"Self-sacrifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part in the first Anglo-Boer war and had passed away in Heidelberg, Transvaal, leaving to the people of his adopted fatherland and to his children a rich inheritance in the memory of a life spent in doing noble deeds—a life of rare self-sacrifice. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... those ancesters of his, who with bleeding feet trudged through the snows of Valley Forge, some of that patriotism and high fealty to duty which has ever been the stamp of the true American. This courageous self-sacrifice to public duty alone is sufficient evidence that he is the man to guide the destinies of one of the greatest states in the Union, and those who are to meet in convention for the choice of a leader will do well to reflect upon what must be considered as a sterling achievement bespeaking the ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... passion. Feeling deeply the family sorrows, she was quick to forget herself in her efforts to lighten them when this privilege was allowed to her. There were opportunities enough for self-sacrifice. With every year Mr. Wollstonecraft squandered more money, and grew idler and more dissipated. Home became unbearable, the wife's burden heavier. Mary, emancipated from the restraints of childhood, no longer remained a silent spectator of her father's fits of passion. When her mother ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... widow, seemingly tickled at the word. She smiled indulgently at the Colonel. "What a pity, Mr. Tipton, that the law compels you to arrest such a good friend of yours as Colonel Sevier. What self-sacrifice, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice, O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best That Heaven itself could give thee—rest. ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the generation preceding. Yet round those doctrines, in defence or in opposition, some of the best and most honourable principles of human nature used to be gathered—a high-minded love of liberty on the one hand, a no less lofty spirit of self-sacrifice and ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... love means self-sacrifice," he said. "Come, my beloved. Let us walk in the gardens, where we can talk at ease of our plans for ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... and pleasure-seeking, self-denial and self-sacrifice for Christ's sake are almost wholly lost. "Some of the men and women now in active life in our churches were educated, when children, to make sacrifices in order to be able to give or do something for Christ." But "if funds are wanted ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... time Rizal had repeated chances to escape, and persons high in authority seem to have urged flight upon him. Running away, however, seemed to him a confession of guilt; the opportunities of doing so always unsettled him, for each time the battle of self-sacrifice had to be fought over again; but he remained firm in his purpose. To meet death bravely is one thing; to seek it is another and harder thing; but to refuse life and choose death over and over again during many years is ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... carefully select and arrange the incidents, compose them into an effective group, and by the power of language make them memorable and alive. In these books Tacitus has little but horrors to describe: his art makes them unforgettably horrible. The same art is ready to display the beauty of courage and self-sacrifice. But these were rarer phenomena than cowardice and greed. It was not Tacitus, but the age, which showed a preference for vice. Moreover, the historian's art was not to be used solely for its own sake. All ancient history was written with a moral object; the ethical ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... statesman increased its prosperity and happiness; whilst the vengeance he took for his kinsman's death fulfilled all ideals of family and feudal duty held by the men of his time. Beowulf, in fact, became an ideal king, as he was an ideal warrior and hero, and he closed his life by an ideal act of self-sacrifice for ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... hundreds of such tales in the Buddhist faith. Some deal with Buddha himself; some with his disciples. In all the stories, however, the virtue of self-sacrifice and of renunciation is strongly painted. It is the cornerstone of the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... institutions, is the work of individuals acting directly under a religious impulse. The difference is perhaps not entirely in favour of the countries of the Romish faith; but there is no denying that it leads to our being presented with pictures of heroic self-devotion and generous self-sacrifice, such as it would be gratifying to see in our own country. Many of the forms of charity met with in Catholic states had their rise in one enthusiastically benevolent man, the celebrated Vincent de ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... act of risking money which was not his own; and do you really think that if the rich one did know it he would return the money? I think not. The history of gambling does not point to many, if any, such cases of self-sacrifice. The truth is that selfishness in its meanest form is at the bottom of all gambling, though many gamblers may not quite see the fact. I want your money. I am too proud to ask it. I dare not demand it. I cannot ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... do this; nor seek assistance of any kind. To show himself to a white man would be to go back into hated bondage—to the slavery from which he has so lately, and at risk of life, escaped. It would be an act of grand generosity—a self-sacrifice—more than man, more than human being is capable of. Could a poor runaway slave be expected to ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and resulted in forming an association.[172] The audience numbered over a thousand, at the different sessions, and among the speakers were some of the ablest men in the State. Though the friends were comparatively few in the early days, yet there was no lack of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Weekly meetings were held, tracts and petitions circulated; conventions[173] and legislative hearings were as regular as the changing seasons, now in Providence, and now in Newport, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... swore to himself he would try to paint her again as she was. He would fight Nature for once and try if pure intellect was strong enough to get the face he wanted on to the canvas without the gratification of his flesh and blood. In which determination glimmered something almost approaching to self-sacrifice in such a man. He did not answer Joan's last remark, but rose and went to his picture, and she, thinking herself snubbed by his silence after her avowal, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... title to fame is that of those who are remembered for some act of justice or self-devotion: the self-sacrifice of Leonidas, the good faith of Regulus, are the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... hard fate,—a revelation that terrified her, and influenced every succeeding movement; it had to do with the illumination that came when Manuel told her the sad secret of his heart,—with that moment when she stood up stronger in love than in fear, stronger in devotion than in pride, strong for self-sacrifice, like one who bears a charmed life pierced to the heart, and never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... been a very broken one, and her record upon land represented a greater amount of endurance and self-sacrifice than his upon the sea. They had been together for four months after their marriage, and then had come a hiatus of four years, during which he was flitting about between St. Helena and the Oil Rivers in a gunboat. Then came a blessed year of peace and domesticity, to be ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at that piece of broken quartz again, with the weak little film across it? it seems such a strange lovely thing, like the self-sacrifice of ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... the moonlight streaming down upon those waves, like God's calm peace on the billows of earthly trial, was in sweet harmony with the feelings of that little group, as Amos and Julia poured out their account of Walter's noble address, and as Amos and Walter told of the unexpected and loving self-sacrifice exhibited in the conduct of their darling sister. Need it be said that in Miss Huntingdon they had one who listened with almost painful interest and thankfulness to the adventures of that never-to-be-forgotten day? Drawing them all round her, she poured ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... not lost that simplicity to which so much of spiritual insight belongs. Admiration and wonder were among its chief habits; and it would not have been repelled by Mysteries in what professed to belong to the Infinite. Lawless as it was, it abounded also in loyalty, generosity, and self-sacrifice; it was not, therefore, untouched by the records of martyrs, examples of self-sacrifice, or the doctrine of a great Sacrifice. It loved children and the poor; and Christianity made the former the exemplars of faith, and the latter the eminent inheritors ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... persons who by extreme and heroic daring have endangered their lives in saving, or endeavoring to save, lives from the perils of the sea in the waters over which the United States has jurisdiction, or upon an American vessel. This recognition should be extended to cover cases of conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifice in the saving of life in private employments under the jurisdiction of the United States, and particularly in the land commerce of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... The fact that he was outraging his own instincts in beating with bitter words the girl who bowed before him with drooping head and disheveled hair made him but the more harsh. To fall from the height of self-sacrifice into a pool of vulgar intrigue! Bah! His disgust at himself for ever having known this woman seemed too ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... her maternal self-sacrifice. The baby, Milita, who attracted attention because of her whiteness and ruddiness, had the strength that her mother lacked. The greediness of this strong, enslaving creature had absorbed all of the ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... priceless advantage of being kept in constant touch with regulars. A passionate devotion to the cause also helped them to acquire, sooner than most other men, both military knowledge and that true spirit of discipline which, after all, is nothing but self-sacrifice ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... burden of self, which otherwise we should drag for ever. But surely in this there is a confusion of self with selfishness. Selfishness is another name for vice. Self is merely consciousness. Without a self, how can there be self-sacrifice? How can the most unselfish motive exist if there is nothing to be moved? "He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that loseth his life, shall find it," is not a doctrine of selfishness, but it implies a self. We have been rebuked ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the small country grew into a great nation, the greatest on earth, because it is the freest, and each citizen in it has his rights respected. But for the courage and determination and self-sacrifice of Columbus this great new world might have remained for hundreds of years ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the Russian raid into East Prussia at Tannenberg following in rapid succession. Against these disasters we have to set the brilliant engagement in the Heligoland Bight. But the onrush of the Germans on the Western front is not stayed, though their time-table has been thrown out by the self-sacrifice of the Belgians, the steadfast courage of French's "contemptible little army" in the retreat from Mons, and the bold decision of Smith-Dorrien, who saved the situation at Le Cateau. In these days ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... the priesthood, cannot but admire the thoroughness and consistency with which the Catholic priesthood's idea is carried out. It would be hard to overstate the moral effect of that vast organised system of self-sacrifice and self-suppression. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... of Flinck's largest works—"Marcus Curius Dentatus"—is at one end: at the other, one of Ferdinand Bol's—"Fabricius in the Camp of Pyrrhus." Facing the windows is one by Wappers and Eeckhout: one that irresistibly appeals to the hearts of all Hollanders. It is called the "Self-Sacrifice of Van Speyk," and depicts the brave admiral of that name blowing up his vessel rather ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... their pictures barely show in the horizon the men who dominate their history. I placed ours in the foreground of the scene; I made them leading actors in this tragedy, wherever I endeavored to represent the three kinds of ambition by which we are influenced, and with them the beauty of self-sacrifice to a noble ideal. A treatise on the fall of the feudal system; on the position, at home and abroad, of France in the seventeenth century; on foreign alliances; on the justice of parliaments or of secret commissions, or on accusations of sorcery, would ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... pyrotechnics, to the intense satisfaction of the unthinking and the grief of the judicious. The senoritos go back to the serious business of their lives—coffee and cigarettes—with a genuine glow of pride in a country which is capable of the noble self-sacrifice of cutting off its nose to spite somebody ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... recall any notable act of heroism or self-sacrifice performed by Snarley on behalf of his flock; but perhaps we shall not err in regarding his whole life as such an act. When, in his old age, physical suffering overtook him—the result of a lifetime of toil and exposure to the ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... speck, wandering among systems of suns, the appearance of life and its slow development and ever-increasing sensitization; the emerging of pain and of pleasure; and presently man with his growing capacity for self-affirmation and self-sacrifice, for rapture and for grief. Love with its unearthly happiness, unmeasured devotion, and limitless pain; all the ecstasy, all the anguish that we extract from the rhythm of life and death. It is much, really, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... light is come! I see the sign. I am directed, and I will follow it. There is yet one hope. The immolation! I shall be saved, yet so as by fire. It is for this my hair has become white;—the sublime warning for my self-sacrifice! The color of ashes!—white—white! It is so! I will sacrifice my body in material fire, to save my soul from that which is eternal! But I had anticipated the ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... to the parent over the son. [17] On the part of his mother, on the other hand, entertaining the husband's memory, there was a sustained freshness of regret, together with the recognition, as Marius fancied, of some costly self-sacrifice to be credited to the dead. The life of the widow, languid and shadowy enough but for the poignancy of that regret, was like one long service to the departed soul; its many annual observances centering about the funeral urn—a tiny, delicately carved marble house, still white and fair, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... supplanted. According to Geddes and Foster and others of their school, it is the species-subserving qualities that Nature selects; and these, in the higher grades of life, are equivalent to the altruistic, social, and ethical qualities. It is in virtue of the parental and maternal instincts of self-sacrifice, self-diffusion, self-forgetfulness in the interests of the offspring, that species are preserved and prevail. Selfish egoism leads eventually (as we see in some modern countries where laizzez-faire liberalism prevails) to social disruption, decadence, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the mass, there is at least the consolation of doing good to the individual. And, after all, is it not enough to have been an influence for good over one or two human souls? There are quite fine characters hereabout—especially in the women—natures capable not only of self-sacrifice, but of delicacy of sentiment. To have learnt to know of such, to have been of service to one or two of such—is not this ample return? I could not get to St. James's Hall to hear your friend's symphony at the Henschel concert. I ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... force Of these new Followers of the camp has come Straight from God's Source To cleanse the world and cleanse the minds of men. Good women, of great courage and large hearts, Women whose slogan is self-sacrifice, Willing to pay the price God asks of pioneers, now play their parts In this stupendous drama of the age As ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of human eloquence more telling, more forcible than the loudest words, than the choicest diction—the silence of woman! Ofttimes they cannot endure the slightest vexation, but some great, heart-breaking sorrow, some pain from constant renunciation, self-sacrifice, they suffer with sealed lips—as if, in very truth, they were bound with bars ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... was not lost on Marcus. He instantly saw, what he had not divined before, that the devotion, the self-sacrifice, the constant, unswerving love of the boy, had at last sounded its echo in the bosom of the maiden. As he swiftly contrasted the manly, athletic figure of the young man, with the delicate beauty of his niece, he ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of all this exercise of individual skill there must be a spirit of self-sacrifice which can only exist in effective potency if prompted by universal sympathy and love for the art. A selfish chorister is not a chorister, though possessed of the voice of a Melba or Mario. Balance ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... would my love be worth if it shrank from self-sacrifice? I really think I should feel more pleasure than pain if I gave up friends, kindred, hope, everything that is supposed to make ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the aid of his battalion in holding its objective. His example of bravery and fortitude and his eagerness to continue with his mission despite the several wounds, set before the enlisted men of his command a most wonderful standard of morale and self-sacrifice. Lieutenant Robb lived at 308 S. 12th ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... of her supreme delicacy, her angelic susceptibility, and her noble spirit of self-sacrifice that she said that. She feared that she would necessarily be a disadvantage to you—an obstacle in the way of your advancement. But the situation ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... men—good that far outweighs the evil. All the good of discipline, all they gained by their coming together for a great cause, all they gained in that great comradeship and service for each other, and in their self-sacrifice for their country and the world. The wonder and beauty of what it is, and means some of our own men have told us—among them one who died, Donald Hankey, and has left us a rich treasure in his works. And we all know it in our own men—that ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... and the milk alone, or whether some rhetorical nomad, as he stretched himself on the grass with a good appetite for contemporary butter, became loud on the virtue of ancestors who were uncorrupted by the produce of the cow; nay, whether in a high flight of imaginative self-sacrifice (after swallowing the butter) he even wished himself earlier born and already eaten for the sustenance of a generation more ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Jocasta; his subsequent sorrow when an exile, poor and bowed down by misfortune; the dreadful fate which befell his sons when they fell by each others' hands before the walls of Thebes; and the heroic self-sacrifice of Antigone to procure the rites of sepulture for her beloved and innocent brother—we shall find we have embraced nearly the whole dramas which exercised the genius of AEschylus, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... suffering, would afford them consolation; but he has not said so, and has not presented it as he should have done; he has not decided, and he has not spoken; and to-morrow, possibly, it will be too late,—he will die. And therefore suffering and self-sacrifice will always be the lot of the ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... go through life, seeking only to gratify your appetites, attracted only by material sensual pleasures. You ignore the best part of life—the pursuit of an ideal, a noble ambition, unselfishness, self-sacrifice. Really, Signor, I pity you—with all ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... that now bind me and the Queen of Ruritania. Far—nobler, as I hold her, for the act—she has followed where her duty to her country and her House led her, and is the wife of the King, uniting his subjects to him by the love they bear to her, giving peace and quiet days to thousands by her self-sacrifice. There are moments when I dare not think of it, but there are others when I rise in spirit to where she ever dwells; then I can thank God that I love the noblest lady in the world, the most gracious and beautiful, and that there was ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Canada, we love you dear, and shall be greatly gratified If by your March Elections our relations are—say ratified. We don't expect self-sacrifice, we do not beg for gratitude, But keep an interested eye, my dear, upon ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... horrible vista of years, lived through with Freule Menela—mean little, vain, disloyal Freule Menela—by my side, contentedly spending my money and bearing my name, while I faded like a lovely lily on the altar of self-sacrifice. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... and from the feeling for others' rights, and the very supremacy which the slaveholders enjoyed was fatal to this feeling. Virginia and Kentucky were rich in independent character, but public spirit is better than this, for it cares for the independence of all through the self-sacrifice of each. That was the secret which Ohio early learned from New England, and which kept her safe from slavery when it pressed so hard upon her in the friendship as well as the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... are that his halt is final. You strive to strive and not to attain. A man must have that direct practical virtue which forgets itself and sees only its work. Parsons will tell you that all virtue is self-sacrifice, and they are right, though not in the way they mean. It may all seem a tissue of contradictions. You must not pitch on too fanciful a goal, nor, on the other hand, must you think on yourself. And it is a contradiction which only resolves itself in practice, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... I write to you, or how shall I attempt to express what I feel! To think of your dear, noble, heroic Brother, who served his Country and his Queen so truly, so heroically, with a self-sacrifice so edifying to the World, not having been rescued. That the promises of support were not fulfilled—which I so frequently and constantly pressed on those who asked him to go—is to me grief inexpressible! indeed, it has made me ill! My heart bleeds for you, his Sister, who have gone through so ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Power! I call thee; I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; Oh, let my weakness have an end! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... of a Buddha?" "Well," replied Ei-sai promptly, "Buddha would give even his own life for the sake of suffering people. How could he be reluctant to give his halo?" This anecdote clearly shows us self-sacrifice is of first ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... and I wish I were as worthy in my place as that bee is in hers. I wish I could act up as well as she does to the true wisdom, which is self-sacrifice. For whom is that bee working? For herself? If that was all, she only needs to suck the honey as she goes. But she is storing up the wax under her stomach, and bee-bread in her thighs—for whom? Not for herself only, or even for her own children: ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... for your sake, Harry, to right you in my eyes at his own expense. And yesterday I could see that you knew nothing whatever about it, that your friend had died without telling you of his act of real and yet vain self-sacrifice! Harry, I can only say that now I understand your friendship, and the dreadful lengths to which it carried you. How many in your place would not have gone as far for such a friend? Since that night, at any rate, I for one have understood. ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... others cannot now be serene. All this unrest, this grasping at the comfort of life on the one hand, and the patience, the justice, the tolerance, with which such claims are viewed by many possessors on the other, is because there is a spirit of sympathy growing up, which has not yet become self-sacrifice, but is on its ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... office of her little hotel. He had become to her an invalid, a child to be jollied and humored, and yet respected; for no one could have been kinder or more scrupulously just than he. And it was the recollection of all his acts of self-sacrifice and loving patience which gave her assurance that he would never require obedience, though ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... martial renown went hand in hand with the noblest of virtues, men who united in their own characters the highest military genius with the loftiest patriotism, the most daring courage with the gentlest courtesy, the most obstinate endurance with the utmost self-sacrifice, the genius of a Caesar with the courage and purity of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... full of affectionate appreciation, showed how wholly she divined his spirit of self-sacrifice. "We wouldn't care in the least for it," she declared. "We enjoy being a little party by ourselves every whit as much as you do—and we both hate the people you get at table d'hotes—and besides, for that matter, if there are any real swells here, you may be sure ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Mallorings to earn their living on fifteen to eighteen shillings a week, and where would they be? The Mallorings have certain virtues, no doubt, natural to their fortunate environment, but of the primitive virtues of patience, hardihood, perpetual, almost unconscious self-sacrifice, and cheerfulness in the face of a hard fate, they are no more the equals of the people they pretend to be superior to than I am your equal ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... could neither eat nor sleep, and it was feared that she would fall dangerously ill. "I can only say that, during those eight days, the empire was nothing to me," she writes. But she confesses to a certain feeling of vanity at her own spirit of self-sacrifice, and the sensibility which made her weep at the thought of leaving those she loved. This access of piety was of short duration, however, as her father quickly put to flight all her exalted visions of a cloister. Her dreams of an emperor for whom she lost a prospective ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... she conferred not with flesh and blood. Her reply was given to Mr. Newell in firm, decided language; and up to the hour when her spirit took its flight from earth to heaven, we have no evidence that she had one single regret that she had chosen a life of self-sacrifice. Her ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... really begun to enjoy life it should be subjected to such a change. She saw that it was obviously the thing that should happen. If the match had been arranged by the entire city of Boston it could not have been more obvious. But she argued with him that marriage was a mutual self-sacrifice, and that until she felt ready to make her share of the sacrifice it was impossible ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... Terence and Lucilius, the poets, and the orator and politician Laelius were his friends. From his position, his talents, and his associations, he seemed marked out as the one man who could and would desire to step forth as the saviour of his country. But such self-sacrifice is not exhibited by men of Scipio's type. Too able to be blind to the signs of the times, they are swayed by instincts too strong for their convictions. An aristocrat of aristocrats, Scipio was a reformer ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... poisoned; his very being was eaten into by doubt, and almost to the very end of his days Turgenef remained a fatalistic sceptic, a godless pessimist; not till his old age did he espy the promised land. It was only when he witnessed with his own eyes the boundless self-sacrifice of the revolutionists, when the old man was moved by the heroism of the young Sophie Bardine even to the kissing of the very sheet upon which the girl's burning words to her judges were printed,—then, indeed, he regained his faith. He now hoped for his country, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... injustice of certain individuals being allowed to hold such immense tracts of country in their possession. We all know what came of the selfish policy of the landowners in France before the Revolution, which consigned them by hundreds to the guillotine. A little self-sacrifice, which, in the end, would have been for their own benefit, might have saved all this. The attempt to depopulate Ireland has been tried over and over again, and has failed signally. It is not more likely to succeed in the nineteenth century than at any preceding period. Even were it possible that ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... self-sacrifice on Bodger's part, clearly! Bless dear Bodger! [Barbara almost breaks down as ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Prometheus suffering all agonies for the sake of men came to her like a revelation. While she pondered over it, suddenly like the shining of a great light she understood the truth of "he that loseth his soul shall find it." The Christ-ideal of self-sacrifice meant the highest self-realization. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... every country in Europe, and had had princes of royal blood in their ranks; who claimed to act upon the purest and most exalted Christian principles; and who proved the sincerity of their professions by their lives of self-sacrifice, and their deaths, for the cause they had taken up; who had been honored and favored and dowered with gifts and privileges, in gratitude for their exploits—should suddenly have fallen into the blackest crimes. So it is no less difficult to understand ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Utility sees in virtue a habit of self-sacrifice, useful to the community, but not naturally pleasant, and therefore not naturally good and desirable, to him that practises it, but made pleasurable and good and desirable to him by practice. (Mill, pp. 53-57.) In this way ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... suitable to my age, which interested me and at the same time provided food for my thoughts and affections. I was only allowed a limited time for this favourite recreation, and it became an occasion of much self-sacrifice, for as soon as the time had elapsed I made it my duty to stop instantly, even in the middle ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... General Booth and in Alexander Borgia; Jesus Christ is a phase of his being, and so is Judas Iscariot. A sentimental Pantheism may say that God is that in a hero which nerves him to heroism, and that in a mother which prompts her self-sacrifice for her children, for there is none else. But that is only one-half of the truth; arguing from the same premises, we must also say that God is that in the sinner which succumbs to sin, and in the wrong-doer that which takes pleasure in wrong, for there is none else. Once ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... some of those of Madame de Berny, and La Femme abandonnee was written the year Balzac severed his relations with his Dilecta. But it is especially in the gentleness and patience portrayed in Madame Firmiani, in the affection and self-sacrifice of Pauline de Villenoix for Louis Lambert, and the devotion of Pauline Gaudin to Raphael in La Peau de Chagrin that Madame de Berny is most strikingly represented. She was all this and more to Balzac. Furthermore, he may have obtained from her ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... would be good enough to go away. The suggestion had been made quite in the other way, and Mrs Baggett was prepared altogether to obliterate herself. Mary did feel that Mr Whittlestaff ought to be made a god, as long as another woman was willing to share in the worship with such absolute self-sacrifice. ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... tear drawn from his sensitive glands by this evidence of self-sacrifice. When he'd done it, looking again at FITZGERALD'S briskly-retreating figure, couldn't help noting how smartly he was got up; summer pants; white waistcoat; the short "reefer," familiar in the Lobby, cast aside for the courtly ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... on that occasion was very simple and noble; his whole position, to one who knew what he had gone through in the way of obloquy, hard work, and self-sacrifice, was touching. Worn down by illness, he was unable to stand, and he therefore read his address in a low tone from his chair. It was very impressive, almost incapacitating me from speaking after him, and I saw tears in the eyes of ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... thus led to atrocious crimes. It is humiliating to find, at every step, the traces of wrong: the comforts supplied the prisoners by their friends, were often stolen by the seamen: the pledges lodged in their hands were not restored: boxes were pillaged, and the trifles furnished by the self-sacrifice of a broken-hearted parent, became the spoil of the assignees of public vengeance. These evils were aggravated by the delay of the voyage, to subserve the commercial speculations of the surgeons, who, beyond the general gains of merchandise, were allowed a large ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... trouble that his companion appeared to be piling up for herself, but he was touched to the depths of his soul. Here was a clever girl, who in her own way appeared to be a member of his profession, who was prepared to sacrifice herself to save another. Self-sacrifice is a beautiful and tender thing, and Merritt had ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... circumstances and however cruel in its execution, which cannot be justified by success, and no triviality, no absurdity of Fashion which deserves a censure: more—there is no act of disinterested love and tenderness, no deed of self-sacrifice and mercy, no aspiration after beauty and excellence, for which a single reason can be ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... to become German. Offering up the elementary principles of morality on the altar of patriotism, they staked their all upon the single venture of the war. It was as the throw of a gambler playing for his soul with the Evil One. Yet the faith of these materialists waxed heroic withal, like their self-sacrifice. And in the fiery ardor of their enthusiasm, hard concrete facts were dissolved and set floating as illusions in the ambient mist. Their wishes became thoughts and their fears were dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what they yearned for, and when at last they dropped from the dizzy height of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... is expensive, and learning can be secured only by severe self-sacrifice. With our ancestors, after religious culture, historical and political reading was next immediately before them; but the youth of this generation who seek such learning are compelled to make their ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... down close to his father's house, he looked on her as a lamb fallen unawares into the jaws of the greedy wolf, which he felt himself to be. For Eustace's love had little or nothing of chivalry, self-sacrifice, or purity in it; those were virtues which were not taught at Rheims. Careful as the Jesuits were over the practical morality of their pupils, this severe restraint had little effect in producing real habits of self-control. What little ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... thermometer at 40 degrees to 50 degrees below zero, and on occasions he was for two or three days without food! This was indeed intrepidity, but he knew his friends were waiting for him, and that without some such self-sacrifice they could not have remained in their winter quarters, where, during Mr Back's absence, they suffered ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... sanguinary revolts against the Faith. The chief reason of such fluctuation seems to have been this, viz. because all that was profound, and of venerable antiquity in the Northern religion, was in sympathy with Christianity, as the religion of sanctity and self-sacrifice; while all that was savage in it opposed itself to a religion of humility and of charity. The Northern religion was an endless warfare, and so was that early Persian religion from which its higher element was ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... to lie still in safety until morning and the world was restored to its normal aspects. But ah! in the highest type of man and dog, self-sacrifice, and not self-preservation, is the first law. A deserted grave cried to him across the void, the anguish of protecting love urged him on to take perilous chances. Falling upon a narrow shelf of rock, he had bounded off and into a thicket of thorns. Bruised and shaken and bewildered, he lay there ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... refuse to recognize her in any way. Thank God, the boy is too true to his gentle and loving mother to enter into any such arrangement, even though the bribe offered is thousands of dollars and a social position of great attractiveness. There is a great deal of this quiet but heroic self-sacrifice among the colored people in the South, that never ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... would understand the true spirit of the time, we must regard Catholics and Protestants as gallant soldiers, whose deaths, when they fall, are not painful, but glorious; and whose devotion we are equally able to admire, even where we cannot equally approve their cause. Courage and self-sacrifice are beautiful alike in an enemy and in a friend. And while we exult in that chivalry with which the Smithfield martyrs bought England's freedom with their blood, so we will not refuse our admiration to those other gallant ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... instruction, and subjected to laws which repress all their energies, both of mind and heart. India furnishes examples of conjugal devotedness, worthy a more enlightened direction. Alas! that such a spirit can find no purer modes of self-sacrifice, than casting the body on a funeral pile, or beneath the wheels of Juggernaut. Profane History, in its wide range, gives us indeed but an occasional gleam of the genuine virtues of woman. How unlike Christianity, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... introduction, and I dream of them still. There was indeed only one quality of womanhood in which she was lacking, and in which, after much serious self-examination, I discovered the reason of my instinctive self-sacrifice of her,—SHE HAD NEVER SUFFERED. As my heart had warned me at the beginning, "she was hoping too much from life to spend one's days with." She lacked the subtle half-tones of experience. She lacked all that a pretty wrinkle or two might have given. There was no ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... a lot out of it in the end, didn't she? And what do selfish people get? I'm one of them. I live absolutely for myself. There isn't a person except Flora who gets anything of service or self-sacrifice out of me. I came down here because she wanted me, but I hated to come. The modern theory is that unselfishness weakens. And the modern psychologist would tell you that little Dorrit was all wrong. She gave herself for others—and it didn't ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... of mediaeval interest than the Church of St. John, with all its treasured relics of the brave, self-denying Knights of Malta. I scarcely think that we in this nineteenth century quite realize the service rendered to Christendom in their deeds of heroism and noble self-sacrifice. It was their indomitable power and courage alone, at one time and another, that prevented the Moslem from overrunning and devastating Europe and the Christian world, and the fair Mediterranean shores from becoming a prey to the hordes of merciless and cruel pirates which would ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... matrimony ought to be the goal of every woman's ambition. But if a woman wishes to remain single and devote herself exclusively to the realisation of some ideal, it is hard to see why she should not. Men who take this course are eulogised for their noble self-sacrifice in immolating themselves for the advancement of the cause of civilisation; women who do precisely the same thing are sometimes unthinkingly spoken of in terms of contempt or with that complacent pity which is far worse. It is difficult ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Ball, wealthy, cultured, with every promising prospect for this world to attract him, made a great self-sacrifice. He chose Poland as a field, and work among the Jews as his mission, refusing to stay at home to rest in the soft nest of self-indulgent and luxurious ease. This choice made on young Muller a deep impression. He was ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... With shouts of encouragement to his new friend, he hurried onward toward the Prince of Helium. The red man's heart leaped in response to this exhibition of courage and self-sacrifice. He regretted now that he had not thought to give Kar Komak one of his swords; but it was too late to attempt it, for should he wait for the Lotharian to overtake him or return to meet him, the Torquasians would reach Thuvia of Ptarth ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would be able to twist her as he would if she could stand upon no surer rock than her fears for her own happiness. One kiss from him would be payment for it all. But all his love, all his sweetness, all his truth, all his eloquence should avail nothing with her towards overcoming that spirit of self-sacrifice by which she was dominated. Though he should extort from her all her secret, that would be her strength. Though she should have to tell him of her failing health,—her certainly failing health,—though even that should be necessary, she certainly would not be won from her purpose. It ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... is true—too true if you will—that all things live on each other. But is it not, therefore, equally true that all things live for each other?—that self-sacrifice, and not selfishness, is at the bottom the law of Nature, as it is the law of Grace; and the law of bio-geology, as it is the law of all religion and virtue worthy of the name? Is it not true that everything has to help something else to ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... must endure the ill-effects of his influence,—be they what they may. When you seceded from our Government you looked for certain adverse consequences. If you did not, where was your self-sacrifice? That such men as Mr. Bonteen should feel that you had scuttled the ship, and be unable to forgive you for doing so,—that is exactly the evil which you knew you must face. You have to face it now, and surely you can ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... kill the love in our hearts, or we can cultivate and increase it till its blossoms and fragrance are the delight of our lives. If your love is not what it ought to be, try fertilizing it with kindness, gentleness, and self-sacrifice, and take away the weeds of selfishness, carelessness, and indifference. You will find that love will grow and increase, and become sweeter and more ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... tasks, too hard for a girl's hands, those unrewarded drudgeries, those days of faithful labor in and out of doors, those evenings of self-sacrifice over the mending-basket; the quiet avoidance of all that might vex her father's crusty temper, her patience with his miserly exactions; the hourly holding back of the hasty word,—all these had played their part; all these had been somehow welded into a strong, sunny, steady, life-wisdom, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... desolate; the empty home, from which all the familiar faces and beloved voices had vanished; this lot surely was harder than the humble, laborious life of old Marlowe on the hills. Yet if any one living had a claim upon him for such self-sacrifice, it was this feeble, tottering old man, who was gazing up into his face ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... given woman two painful but heavenly gifts which distinguish her from the condition of men, and often raise her above it: pity and enthusiasm. Through pity she sacrifices herself; enthusiasm ennobles her. Self-sacrifice and enthusiasm! What else is there in heroism? Women have more heart and imagination than men. Enthusiasm arises from the imagination, self-sacrifice springs from the heart. They are therefore by nature more ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... deep in mud, and absolutely devoid of cover against well-constructed and well-planned trenches, manned by a brave and stubborn enemy, approximately their equal in numbers. They showed a spirit of endurance and self-sacrifice of which their country ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... and flow of letters, bearing solemnity and love upon their surface! what anxiety among us, with all its brave housekeeping shifts, to keep want from the door while labor is paralyzed, and the strong arms have beaten their ploughshares into swords! What self-sacrifice of millions of humble wives and daughters whose works and sorrows are now refining the history of their country, and lifting the popular nobleness: they are giving all that they are to keep their volunteers in the field. The flag waves over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... desire that the feelings of others should confirm, illustrate, and sympathize with, our own. In this respect it is allied with all that draws us out of ourselves. It is the 'last infirmity of noble minds'. Chivalry was likewise founded on the theory of self-sacrifice. Love possesses so extraordinary a power over the human heart, only because disinterestedness is united with the natural propensities. These propensities themselves are comparatively impotent in cases where the imagination of pleasure to be given, as well as to be received, does not enter into the ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the Minamoto chief escaped from the fight and took refuge in the house of his concubine, Enju, at Awobaka in Owari. There they were surrounded and attacked by the Taira partisans. The end seemed inevitable. Respite was obtained, however, by one of those heroic acts of self-sacrifice that stand so numerously to the credit of the Japanese samurai. Minamoto Shigenari, proclaiming himself to be Yoshitomo, fought with desperate valour, killing ten of the enemy. Finally, hacking his own face so that it became ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and honour, reverence for the wise. Purity, constancy, control of self, Contempt of sense-delights, self-sacrifice, Perception of the certitude of ill In birth, death, age, disease, suffering, and sin; Detachment, lightly holding unto home, Children, and wife, and all that bindeth men; An ever-tranquil heart in fortunes good And fortunes evil, with ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... plan to her hostess, who at first opposed the self-sacrifice, as she called it. But finally, being persuaded by Mary Grey, she yielded the point, and fervently praised the beautiful, unselfish spirit of her young guest, who was ever so ready to sacrifice her own comfort for ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... however, is the love of a Father who dares to appeal to the children to make heroic response; and who shows his own love for them in the lengths to which he will go for them. Moral love will go the full length of heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot help believing that it is the quality of God's love, rather than the mere fact of that love, which is the explanation of the ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," I tried to penetrate into the soul of a brave, unselfish, long-suffering man, and to lay bare the processes by which he raised himself to a great height of self-sacrifice. In this novel the aim has been to penetrate into the soul of a bad man, and to lay bare the processes by which he is tempted to his fall. To find a character that shall be above all common tendencies to guilt and yet tainted with the plague-spot of evil hidden somewhere; then to watch the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Joan, but in such a weary voice that Adam's heart smote him for leaving her sitting there alone, and with a great effort at self-sacrifice he said, "Would you like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... small, and Kitty can take her place nicely; so she is actually going to earn her own living, and hand over her share of the family income to Will. What a martyr that girl does make of herself," and Fanny looked as solemn as if Polly had proposed some awful self-sacrifice. ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... sublime in the teaching that individual and social happiness depends upon the degree of affection and goodwill manifested in the human heart. This is no doubt one reason why the adherents of the Positivist Church are so often distinguished by their high morality and their spirit of self-sacrifice. ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... resolved to apply to the leading shamans of the tribe. In order, however, that the Shiuana might look favourably upon his request, he determined upon doing penance himself during four consecutive days. Until this was performed he would not even speak to the medicine-men. The self-sacrifice he thus imposed was to be light, and not a formal fast. It limited itself to a much less substantial nourishment, and to a shorter rest during the hours ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... among the women of the family themselves—a strict and even severe standard of sexual morals. There was no hypocrisy in it; they talked of it but little, but they lived by it; and their men were brought up in the atmosphere created by it. And as affection and tenderness and self-sacrifice were freely mixed with the asceticism, there was no rebellion—at any rate no open rebellion—among their men folk. The atmosphere created led, no doubt, to certain evasions of the hard problems of life; and to some quiet revaluations of things and persons when the sons of the family came ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... proclaim it, then when can it ever be learned and proclaimed, since there can never again be such a spiritual ploughing and harrowing and preparation for the seed? If our souls, wearied and tortured during these dreadful five years of self-sacrifice and suspense, can show no radical changes, then what souls will ever respond to a fresh influx of heavenly inspiration? In that case the state of the human race would indeed be hopeless, and never in all the coming centuries would there ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were too startled to speak; others refrained. Mary Louise stared at the detective with almost Peter Conant's expression—her eyes big and round. Irene thrilled with joyous anticipation, for in the presence of this sorrowing, hunted, white-haired old man, whose years had been devoted to patient self-sacrifice, the humiliation the coming disclosure would, thrust upon Mary Louise seemed now insignificant. Until this moment Irene had been determined to suppress the knowledge gained through the old letter in order to ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and self-sacrifice. Of course there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do and ought to do much more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great careers of outside usefulness in addition to—not as substitutes for—their home work; but I am not speaking of exceptions; I am speaking of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... intellectual beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as the river that seeks in vain for the sea." But for unnecessary self-sacrifice, renouncement, abandonment of earthly joys, and all such "parasitic virtues," he has no commendation or approval; feeling that man was created to be happy, and that he is not wise who voluntarily discards a happiness to-day ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of the church as belonging to them, as a power which exists not only for them but through them. Wherever the Protestant church has gained an equally strong hold upon the poor, it has made equal demands upon their loyalty and self-sacrifice. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... first time in her long life of self-sacrifice that Julia Cloud had been able to rise above her anxiety about her sister's tantrums and go calmly on her way. It is scarcely likely that she would have managed it now if it hadn't been that she felt that Allison and Leslie ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... ineffable loveliness of God. So the man who trains a child, or gives thanks for a friend, or remembers his mother, is always at heart a lover of beauty,—the moral beauty of character, of comradeship, of self-sacrifice. But the poetry of Keats deals largely with outward matters, with form, color, melody, odors, with what is called "sensuous" beauty because it delights our human senses. Such beauty is good, but it is not supreme. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... expression for such an ideal could there be in subjects like the "Last Judgment," or the "Crucifixion of Peter"—subjects which the Christian world imperatively demanded should incarnate the fear of the humble and the self-sacrifice of the patient? Now humility and patience were feelings as unknown to Michelangelo as to Dante before him, or, for that matter, to any other of the world's creative geniuses at any time. Even had he felt them, he had no means of expressing them, for his nudes could convey a sense ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... behind you so much more than you ever knew. I wonder if you've the least idea what most women's lives are like. They come into the world with the finest ideals, the most tremendous energies, with a desire for self-sacrifice that a man can't even begin to understand. Then they discover slowly that none of those things, those ideals, those energies, those sacrifices, are wanted. The world just doesn't need them—they might as well never have been ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of reasons, and each reason is a noble one. We have brought together in that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage, religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade of ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... relief that her eyes rested upon Sybil Latham. The Englishwoman's face was turned to Colcord; her color was heightened only slightly, but in her blue eyes was the light of serene stars, and about her lips those new lines of self-sacrifice, anxiety, sorrow, which Evelyn had resented as marring the woman's delicate beauty, now imparted to her face vast ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... life with a vigour in exact proportion to their baseness, stupidity and narrowness of outlook. They will, as classes, come up for a moral judgment, on whose verdict the whole future of Western civilisation depends. If they cannot achieve a considerable, an unprecedented display of self-sacrifice, unselfish wisdom, and constructive vigour, if the community as a whole can produce no forces sufficient to restrain their lower tendencies, then the intelligent father had better turn his children's faces towards the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... or approval of the Divinity. So that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the presence, or for the honour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honour, or acts of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also, he was always anxious to know something definite ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... questions differently. The man who makes his own imagined good his ruling aim does many things which he would not defend on the ground of right; the man who determines always to do right sometimes performs acts of reputed and conscious self-denial and self-sacrifice. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... many children at his time of life, and not to be prevented by any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit that, the better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of care, and caution, and affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been bestowed upon little Paul, I should wish to refer the question to your medical attendant, or to any of your dependants in this house. Call Towlinson,' said Mrs Chick, 'I believe he has no prejudice in our favour; quite ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... contradictory: it produces fathomless capacities of sacrifice or of perfidy. Both of these qualities were embodied in the brother and in the sister. As happens, sometimes, the two characteristics of their race were divided between them; one had inherited all the virtue of self-sacrifice, the other all the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... beings, the spiritual means, the great, indispensable pair of wings by which man rises upward above himself, above his groveling existence and his limited horizons, leading him on through patience, hope and resignation to serenity, and beyond to temperance, purity, goodness, and self-devotion and self-sacrifice. Always and everywhere, for the past eighteen hundred years, as soon as these wings grow feeble or give way, public and private morals degenerate. In Italy, during the Renaissance, in England under the restoration, in France under the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "but there's no time like the present, believe me. For a man of real convictions this is a fine opportunity of self-sacrifice. You may not find another so favourable, so humane. There isn't even a cat near us, and these condemned old houses would make a good heap of bricks where you stand. You'll never get me at so little cost to life and property, which you are paid ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... fellow. I think differently, however. I wish from my heart, that some selfish persons whom I could name would go to the dogs. They would learn there, I am sure, what they have never learned before—most valuable lessons in gratitude, and affection, and self-sacrifice—to say nothing about common sense, a little more of which would not ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... justice due to a wronged people who have proved themselves capable of self-government, even then it could not be justified in the present crisis abroad. But it is not so. Ulster will fight for the same cause as did the Northern States of America, and may well show the same self-sacrifice. It will be civil war in a country peculiarly adapted to the movements of irregular troops, well acquainted with its features; it will be accompanied by atrocities which will be remembered for centuries. And this is the tremendous risk we are deliberately running, when we only ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Democrats themselves. "If I had to make out a school report for the Social Democratic Movement," said Prince Buelow in the Reichstag on one occasion, "I should say, 'Criticism, agitation, discipline, and self-sacrifice, I. a; positive achievements, lucidity of programme, V. b.'" The taunt is not undeserved. The Socialist Movement in Germany has suffered, like so many German movements, through a rigid adherence to logical theories. Under the leadership of old revolutionary thinkers ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Captain had given her on her last birthday. Mary had frequently admired it in times past and for months Marjorie had saved a portion from her allowance with which to buy it. She had a theory that a gift to one's dearest friends should entail self-sacrifice on the part of the giver. Mary's changed attitude toward her had not counted. She was still resolved upon giving her the chain. But how was she to do it? And suppose when she offered it ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... is the movement of the soul, not towards the ideal end of its being but towards an alleged supernatural transaction,—the redemption of the world by the death of Christ on the Cross. Gratitude to Christ for his love and self-sacrifice may indeed be an effective motive to action, but faith in the efficacy of Christ's atoning sacrifice is no guide to conduct. The inability of Protestantism to deduce a scheme of life from its own master-principle of salvation by "faith" has compelled it, in its desire ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... time, in August, 1805, he was, deservedly, the object of such widespread popular devotion, and his stay was so short, that the voice of censure was hushed amid the general murmur of affectionate admiration. The noble qualities of the man, the exalted spirit of self-sacrifice and heroic aspiration that breathed in his utterances, and was embodied, not only in his brilliant deeds, but in the obscure, patient endurance of the last two years, evoked a sentiment which spread over him and her a haze of tender sympathy that still survives. In the glory ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... a pause—"yes, she was a woman, a whole-hearted,' noble woman. She was the golden star of my childhood, the saintly ideal of the youth, as she is now in heaven the guardian angel of the man; there is no woman like her, Conrad. She was the impersonation of love, of self-sacrifice, of goodness, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach |
