"Abasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Christians. [Footnote: These ascetics were here before Christianity (see Philo Judaeus); in fact, there is not a single element in the new faith which had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of conduct still survived. It received a further rebuff at the hands of men like Benedict, who set up sounder ideals ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... may be considered in reference to mendicancy. The first is on the part of the act itself of begging, which has a certain abasement attaching to it; since of all men those would seem most abased who are not only poor, but are so needy that they have to receive their meat from others. In this way some deserve praise for begging out of humility, just as they abase themselves in other ways, as being the most efficacious remedy ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... sort. Nan knew it, too. He was sure she had not ventured it for the protection of Tira. No one had ever told Nan about the man with the devil in him who "looked up kinder droll." But she could see the tide of human emotion had better be turned to the glorification of God than to the abasement of man. Raven, in the swell of it, put his lips to ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... that turn the human heart To vanity, which should collect itself In penitence; for a lewd, vicious life, Want and abasement ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... reply, for the beating irked her; but sat down, with her arms round her knees and bowing her head, fell a-musing on her case. Then she bethought her of her former ease and affluence and her present abasement, and called to mind her brother and his sickness and forlorn condition and how they were both strangers in a foreign land; whereat the tears coursed down her cheeks and she wept silently and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather than to anything else. She saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in his character; she ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Peninsula. Yet, in that case, the want of unity amongst so many subdivisions that were independent states, might be pleaded as an excuse. Pitiable weakness there was in both cases; and "to be weak is to be miserable;" but degradation by degradation, universal abasement of the national energies, as an effect through wilful abasement as a cause; this miserable spectacle has been exhibited in mellow maturity by no Christian nations but those of Spain and Portugal. Both have degenerated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... between the height Of hope and deep abasement, He caught distressing colds at night, By watching 'neath her casement: He did what I have done, I know, And you, I do not doubt it,— Instead of bottling up his woe, He bored his ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... lawyer; and, to this end, a kindly Uncle Contarine equipped him with fifty pounds for preliminary studies. But on his way to London he was decoyed into gambling, lost every farthing, and came home once more in bitter self-abasement. Having now essayed both divinity and law, his next attempt was physic; and, in 1752, fitted out afresh by his long-suffering uncle, he started for, and succeeded in reaching, Edinburgh. Here more memories survive of his social qualities than of his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and found that his dignity, which procured him no regard from the Spanish soldiers, did but draw on him the insolent mockery of the German, who, being generally attached to the Lutheran principles, were pleased to gratify their animosity by the abasement of the sovereign pontiff. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... stretching out a kindly hand, appears to offer a hearty welcome; the oak that starts backward in astonishment at any familiarity advanced by a passing stranger. The oak that assumes an attitude of pride and self-importance; the oak that approaches a superior neighbour with an air of humility and abasement, listening subserviently to his commands. The shrinking oak in dread of an enemy, and the oak prepared to offer a stout resistance. The hopeful oak in the prime of life, and the oak that totters in desolate and crabbed old age. The oak ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... his eye, glancing round the amphitheatre, betrayed so much of disdain and scorn, that whoever encountered it felt his breath suddenly arrested, and his emotions frozen into one sensation of abasement ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... note that he had written. When dismembered words and phrases from that note came to his mind on the play-ground, the quaver of terror that rose in Piggy's whoop was not dissembled. Sometimes fear froze his vitals, then a flush of self-abasement burned him with its flames. And all the time he knew that the Pratt girl had that note. He almost hoped that an earthquake would swallow her with it before she could deliver it. When Piggy came straggling in, hot, sweaty, and puffing, just ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... place, and this inn, humble though it might be, was not without a copy of this great Bible of society. This Miss Plympton procured, and at once set herself to the study of its pages. It was not without a feeling of self-abasement that she did this, for she prided herself upon her extensive knowledge of the aristocracy, but here she was deplorably ignorant. She comforted herself, however, by the thought that her ignorance was the fault of Sir Lionel, who had lived ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Imperial crown at the hands of the kings, princes, and other hereditary rulers of the various German States. Bismarck was graciously pleased to bestow unity and internal peace—a Prussian peace—upon Germany on condition of its abasement before the Prussian corporal's stick and police-truncheon. Such was the united Germany of Bismarck. Germany meant for Bismarck and his followers Prussia, and Prussia meant their own Junker and military caste, under the titular headship ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... What joy I took in the thought that, though he knew it not, nor could come to know it, I Lazzaro Biancomonte, whom he had abused and whose spirit he had broken—was become a tool to expedite the work of abasement and destruction that was ripening for him. And realizing all this, that letter I vowed to Heaven I would carry, suffering no obstacle to daunt me, suffering nothing to turn ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... upon those who are guilty of it, or even accessory to it. The oppressor is dragged down by the victim of his tyranny. The eternal justice makes the balance even; and as the sufferer by unjust laws is lifted above his physical abasement by spiritual compensations and that nearness to God which only suffering is capable of, in like measure are the material advantages of the wrong-doer counterpoised by a moral impoverishment. Our duty is not to punish, but to repair; and the cure must work both ways, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... charged that the opponents of the bill, were "taking a course for the abasement, depreciation and disuse of silver. The supporters of the bill favor ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... get there as quickly as he could, to reach the white man's nadir of abasement and gather the promise of that soothing indifference which comes with the final disintegration of the fibres of conscience. He had an ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... pernicious and unheard-of practices, and not only so, but that he who cannot but do right should suffer the stain of suspected guilt to be, as it were, rubbed on and soaked in by many sore and amazing circumstances. And it is a matter of soul-abasement to all that are in the bond of God's holy covenant in this place, that Satan's seat should be amongst them, where he attempts to set up his kingdom in opposition to Christ's kingdom, and to take some of the visible subjects of our Lord Jesus, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... dog-like mouth that twitched occasionally, and from his little eyes there glinted a horrible intelligence. Before this man the soul of the Thin Woman grovelled. She felt herself crawling to him. The last terrible abasement of which humanity is capable came upon her: a fascination which would have drawn her to him in screaming adoration. Hardly could she look away from him, but her arms were about the children, and love, mightiest of the powers, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... Methodist experience in William's and my early days in the itinerancy. No matter how young or old or respectable they might be, those received into membership were expected to show signs of awful conviction for sin, to repent definitely—preferably in solemn abasement at the church altar—and to experience a sky-blue conversion. There were no such things as we see now—boys and girls simply graduating into church membership from the Sunday-school senior or junior class. I am not saying it is wrong, you understand; on the contrary, it would ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... have bewailed their error in secret,—to them I appeal to imagine the anguish of self-reproach, the bitterness of humiliation, which stung him in those few moments after his first dishonour. It is the lofty tower that falls with the heaviest crash; it is the stately soul that suffers the deepest abasement; it is the white scutcheon on which the dark stain seems ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... said to his friend Hephaestion, that "the business of eating and drinking compelled him to remember, and with a sense of abasement, his mortal nature, although he was the son ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... year 1900, America had sent forth one word of official cheer to the States of South Africa, the act would have been an act of self- abasement that would have invited the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... occurred from my mind, but as soon as I felt able, I sat down, with the whole matter before me, as it were, and deliberately looked it in the face. I think I never felt more inane in my life than when I remembered my folly, as I now regarded it. All that saved me from utter self-abasement was the fact that it had occurred at a time when I was at such a low ebb physically, by reason of illness. I determined to try to forget it, as speedily as possible. But, however keenly I felt the humiliation and folly of my emotion upon that strange night, ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... approvingly. Brother Archangias's outrageous violence and La Teuse's loquacious tyranny were like castigation with thongs, which it often rejoiced him to find lashing his shoulders. He took a pious delight in sinking into abasement beneath their coarse speech. He seemed to see the peace of heaven behind contempt of the world and degradation of his whole being. It was delicious to inflict mortification upon his body, to drag his susceptible nature ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... ardent to follow this peaceful walk, often throws itself immediately on the present, on active life, and strives to transform the shapeless matter of the moral world. The misfortune of his brothers, of the whole species, appeals loudly to the heart of the man of feeling; their abasement appeals still louder; enthusiasm is inflamed, and in souls endowed with energy the burning desire aspires impatiently to action and facts. But has this innovator examined himself to see if these disorders ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... cannot confine it? It soars even now on the wings of yearning and devotion far above all the circles of the stars: nothing checks its flight, save that earthly power which, when sin entered, pounced upon it and enslaved it. This however we can and ought to subdue, by prayer, by self-abasement before the Lord, by confessing our vast guilt, and by boundless gratitude to him for his unfathomable love; and then we see and hear the things that are curtained from us by space and time; we are here and there; the future comes forward and, like the past, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... humble adoration, that, indeed, he could not be happy under it. If either was to serve the other, it was he; he asked nothing better than to put his hands under her feet. But he could neither coax her nor laugh her out of her absorption: she had the will to self-abasement; and she remained unsatisfied, waiting for the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... doctor's daughter were comparative and their range limited. All she had to measure by was herself. Her imagination in trying to compass such a situation with Susan Gillespie as the heroine, could picture nothing as her portion but complete abasement and, of course, a confession to her father. And how dreadful that would have been! She could feel humiliation stealing on her at the thought of the doctor's frowning displeasure. But Lucy had evidently told no one. Why had she ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... reached those cheerful depths where there is no social or artistic status to maintain; so low as to be expected to do, or attempt to do, whatever might be asked of them, even though failure plunged them, if possible, in deeper depths of abasement. There was nothing beneath them except the Artichokes; and it was seldom, very seldom, an Artichoke ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... in his isolation, like Marsa in her solitude; and he did not consider himself ridiculously absurd or foolishly romantic, when he remembered that his countrymen, the Hungarians, were the only people, perhaps, who, in the abasement of all Europe before the brutality of triumph and omnipotent pessimism, had preserved their traditions of idealism, chivalry, and faith in the old honor; the Hungarian nationality was also the only one which had conquered its conquerors by its virtues, its persistence ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... itself is but a painful illusion, and that the sovereign remedy and end of all evils is non-existence. Its mythology is often as revolting as the rigidity of its caste laws, which condemn millions of human beings to such social abasement that their very touch—the very shadow thrown by their body—is held to pollute the privileged mortals who are born into the higher castes. Nevertheless, Hinduism has for more than thirty centuries responded to the social and religious aspirations of a considerable fraction of the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... in her voice that warned Miss Blake not to pursue the subject. Nan could humble herself to apologize, but to follow the abasement up by shedding tears on it was too much for her dignity, and she fought ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... mischiefs of which it is fitting that he in his degree should do his best to repair, by means however violent. Revenge is the mainspring of his conduct; but he ennobles it in his own eyes, by giving it the colour of a disinterested concern for the maintenance of justice,—the abasement of vice from its high places, and the exaltation of suffering virtue. Single against the universe, to appeal to the primary law of the stronger, to 'grasp the scales of Providence in a mortal's hand,' is frantic ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Francis Trent, with his broken-down, cringing, crafty look, thus sueing for a sovereign. For he had the air of a ruined gentleman, not of an ordinary beggar, and the signs of refinement in his face and bearing made his state of abasement and destitution more apparent. But Oliver was not touched by any such sentimental considerations. He looked at first as if he were about to refuse his brother's request; but policy dictated another course. He must not drive to desperation the man ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Britain from the proud elevation on which it had been placed by the talents and enterprise of her former warriors and statesmen. No longer dreaded by her enemies, her servants were fast losing the confidence of self-respect. In this mortifying abasement, the colonists, though innocent of her imbecility, and too humble to be the agents of her blunders, were but the natural participators. They had recently seen a chosen army from that country, which, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... extent, that small proprietors, having no means of defence against the strong, were compelled to surrender their allodial title for a feudal one, and do homage to the neighboring lord for the sake of protection. And to such an extent did the abasement of allodial privileges prevail, that it came at length to be recognized as a principle that the feudal arrangement was the only legitimate one; whereupon allodial lands were seized with impunity, and appropriated by the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for nothing more; yet at the end, before life left him, one strange last change came over him. Both his rough passion and the terrible abasement of defeat seemed to leave him, and his face became again the face of a well-bred, self-controlled man. There was a helpless effort at a shrug of his shoulders, a scornful slight smile on his lips, and a look of recognition, almost of friendliness, ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... while equally fervent, does not give one the same idea of self-abasement in the sight of the Almighty. It would be unfair to compare him to that other personage of the parable, namely, the Pharisee, for the latter was obviously lacking in sincerity; but at the same time, William ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... carry her to the taxicab, to his abasement he felt her hands press him away. He thought she had not yet recovered, that she believed herself still in the grasp of the madman. He set her on her feet and looked ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... good people, who had been accustomed so long to repeat mechanically their Oriental hyperboles of self-abasement, to hear their worthy minister maintaining that the dignified attitude of the old Patriarch, insisting on what was reasonable and fair with reference to his fellow-creatures, was really much more respectful to his ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... speak, but he could utter nothing. Then a mad desire seized him to lay hold of her—by the arms, by the shoulders, by the throat. Conquering this impulse, he stood motionless, passing his hands through his hair. She dropped her eyes and hung her head. Their abasement in each other's eyes was complete. He was ashamed before her, she was ashamed before him. One moment they faced each other thus, in silence, in pitiless and awful silence, and then slowly, very slowly, stupefied and crushed, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... into the depths of slavery. In the chambers of her imagery were pictures of noble deeds; of high, heroic men, knightly, tender, true, and brave. In Dr. Gresham she saw the ideal of her soul exemplified. But in her lonely condition, with all its background of terrible sorrow and deep abasement, she had never for a moment thought of giving or receiving love from one of that race who had been so lately associated in her mind with horror, aversion, and disgust. His kindness to her had been a new experience. His companionship was an unexpected pleasure. She had learned to enjoy his presence ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... and the influence of the Calvinist Chapel in the village, the Little Bethel, presided over by Pastor Prytherch, a fanatical blacksmith, who alternated spells of secret drunkenness and episodes of animalism by orgies of self-abasement, during which he—in half-confessing his own lapses—attributed freely and unrebukedly the same vices to the male half of his overflowing congregation. These out-pourings—"Pechadur truenus wyf i! Arglwydd ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... and getting down on her hands and knees to inspect the carpet? The truth is there is not one point of sympathy between Martha and myself, not one. One would think that our love to Ernest would furnish it. But her love aims at the abasement of his character and mine at its elevation. She thinks I should bow down to and worship him, jump up and offer him my chair when he comes in, feed him with every unwholesome dainty he fancies, and feel myself honored ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... her than to confess to herself the failure of her power; but her last talk with Van Degen had taught her a lesson almost worth the abasement. She saw the mistake she had made in taking money from him, and understood that if she drifted into repeating that mistake her future would be irretrievably compromised. What she wanted was not a hand-to-mouth existence of precarious intrigue: to one with her gifts the privileges of life should ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... chariots triumphing over abrogated law; that there may be no bounds to waste and luxury! So soon as the law shall cease to limit the expenses of the wife, the husband will be powerless to set bounds to them." As the uttermost measure of the abasement to which the women had descended, Cato declared with indignation that they had solicited votes, and he concluded by saying that though he called upon the gods to prosper whatever action should be agreed upon, he thought that on no account should the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... a raging wave of humiliation, swept through his mind, and left nothing there but a personal sense of undeserved abasement. Why should he be mixed up with such a horrid exposure! It annihilated all the advantages of his well-ordered past, by a truth effective and unjust like a calumny—and the past was wasted. Its failure was disclosed—a distinct failure, on his part, to see, to guard, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... who had uttered them. For a long time during his novitiate he was oppressed with religious despair. He thought he must have committed that sin against the Holy Spirit which dooms the soul for ever, By degrees that dark cloud cleared away, Anselmo juvante; but deep self-abasement remained. He felt his own salvation insecure, and moreover thought it would be mocking Heaven, should he, the deeply stained, pray for a soul so innocent, comparatively, as Margaret's. So he used to coax good Anselm and another kindly monk to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... knelt behind the mullah and the whole camp faced Mecca in forehead-in-the-dust abasement there came a strange procession down the midst—not strange to the "Hills," where such sights are common, but strange to that camp and hour. Somebody rose and struck them, and they knelt like the rest; but when prayer was over and cooking had begun and ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... far, to this degree of disorder and abasement, that a noble people had been dragged downwards in the course of years, sinking constantly deeper, abandoning, one by one, its guarantees, losing its titles to the esteem of other nations, approaching the abyss, seeing the hour draw nigh in which to rise would be impossible, bringing down maledictions ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... it was he! I, even I. I thought that he wanted to rid himself of me,' she cried, pouring forth her confession in shame and abasement. 'There! I can hardly bear to tell you in the dark, and how shall I tell him ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... be indifferent; he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable feelings as to cast truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so pursue truth and justice as to lose sight of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement, reverence, devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any one of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of Christ our Saviour. Let us look into our hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we indolent, or are we active; are we enthusiastic, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... longer. He could not help being much moved by the youth's self-abasement, but that might be only because it was new to him, and he did not even try to recommend him to her mercy; he knew her own heart might be trusted to relent, and it would not hurt Gilbert in the end to be made to feel the full weight of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kingdom.[474] It is doubtful if Wolsey himself desired the fulfilment of so preposterous and iniquitous a scheme. It is certain that Charles was in no mood to abet it. He had no wish to extract profit for England out of the abasement of Francis, to see Henry King of France, or lord of any French provinces. He had no intention of even performing his part (p. 167) of the Treaty of Windsor. He had pledged himself to marry the Princess Mary, and the splendour of that match may have contributed ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... they had no money of their own, were supported in prison by their majas and amigas, females of a certain class, who form friendships with robbers, and whose glory and delight it is to administer to the vanity of these fellows with the wages of their own shame and abasement. These females supplied their cortejos with the snowy linen, washed, perhaps, by their own hands in the waters of the Manzanares, for the display of the Sunday, when they would themselves make their appearance dressed a la maja, and from ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of the case seemed to be that he was innocent! He felt that had he been guilty he could have borne his punishment, because he would have richly merited it; but that, being innocent, he should thus be permitted to suffer such abasement and disgrace seemed incomprehensible to him; the injustice of it appeared to him so rank, so colossal, as to destroy within him, in a moment, every atom of his former faith in the existence of a God of justice and of mercy! ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... which one has had no part in making—'The sea is His, and He made it, and His hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker'—it's that exactly—a sense of joyful abasement in the presence of something great and infinitely beautiful. I do wish that were more clearly stated and understood and believed. Religion, as we know it in its technical sense, is so faint-hearted about it all! It has limited worship to things beautiful ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... turned, and strolled slowly past us, with that ineffable insolence which is the other side of the flunkey's insufferable self-abasement. He cast a glance at us as he went by, a withering glance of brazen effrontery. We knew him now, of course: it was that variable star, our old acquaintance, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... absolutely upon all those who sought in any way to find favor with the head of the State,—to ask and to obtain a residence at Versailles; to follow the court everywhere, even when sick, even when dying, and to approve of everything. Of the universal abasement of spirit which this regime brought about, the memoirs of the time are full. La Bruyere said: "Whoever considers how the happiness of the courtier lies wholly in the face of the prince, that he makes it the one occupation of his life to look on it, and to be seen by it, may, in some ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... believed in the maxim Divide ut imperes. So, before the next ceremony of homage came around, they sent for the Sultan, pointed out to him the humiliation which he incurred in kneeling before the Susuhunan, and offered to provide him with a means of escaping this abasement. Their offer was as simple as it was ingenious—permission to wear the uniform of a Dutch official. This was by no means as empty an honor as it seemed, as the Sultan was quick to recognize, for one of the tenets of Holland's rule in the Indies is that no one who wears the Dutch uniform, whether ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... developed, and in the European towns through which they spread. And here certain theological reasonings came in to resist the evolution of a proper sanitary theory. Out of the Orient had been poured into the thinking of western Europe the theological idea that the abasement of man adds to the glory of God; that indignity to the body may secure salvation to the soul; hence, that cleanliness betokens pride and filthiness humility. Living in filth was regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the Church and to society, as an ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was indeed satisfactory, daughter. But when you proceeded to point out to these plebeians how much of their misery arose from their own idleness, and ignorance, and dissoluteness, and abasement before those higher in station, and jealousy of the best among themselves—what ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... To abasement at the footstool of this triumphant wickedness, everything venal and sordid in the yet Free States would inevitably and intensely gravitate: commerce seeking customers; manufactures eager for markets; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... own pride. He, who could not be so deformed, he who could not vanquish his passion for glory, must, by an effort of faith, have grown jealous of that man who was so extremely ugly and so extremely insignificant, he must have come to admire him as a superior force of penitence and human abasement which threw the portals of heaven wide open. Who can ever tell what ascendency is exercised by the monster over the hero; by the horrid-looking saint covered with vermin over the powerful of this world in their ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in ceremony. Is it so in this church? What means all this tawdriness of color, the crimson, the blue, the gold; what signify these fantastic designs and figures, these monkey-like genuflexions; this wilderness of sign and symbol, this elaborate abasement, this theatrical show of exaltation? This an improvement on the old dignified simplicity? Do you tell me that childishness, and prettiness, and pettiness, are valid substitutes for a genuine, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... eyes he saw for the first time the self-abasement he had dreaded, yet perhaps expected, to see there before. For in her first question to him there had been no real doubt of him; it had been the natural humility of wounded love that cries out, expecting the reply that no power ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out incensed, but with such a mixed feeling of anger, chagrin, self-abasement, and apprehension as they had ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... wrought of villainy with his cousin-wife and what he had caused her of severance between her and her husband and how he had required her person of her, but she had sought refuge for her chastity against him with Allah (to whom belong honour and glory) and chose abasement rather than obedience to him, despite stress of torture: neither recked she aught of that which he lavished to her of monies and raiment, jewels and ornaments. When the King had made an end of his story, he bade the bystanders spit in the Magian's face and curse him; and they did this. Then ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... fortune, even though worthy of the smiles in which they basked; but those who rose superior to fortune, who could not frown them down. Nor have they withheld their homage from the unfortunate in this world of chance and change, if, in abasement of condition, by doing its duties they upheld the dignity of their own nature, and looked round them on their honest brethren in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... beautiful Ellen Jorth? The idea grew on Jean. It could not be dispelled. He resisted stubbornly. It was bound to go to its fruition. Deep into his mind had sunk an impression of her need—a material need that brought spirit and pride to abasement. From one picture to another his memory wandered, from one speech and act of hers to another, choosing, selecting, casting aside, until clear and sharp as the stars shone the words, "Oh, I've been kissed before!" That stung him now. By whom? Not by one man, but by several, by many, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... air of profound abasement, which changed into a look of complicated amusement when he got ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... alternative routes He sought to find, before He resigned Himself to opening the path by His blood. Since His death there is "a new and living way" for those who know Him, which stretches from the lowest point of their abasement to the very peak of God's holiness. Up that way they can pass by repentance and trust, and down it the mercy of God hastens to meet and lead them. They are forever delivered from the sense of exclusion from God; ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... from Duggin's hand to the floor,—with a sound like the first clatter of gravel on a coffin lid; and in abasement absolute he dropped his head; his hands nerveless, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... though he could still hear her; but after her laugh there came a few moments of overwhelming bitterness that sent her on her knees by the side of the couch in self-abasement. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... you never wore me next your heart, although you said so! You wear the lady of Beaumanoir next your heart. You have opened your heart to her after pledging it to me! If I was the pearl of price, you have adorned her with it—my abasement is her glory!" Angelique's tall, straight figure stood up, magnified with fury as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... strong that he immediately replied he should like an order for the play. My friend the editor certainly thought that was rather a strong case; but he said that during his many years of experience he had witnessed an incurable amount of self-prostration and abasement having no outer object, and that almost invariably on the part of people who could well ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... should be from distance of years, as she was the wife of a gentleman; and as the appearance of every thing about her, as well house as dress, carries the marks of such good circumstances, as require not abasement. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... sprang to his eyes as he did so. He had caught a glimpse of the face on the pillow and the changes made in a week were very apparent. Always erect, his father had towered above them then even in his self-abasement, but he looked now as though twenty years, instead of a few days, had passed over his stately head and bowed his incomparable figure. And not that alone. His expression was different. Had Oliver not seen him in his old likeness for that one ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... teach thee in the way which thou shalt go." There he began with the plaintive cry for mercy; here with a burst of praise celebrating the happiness of the pardoned penitent. There we heard the sobs of a man in the very agony of abasement; here we have the story of their blessed issue. There we had multiplied synonyms for sin, and for the forgiveness which was desired; here it is the many-sided preciousness of forgiveness possessed which runs over in various yet equivalent phrases. There ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... from society; and it had lost both power and insurrections. But though disorganized and proscribed, it was far from having disappeared. After the unfortunate attempt of the royalists in Vendemiaire, it arose through their abasement. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... agone to the city I wandered, And watched the ships warped to the Quay of the Merchants; And wondered why folk should be busy and anxious; For bitter my heart was, and life seemed a-waning, With no story told, with sweet longing turned torment, Love turned to abasement, and rest gone for ever. And last night I awoke with a pain piercing through me, And a cry in my ears, and Death passed on before, As one pointing the way, and I rose up sore trembling, And by cloud and by night went before ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... goatherd's dress, he rose up in wonder from his throne, and went to meet him, and said to him, 'My son, is this a king's apparel? And with what crown shall I crown thee, and what sceptre shall I place in thy hand? Surely this should be to thee a day of joy, and not a day of abasement.' ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... been scorched and shrivelled up. No wonder the licking fires of unutterable shame kept her awake of nights. And if she writhed in the flaming humiliation of it all when she was alone, what was that woman's anguish of abasement when she stood face to face, and compelled to speech, with the man whose loving hand had unwittingly kindled ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Yes, unhoped-for joy! I touched her dress, I ate her bread. At the end of three hours my life had mingled with her life! That terrible kiss had bound us to each other in a secret which inspired us with mutual shame. A glorious self-abasement took possession of me. I studied to please the count, I fondled the dogs, I would gladly have gratified every desire of the children, I would have brought them hoops and marbles and played horse with them; I was even provoked ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... not broken him down to this point of self-abasement. Could any Sultan, or even the "Oriental Despot" of a radical penny-a-liner, be implored in more abject terms? Madame de Sevigne, Madame de Scudery, Le Fevre, talked, wrote, and spared no expense for their dear friend. Brebeuf, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... stress, to a quick lifting of her heart and mind for help and insight toward the highest that she knew, and she felt herself pray now, "Help me to be true, to her, for her." The prayer seemed to raise her from some threatened abasement, and from her regained height she spoke with a sense of assured revelation. "We can't have things by merely wanting, them. To gain anything we must work for it. You left us. We didn't shut you out. You ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... That was just it, she said. Did he suspect her of yearning to throw herself in the way of nice people on the day of her abasement? If he chose to ignore her sentiments in the matter, he might at least consider his own interests. Had he forgotten that John Quincy Burton was chairman of the board of trustees of the college? Would the head of the department of classical languages acquire merit in Mr. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... besieged his cabinet and filled his antechamber in order to beg, claim and demand. All of them sought something, and they were almost strangled by the solicitations of their own constituents. They appeared to Sulpice to be rather the commissionaires of universal suffrage than the servants. This abasement before the manipulators of the votes made Vaudrey indignant. He felt that France was becoming by degrees a vast market for favors, a nation in which everyone asked office from those who to keep their own promised everything, and the thought filled him with ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... civilization along; but beneath the great feminine tide there is an undercurrent of hatred and revolt. This is particularly observable in the leaders of the movement; women who in the tumult of their aspirations, and their passionate yearnings towards the new ideal, and the memory of the abasement their sex have been in the past, and are still being in the present, subjected to, forget the laws of life, and with virulent virtue and protest condemn love—that is to say, love in the sense of sexual intercourse—and proclaim a higher mission for woman than to be the mother of men: and an ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... common, and the position of a good many of them is a little doubtful. Nor was he greatly attracted by the wealth Theresa had inherited from her father, since her mother had gained her share in it by deserting the national cause during the period of Italy's abasement. No doubt there was Theresa's undoubted beauty; but that was evanescent, and the lady already showed signs of a too rapidly ripening maturity. Their romantic engagement could not blot out of his mind the memory of the long humiliation ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... and state of a beggar, to call in the poor, and lame, and blind, to the fellowship of his kingdom. It had been a great mystery, then, if God had been manifested in the nature of angels, a great abasement of his majesty. But, O what must it be for God to be manifested in the flesh, in the basest, naughtiest, and most corruptible of all the creatures, even the very dregs of the creation, that have sunk down to the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... him. He stood stripped bare, his soul naked—the soul of Cain. Always since the first brand had been forced and burned upon him he had been ruined. But now with conscience flayed to the quick, yet utterly powerless over this tiger instinct, he was lost. He said it. He admitted it. And at the utter abasement the soul he despised suddenly leaped and quivered with ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... instantly and trotted with them as a guide. And Bell walked naturally, now, with his head up and his shoulders back, and smoked leisurely as he went, and the policeman's abasement became abject. All who walked with that air of amused superiority in Punta Arenas were high in the service of The Master. Obviously, the two men in these dejected clothes must also be high in the service of The Master, and had adopted their disguise for purposes into which a mere policeman and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... in every aspect of the man. The very clothes he wore, somber, wool-threaded homespun, crudely patched, reminded one of the coarse fabrics that monks affect for their abasement. But one saw, when one remembered the characteristic of the man, that they represented here ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Although he had tried to brave it out when the captain first began to speak to him, even his hardened nature had to succumb before the contemptuous looks of the men he had so long bullied, the more especially as they now openly displayed their joy at his abasement. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... upon my knees in the abasement and passion of my desire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her arms about my neck and placed her head where—well, I am no connoisseur in love scenes—but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gave her heart ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Probably, then, they have been favoured by their priests with some good orthodox doctrine, as to divine appointment on the subject. Indeed, the case of these islanders is one in which the necessary effect of that consciousness of impotence and self-abasement, is scarcely in any degree counteracted by other principles. We see it literally exemplifying ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... It is abasement which directs. Nothing is easier of comprehension. It is he who is below who pulls the strings. No position more convenient. He is the eye, and has the ear. He is the eye of the government; he has the ear of the king. To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at one's whim, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... cynical calculations about women fell from me—I saw myself as I had been all day—utterly selfish—not really feeling for her grief, only making capital out of it for my own benefit—. At that moment, and for the rest of the day and night, I suffered every shade of self reproach and abasement a man can feel. And next day I had to stay in bed because I had done some stupid thing to my leg in lying down ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and stepmother, and so enables ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... a philosophical race—the English: Bacon represents an ATTACK on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself; it was Locke of whom Schelling RIGHTLY said, "JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in the struggle against the English mechanical stultification ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... green pastures of success, but goads them constantly up the rocky sides of endeavor. It is not that they love flattery, but that they need approbation as a counterpoise to the dark moments of self-abasement and as a sustaining aid ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Her eyes were kindled with pride of ancestry as she called the roll of experiences and achievements of the line that had bred her, and her clear-cut Greek features mirrored every emotion she felt, emotions of glory and pride, of sorrow and abasement at the fall of her race, of stoic fortitude in the dull present and hopeless future of her people. With one shapely arm upraised, she uttered the names, trumpet-calls to memory ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... they demand every effort on her part to prevent America from being reduced to the British domination, her commerce, and those sources of wealth being restored to the tyrant of the European seas, the ancient rival of France; but on the contrary, the abasement of this rival, and the establishment of a faithful ally, united by all the ties of gratitude, affection, and the most permanent mutual interests. To those invaluable purposes give me leave to repeat to your Excellency, that the decisive measures in the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... and crawling into the firelight. Grey Beaver saw him, and stopped munching the tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission. He crawled straight toward Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower and more painful. At last he lay at the master's feet, into whose possession he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... away. In the holiest and the most trivial things alike we find it penetrating everywhere—even in church, and at her prayers, when the pretty penitent, rising from her lengthy orison, lifts her eyes and looks about her furtively to see who has noticed her self-abasement and to whom her picturesque ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... said he weakly, his shaken mind incapable of comprehending things as they were, his abasement over the breach that he had committed being so profound. She withdrew her hand. When it was gone out of his, he remembered how warm it was with the tide of her young body, and how soft for his own work-roughened fingers to meet ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... with me, still follow me. O sir, will you not picture that dear lady's life? Her years how few, her error thus irreparable, what henceforth can be her portion but remorse, the consciousness of self-abasement, the shame of knowing that her trust was ill-bestowed? To think of it: this was a queen among women; and this—this is George Austin's work! Sir, let me touch your heart: let me prevail with you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a lot of people whom I hear bemoaning the war of Paris. For my part, I find it more tolerable than the invasion, there is no more despair possible, and that is what proves once more our abasement. "Ah! God be thanked, the Prussians are there!" is the universal cry of the bourgeois. I put messieurs the workmen into the same pack, and would have them all thrust together into the river! Moreover they are on the way there, and then calm will ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... miracles they saw her perform, and the admirable tenour of her life, in which the most active virtues were combined with the deepest humility, and supernatural favours received with the most profound self-abasement, were to them a warrant of the genuineness of her revelations, the substance of which, condensed and reduced into a series of rules, are to this day observed by the Oblates of Tor ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... man cringe in abasement and contrition. But the heavy jaw thrust forth in truculent defiance; hate blazed forth from the deep-set eyes; the florid features were empurpled with rage. He made as if to reply, but turned away from the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... succeed in making loyalty not a rational principle, but a mania—if, day by day, and week by week, they insist upon deifying poor infirm humanity, exalting themselves in their own conceit, in their very self-abasement—they may escape an individual accusation in the general folly. When we are all mad alike—when we all, with the editor of the Athenaeum, take our half-day's watch at the little Prince's cradle—when every man and woman throughout the empire believe themselves making royal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... maturity? Or at least may they not place themselves under the government of more just and considerate rulers? How would this country repent her folly, if she should thus become the instrument of her own abasement; if she should herself be the cause of establishing a power already the most formidable rival of her commercial and maritime ascendency, in the very heart of her most valuable possessions, at the main external source of her wealth ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... well as mine. No other women on earth could have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black women in America with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain. I have always felt like bowing myself before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly to insult. I have known the women of many lands and nations,—I ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... honest woman? All this was repeated by Fanny Brattle to Mrs. Fenwick;—and now the assizes were at hand, and how was Carry to demean herself there? Who would take her? Who would stand near her and support her, and save her from falling into that abyss of self-abasement and almost of self-annihilation which would be her doom, unless there were some one there to give ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... recover her, to break down her determination, or to understand if he could the grounds on which she had acted, a new conception of his own life and the meaning of it had taken possession of him. He fell into the profoundest humiliation and self-abasement, denouncing himself as a traitor to his faith, who out of mere self-delusion, and a lawless love of ease, had endangered his own obedience, and neglected the plain task laid upon him. That fear of proselytism, that humble dread of his ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Further, fear is born of love, as stated above (Q. 125, A. 2). Now it belongs to the perfection of virtue to love nothing earthly, since according to Augustine (De Civ. Dei xiv), "the love of God to the abasement of self makes us citizens of the heavenly city." Therefore it is seemingly not a sin to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... face the conscious self-abasement, and the burning indignation of a hundred women, strong in passion and in pride; and there it hid itself with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... by his last month of life. That the protagonist in a great Cause should recant in the face of death seems to argue an almost incredible degree of pusillanimity, and suggests that pusillanimity and subservience are the key to his career. Nevertheless, but for that short hour of abasement nobly and humbly retrieved, the general judgment would probably be altogether different. And that breakdown does not appear to have been characteristic. Twice in the reign of Henry he had bowed to the King's judgment, acknowledging that Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... thought first of Jerusalem; but who without abasement can inhabit with infidels? Then Hagion Oras, the Holy Hill, occurred to me; the same argument applied against it as against return to the convent of Irene-I would be in reach of the Emperor's displeasure. One can study his own heart. Holding ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... seen Hetty in this mood before, petted her, though she said very little, for she felt that the somewhat unusual abasement might, on the whole, be beneficial to her companion. So there was silence in the room, broken only by the snapping of the stove and the faint moaning of the bitter wind about the lonely building, while Miss Schuyler ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... thought comes to me. I remember the morning after the Thing appeared. I remember that the dog licked my hand. It was this one, with the scratch on it; though I have not been even conscious of the abasement, until now. A horrible fear has come to me. It creeps into my brain—the dog's wound, shines at night. With a dazed feeling, I sit down on the side of the bed, and try to think; but cannot. My brain seems numbed with the sheer horror ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... upright," Eccles. vii. 29. There was no thraw(152) or crack in all,—all the powers of the soul bending upright towards that Fountain of all goodness. Now the soul is crooked and bends downward towards those base earthly things that are the abasement of the soul, then it looked upright towards God,—had no appetite, no delight but in him and his fulness, and had the moon or changeable world under its feet. There was a beauty of holiness and righteousness which were the colours that did perfect ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... when he recollected the avowed profession of Stevens his shame increased. He felt how shocking it was to intimate to a sworn non-combatant the idea of a personal conflict. To what point of self-abasement his thoughts would have carried him, may only be conjectured; he might have hurried forward to overtake his antagonist with the distinct purpose of making the most ample apology; nay, more, such was the distinct thought which was now pressing upon his mind, when he was saved from this humiliation ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... a hasty, hot-tempered act more thoroughly punished than this. There had been little need for the doctor or his wife to add a word. Theodora's sorrow and shame were intense; intense, too, was her power of self-abasement. For a week, she spent most of the time in her own room, as if she feared to meet the eyes of her family; and, in this self-imposed isolation, it chanced that she had heard no ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine |
