"Abasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The moisture sprang to his eyes as he did so. He had caught a glimpse of the face on the pillow and the changes made in a week were very apparent. Always erect, his father had towered above them then even in his self-abasement, but he looked now as though twenty years, instead of a few days, had passed over his stately head and bowed his incomparable figure. And not that alone. His expression was different. Had Oliver not seen him in his old likeness for that one terrible half-hour, he would not ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... see the "countenance of our genesis," as St. James calls it—the man or woman that God meant us to be, and know that we could not so see it if we were wholly cut off from its realisation. But the clearer the vision of the ideal, the deeper must be our self-abasement when we turn our eyes to the actual. We must not escape from this sharp and humiliating contrast by mentally annihilating the self, so as to make it impossible to say, "Look on this picture, and on this." Such false ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... a quick lifting of her heart and mind for help and insight toward the highest that she knew, and she felt herself pray now, "Help me to be true, to her, for her." The prayer seemed to raise her from some threatened abasement, and from her regained height she spoke with a sense of assured revelation. "We can't have things by merely wanting, them. To gain anything we must work for it. You left us. We didn't shut you out. You ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... satisfactory, daughter. But when you proceeded to point out to these plebeians how much of their misery arose from their own idleness, and ignorance, and dissoluteness, and abasement before those higher in station, and jealousy of the best among ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... House at Togiak stands forlornly on a wind-swept Alaskan spit, while huddled around it a swarm of dirt-covered "igloos" grovel in an ecstacy of abasement. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... for an hour to teach the boys to write. As he was to be paid separately, I was not included. The feeling of envy, abasement, and self-pity with which I used to watch the other boys ply their quills is among the most painful ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... which he had wrought of villainy with his cousin-wife and what he had caused her of severance between her and her husband and how he had required her person of her, but she had sought refuge for her chastity against him with Allah (to whom belong honour and glory) and chose abasement rather than obedience to him, despite stress of torture: neither recked she aught of that which he lavished to her of monies and raiment, jewels and ornaments. When the King had made an end of his story, he bade the bystanders spit in the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... had fallen about her ears, and she was left standing amidst the ruins. Wendover Abbey, wealth, position, independence, the world's respect, were all as far from her as they had been a month ago. Her sense of disappointment was keen, but not so keen as the sense of her self-abasement. Her own character stood revealed, to herself in all its meanness—its sordid longing for worldly wealth—its willingness to stoop to falsehood in the pursuit of a woman's lowest aim, a good establishment. Seen in the light of abject ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... higher), nor because 'saints' make up for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, but because the main set and current of the life was evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and conquered by strenuous effort. Better a life of Godward aspiration and straining after purity, even if broken by such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward grubbing, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not that there were no influences tending at moments to drag him down—an abasement from which he escaped only because he was up so high. We have seen that Basil Dashwood could affect him at times as a chunk of wood tied to his ankle—this through the circumstance that he made Miriam's famous conditions, those of the public exhibition ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... infinite possible good, a great half-revealed Fatherhood. Doubt faltered there, hope exulted. I have not heard from other mortal lips—I do not hope to hear again—such an expression of humble hope and doubt, such a tone of complete abasement before the Divine Ideal, such a final triumphant note of praise in the far-off haven to which ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... who are guilty of it, or even accessory to it. The oppressor is dragged down by the victim of his tyranny. The eternal justice makes the balance even; and as the sufferer by unjust laws is lifted above his physical abasement by spiritual compensations and that nearness to God which only suffering is capable of, in like measure are the material advantages of the wrong-doer counterpoised by a moral impoverishment. Our duty is not to punish, but to ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... as was evidenced by the fact that to him the worst feature of the case seemed to be that he was innocent! He felt that had he been guilty he could have borne his punishment, because he would have richly merited it; but that, being innocent, he should thus be permitted to suffer such abasement and disgrace seemed incomprehensible to him; the injustice of it appeared to him so rank, so colossal, as to destroy within him, in a moment, every atom of his former faith in the existence of a God of justice and of mercy! And with ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... condemned himself," rejoined Herriot, with an air of deep self-abasement. "But I thank God for giving me the means, and the will, for making ample restitution to such as remain of my injured brother's family, or of my own. Harry, I am that uncle. I am the erring ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... government, that is more difficult to understand, than many things that philosophy has discovered in the natural world. Yet, even infidels do not think of disputing facts conclusively proved by philosophy, because they cannot understand them. It becomes us, then, with the deepest humility and self-abasement, to submit our reason ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... will of God. "Prayer is the only key that will open the door of difficulty." The king fasted for a whole week and was assiduous in his devotions. One night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than the sun and the envy of a pert. He clasped her in his embrace, exclaiming, "There is no strength, no power, save in God!" and he felt assured in his heart ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... beginning to scold us and find fault with us all round. "So much for us children!" he would say. On the whole, however, the impossible pinnacle upon which my childish imagination had placed him had undergone a certain abasement. I still kissed his large white hand with a certain feeling of love and respect, but I also allowed myself to think about him and to criticise his behaviour until involuntarily thoughts occurred to me which alarmed me by their ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... things. You ask me about Lord Tho[mon]d(66) and Will: all [the] party is so broke up at present that they are au desespoir. The Bedfords are in extraordinary good humour; that elevation of spirit does them no more credit than their precedent abasement; the equus animus seems a stranger to them. G. Greenv.(67) is certainly [befouled] as a Minister, but he is so well manured in other respects that he cannot be an object of great ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... besides being extremely unwell; but he had no idea, he explained to Eileen, that anything put into his mouth was not meant to be eaten. He then tendered the clothespin and some mangled brown paper, with an air of profound abasement. After that no further attempts at ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... the emotion, though even that the circumstances might have excused; rather, I think, it was a pang of self-reproach—a consciousness of having acted unwisely, though for the best; perhaps, too, the stubbornness of the heart she had ruled once—so strong and proud even in its abasement—was congenial to her own besetting sin: she liked the fierce threat better than the cool sarcasm. At any rate, she answered more gently than ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... enable him to detect the subserviency of the lower classes there and to resent it, as a man and a brother. He spoke sadly and somewhat bitterly of the manners of the brother man who shaved him, which he found unjustifiably affable, and of the inexcusable abasement of a British railway porter if you gave him a shilling. He said he was glad to leave England, it was demoralising to live there; you lost your sense of the dignity of labour, and in the course of time you were almost bound to degenerate into a swell. He expressed ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... first, is there among you any one who has not loved his father, who has not loved his father's memory; any one born in shame and abasement? See, hear this silence! Priest of a God of peace, thy mouth full of sanctity and religion, thy heart of corruption! Thou canst not know what it is to be a father; thou shouldst have thought of thy own! See, in all this crowd ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... a wonderful thing is the love of a woman in its simplicity and strength, and how it gilds all the poor and common things of life and even finds a joy in service! The prouder the woman the more delight does she extract from her self-abasement before her idol. Only not many women can love like Jess, and when they do almost invariably they make some fatal mistake, whereby the wealth of their affection is wasted, or, worse still, becomes a source of misery or shame ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... heart a dishonor there to win, Restored to his senses, stood the Anak Finn; In racked self-control the squeezed tears peeping, Scalding the eye with repressed inkeeping. Discipline must be; the scourge is deemed due. But ah for the sickening and strange heart- benumbing, Compassionate abasement in shipmates that view; Such a grand champion shamed there succumbing! "Brown, tie him up."—The cord he brooked: How else?—his arms spread apart—never threaping; No, never he flinched, never sideways he looked, Peeled ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... fault that I am the victor? 360 Then within him there thundered a voice, like the voice of the Prophet: "It hath displeased the Lord!"—and he thought of David's transgression,[29] Bathsheba's beautiful face, and his friend in the front of the battle! Shame and confusion of guilt, and abasement and self-condemnation, Overwhelmed him at once; and he cried in the deepest contrition: 365 "It hath displeased the Lord! It is the ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... I will cut out thy tongue and stuff it up thy coynte, O thou city filth!" So she was silent and made him no reply, for the beating pained her; but sat down with her arms round her knees and, bowing her head upon her collar, began to look into her case and her abasement after her lot of high honour; and the beating she had endured; and she called to mind her brother and his sickness and forlorn condition, and how they were both strangers in a far country, which crave her tears down her cheeks and she ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... lower grades; and will soon come to verify and illustrate the remark of Lord Bolingbroke, that "the profession of the law, in its nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind, is in its abuse and abasement, the most sordid ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... of the marks of his high dignity; put on the poor habit, and, with bare feet, join the religious in the regular exercises, in order to imitate their evangelical life!" A lively and enlightened faith, a solid and fervent piety, and a superior mind, convinced him that since the time of the abasement of the Son of God, humiliation is honorable, and adds to the splendor of the highest dignities; a truth which is not understood by persons of little faith, by the proud, the indevout, and those ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... Giorgio Maggiore, where there are a Tintoretto and a Veronese, and four horrible swindling big pictures by Romanino, I discovered to my great dismay that I had in my pocket but five soldi, which I offered with much abasement and many apologies to the sacristan; but he received them as if they had been so many napoleons, prayed me not to speak of embarrassment, and declared that his labors in our behalf had been nothing but pleasure. At Santa ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... though for some reason he had no objection whatever to servility in a nice-looking maid—indeed, rather enjoyed it. But now, in the person of Joseph, he saw that there were human or half-human beings born to self-abasement, and that, if their destiny was to be fulfilled, valetry was a necessary institution. He had no pity for Joseph, no shame in employing him. He scorned Joseph; and yet his desire, as a man-about-town, to keep Joseph's esteem, was in ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... entreaty and self-abasement on my part, she opened the door. The room was dark. We sat down together on the window-seat, and all at once she relaxed and her head fell on my shoulder, and she began weeping again. I held her, the alternating moods ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... used to explain it thus: "You see, it is like this: Rogers furnishes the plans and I foot the bills." And this was all there was about it. Only a big man can take his own without abasement. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... to this degree of disorder and abasement, that a noble people had been dragged downwards in the course of years, sinking constantly deeper, abandoning, one by one, its guarantees, losing its titles to the esteem of other nations, approaching the abyss, seeing the hour draw ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... joy I took in the thought that, though he knew it not, nor could come to know it, I Lazzaro Biancomonte, whom he had abused and whose spirit he had broken—was become a tool to expedite the work of abasement and destruction that was ripening for him. And realizing all this, that letter I vowed to Heaven I would carry, suffering no obstacle to daunt me, suffering nothing to turn me from ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... incomprehensible in their minuteness than in their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the minute towards the vast, is only a proof of the finite nature of our present capacity. The loftiest intellect may, without abasement, be employed on the minutest domestic detail, and in all probability will perform it better than an inferior one: it is the motive and end of an action which makes it either dignified or mean. In the homely words ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... this evening a more complete understanding of that self-emptying and abasement with which it is necessary to come to Christ,—a denying of self, trampling it under foot,—a recognizing of the complete righteousness and justice of God, that could do nothing else with us but condemn us utterly, ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... agone to the city I wandered, And watched the ships warped to the Quay of the Merchants; And wondered why folk should be busy and anxious; For bitter my heart was, and life seemed a-waning, With no story told, with sweet longing turned torment, Love turned to abasement, and rest gone for ever. And last night I awoke with a pain piercing through me, And a cry in my ears, and Death passed on before, As one pointing the way, and I rose up sore trembling, And by cloud and by night went before the sun's coming, As one goeth to death,—and lo here the dawning! And a ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... pardon for an offence, must thrice touch the ground, or the honored feet, with both his hands, which immediately he lays upon his forehead; and there are occasions of peculiar humiliation which require the profound prostration of the sashtangam, or abasement of the eight members, wherein the suppliant extends himself face downward on the earth, with palms joined above ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... in prayer. Marcellus felt as though his own soul was being lifted up to the courts of heaven, to the presence of the Saviour, by the power of that, fervent and agonizing prayer. The words seemed to find an echo in his own soul. In his deep abasement he rested his wants upon his companion so that he might present them in a ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... shook from Duggin's hand to the floor,—with a sound like the first clatter of gravel on a coffin lid; and in abasement absolute he dropped his head; his ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... long to tell, and sad to trace, Each step from splendor to disgrace: Enough—no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell; Yes! self-abasement paved the way To villain-bonds ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... thought over all that. But I am old-fashioned in my feelings even if I have often been the reverse in my behavior. I am revolted at the thought of Almo as a professional cut-throat—I was insulted at the sight of him in the arena. I feel that by his abasement of himself he has obliterated my love for him. It is as if he had never existed. I shall not marry him, even if we both outlive my obligatory term of service. I shall never marry anybody. I shall ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and in the modesty of their own self-abasement, they had fixed on the twentieth place, or thereabouts, for Heathcote, and about the twenty-fifth for Dick. Alas! the singles grew into the teens, and the teens into the twenties, and the twenties into the thirties ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the affair were made with great elaborateness. The galleries were filled with the friends, male and female, of pro-slavery Congressmen. The beauty and chivalry of the South were there. They had come to witness the abasement of the great enemy of their most cherished institution. They were to see him driven from the nation's council chamber, a crushed and dishonored man. Not one friendly face looked down upon him as he sat coolly awaiting the attack, and upon the floor about ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... surrender of national honour and national interests as few nations have ever endured with the chances of war still untried. This surrender may, in the actual condition of the Prussian army, have been necessary, but the abasement of it seemed to cling to Manteuffel and to lower all his conceptions of government. Even where the conclusions of his policy were correct they seemed to have been reached by some unworthy process. Like Germany at large, Prussia breathed uneasily under an oppression which was everywhere felt ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... it wasn't true, I hope no harm is done, it is only his incorrigible——' Oh, to hear that woman's voice in that deep abasement! Lyon had no nefarious plan, no conscious wish to practise upon her shame or her loyalty; but he did say to himself that he should like to bring her round to feel that there would have been more dignity in a union with a certain other person. He even dreamed of the hour when, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... heads turned aside, and I thought, or rather the passing fancy took me, that they shrank from meeting her gaze with something of the same shame and dread I myself felt. But she! Can I ever hope to make you realise her look, or comprehend the pang of utter self-abasement with which I succumbed before it? It was so terrible that I seemed to hear her utter words, though I am sure she did not speak; and with some wild idea of stemming the torrent of her reproaches, I made an effort at explanation, ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... face again into the powdered earth, and something about his dogged attitude said that she was going too far. Her woman's instinct sent this warning just in time, abruptly causing her to realize that a self-esteem once crushed into complete abasement can never look upon fellow man with its former level eyes—and she was here to save, not to destroy! The crouching figure on whom she had inflicted a wound without having done the slightest good, was, after all, a big, imaginative child ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... Bodily mortification was mistaken for holiness, and celibacy for sanctity. [497:3] Other errors of an equally grave character became current, for the penitent was described as making satisfaction for his sins by his fasts and his outward acts of self abasement, [497:4] and thus the all-sufficiency of the great atonement was openly ignored. Thus, too, the doctrine of a free salvation to transgressors could no longer be proclaimed, for pardon was clogged with conditions as burdensome to the sinner, as they were alien to the spirit of the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... their expression was more natural than it had been for many days. He was in one of the strangest humours which can have sway over that unconsciously humorous animal, man. In the midst of the deepest self-abasement his heart was overflowing with joy. The combination of sorrow and happiness is a rare one, not found every day, but the condition of experiencing both at the same time and in the highest ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... all miracles were the means by which the soul might be brought back to the knowledge of its immortal destiny. Was it not under the eyes of a harlot that he, himself, had seen the mystery which is God's goodness? and so might he not find that Connie had learned, in the depths of her self-abasement, that the light which surrounds the pleasures of the senses is full of enchantment only for the distant, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... self-abasement!" Pao-yue interposed. The other day, I was outside the garden, consulting with the gentlemen about paintings, and, when they came to hear that we had started a poetical society, they begged of me to let them have the rough ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... necessary to perswade them that they will not herein do any thing mis-becoming their Rank, the greatest Ladies amongst us may be assur'd that those of a Condition superior to theirs, have heretofore been so far from thinking it any abasement to them to charge themselves with the instruction of their own Children, that (to their Immortal Honour) they have made it part of their Business to assist to that of other Peoples also, who were likely one day to be of consequence to the Common-wealth. And ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... had written. When dismembered words and phrases from that note came to his mind on the play-ground, the quaver of terror that rose in Piggy's whoop was not dissembled. Sometimes fear froze his vitals, then a flush of self-abasement burned him with its flames. And all the time he knew that the Pratt girl had that note. He almost hoped that an earthquake would swallow her with it before she could deliver it. When Piggy came straggling in, hot, sweaty, and ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather than to anything else. She saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in his character; she saw clearly that he would ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... to prevent America from being reduced to the British domination, her commerce, and those sources of wealth being restored to the tyrant of the European seas, the ancient rival of France; but on the contrary, the abasement of this rival, and the establishment of a faithful ally, united by all the ties of gratitude, affection, and the most permanent mutual interests. To those invaluable purposes give me leave to repeat to your Excellency, that the decisive measures in the foregoing ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... of stoicism, which does not, like the great oriental religions, tame personality by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of adversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance, its sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to self-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance is ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... ago since Joan had written that letter, and there had come no reply. The man had ignored her, had treated her with silent contempt. The thought made her face burn, brought a sense of miserable self-abasement to her. She had pleaded to him for help, and he had treated ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... seen Hetty in this mood before, petted her, though she said very little, for she felt that the somewhat unusual abasement might, on the whole, be beneficial to her companion. So there was silence in the room, broken only by the snapping of the stove and the faint moaning of the bitter wind about the lonely building, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... look of keen observation, not unmixed with surprise. It might mean one thing; it might mean another; how could I tell? He always impressed me so with his superiority that even in that moment, when my honor and life's happiness were at stake, I was conscious of a feeling of abasement and guiltiness that I dare accuse him to his face. Perhaps, he saw that I was frightened at my own temerity; at all events he was not thrown off ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... true in every aspect of the man. The very clothes he wore, somber, wool-threaded homespun, crudely patched, reminded one of the coarse fabrics that monks affect for their abasement. But one saw, when one remembered the characteristic of the man, that they represented here ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... come, most blessed Father, and in all abasement beseech you to put to your hand, if it is possible, and impose a curb to those flatterers who are enemies of peace, while they pretend peace. But there is no reason, most blessed Father, why any ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... the perfect freedom of fervent love. When a man truly perceiveth and considereth himself, who and what he is, and findeth himself utterly vile and wicked and unworthy, he falleth into such a deep abasement that it seemeth to him reasonable that all creatures in heaven and earth should rise up against him. And therefore he will not and dare not desire any consolation and release; but he is willing to be unconsoled and unreleased; and he doth not grieve over his ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... uncontrolled, beast-like, was making life more repulsive. The pain of her motherhood never approached the agony of her wifehood, when she knew, while the pride of fatherhood was utterly submerged in the poignancy of his self-abasement, when he realized. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... am all unworthy, Charmian, and so low in my abasement that to touch you is presumption, but oh, woman whom I have loved from the first, and shall, to the end, have you stooped in your infinite mercy, to lift me from these depths—is it a new life you offer me was it for this you ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... is without form or comeliness,—rejects all outward graces, seemingly glories in abasement and deformity, fearing only to attribute to Matter some value ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... genius, in eight months, would have changed the whole face of France, of Europe, perhaps. He would not, certainly, have effaced the crime of his starting-point, but he might have covered it. By dint of material improvements he might have succeeded, perhaps, in masking from the nation his moral abasement. Indeed, we must admit that for a dictator of genius the thing was not difficult. A certain number of social problems, elaborated during these last few years by several powerful minds, seemed to be ripe, and might receive immediate, practical ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... month of life. That the protagonist in a great Cause should recant in the face of death seems to argue an almost incredible degree of pusillanimity, and suggests that pusillanimity and subservience are the key to his career. Nevertheless, but for that short hour of abasement nobly and humbly retrieved, the general judgment would probably be altogether different. And that breakdown does not appear to have been characteristic. Twice in the reign of Henry he had bowed to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... insisting on the duty of humility and self-sacrificing love, brings in that sublime description of the Saviour's original glory and equality with God, which he laid aside for our redemption, taking upon himself the form of a servant and submitting to the death of the cross; for which act of self-abasement he is now exalted to be Lord of heaven and earth. Chap. 2:5-11. Intermingled with the above named commendations, exhortations, and counsels, are frequent notices respecting himself, introduced in the most natural and artless manner, and unfolding ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the most honored place, and this inn, humble though it might be, was not without a copy of this great Bible of society. This Miss Plympton procured, and at once set herself to the study of its pages. It was not without a feeling of self-abasement that she did this, for she prided herself upon her extensive knowledge of the aristocracy, but here she was deplorably ignorant. She comforted herself, however, by the thought that her ignorance was the fault of Sir Lionel, who had lived a ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... is finished—"would it were worthier!"—and I must take leave of my illustrious subject, "kissing hands" in imagination, with profound respect. If I back out of the presence, it is not in unrepublican abasement, but because I am loath to turn my eyes away, from the kindly and now familiar face of the good woman, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... main, was a good-hearted as well as good-natured fellow; and the self-abasement of his companion completely got the better of the passing feeling of personal vanity. He regretted the allusion he had made to the other's appearance, and endeavored to express as much, though it was done in the uncouth manner ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... to hear poor Francis Trent, with his broken-down, cringing, crafty look, thus sueing for a sovereign. For he had the air of a ruined gentleman, not of an ordinary beggar, and the signs of refinement in his face and bearing made his state of abasement and destitution more apparent. But Oliver was not touched by any such sentimental considerations. He looked at first as if he were about to refuse his brother's request; but policy dictated another course. He must not drive ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that breaking down, just as what I call Salvation is its widest, most extensive form. We cast aside our reserves, our secrecies, our defences; we open ourselves; touches that would be intolerable from common people become a mystery of delight, acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with symbolical pleasure. We cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our imprisoned egoism looks out through this window, forgets its walls, and is for those brief moments released ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self- abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:—all these were things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... inconceivable essence. When I think that it is he that gives life and movement to the living and moving substance which controls all living bodies; when I hear it said that my soul is spiritual and that God is a spirit, I revolt against this abasement of the divine essence; as if God and my soul were of one and the same nature! As if God were not the one and only absolute being, the only really active, feeling, thinking, willing being, from whom we derive our ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... treacherous solace to their consciences, one of my vocation has not to learn. Our chief task is to show the delusion of those, who, while condemning their own sins by words of confession and self-abasement, make a merit of humility; but, Doge of Venice, there is still a virtue in the sacred rite I have this evening been required to perform, which can overcome the mounting of the most exalted spirit. Many attempt to deceive themselves at the confessional, while, by the power ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... support of the government by denouncing doctrines unfavorable to sovereignty. The doctrine of justification by faith, Hume thought, was in harmony with the general law by which religions tend more and more to exaltation of the Deity and to self-abasement of the worshipper. Tory as he was, he judged the effects of the Reformation as at first favorable to the execution of justice and finally dangerous by exciting a restless spirit of opposition to authority. One ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... indifference. On such occasions I have sometimes been startled by a subtle, fiendish suggestion inciting me to show him the contrary by a seeming encouragement of Hargrave's advances; but such ideas are banished in a moment with horror and self-abasement; and then I hate him tenfold more than ever for having brought me to this!—God pardon me for it and all my sinful thoughts! Instead of being humbled and purified by my afflictions, I feel that they are turning my nature into gall. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... To abasement at the footstool of this triumphant wickedness, everything venal and sordid in the yet Free States would inevitably and intensely gravitate: commerce seeking customers; manufactures eager for markets; shipping greedy of cargoes and freights; but, above all, Democratic politicians hungry for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... counted the presence of his Maker; but there was a time for every thing. He was conscious to himself, I repeat, of nothing to cause him shame, and in the tramp of his boots there was certainly no self-abasement. It was true he performed next to none of the duties of the rectorship—but then neither did he turn any of its income to his own uses; part he paid his curate, and the rest he laid out on the church, which might easily have consumed six times the amount in desirable, if not ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... square and papered in grey-white with fluted columns of the Corinthian order of architecture, and that touch of history and romance did not fail of its effect on the country boys fresh from the barn-yard and the corn-rows. It added to their fear and self-abasement, as they rolled their slow eyes around and upward. The audience consisted mainly of the pupils arranged according to classes, the girls on the left and the boys on the right. In addition, some of the towns-people, who loved oratory, or were specially ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... about women fell from me—I saw myself as I had been all day—utterly selfish—not really feeling for her grief, only making capital out of it for my own benefit—. At that moment, and for the rest of the day and night, I suffered every shade of self reproach and abasement a man can feel. And next day I had to stay in bed because I had done some stupid thing to my leg in lying ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... reasonable, forcible, moderate. He grapples with the medieval prejudices against the Jews in a manner which places his works among the best political pamphlets ever written. Morally, too, his manner is noteworthy. He pleads for Judaism in a spirit equally removed from arrogance and self-abasement. He is dignified in his persuasiveness. He appeals to a sense of justice rather than mercy, yet he writes as one who knows that justice is the rarest and highest quality of human nature; as one who knows that humbly to express gratitude for justice received is to do ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... half-suppressed oath was ended with an indignant sigh. Here and there too,—contrasting the redecorated, refurnished, and smiling shops—heaps of rubbish before the gate of some haughty mansion testified the abasement of fortifications which the owner impotently resented as a sacrilege. Through such streets and such throngs did the party we accompany wend their way, till they found themselves amidst crowds assembled before the entrance of the Capitol. The officers there stationed kept, however, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... self-abasement Frank failed to take into the accounting the stupendous effect which the New York influences and the handling of great affairs had had upon his own character. Day by day he had learned more plainly the lessons ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Trent's smile suddenly returned. "I could have borne everything but that last revelation of the impotence of human reason. Cupples, I have absolutely nothing left to say, except this: you have beaten me. I drink your health in a spirit of self-abasement. And you shall ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... mere desire to win money. As if money could matter to HER! No, she had some end in view, and there were circumstances at which I could guess, but which I did not know for certain. True, the slavery and abasement in which she held me might have given me (such things often do so) the power to question her with abrupt directness (seeing that, inasmuch as I figured in her eyes as a mere slave and nonentity, she could not very well have ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had been cruelly wounded by Miss Potter's careless but base accusation, was touched at the girl's distress; the abasement of the once proud young beauty, the nature of its cause, together with the realisation of the poor girl's desperate case, moved her deeply: she stood irresolute in the middle of the room. The three weeping girls were wondering when Mavis was going to recommence ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... and amongst all peoples, the spy has been held in marked abhorrence. In the amnesties of war there is for him alone no quarter; in the estimate of social life no toleration; his self-abasement excites contempt, not compassion; his patrons despise while they encourage; and they who stoop to enlist the services shrink with disgust from the moral leprosy covering the servitor. Of such was the witness put forward to corroborate the informer, and still not corroborating ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... of marvelling and rapture, with chill of self-abasement. When, years ago, he saw Irene in the dress of ceremony, she seemed to him peerlessly radiant; but it was the beauty and the dignity of one still girlish. What he now beheld was the exquisite fulfilment of that bright promise. He had not erred in worship; she who had ever been to him the light ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... himself up obstinately in his isolation, like Marsa in her solitude; and he did not consider himself ridiculously absurd or foolishly romantic, when he remembered that his countrymen, the Hungarians, were the only people, perhaps, who, in the abasement of all Europe before the brutality of triumph and omnipotent pessimism, had preserved their traditions of idealism, chivalry, and faith in the old honor; the Hungarian nationality was also the only one which ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... performed in front of a post on which burns a candle, it is called without distinction, to make reparation or to be at the post. The nuns even prefer, out of humility, this last expression, which contains an idea of torture and abasement. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way you see him. It's just one of his times, now. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... second year of the peace. And the degradation of the proud Dorian city seemed to be complete, when a Spartan named Lichas, who had entered for the chariot-race under another name, was driven with blows from the racecourse. So deep was the abasement to which the great name of Sparta ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... not say that which I cannot credit!—You have not confidence in the power of my affection, or you would never have done this thing to save me pain. What pain can be so great to me as the thought of my husband's reputation suffering abasement?—Do you think that, in comparison with this, I, your wife, could put the loss of a service of plate, or house in town, or equipage, or servants, or such baubles as these?" added she, her eyes glancing upon the diamonds; then, snatching them ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... The creature endowed with faculties for "large discourse, looking before and after," capable of so much design, respectability, and happiness, even in its present short stage, and entering on an endless career, is seen in the abasement of snatching, as its utmost reach of purpose, at the low amusements, blended with vices, of each passing day; and cursing its privations and tasks, and often also the sharers of those privations, and the exactors of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the things of this world, a healing of controversies and animosities, a confession of wrongs, a breaking down before God, and penitent, broken-hearted supplications to Him for pardon and acceptance. It caused self-abasement and prostration of soul, such as we never before witnessed. As God by Joel commanded, when the great day of God should be at hand, it produced a rending of hearts and not of garments, and a turning unto the Lord with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. As God said by Zechariah, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... His people. It was the Great Presence, which makes a Catholic Church different from every other place in the world; which makes it, as no other place can be, holy. The Breviary offices were by this time not unknown to Reding; and as he threw himself on the pavement, in sudden self-abasement and joy, some words of those great Antiphons came into his mouth, from which Willis had formerly quoted: "O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in rubo apparuisti; O Emmanuel, Exspectatio Gentium et Salvator earum, veni ad ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... strength for nothing more; yet at the end, before life left him, one strange last change came over him. Both his rough passion and the terrible abasement of defeat seemed to leave him, and his face became again the face of a well-bred, self-controlled man. There was a helpless effort at a shrug of his shoulders, a scornful slight smile on his lips, and a look of recognition, ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... The Peloponnesian war broke out in 431 B.C., and lasted until 404. Its result was the abasement of Athens and the elevation of Sparta to supreme power in Greece. When it began, Athens with her allies included all the coast cities of Asia Minor as far south as Lycia, the cities bordering on the Thracian and Chalcidian ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... and it should triumph by his voice, by his work, by his blood. In moments of ecstatic contemplation, doubtless, the sense of self melted in the sense of the Unspeakable, and in that part of his experience lay the elements of genuine self-abasement; but in the presence of his fellow-men for whom he was to act, pre-eminence seemed a ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... freedom,—hearts, like theirs, which had caught inspiration from the heroes and martyrs of liberty,—good right arms, like theirs, which wielded the implements of war as readily as the implements of labor, all scouted the very thought of such unutterable abasement. By the patriotism which abhors treason, by the fortitude which endures privation, by the intrepidity which faces death, they proved themselves worthy of the great continent they inhabit by showing themselves capable of upholding the principles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... nature. His ambition was to be an object of heathenish idolatry to his subjects—whether as a god or devil it mattered nothing; fear was the only incense he was capable of craving; and if such a nature can be susceptible of enjoyment, his consisted in the abasement of his fellow-creatures. The severity of his decrees, the rigor of his administration, and the attributes of infallibility which he cast around his person, caused him to be regarded with awe, but not with love. He could brook no opposition ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and abasement are of a unique sort ... each has its own peculiar physiognomical expression. In self-satisfaction the extensor muscles are innervated, the eye is strong and glorious, the gait rolling and elastic, the nostril dilated, and a peculiar smile plays upon the lips. This complex ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... His next ambition was to be a lawyer; and, to this end, a kindly Uncle Contarine equipped him with fifty pounds for preliminary studies. But on his way to London he was decoyed into gambling, lost every farthing, and came home once more in bitter self-abasement. Having now essayed both divinity and law, his next attempt was physic; and, in 1752, fitted out afresh by his long-suffering uncle, he started for, and succeeded in reaching, Edinburgh. Here more memories survive of his social qualities than of his studies; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... having no means of defence against the strong, were compelled to surrender their allodial title for a feudal one, and do homage to the neighboring lord for the sake of protection. And to such an extent did the abasement of allodial privileges prevail, that it came at length to be recognized as a principle that the feudal arrangement was the only legitimate one; whereupon allodial lands were seized with impunity, and appropriated by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I glad this violent spirit can thus creep; that, like a poisonous serpent, he can thus coil himself, and hide his head in his own narrow circlets; because this stooping, this abasement, gives me hope that ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... turned on them a mingled torrent of sarcasm, scorn, contempt, irony, scoffing, and derision, hot, seething, hissing, blistering, and consuming. He then turned to the haughty and insolent Commissioners of slavery, who were present, that the abasement of the State might lack no mark or brand, and with an air haughtier and prouder than their own, defied them. He declared himself their mortal foe, and cast the gauntlet contemptuously into their faces. He told them they would meet him again in the coming bitter days, and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the beasts hid themselves in their terror so that not one of them was seen again that night. As for the People of the Little Hills, they were now ready to fall down and put dust in their hair in utter abasement, if either Grom or the Chief so ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... deep abasement of grief, blazed up a fierce and fiery anger. She started from her recumbent position, and began to walk wildly up and down the floor, beating her ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... that God should be exalted and she herself annihilated; hence, there was no height to which she would not have soared to promote honour to God, and no depth to which she would not have descended to procure her own abasement. The generosity of her humility inspired her equally to undertake great things for her Divine Master, when His service required them, and to remain contentedly in inaction when this was more agreeable to Him. Far from attaching any importance ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... he became aware that in some special way he sat judging and pitying her. She had hardly lifted her eyes to him twice, yet it was he, intimately he, who responded, as if from afar off, to the touch of her infinite solicitude and abasement, the joy and the shame of her love. As he watched and knew his lips tightened and his face paled with the throb of his own renunciation, he folded his celibate arms in the habit of his brotherhood and was caught up into a knowledge and an imitation of how the spotless Original would have looked ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... no such thought crossed Frank's mind. He was just as good a Churchman as ever—why not? Just as fond of his own ideal of what a parish and a Church Service ought to be—why not? But the only thought which did rise in his mind was one of utter self-abasement. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... experiencing a curious sensation of pleasure in the midst of my pain. When he repeated his order I found its accomplishment no longer repulsive. One of the few pleasurable memories this intimacy, extending over years, has left for me is that moment of abject abasement to one who, with no warmth of feeling, had yet once had sufficient energy to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... memory of my shame, I covered my face; but now, all at once, perceiving my abasement and bitter remorse, moved by a sweet impulse she clasped her arm about my stooping shoulders and ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... even succeed in harming that enigmatical personage," continued Chauvelin with the same self-abasement. "Sir Percy Blakeney, you remember, threw himself across my plans, quite innocently of course. I failed where you succeeded. Luck has deserted me. Our government offered me a humble post, away from France. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... deny it no longer. Nor was the shame with which she confessed it unmingled with pride. He was a man to compel love, one of the mood imperative, chain-armored in the outdoor virtues of strength and endurance and stark courage. Her abasement began only where his superlation ended. That a being so godlike in equipment should have been fashioned without a soul, and that she should have given her heart to him. This was the fount ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... memories of men. Their naked names, and a grand comprehensive sentiment of civic gratitude, patriotic love, or human admiration—or the utterance of some elementary principle most essential in the constitution of true virtue;—or a declaration touching that pious humility and self-abasement, which are ever most profound as minds are most susceptible of genuine exaltation—or an intuition, communicated in adequate words, of the sublimity of intellectual power;—these are the only tribute which can here be paid—the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... so kindled in my soul. Who has been like to me? My name travels A hundred seven and twenty languages, My name a ship upon them, trading fear. My unseen power weighs upon the heads Of nations, like the blown abasement given By sedges when they are wretched to the wind. Ay, and the farthest goings of the air Can reach no land my taxes do not labour. The fear of me is the conscience of the world. Ahasuerus is a region large As there is light upon the ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie |
