ninety-nine in a hundred ever got at a university—an accomplished and most trustworthy writer. The real founder of the Newcastle Mechanics' Institute, and the leader of ...

— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... owed to the mother I feel in a measure absolved from by her rejection of all present advances. And inasmuch as I am making you my father confessor, I may as well tell you, my dear Johns, that no particular self-denial would be involved in a marriage with Mademoiselle Chalet. For myself, I am past the age of sentiment; my fortune is now established; neither myself nor my child can want for any luxury. The mother, by her present associations and by the propriety of her life, is above all suspicion; ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... me your taunts. You, by self-denial and profound search into the highest of the higher Mysteries, have made yourself something wiser than human; I have preserved my humanity, and with it its powers and frailties; and it seems that each of us has his proper uses, or you would not be come now here to ...

— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... conclude that the present fuels are being exhausted at a certain rate; that barring new discoveries industry will have to enter a phase of contraction at some definite time in the future. We have then to determine how much thrift and self-denial we will use, after all feasible economies have been exercised, in order not to rob posterity. But what shall we consider posterity? Our grandchildren? Our great grandchildren? Perhaps we shall decide to calculate on a hundred years, believing that to be ample ...

— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... not tell such an assembly that there are joys of the intellect as well as joys of the body, or that these pleasures of the spirit constituted the reward of our great investigators. Led on by the whisperings of natural truth, through pain and self-denial, they often pursued their work. With the ruling passion strong in death, some of them, when no longer able to hold a pen, dictated to their friends the last results of their labours, and then ...

— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... part to play in the following narrative. Being as hypocritical as Urbain was straightforward, his ambition was to gain wherever his name was known a reputation for exalted piety; he therefore affected in his life the asceticism of an anchorite and the self-denial of a saint. As he had much experience in ecclesiastical lawsuits, he looked on the chapter's loss of this one, of which he had in some sort guaranteed the success, as a personal humiliation, so that when Urbain gave himself airs of triumph and exacted the last letter ...

— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... impression of religious duty alone sustained her, and that the yearnings of the mother's heart, though stilled by resignation to the Divine Will, were yet more intensely agonized by the suppression of what she secretly felt. Such, however, is the motive of those heroic acts of self-denial, which religion only can enable us to perform. It does not harden the heart, or prevent it from feeling the full force of the calamity or sorrow which comes upon us; no, but whilst we experience it in all the rigor of distress, ...

— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... righteousness, the planting of the Lord," that could not have been acquired amidst the sunny skies and balmy air of the heavenly paradise. The saints of God have learned lessons here of patience, endurance, self-denial, and faith, that could not have been learned there. Like old soldiers, they have been trained by long campaigns and terrible combats with the enemy. On earth and not in heaven are Marthas and Maries with whom we can weep; and prodigals whom we can receive back; ...

— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... went to the polls in a mood of exalted self-denial. They knew that they were voting away their own rights, but they also knew that their private ideals would be more than realized in the legalized frenzy of their representative. Bleak, appearing on the balcony ...

— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... a sense of duty, but merely from a sense of delight. The whole world teems with subjects and thoughts, sights of beauty and images of joy and sorrow, that I desire to put into words; and to forbid myself to write would be to exercise the strongest self-denial of which I am capable. Of course I do not mean that I can always please myself. I have piles of manuscripts laid aside which fail either in conception or expression, or in both. But there are a dozen books I would like to write if I had ...

— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Frederick. "The most devoted are always misunderstood, and if one were not sustained by one's conscience, the brutes that you mix yourself up with would make you feel disgusted with your own self-denial!" ...

— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... careless and extravagant; and Evelyn was too inexperienced, and too gentle, perhaps, to correct his tendencies. Maltravers learned that Legard's income was one that required an economy which he feared that, in spite of all his reformation, Legard might not have the self-denial to enforce. After some consideration, he resolved to add secretly to the remains of Evelyn's fortune such a sum as might, being properly secured to herself and children, lessen whatever danger could arise from the possible ...

— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... living on a crust for months, denying himself first this, then that ingredient of what should have been an invalid's diet. But it had been for cause—for the poor—for self-mortification. There was something just a little jarring to the ascetic in this contact with a self-denial of the purely rationalistic type, so easy—so cheerful—put forward without the smallest suspicion of merit, ...

— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... rather than an end. The same true of intellectual improvement. The general homage which is paid to inoffensiveness. Picture of a modern Christian family. Measuring ourselves by others. Our Saviour the only true standard of comparison. Importance of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Blessedness of communicating. Young women urged to emancipate themselves from the bondage of ...

— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... kept as carefully as our annals of vice, we might find that town life stood higher in the one than in the other. There are more opportunities to display positive goodness and positive badness in the town; life is more crowded and more rapid, and it is likely that acts of kindness, generosity, self-denial, even of heroic self-sacrifice, are more numerous in the town than in the country. The average townsman is more developed morally as well as intellectually for good and for evil. That the good does not ...

— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... confronted and exposed,—are among the greater merits of this elaborate and able discourse. It must have required of one not in the arena of political strife, who for a large part of his manhood has occupied himself abroad in the studies of an intelligent scholar and a patriotic American, somewhat of self-denial, to throw away the certainty of almost universal cheers for his performance, by incurring the displeasure of some of his audience and many of ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... as a duty to present the body to God, as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable in his sight. That God gives man no law that is not for his best advantage, and that the interests of humanity, and the laws of purity and self-denial all lie in the same direction, and the man who does not take care of his body must fail to take the best care of his soul; for the body should be temple for God's holy spirit and the instrument to do his work, and we have no right to defile the ...

— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... be impossible to tell how the sense of Esclairmonde's trust, and of the resolute self-denial it would require of him, elevated Malcolm's whole tone, and braced his mind. The taking away of his original high purpose had rendered him as aimless and pleasure-loving as any ordinary lad; but the situation in which he now stood—guarding ...

— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... entirely to you and does not ask you (sublime self-denial!), that you should love her, but only that you should let her love you. Balzac extolled the women of thirty; that was because he had not tasted those of forty. Ah! the women ...

— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... savings were fast disappearing; his stock and furniture were mortgaged; some of it had been sold, and his principal witness and faithful servant was now gone for a soldier. In addition to all this, poor Mr. Bumpkin could not help recalling the happiness of his past life, his early struggles, his rigid self-denial, his pleasure as the modest savings accumulated—not so much occasioned by the sordid desire of wealth, as the nobler wish to be independent. Then there was Mrs. Bumpkin, who naturally crossed his mind at this miserable moment in his existence—at ...

— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... looked at the last-named speaker with a glance which seemed to say, "You who have never known self-denial cannot feel for me," and remarked, "You surely think one can be ...

— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... the morning's self-denial, of a day passed quietly in bed, with only the companionship of pillows and dreams. I was forced to choose between Mrs. St. Clare's 'lunch' and Mrs. Tarrant's 'crush,' 'not that I love Caesar less, but that I love Rome more;' and ...

— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... proceedings resulted in a charge of "grumbling." Why couldn't he be nice— as he used to be? And Coombes was such a harmless little man, too, nourished mentally on Self-Help, and with a meagre ambition of self-denial and competition, that was to end in a "sufficiency." Then Jennie came in as a female Mephistopheles, a gabbling chronicle of "fellers," and was always wanting his wife to go to theatres, and "all that." And in addition were aunts of his wife, and cousins (male and female) ...

— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... following year with a heart as whole as his physique was fine. But there were some cares to cloud his young life in the army,—a sister whose needs were many and whose means were few. He found that rigid economy and self-denial were to be his portion from the start, and was not sorry that his assignment took him to the far-away land of Arizona, where, as his new captain wrote him, "you can live like a prince on bacon and frijoles, ...

— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... nor the space that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see on our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in small pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones.... It is not the love of fresco that we want; it is the love of God and His creatures; it is humility, and charity, and self-denial, and fasting, and prayer; it is a total change of character. We want more faith and less reasoning, less strength and more trust. You want neither walls, nor plaster, nor colours—ca ne fait rien a l'affaire; it is Giotto, and Ghirlandajo, and Angelico that you want, and that you will and ...

— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... tempted to throw herself in his arms and confess all. The high resolves of years of self-denial were on the verge of being broken in one weak moment; but the very peril, the very temptation calmed her suddenly. She brushed away her tears, and, gently withdrawing the hand Maurice held, ...

— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... third piece, and hesitated about the fourth; but no, he was a human being,—no brute. He thrust the remainder into his watcher's hands, and turned his back upon him, so as not to be tantalized. Beasts indeed! Here were two instances of self-denial, nowhere to be matched in the whole animal creation, except in that race which is but ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... to believe that the captain would ever send any more, and as she had a home, and Ralph and Edna had not, she would not take all the money that was due her, feeling that they might come to need it more than she would. But even with this generous self-denial she found herself in Plainton with a balance of some thousands of dollars in her possession, and as much more in Edna's hands, which the latter had insisted that she would hold subject to order. What would the ...

— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... whenever he pleased, but also should be furnished with a sum sufficient for the expences of his journey; but added, that the offer he now made of depriving himself of so agreeable a companion was a piece of self-denial, than which there could not be a greater ...

— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... his side his sons, excused all explanation, Silent began to clutch their hands in proper alternation, (Not by their tender palms to trace the chiromantic linings, For at that day no place was found in Spain for such divinings), But calling on his honor spent for strength and self-denial, He set aside parental love and steeled his nerves to trial, Griping their hands with all his might till each cried: "Hold, Sir, hold! What meaneth this? pray, let me go; thou'rt killing me, behold!" Now when he came to Roderick, ...

— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... nonsense, Frank," he retorted. "Bad food is bad for everyone, and abstinence from tobacco is mere torture to me. Chastity is just as unnatural and devilish as hunger; I hate both. Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body ...

— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... takes in sewing sometimes, and sometimes goes out washing. Poor Owen! I was over there yesterday; he looks thin and wasted, and his wife was saying that he was parched with constant fever, and had very little appetite. She had, with great self-denial, and by restricting herself almost of necessary food, got him two or three oranges; and the poor fellow ...

— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... because I fear God, and have at the bottom a principle of religion; then, on the other hand, I am not properly God's, because his law appears hard and irksome to me, and I cannot bring myself to acts of self-denial; so that altogether I am one of those called lukewarm Christians, the great number of which does not in the least surprise me, for I perfectly understand their sentiments, and the reasons that influence ...

— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... the morning. Would her sparkling gaiety endure, I wondered, through the monotonous days ahead, when poverty became, not a child's play, not a game tricked out by the imagination, but the sordid actuality of hard work and hourly self-denial? ...

— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... turban on his head—the upper part of his body and his legs being completely exposed. The man was a fakir, one of a class of religious fanatics, who, ignorant of a God of love and mercy, believe that holiness can be obtained by practising the most rigid self-denial and the infliction of every variety of torture ...

— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... independent reflection and action arrives, their judgment and feelings may be ready to carry them forward in the right path; to teach them the habit, for instance, of discovering that, in practice, there is a positive, and generally a speedy pleasure and reward attendant on almost every exercise of self-denial. When that point is once firmly established in the minds of young men, it becomes less difficult to persuade them to relinquish whatever is merely agreeable at the moment, if it stand in the way of the ...

— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... he calls his interest; he will find that it consists chiefly of certain degrees of decency, beauty, and order, variously combined into one system, the idol which he seeks to enjoy by labour, hazard, and self-denial. It is, on this account, of the last consequence to regulate these images by the standard of nature and the general good; otherwise the imagination, by heightening some objects beyond their real excellence and beauty, or by representing others in a more odions or terrible ...

— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... such a proposition never for an instant entered Shakspere's head. He used the word "assume" in this case in its primary and justest sense; ad-sumo, take to, acquire; and the context plainly shows that Hamlet meant that his mother, by self-denial, would gradually acquire that virtue in which she was so conspicuously wanting. Yet, for lack of a little knowledge of the history of the word employed, the other monstrous gloss has received ...

— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... she would have worn the vesture of sackcloth, and slept upon the bed of iron, and even used the knotted scourge in expiation of her sins, but as the severe simplicity of her Protestant faith forbade such penances, she manifested, by the most rigid self-denial and strictest devotion, the sincerity of her penitence and the ...

— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... all religions, all the practices, the renunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage. And a wild thrill of something that was almost like joy rushed through her, the joy that sometimes comes to the unbelievers when they are about to commit ...

— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... with great self-denial and fidelity, said: "No, I accept her as a charge, but for wife, she is worthy to be one for a higher than I. If you will trust her to me, I will take her to my master, for by her beauty and charms she is worthy to be the queen ...

— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... number of Imperial and royal palaces, from the great augmentation of the Imperial and royal domains; from the immense and valuable quantity of diamonds, jewels, pictures, statues, libraries, museums, etc., disinterestedness and self-denial are ...

— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... she will one day become the wife of the god Shiva. This prediction awakens her father's pride, and also his impatience, since Shiva makes no advances. For the destined bridegroom is at this time leading a life of stern austerity and self-denial upon a mountain peak. Himalaya therefore bids his daughter wait upon Shiva. She does so, but without being able to divert him ...

— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... Quaker: self-renunciation,— reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling Spirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our hearts. They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of ...

— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... to accept, but she felt an alarmed tug at her arm, and saw that Florence would be placed in an embarrassing position if she accepted. So, by an exercise of self-denial—for Mrs. O'Keefe was by no means insensible to the attractions of whiskey, though she never drank to ...

— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... don't suit me either; but, on the whole, they are wanted—at any rate, in this college. Even the worst of them is making some sort of protest for self-denial, and against self-indulgence, which is nowhere more needed ...

— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... difficulty. He felt this the more painfully because, before sitting down to think of his sermon, he had immersed himself, to use his own words, in the fountain-head of self-sacrificing enthusiasm. And now he could not show his flock that there was any trace of self-denial in his conduct. It was apparent that his acceptance of the call made a great sermon an utter impossibility. He must say as little about the main point as possible, glide quickly, in fact, over the thin ice. But his disappointment was none the less keen; there was no splendid ...

— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... yours and mine has very justly defined good breeding to be the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them. Taking this for granted, as I think it cannot be disputed, it is astonishing to me that anybody who has good sense and good nature, and I believe you have both, can ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... changed so little in a century, that all this would hold admirably true of Italian life at this time. The goodly outside in religion, in morals, in every thing is too much the ambition of Italy; this achieved, she is content to endure any pang of self-denial, and sell what little comfort she knows—it is mostly imported, like the word, from England—to strangers at fabulous prices. In Italy the luxuries of life are cheap, and the conveniences unknown or excessively dear.] Their idle thoughts, not drilled by ...

— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... as he already was in the school of the world, he entered into the quiet shades of the cloister. It can scarcely be expected that he will remain there long. First of all, let us take a view of monastic life on its most favorable side, as a school of self-denial, as a place of refuge for more profound study, as a field for the exercise of practical charity. In all these respects it has no doubt served valuable ends. And who will deny that, in times when the will of the strong would endure no restraint, when ...

— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... Whitman's glorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance, etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,—the free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life and conditions of men, ...

— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... fundamentals that underlie all fulness and without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible. Power of attention, power of industry, promptitude in beginning work, method and accuracy and despatch in doing it, perseverance, courage before difficulties, cheer, self-control and self-denial, they are worth more than Latin and Greek and French and German and music and art and painting and waxflowers and travels in Europe added together. These last are the decorations of a man's life, those other things are the ...

— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... ran across Neave at Christie's. He was the same little man we'd known, effaced, bleached, indistinct, like a poor "impression"—as unnoticeable as one of his own early finds, yet, like them, with a quality, if one had an eye for it. He told me he still lived in Rome, and had contrived, by fierce self-denial, to get a few decent bits together—"piecemeal, little by little, with fasting and prayer; and I mean the fasting literally!" ...

— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... wished to follow it, and I see with pleasure in my Mother's letters that as I grew older I began to be a greater comfort. This is what she writes in 1876: "Even Therese is anxious to make sacrifices. Marie has given her little sisters a string of beads on purpose to count their acts of self-denial. They have really spiritual, but very amusing, conversations together. Celine said the other day: 'How can God be in such a tiny Host?' Therese answered: 'That is not strange, because God is Almighty!' ...

— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... she saw all religions, all the practices, the renunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage. And a wild thrill of something that was almost like joy rushed through her, the joy that sometimes comes to the unbelievers when they are about to commit ...

— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... as I had witnessed more than once among believers in England the injurious effects of doing things because others did them, or because it was the custom, or because they were persuaded into acts of outward self-denial, or giving up things whilst the heart did not go along with it, and whilst the outward act WAS NOT the result of the inward powerful working of the Holy Ghost, and the happy entering into our fellowship ...

— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller

... this respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; ...

— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... Robespierre?" exclaimed one of the partisans when tranquillity was re-established. "Because he is the only man capable of making head against their party, if they should succeed in forming it. Yes, in revolutions we require those men, who, full of self-denial, deliver themselves as voluntary victims to factions. The people should support them. You have found those men—Robespierre and Petion. Will you abandon them to their enemies?" "No! no!" exclaimed a thousand voices, and a motion, proposed by the president ...

— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... last moment my poor wife lost all her courage, and regretted she had ever given her consent; but when Lucien saw the tears which his departure had called forth, he became heroic in his self-denial, throwing aside ...

— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... part of my life which gives me more intense satisfaction than another, it is my friendship of more than forty years' standing with Susan B. Anthony. Ours has been a friendship of hard work and self-denial.... Emerson says, "It is better to be a thorn in the side of your friend than his echo." If this add weight and stability to friendship, then ours will endure forever, for we have indeed been thorns in the side of each other. Sub rosa, dear friends, I have had no peace ...

— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... he answered, in a low, ashamed voice; and he withdrew his glass,—for which effort of self-denial he was rewarded by one of those eloquent looks of gratitude which some women can give, and which are only understood by those whom ...

— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... But now conditions had changed. Thanks to his present employer's liberality, he was able to stamp himself with the hall mark of success. As Robert Stafford's right-hand man, drawing $5,000 a year, self-denial was no longer necessary; he could indulge his taste to the limit. Dressed in a fashionably cut evening dress coat, with white tie and waistcoat, patent-leather pumps and silk socks with embroidered trees, anyone might have easily ...

— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... colonies everywhere seconded the non-importation movement, entering at once upon a course of rigid self-denial, and their legislatures commended the scheme. An agreement, presented in the Virginia House of Burgesses, by Washington, was signed by every member. For more than a year, this powerful engine of retaliation waged ...

— Tea Leaves • Various

... Mankind to value and esteem those who set a moderate Price upon their own Merit; and Self-denial is frequently attended with unexpected Blessings, which in the End abundantly recompense such Losses as the Modest seem to suffer in the ordinary Occurrences of Life. The Curious tell us, a Determination in our Favour or to our Disadvantage is made upon ...

— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... the agent sobbing as he stole away; but when he knocked at Mrs. Everett's door she answered petulantly, and at first she refused to rise. She had little self-denial; it would pain her to enter a dying chamber; and she would have left Wait to perish, had not some strange passage from the romance entered her head of dead folk, with secrets on their minds, haunting the living. It would be very terrible to be haunted, and ...

— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... over to Orham and looked up the land. It was a strip along the shore, almost worthless, and unsalable at present. The taxes had been regularly paid each year by Mary Thomas, who had sent money orders from Concord. The self-denial represented by these orders ...

— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... him do that which was unpleasant to him, became frantically rude and unruly. A person who is used to making sacrifices—Laura, for instance, who had got such a habit of giving up her own pleasure for others-can do the business quite easily; but Pen, unaccustomed as he was to any sort of self-denial, suffered woundily when called on to pay his share, and savagely grumbled at being obliged to forego any thing ...

— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... hungry, and he asked Sancho Panza to give him some food out of his alforjas. Sancho made apologies for having nothing but onions, cheese, and a few crusts of bread to offer such a valiant knight, but Don Quixote explained that one of the glories of knighthood was self-denial: many a knight had been known to go without food for a month at a time. However, he thought it advisable for Sancho to gather dry fruits from time to time as a safeguard against overwhelming hunger. Sancho feared that his appetite might crave food of a more substantial ...

— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... and good men have been anglers, as well as many men of a different description; but their goodness would have been complete, and their bravery of a more generous sort, had they possessed self-denial enough to look the argument in the face, and abstained from procuring themselves pleasure at the expense of a needless infliction. The charge is not answered by the favorite retorts about effeminacy, God's providence, neighbors' faults, and doing "no worse." They are simple beggings of the question. ...

— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... else that must be said. Grace has been indulged and knows nothing of self-denial. Frugality that you think proper and usual would be hardship to her. Can you give your wife the comforts and refinements she has had ...

— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... remember this, the thought of sacrifice, that our lives to be truly Christian must have the spirit of the Cross worked into them. It was by offering Himself in sacrifice that Christ redeemed us, and it is by offering ourselves to Him in sacrifice, by self-denial for His cause, and by doing good (at some cost to ourselves) to others for His sake, that we make the response He asks to His love. That offering of ourselves must be made not only by our lips in the act of worship, but also by ...

— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... became an apostle. Christ's kingdom was not of this world. Laws and officers were necessary among the men of the world, but not among Christians. Spoke of the cross of Christ as consisting in suffering and self-denial. His blood was the Spirit which cleansed from all sin, by delivering all who obeyed him from its power. He named not my blessed Saviour, except when he had occasion to mention some of his moral sayings. He said, indeed, that he was the Light that lightened every man that came into the world, ...

— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... His patience and self-denial were soon rewarded. A light quick step sounded in the passage, and a shrouded female form ...

— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... of equal value from this treasury of wisdom. The book touches humanity at almost every point, and there is scarcely any lesson, relating to the elements of success in life, which it does not contain. Industry, perseverance, self-denial, decision, energy, economy, frugality, thoroughness, magnanimity, courage, fidelity, honesty, principle, and religion,—these, and all other indispensable human qualities, receive careful and just attention. And we repeat, George ...

— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... dignified and ennobled this life of toil and hardship, deprived of almost all the things which she had always regarded as necessary, that the welfare, prosperity and happiness of generations yet to come might be reared on this foundation laid by self-denial ...

— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... of. Both David and Jean were as anxious to hear Tom Gray's story, as the latter was to tell it. Self-denial in this respect had been hard to practice. Yet all three had acquitted themselves with credit. Seated on a log, with his friends on either side of him, Tom ...

— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... roadside springs, he absorbed instead the thirst-breeding heat of the sun; when they but prayed, he shed his blood to the praise of the Most High; when they turned into the shelter of Alpine sanctuaries, he made ice and snow his bed; with closed eyes—climax of self-denial!—with closed eyes, that he might not behold the wonder of them, he passed unseeing through the lovely plains of Italy! All this because he wished to atone to the point of self-annihilation, that the tears might be sweetened of his angel. He had reached Rome, he had bowed ...

— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... heroic themes which have absorbed the attention of Congress for the last five years. To turn from the consideration of armies and navies, victories and defeats, to the array of figures which exhibits the debt, expenditure, taxation, and industry of the nation requires no little courage and self-denial; but to these questions we must come, and to their solution Congress and all thoughtful citizens must give their best efforts for ...

— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... lurks terror and in their lines one spells their secret of rebellious hunger; of Delsarte, gymnastics and massage. Sometimes the matron is an improvement on the maid. But this is not always true. For those who turn coarse and harsh with years, we recommend Christian Science and a less flexible self-denial. ...

— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... is being made against the polar sledging ration. On the whole, it was found to be excellent and the best that experience had been able to devise. Entering the polar zones, one must not be over-fastidious, but take it as a matter of course that there will be self-denial ...

— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... "uncircumcised"-partly for your reasons, partly because I believe it is an excellent rule always to erase anything that strikes one as particularly smart when writing it. But it is a great piece of self-denial to abstain from expressing my peculiar antipathy to the people indicated, and I hope I shall be rewarded ...

— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... were dependent on his labours had impelled him, from the time of his marriage, to devote to the insuring of his life a much larger portion of his income than most men consider it necessary to set aside for that purpose. Thanks to his admirable prudence and self-denial my mother and sister were left, after his death, as independent of the world as they had been during his lifetime. I succeeded to his connection, and had every reason to feel grateful for the prospect that awaited me ...

— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... engagements and activities, had a worth for the discipline and perfecting of character, and were capable of being consecrated to the highest ends. There are, indeed, not a few passages in which the call to self-denial is emphasised. But neither Christ nor His apostles represent pain and want as in themselves efficacious or meritorious. Renunciation is inculcated not for its own sake, but always as a means to fuller realisation. Jesus, indeed, transcends the common ...

— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... holy, which Miss Valery had unconsciously drawn, Agatha had not the heart to deny. She knew it was but right that she should love, and be supposed to love, her betrothed husband. And looking at him, his suffering, his strong self-denial, she almost felt that she did really love ...

— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... believe that Nelly has deserved all the praise and love which she has won," sighed the disappointed Matty, her jealousy conquered by the example of generous self-denial which she saw ...

— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... still hanging on her bank, "isn't like most married women. She hates self-denial and economy—Dad always made life too easy for us, you know. It wasn't even as if she had had my mother's example before her; she really knew ...

— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... incidents, which excite the finest and the pleasantest emotions of the human breast. As he leads us from one savage tribe to another—as he paints successive scenes of heroism, perseverance, and self-denial—as he wanders among the magnificent scenes of nature—as he relates with scrupulous fidelity the errors, and the crimes, even of those whose lives are for the most part marked with traits to command admiration, and perhaps esteem—every where we find him the same undeviating, but beautiful moralist, ...

— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... nature and inborn selfishness were striking manifested. He has no spirit of self-denial. He began straight off, and continued for an hour, to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed. I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was; just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about anybody else. I had noticed that trait in him, over ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Henry tobacco had been a narcotic, and now his nerves were set on edge. He had pluck, though, and irritable and suffering, endured as well as he could. At length came, as will come eventually in the case of every healthy man persisting in self-denial, surcease of much sorrow over tobacco, but in the interval George Henry had a residence in purgatory, ...

— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... the habits which enable him to do so, avoid such a pressure upon those who were under him as amounted to great hardships and injustice. The system held out so many temptations to iniquity in the management of land, and in the remuneration of labor, that it required an amount of personal virtue and self-denial to resist them, that were scarcely to be expected from any one, so difficult was it to overlook or neglect the opportunities for oppression and fraud which it ...

— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... romance, giving them at once a complacent tone of clerical dignity, and an agreeable dash of heretical impudence; while the inculcated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no laborious scholarship for its foundation, and no painful self-denial for ...

— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... society and the broken-spirited widow who asked his Christian counsel, has been ascribed to a love of praise that rejoiced in every person's homage, or a far-sighted policy that desired every person's suffrage. True, that his self-denial has been called a deep self-interest that would win high honors by refusing to accept the less rewards. True, that his piety has sometimes been called sentimentalism, and an alloy of baser emotion has been hinted at as running through some of his letters ...

— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... nowadays told that they, and they alone, shall decide the fate of empires, shall decide the ownership of property, shall manipulate the fortunes of those who have raised themselves from the dirt by ability, self-denial, and unremitting hard work. Look at the comparative returns of the illiterate electorate. In Scotland 1 in 160, in England 1 in 170, in Ireland 1 in 5. In one quarter of Donegal, a Catholic one, more illiterates ...

— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... harmony with the holiest instincts of human nature, and by the force of circumstances, detrimental not only to the individual himself, but to society at large—on the other, a high standard of social and domestic virtue, a career of persistent self-denial, simplicity, and dignified obedience to the natural laws and exigencies of society, a life indeed edifying to all, and, by virtue of its unselfishness, uplifting to the individual. No one who knows French life intimately can fail ...

— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... ... all will come round. All the best actions of war and peace ... all help given to relatives and strangers and the poor and old and sorrowful and young children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons ... all furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves ... all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks and saw others take the seats of the boats ... all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake ... all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbors ... all the vast sweet ...

— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... VI. Self-denial, upon which Cato has bestowed such lavish praise, was practised in its purest and brightest form by Aristeides, while Cato seems to have forfeited all claim to this virtue by his unsuitable and unseasonable second marriage. It could not be to his honour, when he was of such a great age, to ...

— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... Jack, love to have delays, wilful and studied delays, imputed to them in these cases—yet are indelicate in their affected delicacy: For do they not thereby tacitly confess, that they expect to be the greatest estgainers in wedlock; and that there is self-denial in the pride ...

— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... deceit or imposition; and in that respect, perhaps, his character was formerly misunderstood by one who was dear to him. He has, too, a tinge of romance in his disposition; and I have seen the narrative of a generous action, a trait of heroism, or virtuous self-denial, extract tears from him which refused to flow at a tale of mere distress. But then Brown urges that he is personally hostile to him. And the obscurity of his birth, that would be indeed a stumbling-block. ...

— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... at the things on the table. He felt the embarrassment of detecting his brother in some private religious exercise; nothing, he thought, but an excess of self-denial could have brought this about; yet ...

— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... privileges. It is one of his privileges to watch the steady growth of an institution in which he takes great interest; it is one of his privileges to bear his testimony to the prudence, the goodness, the self-denial, and the excellence of a class of persons who have been too long depreciated, and whose virtues are too much denied, out of the depths of an ignorant and stupid superstition. And lastly, it is one of his privileges sometimes to be called on to propose the health ...

— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... great-great-grandfather was a captain in the Pretender's army at Culloden, and had a son, Angus, who settled in Aberdeen. When AEneas MacKenzie, my grandfather, was born, his family moved south and settled in Newcastle-on-Tyne. A local biographer writes of him: "A man who by dint of perseverance and self-denial acquired more learning than ninety-nine in a hundred ever got at a university—an accomplished and most trustworthy writer. The real founder of the Newcastle Mechanics' Institute, and the leader of the ...

— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... 'New Recollections' Journey to Albi and Castera Bordeaux Montignac, Saint Macaire Saint Andre, Monsegur Recitation at Arcachon Societies of Mutual Help 'Imitation of Christ' Testimony from Bishop of Saint Flour Jasmin's Self-denial Collects about a Million and a half of Francs for the Poor Expenses of his Journey of fifty Days His Faithful Record Jasmin at Rodez Aurillac Toulouse His ...

— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... his hardest from youth to age, never sparing labour or shirking difficulties or turning aside from his path. Coleridge dawdled through life, solacing himself with opium, and could only be coaxed into occasional activity by skilful diplomacy. Mill preserved his independence by rigid self-denial, temperance, and punctuality. Coleridge was always dependent upon the generosity of his friends. Mill brought up a large family, and in the midst of severe labours found time to educate them even to excess. Coleridge left his wife and children to be cared for by others. And Coleridge died ...

— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... beauty of Nature around them. How can they help but think of the Creator when they dwell so near the primal source of life. The crystal waters of the lake will teach them purity, the leaves of the trees will rustle messages of self-denial, and the majestic mountains will speak to them of endurance and courage, a religion which dwells in Nature until they, "like Moses, will see in the bushes the radiant Deity and know they ...

— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... distinctness of expression, and its capricious tendency to combine must be limited by a strictly legitimate course of procedure. I grant that it will not bend to this yoke without resistance; but in this matter reliance is properly placed on a certain amount of self-denial, and on an earnest determination of the hearer or reader not to be deterred by the difficulties accompanying the form, for the sake of the subject-matter. But in all cases where no sufficient dependence can be placed on this ...

— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... antagonistic to it, until they have undergone a certain modification and transformation—until, that is to say, they have been mulcted of their more frank and genial elements. The nearest approach to them in Christian phrase is 'self-denial,' but the sound of this word kindles no smile of pleasure like that kindled by the ideas of generosity and nobility of conduct. At the thought of self-denial we feel good, but uncomfortable, and as though on the point of performing some disagreeable ...

— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... put her to sit in the corner by the window, and seated himself next to her. He was so anxious that no one should speak to her that he even gave up the comfortable corner seat himself, and sat bolt upright beside her, a bit of self-denial which did not improve his temper, which was at no time a sweet one; and when at last Waterloo was reached, it was with no gentle hand that he shook and roused her from the kindly sleep which had fallen on her again, and blotted for the time all ...

— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... to a future state, just as sensualism is naturally generated and fostered by unbelief in regard to those moral principles which have respect to the present life; and if these principles may and should exert a controlling influence over our conduct, even to the extent of imposing restraint and self-denial with a view to our welfare in time, may they not be expected to be all the more powerful when we include also our welfare in eternity? and may it not thus become manifest that "godliness hath the promise of the life that ...

— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... Continence.—Some there are who urge that self-denial is difficult; that the natural promptings are imperious. From this they argue that it cannot but be right to gratify so strong a passion. "The admitted fact that continence, even at the very beginning of manhood, is frequently productive of distress, is often a struggle hard to be borne—still ...

— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... her guests, and confronting from her sofa Mr. Bemis, who still remains sunken in his armchair, has apparently closed an exhaustive recital of the events which have ended in his presence there. She looks round with a mixed air of self-denial and self-satisfaction to read the admiration of her listeners in their ...

— The Garotters • William D. Howells

... virtues claimed by "Christian civilization" are not peculiar to any culture or religion. My people were very simple and unpractical—the modern obstacle to the fulfilment of the Christ ideal. Their strength lay in self-denial. Not only men, but women of the race have served the nation at most opportune moments in the history ...

— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... in reality, is but the outcome of "much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial exercised for the sake of others, with a view to obtain the same indulgence ...

— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... poor neighbors put their old heads together to find out the solution of the problem. And they came to the conclusion that this lady must have been a great sinner, whose husband had abandoned her for some very good reason, and who was now endeavoring to atone for her sins by a life of self-denial and benevolence. This conclusion seemed too probable to be questioned. This verdict was brought to the knowledge of Berenice in a curious way. Among the recipients of her bounty was Mrs. Jones, the ladies' nurse. The old woman had fallen ...

— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... glowing with admiration. From that moment you became the idol of my heart, the never-changing object of my Meditations. I enquired respecting you. The reports which were made me of your mode of life, of your knowledge, piety, and self-denial riveted the chains imposed on me by your eloquence. I was conscious that there was no longer a void in my heart; That I had found the Man whom I had sought till then in vain. In expectation of hearing you again, every day I visited your Cathedral: You remained ...

— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... Persia would have given ample employment for the greater part of the day to any monarch who was determined not only to reign, but to govern. Among the Persian sovereigns there seems to have been a few who had sufficient energy and self-denial to devote themselves habitually to the serious duties of their office. Generally, however, the cares of government were devolved upon some favorite adviser, a relative, or a eunuch, who was entrusted by the monarch ...

— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... taken his eyes off the young girl, who seemed to expand, as it were, beneath the happy influence she felt was shed around her, and who was delighted and too pure in spirit for any other thought than that of love to find an entrance either to her mind or her heart. Acknowledging this touching self-denial by the fixity of his attention, the king showed La Valliere how much he appreciated its delicacy. When the list was finished, the different faces of those who had been omitted or forgotten fully expressed their disappointment. ...

— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of affection and contrition and rose-colored pictures of their future life. He had risen an hour earlier to write it, and he did not fail to notice what a healthy natural pleasure even this small effort of self-denial gave him. He determined that he would that very night write long letters to his mother and Janet, and even to his father. "There was a good deal he wanted to say to him about money matters, and his marriage, and fore-talk always saved after-talk, besides it would keep the influence ...

— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... pleasant domain where she presided, and which her painfully awakened energy had helped to buy. In time she told her secret, and thanked them for that ten minutes' gossip. In time, too, sons and daughters came and found a mother prepared by self-denial for ...

— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... for the music, the painting, the poetry, and all the arts which would leave a big blank in your life, Ideala, if they ceased to exist? You would have been a mere savage now, without refinement enough to appreciate that rose at your waistbelt, but for the labour and self-denial which the hundreds and thousands who lived, and loved, and suffered in order to make you what you are have bestowed on you, and on all of us. You would not say, if you thought a moment, that society had done nothing for you; and no one can honestly think that they owe ...

— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... long, and many a fierce attempt did the enemy make upon the town, and many a shrewd brush did some of the townsmen meet with from the enemy, especially Captain Self-denial, to whose care both Ear- gate and Eye-gate had been intrusted. This Captain Self-denial was a young man, but stout, and a townsman in Mansoul. This young captain, therefore, being a hardy man, and a man of great courage to boot, and willing to venture himself for the good of the ...

— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... happy to have escaped with so gentle an admonition, returned to Lantza to resume his command. He was indeed more circumspect than in the past; but he found and seized the occasion to revenge himself on the town for the compulsory self-denial the Emperor had imposed on him. On his arrival he found in the suburbs a large number of recruits who had come from Paris in his absence; and it occurred to him to make them all enter the town, ...

— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... herself for her husband; and she cannot help taking his friend, when she has lost him. Nor must it be forgotten, that the husband was the first to break the tie. We respect him more than we do her, because he was capable of greater self-denial; but if he himself preferred his friend to his love, we can hardly blame her (custom apart) for ...

— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... a capital idea, and might easily be carried out. It requires nothing but a little self-denial, with the conviction of the necessity of doing something, if the downward tendency is to be ever checked short of civil war, and a revolution that is to let in despotism in its more direct form; despotism, in the indirect, is fast appearing ...

— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... have had a relapse of his disease; but the impetus of flight had carried Sidonie away so swiftly and so far that her return was impossible. At all events, it was a relief for him to be able to live without lying; and the new life he was leading, a life of hard work and self-denial, with the goal of success in the distance, was not distasteful to him. Luckily; for the courage and determination of both partners were none too much to put the house on ...

— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... culture gay, Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan! Well might each heart be happy in that day— For Gods, the Happy Ones, were kin to Man! The Beautiful alone, the Holy there! No pleasure shamed the Gods of that young race; So that the chaste Camoenae favouring were, And the ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... would I not, Lettice, for the child's own sake. It were far better for her to go with you. There is an offer thou couldst make me, of that fashion, that my self-denial were not equal to refuse. So see thou make ...

— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... ancient German stock, who had learned the arts of war and peace in the service of a foreign and haughty world-empire. Determination, concentration of purpose, constancy in calamity, elasticity almost preternatural, self-denial, consummate craft in political combinations, personal fortitude, and passionate patriotism, were the heroic elements in both. The ambition of each was subordinate to the cause which he served. Both refused the crown, although each, perhaps, ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... from family, from friends, from whatever is nearest and dearest,—and which hovers before him like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, beckoning him, not to crime, but to the legitimate royalties of self-denial and self-sacrifice, to the freedom which is won only by surrender of the will. Christianity has never been concession, never peace; it is continual aggression; one province of wrong conquered, ...

— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... the typical avenger of the wrongs of the poor and the oppressed against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful; his name has been honored and his manly deeds have been lauded in prose and verse by thousands in many lands for many centuries, exciting doubtless many a noble deed of self-denial, and spurring to the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to write many pages of the history of the people, and that in spite of the questionable ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... more strongly, and, as it may still seem to many minds, with convincing reason, he objected to an eleemosynary system, which "precludes the poor mother from the strongest motive human nature can be actuated by for industry, for forethought, and self-denial." "The Spartan," he said, "and other ancient communities, might disregard domestic ties, because they had the substitution of country, which we cannot have. Our course is to supplant domestic attachments, ...

— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... do not want to people of whom you intend to make use. This distinction between virtue and goodness is not understood in England: hence the poverty of our drama in heroes. Our stage attempts at them are mere goody-goodies. Goodness, in its popular British sense of self-denial, implies that man is vicious by nature, and that supreme goodness is supreme martyrdom. Not sharing that pious opinion, I have not given countenance to it in any of my plays. In this I follow the precedent of the ancient myths, which ...

— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... should have of his honor, to show that he stood in need of no strengthening at her hands; and it seems legible enough, between the lines, that he had rather to resist the pull of her weakness, or her interest, than to look for encouragement in the path of hardship and self-denial. It is certain, too, that some days before Blackwood arrived, Nelson understood that he might be wanted soon, and avowed his entire willingness to go, while not affecting to conceal his hope that circumstances might permit him to remain until October, ...

— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... well—there was a burning sympathy with them, a sympathy born in her, and not assumed for the sake of having a career. It was this that had impelled her to get a medical education, which she obtained by hard labor and self-denial. To her this was not a means of livelihood, but simply that she might be of service to those all about her who needed help more than she did. She didn't believe in charity, this stout-hearted, clearheaded little woman; she meant to ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... certain cases (which only the parties' own judgment and conscience can settle) intercourse should be restricted by consent to certain times at which it is less likely to lead to conception. This is only to use natural conditions; it is approved by good medical authority; it means self-denial and not self-indulgence. And we believe it to be quite legitimate, or at least ...

— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... instead of the dram-sellers' banks for losings, would do more for the well-being of our working classes than all the trades-unions or labor combinations, that ever have or ever will exist. The laboring man's protective union lies in his own good common sense, united with temperance, self-denial and economy. There are very many in our land who know this way; and their condition, as compared with those who know it not, or knowing, will not walk therein, is found ...

— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... winning is even possible. Power of attention, power of industry, promptitude in beginning work, method and accuracy and despatch in doing it, perseverance, courage before difficulties, cheer, self-control and self-denial, they are worth more than Latin and Greek and French and German and music and art and painting and waxflowers and travels in Europe added together. These last are the decorations of a man's life, those ...

— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... her fine qualities had been exercised, and her weaknesses almost subdued. She had been not only the devoted wife, but patient and generous towards her foes, full of faith and cheerfulness in her temper, and capable of any degree of self-denial in the conduct of her daily life. She had been of late all that in the days of their engagement—in the days when he had dealt falsely with his own mind—he had trusted she would be. A friendship, whose tenderness ...

— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... that if we prospered, there had been much of it her doing; and she said she admired nothing so much as my resolution and courage in going to Australia, until she admired still more my resolution and self-denial in coming back. I do not think much of flattery, Miss Elsie—they say it is very sweet to the young and the bonnie—but these words of praise from a good woman like Miss Thomson made my heart swell and my eyes overflow. You have ...

— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the ...

— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... mendicant. It is said that he walked about in a shroud, taken from the body of a female slave. Profoundly impressed with the vanity of all human affairs, he devoted himself to philosophical meditation, by severe self-denial emancipating himself from all worldly hopes and cares. When a man has brought himself to this pass he is able to accomplish great things. For the name by which his parents had called him he substituted that of Gotama, ...

— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... which she was soon to be borne, than among the living. The two mourners, stunned with their great grief, desired not the sympathy of strangers. One member out of most of the families in the parish was bidden to the funeral; and it became an act of self-denial in many a poor household to give up to another the privilege of paying their last homage to her; and those who were excluded from the formal train of mourners thronged the churchyard and church, to see carried ...

— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... noble way out of the difficulty. He felt this the more painfully because, before sitting down to think of his sermon, he had immersed himself, to use his own words, in the fountain-head of self-sacrificing enthusiasm. And now he could not show his flock that there was any trace of self-denial in his conduct. It was apparent that his acceptance of the call made a great sermon an utter impossibility. He must say as little about the main point as possible, glide quickly, in fact, over the thin ice. But his disappointment was none the less keen; there was ...

— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... wagon beds, or the breathing of the cattle. But here there was neither sound nor motion. Susy's prattle, and even the sound of his own voice, would have broken the benumbing spell, but it was a part of his growing self-denial now that he refrained from waking her even by a whisper. She would awaken soon enough to thirst and hunger, perhaps, and then what was he to do? If that looked-for help would only come now—while she still slept. For it was part of his boyish ...

— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... patience they toiled for their bread. Every spot of tillable land among the mountains was carefully improved; the valleys and the less fertile hillsides were made to yield their increase. Economy and severe self-denial formed a part of the education which the children received as their only legacy. They were taught that God designs life to be a discipline, and that their wants could be supplied only by personal labor, by forethought, care, and faith. The process was laborious and wearisome, but it was wholesome, ...

— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... province of thought which concerns itself with material facts. The musician is not fettered by the laws of harmony, but only by those of discord. The truly virtuous man, remarks Aristotle, never has occasion to practise self-denial. Hence, mathematically, "the theory of the intellectual action involves the recognition of a sphere of thought from which all limits are withdrawn."[105-1] True freedom, real being, is only possible when law as such is inexistent. Only the lawless makes the law. When the idea ...

— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... the latter agreed, with a patience he did not often use. "I'm paying for it now and you will pay a higher price, if you go on as you promise. You must pull up; I've done enough and am getting tired of self-denial." ...

— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... cherished ends of his life. As early as 1817, what he called "sects" disturbed central Europe. These were a class of people who resembled the Methodists of England, and the followers of Madam von Kruedener in Russia,—generally mystics in religion, who practised the greatest self-denial in this world to make sure of the promises of the next. The Kingdom of Wuertemberg, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and Suabia were filled with these people,—perfectly harmless politically, yet with views which ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... helps to reverse our foolish desire to make earth foremost. The true end of prayer is to get our wills harmonised with His, not to bend His to ours. Surely if self-denial and submission be the very heart of Christianity, that should be most expressed in prayer which is the very sanctuary of religion. The prayers that are to be offered after this manner will not be passionate, ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... and some philosophers have covered her; and nothing appears but gentleness, humanity, beneficence, affability; nay, even at proper intervals, play, frolic, and gaiety. She talks not of useless austerities and rigours, suffering and self-denial. She declares that her sole purpose is to make her votaries, and all mankind, during every period of their existence, if possible, cheerful and happy; nor does she ever willingly part with any pleasure but in hopes of ample ...

— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... ever yet came upon me, for you are innocent herein.' After this, at last he was set free. The first thing he did was to try to return home to his wife and children. It is said that 'he was a man of great self-denial, and very jealous of himself ever after his fall and recovery. At last, departing from the city of London, about the latter end of October 1660, towards the north, intending to go home to his wife and children at Wakefield in Yorkshire, he was seen by a Friend of Hertford (sitting by the wayside ...

— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... the Arabic numbers, of whose combinations and results their own language is not capable, and have instructed a few of their youth in the principles of arithmetic and the mathematics. For such an omission, however, human nature can readily find an excuse. It would be too great an instance of self-denial, to relinquish the advantages and the credit which their superior skill had gained them over a vast empire, by making the individuals of that empire ...

— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... hour and a half. This was doing nobly, and Jessie felt more self-respect than she had ever felt before. She was certainly doing battle in real earnest with her old enemy, the little wizard, as Uncle Morris facetiously called him. And she had her reward for all her self-denial in the glad feelings which bubbled up in her heart like springs of water in some cosy ...

— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... being one hundred and three drops; of the second, eighty-four drops; of the third, one hundred and forty-two drops; and of the fourth, one hundred and thirty-eight drops; and that in the fifth week the self-denial of more than three days had been rewarded with the indulgence of three hundred drops on the fourth. A careful comparison of this kind, showing that in an entire month the average of the first week had been but ...

— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... and the consequent admiration and flattery, developed an unusual degree of vanity, which had strengthened with years; though now she had too much sense and refinement to display it publicly. While generous and naturally warm-hearted, the elements of gentleness and patient self-denial for the sake of others at this time could scarcely have been discovered in ...

— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... purpose that he lights up the faces of the horrified spectators with his glare. A father fond of unworthy children, and leading a life of self-denial for their sake, as may probably and pathetically be, is not enough; there must be an imbecile, trembling dotard, willing to promote even the liaisons of his daughters to give them happiness and to teach the sublimity of the paternal instinct. The hero ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... are had recourse to sustain those appearances, which are all the world looks to. It is possible, therefore, that little efforts have been made to initiate youth, prior to entering the universities, in that path of self-denial and high-mindedness which are the safeguard from vicious prodigality. They bring with them the vices of their caste, whatever that caste may be. Youth is imitative, and seldom a clumsy copyist, of the faults ...

— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... imported from Britain. That wool might not be wanting, they entered into resolutions to abstain from eating lambs. Foreign elegancies were laid aside. The women were as exemplary as the men in various instances of self-denial. With great readiness they refused every article of decoration for their persons, and of luxury for their tables. These restrictions, which the colonists had voluntarily imposed on themselves, were so well observed, that multitudes of ...

— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... begin to understand the Great Physician, and the regimen which he has prescribed for me. I feared the gangrene selfishness, and would drink myself free therefrom by the nectar of love; but he said, 'Jeremias, drink not this draught, but that of self-denial—it is ...

— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... stories rang silverly from her fair lips. Or we listened eagerly to her as she told us of the homes we had left, and the bonny maidens there, sobered since our departure into patriotic industry. Stories of touching self-denial, with a wholesome pathos, and sometimes from her dainty musical talk she dropped, pebble-like, a name, as 'Fanny,' 'Carry,' 'Maggie,' and responsive blushes rippled up over sunburned, honest faces, and a soft mist brightened for a second resolute eyes. Presently ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and his wife practised unless by prayer he can obtain the power of the unseen holiness to work upon the flux of circumstance; yet do not let those fear to imitate it who have learned the secret of prayer. It was a strenuous life of prayer and self-denial that these two lived until their race in this phase of things ...

— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... drinking," but to an excessive preference for poverty and antipathy to wealth which would arrest human progress and kill civilization. We have, however, a Nicodemus and a Joseph of Arimathea, as well as a Dives and a Lazarus. Nothing points to a Simeon Stylites. Self-denial, though not asceticism proper, is a necessary part of the life of a wandering preacher, which also precluded the exhibition of domestic virtues. The relation of Jesus with his family seems to have been hardly domestic; we have no record of any communication ...

— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch, could discover no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and self-denial: but when once this unlucky "Book of Sports" was thrown among the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that everything concerning the nature ...

— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recognized motives ...

— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... but found that this caution only made him the more eager to handle it, since the prospect of an accident found an irresistible attraction. I would not let it go out of my own hands, however; and the Kohen, whose self-denial was always most wonderful to me, at once ...

— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... her handkerchief to her eyes. In her own room she lingered still longer, going from one piece of furniture to another, and laying her hand on each. It was handsome furniture, such as a lady should have about her, and every piece represented a longer or shorter period of self-denial, both on her own part and on her husband's, and a proportionately keen joy in the acquisition of it. She remembered so well when the wardrobe came home, and the dressing-table too, and the mahogany drawers. The furniture was to follow to the new home, and each piece would still have ...

— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... we have had what we call Altar Services. At such times, and more especially during the Self-Denial and Harvest Festival efforts, Soldiers, friends, and others who are interested in God's work are invited to come forward with gifts of money to lay upon the special table which, for that occasion, serves the purpose of an altar. Those who have been present at ...

— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... She liked him particularly because he looked so unministerial in his soft shirt and blue overalls. She liked Mrs. Judson, with her sweet, tired face looking out from a cavernous sun-bonnet. Mrs. Clyde's discerning eye read in the patient worn face a history of privation and self-denial; and surmised that the enthusiasm of the missionary was paid for most dearly ...

— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... wonderful struggle against inexorable destiny. Sustaining hunger and cold, vigils and incessant toil, anxious for his soldiers, unmindful of himself, he set, even to the forest-trained red men, an example of self-denial and endurance, and in the midst of corruption made the public good his aim. Struck by a musket ball, as he fought opposite Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's ...

— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... boy, this surgery," said the doctor, still frowning at Hans. "It requires great patience, self-denial, ...

— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... elegant idleness, to supply all your wants, and to help carry on the many benevolent enterprises in which I have become engaged, on the small amount of property left us, and with the slender salary of fifteen hundred dollars from the Insurance Office? If I had not some self-denial, some management, you would find quite a ...

— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... you wouldn't care about it," said her mother. "A little here and a little there, a stitch, a kind word, a small self-denial, these are in the power of all of us, and in course of time they mount up and make a great deal. And, Mary dear, I've always found if you once start in a path and are determined to keep on, somebody's sure to come along and lend a helping hand, ...

— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... have had great opportunities offered for service, which we have let slip in like manner! To have doors opened which we are too lazy, too cowardly, too much afraid of self-denial, to enter, is the tragedy and the crime of many a life. It is easier to live among the low levels of the plain of Babylon, than to take to the dangers and privations of the weary tramp across the desert. ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... another as much as Mrs Salmon's court of Great Britain, and are in as much danger of melting away, by too near approaching the fire, which they for that reason carefully avoid, though 'tis now such excessive cold weather, that I believe they suffer extremely by that piece of self-denial. The snow is already very deep, and the people begin to slide about in their traineaus. This is a favourite diversion all over Germany. They are little machines fixed upon a sledge, that hold a lady and gentleman, and are ...

— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... On his declaring that he was able to provide for himself, he was allowed to work for his own support, and for some time past he had cut wood and drawn water for a drummer in the New South Wales corps, a man who, by much self-denial and economy, had got together and laid up thirty-three guineas, for the prudent and laudable purpose of hereafter apprenticing his children; but having unfortunately and most indiscreetly suffered this man to know, not ...

— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... young lady might not improperly dislike. The austere and ascetic character is of course far less agreeable to women than the sensuous and susceptible. The self-occupation, the pride, the abstraction of the former are to the female mind disagreeable; studious habits and unusual self-denial seem to it purposeless; lofty enthusiasm, public spirit, the solitary pursuit of an elevated ideal, are quite out of its way: they rest too little on the visible world to be intelligible, they are too little suggested by the daily ...

— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... purposely allowed themselves to be worsted in the disputes and conferences, that the king might more readily be convinced of the weakness of their cause, and might more cordially and sincerely, at least more decently, embrace the religion which it was so much his interest to believe. If this self-denial, in so tender a point, should appear incredible and supernatural in theologians, it will, at least, be thought very natural, that a prince so little instructed in these matters as Henry, and desirous to preserve his sincerity, should ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... or temporal affairs. His learning made him the equal and the friend of Grotius, and of the foremost contemporary scholars. His preaching was a unique combination of rhetorical splendour and scholarly richness; his piety that of an ancient saint, semi-ascetic and unearthly in its self-denial. As a churchman he is typically Anglican, equally removed from the Puritan and the Roman positions. He stands in true succession to Richard Hooker in working out the principles of the Puritanism, Andrewes chiefly combated ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the Parish Powers, Who regulate Labor's hours, The daily amount of human trial, Weariness, pain, and self-denial, Would turn from the artificial dial That striketh ten or eleven, And go, for once, by that older one That stands in the light of Nature's sun, And ...

— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... that parents should provide a property inheritance for their children that will deprive them of the natural advantages which reasonable labor and its restraining influence afford both body and mind. Parental drudgery and self-denial for the purpose of relieving children from the necessity of wholesome effort is mistaken generosity. It makes parent and child alike fall short of the high purposes for which life is given. For life is intended for more important purposes than mere money-getting or the pursuit ...

— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... gallantry. In fact, the Prater is quite the Paradise of the bourgeoisie of Vienna, who are fond of the pleasures of the table and take every opportunity of making dinner and supper parties. The bourgeois of Vienna are far more sensual than spiritual and not at all disposed to self-denial. ...

— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... antagonist, neither was it his nature to continually thrust any sacrifice he might make before the eyes of the one he was benefiting. How much silent heroism goes unpraised in the world, while we stand on the highways, and prate of our discrimination, our quick insight! Jack might be praised for his self-denial, but the higher appreciation was withheld. Even Sylvie was fretted at times, because he would get interested in all ...

— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... themselves are hard upon their own sex, men are never so in earnest. They realize more profoundly than women the depth of affection and self-denial in the womanly soul; and they feel also, with crushing certainty, the real significance of the obstacles they have themselves placed in ...

— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... degrading the throne of which he is the occupant, and that the principle involved in his impunity was of more consequence in its great and permanent results than any success of theirs. But it would have required more virtue, self-denial, wisdom, and philosophy than falls to the lot of any public man individually in these days to have embraced all these considerations, and it would have been a miracle if a great mob of men calling themselves a party could have been made to act under the influence ...

— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... slowly released and returned to its place, and the little fellow, who with no small amount of self-denial had conquered the intense desire to take the eggs, stood still gazing at the bush. Little Miss Alice now made signs that she wished to be lifted up to see into the nest, and with no small difficulty her sturdy ...

— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker

... window of that committee room, my speed in streaking it for the adjacent forest, my self-denial in ever afterward resisting the impulse to return to Berrywood and look after my political and material interests there—these I have always considered things to be justly proud of, and I hope I am proud ...

— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... cost considerable self-denial; for of course he boiled with curiosity about the man in the orchard. He did not dare to go out there, but now, stealthily glancing out of the window, he saw his father returning from the garden with ...

— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... He missed her as he would the sun from day. Althea was much inclined to remain at home; and Thornton would not often have found chance to grumble upon this score. He was not given to habits of self-denial; nevertheless, to secure good will and triumph over Sharp, he would encourage Althea to make frequent visits—nay, often insist upon it, against her inclination and his own private wish. If his wife could serve his policy, well and good. What was a ...

— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... which no longer loves or wills sin. "Christ alone," he says, "can heal the malady of the soul, but He can heal it." "There is," he says again, "no other way of salvation for any man than the way of self-denial. He must put off his old man and put on Christ—however much blood and sweat the struggle may cost." Man, he insists, is always wrong when he represents God as angry. Christ showed that God needed no appeasing, but rather that man needed to ...

— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... singular starts of vision, that made him seem at times, though purblind to things in common, gifted with an eye of instinct for espying any action that he thought merited reprehension; for all at once, looking fixedly on Mr. Greville, who without much self-denial, the night being very cold, kept his station before the chimney-piece, he exclaimed:—"If it were not for depriving the ladies of the fire, I should like to stand upon the hearth myself." A smile gleamed upon every face at this pointed speech. ...

— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... an insufferable fetter. Its exactions do not make it tyrannical, because it is loyally and freely accepted, accepted even with pleasure. The whole life of the Jew is taken into consideration beforehand, its boundaries are marked, its actions controlled. But this submission entails no self-denial; it is voluntary and the reason is provided with sufficient motives. Indeed, it is remarkable what freedom and breadth thought was able to maintain in the very bosom ...

— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... the stern Spartan self-denial of the man and his followers. There is a hedonistic test, but the higher hedonism prevails against the lower: ignoble and impolitic to sit here feasting while they are fighting, and we don't even know how it fares with them, our allies. The style rises and ...

— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... familiar to English readers of Browning's Balaustion's Adventure. It has been set to music and produced at Covent Garden this very year. The specific Euripidean marks are everywhere upon it. The selfish male, the glorious self-denial of the woman, the deep but helpless sympathy of the gods, the tendency to laughter to relieve our tears, the wonderful lyrics indicate a new arrival in poetry. The originality of Euripides is evident in the choice of ...

— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... Reconciliation, Love of one's Enemies, Patience, Humility, Renunciation, Faith, and Hope. Indeed, it went even further: it taught that the world was of evil and that we needed deliverance; consequently it preached contempt of the world, self-denial, chastity, the giving up of one's own will, that is to say, turning away from life and its phantom-like pleasures; it taught further the healing power of suffering, and that an instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity, ...

— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the part of Philippa are rather vague, but I know that Reade was right in insisting that I needed more "bite" in the passages when I was dressed as a boy. Though he complimented me on my self-denial in making what he called "some sacrifice of beauty" to pass for a boy, "so that the audience can't say, 'Why, James must be a fool not to see she is a girl,'" he scolded me for ...

— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... love is too refined for me. I am, as you observe, a little gross and material. I love with all my being; and, in the love that is given to me, I wish to include the whole person. This is not a subject for lofty self-denial; and, without wishing to wrong your noble sentiments, I see that in the world my method has a certain vogue; that marriage is somewhat the fashion, and passes for a tie honourable and tender enough to have made me wish to become ...

— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... provided liberally for the household expenses, and his wife and children were supplied with money and the means to travel as they requested it. But the minute he was crossed in his own plans, or anyone demanded of him a service that compelled some self-denial, he became hard, ill-natured, ...

— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... the expense of manners and philosophy. In view of the thousands who were dying in battle every day, her remark seemed as heartless as it was superficial and in keeping with the riotous joy of living and prosperity which strikes every returned American with its contrast to Europe's self-denial, emphasized by such details gained by glimpses in the shop windows of Fifth Avenue as the exhibit of a pair of ladies' silk hose inset with lace, ...

— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... poor-box which he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation, and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil as a barber and hair-dresser. It will be generally admitted that the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no ...

— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... age cannot be reached without the exercise of many virtues. There must have been prudence, self-denial, and temperance at the very least. According to the proverb, he that would be long an old man must begin early to be one, and the beginning early just means taking a great many precautions commonly neglected till it is too late. More people ...

— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... SUPERCILIOUS, spends at least half her life in wishing the annihilation of the other half; for as she must only speak in her own Coterie, she is compelled to be frequently silent, and therefore, having nothing to think of, she is commonly gnawn with self-denial, and soured with want of amusement: Miss Larolles, indeed, is better off, for in talking faster than she thinks, she has but followed the natural bent of her disposition: as to this poor JARGONIST, he has, I must own, ...

— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... supplied her bountifully with spending money; Gypsy's stock was small. When Joy wanted to make a present, she had only to ask for a few extra dollars, and she had them. Gypsy always felt as if a present given in that way were no present; unless a thing cost her some self-denial, or some labor, she reasoned, it had nothing to do with her. If given directly out of her father's pocket, it was his ...

— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... francs a-year. Indeed this journal has the rare merit of being the first to teach the French the use, and we must add the abuse, of advertisements. We fear the Presse, during these early days of the gentle Emile and Granier Cassagnac, was neither a model of virtue, disinterestedness, nor self-denial. Nor do we know that it is so now, even under the best of Republics. There are strange tales abroad, even allowing for the exaggeration of Rumor with her hundred tongues. One thing, however, is clear; that the Presse ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... of desperation, he brought himself to the depth of asking Minna to pawn some of her jewelry. She told him that she had long ago pawned it all. She faced their distress like a heroine. Wagner used to weep when he told of her self-denial, and the cheerfulness with which she, the pretty actress of former days, cooked what meals there were to cook, and scrubbed what clothes there were to scrub. For diversion, when they had no money for theatres and the opera, the genius and his wife and the dog ...

— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... of generosity are very defective. As rightly measured, generosity is great in proportion to the amount of self-denial entailed; and where ample means are possessed, large gifts often entail no self-denial. Far more self-denial may be involved in the performance, on another's behalf, of some act that requires time ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... occasions is afterwards detected in simulating, very clumsily, the results which he had once successfully accomplished. The real power having failed, he has not the moral courage to admit it, nor the self-denial to forego his fee which he endeavours to earn by a travesty of what was once genuine. Such an explanation would cover some facts which otherwise are hard to reconcile. We must also admit that some mediums are extremely irresponsible and feather-headed ...

— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... discipline consciously undertaken by personal effort. "The making of mind" is not an art of youth alone. It is an art of middle age and of the older years. Says William James: "The man who daily inures himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition and self-denial in unnecessary things, will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." Such a one also will resist the decay of powers and be able to keep young when the years ...

— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... was not really religious. She was fond of pleasure and games of cards, and really hated any self-denial, or long prayers, though she went to Mass now and then. But between her and the earnest, devoted Helene ...

— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... He took from the battle its crime, and from the conquest its chains; he left the victorious the glory of his self-denial, and turned upon the vanquished only the retribution of his mercy. Happy, proud America! The lightnings of heaven yielded to your philosophy! The temptations of earth could not seduce your patriotism! ...

— Washington's Birthday • Various

... help us, we beseech Thee, that we may be of the sheep that hear the Shepherd's voice and follow Him. Strengthen our faith in that dear Lord who has laid down His life for us, that we may daily, by self-denial and self-sacrifice, lay down our lives for Him, and follow Him here in all the footsteps ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... so-called bachelor club, and he was graduated in the June of the following year with a heart as whole as his physique was fine. But there were some cares to cloud his young life in the army,—a sister whose needs were many and whose means were few. He found that rigid economy and self-denial were to be his portion from the start, and was not sorry that his assignment took him to the far-away land of Arizona, where, as his new captain wrote him, "you can live like a prince on bacon and frijoles, dress like a cow-boy on next to nothing or like an Apache in next to nothing, spend ...

— Foes in Ambush • Charles King