"Blessedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... religious service in the Basilica called Ambrosian, into which the bodies of the martyrs have been translated, when he had touched the garment of the martyrs, forthwith received sight. Moreover, bodies possessed by unclean spirits were restored, and with all blessedness returned home. And by means of these benefits of the martyrs, while the faith of the Catholic Church made increase, by so much ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without conscious recollection,—innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the extinction of all desires, even the instinctive ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... and anxiety lest something should have happened to delay Susie at this supreme moment. At the window end of the room she stopped each time she reached it and looked eagerly up and down the street, the flower-women and the blessedness of selling daffodils having within an hour become profoundly indifferent to her. At the other end of the room, where a bureau stood, she came to a standstill too, and snatching up a pen began a letter to Peter in Devonshire; but, hearing wheels, threw ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon, Thrice blessed they that master so their blood, To undergo such maiden pilgrimage; But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd Than that which withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness." ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... of these wild dreams, in which my soul delighted, I was sometimes tempted to rise up a prophet, preach salvation to the poor, and confound the wise. Persecution I must expect, but in that I should glory: it was the badge of blessedness, the mark of election, the signing of the covenant. Elevated to these celestial heights, with what contempt did I look down on the doctors, proctors, and preachers of Baal (for such were all the unenlightened) and on their dignities, paraphernalia, and many coloured robes. What were these ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... since only by producing better things can he affirmatively elevate himself above his past. This active acknowledgment of the necessity of freedom as the determining principle of destiny gives the highest satisfaction to which practical religious feeling may arrive, for blessedness develops itself in it—that blessedness which does not know that it is circumscribed by finitude and transitoriness, and which possesses the immortal courage to strive always anew for perfection with free resignation at its non-realization, so that happiness and misery, pleasure ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... plovers' eggs into their lives and taught them to appreciate the difference between coupe Jacques and Macedoine de fruits. His friends pointed out that it was a doubtful kindness to initiate a boy from behind a drapery counter into the blessedness of the higher catering, to which Lucas invariably replied that all kindnesses were doubtful. Which ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... that although Shargar was still kilted, he was not the less trowsered, such as the trowsers were. It makes my heart ache to think of those trowsers—not believing trowsers essential to blessedness either, but knowing the superiority of the old ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... How frail these bauble-toys of Time When Thy "forever" dawns upon the heart; Thy perfect fullness, Saviour, how divine, E'en while we taste its blessedness in part! Still yesterday, to-day, while ages roll In grand, eternal vastness, still the same, Oh! potent Healer! every whit made whole, I sing glad Hallelujah to ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... like that. If you heard all I hear of her—daily—hourly—her unselfishness, her energy, her generous, warm heart! It is blessedness even to have known her. She is an angel—no, better than that, a woman! I did not want her for a saint in a shrine—I wanted her as a help-meet, to walk with me in my daily life, to comfort me, strengthen me, make me pure and good. I could be a good man if ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... mistaken to be the way, by which they hope to attain true and everlasting happiness: and having discovered the mistaken, he proceeds to direct to that true way, by which, and no other, everlasting life and blessedness is attainable. And these two ways he demonstrates thus;—they be his own words that follow:—"That, the way of Nature; this, the way of Grace; the end of that way, Salvation merited, pre-supposing the righteousness of men's works; their righteousness, a natural ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... doubt Mr. Huntingdon is a much better man than you think him; but we are not talking about him now, but about Mr. Boarham; and as I would rather grow, live, and die in single blessedness—than be his wife, it is but right that I should tell him so at once, and put him out of suspense—so let ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... over her; she was, though Paul understood it not, in the struggle of youth with life. Do you know what that struggle is? Not all who pass through it go on their way rejoicing, over the everlasting blessedness won from the 'good and great angel.' For then this earth more manifestly were the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the company's pardon," said he, "I have no halo, and I gained eternal blessedness without any eminent distinction. But after what the great St. Augustine has just told you I believe it right to impart a cruel experience, which I had, relative to the conditions necessary for the validity of a sacrament. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... nine o'clock in the evening, and found there had arrived from a great distance L100 for Missions, with L100 left at my disposal, and L5 for myself. I took, therefore, the whole L200 for Missions, and thus had L480 in hand to meet the L476 which I desired for this object. Those who know the blessedness of really trusting in God, and getting help from Him, as in this case, in answer to prayer, will be able to enter into the spiritual enjoyment I had in the reception of that donation, in which both the answer to prayer was granted, and with it the great enjoyment ...
— Answers to Prayer - From George Mueller's Narratives • George Mueller
... Marilla's state of single blessedness had never been a sore point with her, so she answered amiably, with an exchange of significant looks with Anne, that she supposed it was because nobody would ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... How much bitterness is mingled with the sweetness of man's felicity, which, though it seemeth so pleasant while it is enjoyed, yet can it not be retained from going away when it will. And by this it appeareth how miserable is the blessedness of mortal things, which neither endureth alway with the contented, nor wholly delighteth ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... me to a continual tendency to suspend the judgment. What a state of blessedness it would have been had I possessed the dead certainty of the homoeopathic persuasion, and as soon as I found the Lakes Bangweolo, Moero, and Kamolondo pouring out their waters down the great central valley, bellowed out, "Hurrah! Eureka!" ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... sweets on the wild breezes flinging, While in their depths are new odors upspringing:— (Blessedness twofold of Love's holy dowers,) Live ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... other professing Christians. It opened the way for me to speak on the peculiar doctrines and practices of Friends at more length than I ever remember to have done before; after which the glad tidings of the gospel flowed freely, and the people were invited to come to Christ and partake of the full blessedness of his teaching by the Holy Spirit. A precious solemnity prevailed, and the serious attention of the company was great. A good many soldiers, and some officers, were present; but the expression of our dissent from all wars and fightings ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... eating any sort of flesh; and thus weaning themselves from all the pleasures of the present life, which they account hurtful, they pursue, even by the hardest and painfullest methods possible, that blessedness which they hope for hereafter; and the nearer they approach to it, they are the more cheerful and earnest in their endeavours after it. Another sort of them is less willing to put themselves to much toil, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... to you, and more than praise And thankfulness, for some things done; And blessedness, and length of days As long as earth shall last, or sun! You first among the peoples spoke Sharp words and angry questionings Which burst the bonds and shed the yoke That made your men the slaves ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... accompaniment of my harp—and my pot-boilers would never have been. And we should all have worn trains and picturesque headdresses instead of shirtwaists and sports hats, and I should have called some man 'my Lord,' and have listened for his footsteps instead of ending my days in single blessedness with a type-writer as ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... The role of single blessedness may be charming to a man of means, but it is often extremely irksome to an heiress in her own right. Miss Purling was like a pigeon that escapes from the inclosure at a match—an aim for every gun around. Great ladies took her up, as a kindness to their younger sons; ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... "assumptions," "annunciations," mortals "caught up" into it and returning, angels flying between it and the earth, thunderbolts hurled down from it, mighty winds issuing from its corners, voices speaking from the upper floor to men on the lower, temporary openings of the floor of heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good, "signs and wonders" hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions of every kind—from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of errand, and Jehovah coming down to walk in Eden in the cool of the day, to St. Mark swooping down into the market-place ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... day by day, and amidst their daily duties, at realising that most elementary thought which, like a great many other elementary thoughts, is impotent because we believe it so utterly, that wherever we are, we may have Him with us. It is the secret of blessedness, of tranquillity, of power, of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... His conjunction with the angels of heaven, and in particular from the conjunction of good and truth in each angel. These are the origins of peace. From this it can be seen that peace in the heavens is the Divine inmostly affecting with blessedness everything good therefrom, and from this is every joy of heaven; also that it is in its essence the Divine joy of the Lord's Divine love, resulting from His conjunction with heaven and with everyone there. This joy, felt by the ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... lecture with giving you a slight descriptive sketch of the structure of the bed, and the nature of those influences with which it glows—which it breathes forth, and with which it animates, regenerates, and transports those happy, happy persons who have the honour and the paradisiacal blessedness of reposing ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... me—never leave me again, Sandy, never again. Where is your hand?—give it me, dear, let me hold it—there —now all is well, all is peace, and I am happy again—we are happy again, isn't it so, Sandy? You are so dim, so vague, you are but a mist, a cloud, but you are here, and that is blessedness sufficient; and I have your hand; don't take it away—it is for only a little while, I shall not require it long.... Was that the child?... Hello-Central!... she doesn't answer. Asleep, perhaps? Bring her when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... joy which thrilled you when you first received Him as your Saviour, but perhaps it was not until afterwards that you realised the blessedness of your new position as ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... without any violent break, probably taking part with Wynram in the composition of Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism, as he did afterwards in the preparation of the Reformed Confession of Faith and the First Book of Discipline. He was a man of the ancient academic type, content to live in single blessedness, to treat his pupils, who also lived in college, with the familiarity and affection of a father. He had the honour of training the youthful Andrew Melville, and perhaps it was with some presentiment of his future eminence ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... me deeply. Our life here is but a span, and our brief union shadowed by care, pain, sickness, and the never-dying fear of parting. The sky of our being is not unclouded long. And therefore I cannot believe that the blessedness of married love dies forever at the end of this struggle to come into perfect form and beauty. No, Doctor; the end is not here. And so Blanche and I turn often with an eager delight to these relations, feeling, as we read, that they are not mere pictures ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... life, wisdom, truth, bounty and blessedness, the eternal, the only true Good. My God and my Lord, Thou art my hope and my heart's joy. I confess with thanksgiving that Thou hast made me in Thine image, that I may direct all my thoughts to Thee and love Thee. Lord, make me to know Thee ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... placed the instrument against his shoulder and seized the bow. But all of a sudden he paused—a cold perspiration bedewed his face—his limbs could scarcely support him. What if the proof deceives him. What if—; but incertitude was intolerable, and he passed the bow over the strings. Oh blessedness! Frederick recognized the unequalled tones of his instrument—he recognized its voice, so clear, so melting, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... too, are gently turned sometimes on a blessed future, which might still lie ahead: of her at last coming, as a Widow, to live with her Brother, in serene affection, like that of their childhood together; in a calm blessedness such as the world held no other for her! But gloomy Reinwald survived bright Schiller for above ten years; and she had thirty more of lone widowhood, under limited conditions, to spend after him, still ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... greater part of the sect, it is, we apprehend, of little consequence what they study or under whom. It would be more amusing, to be sure, and more reputable, if they would take up the old republican cant and declaim about Brutus and Timoleon, the duty of killing tyrants and the blessedness of dying for liberty. But, on the whole, they might have chosen worse. They may as well be Utilitarians as jockeys or dandies. And, though quibbling about self-interest and motives, and objects of desire, and the greatest happiness of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... upon thy countenance, As if each lingering cloud of doubt, The cold, dark shadows resting here In Time's unluminous atmosphere, Were lifted by an angel's hand, And through them on thy spiritual eye Shone down the blessedness on high, The glory ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... witty and exceedingly wise potentate lived for half a century in single blessedness; at length his courtiers began to think it a great pity so wise and wealthy a prince should not have a child after his own likeness, to inherit his talents and domains; so they urged him most respectfully to marry, for the good of his estate, and the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and beget children—this is the character of their love; their offspring, as they hope, will preserve their memory and give them the blessedness and immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are pregnant—for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies—conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... loved, and both were filled with the one desire to please Him. Mrs. Lue had to share in the new-found joy of the one she had been leading to Christ, and every one who has been used in winning souls for the Master knows the blessedness of such hours; an abundant reward ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen
... this unhealthy atmosphere such households as Vocco's are most notable. And that you, who seem by nature fitted for just such blessedness as has befallen Flexinna, should have been robbed of it by a strange series of peculiar circumstances wins for you our interest and our solicitude. Still more are our hearts drawn towards you by your unwavering fidelity, alike to your present duties and all that they ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... flowers and fruits innumerable. And the inhabitants dwell some on the shore of the sea of air, others in 'islets of the blest,' and they hold converse with the gods, and behold the sun, moon and stars as they truly are, and their other blessedness is of a ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... Christian is a beautiful triumph over the fears of life. In Him who conquered death, and led captivity captive, he finds the fruition of his being, the eternal blessedness promised to him in the Gospel, which places him beyond the wants and woes of time. The death of such a man should be celebrated as a sacred festival, not lamented as a dreary execution,—as the era of a new birth, not the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the house of Mr. Mullaly, a retired merchant of considerable means whose wife and daughters were desirous of obtaining an entree into polite society. Placing her boy out to nurse, she set out for her new home, and soon began to feel the blessedness of working ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... the seal. Had they remembered only this, and had they adhered to it, "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee," and had they been a covenant-keeping people, their peace, as God says to them, would have been as a river; an endless, inexhaustible tide of prosperity and blessedness. ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... down And say to the holy man, the Landgrave Lewis With humble greetings prays his blessedness To make these secular walls the spirit's temple At ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... me to believe," said Kilcullen, with a gentle laugh, "that you are contented to live and die in single blessedness at Grey Abbey?—that your ambition does not soar higher than the interchange of ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... and rather stolidly): No, Mr. Binder. Nor not inclined to neither. (Draws a great breath.) I'm a single man, Mr. Binder, and intend so to adhere. (A pause to think.) That's what I call (a further pause to get the right phrase) "single blessedness." Yes, (another deep breath) I find ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... shedding abroad of Thy love in our heart, but our heart's love. If, however, we did what we could, not clinging with our hearts to anything whatsoever in this world, but having our treasure and our conversation in heaven, then this blessedness would soon be ours, as all Thy saints testify. God never withholds Himself from him who pays this price and who perseveres in seeking Him. He will, little by little, and now and then, strengthen and restore that soul, till at last it is victorious. If he ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... Learned (for he does not seem to have been by any means very wise) much more is of course known, though the saying about the blessedness of having no history is not falsified in his case. But his titular enjoyment of the empire, his difficulties with his sons, his death, practically dethroned, and the rest, do not concern us: nor ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... such blessedness. One thereof had He made so strong, so mighty in his intellect; to him did He grant great sway, next to Himself in the Kingdom of Heaven. So bright had He made him, so beautiful was his form in Heaven that was given him ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... I say, Who changes from his singleness, Who will not yield to woman's sway Is sure of earthly blessedness. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Bhanavar asked to hear no more. Surely she was at the gates of pale spirits within an hour of her interview with Ukleet, and there was no blessedness for her save in death, the stiffer of ills, the drug that is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... frighten me!" cried Rosie, drawing a long breath and lifting her hands with a gesture of alarm and despair; "what shall I do? Would you recommend single blessedness—you who have twice tried laying hold of the other horn ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... and dismay. And now, the doubts, the dread, the inexpressible humiliation are all in the past and there remains only this,—to feast his eyes where his heart has so long feasted, and to thank God for the blessedness of a speedy going, which has taken the sword from the hand of Justice and saved Oliver the anguished sight of a father's ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... merciful!... My goddess, who knowest the unknown, be merciful!... How long, O my god?... How long, O my goddess?... Lord, thou wilt not repulse thy servant. In the midst of the stormy waters, come to my assistance, take me by the hand! I commit sins—turn them into blessedness! I commit transgressions—let the wind sweep them away! My blasphemies are very many—rend them like a garment!... God who knowest the unknown,[AF] my sins are seven times seven,—forgive ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... the eunuch Sandal; whereupon the castratos will direct thee to me and by coming thither thou shalt get what falleth to thy lot and therewith wend thy ways." Quoth Khalifah, "Indeed, this is a blessed day and its blessedness was manifest from the first of it!"[FN228] Then he shouldered his net and returned to Baghdad; and as he passed through the streets, the folk saw the Caliph's gown on him and stared at him till he came to the gate of his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... and the corruption, the pain and the shame and the manifold misery of secret sin; but all that will be told, believed, and understood by all men long before the full magnificence of their sanctification, and the superb transcendence of their blessedness, will even begin to be described to God's secret saints. For, all that sleepless, cruel, and soul-killing pain, and all that shameful and humbling corruption,—all that means, all that is, so much holiness, so much heaven, working itself out in the soul. All that is so ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... my craving began to yield. The blessedness of the relief is beyond description. Little by little the resistance to my will weakened. Little by little my will gained mastery. It seemed a youthful giant, learning its power. It seemed to fill the room, to seek to reach beyond and find ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... his pupils. When he became a parish priest, his preaching took a singularly practical and plain-spoken character. The first sermon of the series, a typical sermon, "Holiness necessary for future Blessedness," a sermon which has made many readers grave when they laid it down, was written in 1826, before he came to St. Mary's; and as he began he continued. No sermons, except those which his great opposite, Dr. Arnold, was preaching at Rugby, had appealed to conscience with such directness ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... me your hand too. You have become reconciled to him, then. I see how it is. Ah! how dear you are to one another! My God! what blessedness is this! And yet I thought that you had fled from him, and left him forever. But he found you. You are ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view Of ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... the heavens and dim the joy of the blest! Long, long before then, your and my remembrance, Faith, will have perished from the earth. You will be then a seraph, and I—. If there be ever an interval of pain, it will be when I think of your blessedness, and you, if angels sometimes weep, will drop a tear to the memory of your father, and it ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... with me. At least you have that much blessedness, Mr. Fred. D'you know that girl was willing to be a murderess? Yes! She tried to murder Rustum Khan. Rustum Khan ought to be hanged, for he is a villain—a black villain! But she must not have blood on ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... but the unspeakable glory that follows causes the enraptured soul to be astonished at the marvelous gain for so small a loss. The perfect love of Jesus now flows from his heart into the one which has yielded its all to him. The undivided affections now feel the blessedness of perfect unity with him—married indeed to him who is ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... it has him for its own; it rejects him because, flying from him, the higher it makes itself the more he ascends upwards to it; the more he follows it, the further off it appears, by reason of its high excellence, according as it is said: Accedit homo ad cor altum, et exaltabitur Deus. Such blessedness of affection begins in this life, and in this state it has its mode of being. Hence the heart can say that it is within with the body, and without with the sun, in so far as the soul with its twin faculty, puts into operation two functions: the one ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... his flushing march, his golden hair abroad, It seems as on the mountain's side of beams a furnace glow'd, Now melts the honey from all flowers, and now a dew o'erspreads (A dew of fragrant blessedness) all the grasses of the meads. Nor least in my remembrance is my country's flowering heather, Whose russet crest, nor cold, nor sun, nor sweep of gale may wither; Dear to my eye the symbol wild, that loves like me the side Of my own Highland mountains ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... had never married; and explained the mystery to their own satisfaction by conjecturing that she had had a disappointment in her youth, and had been incapable of loving twice. It never struck them—which was actually the case—that she had been incapable of loving once; and that her single-blessedness was due to no unforgotten love-story, but to the unromantic fact that among her score of lovers she had never found a man for whom she seriously cared. In a delicate and ladylike fashion she had flirted outrageously in her time; but she had always broken hearts so gently, and put away the pieces ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... me the power to control my mind and heart, that I may not be a slave to habits that may keep me from eternal love and blessedness. May I have sympathy and compassion for others, and cherish thy tenderness and mercy as I hold it in ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... little branch defined against it, without thinking of that silence of intense, almost awe-struck joy in which Harold went home by my side, only at long intervals uttering some brief phrase, such as "This is blessedness," or "Thank God, who gives ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mother's cheeks as she spoke, but her manner was calm and quiet. To her, as to her child standing upon the very brink of Jordan, heaven seemed very near, very real, and while mourning that soon that beloved face and form would be seen no more on earth she rejoiced with joy unspeakable, for the blessedness that should be hers forever ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... on his shoulder, sobbing. The sobs passed unnoticed by the dying girl, even as her brother's arrival had done. She lay there perfectly immovable. Only when the viaticum had been administered, when the priest's voice promised her eternal blessedness, her marble lips appeared to live again, and she murmured in a ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... to ever remember that you can no more live a spiritual life independently of the word of God than you can live a physical life independently of bread. If growth in grace is worth anything to you, and eternal blessedness in the sweet fields of heaven of any value, keep this ever in mind and act accordingly. As with the physical being, so it is with the spiritual. There must be appetite, eating, digestion, and assimilation, that the word ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... old friend, Are we "lucky dogs," indeed? Are we all that we pretend In the jolly life we lead?— Bachelors, we must confess, Boast of "single blessedness" To the world, but not alone— Man's ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... off in the midst of his days, without warning, she must have believed that it was well with him now. But, in the memory of the time before his death, the blessedness of his present state seemed less a matter of faith than of sure and certain knowledge. There could be no gloom, either in the past or the future, so thick but the light of that blessed assurance might penetrate ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... age, I come to-night to pay an humble tribute to him, who, in the hour of my birth, took me into his watchful care, and whose parental faithfulness, combined with that of my mother, was the means of bringing my erring feet to the cross, and kindling in my soul anticipations of immortal blessedness. If I failed to speak, methinks the old family Bible, that I brought home with me, would rebuke my silence, and the very walls of my youthful home would tell the story of my ingratitude. I must speak, though it be with broken utterance, and in ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... other with tender cheerfulness, "you are not to agitate yourself or to excite me. I've lived half a year more now than the doctors allowed me, and I've enjoyed it too. Besides, think of the blessedness of not having any pain. Do you know, the night after Mrs. Crapps had that scene in the hotel, I was in a panic of terror lest my old agony should come back; but it didn't. Then I said to myself: 'Of course I couldn't ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... refuse or neglect to make the experiment without guilt. But, 4, it is the experience derived from a practical conformity to the conditions of the Gospel—it is the opening eye; the dawning light: the terrors and the promises of spiritual growth; the blessedness of loving God as God, the nascent sense of sin hated as sin, and of the incapability of attaining to either without Christ; it is the sorrow that still rises up from beneath and the consolation that meets it from above; the bosom treacheries of the principal ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... long time in single blessedness, Lauckie all at once, and not long before my visit to the neighborhood, took it into his head to get married. The neighbors were all surprised; but the family connection, who were as proud as they were poor, were grievously scandalized, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... the chambers of a many-storeyed caravanserai, haunted with vociferous nightmares, and many wakeful people come down late for breakfast in the morning. Upon that theory the cynic may explain the whole affair—exhilaration, nightmares, pomp of tongue and all. But, on the other hand, the peculiar blessedness of boyhood may itself be but a symptom of the same complaint, for the two effects are strangely similar; and the frame of mind of the invalid upon the Alps is a sort of intermittent youth, with periods of lassitude. The fountain of Juventus ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this final promise of blessedness, given by the noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's fifth Latter-day Pamphlet, throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... no!" cried Alumion with fervour. "For you have opened up to me a new source of happiness—of blessedness which I have never known before. Only let us go together to your world ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... accustomed myself during the last two years to so close a contemplation of this, our best and truest friend, that he possesses no more terrors for me—nothing but peace and consolation. And I thank God for enabling me to discern in death the key to our true blessedness. I never lie down in bed without remembering that, perhaps, young as I am, I may never see another day, and yet no one who knows me can say that I am melancholy or fanciful. For this blessing I thank God daily, and desire nothing more than to share ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Bible. It was not made for that. Take "Howe's Elements of Criticism"—it will be better than the Bible for that. If you want to study metaphysics, better than the Bible will be the writings of William Hamilton. But if you want to know how to have sin pardoned, and at last to gain the blessedness of Heaven, search the Scriptures, "for in ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the life of the inhabitants of the earth Jupiter; for the inborn disposition of the inhabitants is known from the spirits, since every one carries his own life with him from the world, and lives it when he becomes a spirit. It was observed that they had a state of still more interior blessedness or happiness. This was observed by its being perceived that their interiors were not closed, but open to heaven; for the more open to heaven the interiors are, the more capable are they of receiving Divine good, and with it blessedness and interior happiness. It is quite otherwise ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of peace; sun and wind, rain, flowers, and birds gather me into the blessedness of their active harmony. The world holds no wish for me, now that I have come home to die with my own people, for verify I think that the sap of grass and trees must run in my veins, so steady is their pull upon my heart- strings. London claimed all my philosophy, but the country ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... right than President," said Henry Clay. It is to men who are animated by this spirit that the greatest satisfaction in life comes. For true blessedness does not lie far off and above us. It is close at hand. Booker T. Washington once told a story of a ship that had exhausted its supply of fresh water and signaled its need to a passing vessel. The reply was, "Send ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... people, taking for the first time since his childhood a holiday on a work-day, seemed to comprehend the first notes of that great harmony of life which proves by the laws of sequence the last. The premonition of some final blessedness, to survive all renunciation and sacrifice, was upon him. He felt raised above the earth with happiness. Jerome seemed like another person to his companions. The wine of youth and certainty of joy stirred all the light within him to brilliancy. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... proposed for Joanna in the course of her life; but they all vanished into air, and the "excellent lady," as she was usually called by the Portuguese, died as she had lived, in single blessedness, at the ripe age of sixty-eight. In the Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi., the 19th Ilustracion is devoted to this topic, in regard to which Father Florez shows sufficient ignorance, or inaccuracy. Reynas Catholicas, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... of all the blessed is the Empyrean,—the first circle, counting from above; but there are degrees in blessedness, each spirit enjoying according to its capacity; no one is ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... writ large on her powdered brow, and it needed no great foresight to foresee the speedy approach of acidulated spinsterhood. But, to do her justice, this regrettable state of single blessedness was far from being her own fault. If her good fortune had but equalled her courage and energy she should have relinquished ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Olive, who could scarcely help laughing, "there was a good reason then for my being so sensible, and that reason no longer exists. I can now afford single-blessedness." ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... and piety. Daniel Doddridge and his wife had sought for their child first of all the kingdom of heaven, and God gave it now. Under the ministry of Rev. Samuel Clarke of St. Alban's, his mind had become more and more impressed with the beauty of holiness, and the blessedness of a religious life; and, on the other hand, that kind-hearted pastor took a deepening interest in his amiable and intelligent orphan hearer. Finding that he had declined the generous offer of the Duchess of Bedford, to maintain him at ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs? ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... out of the darkness a bright and shining angel in white apparel and with radiant wings descended upon him. And out of the silence were heard these words, "O, Son of Man, sanctify the Father's will! Look upon the blessedness which will proceed from thy struggles. The Father has laid it upon thee to become the sacrifice for sinful man. Carry it through to the end. The Father will ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... when I murmured at thy dealings." Then a solemn hush will follow—a holy twilight of the soul,—as if the sorrows of earth were blending with the joys of heaven, the pains of mortality with the blessedness of the angelic bards. Oh, these are the flowers for a sickroom! How dreary and desolate does it seem without them! The strong and healthy may live on, careless and irreligious, but what would become of the poor, ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... God, or of the eternal and infinite being; not, indeed, all of them (for we proved in Part i., Prop. xvi., that an infinite number must follow in an infinite number of ways), but only those which are able to lead us, as it were by the hand, to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness. ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... no ordinary fantasy of the unguided brain. She had in some strange way seen Donal. Where—how—where he had come from—where he returned after their meeting—he ceased to ask himself. What did it matter after all if souls could so comfort and sustain each other? The blessedness of it was enough. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... little to tell you of my blessedness; but my very heart was filled with the light of those radiant eyes, which were to me what the sun is to the world. Yet one dark shadow rested on my soul, beyond even their influence. Death had been the awful conqueror ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... about, ease and luxury within, wavy trees and sloping lawn or eddying waters without—who, in seeing all these, has not questioned himself as to why this should be deserted? and why is there none to taste and feel all the blessedness of such a lot as life here should offer? Is not the world full of these places? is not the puzzle of this query of all lands and of all peoples? That ever-present delusion of what we should do—what be if we were aught other than ourselves: how happy, how contented, how unrepining, and how ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... this Maggie was less hopeful. Her grandmother would never consent to their marriage, she knew—the "Stars and Stripes" had decided that matter, even though there were no Arthur Carrollton across the sea, and Maggie sighed despondingly as she thought of the long years of single-blessedness in store ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... care not for the old distress, Nor if to-morrow bid me moan; To-day is mine, and I have known An hour of blessedness. ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... is the end of being—the one sweet hope and crown and glory of life, the one desire and hope of every living man. The blessing is denied to none. Rejoice with me, oh Atam-or! you will soon know its blessedness as well as I." ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... the most heedless that something quite unlike the ordinary stuff of school-sermons is coming. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." The speaker speaks of the blessedness and glory of boyhood; the splendid inheritance of a Public School built on Christian lines; the unequalled opportunities of learning while the faculties are still fresh and the mind is still receptive; ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... we call this beautiful twilight, this night of the soul, so starry with heavenly mysteries? Not happiness,—but blessedness. They who have it walk among men "as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing,—as poor, yet making many rich,—as having nothing, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... oftener peruse the Scriptures, and attend public worship; and they are more attentive to all the means of grace. In a word, they are more likely to become useful and happy in this life, and to be prepared for lasting blessedness in the life ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... house," she admitted; "but I suppose what I like is the blessedness of its being here, in my own country and my own town; and then, of being alone in it." She spoke so low that he hardly heard the last phrase; but in his awkwardness he took ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... emphasized when we turn to the prayers of Christ. And in this connection it is worthy of note that though Christ has much to say concerning the duty and blessedness of prayer, and Himself spent much time in prayer, yet never, so far as we know, did He ask for the prayers of others. "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... and my heart was dumb With praise no language could express; Longing in vain for him to come Who had breathed such blessedness. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... in God's plans for His saints than mere selfish happiness and content. There is the blessedness that comes of sympathy with Him over human sorrow and pain. We but degrade the thought of the blessedness of the redeemed when we desire that they should ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... is what I have always felt," cried the Pilgrim, clasping her hands; her eyes were dim, her heart for a moment almost forgot its blessedness. "But He could—Oh, little Margaret! He could! You have forgotten—Lord, if Thou ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant |
