"Effacement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the better. A grand step was made in the direction of the abandonment of our South African Empire when we surrendered the Transvaal to the Boers, and it is clear that if our troops can be withdrawn from Natal and all responsibility for the safety of that colony put an end to, the triumph of self-effacement will be still more complete. But there is another and more immediate reason for Lord Kimberley's generous offer. He knows, no one better, that the policy pursued in South Africa, both as regards the Transvaal and Zululand, must produce its legitimate fruit—bloodshed—before very long. ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... regarded war per se as other than monstrous, or hoped that by the use of violence anything more could be accomplished than the frustration of a temporarily powerful malicious wickedness. War in itself gives birth to no righteousness. Only such a fire of love as leads to self-effacement can advance the welfare of mankind." "Will the Christian Church Survive?" Atlantic Monthly, Vol. ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... think of Helen, and of what, with their wealth, she and Franklin could do for Helen, seemed, really, her strongest hold on life. It was the brightest thing that she had to look forward to, and she looked forward to it with complete self-effacement. She saw the beautiful Italian villa where Helen should be the fitting centre, the English house where Helen, rather than she, should entertain. She felt that she asked nothing more for herself. She was safe, if one liked to put it so, and in that safety she felt not only her ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and experimental grounds at Bell, Maryland, some of us more than once. Few of us knew his varied and high attainments in many other fields than plant breeding, though a moment's thought would have made a discerning person see that his modesty, self-effacement, kindliness and sympathy were things that most often come to those whose experiences of life have been the widest. His accomplishments in plant breeding and other fields, a bibliography of his writings, and the events of his life, were fully and sympathetically related in a communication ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... felt. She stiffened and narrowed intellectually; while for all sinners and sufferers, within the lines of sympathy she gradually traced out for herself, she would have willingly given her body to be burned, so strong was the Franciscan thirst in her for the self-effacement and self-sacrifice that belong to the Christian ideal, carried ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... verge of tears as she was, she could not forbear smiling a little at this proclamation of complete self-effacement. "I fear I must pay some attention to you," she said, "if I am to confide in you and—and perhaps ask your help, your advice, afterwards. I have reached a point when I must ask some one's advice; I have thought myself into a maze and I don't ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... me," he said to Ko-tan, "lest Jad-ben-Otho, mistaking their intention, strike them dead." The effect of his words was immediate upon the men in the front rank of those who faced him, each seeming suddenly to acquire a new modesty that compelled him to self-effacement behind those directly in his rear—a modesty ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which will not permit a man to set aside his work and enter a more lucrative and materially satisfactory field of endeavor—if he starve in his obstinacy—engineers are men of the temperament, aside from the training, to minister to public needs and desires. Self-effacement is the engineer's chief characteristic. He views largely and without bias. He can see things from the other fellow's angle because he is not an engineer if he has not the gift of imagination. The successful engineer has this most precious ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... in that it also has a quality of self-effacement, but it really means a love of the essential and of directness. Simple people put no trimmings on their phrases, nor on their manners; but remember, simplicity is not crudeness nor anything like it. On the contrary, simplicity of speech ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... perhaps the final Pieta, the ideal of tone-harmony towards which the master in his late time had been steadily tending. Richness and brilliancy of local colour are subordinated, and this time up to the point of effacement, to this luminous monotone, so mysteriously effective in the hands of a master such as Titian. In the solemn twilight which descends from the heavens, just faintly flushed with rose, an amorous shepherd, flower-crowned, pipes to a nude ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... their hurried writing, their inconsistencies, and their qualities of the "Shilling Shocker," the result of their author's failure to attain "the tempestuous loveliness of terror" that are in so many of them, long or short. As aids to this effacement of the cheapening elements are the very materials of the tales, their characters, now elemental, now other-worldly, and their background of mountains that uplift the spirit, and ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... truly said that it gives a motive for our care of offspring, and for all our other most self-forgetful devotions, our finest altruisms, our most polished expressions in language, manners and dress. It justifies labor, ambition, and at times even self-effacement. It underlies nearly all the lyric expressions in art; furnishes almost the only theme for that delineation of modern life which we call the novel; and is a main support for music, painting, statuary and ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... away, of the effacement of individual life. One sighs, remembering that it is even so, that life passes, sunrise after sunrise, moonlight upon moonlight, evening upon evening, and we like May-flies on the surface of a stream, no more than they for all ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... who would lose such a good occasion, and Count Victor made the most of it. He was gentle, but not too gentle—for this was a lady to resent the easy self-effacement with which so many of her sex are deceived and flattered; he was not unmindful of the more honest compliments, yet he had the shrewdness to eschew the mere meaningless blague that no one could better employ with the creatures of Versailles, who liked their olives well ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... utmost importance to inaugurate a just policy, which shall at once be put in motion, and which shall commend itself to those who come after us for its continuance. We must aim at nothing less than the complete effacement of the financial evils that necessarily followed a state of civil war. We must endeavor to apply the earliest remedy to the deranged state of the currency, and not shrink from devising a policy which, without being ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... everything, the false love that grasps everything; of the passionate, eloquent, suffering eyes, full of jealousy and yearning, fierce hate and fiercer desire, and behind all, yes, dominating all, the struggle for martyr-like self-effacement whose cry forever is, not for my sake, but for the sake of one that I love. Great waves of pity overwhelmed every other emotion in Helene's breast, as she leaned forward. "My poor child," she said, "how intensely you love him! Do not let my ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... delight of being purely self-absorbed is very great and intoxicating to those who are constantly—either by desire or the force of circumstances—unselfish. A faint flush swept into Brigit's face under the effect of an experience so novel. Their twofold consciousness had all the pathos of self-effacement, and all the thrill of satisfied egoism. Such instants cannot last, and they are shortest when one's habits of thought are antagonistic to such luxury. Brigit sighed deeply, and roused herself with a painful sense that the minute ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... discrediting in society of the ancient European waltz or dance with partners, and the substitution of that horrible and degrading oriental interlude which is known as skirt-dancing. That is the whole essence of decadence, the effacement of five people who do a thing for fun by one person who does it for money. Now it follows, therefore, that when Mr. McCabe says that the ballets of the Alhambra and my articles "have their place in life," it ought to ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the typical lazy, effeminate, creature whose only interests in life were holidays and the society of such ladies as would receive him. On the contrary he was conscientious, retiring to a point of absolute self-effacement, and able to forget himself only in his one great passion: music. He was a Pole of the Chopinesque type: and it was in spite of himself that he gave his pupil, besides the regular studies, a very thorough grounding in the classical masters, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the achievements of a past generation, he concluded, "We are the same men, but we no longer believe in ourselves. We act as if we were a vanquished people, and in any case we appear so to the world. This is the result of our policy of effacement for which must be substituted at all costs a policy of action which will permit us to hold ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... in arranging a mutually agreeable peace. Now for the third time I am come, and I flatter myself that to-day again I shall obtain a reconciliation, and on grounds exceptionally just. My eyes bear witness that our hearts are in accord; you and we alike are pained at the effacement of Plataeae and Thespiae. Is it not then reasonable that out of agreement should spring concord rather than discord? It is never the part, I take it, of wise men to raise the standard of war for the sake of petty differences; but where there is nothing ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... habits in thought or conduct there are good and real reasons in the nature of things. To leave such habits attached to false opinions is to lessen the weight of these natural or spontaneous reasons, and so to do more harm in the long run than effacement of them seems for a time to do good. Most excellences in human character have a spontaneous root in our nature. Moreover if they had not, and where they have not, there is always a valid and real external defence for them. The unreal defence must ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... train from King's Cross at eleven. At half-past ten Tibby, with rare self-effacement, fell asleep, and Margaret was able to drive her aunt ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... December Chatham went to Bath for the sake of his health. In February, 1767, he had a severe attack of gout, and in March the disease began to affect his mental powers. For the next two years he was unable to take any part in politics. His effacement left the ministry without a head. Before his retirement a difference arose in the cabinet on the affairs of the East India Company. From a simple trading company it had been raised by the victories of Clive and his generals to the position of a territorial power. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... breath of life is in me, Manikawan, I shall never forget your example of patience and encouragement and self-effacement. It has built for me new ideals. It has taught me that there are other things to live for than the mere attainment of pleasure and the gratification ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... loved and revered, was individually great, but only as he contributed to the greatness of Venice—the one deathless entity; her noblest were content to give of their greatness and be themselves nameless; and against the less great, for whom self-effacement was impossible—men strong in gifts and eager for power—the jealous Republic had provided a system of efficient checks, based upon an astute understanding of the fears and claims of self-interest. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... next candidate for Mayor, on a reform ticket—he sat very still for a moment or two, while his hand shook slightly. No backward step, now! His head was in the noose. He wondered, with a fresh burst of self-effacement, what people would say about it. One thing—they wouldn't accuse him of the truth. Nobody but Mr. Mix himself knew the whole truth—unless perhaps it were Henry Devereux. Henry had developed a knowing eye. But Henry didn't count—Henry was ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... were to be treated, in short, as if they did not know how to manage their own affairs. Mr. Lay's dreams were suddenly dispelled, and his philanthropic schemes fell to the ground. Neither Prince Kung nor his colleagues had any intention to pave the way for their own effacement. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... misunderstood, if only for our children's sake. But even that will not long be necessary, for the vindication of our principles will be made manifest in the working out of the problems with which the republic has to grapple. If, however, the effacement of state lines and the complete centralization of the government shall prove to be the wisdom of the future, the poetry of life will still find its home in the old order, and those who loved their State best will live longest in ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... too much self-effacement!" he grinned. "I enjoyed the last occasion when you were my guest, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Rishis think that the distinctions between the lower, the middling, and the higher classes of society are eternal, and nothing can be a greater calamity than the effacement of those distinctions. Equality of men, in their eyes, is an ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Hyde's later administration they never exceeded 5000 men. The magic of discipline and cohesion gone, Cromwell's Ironsides ceased to be an effective instrument of war. But, spread throughout the villages of England, they powerfully leavened the national character, and prevented the effacement of a type which the strain of Civil War and the white-heat of religious enthusiasm had served to create. The threatenings of a sullen temper on the part of the army, who found their occupation gone, were happily averted. But Hyde recognized that a deeper danger lay ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... selling St. Peter's Oil or some other cheerful concoction, with manners as gentle and a voice as soft as a spring zephyr, who always took off his hat when he came into a business office, seemingly bashful to the point of self-effacement, was the one who snatched Charles F. Dodge from the borders of Mexico and held him in an iron grip when every influence upon which Hummel could call for aid, from crooked police officials, corrupt judges, and a gang of cutthroats under the guise of ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... was over, for I had become hindrance instead of help. While he was outcast and hated I had the pride of standing at his side; when all the fair-weather friends came buzzing round him I served him best by self-effacement, and I never loved him better than when I stood aside. But I continued all the literary work unaltered, and no change of opinions touched his kindness to me, although when, a little later, I joined the Theosophical Society, he lost his trust in my ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... of gold at the end of the rainbow. He was always looking for romance, forgetting that the most wonderful romance is that of the hearthstone and of the quiet heart. If he had ever really loved he would have known the joy of self-sacrifice, of self-effacement—but he ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... Being, as I find much reason to conceive, 75 Intended to be viewed eventually As a great whole, not analyzed to parts, But each part having reference to all— How shall a certain part, pronounced complete, Endure effacement by another part? 80 Was the thing done?—then, what's to do again? See, in the checkered pavement opposite, Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb, And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid— He did not overlay them, superimpose 85 The new upon the old and blot it out, But laid them ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... were peculiar. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had outraged the North and indicated that a new party must be formed to resist the extension of slavery. In the disorganization of the Democratic party, and the effacement of the Whig, nowhere may the new movement so well be traced as in the news and editorial columns of the newspapers, and in the speeches of the Northern leaders, many of these indeed being printed nowhere else than in the press. What journals and what journalists ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... longer keeps secret house unless he chooses, and observes, if a more monotonous, a more secure and comfortable tenor of life. This change is of course due to a cause which lies very near the surface—to the gradual effacement of the deeply-cut separating lines between the orders of society, and the stealthy uprise of the class, which is fast gathering all power into ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... still later (though before the development of the healing faculty) achieved distinction in the spiritualistic world. (He was an extraordinarily favoured medium, only he had had to stop for reasons of which Mrs. Tarrant possessed her version.) Even in a society much occupied with the effacement of prejudice there had been certain dim presumptions against this versatile being, who naturally had not wanted arts to ingratiate himself with Miss Greenstreet, her eyes, like his own, being fixed exclusively on the future. The young couple (he was considerably her elder) had gazed on ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... public speaking (derisive cheers), and unwilling as we are to obtrude our private affairs upon what Virgil calls the ignobile vulgus (hisses from Messrs. Errol and Bangs and the doctor), nevertheless, on this festive occasion, we owvercome our natural modesty and spirit of self-effacement (more derision) sow far as to remark that Cubbyholes (a dig from Miss Halbert) will be ready for our occupation in the second week of September, about which time the Bishop will make a visitation, including the office of howly matrimony. Meanwhile ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... that with reference to what my wife had told me of this young lady's behavior when she was with her mother, her submissiveness, her entire self-effacement, up to a certain point, I did not know quite what to make of her present independence, not to say freedom. I thought she might perhaps have been kept so strictly in the background, with young men, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... mother, was so refined that there was scarcely anything of her; her presence was barely perceptible. She had learnt the art of self-effacement to the point of showing no trace of being there at all. To add to the effect of not being noticeable, she wore a dress exactly the same colour as the sofa on which she sat—like those insects who, when hiding from their foes, become the colour of the leaves on which ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... by removing her from her normal surroundings to the depressing exile of a factory-settlement. However much he blamed himself for exacting this sacrifice, it had been made so cheerfully that the consciousness of it never clouded his life with his mother; but her self-effacement made him the more alive to his own obligations, and having placed her in a difficult situation he had always been careful not to increase its difficulties by any imprudence in his conduct toward his employers. Yet, grave as these considerations ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... that accompany his illustrations will be appreciated. His reticence as regards his own doings, the casual nature of his references—where they could not be avoided—to his personal share in great achievements, manifest a spirit of self-effacement that is characteristic of the men of the army in which he fought; men whose like the world has ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... through the formality of shaking hands with each person and bidding each "good-night" ere she left the room. "Fisher manners," Madame would whisper impatiently to Marion. "I cannot teach her a decent effacement of her personality." For this little ceremony always ended in Archie's escorting her upstairs, and so far he had never neglected this formal deference due his wife. Sometimes too he came back from the duty very distrait and unhappy-looking, a circumstance always noted by Madame with anger ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... she continued, "that woman's supreme happiness is to be gained by self-effacement. I suppose her custom is with you, as it formerly was here, to renounce her own ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... gradually, however high the enthusiasm which inspires the troops, that the ideas of peace become effaced, and they must be seasoned soldiers who will endure, without flinching, the losses of Waterloo or Gettysburg. Discipline, which means the effacement of the individual, does more than break the soldier to unhesitating obedience; it trains him to die for duty's sake, and even the Stonewall Brigade, in the spring of 1862, was not yet thoroughly disciplined. "The lack of competent and energetic ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... correct, this English version reads like an excellent original English work, and gives fresh proof that the work of translation, if it is to be done with effect, must be done by those who, possessing, like Mrs. Ward, original literary gifts, are willing to make a long act of self-denial or self-effacement [20] for the benefit of the public. In this case, indeed, the work is not wholly one of self-effacement, for the accomplished translator has prefaced Amiel's Journal by an able and interesting essay of seventy pages on Amiel's life and intellectual ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... was not always fortunate in his expressions. At Augusta, for example, he described Beauregard, whom he had recently placed in general command over Georgia and South Carolina, as one who would do whatever the President told him to do. But this idea of military self-effacement was not happily worded, and the enemies of Davis seized on his phraseology as further evidence of his instinctive autocracy. The Mercury compared him to the Emperor of Russia and declared the tactless remark to be "as insulting to General Beauregard ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... de Chantelle, as Darrow soon perceived, had the same mild formidableness as the late Mr. Leath: a sort of insistent self-effacement before which every one about her gave way. It was perhaps the shadow of this lady's presence—pervasive even during her actual brief eclipses—that subdued and silenced Mrs. Leath. The latter was, moreover, preoccupied about ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... he mused, "Nature will have her way about this old world and its destiny. Self-development is the first law of life, not self-effacement." ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... bit his lip. His dulled realization of what Yale had been to him was quickened by this tormenting comrade of the brave days of old, but he could not be shaken from his attitude of morbid self-effacement. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... might be cited to prove that Germany would like to see a split among the allies. But France's honour and welfare are in her own hands, and it appears a futile hope that Germany, after failing to bring France to submission and self-effacement by threats of saigner a blanc, will succeed in her purpose by ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... not thus; Time mocks at pause, In march continual onward goes; Th' unfailing progress of his laws, No respite nor effacement knows; This year is but the force of last, Not something new to mortal ken; Heredity's enchainment vast Enthrals the moments as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... then the world, bereft of its Jews and its Irish, has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos for you in this story? Can you not understand now why I am come to visit the scene of this tragic effacement of a race of ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... my child? Well, by the time that she grew up, if she lived to grow up, all the trouble and scandal would be forgotten, and the effacement of a discredited parent could be no great loss to her. Moreover, my life was insured for 3000 pounds in an office that took ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... this reason was not imperative. Saga, after a most useful reign of thirteen years, stepped down frankly in favour of his younger brother. There is no valid reason to endorse the view of some historians that these acts of self-effacement were inspired by an indolent distaste for the cares of kingship. Neither Heijo nor Saga shrank from duty in any form. During his brief tenure of power the former unflinchingly effected reforms of the most distasteful kind, as the dismissal of superfluous officials and the curtailing of expenses; ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Obliteration — N. obliteration; erasure, rasure^; cancel, cancellation; circumduction^; deletion, blot; tabula rasa [Lat.]; effacement, extinction. V. efface, obliterate, erase, raze^, rase^, expunge, cancel; blot out, take out, rub out, scratch out, strike out, wipe out, wash out, sponge out; wipe off, rub off; wipe away; deface, render illegible; draw the pen through, apply ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... always remember that it was as a scholar and a theologian that he acquired his chief reputation among his contemporaries. On his return from exile he found such engrossing occupation in the business of his see, that he took little part in politics for several years. His self-effacement strengthened ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... adherents of monarchy. As if to insure the disasters of such an antagonism, the Assembly, which numbered among its members every man in France of ripe political experience, committed the incredible folly of self-effacement, voting that not one of its members should be eligible to the legislature ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... hypothesis of a part of the good and evil works being left behind at the time of the soul's departure from the body, and another part later on, and the effacement of works thus taking place in a double way, that a sense can be found in the scriptural declaration of the soul proceeding on the path of the gods. For otherwise there would be a contradiction. For if all the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... propitious instant when the tapping of the pipe-men's hammers should drown the noise of a dash for effacement. When it came, he flung himself backward, whipped Nan over his head and out of the line of sight as if she had been feather-light, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... corrective especially are insubordination, sulkiness and sullenness; it is good to stir up the lazy; it is necessary to instil in the child's mind a saving sense of its own inferiority and to inculcate lessons of humility, self-effacement and self-denial. It should scourge dishonesty and lying. The bear licks its cub into shape; let the parent go to the bear, inquire of its ways and be wise. His children will then have a moral shape and a form of character that ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... is, as at present too frequently happens, merely a stepping-stone to a Lieutenant-Governorship, it is idle to expect that the hope of advancement will not sometimes act as a restraint upon the independence and sense of individual responsibility which a seat in Council demands. In any case, the effacement of Council during the last few years behind the Viceroy has not been calculated to dispel the widespread impression that, both in Calcutta and in Whitehall, there has been a tendency to substitute for the constitutional relations between the Governor-General ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... like George III., who set his opinion against the nation's will constitutionally expressed. Then no man knows with what storm and tumult, with what strife and injury, the inevitable transition would have been effected. Be sure of this, that the wise self-effacement of our Sovereign during these critical years of change is largely the reason why they have been years of peace, in which the new has mingled itself with the old without revolution or disturbance. It is due to her in a very ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... better served; the dinner had rarely come to the table so hot. Had she been a butler of the first magnitude she could not so have discouraged the idea of acquaintance; her attraction, if anything, was a combination of her self-effacement and her ugliness. The latter might have been noticed as she entered the dining-room; it was soon forgotten in the unconsciously observed ease with which she went ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... whether I should not abandon the struggle altogether— leave this sad world of ordinary life for which I am so ill fitted, abandon the name of Cummins for some professional pseudonym, complete my self-effacement, and—a thing of tricks and tatters, of posing and pretence—go upon the stage. It seems my only resort—"to hold the mirror up to Nature." For in the ordinary life, I will confess, no one now seems to regard me as both sane and sober. Only upon ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... fatal precedent. Of Saturninus himself we do not know much more than that he was an eloquent speaker, and a resolute though not over-scrupulous man at a time when to be scrupulous was equivalent to self-martyrdom or self-effacement. [Sidenote: Glaucia.] In something of the same relation in which Camille Desmoulins stood to Danton, Caius Servilius Glaucia, a wit and favourite of the people, stood towards the sombre and imperious Saturninus, and both hoped to effect their aims ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... being first addressed. The discipline of a man-of-war prevailed; everything went forward with stereotyped precision and formality; the officers were supposed to comport themselves with impassivity and self- effacement. Florence had no more need of being conscious of their presence than if they ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... hitherto undisturbed on the surface. Low company and its brutalizing influences were tending to bring about a state of things to which the most patient of wives might find it hard to submit. A role of complete self-effacement was not one it was in her power long to sustain, and the utter moral solitude into which she was thrown consolidated those forces inclining her to the extreme of self-assertion. For together with trials without came the growing sense of superiority, the ennui and unrest ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... with this episode continued to show themselves in a desultory way until the end. A few individuals threw what impediments they could in the path of this Committee, and thereby furnished the only exception to the wonderful exhibition of loyalty and self effacement that manifested ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... aged, a toning-down of the somewhat imperious demands of the entirely efficient and clear-minded, a tolerance of imperfection. Thus for these efficient and clear-minded members there is always, in the church as in the family, a perpetual opportunity of humility, self-effacement, gentle acceptance; of exerting that love which must be joined to power and a sound mind if the full life of the Spirit is to be lived. In the realm of the supernatural this is a solid gain; though not a gain which we are very quick to appreciate in ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... in the Irishwoman's mental outfit, namely, the capacity even to conceive that ideal of impersonal self-effacement, which, as Paul said truthfully, is the everywhere accepted standard for servants. Her loquacity was a never-ending joke to Madeleine Lowder and her husband, who were exulting in a couple of deft, silent, expensive Japanese "boys" and who, since Madeleine frankly expressed her horror ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Canada something of that spirit of unworldliness which constituted one of the principal beauties of the budding Church of Jerusalem in the time of the apostles." The examples of brotherly unity and self-effacement which he admired so much in others he also set himself: he placed in the library of the seminary a magnificent collection of books which he had brought with him, and deposited in the coffers of the house several thousand francs ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... painting (I apprehend this through his own persistently modest observations) at which he works out his purpose more excellently than Watteau; of whom he has trusted himself to speak at last, with a wonderful self-effacement, pointing out in each of his pictures, for the rest so just and true, how Antony would have managed this or that, and, with what an easy superiority, have done the thing ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... what he has said that I imagine he intended the inference to be drawn,—if this is so, assimilation is nothing else than the communication of its own rhythms from the assimilating to the assimilated substance, to the effacement of the vibrations or rhythms heretofore existing in this last; and suitability for food will depend upon whether the rhythms of the substance eaten are such as to flow harmoniously into and chime in with those of the body which has eaten it, or whether they will refuse to act in concert ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... falls back with relieved contentment on some human love, a love on its own plane, where somewhat short of total surrender may go to requital, where no upward effort is needful. And it ends by giving for the meanest, the most unsufficing and half-hearted return, that utter self-surrender and self-effacement which it denied to God. Even (how rarely) if the return be such as mortal may render, how empty and unsatiated it leaves the soul. One always is less generous ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... ways—vide the rebound, immediately after Oliver Cromwell's death, and the return to the old state of things, which has never altered since, except as a matter of fashion. Yet, even then, there were protests against this effacement of Christ-tide, and many have been handed down to us, differing naturally very much in style. One really amusing one has the merit of being short: and when the reader of this book has perused it, I believe he will thank me for ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... in the Western hemisphere now kept a watch on that roundabout road. All of which quite applied to Pandora Day— the journey to Europe, the culture (as exemplified in the books she read on the ship), the relegation, the effacement, of the family. The only thing that was exceptional was the rapidity of her march; for the jump she had taken since he left her in the hands of Mr. Lansing struck Vogelstein, even after he had made all allowance for the abnormal homogeneity of the American mass, as really considerable. ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... patronymic of his favourite saint. Jean Kostka is not Jean Kostka, but it is without intent to deceive that he evades any possible responsibility in connection with his concealed identity; it is a kind of pious self-effacement, I hope everyone will believe what he says, and give him all credit for having "turned towards the outraged Church." In matters of evidence, pseudonymous statements are, however, objectionable, and I therefore identify our witness as Jules Doinel, who was chiefly concerned in the restoration ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... greatly deranged and broken. Walls and ceilings were knocked away here and there, and a lingering odor of powder smoke was everywhere. The beds, the closets of women's clothing, the cupboards were not greatly dam-aged. The new tenants for a night made themselves comfortable, and the virtual effacement of Coulter's battery supplied them ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... from her own. If she had wished to irritate his curiosity and lead him to take her confidence by storm nothing could have served her purpose better than this studied discretion. He measured the rare magnanimity of self-effacement so deliberate, he felt how few women were capable of exchanging a luxurious woe for a thankless effort. Madame de Mauves, he himself felt, wasn't sweeping the horizon for a compensation or a consoler; she had suffered a personal deception that had disgusted her ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... greeted that gentleman, even more when he shook hands with Bob, there was a touch of regality in his manner; the reserve was prominent, and his prerogative was claimed. Very soon he carried Janie off for a solitary walk in the shrubberies. Mina enjoyed her uncle's frown and chafed at Bob's self-effacement; he had been talking to Janie when Harry calmly took her away. The pair were gone half an hour, and conversation flagged. They reappeared, Janie looking rather excited, Harry almost insolently calm, and sat down side by side. The ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... and Leander ventured finally to inquire if they aimed to spend the night at his brother's ranch, it being the next mess-box between here and nowhere. They admitted that his brother's ranch was their next stopping-place, and Leander went through perfect contortions of apology and self-effacement before he could bring himself to ask them to do him a favor. It would have taken a very stern order of womankind to refuse anything so abject, and they blindly committed ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year's pension as a solatium for his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anti-Clericals. Whatever liberalism or republicanism means, socialism cannot mean less than the economic solution of regality and aristocracy in Europe, and in Italy as elsewhere. It does not mean the old-fashioned revolution; it means simply the effacement of all social differences by equal industrial obligations. So far as the Socialists can characterize it, therefore, the actual municipal government of Rome is as antimonarchical as it is antipapal. But ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... his character, socially, seemed to be self-effacement, high-bred courtesy, never-failing consideration for others. He was the most charming companion conceivable, having intimately known so many important and celebrated people, and liking to speak of them; but one would never have guessed from anything ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... see the cardinals first of all, and, an inspiration coming to him, he resolved that his next visit should be for Cardinal Sarno, whose acquaintance he had eventually made at Donna Serafina's Mondays. In spite of Cardinal Sarno's voluntary self-effacement, people looked upon him as one of the most powerful and redoubtable members of the Sacred College, albeit his nephew Narcisse Habert declared that he knew no man who showed more obtuseness in matters which did not pertain to his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... knew, then or after, how she reached this mystic climax of effacement; she was only conscious, through her anguish, of that lift of the heart which made one of the saints declare that joy was the inmost core of sorrow. For it was indeed a kind of joy she felt, if old names must serve for such new meanings; a surge of liberating faith in life, the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... our soldiers at Santiago shall be permanently marked. The present marking will last but a short time, and before its effacement occurs suitable and permanent markers should ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... November. That night, Lincoln with his Secretary was again in the War Office. The early returns showed that the whole North was turning to him in enormous majorities. He showed no exultation. When the Assistant Secretary of the Navy spoke sharply of the complete effacement politically of Henry Winter Davis against whom he had a grudge, Lincoln said, "You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I have too little of it; but I never thought it paid. A man has no time to spend half his life in quarrels. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... young actress in her first triumph, filling her role with a sort of enthusiasm, enjoying it with all her heart. And when the Contessa rose to sing, Bice followed her to the piano with an air as different as possible from the swift, noiseless self-effacement of her performance on previous occasions. She looked round upon the company with a sort of malicious triumph, a laugh on her lips as of some delightful mystification, some surprise of which she was in the secret. "Come and listen," she said to Jock, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... left before dawn, not even waiting for his customary cup of coffee. With the kindness of a sister, the girl wife urged me to take their bed; but I assured her that comfort was the least of my concerns, complete effacement being my consuming thought. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... balanced, and her generosity threatened to degenerate into weakness. Most women love to feel the support of a stronger nature; Audrey loved to support others; any form of suffering, mental or physical, appealed to her irresistibly. Her sympathy was often misplaced and excessive, and her power of self-effacement, under some circumstances, was even more remarkable, the word 'self-effacement' being rightly used here, as 'self-sacrifice' presupposes some consciousness of action. It was this last trait that caused genuine anxiety to those who knew and loved Audrey best; for ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... such rash ones as make the experiment, and they seldom live long enough to pass their folly on. Only the mighty can afford not to walk circumspectly, and they are very few, and, with man about, even they have learnt wisdom. That is why the wild is so guarded, and why self-effacement becomes almost ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... schooner for York and Kingston. At both of these places fervid demonstrations were showered upon him. But "Master Isaac's" head could not be turned either by success or adulation. The old spirit of self-effacement asserted itself. "The gallant band of brave men," he said, "at whose head I marched against the enemy, are the proper objects of your gratitude. The services of the militia have been duly appreciated and ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey |
