"Compassionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power of the prince of this world, who was now venting on Him all his malice. At this moment the serpent was bruising the heel of the Son of Man, who shortly would bruise His head. It would appear as though our Lord were addressing kind and compassionate words to Pilate. "Great as your sin is, in abusing your prerogative, given to you from above, it is less than the sin of that Evil Spirit who has cast Me into your power, and is urging you to extreme measures against Me. The devil sinneth from the beginning." Even in His sore travail, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... conditions, to use her judgment and to keep her head. Increasingly he respected her character as well as her intelligence. He found in her unswerving sense of right and wrong, sense of honour likewise. Impetuous she might be, swift to feel and to revolt; but of tender conscience and, on occasion, royally compassionate. Now he could give her fuller opportunity. Could place her in circumstances admittedly enviable and prominent. From a comparative back-water, she should gain the full stream—and that stream, in a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... ye did it unto me;" and again, "Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me." But these words had never yet reached her ears, and as yet it was only the instincts of a true God-created heart that led her to compassionate and care for the ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled: that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or manners no law can possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw itself: but those neighbouring differences, or rather indifferences, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... is steep," said Romola, with compassionate gentleness, seating herself by him. "And I fear you have been weakened ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Lord Stanhope, 'was a humane and compassionate man. Even in the eagerness to pursue fresh conquests he did not ever neglect the care ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... half-dead, very pale and waxen in the face. For what seemed a long time he sat thus, motionless and almost without signs of life, while the two stood side by side before him. Mary glanced once at Beaumaroy; his lips were apart in that half humorous, half compassionate smile; there was no hint of impatience ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... mistaking the color in Helen's face now. If her eyes were anxious the crimson in her cheeks and on her forehead was that of anger. Geoffrey felt compassionate, but he was ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... have his own way, for she understood nothing about politics. She was compassionate and, as she was unable to respect all men, she pitied those who were unfortunate enough to be wicked. She helped the suffering in every possible way, visited the sick, comforted the widows, and took the poor orphans ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... Rembrandt—could have portrayed the face of Lincoln. Plain, homely, awkward, eyes not mates, sunken cheeks, leathery skin, moles, uncombed hair, neckcloth askew; but over and above and beyond all a look of power—and the soul! that look of haunting sorrow and the great, gentle, compassionate soul within! ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... for you, Master Oakshott," said Anne, compassionate, but still retreating as far as the window would let her; "but you are mistaken. If this power be in me, which I cannot quite believe—yes, I see what you want to say, but if I did what I know to be wrong, I should lose it ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. May God show kindness to Mahomet and his kinsfolk, fostering them by his favours! This is the tomb of the captain Jacchia Albosasso. God be merciful to him. He passed away towards noon on Saturday in the five days of the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... delighteth in autumn lotuses, and unto Sree herself in symmetry and every grace she is such a woman as a man may desire for wife in respect of softness of heart, and wealth of beauty and of virtues. Possessed of every accomplishment and compassionate and sweet-speeched, she is such a woman as a man may desire for wife in respect of her fitness for the acquisition of virtue and pleasure and wealth. Retiring to bed last and waking up first, she looketh after all down to the cowherds and the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the woman cast at her husband was almost compassionate; he never disturbed her now. She nodded with a smile to her lover and then pushed the bottle, which was not yet empty, nearer to her husband. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... For the first three months, I was the butt of every joker in the ship. I was the scape-goat of every accident and of every one's sins or carelessness. As I lived in the cabin, each plate, glass, or utensil that fell to leeward in a gale, was charged to my negligence. Indeed, no one seemed to compassionate my lot save a fat, lubberly negro cook, whom I could not endure. He was the first African my eye ever fell on, and I must confess that he was the only friend I ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... says (De Civ. Dei ix, 5), mercy is heartfelt sympathy for another's distress, impelling us to succor him if we can. For mercy takes its name misericordia from denoting a man's compassionate heart (miserum cor) for another's unhappiness. Now unhappiness is opposed to happiness: and it is essential to beatitude or happiness that one should obtain what one wishes; for, according to Augustine (De Trin. xiii, 5), "happy is he who has ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to be the home of all delights to the poet-priest. When his King was absent at Stirling, Dunbar in the pity of his heart sang an (exceedingly profane) litany for the exile that he might be brought back, prefacing it by the following compassionate strain:— ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and lower, till at last it flew down behind a rock. Immediately afterward they heard a piercing shriek, and, running up, they saw with affright that the eagle had caught their old acquaintance, the Dwarf, and was trying to carry him off. The compassionate children thereupon laid hold of the little man, and held him fast till the bird gave up the struggle and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... wiped his face and gave it back to her, saying, "Compassionate soul, the Father will ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... powerful, does'nt it?" she said. "It has something in it to keep it, you know. It's very unpleasant to take," she added, rolling up her brown eyes to Druse's compassionate face. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... little—" saying which he stepped to the Burgundian and began a fair soft speech, all of goodly and gentle tenor; and in the midst he mentioned the Maid; and was going on to say how she out of her good heart would prize and praise this compassionate deed which he was about to— It was as far as he got. The Burgundian burst into his smooth oration with an insult leveled at Joan of Arc. We sprang forward, but the Dwarf, his face all livid, brushed us aside and said, in a most grave ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... minds sometimes seek alleviation in exciting amusements; others resort to the grosser enjoyments of sense. Oppressed with the extremes of languor, or over-excitement, or apathy, the body fails under the wearing process, and adds new causes of suffering to the mind. Such, the compassionate Saviour calls to his service, in these appropriate terms: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me," "and ye shall find ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... that case wherein they are like to be overwhelmed with discouragements; and could the believer but think upon and believe those three things, he might be kept up under all discouragements: (1.) That Christ is a compassionate, tender-hearted Mediator, having bowels more tender than the bowels of any mother; so that "he will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax," Isa. xl. 2. He had compassion on the very bodies of the multitude that followed him; and would not let them go away fasting, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... the "Convoi du Pauvre," delights in mounting guard, goes on Sunday to its own country-house, is anxious to acquire the distinguished air, and dreams of municipal honors,—that middle class which is jealous of all and of every one, and yet is good, obliging, devoted, feeling, compassionate, ready to subscribe for the children of General Foy, or for the Greeks, whose piracies it knows nothing about, or the Exiles until none remained; duped through its virtues and scouted for its defects by a social class that ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... and skill of mind and hand, to cherish her; and I would speak to her of this passion and dear hope, but must not, because of the mystery concerning me. There came, then, an evening when I sought my uncle out to question him; 'twas a hushed and compassionate hour, I recall, the sunset waxing glorious above the remotest sea, and the night creeping with gentle feet upon the world, to spread ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... with the precepts of the Koran, began their morning ablutions, using, however, sand instead of water, which they desired to save. Afterwards resounded voices, saying the "soubhg," or morning prayer. Amidst the deep silence plainly could be heard their words: "In the name of the compassionate and merciful God. Glory to the Lord, the sovereign of the world, compassionate and merciful on the day of judgment. Thee we worship and profess. Thee we implore for aid. Lead us over the road of those to whom thou dost not ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... all the expense of lodgings, coach, dress, servants, &c., which, according to the several places where you may be, shall be respectively necessary to enable you to keep the best company. Under the head of rational pleasures I comprehend, first, proper charities to real and compassionate objects of it; secondly, proper presents to those to whom you are obliged, or whom you desire to oblige; thirdly, a conformity of expense to that of the company which you keep; as in public spectacles, your share of little entertainments, a few pistoles at games of mere commerce, and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Mrs. Hill was left in a state which only those who are troubled with the disease of excessive curiosity can rightly comprehend or compassionate. She hied her back to Phoebe, to whom she announced her father's answer, and then went gossiping to all her female acquaintance in Hereford, to tell them all that she knew, and all that she did not know, and to endeavour to find out ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... on mankind.' His language about the blundering tyranny of the English rule in Ireland would satisfy Mr. Froude, though he would hardly have loved a Home Ruler. He denounces the frequency of capital punishment and the harshness of imprisonment for debt, and he invokes a compassionate treatment of the outcasts of our streets as warmly as the more sentimental Goldsmith. His conservatism may be at times obtuse, but it is never of the cynical variety. He hates cruelty and injustice as righteously as he hates anarchy. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "Do you know," he said, "I find the element of pity quite as strongly developed in these French farces as in the Ambigu melodramas. The truant husband leaves home, goes out for a good time, gets buffeted and bastinadoed for his pains, and when the compassionate audience says, 'He has had enough; let up,' he comes humbly home to the bosom of his family and is forgiven. Where can you find a more ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... prospects of earthly happiness, and leave them no object to live for but the hope of winning mercy at God's hands for some dear departed one; or by the terrible anxiety about the state of some beloved soul which forces on the survivor the practice of a continual appeal to His compassionate goodness. Her zeal for the souls in Purgatory was perfectly free from any earthly attachment; it was as disinterested as possible, and sprung up in her heart before she had known what it is to lose ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... is not ours to separate The tangled skein of will and fate, To show what metes and bounds should stand Upon the soul's debatable land, And between choice and Providence Divide the circle of events; But He who knows our frame is just, Merciful and compassionate, And full of sweet assurances And hope for all the language is, That He remembereth ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... forbearing. When a strife had arisen among the apostles which of them should be the greatest, instead of denouncing in severe terms their foolish ambition, he called to himself a little child and set him in the midst, and from him gave them a lesson on the duty of humility. Yet this tender and compassionate Jesus of Nazareth, who took little children in his arms and blessed them, who stood and cried, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest," and who wept at the grave of Lazarus—this same Jesus could say to Peter when he would deter Him from the path of duty, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... groan that betokened not only a poignant sorrow, but also something of relief—for the tortures of not being able to unburden himself had plainly become intolerable. He glanced up and met the compassionate eyes of the rector, who ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... upon her, and the holy words are spoken with greater effort and slowly; yet the beads pass through her fingers in endless succession, and each one launches the offering of an Ave to that sky where Mary the compassionate is surely seated on her throne, hearkening to the music of prayers that ever rise, and brooding over the ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... CINDERELLA!" said the Fairy, in a compassionate tone, "and so your stepmother and sisters have gone to the Prince's ball, and left you to cleanse the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... further disaster than befalls me when, as usual, I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and left undone those things which I ought to have done—the former in this instance having reference to various bouts of crying—which drew forth the sympathy of a compassionate female sharper in the train—and the latter to the catch of my sachel, which enabled that obliging person to draw forth my embroidered pocket-handkerchief ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... its cradle, endowed it with a charm and glory of its own. Presently it fell sick, lost itself in the darkness of the Middle Ages, and was hidden away by the Witch in woods and wilds: there, sustained by her compassionate daring, it was made to live anew. Thus, of every religion woman is the mother, the gentle guardian, the faithful nurse. With her the gods fare like men: they are born and die upon ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... said angrily to him after a fruitless search in a new and well-to-do village in Champagne: "A good heart is a fine thing to have, but you are an officer now, and not a Sister of Mercy. Our men have a right to eat, and if you want to be compassionate, our poor fellows want food just as much as those French peasants. Deny yourself if you like, but take care that the soldiers have what they need. If ever you get back to Berlin, then in God's name you can please yourself by distributing ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... tempted her into the Presbyterian chapel close by. And thus when there came two children to be baptized the difficulty as to religion was compromised, and a triumph allowed to neither side, by the babes being solemnly received into the compassionate and truly Catholic fold of what was then the Established Church. That both these little ones had been taken away by death was a misfortune, and tended to harden even more the somewhat disagreeable and rigid lines that marked the individuality of ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... who has already been introduced to the reader, had spent the evening at the gambling house, having come into possession, during the day, of a small sum of money, given him by a compassionate miner. He had risked it, and for a time been successful, so that at the end of an hour he might have left off with twenty pounds. But the fatal fascination of the game drew him on till all his winnings melted away, and he left the cabin at midnight ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... becoming one with what is beyond our personal borders, we may take a long step toward freedom. Two directions for this may be suggested: the pure love of the artist for his work, and the earnest, compassionate search into the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... he was happily unconscious of any spectator beyond Bella the house-maid, but he felt relieved to be delivered from her compassionate stare. He had an instinctive sense that she knew as well as he did what he had come there for, and was pitying him—an inference in which he was quite correct. For Bella was older than the unseen "chorus" on the landing, who did not ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... The mighty God walking upon the waves of this sinful, troubled life, stretches out His arm, the very instant any sinking soul cries, "Lord save me." And unless that appeal and confession of helplessness is made, He, the Merciful and the Compassionate, will let the soul go down before His own eyes to the unfathomed abyss. If the sinking Peter had not uttered that cry, the mighty hand of Christ would not have been stretched forth. All the difficulties disappear, so soon as a man understands the truth of the Divine affirmation: ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... who approved it resigned; while its opponents remained in office, namely, Portland, Chatham, and Westmorland. The same is true of the subordinate offices. The new Cabinet decided to grant only occasional relief and a "compassionate allowance" to the Irish priests.[596] In several other matters its policy differed from that of Pitt; and Addington soon made it apparent that he ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... pierce the yielding hose, So oft thy beauties pierce my yielding breast: Oh then compassionate my deep felt woes, And bid awhile ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... what he had been going toward, not only on those terrible roads in France, but all through the years of his life. An exquisite, imperious little officer's girl with divinely compassionate eyes, who wasn't ashamed to dance with a private, and who had let him hold her hand at parting while she said in accents an angel might have envied, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... schools, and on going out, she found that Mr. Ferrars had moved and carried that Gilbert should be taken home at once, and, on the way, be shown to a physician at the county town. From this she gathered that Maurice was compassionate, and though, of course, he would make no such admission, she had reason afterwards to believe that he had shown Mr. Downton that the pupil's health ought to have met with a ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... streets, his relentless persecutors pricking him with lances. After hours of suffering, they threw him aside in the inclement weather, he imploring them earnestly to kill him to end his misery. A compassionate Mexican at last closed the tragic scene by shooting him. Stephen Lee, brother to the general, was killed on his own housetop. Narcisse Beaubien, son of the presiding judge of the district, hid in an outhouse with his Indian slave, at the commencement of the massacre, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... of viewing the subject was thought by some of the neighbors to be assumed, as the best mode of concealing wounded pride. They said, in compassionate tones, that they really did pity the Whartons; for, let them say what they would, it must be dreadfully mortifying to have that squaw about. But if such a feeling was ever remotely hinted to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... had: defended the girl's piteous secret to the last. She too began to feel the contagion of his pity—the stir, in her breast, of feelings deeper and more native to her than the pains of jealousy. From the security of her blessedness she longed to lean over with compassionate hands...But Owen? What was Owen's part to be? She owed herself first to him—she was bound to protect him not only from all knowledge of the secret she had surprised, but also—and chiefly!—from its consequences. Yes: the girl must go—there could ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... aforesaid, terrified with her father's threats and hard usage, and pressing me to find some remedy from this violence intended, I did compassionate her condition, and bethought myself of this contract to my Lord of Oxford, if so she liked, and thereupon I gave it to her to peruse and consider by herself, which she did; she liked it, cheerfully writ it out with her own hand, subscribed it, and returned it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to the princess' feet, and having seized them in her arms, she hid her face in the folds of the heavy dress; the lady turned her compassionate but also astonished ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... wept so that the ladies exchanged compassionate looks, and Arabella rose to press her hand and diminish her distress. Wilfrid saw that his work would be undone in a moment, and waved her to her seat. The action was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heard of it, except the devoted band who had no will but that of Francis. His friend, the Bishop of Assisi, was one of those who stumbled at this novel and wonderful self-devotion. 'Your life, without a possession in the world, seems to me most hard and terrible,' said the compassionate prelate. 'My lord,' said Francis, 'if we had possessions, arms and protection would be necessary to us.' There was a force in this response which perhaps we can scarcely realize, but the Assisan bishop, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... he understood. She had guaranteed to Milly Theale through Mrs. Stringham that Kate didn't care for him. She had affirmed through the same source that the attachment was only his. He made it out, he made it out, and he could see what she meant by its starting him. She had described Kate as merely compassionate, so that Milly might be compassionate too. "Proper" indeed it was, her lie—the very properest possible and the most deeply, richly diplomatic. So Milly ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... words of his mother, Yudhishthira said, 'What thou, O mother, hast deliberately done, moved by compassion for the afflicted Brahmana, is, indeed, excellent Bhima will certainly come back with life, after having slain the cannibal, inasmuch as thou art, O mother, always compassionate unto Brahmanas. But tell the Brahmana, O mother, that he doth not do anything whereby the dwellers in this town may know all about it, and make him promise ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... united an exquisite moral sensibility to a thrilling gift of song. . . . Her verses were doubtless the expression of her life; in them she is reflected in hues both warm and bright; they ring with her cries of love and grief. . . . Hers was the most courageous, tender and compassionate of souls." ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... notion of crucifying a Roman citizen, had not a word to say against these horrible abuses of victory. It is evident that in his eyes a barbarian did not belong to the same human race as a Roman. On the contrary, in proportion as nations become more like each other, they become reciprocally more compassionate, and the law of nations ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... deacons;" [504:2] for Polycarp was certainly not aware of the existence of any new office-bearers; and he accordingly exhorts his correspondents to be "subject to the presbyters and deacons." [504:3] "Let the presbyters," says he, "be compassionate, merciful to all, bringing back such as are in error, seeking out all those that are weak, not neglecting the widow or the fatherless, or the poor; but providing always what is good in the sight of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... as a Crime? It is an easie thing, for us to fall into the Fault of, Adding Affliction to the Afflicted, and of, Talking to the Grief of those that are already wounded. Nor can it be wisdom to slight the Dangers of such a Fault. In the mean time, We have no Bowels in us, if we do not Compassionate the Distressed County of Essex, now crying to all these Colonies, Have pity on me, O ye my Friends, Have pity on me, for the Hand of the Lord has Touched me, and the Wrath of the Devil has been therewithal turned upon me. But indeed, if an hearty pity be ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... By whom, if not by you, should I be restored to the honors of my fathers? Please God things turn out favorably for me and for my fortunes! Rejected, what, can become of me save to be exhibited as a spectacle to all who look on me? Suffer yourself to be moved by some feeling of humanity: be compassionate towards a man who has been tried by so ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... his lips without replying, and she leaned down, her eyes full of the utmost compassionate tenderness and held the violets to him. He raised a hand with evident effort and fumblingly took her wrist. He pressed the wet flowers against ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... declaration, and retires to the country. But she returns, and the exemplary Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his creator's biographers may be believed, Constant himself was very fond of employing in similar cases, and which the great popularity of Werther made terrible to the compassionate and foolish feminine mind. He will kill himself. She hesitates, and very soon she does not hesitate any longer. The reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, that nothing but the fact of his having been brought up in a time when Sensibility was dominant saves ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... with the count, that he was enabled to conquer the whole of the Milanese territory, and to press the city so closely, that the inhabitants could not provide themselves with necessaries; despairing of success, they sent envoys to the Venetians to beg they would compassionate their distress, and, as ought to be the case between republics, assist them in defense of their liberty against a tyrant, whom, if once master of their city, they would be unable to restrain; neither did they think he would be content with the boundaries assigned him by the treaty, but would expect ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Bonapartist, or of being unfit for his position, was discharged from the service of the church, and had only the right to stand at the threshold as a privileged beggar; however, he profited greatly by his new position, for he knew how to arouse the compassionate feelings of the faithful in every possible way, chiefly by passing as a centenarian. Having been entrusted with the diamonds that Charles Crochard had stolen from Mademoiselle Beaumesnil and which the young thief wished to get off his hands for ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night. When he had finished, and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr. Treffry opened ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... she said. "Oh! I'm terribly sorry for him." Her eyes were extraordinarily tender and compassionate as she spoke. I felt that if any lover of Anne's could ever inspire such devotion as showed in her face at that moment, he would indeed ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... The towers of Hautefort, that thou lookedst not That way, ere he was gone."—"O guide belov'd! His violent death yet unaveng'd," said I, "By any, who are partners in his shame, Made him contemptuous: therefore, as I think, He pass'd me speechless by; and doing so Hath made me more compassionate his fate." So we discours'd to where the rock first show'd The other valley, had more light been there, E'en to the lowest depth. Soon as we came O'er the last cloister in the dismal rounds Of Malebolge, and the brotherhood ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... boy, with the accent of a miserable child in a bad dream. Ellesborough's face softened. He bent over him and said something in German. Rachel did not understand it—only the compassionate look ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... any kind of nourishment. She knew that they were watching for the moment when she would be strong enough to stand the pillory, and perhaps she had resolved to die of hunger. There had been some thought—and this compassionate idea seems to have originated with Licquet—of sparing the aged woman this supreme agony, but the Procurer-General showed such bitter zeal in the execution of the sentence, that the prefect received ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... on your enemy by not resembling him. Forgive; forgive always; die forgiving. Be indulgent to the wrong-doer; be compassionate to him; tell him how he should act; speak to him without anger, without sarcasm; speak to him affectionately. Besides, what do you know of his wrong-doing? Are all his thoughts familiar to you? May there not be something that justifies him? And you, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... turning slowly and hesitatingly on its hinges, until it disclosed her father's venerable figure. His limbs seemed weak; his shoulders drooped; but Cornelia looked only at his face. His eyes were deep and compassionate. He held out his arms, which shook slightly but continually: "Come, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... possibility; but that it went so far counted for a great deal to him, to whom, in all his life, no single gleam nor even faintest hope of love had ever come. The gentle glance or two which she had cast him in her compassionate sorrow for his friendlessness sank down into the depths of Pedro's heart, and bred there for her that great love—tender, yet almost stern in its fierce intensity—to which only a passionate, repressed nature can give birth. And through the year that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... the ancient Panegyrici, when haranguing the Emperor Theodosius: "Thou, Rome! that, having once suffered by the madness of Cinna, and of the cruel Marius raging from banishment, and of Sylla, that won his wreath of prosperity from thy disasters, and of Caesar, compassionate to the dead, didst shudder at every blast of the trumpet filled by the breath of civil commotion,—thou, that, besides the wreck of thy soldiery perishing on either side, didst bewail, amongst thy spectacles of domestic woe, the luminaries of thy senate ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... me," sighed the officer, casting a despairing glance on this scene of desolation. "Oh, why was it not vouchsafed to me to die on the battle-field? Why did not a compassionate cannon-ball have mercy on me, and give me death on the field of honor? Then, at least, I should have died as a brave soldier, and my name would have been honorably mentioned; now I am doomed to be named only among the missing! Oh, it is sad ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... circle of men and women whom he faithfully loved, and to that Francesco Gori who shared with Tommaso di Caluso the rather trying honour of being his bosom friend. This Gori, "an incomparable man," writes Alfieri, "good, compassionate, and with all his austerity and ruggedness of virtue (con tanta altezza e ferocia di sensi) most gentle," appears literally to have nursed Alfieri in this period of moral sickness as one might nurse a sick or badly-bruised child. "Without him," writes ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... had passed when Mr. Travilla came to her side, and said in a compassionate tone, "I am really very sorry for you, my little friend; but I advise you to submit to your papa. I see you are getting very weary sitting there, and I warn you not to hope to conquer him. I have known ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... said the doctor. "He is no more startling to you than you were to me. What I want to know is how he induced some compassionate soul to shoot him." ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... moral warning to all England, and commanded the sympathy and admiration of a nation, lived on, to achieve nothing but the delivery of some confidences of questionable value and beauty, and to command from us nothing more than a compassionate sorrow that an intellect so subtle and an eloquence so charming in its pathos, its humor, its insight, and its music, should have left the world in no way the better for such gifts, unless by the warning afforded in "Confessions" first, and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... livelihood by his labour, weary, and full of remorse, he daily took his round through the public streets, soliciting a penny for the "poor blind." A dog, induced for a weekly trifle and the prospect of an extra bone or two thrown to him, sometimes by the compassionate as they went their melancholy way, led him in his wanderings. At first, however, either from ignorance or carelessness, or a currish malice, he would often guide his helpless master into positions of difficulty and ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... practice—the capture of Verucchio in 1462 by a forged letter pretending to come from Sigismondo Malatesta—stained his character for honesty. To his soldiers in the field he was considerate and generous; to his enemies compassionate and merciful.[3] 'In military science,' says Vespasiano, 'he was excelled by no commander of his time; uniting energy with judgment, he conquered by prudence as much as by force. The like wariness was observed in all his affairs; and in none of his many battles was he ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is even for its own sake incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and, though it seldom receives much honor, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whose recent victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it is said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side, spoke in her favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But all was vain. The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence should be commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death on a scaffold in the marketplace ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... other, great remorse for wickedness and ill-doing. But these results are not eternal, though the dreadfully cruel teachings of religion have made people believe so. The faintest stirrings of desire to be better, the least aspiration toward the higher life is sure of a response from loving, compassionate beings in ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... but, as might only too surely have been expected, the exposure brought back his former illness, and he was obliged to take shelter in the cabin of a poor old Scotchwoman. She—blessings be on her head!—was faithful and compassionate, and would not deliver him up to his enemies, and thus his sickness preserved him from being taken with his leader by the wretched ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... States and local governments than ever before—$70 billion for the current fiscal year. Through these programs and others that provide aid directly to individuals, we have kept faith with our tradition of compassionate help for those who need it. As we begin our third century we can be proud of the progress that we have made in meeting human needs for all of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and affable in her manners, sober and chaste, not given to passion, liberal and compassionate towards the poor, and not greedy of gain when she attends the rich. She should have a cheerful and pleasant temper, so that she may be the more easily able to comfort her patients during labour. She must never be ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Jack, but still he hoped to elude the giant, and therefore he again entreated the woman to take him in for one night only, and hide him where she thought proper. The good woman at last suffered herself to be persuaded, for she was of a compassionate and generous disposition, and took him into the house. First, they entered a fine large hall, magnificently furnished; they then passed through several spacious rooms, all in the same style of grandeur; but they appeared to be quite forsaken and desolate. ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... the chief said. "You did it because you have a heart." He leaned suddenly forward, both hands on his desk. "It's good for a man to have a heart and be compassionate. He's not worth anything if he isn't. But"—and he shook his finger at Jordan as he spoke—"that man is going to be compassionate at his own expense, not at the expense of the ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... their fashion, or for not having suffered precisely as they settled or imagined he should have done. They vied with each other in tearing the seamless robe of his Church; many illtreated, insulted, and denied him, and many turned contemptuously away, shaking their heads at him, avoiding his compassionate embrace, and hurrying on to the abyss where they were finally swallowed up. He saw countless numbers of other men who did not dare openly to deny him, but who passed on in disgust at the sight of ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... His compassionate sentence remained unfinished, for, just at that moment the child turned over in his sleep, and, to the extreme surprise of everybody, there was a large label on his shoulders, on which the following ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Lord most compassionate, the Buddha of immeasurable Light, He who had attained unto the Supreme Wisdom even before the myriads of Kalpas were, pitying them that know not, made himself manifest in the Palace of ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... Mary. More compassionate to one of my own sex, or to any one in misfortune. Had you come to me, almost broken hearted, and not looking like one quite abandoned to wickedness, I should have thought on your misery, and forgot that it might have been ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... face, which for all its brightness was worn and deep-lined, and her compassionate motherly ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... able—indeed, I did not desire—wholly to withdraw myself from intercourse with non-believers. There was too much in society that was congenial to me to be given up. My instinctive dislike to Miss Abby Fetters and my compassionate regard for Mrs. Stilton's weakness only served to render the company of intelligent, cultivated women more attractive to me. Among those whom I met most frequently was Miss Agnes Honeywood, a calm, quiet, unobtrusive girl, the characteristic of whose face ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... garlic mines, supplying their own needs by purchase from foreign trading proas. Having few cowrie shells, with which to purchase, the poor Scamadumclitchclitchians suffered a great distress, which so touched the hearts of the compassionate Uggards—a most humane and conscientious people—that they declared war against the Wuggards and sent a fleet of proas to the relief of the sufferers. The fleet established a strict blockade of every port in Scamadumclitchclitch, and not a clove ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... agreeable to sympathize with joy, and we do so with the heart; the painfulness of entering into grief and misery holds us back. Hence, as he remarked before, the magnanimity and nobleness of the man that represses his woes, and does not exact our compassionate participation. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... possessing nearly every one of those qualities, positive and negative, which the two other scenes above quoted are without. The author does not here obtrude himself, does not importune us to admire his exquisitely compassionate nature; on the contrary, he at once amuses us and enlists our sympathies by that subtly humorous piece of self-analysis, in which he shows how large an admixture of curiosity was contained in his benevolence. The incident, too, is well chosen. No forced concurrence ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... with an air ill-used yet compassionate, such as he might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could not be convinced, for instance, of the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... at Cotenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially tender for all womankind, was to be ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... spoke in a low, respectful voice, looking at her master with eyes that seemed to compassionate him. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... well fitted as they ought to be, to take the care of their Children, yet not to be willing to do what they can herein, either as thinking this a matter of too much pains for them, or below their Condition, expresses so senseless a Pride, and so much want of the affectionate and compassionate Tenderness natural to that Sex and Relation, that one would almost be tempted to question whether such Women were any more capable of, than worthy to be the ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... Attorney, who was a man of more feeling than was usually supposed, contemplated him in compassionate silence for a moment, then gently—very gently for him—leaned forward and drew from under the unresisting hands the scattered sheets which lay in disorder before him, and passed them ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... which I had witnessed in my vision, and could so well confirm from the experience of my former life, though they had, alas! once been, and must in the retrospect to the end of time move the compassionate to tears, were, God be thanked, forever gone by. Long ago oppressor and oppressed, prophet and scorner, had been dust. For generations, rich and poor had been ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... his left arm, and he began to hate the contact. He hardly knew what to do. It was useless to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion from the rum and from the fall. He remained silent, his hold upon his companion, however, being stern rather than compassionate. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... is wrong to care so much about them, but I can't help it. I have not told you this to excite your pity; but that you may know that others have their daily trials as well as yourself. Do not think, dear child, that I do not compassionate your sad lot; only try to remember the comforts which you do enjoy, notwithstanding the ills you are called upon to endure. Think how much worse your fate might have been, if your grandparents had refused to ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... suspected, if he had not measured, his domestic abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy of her powers. She held her candlestick aloft again and looked around the salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated that she accepted the mission, and that its sacred character would sustain her in her rupture with Madame de Bellegarde. With this she curtsied ...
— The American • Henry James
... lodging-house room, and the curtainless iron bed in which he slept with his father: reminiscences of some long, inexplicable anguish through which that father had passed; then of his death, and his own lonely crying. He seemed still to feel the strange sheets in that bed upstairs, where a compassionate fellow-lodger had put him the night after his father died; he sat up again bewildered in the cold dawn, filled with a home-sickness too benumbing for words. He resented these memories, tried to banish them; ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the whole story of the loss of the weapon at Moldwarp Hall. Up to the time of my leaving for Switzerland I had shrunk from any reference to the subject, so painful was it to me, and so convinced was I that his sympathy would be confined to a compassionate smile and a few ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... dearest child, forcibly as these arguments carry conviction to my mind, I dread lest your compassionate, generous temper, should prevent their reaching your understanding. Then let me conjure you, by all the respect which you have ever shown for your mother's opinions, by all that you hold dear or sacred, beware of forming an ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... that you shall undergo bitter affliction—it is a fearful awakening! What glory have we ever rendered to God that we should expect him to be so merciful to us? Are not all things His, and is not He infinitely more tender and compassionate than ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Lord of all compassionate control, O Love! let this my lady's picture glow Under my hand to praise her name, and show Even of her inner self the perfect whole: That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal, Beyond the light that the sweet glances ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... to come in with her and rest for the night. And that is just the one thing she ought not to do, for here is what I hope you will see and remember more than anything else in all this: be as kind and as helpful and as compassionate as you can, always, but never help, never listen to, never allow to be near you a man or a woman who says one word against anyone you love. Put no trust in anyone till you know that trust is safe, and, when you once know, never hear of one breath of ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had done. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... had been bitter enough in its set and scornful beauty, suddenly melted into a bewildering softness of light and laughter. She leaned forward. "But it was funny!" she said. "It was very, very funny, Doctor Strong, you must admit that. You were so compassionate, ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... father," continued Kolina, with a compassionate look at Ivan; "and as your child cannot remain alone, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... concealed, at least according to the capacity of whoever beholds it, and by his love, which, perchance, is equal to so much beauty (equal, he means, of the beauty, in so far as he can comprehend it) that it surrender itself to pity, that is, that it should do as those who are compassionate, and who from being capricious and gloomy become gracious and affable and that it prolong not the evil which results from that privation, and not allow that its splendour, for which it is so much desired, should appear greater than that love by means of which it communicates ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... then introduced, and said: Ladies and gentlemen, I am not generally in favor of compromises, but I come before you to-night to propose a compromise. I had written a speech for the occasion, and—a—I assure you it was a very good speech. As I am compassionate, however, if you will take my word for it that it is a very good speech I will not inflict it ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a glance of earnest surprise. She was so unused to pity that the compassionate voice brought a dry sob to ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... nearer, he found the traces of her tears. Sympathizing with her, he asked the cause of her grief, and she tried to avoid answering him; but as he continued to urge her, she at last said, "I dare tell you why these tears flow, because you are good and compassionate, and will not consider it a crime that I have a feeling and sympathizing heart. You know that I was formerly beloved by Prince Mundian Oppu, the son of the neighbouring King. I related to you that this Prince was changed into a blackbird by the enchanter, and ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... youth and the "field of valor" he had tempted. He wept. He sobbed. He threw himself upon the bed, and pressing his temples into the ragged quilt, felt the panorama of childhood pass across his mind like something cool, sorrowful, and compassionate. The sickness she had cured, the bad words she had taken from his undutiful lips, the whipping she had saved him from at the cost of her deceit, the lie she had never told him, the tears he had found her shedding upon her knees when first he had been drinking, the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the rest I see Turn and consider me Compassionate Euterpe!) "There is a gate beyond the gate of Death, Beyond the gate of everlasting Life, Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell," she saith, "Whereon but to believe is horror! Whereon to meditate engendereth Even in deathless ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... describe my difficulties after having penetrated about two feet into the hewn stone. My tools were the irons I had dug out, which fastened may bedstead and night-table. A compassionate soldier also gave me an old iron ramrod and a soldier's sheath knife, which did me excellent service, more especially the latter, as I shall presently more fully show. With these two I cut splinters from my bedstead, which aided me to pick the mortar from the interstices ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... him had been ready to give their lives for the Truth being, like all brave and noble men, gentle and compassionate, they resolved to make it as easy as possible. They announced that absolution would be given freely to all who accepted the Creed of Nicea. Those who had fallen away were mostly good men and true believers who had yielded ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... were disturbed by detecting in his eyes a look that seemed to express deep pity and regret. Occasionally he would draw apart, and gaze at the passing crowds with a compassionate expression, and then, slowly turning his back, while his fingers worked nervously, would disappear, with downcast head, in his ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... was not sufficient that one should be charitable, henceforth one must be just. Given justice, indeed, horrid misery would disappear, and no such thing as charity would be needed. Most certainly there was no lack of compassionate hearts in that grievous city of Paris; charitable foundations sprouted forth there like green leaves at the first warmth of springtide. There were some for every age, every peril, every misfortune. Through the concern ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... woman with a basket of wares, who prayed hard to be allowed to show them to your Grace or some of the ladies. She said she had five sorely hungered children, and that she heard your Grace was a compassionate lady." ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laugh from the other side of the wall, not a scornful laugh or an idle laugh, but a laugh kind and compassionate, like a father with a child on his knee; and the voice said, "I have seen Him—I see Him! He is here all about us, and He is yonder. He is not coming to meet us, as you think. . . . Dear me, how young you must be. . ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson |
