"Effacement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his self-effacement, his cheerful stoicism, his desire to follow his dead lord, has been well likened to Horatio. But Horatio is not old; nor is he hot-headed; and though he is stoical he is also religious. Kent, as compared with him and with Edgar, is not so. He has not ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... destined to sacrifice and self-effacement, and as he grew older and other youngsters came to fill Cassie's cabin, he took up his lot with the meekness of an infantile Moses. Like a Moses he was, too, leading his little flock to the promised land, when he grew to the age at which, barefooted and one-shifted, he led or carried his little brothers ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... who fails because he has been inefficient in selling true impressions of his qualifications for success. A private secretary, for illustration, might be thoroughly competent for managerial duties; but by his self-effacement in his present job he might make the false impression that he was wanting in executive capacity. He would be given a chance as manager if he were effective in creating a true impression of his administrative ability. Such a capable man, ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... enthusiasm which inspires the troops, that the ideas of peace become effaced, and they must be seasoned soldiers who will endure, without flinching, the losses of Waterloo or Gettysburg. Discipline, which means the effacement of the individual, does more than break the soldier to unhesitating obedience; it trains him to die for duty's sake, and even the Stonewall Brigade, in the spring of 1862, was not yet thoroughly disciplined. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... natural flight of ideas, the loathing of the city turned to loathing of himself—to an unsatiable desire for self-forgetfulness, for self-effacement. Solitude was no longer tenable, the walls of the appartement seemed to close in about him, stifling—suffocating him. With a feverish movement, he turned from the window, picked up his hat and ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... loss, and though Uncle David came at once to assist her in the necessary arrangements, she suffered no hand but her own to do the last kind offices for her dear dead. And oh! how empty and lonely was now the little cottage, while the swift return to all the ordinary duties of life seemed such a cruel effacement. Uncle David watched her silently, but on the evening of the third day after the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... served; the dinner had rarely come to the table so hot. Had she been a butler of the first magnitude she could not so have discouraged the idea of acquaintance; her attraction, if anything, was a combination of her self-effacement and her ugliness. The latter might have been noticed as she entered the dining-room; it was soon forgotten in the unconsciously observed ease with which ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... majority of the white population. But by the arrangement of 1809 the people of this section must content themselves with remaining in the minority in the state legislature, and suppress whatever of opposition they felt toward the institution of slavery, the cause of their effacement. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... English version reads like an excellent original English work, and gives fresh proof that the work of translation, if it is to be done with effect, must be done by those who, possessing, like Mrs. Ward, original literary gifts, are willing to make a long act of self-denial or self-effacement [20] for the benefit of the public. In this case, indeed, the work is not wholly one of self-effacement, for the accomplished translator has prefaced Amiel's Journal by an able and interesting essay of seventy pages on Amiel's life and intellectual position. And certainly there is much in ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... these diversions, not so much like a man in high spirits, but like one of an approved good-nature, habitually self-forgetful, accustomed to please and to follow others. I have remarked in old soldiers much the same smiling sadness and sociable self-effacement. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... congratulations of the lady to whom he was engaged, Brock took schooner for York and Kingston. At both of these places fervid demonstrations were showered upon him. But "Master Isaac's" head could not be turned either by success or adulation. The old spirit of self-effacement asserted itself. "The gallant band of brave men," he said, "at whose head I marched against the enemy, are the proper objects of your gratitude. The services of the militia have been duly appreciated ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... Admiral in Diego Flores de Valdes, whose professional advice he usually followed, and he had able squadron commanders in Recalde, Pedro de Valdes, Oquendo, and others; but such a commander-in-chief, unless a very genius in self-effacement, was enough to ruin a far ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Cosmic Light; his opinion regarding the possibility of becoming more general. Peculiar methods of producing spiritual ecstacy, as described by Lord Tennyson and others. The Power and Presence of God, as a reality. The dissolution of race barriers. The effacement of the sense of sin among the Illuminati. What is meant by the phrase "naked and unashamed." Will such a state ever exist on the earth? Efforts of those who have experienced Cosmic Consciousness to express the experience; ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... life, which is relinquished, the position of the individual vis-a-vis the family being unaffected; in the other case, it is the position of head of the family which is relinquished, with the result of the complete effacement of the individual so far as the family is concerned. Moreover, although abdication usually implies the abandonment of the business, or profession, of the person who abdicates, this does not necessarily follow, abdication being in no way incompatible with ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... more than Greek delicacy with which the tragedy is told. No mutilation, no gore; just an effacement—prompt and absolute—'there wasn't any.' It would be hard to ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... firm land and healthy motion this dream of a headlong gallop was born in him. The poem was pencilled on the cover of Bartoli's "De' Simboli trasportati al Morale", a favourite book and constant companion of his; and, in spite of perfect effacement as far as the sense goes, the pencil dints are still visible. The little poem 'Home Thoughts from the Sea' was written at the same time, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... or after, how she reached this mystic climax of effacement; she was only conscious, through her anguish, of that lift of the heart which made one of the saints declare that joy was the inmost core of sorrow. For it was indeed a kind of joy she felt, if old names must serve for such new meanings; a surge of liberating faith in life, the old ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... man who looked less like a detective than a commercial traveller selling St. Peter's Oil or some other cheerful concoction, with manners as gentle and a voice as soft as a spring zephyr, who always took off his hat when he came into a business office, seemingly bashful to the point of self-effacement, was the one who snatched Charles F. Dodge from the borders of Mexico and held him in an iron grip when every influence upon which Hummel could call for aid, from crooked police officials, corrupt judges and a gang of cutthroats ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... him to have his inferiors in rank assert themselves. That accounted, no doubt, for the meek self-effacement of the Turks who had come with him. Peter Measel did not appear to mind being rebuked. He crossed to the other side of the room, and proceeded to look the gipsies over with the air ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the rumble of the engine was heard up and down the fields from early morning until dark. From his wife he held aloof, speaking with strained courtesy when speech was necessary. She, in turn, schooled for years in self-effacement, hid her sorrow in her heart, and went about her work with a resignation which he mistook for cheerfulness, and which confirmed him in his opinion that she knew more of Beulah's intentions than she had cared to admit. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... stiffened and narrowed intellectually; while for all sinners and sufferers, within the lines of sympathy she gradually traced out for herself, she would have willingly given her body to be burned, so strong was the Franciscan thirst in her for the self-effacement and self-sacrifice that belong to the Christian ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... looked at him steadily, her chin in the air, a world of scorn in her face. "Go on sweating beneath the useless load! Go on building your structure of artificiality that ends centuries from now in nothingness! Here's happiness to you in your empty life of self-effacement, with your machine prompted acts, years considered!" Without looking at him, one hand made scornful motion of dismissal. "Good-bye, ghost of man; I ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... opponents and adherents of monarchy. As if to insure the disasters of such an antagonism, the Assembly, which numbered among its members every man in France of ripe political experience, committed the incredible folly of self-effacement, voting that not one of its members should be eligible to the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lacking in the Irishwoman's mental outfit, namely, the capacity even to conceive that ideal of impersonal self-effacement, which, as Paul said truthfully, is the everywhere accepted standard for servants. Her loquacity was a never-ending joke to Madeleine Lowder and her husband, who were exulting in a couple of deft, silent, expensive Japanese "boys" and who, since Madeleine frankly ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... don't. Mr. McCabe may recognize an example of what I mean in the gradual discrediting in society of the ancient European waltz or dance with partners, and the substitution of that horrible and degrading oriental interlude which is known as skirt-dancing. That is the whole essence of decadence, the effacement of five people who do a thing for fun by one person who does it for money. Now it follows, therefore, that when Mr. McCabe says that the ballets of the Alhambra and my articles "have their place in life," it ought to be pointed ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... minutes from the instant of their encounter, they stood outside Troyon's back door, facing a cramped, malodorous alley-way—a dark and noisome souvenir of that wild mediaeval Paris whose effacement is an enduring monument to the fame of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... of this portrait, Bettina turned to its companion. Here she encountered a face and form which were truly all womanly, if by womanliness is meant abject submission and self-effacement. The poor little lady looked patiently hopeless, and her deprecating air seemed the last in the world calculated to hold its own against such a lord. That she had not done so—of her own full surrender of herself, in mind and soul and body—the picture seemed ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... the sting of Arthur's relapse to worldliness and folly lay in his own consciousness that it was partly his fault. He could not chide his brother when he felt that his own heart was absorbed in his neighbor's wife, and although he had rigidly adhered to his own crude ideas of self-effacement and loyalty to McGee, he had been again and again a visitor at his house. It was true that Mrs. McGee had made this easier by tacitly accepting his conditions of their acquaintanceship, by seeming more natural, by exhibiting a gayety, and at times even a certain gentleness and thoughtfulness ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... were born in a farmyard and as they were stepping timidly about the farmer said: "Them ducks can fly, they can fly miles, but they don't know it." "One reason why women do not vote," she said, "is the entire self-effacement of many, and another is the kindness of many men. These are lovely traits but they may be misapplied. Women sometimes efface themselves to an extent that is bad for their men as well as themselves, and men out of mistaken kindness shield their women from ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... to get on alone. Immediately get off on other side. Nearly upset the pretty girl. Polite self-effacement impossible when one is at the mercy of a mere machine. After a time manage better. And at last get started and ride alone for short distances. Always tumble off ignominiously just as I meet the pretty girl. Instructor urges me to break the record. ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... little inclination to perform this noble act of self-effacement. On no account would {115} he have a dictator imposed upon him to shape the fortunes of Greece according to his caprice, unfettered by "military advisers of limited perceptions." If Greece was to have a dictator, the King had said long ago, he would rather be that dictator; ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... further, that I consider these tender expressions of general regard out of place now, and that I deeply regret my share in them. Today at least, no friend of Oldendorf has any occasion to praise your chivalrous sentiments or your self-effacement. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the return of peace, it is of the utmost importance to inaugurate a just policy, which shall at once be put in motion, and which shall commend itself to those who come after us for its continuance. We must aim at nothing less than the complete effacement of the financial evils that necessarily followed a state of civil war. We must endeavor to apply the earliest remedy to the deranged state of the currency, and not shrink from devising a policy which, with-out being oppressive to the people, shall immediately ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... the eighth of November. That night, Lincoln with his Secretary was again in the War Office. The early returns showed that the whole North was turning to him in enormous majorities. He showed no exultation. When the Assistant Secretary of the Navy spoke sharply of the complete effacement politically of Henry Winter Davis against whom he had a grudge, Lincoln said, "You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I have too little of it; but I never thought it paid. A man has no time ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... like a father. If he hesitates a moment between his attention to his wife and the effacement of his happiness, what shall ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... opened, and a trio of Indians padded softly into the store with gaily-beaded, moccasined feet. Two elderly bucks and a young squaw. The latter flashed a shy, roguish grin at the white men, and then with the customary effacement of Indian women withdrew to the rear of the store. Squatting down, all huddled-up in her blanket, she peered at them with the incurious, but all-seeing stare of her tribe. George got an impression of beady black eyes and a brown, rounded, child-like ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... both sides stood ready to die for the decisions of their councils which they did not understand, there was underlying the whole question the political jealousy existing between the two: Byzantium, embittered by the effacement of its political jurisdiction in the West, exasperated at the overweening pretensions of Roman bishops; Rome, watching for opportunity to cajole or compel the Eastern Church to submit to her authority ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... taxi, and as Selwyn snapped the door he huddled in an opposite corner as if effacement were an obligation required by the situation in which he found himself. But he had never been in an automobile before, and his sense of awe soon yielded to eager anxiety to miss no thrill of the unexpected experience. His face ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... however cruelly he may be tortured, considers himself revenged on his tormentor by the bitterness of his own tongue. Supposing we withdraw from pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid sphere of self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-effacement: one is another person when one leaves these protracted and dangerous exercises in the art of self-mastery, one has one note of interrogation the more, and above all one has the will henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder, more wicked, and ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... an expensive nursing home, to insist later upon his meeting the bill. For all her awakened instinct of self, the fact of her still deciding to remain at Mrs Gowler's was a yet further sacrifice on the altar of the loved one. Perhaps this further self-effacement where her lover was concerned urgently moved her to stand no trifling in respect of others. Consequently, when about half-past ten Mrs Gowler opened the door, accompanied by her idiot son, Oscar, who looked more imbecile than ever in elaborate clothes, she ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the speech and action of the characters present, the pulse of the poem beats fainter and its forces begin to flag. In King John this difficulty was met and mastered, these double claims of the subject of the poem and the object of the poet were satisfied and harmonised, by the effacement of John and the substitution of Faulconbridge as the champion of the national cause and the protagonist of the dramatic action. Considering this play in its double aspect of tragedy and history, we might say that the English ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... other influences. It cannot be because there was a less spiritual life in the apostles than in the bards. We cannot compare Cuculain, the most complete ideal of Gaelic chivalry, with that supreme figure whose coming to the world was the effacement of whole pantheons of divinities, and yet it is true that since the thoughts of men were turned from the old ideals our literature has been filled with a less noble life. I think a due may be found in the withdrawal of thought from ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... a train from King's Cross at eleven. At half-past ten Tibby, with rare self-effacement, fell asleep, and Margaret was able to drive her aunt to ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Instead, he breathed out threatenings, and promised the fell destruction of the pale-faced interlopers. Even now, he told them, hundreds of his kinsmen were gathering upon the Ottawa and St. Lawrence for the final effacement of Quebec, and with hideous fury the baptized savage called down upon them the wrath of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the painter. His firm and yet sensitive mouth and his thick, well-arched brows gave an air of authority and power to his face, while the more subdued expression which was habitual to his brother marked the man whose whole life had been spent in one long exercise of deference and self-effacement. The dauphin, on the other hand, with a more regular face than his father, had none of that quick play of feature when excited, or that kingly serenity when composed, which had made a shrewd observer say that Louis, if he were not the ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... purpose of exciting interest in her own experiences of a remarkable voyage, but in the hope that it would arouse philanthropic endeavour to ameliorate the condition of American seamen. Throughout the volume there is a vein of deep, yet unobtrusive piety, and the reader is struck with her self-effacement, her courage, her reverent admiration for her young sailor husband, and her pride in his gallant ship and sturdy crew of native-born American seamen. In the Antarctic the young couple sailed many seas, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... intoxicating to those who are constantly—either by desire or the force of circumstances—unselfish. A faint flush swept into Brigit's face under the effect of an experience so novel. Their twofold consciousness had all the pathos of self-effacement, and all the thrill of satisfied egoism. Such instants cannot last, and they are shortest when one's habits of thought are antagonistic to such luxury. Brigit sighed deeply, and roused herself with a painful sense that the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... too much self-effacement!" he grinned. "I enjoyed the last occasion when you were my guest, so ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the embankment now grown scarcely discernible among the concealing grass and weeds, although the track itself had been built but recently. This railroad sought to efface itself, even as the land sought to aid in its effacement, as though neither believed that this was lawful spot for it. One might say it made a blot upon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... perceived that their amusements—also, which seems the last straw, their vices—can actually be enjoyed by the base mechanical sort, insomuch that, if this kind of thing goes on, there must in the end follow an effacement of all classes, and the peer will walk arm and arm with the blacksmith. But class distinctions die hard, and the working men are not yet all ready for the disciplined recreation which will help to break down the barriers, and we may not look for this millennium within the lifetime ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... imperious demands of the entirely efficient and clear-minded, a tolerance of imperfection. Thus for these efficient and clear-minded members there is always, in the church as in the family, a perpetual opportunity of humility, self-effacement, gentle acceptance; of exerting that love which must be joined to power and a sound mind if the full life of the Spirit is to be lived. In the realm of the supernatural this is a solid gain; though not a gain which we are very quick to appreciate in our vigorous ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She, therefore, hit out—to regret her indiscretion the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... conspicuous, that we do not always remember that it was as a scholar and a theologian that he acquired his chief reputation among his contemporaries. On his return from exile he found such engrossing occupation in the business of his see, that he took little part in politics for several years. His self-effacement strengthened the position of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... a child of his age, he preached its formula. While a passionate Jew at heart, he championed the cause of Russification, though not in the extreme form of spiritual self-effacement. The Odessa pogrom of 1871 staggered his impressionable soul. He was tossing about restlessly, seeking an outlet for his resentment, but everywhere he knocked his head against the barriers of censorship and ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... and after a freshening up and a change of raiment we joined the reunion, which was in full swing. The prospective husband and wife were enjoying their usual state of effacement, but I discovered them finally. I talked with the insurrecto and found him ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... hardly the typical lazy, effeminate, creature whose only interests in life were holidays and the society of such ladies as would receive him. On the contrary he was conscientious, retiring to a point of absolute self-effacement, and able to forget himself only in his one great passion: music. He was a Pole of the Chopinesque type: and it was in spite of himself that he gave his pupil, besides the regular studies, a very thorough grounding in the classical masters, taught him something of the spirit of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... is another side to the matter. A high price has been paid for this feat of manufacturing a portable literature: no less a price than the effacement from the books of the Bible of their whole literary structure. Where the literature is dramatic, there are (except in one book) no names of speakers nor divisions of speeches; there are no titles to essays or poems, ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... surroundings to the depressing exile of a factory-settlement. However much he blamed himself for exacting this sacrifice, it had been made so cheerfully that the consciousness of it never clouded his life with his mother; but her self-effacement made him the more alive to his own obligations, and having placed her in a difficult situation he had always been careful not to increase its difficulties by any imprudence in his conduct toward his employers. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... making himself excessively unpopular by the wide and sweeping variety of his censure. "We are confessedly a barbarian nation," fearlessly declared this unprejudiced person (who, although entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field of battle, with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home and encourage those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy to the task and the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing it), "and in order to achieve our purpose speedily it is necessary to resort to the methods ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... be! How could woman conceive so blindly? The child should be got with joy, should flower from a sublime moment of perfect union when the man and the woman were lifted out of themselves to some divine pinnacle of experience, of soul and body union and self-effacement. Then conception would be but the carrying over of their deep yearning, each for the other, the hunger of souls ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... that no officer should speak to her without being first addressed. The discipline of a man-of-war prevailed; everything went forward with stereotyped precision and formality; the officers were supposed to comport themselves with impassivity and self- effacement. Florence had no more need of being conscious of their presence than if they ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... France sustained at the hands of the invader and in civil war were soon repaired; but from the battle of Woerth down to the overthrow of the Commune France had been effaced as a European Power, and its effacement was turned to good account by two nations who were not its enemies. Russia, with the sanction of Europe, threw off the trammels which had been imposed upon it in the Black Sea by the Treaty of 1856. Italy gained possession of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... gradual effacement of things, seeing the lights of the farmhouses in the long plain start into existence, and then remain fixed, like gold beetles pinned on a blue curtain. The chill evening drew her to him, till they seemed one; and full of the intimate happiness ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... find that the inhabitants of this country, who had always been more or less dead, were wholly extirpated contemporaneously with the disastrous events which swept away the Galoots, the Pukes and the Smugwumps. The agency of their effacement was an endemic disorder known as yellow fever. The ravages of this frightful disease were of frequent recurrence, every point of the country being a center of infection; but in some seasons it was worse than in others. Once in every half ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... of the effacement of individual life. One sighs, remembering that it is even so, that life passes, sunrise after sunrise, moonlight upon moonlight, evening upon evening, and we like May-flies on the surface of a stream, no more than they for all our ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... wide interval between the grotesque effrontery that wears the Hellenic crown and the undeviatingly decorous self-effacement of the Dutch sovereign; and yet there is something of a common complexion runs through the whole range of establishments, all the way from the quasi-dynastic to the pseudo-dynastic. For reasons unavoidable and persistent, though not inscribed ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... precedent. Of Saturninus himself we do not know much more than that he was an eloquent speaker, and a resolute though not over-scrupulous man at a time when to be scrupulous was equivalent to self-martyrdom or self-effacement. [Sidenote: Glaucia.] In something of the same relation in which Camille Desmoulins stood to Danton, Caius Servilius Glaucia, a wit and favourite of the people, stood towards the sombre and imperious Saturninus, and both hoped to effect their ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore, as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually non-existent. This self-effacement in both directions had been quite in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair consideration of her deserts. She had set herself ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... dim object must have been a canoe, but its sudden effacement, and the loud cry for help, were mysteries too deep for immediate comprehension. He shouted with all the power of his voice full half a dozen times, ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... in December Chatham went to Bath for the sake of his health. In February, 1767, he had a severe attack of gout, and in March the disease began to affect his mental powers. For the next two years he was unable to take any part in politics. His effacement left the ministry without a head. Before his retirement a difference arose in the cabinet on the affairs of the East India Company. From a simple trading company it had been raised by the victories of Clive and his generals to the position of a territorial power. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... "lest Jad-ben-Otho, mistaking their intention, strike them dead." The effect of his words was immediate upon the men in the front rank of those who faced him, each seeming suddenly to acquire a new modesty that compelled him to self-effacement behind those directly in his rear—a modesty that became ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... first triumph, filling her role with a sort of enthusiasm, enjoying it with all her heart. And when the Contessa rose to sing, Bice followed her to the piano with an air as different as possible from the swift, noiseless self-effacement of her performance on previous occasions. She looked round upon the company with a sort of malicious triumph, a laugh on her lips as of some delightful mystification, some surprise of which she was in the secret. "Come and listen," she said to Jock, lightly touching him on the ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... active knees there was a look of feebleness. Seen from the front they could readily be differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened down his cheeks till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his face and manner a sort of formal, though discontented, effacement, as of an individualist who has all his life been part of a system, from which he has issued at last, unconscious indeed of his loss, but with a vague sense of injury. He had never married, feeling it to be comparatively useless, owing to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... given up the violin,[20] but finding some of the school taking to the strings, he took it up again by way of encouraging them to persevere in what he deemed to be so good a thing for his boys. And he quietly inculcated a lesson in self-effacement too, for albeit he had begun the violin very long before our time, he invariably took second fiddle. He had no high opinion of his own performances. Answering the Liverpool anti-Popery spouter's summons to battle, he relied rather on his friends' estimate of his powers than upon his ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... passage should be told, for it had importance in the history of the Convention; and also it conveys an idea of the limits to which Redmond carried self-effacement. It is important because it acted on Ulster like a red rag shown to a bull. Obviously, if this were the Nationalist view, then the Home Rule Act could not be said to give self-government—for under its system of contract finance Ireland certainly had not control ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year's pension as a solatium for his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the centre of that feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in the mating season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a greater readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the attributes of romance. In Lily's set this conduct implied a sympathetic comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in her esteem as she saw ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... motives are challenged or misunderstood, if only for our children's sake. But even that will not long be necessary, for the vindication of our principles will be made manifest in the working out of the problems with which the republic has to grapple. If, however, the effacement of state lines and the complete centralization of the government shall prove to be the wisdom of the future, the poetry of life will still find its home in the old order, and those who loved their State best will live longest ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Master,—Whereas the Great War for the liberties of Europe involves sacrifices from all, and the rise in prices must cause considerable difficulties, hitherto endured with noble self-effacement, to house-masters, We, the undersigned, feel that a corresponding sacrifice on our part is necessary, and respectfully pray that we may be permitted to give up two weeks of the Easter term, thus allowing ourselves more time for war-work in our respective homes and relieving our house-masters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... extravagance of Hinduism is more serious. It is kept in check by the general conviction that asceticism, or at least temperance, charity and self-effacement are the indispensable outward signs of religion, but still among the great religions of the world there is none which countenances so many hysterical, immoral and cruel rites. A literary example will ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... to the point of self-effacement, instantly hushed all discontent and, before it, even the ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... his lip. His dulled realization of what Yale had been to him was quickened by this tormenting comrade of the brave days of old, but he could not be shaken from his attitude of morbid self-effacement. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... as much forgotten as many other great things,—like the Jesuits, the Buccaneers, the Abbes, and the Farmers-General,—had acquired an irresistible good-humor, a kindly ease, a laisser-aller devoid of egotism, the self-effacement of Jupiter with Alcmene, of the king intending to be duped, who casts his thunderbolts to the devil, wants his Olympus full of follies, little suppers, feminine profusions—but with Juno out of the way, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... to spend the night at his brother's ranch, it being the next mess-box between here and nowhere. They admitted that his brother's ranch was their next stopping-place, and Leander went through perfect contortions of apology and self-effacement before he could bring himself to ask them to do him a favor. It would have taken a very stern order of womankind to refuse anything so abject, and they blindly ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... in him deepened daily, so wonderful seemed her purposefulness, her energy, her faith in herself. And though, beside these qualities of hers, his diffidence compelled him to self-effacement, he yet seemed to draw something from ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the propitious instant when the tapping of the pipe-men's hammers should drown the noise of a dash for effacement. When it came, he flung himself backward, whipped Nan over his head and out of the line of sight as if she had been feather-light, and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... that deserve this corrective especially are insubordination, sulkiness and sullenness; it is good to stir up the lazy; it is necessary to instil in the child's mind a saving sense of its own inferiority and to inculcate lessons of humility, self-effacement and self-denial. It should scourge dishonesty and lying. The bear licks its cub into shape; let the parent go to the bear, inquire of its ways and be wise. His children will then have a moral shape and a form of character ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... "Nature will have her way about this old world and its destiny. Self-development is the first law of life, not self-effacement." ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... boot, they had no sympathy with their masters, nor their ways—vide the rebound, immediately after Oliver Cromwell's death, and the return to the old state of things, which has never altered since, except as a matter of fashion. Yet, even then, there were protests against this effacement of Christ-tide, and many have been handed down to us, differing naturally very much in style. One really amusing one has the merit of being short: and when the reader of this book has perused it, I believe he will thank me for having reproduced ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... sequence of the soul's achievements here Being, as I find much reason to conceive, Intended to be viewed eventually. As a great whole, not analyzed to parts, But each part having reference to all— How shall a certain part, pronounced complete, Endure effacement by another part? 80 Was the thing done?—then, what's to do again? See, in the chequered pavement opposite, Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb, And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid— He did ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... realization, and were to be treated, in short, as if they did not know how to manage their own affairs. Mr. Lay's dreams were suddenly dispelled, and his philanthropic schemes fell to the ground. Neither Prince Kung nor his colleagues had any intention to pave the way for their own effacement. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... later (though before the development of the healing faculty) achieved distinction in the spiritualistic world. (He was an extraordinarily favoured medium, only he had had to stop for reasons of which Mrs. Tarrant possessed her version.) Even in a society much occupied with the effacement of prejudice there had been certain dim presumptions against this versatile being, who naturally had not wanted arts to ingratiate himself with Miss Greenstreet, her eyes, like his own, being fixed exclusively on the future. The young couple ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... frequent elections, but in 1854 conditions were peculiar. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had outraged the North and indicated that a new party must be formed to resist the extension of slavery. In the disorganization of the Democratic party, and the effacement of the Whig, nowhere may the new movement so well be traced as in the news and editorial columns of the newspapers, and in the speeches of the Northern leaders, many of these indeed being printed nowhere else than in the press. What journals and ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... very high chair, he in a low one, so that her eyes were above his. The professor was blent with the shadows of some corner, in silent self-effacement, with a note-book in ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... "conditions" into his own sophomore class. Then was there the extraordinary spectacle of a college boy— quiet, serious, toiling—making the slow way toward the humanities under charge of murder and awaiting trial for his life. And that course Jason Hawn followed with a dignity, reticence, and self- effacement that won the steadily increasing respect of every student and teacher within the college walls. A belief in his innocence became wide-spread, and that coming trial began to be regarded in time as a trial of the good name of the college itself. A change of venue had been obtained ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... he went by launch into Naples in the interests of his banking, and did not return for luncheon; and she had long uninterrupted hours for the enjoyment of her pleasant domain. Altogether, his demands upon her were reasonable to the point of self- effacement. He laughed a great deal; this annoyed her youthful gravity and she remonstrated sharply more than once, but he only leaned back and laughed harder. Then she would either grow coldly disdainful or leave the room, followed by the echo of his merriment. There was something impervious, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... though secretly delighted at this evidence of something like conversion, eyed Jabe doubtfully. He was not sure of the latter's capacity for the tireless patience and long self-effacement necessary for such ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... twist. The hand should meanwhile be introduced into the womb and the snared limbs seized and pressed against its walls so as to secure the rotation of the uterus along with the body of the fetus. The relaxation of the constriction and the effacement of the spiral folds will show when success has been gained, and the different members at one end of the body should then be brought up so as to ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... this hugely; the real Edward Bok did not. The one was bottled up in the other. It was a case of absolute self-effacement. The man behind the editor knew that if he followed his own personal tastes and expressed them in his magazine, a limited audience would be his instead of the enormous clientele that he was now reaching. It was the man behind the editor who had sought expression in the idea of Country Life, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... you abusing God, and praising With mock effacement And false abasement Your own heart's kindness, deeming it amazing That you should do this duty for my sake, Which is His bidding, Nor blame for ridding Himself of me, your neighbour, he who spake hard words, Hard words and drove me forth all ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... Tom with the four-in-hand," said Franco. And then, with a readiness for self-effacement that was surely less British than the language in which it found expression, "Would you care to take the ribbons, Count?" he asked. And when Anthony had declined, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Squalor, depravity, brutalisation, death—moral, mental and physical deformity were the rewards which the American public learned the fighting man gained in the trenches. They heard very little of the capacity for heroism, the eagerness for sacrifice, the gallant self-effacement which having honor for a companion taught. And yet, despite this frantic portrayal of terror, America decided for war. Her National Guard and Volunteers rolled up in millions, clamouring to cross the three thousand miles of water that they might place their lives in jeopardy. They were ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... over Catholic interests; therefore, according as his temporal power diminishes his spiritual power expands, to such an extent that, in the end, after three-quarters of a century, just at the moment when the former is to fall to the ground the latter is to rise above the clouds; through the effacement of his human character his superhuman character becomes declared; the more the sovereign prince disappears, the more does the sovereign pontiff assert himself. The clergy, despoiled like him of its ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The "believer" does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-effacement, of self-estrangement.... When one reflects how necessary it is to the great majority that there be regulations to restrain them from ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... she continued, "that woman's supreme happiness is to be gained by self-effacement. I suppose her custom is with you, as it formerly was here, to renounce her own ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... graves of our soldiers at Santiago shall be permanently marked. The present marking will last but a short time, and before its effacement occurs suitable and permanent ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... worldly indulgence and of unreasoning severity of life, Hildebrand ever pursued a middle course, for whilst on the one hand he eschewed the vanities of life around him, on the other he never sank into the self-effacement of a hermit. His acknowledged purity and zeal soon won for him from the laity a respect mingled with awe, whilst his natural talents, his indomitable will, and his genuine piety in course of time brought all Churchmen who had any regard for their holy office to ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... brightness, now lowering by an imperceptible shade a tone of colour, until she had become what I saw her, still the pink and white beauty, but with rose all deadened into white, like a sick pink pearl. Her pink and white character had also suffered the effacement of the years. She was as dainty and as negative as a piece of Dresden China. She loved to dress in lilac and old lace: and that is how I painted her, regarding her as a bit of exquisite decoration to be treated flat like a panel of Puvis ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... wildernesses. Within a few centuries the greater birds, the Dinornis and Epiornis, as well as the interesting Dodo, have vanished from the southern isles which they inhabited. In the century to come we can foresee that this process of effacement of the ancient life will ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... time I worshipped Aunt Emmy, who represented in my somewhat colourless orphaned existence the beautiful and romantic side of life. Aunt Emmy looked romantic, and the contrast between her refined, gentle self-effacement and the commonplace egotism of her two men was of the glaring nature which appeals to a young ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... he was curiously regardless of fame. He gave ungrudgingly of his knowledge to all who claimed his help and direction, and he trained many other men to great public service. In Mr. Alfred Lyttelton's happy phrase, he possessed "rare self-effacement." There are many instances in his early career of this habit of self-effacement, and the habit increased with years. Remonstrance met with the reply: "What does it matter who gets the credit so long as the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... depressingly low. But in a city where more or less strikingly pretty women, bent upon being seen, are as plentiful as the blackberries of Kentucky's July—in New York no one would have given her a second look, this quiet young woman screened in an atmosphere of self-effacement. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... a pruning hook. With this to leaven them, the rough habiliments were most becoming. In a word, they supplied the very setting which manhood should have; and since Anthony, sitting there at his meat, was the personification of virility, they served, as all true settings should, by self-effacement to magnify their treasure. The ex-officer might have stepped out ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... is not thus; Time mocks at pause, In march continual onward goes; Th' unfailing progress of his laws, No respite nor effacement knows; This year is but the force of last, Not something new to mortal ken; Heredity's enchainment vast Enthrals ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... African Empire when we surrendered the Transvaal to the Boers, and it is clear that if our troops can be withdrawn from Natal and all responsibility for the safety of that colony put an end to, the triumph of self-effacement will be still more complete. But there is another and more immediate reason for Lord Kimberley's generous offer. He knows, no one better, that the policy pursued in South Africa, both as regards the Transvaal and Zululand, must produce its legitimate ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... individual, let all bear in mind this alarming fact, that eccentricity of thought, habit, or behaviour may result, as in the case of this unfortunate ellipse, which once presented such fair and promising proportions to the student's admiring gaze, in the 'sinister effacement of a man,' or the gradual absorption of a State into an uninteresting thing 'which lies evenly ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... assure myself of the plight from your own lips, ungenerous though it was at the moment. It has since been my endeavour to show that I regretted my impulsive persecution, and I trust that my long forbearance and self-effacement have proved to ye that your comfort and happiness are the first object ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... on her mind; a thing not gathered from Gridley or from any one else in particular, but which seemed to take shape of itself. The effect of setting it in speech asked for a complete effacement of Lidgerwood the superintendent, and that was rather difficult. But ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... have hoped to escape notice by a policy of judicious self-effacement, but unhappily his long, blank, uninterested face was held by his companions to bear an implied reproach; and being delicately sensitive on this point, they kicked his legs viciously, which made him extremely glad when dinnertime came, although he felt ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Chantelle, as Darrow soon perceived, had the same mild formidableness as the late Mr. Leath: a sort of insistent self-effacement before which every one about her gave way. It was perhaps the shadow of this lady's presence—pervasive even during her actual brief eclipses—that subdued and silenced Mrs. Leath. The latter was, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... ruled out of court at once. Scientific knowledge, keen observation, or intuitive power of discrimination go far. To enlist our curiosity or enthusiasm or to excite our wonder are even stronger recommendations. Charm of personal manner, power of will, anthropological interest, self-effacement in view of some great objects—all these qualities have made travel-books live. One knows pretty nearly the books that one is prepared to re-read in this department of literature. Marco Polo, Herodotus, a few sections in Hakluyt, Dampier and Defoe, the early ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... praise him, as the sacrifice he was undergoing would be out of proportion to the good attained by it, and the interests of others to which he was postponing his own interests would not be so distinctly greater as to warrant the act of self-effacement. But now let us suppose that, in attending to the interests of the trust, he is neglecting the interests of others who have a claim upon him, or impairing his own efficiency as a public servant or a professional ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... was working out his destiny. "How can I best help?" she asked herself, which showed that the spirit aroused in her that afternoon had not in reality died. And her intellect relentlessly pointed out to her that her only aid would come from her self-effacement, her standing one side. When the great ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... quest of my horse, and was informed that he left before dawn, not even waiting for his customary cup of coffee. With the kindness of a sister, the girl wife urged me to take their bed; but I assured her that comfort was the least of my concerns, complete effacement being my consuming thought. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... or republicanism means, socialism cannot mean less than the economic solution of regality and aristocracy in Europe, and in Italy as elsewhere. It does not mean the old-fashioned revolution; it means simply the effacement of all social differences by equal industrial obligations. So far as the Socialists can characterize it, therefore, the actual municipal government of Rome is as antimonarchical as it is antipapal. But the syndic ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... models and give it a complexion far removed, socially as well as politically, from Republican simplicity, coupled with a disposition to aggress upon and dictate to the individual states of the Union, to their nullification and practical effacement. ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... belonged. In his simple and untutored heart there was no desire for vengeance, and in his brave black hands he bore nothing but gifts to the South—gifts of golden leisure, untold wealth, baronial pleasure and splendor, infinite service, and withal, a phenomenal effacement of himself. Economically weak, yet singularly favored by a fortuitous combination of circumstances, slave labor flourished and expanded until at length it came into rough contact and rivalry with modern industrialism as it leaped into life under the magical influence ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... briefly as might be, of that morning's great experience; of Hugh's return, and noble self-effacement; of the clear light she had received, and the decision to which she had come; and of how she was now going forward, with a free heart, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... subsequent career proves that this reason was not imperative. Saga, after a most useful reign of thirteen years, stepped down frankly in favour of his younger brother. There is no valid reason to endorse the view of some historians that these acts of self-effacement were inspired by an indolent distaste for the cares of kingship. Neither Heijo nor Saga shrank from duty in any form. During his brief tenure of power the former unflinchingly effected reforms of the most distasteful kind, as the dismissal of superfluous officials and the curtailing of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to what my wife had told me of this young lady's behavior when she was with her mother, her submissiveness, her entire self-effacement, up to a certain point, I did not know quite what to make of her present independence, not to say freedom. I thought she might perhaps have been kept so strictly in the background, with young men, that she was rather disposed to make the most of any chance at them which offered. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... good and real reasons in the nature of things. To leave such habits attached to false opinions is to lessen the weight of these natural or spontaneous reasons, and so to do more harm in the long run than effacement of them seems for a time to do good. Most excellences in human character have a spontaneous root in our nature. Moreover if they had not, and where they have not, there is always a valid and real external defence for them. The unreal defence must be weaker than the real one, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... we know they had not approached very near. But here was one, timid enough in health, who was positively reckless under circumstances that made most people meek. He had proposed to her arrayed in a blue flannel nightingale, and Priscilla felt that headlong self-effacement could go no further. "He must have a great soul," she said to herself over and over again during the drive home, "a great, great soul." And it seemed of little use wiping her tears away, so many fresh ones immediately ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... veiled hint that he might be the next candidate for Mayor, on a reform ticket—he sat very still for a moment or two, while his hand shook slightly. No backward step, now! His head was in the noose. He wondered, with a fresh burst of self-effacement, what people would say about it. One thing—they wouldn't accuse him of the truth. Nobody but Mr. Mix himself knew the whole truth—unless perhaps it were Henry Devereux. Henry had developed a knowing eye. But Henry didn't count—Henry was beaten already. ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... verge of tears as she was, she could not forbear smiling a little at this proclamation of complete self-effacement. "I fear I must pay some attention to you," she said, "if I am to confide in you and—and perhaps ask your help, your advice, afterwards. I have reached a point when I must ask some one's advice; I ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... calling him Peter, not Simon, reinstates him in his official position by anticipation, even though in the subsequent full restoration scene by the lake he is thrice called Simon, before the complete effacement of the triple denial ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... her, one of the bravest, saddest, noblest of women. Of course Welby had shared in the immense effort of the family to comfort and console her. They had been so eager to accept his help; he had given it with such tact and self-effacement; and now, meanly, they must help Eugenie to dismiss him! For it was becoming too big a thing, this devotion of his, both in Eugenie's life and also in the eyes of the world. Lord Findon must needs suppose—he did not choose ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... intelligent manner during many successive lives, until the habit has acquired the highest perfection which the circumstances admitted; and, finally, so deeply impressed upon the memory as to survive that effacement of minor impressions which generally takes place in every fresh life-wave ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... sun. The constellations would thus twinkle on as before, but a wonderful change would come over the planets. Were the sun to be obscured, the planets would also disappear from view. The midnight sky would thus experience the effacement of the planets one by one, while the stars would remain unaltered. It may seem difficult to realise how the brilliancy of Venus or the lustre of Jupiter have their origin solely in the beams which fall upon these bodies from the distant sun. The ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... such doubtfully ornamental or useful task, as the specimen which he now carried. Truth to say, he had scarcely noticed Annie Eustace at all. She had produced the effect of shrinking from observation under some subtle shadow of self-effacement. She was in reality a very rose of a girl, loving and sweet, and withal wonderfully endowed; but this human rose, dwelt always for Karl von Rosen, in the densest of bowers through which her beauty and fragrance of character could not penetrate ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... confessed that he was not exceedingly optimistic about that best. And further, he was not exceedingly optimistic about the young man. He could imagine himself, in a like situation, consigning Nick and his conditions to the nether regions; certainly not submitting meekly to a year's effacement of his personality for the sake of money. Such ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... save perhaps the final Pieta, the ideal of tone-harmony towards which the master in his late time had been steadily tending. Richness and brilliancy of local colour are subordinated, and this time up to the point of effacement, to this luminous monotone, so mysteriously effective in the hands of a master such as Titian. In the solemn twilight which descends from the heavens, just faintly flushed with rose, an amorous shepherd, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... enjoined to die; at the beginning in the preparation room and at the end at the final initiation into the inmost chamber. The second death corresponds to the perfection of the grand mastery. It signifies the complete sacrifice of his personality, the renunciation of every personal desire. It is the effacement of that radical egotism that caused the fall of Adam, in that he dragged down spirituality into corporeality. The narrow pusillanimous ego melts into nothing before the high impersonal self, symbolized by Hiram. The mythical sins of the eternal universal human Adam are thus expatiated. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... most desired to obtain embonpoint; men admired fat women and women sought to become fat. "The idea of a very fat woman," Sonnini adds, "is nearly always accompanied in Europe by that of softness of flesh, effacement of form, and defect of elasticity in the outlines. It would be a mistake thus to represent the women of Turkey in general, where all seek to become fat. It is certain that the women of the East, more favored by Nature, preserve longer than others the firmness of the flesh, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Italians have a proverb, "Six Greeks, seven captains," which in a pithy way expresses the reason why the Greeks have never been able to succeed in any national movement—the necessary subordination and self-effacement needed for civic or military solidity are, and always have been absolutely out of the character of the people. Courage they had, but discipline they never would submit to, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... to by his having fancied that his wife's features lacked in its complete form the expression which he had been accustomed to associate with the faces of those whose spirits have fled for ever. The effacement of life was not so marked but that, entering uninformed, he might have supposed her sleeping. Her complexion was that seen in the numerous faded portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds; it was pallid in comparison with life, but there was visible on a close inspection the remnant of what had once been ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy |
