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Self-denial   /sɛlf-dɪnˈaɪəl/   Listen
Self-denial

noun
1.
The trait of practicing self discipline.  Synonym: self-discipline.
2.
The act of denying yourself; controlling your impulses.  Synonyms: self-control, self-discipline.
3.
Renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others.  Synonyms: abnegation, denial, self-abnegation, self-renunciation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Self-denial" Quotes from Famous Books



... encouraged to save money and to acquire habits of frugality?-I don't think so. My experience, from the beginning of the business, so far as I have had to do with it, has been, that under the present system a prudent man who chooses to exercise self-denial could pass out of all possible control, either of landlord or fish-curer, to do him any injury. He could, if he chose, draw his money and send it where he liked; and I have had numbers of men who have not dealt ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... you have always had and felt you must have. You have never learned to do without them. I understand that Robeson will not accept them at my hand, nor at yours. I don't know that I think the less of him for that—but—you will have to learn self-denial. I want you to be very sure that you can do it, and that it ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... that could be said, even upon this interesting subject, and the narrator, casting his eyes around in search of wherewithal to amuse himself, chanced to espy my new writing-desk, a parting gift from my little sister Fanny, who, with the self-denial of true affection, had saved up her pocket-money during many previous months in order to provide funds for ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... something like an authority. What must they think of that body of teachers, if they see it in no part above the establishment of their domestic servants? If the poverty were voluntary, there might be some difference. Strong instances of self-denial operate powerfully on our minds; and a man who has no wants has obtained great freedom and firmness, and even dignity. But as the mass of any description of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be voluntary, that disrespect which attends upon all lay poverty will not depart from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... self, a purified nature, a morally transformed man, a will which no longer loves or wills sin. "Christ alone," he says, "can heal the malady of the soul, but He can heal it." "There is," he says again, "no other way of salvation for any man than the way of self-denial. He must put off his old man and put on Christ—however much blood and sweat the struggle may cost." Man, he insists, is always wrong when he represents God as angry. Christ showed that God needed no appeasing, but rather that man needed to be brought back to ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... plains of the great Department of the Nord, and in its crowded busy towns and cities, this Catholic faith is everywhere to be seen and felt—to be felt rather than to be seen in its fruits of charity, self-denial, and devout self-sacrifice. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... sat waiting, every word spoken in the next room sounded like a moan from the injured man. Mrs Winthorpe's face appeared to be that of a woman ten years older, and her agony was supreme; but like a true wife and tender mother—ah, how little we think of what a mother's patience and self-denial are when we are young!—she devoted her whole energies to administering comfort ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... to speak to the band of little girls, who had eagerly gathered around her; thus was she wont to teach them lessons of wisdom in a sprightly, gay, happy-hearted way, as if generosity, unselfishness and self-denial were the most natural traits imaginable, and the whole world fair because it is God's world, and we are all His children. Was it this spirit of joyousness which attracted young people especially to her, and gave her ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... the volcano beneath, and only little spats of smoke and dying bits of ashes in evidence! Even the message of his Chief about her not getting a new bonnet all summer seemed a godsend under the circumstances. Had there been any basis for her self-denial he would not have told her, knowing how much anxiety she had suffered an hour before. But there was no real good reason why she should economize either in bonnets or in anything else she wanted. McGowan, of course, would be held responsible; for whatever damage had been done he would ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... morning meal. They were not very palatable, and Crane sighed for the breakfasts of old, the memory of which at this moment was very tantalizing. But he comforted himself with the thought that he had the means of making up for his enforced self-denial ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... surfeit of the fancy,—as that well—known passage beginning, 'Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance,' sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... Dysart, which, she believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an average ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... the fields and the song of birds, or the enjoyment of other people's brain-work, has glued himself to his desk for long hours, can say or imagine that his task is, or has been, aught else than hard and distasteful work, demanding unrelaxing self-denial and industry. And however fine the frenzy in which the poet's eye may roll while he builds the lofty line, the work of putting some thousands of them on the paper when built must be as irksome to him as the penny-a-liner's task is to him—more so, in that the mind of the latter does not ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... among the Greeks of Cassandra, in that region, was traceable to him. Though suffering from bodily infirmity in the later years of his life, his labors were unceasing for the salvation of souls, and for the edification of the church. He was noted for his humility and self-denial, and his piety was a steady glow of light. His views of the gospel method of salvation were clear, and his manner of presenting it exceedingly happy. He was eminently a peacemaker in the church, and his good sense was in constant demand in the settlement ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... of India, who, for the first time in history, formulated the true principles of freedom and devoted themselves to the holy quest of truth and the final assessment and discovery of the ultimate spiritual essence of man through their concrete lives, critical thought, dominant will and self-denial. ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... the money away in her purse, conscious that it meant self-denial on the lad's part, but knowing that she would hurt his pride irreparably did she refuse to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... Scipio had never given into the fashionable debaucheries and excesses to which the young people at Rome so generally abandoned themselves. But he was sufficiently compensated for this self-denial of all destructive pleasures, by the vigorous health he enjoyed all the rest of his life, which enabled him to taste pleasure of a much purer and more exalted kind, and to perform the great actions that reflected ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... at the hands of a powerful and jealous race. Here was no place for indolence and luxurious ease. Only by the most persevering and painful labors could the bleak hills and gorge-like valleys be made to yield the fruits of life. Only by unremitting energy and the most patient self-denial could starvation be kept from his door, while constant watchfulness and never-flinching courage were required to ward off the many dangers that beset his path. Nature herself seemed pitted against him to contest every inch of his progress. But his nature was as stern ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... it upon myself to say, that in no country in the world, upon either continent, can there be found a body of ministers of the Gospel who perform so much service to man, in such a full spirit of self-denial, under so little encouragement from government of any kind, and under circumstances almost always much straitened and often distressed, at the ministers of the Gospel in the United States, of all denominations. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... grave and solemnn, and demand as much Strictness and Observance as any other Virtues. Why lenioribus then; but that they are more mild and gentle in the Restrain they lay upon our Inclinations, and that the Self-denial they require is more practicable and less mortifying than that of Virtue itself, as it is taken in it proper and genuine Sense? To be Just or Temperate, we have Temptations to encounter, and Difficulties to surmount, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... up. I almost thought that I ought to refuse you because I can do nothing,—nothing to help you. But there will always come a limit to self-denial. I couldn't ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... residents had a small chapel of their own which was well sustained by them. There was one missionary who commanded my especial respect and admiration. I refer to the Rev. Mr. William C. Burns, a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman. He led a life of consecrated self-denial, living exclusively with the natives and dressing in the Chinese garb which, with his Caucasian features and blond complexion, caused him to present the drollest appearance. Only those who have resided in China can understand the repugnance with which anyone accustomed to the amenities of ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... difficulty. Joy's father always supplied her bountifully with spending money; Gypsy's stock was small. When Joy wanted to make a present, she had only to ask for a few extra dollars, and she had them. Gypsy always felt as if a present given in that way were no present; unless a thing cost her some self-denial, or some labor, she reasoned, it had nothing to do with her. If given directly out of her father's pocket, it was his gift, ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... woman who had sacrificed herself to his selfishness, and the independence he had won turned out to be only a morose solitude after all. "Money," he was fond of saying, "is freedom," but he never learned that self-denial is freedom with the addition of self-respect. With a hearty contempt for the ordinary objects of human ambition, he could yet bring himself for the sake of them to be the obsequious courtier of three royal strumpets. How should he be happy who had defined happiness to be "the perpetual ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... stern a ruler of the Church as William was of the State. He was an uncompromising champion of the Cluniac reforms (see p. 67). His object was to moderate the cruelty and sinfulness of the feudal warriors of Europe by making the Church a light to guide the world to piety and self-denial. As matters stood on the Continent, it had been impossible for the Church to attain to so high a standard. The clergy bought their places and fought and killed like the laymen around them. The Cluniac monks, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... smile suddenly cast a rich glow of warm colour over the long, grey road of Sir Archibald's youth of self-denial and struggle. The mild indulgences of his early years, under the transforming influence of that same arch and accusing smile, took on for Sir Archibald such an aspect of wild and hilarious gaiety as to impart a tone of hesitation to his voice ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... of Bata is one of the most beautiful character-drawings in the past. The self-denial and sweet innocence of the lad, his sympathy with his cattle, "listening to all that they said," and allowing them their natural wishes and ways, is touchingly expressed. And those who know Egypt will know that ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... creature of thirty-one years of age, whose life, with the exception of two years, had been spent on the bleak and dreary moorlands of Yorkshire, and for the most part in the narrow confines of a grim gray stone parsonage. There she had lived a pinched and meagre little life, full of sadness and self-denial, with two sisters more delicate than herself, a dissolute brother, and a father her only parent,—a stern and forbidding father. This was no genial environment for an author, even if helpful to her vivid imagination. Nor was it a temporary condition; it was a permanent ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... life long, with constancy, moderation, and wonderful tact, Livia fulfilled her mission. She succeeded in resolving into the admirable harmony of a long existence that contradiction between the liberty conceded to her sex and the self-denial demanded of it by man as a duty. She was assuredly one of the most perfect models of that lady of high society whom the Romans in all the years of their long and tempestuous history never ceased to admire. Even and serene, completely mistress of herself and of her passions, endowed with ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... say, Who sins and I am not ashamed? And if He thus enters into a living sympathy with us, shall not we enter into sympathy with Him, and go without the camp bearing His reproach, which, indeed, is ours; striving, though it cost us much shame and self-denial, to enter heartily into His feelings at our sins, and not letting our union to Him be a mere name or an inoperative tie which effects no real assimilation in ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods

... what he would say to the bishop, and what he hoped the bishop would say to him, and Nan had rejoiced almost as much as the boy himself as, week by week, the sum in her hands grew toward the desired amount. Even Nan did not know all the hard work and stern self-denial that had made it possible for Theodore to put by that money out of ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... it back," he said. "It's all right." He smoked in silence for a minute; then went on. "Why, 'content' is hardly the word for it. When I think what it was I wanted and what you've given me instead ...! It wasn't self-denial or any other high moral principle that kept me from flaring up when you took hold of me just now. It's because I've got a better thing. Something I wouldn't trade for all the love in the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... Venetian scholar seated in his comfortable, bright library, in the midst of his books, with his little shelf of bric-a-brac running along the wall. There is nothing in his look or surroundings to speak of a life of self-denial or of arduous devotion to the problems of sin and redemption. Even the "Presentation of the Virgin," which offered such a splendid chance for a pageant, Carpaccio, in one instance, turned into the picture of a simple girl going to her first communion. In other words, Carpaccio's quality is the quality ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... who was appointed, ever found in Big Tom a wise and judicious counsellor and friend. I was thrilled by the address and the spirit manifested. How few white men in like circumstances would have had grace and self-denial enough to have acted in ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... one of his recreations to spread them on one of the flat, grey stones and count the silver pieces as they glittered in the sun. He knew well what he meant to do with them when the pile grew large enough; but its growth was a very slow one, and required much self-denial on Geordie's part, seeing that the component parts of each shilling were generally gathered in a stray penny now and then, which he earned by holding a market-going farmer's cob; and if, by a rare chance, a sixpence happened to be the unexpected result of one such service, ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... crane takes the place of other devotional music; and in which the worship of Mammon or Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... him not to handle it carelessly, but found that this caution only made him the more eager to handle it, since the prospect of an accident found an irresistible attraction. I would not let it go out of my own hands, however; and the Kohen, whose self-denial was always most wonderful to me, at ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... here is passable. I've got no outside outlay. The main thing I have to mind is to make provision for a year's necessary expenses. If I launch out into luxuries, I have to suffer hardships, so I must try a little self-denial and manage to save something. It's the custom, besides, at the end of the year to send presents to people and invite others; but I'll thicken the skin of my face a bit, (and dispense with both), and have done. I'm not like ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... arose among them concerning personal precedence in the kingdom which their Master should soon set up. In this rapid reaction from unbelief to faith the disciples seem to have forgotten the lesson of self-denial recently given them (Mark viii. 34, 35). In Peter's confession the corner-stone of the church was laid; but the superstructure was yet far out of sight. Although his own soul, taking its way down into the valley of shadows, might rightly have asked for sympathy and complained ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... children to the habit of obedience. It is true that it was only a first lesson. It was a beginning, but it was a very good beginning. If, on the following day, Mary had given the children a command which it would be irksome to them to obey, or one which would have called for any special sacrifice or self-denial on their part, they would have disregarded it. Still they would have been a little less inclined to disregard it than if they had not received their first lesson; and there can be no doubt that if Mary were to continue her training in the ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... disposed to believe that his motives are good, and that he is really desirous of aiding in the compromise which is about to take place, and promoting the great work of Irish pacification, not probably without some personal views and objects; and if the present Government remains in, his present act of self-denial will be 'reculer pour mieux sauter,' and find its reward in the Chief Justiceship whenever Lord Chief Justice Bush retires, of which ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... way, for obtaining a knowledge of goods). Week by week our income came to fifteen shillings, out of which three people had to be kept. My mother managed so that I put by three out of these fifteen shillings regularly. This made the beginning; this taught me self-denial. Now that I am able to afford my mother such comforts as her age, rather than her own wish, requires, I thank her silently on each occasion for the early training she gave me. Now when I feel that in my own case it is no good luck, nor merit, nor talent,—but simply the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that the proportion of pregnancies which end in miscarriage is quite formidable. But this should not be true, as the accident is frequently preventable, and many of these accidents could be avoided by the cooperation of patients. As self-denial and personal inconvenience are often essential, it is only fair to explain their value. Furthermore, the, patient who appreciates the reason for certain directions the physician gives becomes responsible to herself, and is much more likely to carry ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... very virtuous self-denial in regard to the Duke of Savoy did not prevent a secret but well developed ambition at the expense of the Elector of Brandenburg. For after all it was well enough known that the Elector was the really important and serious candidate. Henry knew full well that Neuburg was depending on the Austrians ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... his own side of the house, and especially by his friend and disciple, Charles Fox; but on the ministerial side of the house a profound and ominous silence prevailed. As Fox observed, it was evident there was not sufficient virtue in the house, or rather self-denial, to carry such a plan ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... found that Rosamond was fulfilling the doctor's predictions and getting well by leaps, she was not sorry for her self-denial. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... an idea. His idea happens to be one which, granting that it ought to be adopted by everybody, is still one which is very difficult of adoption by anybody,—peculiarly difficult in his own case. And it is an uncomfortable theory of self-denial which very few people like to have preached to them in any form. Add to this that his philosophical expositions of his theory lack the clearness which generally—not always—results from a course of strict preparatory training, and we have more than sufficient foundation for the reports of ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... so does love, for that much is forgiven. And what matter can be found in the soul for humility to work by so well, as by a sight that I have been and am an abominable sinner? And the same is to be said of patience, meekness, gentleness, self-denial, or of any other grace. Grace takes occasion, by the vileness of the man, to shine the more; even as by the ruggedness of a very strong distemper or disease, the virtue of the medicine is best made manifest. 'Where sin abounded, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... times, though purblind to things in common, gifted with an eye of instinct for espying any action that he thought merited reprehension; for all at once, looking fixedly on Mr. Greville, who without much self-denial, the night being very cold, kept his station before the chimney-piece, he exclaimed:—"If it were not for depriving the ladies of the fire, I should like to stand upon the hearth myself." A smile gleamed upon every ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... countries," says an old author, "I fall in with a man too helpless for a Frenchman, too ceremonious for an Englishman, too pliable for a Spaniard, too lively for a Dutchman, too cordial for an Italian, too modest for a Russian—a man pressing towards me with oblique bows, and doing homage with ineffable self-denial to all that seems of rank; then my heart, and the blood in my face, says, 'that is thy countryman.'" How true! and how often have I lighted on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various

... Major's secret, Mrs Shepherd had given up all friends, all acquaintance. She had not known a woman-friend for years, and the affinities of sex drew her to accept the sympathy with which she was tempted. The reaction of ten years of self-denial surged up within her, and she felt that she must speak, that her secret was being dragged from her. Ethel's eyes were fixed upon her—in another moment she would have spoken, but at that moment Nellie appeared climbing up the steep bank. 'Is that your little girl? Oh, what a pretty child!' ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... weather, and was wrapped to the chin in a long fur overcoat, which he wore that night as a duty to his family, with a conscience against taking cold and alarming them for his health. He now practised another piece of self-denial: he let the cabman drive rapidly past the interesting spectacle, and carry him to the house where he was going to fetch away the child from the Christmas party. He wished to be in good time, so as to save ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... religion and his spirit approach nearer to Christianity than any other oriental faith, and doubtless his influence was great for the uplifting of the race, though it cannot be classed as technically educational. "Self-denial, virtuous life, suppression of all self-seeking, love for fellow-men," said he, "are cardinal virtues which bring blessedness to mankind." T. W. Rhys Davids says, "Buddha did not abolish castes, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... save himself; I don't mean too fast, but scarcely fast enough; and the General says, that Lord Frederick Cavendish, your friend, is safe; the thing he seems to have thought of most, except a little vain parade of his own self-denial on his nephew. I shall not be at all surprised if, to show he was not in the wrong, Mr. Pitt should get ready another expedition by the depth of winter, and send it in search of the cannons and colours of these twelve battalions. Pray Heaven your letter don't put it in his ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... now so happily assembled; but she hoped she should always have virtue enough to postpone any interested consideration, when it should happen to clash with the happiness of her friends. Finally, such was her modesty and self-denial that she industriously informed those whom it might concern, that she was no less than three years older than the bride; though had she added ten to the reckoning, she would have committed no mistake in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... bring our ship to anchor," observed Marie. Father Jogues and his donne, eating with the habitual self-denial of men who must inure themselves to hunger, still spoke with Van Corlaer about their mission. But during all his talk he ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... and wise management would, doubtless, have ere long led to a return of confidence, a reappearance of money and a resumption of business; but these involved patience and self-denial, and, thus far in human history, these are the rarest products of political wisdom. Few nations have ever been able to exercise these virtues; and France was not then one of these ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... not given up so much, I thought. Perhaps in her self-denial there was method, and her simple garb became her best. Even a prayer-cap might frame her face the fairest; but she must know. And I had seen that in the flash of her eye and the toss of her head that told me that a hundred Luther Wardens, a hundred Dunkard preacher uncles, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... life, this ambition, akin to what we see taking quite another form among ourselves, Zola does not sufficiently realize. Shocking indeed were the miserliness and materialism of such existences but for the element of self-denial, this looking ahead for those to follow after. How differently, for instance, the farm-house and its group must have appeared, but for the evident pride and hopes centred in nos Parisiens, who knows?—perhaps youths destined to ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... made him pay for her public concession by the private disregard of his wishes; and if something of this sort had actually resulted, his sense of fairness told him that it was merely the natural reaction of a soft nature against the momentary strain of self-denial. At first he had been hardly aware of this consequence of his triumph. The joy of being able to work his will at Westmore obscured all lesser emotions; and his sentiment for Bessy had long since shrunk into one of those shallow pools of feeling which a sudden tide might fill, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... and which her painfully awakened energy had helped to buy. In time she told her secret, and thanked them for that ten minutes' gossip. In time, too, sons and daughters came and found a mother prepared by self-denial for the ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... older I began to be a greater comfort. This is what she writes in 1876: "Even Therese is anxious to make sacrifices. Marie has given her little sisters a string of beads on purpose to count their acts of self-denial. They have really spiritual, but very amusing, conversations together. Celine said the other day: 'How can God be in such a tiny Host?' Therese answered: 'That is not strange, because God is Almighty!' 'And what does Almighty mean?' ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... is to be one of the hardest work and all the necessary self-denial. It must be a disciplined and sustained effort for excellence and victory. Those who cannot accept these principles in full are urged not to enroll in the squad ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... away to try and get somewhere quite alone to sit down and think. For I was beginning to waken to the fact of how much I cared for the great kind-hearted, patient fellow, who had all along devoted his life to our service, and in the most utter self-denial offered that ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... religion and unscrupulous ambition modified by patriotism: in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy," to purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to noble steadfastness: and in Constance's, in "In a Balcony," to self-denial. Of these plays, "The Return of the Druses" seems to me the most picturesque, "Luria" the most noble and dignified, and "In a Balcony" the most potentially a great dramatic success. The last is in a sense a fragment, but, though ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... taking any, which I sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or corner in aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway robbery, treasures of conscientiousness and self-denial. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... might one day become better, far better than my evil, wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit and warm to the flesh, will now permit me to be. I often plan the pleasant life which we might lead together, strengthening each other in that power of self-denial, that hallowed and glowing devotion, which the first saints of God often attained to. My eyes fill with tears when I contrast the bliss of such a state, brightened by hopes of the future, with the melancholy state ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... necessary, either for the child's own welfare, physical or mental, or by circumstances beyond the parent's control. The word "necessary" is a very authoritative one; conscience, if left free, soon narrows down its boundaries; inconvenience, hindrance, deprivation, self-denial, one or all, or even a great deal of all, to ourselves, cannot give us a shadow of right to say that the pain of the child's disappointment is "necessary." Selfishness grasps at help from the hackneyed ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... interest with the ambitious, and indeed with the public in general. We have, therefore, enlarged the power, and the term of holding it, and make him who would attain it, purchase it by previous exertion and self-denial: and we farther compel those who favour him, to lose as well as gain. We array the love of money against the love of power; or rather, one love of power to another. Moreover, as it is only by the civic virtues that our citizens ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... patience, and smilingly keeping aloof from all participation at first hand in the scene which would have helped to amuse her indeed, but interfered with the fulfilment of her role. But she had internal happiness enough to make up to her for her self-denial. She would order that set of pearls for Bice and the emerald pendant for herself which had tempted her so much, to-morrow. And the Duchess was to present her, and probably this evening Montjoie would propose. Was it possible to expect in this ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... will be fully understood. The parents of both bride and groom being abundantly able to provide everything necessary or desirable, why should distant relatives and friends assist in it, perhaps at the cost of embarrassment or self-denial?" ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley

... on with such confused ideas as these had it not been for the hypothetical other man. He haunted me. The hypothesis became a fact. It found embodiment in Boller of '89. When after three interminable days of self-denial I presented myself one evening at the president's house, a look of annoyance with which Gladys greeted me seemed connected in some way with the presence of Boller. In my state of mind I should have suspected any octogenarian who smiled on Gladys ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... good, so charitable, so compassionate to the suffering. This was the cause of the Cure's great anxiety, of his great solicitude. His friend Reynaud, where was he? Where was he? Then he called to mind the noble life of the country doctor, all made up of courage and self-denial; he recalled his death, above all his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... becomes himself God. Of all the incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of self-denial and self-annihilation." ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... poverty was staring the deserted family in the face. Debts had accumulated, and though Mrs. Hamilton had done all that could be done to meet the emergency, though she had labored incessantly, and borne fatigue and self-denial, with a brave and cheerful spirit, it had been found necessary to leave the home so dear to her,—the home where she had been brought a fair and youthful bride; where she had spent many happy years, and which was endeared to her by so many sweet and hallowed, ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous

... honor, to show that he stood in need of no strengthening at her hands; and it seems legible enough, between the lines, that he had rather to resist the pull of her weakness, or her interest, than to look for encouragement in the path of hardship and self-denial. It is certain, too, that some days before Blackwood arrived, Nelson understood that he might be wanted soon, and avowed his entire willingness to go, while not affecting to conceal his hope that circumstances ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... first to teach the French the use, and we must add the abuse, of advertisements. We fear the Presse, during these early days of the gentle Emile and Granier Cassagnac, was neither a model of virtue, disinterestedness, nor self-denial. Nor do we know that it is so now, even under the best of Republics. There are strange tales abroad, even allowing for the exaggeration of Rumor with her hundred tongues. One thing, however, is clear; that the Presse was a liberal paymaster to its feuilletonistes. To Dumas, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... dependent on her, and she sold these baskets for him so successfully that he was gradually making quite a little trade of them. Poor child! for she was not much more than a child—what a bright face she had!—glorified by the self-denial and courage of her everyday life. No wonder she had won the sympathy of the warmhearted and impulsive Neapolitans—they looked upon her as a heroine of romance; and as she passed through the streets, leading her blind husband tenderly by the hand, there ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... relapse of his disease; but the impetus of flight had carried Sidonie away so swiftly and so far that her return was impossible. At all events, it was a relief for him to be able to live without lying; and the new life he was leading, a life of hard work and self-denial, with the goal of success in the distance, was not distasteful to him. Luckily; for the courage and determination of both partners were none too much to put the house ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... she smiled sweetly at him as she made the promise—she would endeavour to do nothing that would offend him; and then she added that on that evening she would dance with him any dances that he liked. Maurice, with a self-denial that was not very wise, contented himself with engaging her for ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope

... themselves to the harsh discipline of a rigid necessity. With us, labor and frugality, the parents of riches, are spared, and wisely too. The moment men cease to augment the common stock, the moment they no longer enrich it by their industry or their self-denial, their luxury and even their ease are obliged to pay contribution to the public; not because they are vicious principles, but because they are unproductive. If, in fact, the interest paid by the public had not thus revolved again into its own fund, if this secretion had not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... week these cafes do an immense business; it is the harvest of their year. People who can hardly afford three meals a day pinch themselves and suffer much self-denial that they may have money to spend in carnival week. The public masquerade balls, which then take place, allure all classes. The celebrations of the occasion culminate in a grand public masquerade ball given in the Tacon Theatre. The floor of the parquette is temporarily raised ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... fully realized the effect that this time of waiting and uncertainty might have upon her, in the solitude to which he had left her, and which he had at first supposed would be altogether occupied by Peter. Her letters—infrequent as he, in his self-denial, had suggested—were characterized by a delicate reserve and a tacit refusal to take anything for granted in their relations to each other, which half charmed and half tantalized John; but scarcely enlightened him regarding the ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... Taylor, then dramatic critic of the Times, at the famous first night at the Lyceum, in 1874, when Henry put his fortune—counted, not in gold, but in years of scorned delights and laborious days, years of constant study and reflection, of Spartan self-denial and deep melancholy—when he put it all to the touch "to win or lose it all." This is no exaggeration. Hamlet was by far the greatest part that he had ever played or ever was to play. If he had failed—but why pursue it? He ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... love Ziza Cattley. I knew her first as a fairy, I know her now as a woman who is worthy of a place among the angels, for none but those who know her well and have seen her fighting the battle of life can have the least idea of the self-denial, the perseverance under difficulties, the sweetness of temper, and the deep-seated love of that devoted girl. She goes every night, after the toil of each day, to the door of the theatre, where she waits to conduct her father safely past the gin-palaces, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... with the characteristic behaviour of 'Tommy Atkins' to these men; even to the extent of sharing his rations with them, and handing out his 'fags,' which was an act of real self-denial. ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester

... bad, I am so wake—oh, I do fale so bad,' she used to say. 'I wish some wan would take me by the ear and lade me round to the ould shebeen, and set me down, and fill a noggen of whusky and make me dhrink it—whether I would or no!' Whether I would or no I have to drink the cup of self-denial," Crozier continued, "though Bradley and his gang have closed every door against me here, and I've come back without what I went for at Aspen Vale, for my men were away. I've come back without what I went for, but I must just grin and bear it." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... involves considerable self-denial and patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern life must be ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... it cannot be too clearly perceived that there is nothing in the disinterestedness, and in the obligation to render public service characterizing professional life that amounts to unnatural self-denial or painful renunciation,—unless in some extreme and individual cases. On the contrary, professional life at its best offers a great advantage in so far as it permits a man to think first of the work he ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw

... continually prattle of the noble precepts of virtue, which they feel not in their hearts; who only abstain from evil because it is accompanied by danger, and from doing good because it requires courage and self-denial; who traffic with religion, and, like avaricious Jews, lay out their capital at interest, for the purpose of securing a comfortable berth for their miserable souls; and who worship God from fear, and tremble before ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... pride of his heart, he deemed exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, forgetting, either deliberately or stupidly, that the presence of Mary rendered that otherwise dull cavern the most delightful of sick chambers, and that her attendance was ample compensation and reward for any amount of pain or self-denial. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... attention of Congress for the last five years. To turn from the consideration of armies and navies, victories and defeats, to the array of figures which exhibits the debt, expenditure, taxation, and industry of the nation requires no little courage and self-denial; but to these questions we must come, and to their solution Congress and all thoughtful citizens must give their best efforts ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... society among the old as well as the young, and in both cases most dishonest means are had recourse to sustain those appearances, which are all the world looks to. It is possible, therefore, that little efforts have been made to initiate youth, prior to entering the universities, in that path of self-denial and high-mindedness which are the safeguard from vicious prodigality. They bring with them the vices of their caste, whatever that caste may be. Youth is imitative, and seldom a clumsy copyist, of the faults of its elders, provided those faults are fashionable faults, however ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... twelve millions, which we shall offer to pay immediately. He is ready to order reductions in the budget of the army, the opera, the ballet, and the extraordinary pensions. He himself sets an example of self-denial and economy. He will reduce further his household, and retain only the most indispensable servants. Notwithstanding my protestations, he insists on refusing to accept the civil ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... about an hour and a half. This was doing nobly, and Jessie felt more self-respect than she had ever felt before. She was certainly doing battle in real earnest with her old enemy, the little wizard, as Uncle Morris facetiously called him. And she had her reward for all her self-denial in the glad feelings which bubbled up in her heart like springs of water in some cosy ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... of farming and the burden of taxes. The latter soon gathered that there was not much profit to be derived from a small moorland estate and his host was far from rich. It looked as if it had cost him, and perhaps his family, some self-denial to send the money that had once or twice enabled Lawrence, and Foster with him, ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... Robert Summers was turned over to me as my first lieutenant. We grumbled almost incessantly at our hard lot in not being allowed to render our valuable assistance more directly to the work in hand, but the reward for our enforced self-denial was nearer at hand than either ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... to feeling and stimulates the growth of that series of great emotions that make so large a part of character. It may excite ambition and a thirst for power or wealth or give an impulse to labor and self-denial; it may teach us sympathy and love for our fellow-men, or arouse anger, hatred and defiance; it may give us a keener discrimination of right from wrong and lead us far on our search for truth, even into ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... Pretender's army at Culloden, and had a son, Angus, who settled in Aberdeen. When AEneas MacKenzie, my grandfather, was born, his family moved south and settled in Newcastle-on-Tyne. A local biographer writes of him: "A man who by dint of perseverance and self-denial acquired more learning than ninety-nine in a hundred ever got at a university—an accomplished and most trustworthy writer. The real founder of the Newcastle Mechanics' Institute, and the leader of ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... owed to the mother I feel in a measure absolved from by her rejection of all present advances. And inasmuch as I am making you my father confessor, I may as well tell you, my dear Johns, that no particular self-denial would be involved in a marriage with Mademoiselle Chalet. For myself, I am past the age of sentiment; my fortune is now established; neither myself nor my child can want for any luxury. The mother, by her present associations and by the propriety of her life, is above all suspicion; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... me your taunts. You, by self-denial and profound search into the highest of the higher Mysteries, have made yourself something wiser than human; I have preserved my humanity, and with it its powers and frailties; and it seems that each of us has his proper uses, or you would not be come now here to ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... conclude that the present fuels are being exhausted at a certain rate; that barring new discoveries industry will have to enter a phase of contraction at some definite time in the future. We have then to determine how much thrift and self-denial we will use, after all feasible economies have been exercised, in order not to rob posterity. But what shall we consider posterity? Our grandchildren? Our great grandchildren? Perhaps we shall decide to calculate on a hundred years, believing that to be ample ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... not tell such an assembly that there are joys of the intellect as well as joys of the body, or that these pleasures of the spirit constituted the reward of our great investigators. Led on by the whisperings of natural truth, through pain and self-denial, they often pursued their work. With the ruling passion strong in death, some of them, when no longer able to hold a pen, dictated to their friends the last results of their labours, and then ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... part to play in the following narrative. Being as hypocritical as Urbain was straightforward, his ambition was to gain wherever his name was known a reputation for exalted piety; he therefore affected in his life the asceticism of an anchorite and the self-denial of a saint. As he had much experience in ecclesiastical lawsuits, he looked on the chapter's loss of this one, of which he had in some sort guaranteed the success, as a personal humiliation, so that when Urbain gave himself airs of triumph and exacted the last letter ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... impression of religious duty alone sustained her, and that the yearnings of the mother's heart, though stilled by resignation to the Divine Will, were yet more intensely agonized by the suppression of what she secretly felt. Such, however, is the motive of those heroic acts of self-denial, which religion only can enable us to perform. It does not harden the heart, or prevent it from feeling the full force of the calamity or sorrow which comes upon us; no, but whilst we experience it in all the rigor of distress, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... righteousness, the planting of the Lord," that could not have been acquired amidst the sunny skies and balmy air of the heavenly paradise. The saints of God have learned lessons here of patience, endurance, self-denial, and faith, that could not have been learned there. Like old soldiers, they have been trained by long campaigns and terrible combats with the enemy. On earth and not in heaven are Marthas and Maries with whom we can weep; and prodigals whom we can receive back; ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... went to the polls in a mood of exalted self-denial. They knew that they were voting away their own rights, but they also knew that their private ideals would be more than realized in the legalized frenzy of their representative. Bleak, appearing on the balcony ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... a sense of duty, but merely from a sense of delight. The whole world teems with subjects and thoughts, sights of beauty and images of joy and sorrow, that I desire to put into words; and to forbid myself to write would be to exercise the strongest self-denial of which I am capable. Of course I do not mean that I can always please myself. I have piles of manuscripts laid aside which fail either in conception or expression, or in both. But there are a dozen books I would like to write if I had ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Frederick. "The most devoted are always misunderstood, and if one were not sustained by one's conscience, the brutes that you mix yourself up with would make you feel disgusted with your own self-denial!" ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... careless and extravagant; and Evelyn was too inexperienced, and too gentle, perhaps, to correct his tendencies. Maltravers learned that Legard's income was one that required an economy which he feared that, in spite of all his reformation, Legard might not have the self-denial to enforce. After some consideration, he resolved to add secretly to the remains of Evelyn's fortune such a sum as might, being properly secured to herself and children, lessen whatever danger could arise from the possible ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... living on a crust for months, denying himself first this, then that ingredient of what should have been an invalid's diet. But it had been for cause—for the poor—for self-mortification. There was something just a little jarring to the ascetic in this contact with a self-denial of the purely rationalistic type, so easy—so cheerful—put forward without the smallest suspicion of merit, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... rather than an end. The same true of intellectual improvement. The general homage which is paid to inoffensiveness. Picture of a modern Christian family. Measuring ourselves by others. Our Saviour the only true standard of comparison. Importance of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Blessedness of communicating. Young women urged to emancipate themselves from the bondage of ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... kept as carefully as our annals of vice, we might find that town life stood higher in the one than in the other. There are more opportunities to display positive goodness and positive badness in the town; life is more crowded and more rapid, and it is likely that acts of kindness, generosity, self-denial, even of heroic self-sacrifice, are more numerous in the town than in the country. The average townsman is more developed morally as well as intellectually for good and for evil. That the good does not ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... confronted and exposed,—are among the greater merits of this elaborate and able discourse. It must have required of one not in the arena of political strife, who for a large part of his manhood has occupied himself abroad in the studies of an intelligent scholar and a patriotic American, somewhat of self-denial, to throw away the certainty of almost universal cheers for his performance, by incurring the displeasure of some of his audience and many of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... as a duty to present the body to God, as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable in his sight. That God gives man no law that is not for his best advantage, and that the interests of humanity, and the laws of purity and self-denial all lie in the same direction, and the man who does not take care of his body must fail to take the best care of his soul; for the body should be temple for God's holy spirit and the instrument to do his work, and we have no right to defile the ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... be impossible to tell how the sense of Esclairmonde's trust, and of the resolute self-denial it would require of him, elevated Malcolm's whole tone, and braced his mind. The taking away of his original high purpose had rendered him as aimless and pleasure-loving as any ordinary lad; but the situation in which he now stood—guarding ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... entirely to you and does not ask you (sublime self-denial!), that you should love her, but only that you should let her love you. Balzac extolled the women of thirty; that was because he had not tasted those of forty. Ah! the women ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... savings were fast disappearing; his stock and furniture were mortgaged; some of it had been sold, and his principal witness and faithful servant was now gone for a soldier. In addition to all this, poor Mr. Bumpkin could not help recalling the happiness of his past life, his early struggles, his rigid self-denial, his pleasure as the modest savings accumulated—not so much occasioned by the sordid desire of wealth, as the nobler wish to be independent. Then there was Mrs. Bumpkin, who naturally crossed his mind at this miserable moment in his existence—at ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... looked at the last-named speaker with a glance which seemed to say, "You who have never known self-denial cannot feel for me," and remarked, "You surely think one can be ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... the morning's self-denial, of a day passed quietly in bed, with only the companionship of pillows and dreams. I was forced to choose between Mrs. St. Clare's 'lunch' and Mrs. Tarrant's 'crush,' 'not that I love Caesar less, but that I love Rome more;' and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... proceedings resulted in a charge of "grumbling." Why couldn't he be nice— as he used to be? And Coombes was such a harmless little man, too, nourished mentally on Self-Help, and with a meagre ambition of self-denial and competition, that was to end in a "sufficiency." Then Jennie came in as a female Mephistopheles, a gabbling chronicle of "fellers," and was always wanting his wife to go to theatres, and "all that." And in addition were aunts of his wife, and cousins (male and female) ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... following year with a heart as whole as his physique was fine. But there were some cares to cloud his young life in the army,—a sister whose needs were many and whose means were few. He found that rigid economy and self-denial were to be his portion from the start, and was not sorry that his assignment took him to the far-away land of Arizona, where, as his new captain wrote him, "you can live like a prince on bacon and frijoles, ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... nor the space that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see on our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in small pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones.... It is not the love of fresco that we want; it is the love of God and His creatures; it is humility, and charity, and self-denial, and fasting, and prayer; it is a total change of character. We want more faith and less reasoning, less strength and more trust. You want neither walls, nor plaster, nor colours—ca ne fait rien a l'affaire; it is Giotto, and Ghirlandajo, and Angelico that you want, and that you will and ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... tempted to throw herself in his arms and confess all. The high resolves of years of self-denial were on the verge of being broken in one weak moment; but the very peril, the very temptation calmed her suddenly. She brushed away her tears, and, gently withdrawing the hand Maurice held, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... third piece, and hesitated about the fourth; but no, he was a human being,—no brute. He thrust the remainder into his watcher's hands, and turned his back upon him, so as not to be tantalized. Beasts indeed! Here were two instances of self-denial, nowhere to be matched in the whole animal creation, except in that race which is but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... to believe that the captain would ever send any more, and as she had a home, and Ralph and Edna had not, she would not take all the money that was due her, feeling that they might come to need it more than she would. But even with this generous self-denial she found herself in Plainton with a balance of some thousands of dollars in her possession, and as much more in Edna's hands, which the latter had insisted that she would hold subject to order. What would the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... whenever he pleased, but also should be furnished with a sum sufficient for the expences of his journey; but added, that the offer he now made of depriving himself of so agreeable a companion was a piece of self-denial, than which there could not be a greater ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... his side his sons, excused all explanation, Silent began to clutch their hands in proper alternation, (Not by their tender palms to trace the chiromantic linings, For at that day no place was found in Spain for such divinings), But calling on his honor spent for strength and self-denial, He set aside parental love and steeled his nerves to trial, Griping their hands with all his might till each cried: "Hold, Sir, hold! What meaneth this? pray, let me go; thou'rt killing me, behold!" Now when he came to Roderick, ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... nonsense, Frank," he retorted. "Bad food is bad for everyone, and abstinence from tobacco is mere torture to me. Chastity is just as unnatural and devilish as hunger; I hate both. Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... takes in sewing sometimes, and sometimes goes out washing. Poor Owen! I was over there yesterday; he looks thin and wasted, and his wife was saying that he was parched with constant fever, and had very little appetite. She had, with great self-denial, and by restricting herself almost of necessary food, got him two or three oranges; and the poor fellow ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... because I fear God, and have at the bottom a principle of religion; then, on the other hand, I am not properly God's, because his law appears hard and irksome to me, and I cannot bring myself to acts of self-denial; so that altogether I am one of those called lukewarm Christians, the great number of which does not in the least surprise me, for I perfectly understand their sentiments, and the reasons that influence ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... the morning. Would her sparkling gaiety endure, I wondered, through the monotonous days ahead, when poverty became, not a child's play, not a game tricked out by the imagination, but the sordid actuality of hard work and hourly self-denial? ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... turban on his head—the upper part of his body and his legs being completely exposed. The man was a fakir, one of a class of religious fanatics, who, ignorant of a God of love and mercy, believe that holiness can be obtained by practising the most rigid self-denial and the infliction of every variety of torture ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... independent reflection and action arrives, their judgment and feelings may be ready to carry them forward in the right path; to teach them the habit, for instance, of discovering that, in practice, there is a positive, and generally a speedy pleasure and reward attendant on almost every exercise of self-denial. When that point is once firmly established in the minds of young men, it becomes less difficult to persuade them to relinquish whatever is merely agreeable at the moment, if it stand in the way of the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... he calls his interest; he will find that it consists chiefly of certain degrees of decency, beauty, and order, variously combined into one system, the idol which he seeks to enjoy by labour, hazard, and self-denial. It is, on this account, of the last consequence to regulate these images by the standard of nature and the general good; otherwise the imagination, by heightening some objects beyond their real excellence and beauty, or by representing others in a more odions or terrible ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... such a proposition never for an instant entered Shakspere's head. He used the word "assume" in this case in its primary and justest sense; ad-sumo, take to, acquire; and the context plainly shows that Hamlet meant that his mother, by self-denial, would gradually acquire that virtue in which she was so conspicuously wanting. Yet, for lack of a little knowledge of the history of the word employed, the other monstrous gloss has received ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... she would have worn the vesture of sackcloth, and slept upon the bed of iron, and even used the knotted scourge in expiation of her sins, but as the severe simplicity of her Protestant faith forbade such penances, she manifested, by the most rigid self-denial and strictest devotion, the sincerity of her penitence and the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... all religions, all the practices, the renunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage. And a wild thrill of something that was almost like joy rushed through her, the joy that sometimes comes to the unbelievers when they are about to commit ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... with great self-denial and fidelity, said: "No, I accept her as a charge, but for wife, she is worthy to be one for a higher than I. If you will trust her to me, I will take her to my master, for by her beauty and charms she is worthy to be the queen ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... number of Imperial and royal palaces, from the great augmentation of the Imperial and royal domains; from the immense and valuable quantity of diamonds, jewels, pictures, statues, libraries, museums, etc., disinterestedness and self-denial are ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... she will one day become the wife of the god Shiva. This prediction awakens her father's pride, and also his impatience, since Shiva makes no advances. For the destined bridegroom is at this time leading a life of stern austerity and self-denial upon a mountain peak. Himalaya therefore bids his daughter wait upon Shiva. She does so, but without being able to divert him ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... Quaker: self-renunciation,— reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling Spirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our hearts. They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... to accept, but she felt an alarmed tug at her arm, and saw that Florence would be placed in an embarrassing position if she accepted. So, by an exercise of self-denial—for Mrs. O'Keefe was by no means insensible to the attractions of whiskey, though she never drank to ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... don't suit me either; but, on the whole, they are wanted—at any rate, in this college. Even the worst of them is making some sort of protest for self-denial, and against self-indulgence, which is nowhere more needed ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... difficulty. He felt this the more painfully because, before sitting down to think of his sermon, he had immersed himself, to use his own words, in the fountain-head of self-sacrificing enthusiasm. And now he could not show his flock that there was any trace of self-denial in his conduct. It was apparent that his acceptance of the call made a great sermon an utter impossibility. He must say as little about the main point as possible, glide quickly, in fact, over the thin ice. But his disappointment was none the less keen; there was no splendid ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... yours and mine has very justly defined good breeding to be the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them. Taking this for granted, as I think it cannot be disputed, it is astonishing to me that anybody who has good sense and good nature, and I believe you have both, can ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... changed so little in a century, that all this would hold admirably true of Italian life at this time. The goodly outside in religion, in morals, in every thing is too much the ambition of Italy; this achieved, she is content to endure any pang of self-denial, and sell what little comfort she knows—it is mostly imported, like the word, from England—to strangers at fabulous prices. In Italy the luxuries of life are cheap, and the conveniences unknown or excessively dear.] Their idle thoughts, not drilled by ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... as he already was in the school of the world, he entered into the quiet shades of the cloister. It can scarcely be expected that he will remain there long. First of all, let us take a view of monastic life on its most favorable side, as a school of self-denial, as a place of refuge for more profound study, as a field for the exercise of practical charity. In all these respects it has no doubt served valuable ends. And who will deny that, in times when the will of the strong would endure no restraint, when ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... Whitman's glorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance, etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,—the free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life and conditions of men, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... fundamentals that underlie all fulness and without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible. Power of attention, power of industry, promptitude in beginning work, method and accuracy and despatch in doing it, perseverance, courage before difficulties, cheer, self-control and self-denial, they are worth more than Latin and Greek and French and German and music and art and painting and waxflowers and travels in Europe added together. These last are the decorations of a man's life, those other things are the ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... ran across Neave at Christie's. He was the same little man we'd known, effaced, bleached, indistinct, like a poor "impression"—as unnoticeable as one of his own early finds, yet, like them, with a quality, if one had an eye for it. He told me he still lived in Rome, and had contrived, by fierce self-denial, to get a few decent bits together—"piecemeal, little by little, with fasting and prayer; and I mean the fasting literally!" ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton



Words linked to "Self-denial" :   forgoing, control, asceticism, discipline, renunciation, mortification, selflessness, continency, forswearing, abstention, continence, self-sacrifice, abstinence, austerity, nonindulgence, ascesis



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