"Renunciation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creature seemed to suffer acutely under this renunciation. A desolate air of utter and complete loneliness fell upon him, like a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... immediately that they are willing to open peace negotiations as soon as the enemy powers declare their consent to the renunciation of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Votum pro pace[633]. "If in my youth, says he, having less knowledge than now, the prejudices of education, or a blind attachment to authors of same, carried me too great lengths, shall I not be permitted at present, when I am old, to adopt more reasonable sentiments, after long enquiry and a renunciation of all ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... not been for the force of circumstances, which revealed to me that she left for the North, in the early express—with you—or equivalent to that. She entered the train at the same time, and you were both in the same car. That fact, coupled with your well-known devotion to her, and her renunciation of me, satisfied me that she had fled from me, to the ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... do it. I'm going to do what I can. I'm going to be as you wish me to be, to help you, to serve you.... If you can't come to meet me, I'll meet you. I can't help but love you, I can't do without you. Never in my life have I subscribed willingly to the idea of renunciation. I've hated renunciation. But if there is no other course but renunciation, renunciation let it be. I'm bitter about this, bitter to the bottom of my soul, but at least I'll have you know I ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... susceptible spinster, with all her experience of the villany of man, had never conceived the wretch to be so thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption as when Dr. Riccabocca took his leave, and once more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the Casino, and without having made any formal renunciation of his criminal celibacy. For some days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and brooded with more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty of the approaching crash. Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity, which, while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had permitted ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... detect it in the lowest socket of the heart. Often it is most vital when we feel most sure that it is vanquished. It delights in the garb of humility, and finds its food in the profession of self-renunciation. See its grossest expression in the desire for physical superiority—the glory of the victor in the Grecian games, or the modern pugilist with the champion's belt. This is the reason why men, priding themselves upon qualities in which they are equalled by any mastiff and excelled ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... been sore aggrieved by thine evil doing. She demandeth of thee an instant yielding of yon heretical and pernicious book, the which hath led thee astray; and a renunciation of thy heresy; the which done, thou shalt receive apostolic ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... or Torvald Helmer's. They are swathed in timid conventions, blindfolded with selfishness, so that they cannot perceive, and unable with their own hands to tear off these bandages. They are incapable of the highest renunciation. "No man," says Torvald Helmer, "sacrifices his honor, even for one he loves." Those who heard Miss Achurch deliver Nora's reply will not easily forget it. "Millions of women have done so." The effect in the theatre was tremendous. This sentence ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... become what the French call a devote. She gave herself up to mythical thoughts, and expressed a desire of taking the veil. Her confessor, however, was a keen student of human nature, and he perceived that she was too young to decide upon the renunciation of earthly things. Moreover, her grandmother, who had no intention that Aurore should become a nun, hastened to Paris and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... great pleasure to state that the present executive of Massachusetts has disclaimed the principle which was maintained by the former executive, and that in this disclaimer both branches of the legislature have concurred. By this renunciation the State is placed on the same ground in this respect with the other States, and this very distressing anomaly in our system is removed. It is well known that the great body of our fellow-citizens in Massachusetts are as firmly devoted ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... reporting other amendments—one requiring a similar renunciation on the part of all persons holding office, and one abolishing domestic slavery. But before the convention adjourned he was, unfortunately, summoned to the bedside of his dying mother. Otherwise, New ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the use he made of the Gordon Riots of 1780, "Barnaby Rudge," like "A Tale of Two Cities," may be considered an historical work. It is more of a story than any of its predecessors. Lord George Gordon, the instigator of the riots, died a prisoner in the Tower of London, after making public renunciation of Christianity in favour of the Jewish religion. "The raven in this story," said Dickens, "is a compound of two originals, of whom I have been the proud possessor." Dickens died at Gad's Hill on June 9, 1870, having written fourteen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... their spiritual needs; they want to have their souls washed clean by penance and self-denial. But you," he continued, in no unfriendly mood, but with his usual uncompromising sincerity, "whence comes your renunciation? It is simply that a woman has turned your head. You want to find yourself on the same plane with her; you want to be socially her equal; and to do that you think you should throw off those theatrical trappings. You see, my dear Linn, if I have remembered my catechism, you have ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... answered. "In fact I've made one failure already, and I'm pretty well on with a second; but the principle is right, all the same. I don't expect everybody to see the difference between Don Ippolito and Father O'Brien. At any rate, what I'm going to paint at is the lingering pagan in the man, the renunciation first of the inherited nature, and then of a personality that would have enjoyed the world. I want to show that baffled aspiration, apathetic despair, and rebellious longing which you caten in his ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... study, if she would do the household drudgery. Because his mother whom he loved and honoured was content to lead this life, he seemed to think that his wife could do the same; but her nature and her rearing were not those of the Carlyles and their Annandale neighbours. It involved a complete renunciation of the comforts of life and the social position which she enjoyed; and much though she admired his talents and enjoyed his company, she was not in that passion of love which could lift her to such heights ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... resolutely closed the drawer, blew out the candles, and strode swiftly from the room and down the creaking stairs, lighting the way with matches. Even as he convicted himself of wrong, he justified himself as right. The virtuous renunciation balanced, aye, overbalanced,—the account with cupidity. He was saying to himself as he made his way ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... clear that so glaring a renunciation of the incommunicable sovereign rights of life and death could only have been successfully obtained by the regular intercession made to each duke for the release of one prisoner every year; and the origin of that intercession can be explained ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... aspect: whereas in the beginning the body of worshippers, whether it approached its god with prayer for deliverance from calamities or for material blessings, approached him in order that their desires might be fulfilled; in the end the worshipper is taught that approach is possible only on renunciation of his own desires and on acceptance of God's will. The centre of religion is transposed: it is no longer man and his desires round which religion is to revolve. The will of God is to be the centre, to which man ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... voluntary renunciation, I hoped to escape the curse that advancing age brings to most women. Alas! This year has taught me that we can neither deceive nor escape our destiny, since we carry it in our hearts ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... in any particular manner. Etta, indeed, and one or two others, were in white, because it happened to be more convenient and suitable, but neither Mr. Morven nor Miss Eunice wished to have the consciousness of dress interfere with the solemn thoughts of self-dedication and renunciation of the world appropriate to the occasion. Even with Bertie Sanderson, who had come home a few days before, "old things had so passed away," that she wore a simple blue gingham, much plainer, and at the same time much more becoming, than the costume in which she had originally ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... words," said Halfvorson, "that, after the foundation, two things are necessary for those who wish to reach the heights. Work, untiring work, Petter Nord, is one; and the other is renunciation. Renunciation of play and love, of talk and laughter, of morning sleep and evening strolls. In truth, in truth, two things are necessary for him who would win fortune. One is called work, and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... were fastened on Gualtier as he said these words. The scorn with which he disowned any obedience, the confidence with which he spoke of that renunciation of his former subordination, were but ill in accordance with those words with which he ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... authority so high as your own, that this is a wicked book that should be coerced and suppressed by a Tory Government, will, no doubt, rush to it and read it. But, alas! they will find that it is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... securing the dependency of Ireland; and against which a loud clamour had been long raised in that country. This repeal, which was carried through both houses of parliament without a division, was virtually a renunciation of legislating for Ireland; and therefore gave great satisfaction to the whole body of the Irish people. This satisfaction was increased by the abolition of the power of suppressing or altering bills in the privy-council, and the limitation of the duration of the Mutiny Act to the term ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The Duc de Bordeaux, only son of the Duc de Berri, had by the death of Charles X. and the renunciation of all claims to the French Throne on the part of the Duc d'Angouleme, become the representative of the elder branch of the Bourbons. He had intended his visit to England to have a private ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the time of the singing of birds having come and the voice of the turtle being heard in the land, the grain is committed in faith of increase to the earth, is the greater in consequence of a period of partial abstinence and renunciation of social pleasures, analogous to the Christian lent, having preceded it. For during the month of March the Circassian puts himself on a low diet, refraining especially from the eating of eggs, and will neither hire, lend, borrow, or receive any thing from another, not even a light from ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... more. I want habitual intercourse, cheer, inspiration, tenderness. I want these for myself; I want to impart them. I have done as Timon did, for these last eight years. My early intercourses were more equal, because more natural. Since I took on me the vows of renunciation, I have acted like a prodigal. Like Timon, I have loved to give, perhaps not from beneficence, but from restless love. Now, like Fortunatus, I find my mistresses will not thank me for fires made of cinnamon; rather they run from too rich an odor. What shall I do? not curse, like him, (oh base!) nor ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Manovska,—I can't see you weep." So tenderly he spoke her name, with quivering lips, reverently. With all his power he held himself and would dare no more. If only once more he might touch her lips with his—only once in his renunciation—but no. His conscience forbade him. Memory closed upon him like a deadening cloud and drenched his hurt soul with sorrow. He rose from stooping above her ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... on the left side, looking to the window. The life of St. Francis begins in his renunciation of ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... an utterly new emotion, which inevitably must have become the love he had so quietly declared it to be. He had never before felt as he felt then, cared as he cared then. Anything had been possible for him at that time—any degree of love, any devotion, any generous renunciation. Clear-sighted, master of himself, he saw love before him, and knew it when he saw it; recognised it, was ready for it, offered it, emboldened by her soft hands ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Tabanan, trade and industry could not flourish if insecurity of persons and property existed to any great extent. The natives have also a remedy against the aggression of their rulers in their own hands; it is called Metilas, consists in a general rising and renunciation of allegiance, and proves mostly successful. Justice is administered from a written civil and criminal code. Slavery is abolished. Hinduism, which was once the religion of Java, but has been extinct there for four centuries, is still in vogue in the islands of Bali and Lombok, where the cruel ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... one of the saving qualities of the Russian's soul. The peasant's nature is one that has few wants and little rebellious power. The Greek church of the simple gospel is his and a government of the Czar's will. His power of self renunciation is one which in Slavophilic thought gives him true liberty. Therefore ask the followers of this doctrine, what need is there of the constitutional liberties of the west, or its republics or limited monarchies, or its differences in ecclesiastical ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... compelled by the revolutionists to abdicate, and the crown prince signed a renunciation of his right to the succession. The abdication of the Kings of Bavaria and Wurtemburg occurred at the same time. The ex-emperor and the crown prince, in an attempt to reach the British line and surrender themselves, were headed off by the revolutionary ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... at Aphaca, at Hierapolis, and at Antioch, where, in the time of Julian, even a Libanius confessed that the great festival of the year consisted only in the perpetration of all that was impure and shameless, and the renunciation of every ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Neither of these oracles of my life forbid me to be yours, and the impulse of my whole soul would cast me into your arms, if you could only be happy at that price. But shall you or I place our happiness in a fugitive delirium of the senses, which cannot give half the enjoyment that its voluntary renunciation would afford our hearts? Shall we not more fully believe in the immateriality and eternity of our love, if it remains, like a pure thought, in those regions which are inaccessible to change and death, than if it ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... mathematics; Origen doctored his body with a knife; every day some one is thus mortifying his dearest interests and desires, and, in Christ's words, entering maim into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is to supersede the lesser and less harmonious affections by renunciation; and though by this ascetic path we may get to heaven, we cannot get thither a whole and perfect man. But there is another way, to supersede them by reconciliation, in which the soul and all the faculties and senses pursue a common ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... self-control and temperance in all things, there would be no joy without remorse, no pleasure without fatigue—that it is from within that happiness must come, if it come at all, and that unless the mind has schooled itself to peace by the renunciation ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... will fall into a habit of wondering praise of Bushido, the Japanese chivalry, as if no Western knights had ever vowed noble vows, or as if no Eastern knights had ever broken them. Or again, our drawing-rooms will be full of the praises of Indian renunciation and Indian unworldliness, as if no Christians had been saints, or as if all Buddhists had been. But if the first injustice is to think of human virtues as peculiarly Eastern, the other injustice is a ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... ground. Touches of tenderness break in upon the reveller; thoughts of the kinship of earth, as the drinker lifts the sweet cup wrought of the same clay as he; submission to the lot of mortality; counsels to be generous while life lasts, "to give and to share"; the renunciation of gross ambitions such as wealth and power, with some likeness or shadow in it of the crowning virtue ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... the Bishop-Home excellently arranged; the sisters, the doctor, and the missionaries, all indefatigable in their noble tasks. It was a different place when Damien came there, and made his great renunciation, and slept that first night under a tree amidst his rotting brethren: alone with pestilence; and looking forward (with what courage, with what pitiful sinkings of dread, God only knows) to a lifetime of dressing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instrument to observe it, as if they were condemned thereto by the definitive sentence of a competent judge, rendered in a case decided. We renounce whatever laws and rights plead in our favor, and in this case, and the law and rule of law that says that a general renunciation of laws is invalid. This is given in the said city of Manila, on the twenty-eighth day of the month of April of the year one thousand six hundred and eleven. The grantors, whom, I, the notary, testify to be known to me, signed this instrument—Captains Diego de Valdez, Geronimo ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... rest of the tangle. She gives me up? Pooh! She writes it. She writes anything. And that vilest, I say, I will make more enviable, more Clotilde! he thundered her signature in an amazement, broken suddenly by the sight of her putting her name to the letter. She had done that, written her name to the renunciation of him! No individual could bear the sight of such a crime, and no suffering man could be appeased by a single victim to atone for it. Her sex must be slaughtered; he raged against the woman; she became that ancient poisonous thing, the woman; his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... about words, and yet, in reality, serious constitutional questions were involved in the debate. The Commons insisted on the word 'abdicated,' not as wishing to imply that in any act of the late king there had been an official renunciation of the crown, which would have been manifestly untrue; but because 'abdicated' in their minds alone expressed the fact that James had so borne himself as virtually to have entirely renounced, disowned, and relinquished the crown, to ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... wrong me. The Anguissola lose more than I shall gain by Agostino's renunciation of the world. And I am sorry for it. You ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... affair after all. The Family Name has taken to itself a soul. It is a living thing. It may be worked for, it may be nourished by affection, it may even be worshipped. Men may give their lives to it with as great a devotion, with as exalted a sense of renunciation, and as lofty a joy in that renunciation, as those who vow allegiance to St. Francis or St. Dominic. The tearing of the heart from the bosom often proves to be a mortal hurt when there is nothing to put in the gap of its emptiness. Not so when a tradition ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... friends of Richard abhorred them as the worst of traitors. They had therefore no resource but to submit, and to second the design of Lancaster. After several consultations it was resolved to combine a solemn renunciation of the royal authority on the part of Richard with an act of deposition on the part of the two houses of parliament, in the hope that those whose scruples should not be satisfied with the one, might acquiesce in the other. To obtain the first, the royal captive was assailed with promises and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Rodney pulled himself back from the edge of a topic on which he was apt to become readily vehement. "But Socialism isn't the way out for them any more than it's the way out for the poor; it's got, I believe, to be by individual renunciation that their salvation will come; by their giving up, and stripping bare, and going down one by one and empty-handed into the common highways, to take their share of hardness like men. It will be extraordinarily difficult. Changing one's camp is. It's so difficult as to be all but impossible. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... of Miss Spencer's quiet words of renunciation, there was a look of pleading in her shyly uplifted eyes impossible to resist. Brant promptly ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... we die, then should we be certain of this blissful future, my Geraldine. There, above, there is no more separation—no more renunciation for us. There above, you are mine, and the bloody image of your husband no longer ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... his—his at last! After struggles so long and painful, after such bitter renunciation, and such mournful resignation, happiness had at last arisen for him; the never expected had at last become indeed a reality. Catharine loved him. With a sacred oath she had sworn to him that she would one day become his ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... some nameless one makes for the citizens, perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their laws. These, too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal taunt. They are, indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at all—this it is that makes the succes fou (and here Paris is of one mind with London) of ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... path so easy, took the lead. "Just a formal renunciation of the crown," he said. "Give as your reason, if you choose, your inability to fall in with the expressed desire of the Cabinet that you should marry a Serbian lady. It is essential that ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... with a sigh of renunciation, "I suppose we'll have to advertise it; and watch the 'Lost and Found' columns, too. But—wouldn't it be glorious if nobody should see our advertisement or—or ever advertise for it? It's so lovely! ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... in this, and in 1675 there was war, when, Holstein being defeated, the Danes imprisoned its duke, Christian Albertus, until he signed a renunciation of all his rights. ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... end and the days of the Goddess of Joy were numbered. There had been conceived in Judaea symbols more lofty and more pure, which were to rule a great part of the world for two thousand years—afterwards, alas, to decline in their turn; and men were about to throw themselves passionately into renunciation, asceticism ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... use no politer word.' For humanism, conceiving the more 'true' as the more 'satisfactory' (Dewey's term), has sincerely to renounce rectilinear arguments and ancient ideals of rigor and finality. It is in just this temper of renunciation, so different from that of pyrrhonistic scepticism, that the spirit of humanism essentially consists. Satisfactoriness has to be measured by a multitude of standards, of which some, for aught we know, may fail in any given case; and what is more ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... life of complete self-renunciation lived out in that little home—the quiet acceptance and patient bearing of a life-long sorrow, and the earnest endeavour day after day to follow closely the Master's footsteps, and live his holy, blameless ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... so essential a point. Finding in me no scruples, no unwillingness, he thought it absurd to be scrupulous for me. My own heart having abjured my religion, it was absurd to make any difficulty about a formal renunciation. These were his avowed reasons for concurrence, but time showed that he had probably other reasons, founded, indeed, in his regard for my happiness, but such as, if they had been known, would probably have strengthened ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... into the sitting room of the farmhouse, where he found Joe and Janey, the rare smile that comes with the sweetness of renunciation was on his lips. After he had congratulated them, he asked ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... revised edition of the confession of faith, Van Os was censured for heresy. But he took the first opportunity to preach the Protestant doctrine that every one had the right to test the church-creed by the word of God. In the opinion of the people this course amounted to a total renunciation of the creed, and he was accordingly dismissed. Another dispute, which created attention and attracted the suspicion of the watchful church, was on toleration. All who dared to defend even the word, were stigmatized as unpardonable heretics, for Voltaire had just written in its favor. Pastor ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... would never efface. But the charm of either remained—perceptible at this hour as perhaps it would never be again to the same extent. Antoinette basked in the light of Ermentrude's beauty ennobled by renunciation, and Ermentrude in that wonderful look in her friend's plain face which came at great crises and made her for the moment the equal ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... known, that he was charged by Gov. Hamilton, to make prisoners of the garrison, but not to treat them harshly; and that if nine of their principal men would come out, and negotiate a treaty, based on a renunciation of allegiance to the United States, and on a renewal of their fealty to the king, the Indian army should be instantly withdrawn. Boone did not confide in the sincerity of the Frenchman, but he determined to gain the advantage of farther preparation for resistance, by delaying ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... To that renunciation her husband had assented. It had been made an article of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The Pope had been requested to give his apostolical sanction to an arrangement so important to the peace of Europe; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... war on the Continent than about the conversion of the English heretics, determined to save his foreign policy at the expense of his plans in favour of the Catholic church. He obtained a supply; and in return for this concession he cancelled the Declaration of Indulgence, and made a formal renunciation of the dispensing power ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... appeared to her already, since this pretty card had come; she looked at it strangely, with eyes in which there was longing, renunciation, and a wild hopelessness of love. She must not keep it; it was not hers; it belonged of right to that other—the woman who was his wife. No, she must not keep it—the beautiful, tender thing. With steady hand, but blanched, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... This renunciation by the War Department of the proper show of authority and power, demanded by plain necessity and repeatedly urged by its trusted agents, must have touched the pride of Anderson and his brother officers. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... ended in Mr Slope receiving a full renunciation from Mr Quiverful of any claim he might have to the appointment in question. It was only given verbally and without witnesses; but then the original promise was made ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... pray—brokenly and desperately, as she had often prayed during the last few weeks. It was a passionate throwing of the will against a fate, cruel, unjust, intolerable; a means not to self-renunciation, but to a self-assertion which was in her like madness, so foreign was it to all the habits of ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thundering anathemas against each other and the supporters of their rivals. Benedict XIII. was then Pope in Avignon, but there was a general desire in Christendom that the scandal should be terminated. All his cardinals except two deserted Benedict, and the King of France required his renunciation of the tiara. "Pope I have written myself; Pope I have been acknowledged to be; Pope I will remain to the end of my days," was his answer. Then he was besieged in his palace and forced to capitulate, and thrown into prison, where ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... spirit than this laying aside of personal ambitions in order to join in the struggle for human liberty. In his best known sonnet, "On His Blindness," which reflects his grief, not at darkness, but at his abandoned dreams, we catch the sublime spirit of this renunciation. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... enchantress whose sorceries had kindled in his heart one of those fatal passions which burn out the whole of a man's nature, and leave it, like a sacked city, only a smouldering heap of ashes. Deepest, therefore, among his vows of renunciation had been those which divided him from all womankind. The gulf that parted him and them was in his mind deep as hell, and he thought of the sex only in the light of temptation and danger. For the first time in his life, an influence serene, natural, healthy, and sweet breathed over him from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... strain of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still!—so different from the practice of your common converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they can never get far enough from the society of their former errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths, with which they ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... creation, and, plunged in severe ascetic austerities, thou hast also surpassed the Prajapatis themselves! Thou art esteemed as one who is nearest to Narayana, in the next world. Many a time in days of yore hast thou beheld the Supreme Creator of the universe with eyes of spiritual abstraction and renunciation, having first opened thy pure and lotus-like heart—the only place where the multiform Vishnu of universal knowledge may be seen! It is for this, O learned Rishi, by the grace of God neither all-destroying Death, nor dotage that causeth the decay ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the love of beauty and therefore to the arts. The illustrations are taken from music and painting, from sculpture and poetry. Only in dwelling too exclusively, as perhaps the situation demands, on the renunciation of this world's successes, he has left out that part of his theory which demands that we should, accepting our limits, work within them for the love of man, but learn from their pressure and pain to transcend them always in the desire of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... afraid to believe it. It is too good to be true. My brother's chief characteristic was neither egotism nor self-renunciation, but a strict mean between the two. He never sacrificed himself for any one else; but not only always avoided injuring others, but also interfering with them. He kept his happiness and his sufferings ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... the leadership of the Protectionist party by Lord George Bentinck, it was soon evident to the House and the country that that renunciation was merely formal. In these days of labour, the leader of a party must be the man who does the work, and that work cannot now be accomplished without the devotion of a life. Whenever a great question arose, the people out of doors went ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... appointment." But inasmuch as the Prince was wholly content and entirely happy in Darwaysh-hood, he cared naught for rule or government or aught of worldly vanities; so he sent back the official with his duty and grateful thanks, requesting that he might be left to live his life in solitude and renunciation of matters mundane. Now when Queen Shahrazad had made an end of telling her story and yet the night was not wholly spent, King Shahryar spake saying, "This thy story, admirable and most wonderful, hath given me extreme delight; and I pray thee ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... himself. He was weary of the struggle, and it seemed to him that he must somehow or other escape from the grip in which his life was held. He must somehow deaden this sense, this bitter sense of loss, if it were only by postponing the last renunciation. He would go back to his work and force himself not to hate it. It was his only refuge, and he must cling to it for dear life. And he would not see her again till the night of the first performance of Elvira. She would be ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... explains how the king of Spain hopes, in spite of the renunciation of his rights, to mount the throne of France. But, among the people attached to the regency, he may ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... unhappiness. At least, as Buddhism desired and, in some degree, though less, Christianity also, it is necessary to make an approach to death by a kind of reduction to the absolute minimum of will, by detachment and renunciation pushed as ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... of a thousand years had as yet no existence. Thus the fact is concealed, which, however, does not escape the eye of one who looks below the surface, that the inner history of the ancient world must necessarily have degenerated into barbarism of its own accord, because it ended with the renunciation of this world. There is no desire either to enjoy it, to master it, or to know it as it really is. A new world is disclosed for which everything is given up, and men are ready to sacrifice insight and understanding, in order to possess this world with certainty; ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... shrine. Many pass through life with this taper unlighted, despite the pomps and pleasures of the conjugal comedy. But others carry in the little chapel of their hearts a solitary glimmering lamp of love which only flames out with death. Zora knows this glimmering light is not love, but renunciation. Is not she the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... of physical causes with the influences proper to a mere thought. The moralist, indeed, might have noted that a meaner kind of pride, the morbid fear of vulgarity, lent secret strength to the intellectual prejudice, which realised duty as the renunciation of all finite objects, the fastidious refusal to be or do any limited thing. But besides this it was legible in his own admissions from time to time, that the body, following, as it does with powerful temperaments, the lead of mind ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... made another choice. And this was, of a truth, the "great renunciation!" He turned His back on the glory, and deliberately faced the darkening way which led to Calvary and the grave. I do not wonder that His mysterious visitors spake with Him "of the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." He could talk about nothing else! ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... with pleasure that I can say in the spirit of thankfulness and humility, there have been those whose lives are all the sweeter and brighter through my life and instructions. Sweet lady, you know what I mean when I say, having obtained freedom through renunciation I realized illumination, and through the light which I have received I am in the possession of knowledge which the many know little about, and through the light and knowledge which I have received I came to know you long before seeing you to-day. I have seen ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... along the lines of highest soul evolution. The greatest possible unfoldment is not a gift of God. It is held only by the individual soul as the result of age-long study, and toil, through manifold embodiments, long-continued self renunciation, and sacrifices not yet known or understood. Its initiations are endless; its revelations of the infinite law are, at times, too seemingly trifling for recognition; but as the lapidary leaves no facet of the jewel uncut and unpolished, so the guardians—the guides and teachers ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... and announced that they would accept no 'restitution' at the expense of the taxpayers of France of their property sold and alienated under the spoliation of 1852; and the text of the law as finally passed in 1872 expressly ordains that 'conformably to the renunciation offered before the presentation of the bill by the heirs of King Louis Philippe, and since renewed,' their unsold property, 'real and personal, seized by the State and not alienated before this date, be immediately restored to its owners.' As a matter ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the incidents at the Pavlofsk station, and at the other station in the morning; and the question asked him by Rogojin about THE EYES and Rogojin's cross, that he was even now wearing; and the benediction of Rogojin's mother; and his embrace on the darkened staircase—that last supreme renunciation—and now, to find himself full of this new "idea," staring into shop-windows, and looking round for ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the maddening echo of your accusing cry, 'You have ruined my life!' God knows, you have as effectually ruined mine. You have your revenge—if it comfort you to know it; but I am incapable of your sublime renunciation. I am no patient martyr; I am, instead, an intensely selfish man. You choose to hug the ashes of desolation; I purpose to sweep away the wreck, to rebuild on the foundation of one hope, which all the legions in hell cannot shake. Between you and me the battle ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... their worst. So on the morning after the election he was in a thoroughly disgusted mood. He scoffed at the idea of becoming a Mugwump, but declared himself ready to renounce his Republicanism and become a Democrat. To that end he prepared a formal renunciation. It consisted of a flamboyant denunciation of the past glories and present virtues of the Republican party and an enthusiastic eulogy of the crimes, blunders, and base methods of the Democratic party. Field announced that ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... aside all the teachings of his lifetime—the teachings of Granny, of experience, yes, even of Monteith, for he realised now they had all come from God, and were one. He was down in the valley of the shadows, and the rod and staff were of no comfort to him, for they meant pain and renunciation. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... clear a blessing what in the name of consistency had the dear man meant by turning him upside down that night—by dosing him to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with the doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an irreparable loss, then her husband's inspired advice had been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. Overt was on the point of rushing back to London to show that, for his part, he was perfectly willing to consider it so, ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... Northumberland, found himself driven to the necessity of making a peace with that power, by which Boulogne was given up and Scotland abandoned to French influence. One article of the treaty contains indirectly a renunciation of the proposed marriage between the King of England and the Queen of Scotland. And this treaty was greatly to the Emperor's disadvantage, since it now set the French free to renew the hostility against him which had been broken off some ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... eldest sister had married Lewis the Fourteenth. The Dauphin would, therefore, in the common course of inheritance, have succeeded to the crown. But the Infanta had, at the time of her espousals, solemnly renounced, in her own name, and in that of her posterity, all claim to the succession. This renunciation had been confirmed in due form by the Cortes. A younger sister of the King had been the first wife of Leopold, Emperor of Germany. She too had at her marriage renounced her claims to the Spanish crown; but the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life, and autumnal renunciation on the part of a decaying family, are also among the principal motifs in the work of Thomas Mann. "Life, revealing itself in eternal contrariness to the spirit and to art—not as a vision of bloody greatness and untamed beauty, not as something uncommon does it present ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... be obtained? In the true Christian life, self-denial is the path to enjoyment, renunciation to possession, death to life. As long as there is ought that we think we have liberty and power to use or enjoy aright, if we but do so in moderation, we have not yet seen or confessed our own unholiness, or the need of the entire renewing of ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... the solicitor. "He is even willing to sign a renunciation of any claim which might arise out of this information. It is rather a singular case, but he seems to be a rich man and quite able to ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... she exclaimed. "I am mad to go to France! It is a sacrifice—a renunciation for me to remain in New York. I understand nursing and I know how to drive a car; but I have stayed here because my knowledge of ciphers seemed to fit ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the renunciation of that faith—that life, for which he had sacrificed so much, and still haunted by the promises of the Egyptian, extricated himself forcibly from the grasp; and feeling an effort necessary to conquer the irresolution ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... was his true and final confession. His second fall after leaving prison had put him "at war with himself." This is, I think, the very heart of truth about his soul; the song of sorrow, of pity and renunciation was not his song, and the experience of suffering prevented him from singing the delight of life and the joy he took in beauty. It never seemed to occur to him that he could reach a faith which should include both self-indulgence and renunciation in ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... one look of appeal to Pupkin, and Pupkin looked one glance of comprehension, and turned and fled down Oneida Street. And if the scene wasn't quite as dramatic as the renunciation of Tancred the Troubadour, it at least had something of the ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... not fail to be an age of resistless moral power; and it would be safe to say that no heathen system could long stand against the sustained and persistent force of such influences. Were the Christian Church of to-day moved by even a tithe of that high self-renunciation, to say nothing of braving the fires of martyrdom, if it possessed in even partial degree the same sacrifice of luxury and ease, and the same consecration of effort and of influence, the conquest of benighted nations would be easy ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... am just to that now. It has been an object of curiosity to me that people raise so many just roses. Here is a world by itself. There is a rose for every station in society. There are roses for beast and saint; roses for passion and renunciation; roses for temple and sanctuary, and roses to wear for one going down into Egypt. There are roses that grow as readily as morning-glories, and roses that are delicate as children of the Holy Spirit, requiring the love of the human heart to thrive upon, before sunlight and water. There is a ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... think) 1836, one of my brothers married a beautiful and in every way charming person, who had been brought up in a family of the unitarian profession, yet under a mother very sincerely religious. I went through much mental difficulty and distress at the time, as there had been no express renunciation [by her] of the ancestral creed, and I absurdly busied myself with devising this or that religious test as what ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... expressed her gratitude for this self-renunciation on the part of her son, and she said: "My daughter, I need your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that it was all over. They were experiencing that species of comfort which follows rapid denouements, when at the windows of the attics in the chateau appeared men-servants tearing their liveries to pieces. They flung their torn clothes into the garden, as a mark of renunciation. The people hooted at them, and then ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... been made a nun by force, though my father was a Protestant, and taught me his religion. I pray you to endeavour to obtain my freedom. I am made most miserable here, and am kept in solitary confinement. I have nothing to eat but bread and water, because I will not sign a renunciation of my property. The Bishop of Oporto has himself threatened me, and it is useless to appeal to him. Nothing but an English army being stationed here can save me. Have pity upon ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... on the surface: the Lacedaemonian details also—the military turn taken, the disinterestedness of the powerful, their monastic renunciation of what the world prizes most, above all the doctrine of a natural aristocracy with its "privileges and also its duties." Men are of simpler structure and capacities than you have fancied, Plato would assure us, and ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... analogy between this art and the creations of pagan antiquity. In Hellenic paganism, we behold the triumph of humanity. The human form in its most ideal beauty is the type of all things divine. Christianity starts at once with the peremptory condition of a renunciation of individual beauty and strength. Christianity counted sensual beauty as nothing: she regarded the mind alone. She permits the human form only as the incorporation of some hidden thought divine. In the one instance, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... and renunciations. But, in its essence, renunciation is ever the same. And the paradox of it is, that men and women forego the dearest thing in the world for something dearer. It was never otherwise. Thus it was when Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. The firstlings ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... me feel myself more than ever a shocking example,' he said, letting it go with a little sigh. The smart of his own renunciation was still keen in him. She lingered a moment, could find nothing to say, threw him a look all shy sympathy and lovely pity, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had he to offer her in return for her love? His own love, it is true. But he was uncouth, stricken with deafness, and had many of the "bad moments" of genius. He foresaw unhappiness for both, and, to spare her, took upon himself the great act of renunciation. We need only recall him weeping over the picture of his Therese. And Therese? To her dying day she treasured his memory. Very few shared her secret. Her brother Franz, Beethoven's intimate friend, knew it. Baron Spaun also divined the cause of his ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... her wind-whipped head and Racey snatched a wistful glance at the face he loved. Renunciation was in his eyes, for that second letter found caught in the bran sack's seam had changed things. He could not marry her. No, not now. And yet he loved her more than ever. She looked at him and smiled, and he ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... the divine—and you will remember that this was our definition—will prove to be both a helpless and a sacrificial attitude. That is, we shall have to confess to at least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some amount of renunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. The constitution of the world we live in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... was frankly surprised and pleased. This unexpected support and enthusiastic commendation of his plan was something he gratefully accepted, and he assumed a new manner toward me. He ascribed to me a power of self-renunciation which won ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... narrowness of mind, incompetency of attainment,—for the tranquillity and sweet perfection of the picture his eyes rested upon—a picture lovelier than even the Gretchen which tempted Goethe's Faust to Hell,—made him doubtful of his own powers— mistrustful of his own worth. In his life of self-renunciation among the poorer classes, he had grown accustomed to pity women,—to look upon them more or less as frail, broken creatures needing help and support,—sometimes to be loved, but far more often to be despised and neglected. But Sylvie, Comtesse Hermenstein, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to deny to herself that she loved Bob Worthington—loved him with the full intensity of the strong nature that was hers. To how many of these girls would come such a love? and how many would be called upon to make such a renunciation as hers had been? No wonder she felt out of place among them, and once more the longing to fly away to Coniston almost overcame her. Jethro would forgive her, she knew, and stretch out his arms to receive ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... something of what is going on within him, of what is taking place in nature: the dithyrambic quality of his movements speaks just as eloquently of quivering comprehension and of powerful penetration as of the approach of love and self-renunciation. Intoxicated speech follows the course of this rhythm; melody resounds coupled with speech, and in its turn melody projects its sparks into the realm of images and ideas. A dream-apparition, like and unlike the image of Nature and her wooer, hovers forward; it condenses into more human shapes; it ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... which my unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled chiefly upon Jane Eyre, with occasional tentative imitations of Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending in renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with resolute purpose, after the first reading of Esmond, and in the endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of England, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... customers he must share their ideas and their tastes; and so he was bitter against reformers, who interfered with the gaieties of the city, with no consideration for the tastes of "buyers." But then, on the other hand, would come a time of renunciation, when he would be ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... in some cases their meaning was entirely changed. And the change was seldom to my advantage. A difference of expression between me and my brethren was mistaken for a difference of belief; and the disuse of an unscriptural word, was mistaken for a renunciation of a Christian doctrine. A dispute about the "eternal sonship" was mistaken for a dispute about the divinity of Christ, and a difference of opinion about the meaning of a passage of Scripture, came to ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... view may be had by setting down what John Dexter said to his wife, and what she said to him. Said he, when he had recounted the renunciation of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... what I prayed you would do. When the months passed and you did not come back, I knew that not even the woman you loved could have called you back. I knew that you had learned the priceless lesson of renunciation, of sacrifice, through which alone the great deeds of the world ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... sighed in luxurious renunciation. Oh, it was good to be alive—to be a girl of seventeen, with wonderful ambitions and all the world before her! The years of the future sparkled and gleamed alluringly. Jane Lavinia, with her head on the window sill, looked out into ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... But on this point I do not care strongly to insist, because at the present moment every part of Irish history excites controversy. When, however, the excitement of the day has passed by, no one will dispute that 22 Geo. III. c. 53 and 23 Geo. III. c. 28 constituted the renunciation by the British Parliament of sovereignty over Ireland. The difference between the limitation of sovereignty and the surrender of sovereignty has been pressed far enough for my present purpose; no principle of jurisprudence is more certain than that sovereignty implies the power ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... her. But men are deceivers ever, and never so cunning in deceit as when love has slipped from their hearts. To be sure, Jim had the grace to be ashamed of all this in certain moods, but acknowledgment of the sin was not followed by renunciation. Aurora's flash of passion was probably due to the instinct that warned her of the fading of Done's love ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... are over. I lived in one: to expiate—to wipe out— a past, by spending my life for others. The expiation is not enough. I lived in another: to win a woman's love; and I have, and was caught up by it for a moment, and it was wonderful. But it is over now, quite over. . . . And now for her sake renunciation must be made, before I have another ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... therefore, the renunciation, accepted on the surface with so kind a face, was a source of secret bitterness and hidden tears. But time, with its mercy of compensation, had worked for her one of its many mysterious transmutations, and shown her of what fine gold ...
— Different Girls • Various
... stick a pin in him—if I had him at my mercy. No—I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give him"—she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation—"yes, I would give him my tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?" And, to ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... of poverty, renunciation, leaving the world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to take the confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and ignorance. Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our sympathies, to label them "Dangerous." Why should we turn ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... year, adultery, condemnation for felony, concealment of any loathsome disease at time of marriage or contracting it afterwards, force, duress, or fraud in obtaining marriage, uniting with any creed or religious society requiring a renunciation of the marriage covenant or forbidding husband and wife to cohabit. To the wife, when not in like fault, for confirmed drunkenness of husband leading to neglect to provide, habitual behaviour by husband for six months indicating aversion to wife and causing ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Mr. Slope receiving a full renunciation from Mr. Quiverful of any claim he might have to the appointment in question. It was only given verbally and without witnesses, but then the original promise was made ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... rash impulse of despair—of a despair that hoped nothing and feared nothing—she was taking the most terrible step that a young creature could take. She was doing evil that good might come; she was giving up herself in complete renunciation and self-sacrifice in obedience to a miserable and mistaken idea. If she had been older; if her simplicity of character had been less childish, and her worldly knowledge greater, she must surely have hesitated before taking a step that must anger as well as grieve her husband. How ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... present was bad, he made it yet worse, that thereby the future might be better. And he gave God thanks for the strength that enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and all returned again ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... been they were unknown to Philip, as they are to these historians; if she was seeming to be what she was not, and carrying a burden heavier than any one else carried, because she had to bear it alone, she was only doing what thousands of women do, with a self-renunciation and heroism, of which men, impatient and complaining, have no conception. Have not these big babies with beards filled all literature with their outcries, their griefs and their lamentations? It is always the gentle sex which is hard and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... any happiness in the renunciation which he imposed upon himself; he had no religious ideas about it. On the contrary, he suffered keenly, and was bitter because he had no share in the amusements of his friends. He stuck to his work and forced himself to ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... vision was not attained by him, any more than by others, without deliberate renunciation. He lays great stress upon this; and yet it is a point in his teaching sometimes overlooked. He insists repeatedly upon the fact that before any one can taste of these joys of the spirit, he must be purified, disciplined, self-controlled. He leaves us a full account of his purgative stage. ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... too deeply in earnest to accept as final a stingless rejection spoken by lips that were so openly contradicted by the smiling eyes above. Whatever of stern necessity might have inspired the utterance of such words of cold renunciation, it was assuredly neither indifference nor dislike. He forgave the lips, recalling ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... rigors of the hour and occasion reached their climax. The shivering gas-jets lit up the austere pallor of the bare walls, and the hollow, shell-like sweep of colorless vacuity behind the cold communion table. The chill of despair and hopeless renunciation was in the air, untempered by any glow from the sealed air-tight stove that seemed only to bring out a lukewarm exhalation of wet clothes and cheaply dyed umbrellas. Nor did the presence of the worshippers ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdene had left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might have surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the renunciation the less absolute ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... ironies of history that the renunciation of the Papal authority and the submission to the king's supremacy was far more rapid and general in Ireland than it was in England. For not only did all the lay chiefs readily yield their adhesion, but only two of the bishops refused to take the oath of supremacy. Rebellions such as ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... that three courses were now open to a man and whether he followed one or other depended on his own particular cast of mind, the degree of his will-power, the strength of his passions and finally, his capacity for renunciation, righteousness and love. On these qualifications the upshot would largely depend. But they were not the only factors. Since gods and demons were part of the world, a man could be aided or frustrated according as gods or demons chose to intervene. Life could, in fact, be viewed from two angles. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer |
