"Aspiration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for some days after on that pious aspiration of her grandfather's old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return upon her. Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong. She told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this dwindling flame, it was a lot of God's giving, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... sage, "I talk of a longing wish which every man feels at the bottom of his heart, to hold communication with beings more powerful than himself, and who are not naturally accessible to our organs. Believe me, Hereward, so ardent and universal an aspiration had not existed in our bosoms, had there not also been means, if steadily and wisely sought, of attaining its accomplishment. I will appeal to thine own heart, and prove to thee even by a single ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... background of his hopes, the foundation-stone of his life, which he had hidden out of sight. Deep in his heart was the hope that he might one day write a valiant book; he scarcely dared to entertain the aspiration, he felt his incapacity too deeply, but yet this longing was the foundation of all his painful and patient effort. This he had proposed in secret to himself, that if he labored without ceasing, without ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... describe the productions of my female correspondents in detail. Suffice it to say, that most of them contain a smaller proportion of useless information, and a larger proportion of sentiment, vague aspiration, and would-be-picturesque description, than those of the men who pay postage on my behalf. They are longer, and sometimes crossed; it is therefore a greater task to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the desolation of the sea-wife, the long lonely nights, the ever-present apprehension of loss. We understood the pathos of the scaldino. And swift upon this new interpretation we saw the great dangers of such a life to a woman of imperfect culture, strong passion and yet noble aspiration. We saw, too, another and more particular tragedy possible to her, in being forever debarred from her husband's innermost life. That vague look of distress was pregnant with meaning. She wished to say—how much! Yet in English ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Father. To each one of us are these words addressed: God loves thee; be happy! If therefore (and I address myself more particularly to the younger of my hearers), if in the depth of your soul you are conscious of a sudden aspiration after true felicity, ah! do not suffer the holy flame to be extinguished, do not talk of illusions; do not, I pray you, resign yourselves to the prose of life; to a dreary and gloomy contentedness with a ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... Jesus at the height of his fame. The air of gladness which reigned around him surprised them. Accustomed to fasts, to persevering prayer, and to a life of aspiration, they were astonished to see themselves transported suddenly into the midst of the joys attending the welcome of the Messiah.[1] They told Jesus their message: "Art thou he that should come? Or do ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... through storey after storey of our vanity and aspiration, it is then that we begin to measure the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... these is compounded Hycsos: but some say that these people were Arabians." Now in another copy it is said that this word does not denote Kings, but, on the contrary, denotes Captive Shepherds, and this on account of the particle Hyc; for that Hyc, with the aspiration, in the Egyptian tongue again denotes Shepherds, and that expressly also; and this to me seems the more probable opinion, and more agreeable to ancient history. [But Manetho goes on]: "These people, whom we have before named kings, and called ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... turning-points in life when a natural instinct is a surer guide than noble motive or high aspiration, and consequently the more thoughtful and introspective nature will sometimes fall just where a commonplace one would have passed in safety. Ruth had acted for the best. When for the first time in her life she had been brought into close contact ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the Ball. My first return to Scotland and journey through Europe was an epoch in my life, I had so early in my days determined to do it; to-day another epoch comes—our tour fulfils another youthful aspiration. There is a sense of supreme satisfaction in carrying out these early dreams which I think nothing else can give, it is such a triumph to realize one's castles in the air. Other dreams remain, which in good time also must come to pass; for nothing ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... aristocracy. Having amassed fortunes, these merchants yearned to be the founders of great estates; to live as virtual princes in the midst of wide possessions, even if these were still comparative solitudes. This aspiration was mixed with the mercenary motive of themselves owning the land from whence came the furs, pelts, timber and ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Mrs. Abbott were vaunted before her, when Harvey simply ignored all that in herself compensated the domestic shortcoming. Of course, she was not a model of the home-keeping virtues; who expected an artist to be that? But Harvey denied this claim; and of all the motives contributing to her aspiration, none had such unfailing force as the vehement resolve ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... description of each subject were entered upon, which task is left for those who feel so inclined. A rich reward is in store for those spiritual investigators who will follow out the paths and lines herein mapped out on Spiritual Astrology, Alchemy, and other subjects. Meditation and aspiration will open up hidden treasures that will prove a boon to Occult students, for Astrology and Alchemy are the two grand sciences that explain the why and reasons for what we see and experience on every plane of life. In this age there should be no concealing of these Divine ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... spirit of steadfastness in the midst of this huge unrest, and an abiding, unshaken, immovable principle of good guiding this vanishing world of fluctuating atoms, in whose eternal permanence of nature we largely participate, and our tendency toward and aspiration for whose perfect stability is one of the very causes of the progress, and therefore mutability, of our existence. Perhaps the most painful of all the forms in which change confronts us is in the increased infirmities and diminished graces which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... to expect gold at the rainbow's foot. Speaking without disrespect to the poet Shelley"—here he lifted his hat and replaced it—"a new Peneus does not roll his fountains against the morning star, whatever that precise—er—operation may have been. But let us honour the aspiration, Smiles, though the chill monitor within forbid us to endorse it. 'A loftier Argo'"—Mr. Mortimer indicated the Success to Commerce with a sweep ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the need of various delicate instruments—phytographs, as I shall call them—for the automatic record of the plant's responses. What was, ten years ago, a mere aspiration, has now after so many years of effort, become actual fact. It is unnecessary to tell here of many a fruitless and despairing attempt. Nor shall I trouble you with any account of intricate mechanism. I need only say that with the aid of ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... extemporising a speech. He was pressing his argument with gestures and the tone of thunder. We listened a moment, while a worried look came over the face of Uncle Eb. Tip's words were meaningless save for the secret aspiration they served to advertise. My old companion thought Tip had gone crary, and immediately swung the door and stepped in. The orator fell suddenly from his lofry altitude and became a very sober looking ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... of God whose office it is to take of the things of Christ and show them unto men, and so glorify Christ. Such fellowship in glorifying God Mr. Muller set before him: and in the light of such sanctified aspiration we may read that humble entry in which, reviewing the year 1837 with all its weight of increasing responsibility, he lifts his heart to his divine Lord and ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... emperor of the same name (Don Agustin de Iturbide), is probably the best, as it is the largest in the city; but this is faint praise. Hotel-keeping is one of the arts which, at its best, has not yet been introduced into this country. Iturbide's aspiration led him to assume the imperial crown, in consequence of which he fell. After reigning for a twelvemonth, he was banished from Mexico on parole never to return. This parole he broke, landing from Europe at Vera Cruz in 1824. He was seized, thrown into prison, and was shot by orders of the government, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect into unity what is fragment and riddle ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... H, aspiration, consonne, signe orthographiqne, XXIII, 17. —Tableau de tous les mots francais commencant par ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... adults with opinions to express and doctrines to preach has resulted unhappily. The adults who gather seem always, or almost always, to be, not average, well-disposed citizens, but a more or less incendiary minority who want to change things—and to change them a lot and very quickly. That aspiration is not wholly indefensible, for a good many things would be the better for changing, but real light and leading have not often been found on top at meetings in schoolhouses, and experience has proved that the Teachers' Union has neither ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... could make was going not only to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant betterment for himself—straighter living, perhaps straighter thinking—the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even aspiration—or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others which ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... resolutely in Browning's poetry, and on which, as we shall see later, his optimism is founded. Science tells us that the matter of which the universe is composed is indestructible; Browning believes even more strongly in the permanence of spirit. Aspiration, enthusiasm, love would not be given to us to have their purposes broken off, not if this is a rational and economic universe; the important thing is not to have our hopes fulfilled here, the important thing ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... would rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more violent terms was, as far as we know, never fulfilled. No inference can be drawn from this circumstance as to the probability of the words attributed to him having been actually uttered. They express the aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy, that he would leave behind him many followers, accompanied by the not unnatural feeling that they would be fiercer and more inconsiderate in their words when emancipated ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... in a more serious strain to sketch the history of superstition and ends with an eloquent aspiration for ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... protection, grace, preference, predilection, are incompatible with what a God should be, with the Ideal of civilization, with the supreme aspiration of ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... the children of flesh will call upon Thy name, when Thou wilt turn unto Thyself all the wicked of the earth.... In that day the Lord shall be One and His name One." Israel disappears altogether in this diurnal aspiration. ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... in her mind - implanted there before her eminently practical father began to form it - a struggling disposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever heard of, constantly strove with doubts and resentments. With doubts, because the aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth. With resentments, because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed a whisper of the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to self-suppression, thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy came ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... in the continued elimination from the various denominational hymn-books (as new ones were issued beginning as far back as the late seventies) of hymns relating to the facts of the Atonement and other kindred subjects, and the substitution of odes, poems, etc., in which aspiration took the place of experimental religion. The hymn-books of more than one, or two, or three denominations, showed this retrograde movement, through their several ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... whose mission it is, in the newspaper campaign against realism, to adorn and dramatize the commonest events of life, creating in place of the old-fashioned "news" the highly spiced "story," which is the ideal aspiration of the reporter. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... attention the lines of dejection and fatigue which marred the attractiveness of features otherwise frank, poetic, and noble. He had seen many such men. Men in their prime who had begun life full of high faith, hope, and lofty aspiration, yet whose fair ideals once bruised in the mortar of modern atheistical opinion had perished forever, while they themselves, like golden eagles suddenly and cruelly shot while flying in mid-air, had fallen ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... one of those amazing confusions of a Scriptural recollection which prompts her at another time in the novel to exclaim, in regard to the Ankworks package, "'I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do,' appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in that mysterious aspiration,"—by observing at this point, "Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye. That is my comfort, and I hope I knows it." One whole chapter of "Martin Chuzzlewit," with the exception of the merest fragment of it—the chapter pre-eminently in relation ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... poetry,—bad enough to be worthy a place in "The Bay Psalm Book,"—but is also a most noble, laudable, and necessary aspiration; for power of Grace was plainly needed to enable Abednego or any one else to sing from those pages; and our pious New England forefathers must have been under special covenant of grace when they persevered against ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... politicians; but if they were got rid of regularly for forty or fifty years in the manner we have suggested, and nothing came in from the outside to supply their places, the politicians would somehow find that they themselves had less public money to vote or steal, less national aspiration to trade upon, less national force to direct, less national dignity to maintain or lose, and that, in fact, by some mysterious process, they were getting to be of no more account in the world than their fellows in ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... in Grenada about the period above mentioned disclosed, thinly draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a scheme to thwart political aspiration in the Antilles. That project is sought to be realized by deterring the home authorities from granting an elective local legislature, however restricted in character, to any of the Colonies not yet enjoying such an advantage. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... their pensioners), and if invited to drink as the guest of another, he would drain tumbler after tumbler continuously, until his entertainer stopped him, and would appear no further over-seas at the end than at the outset. There was something pathetic in his comparative sobriety, like an unfulfilled aspiration. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... its experiences; it lives a comparatively free life, and gradually gains the power to estimate the earthly experiences at their real value; it works out thoroughly and completely as objective realities all the ideas of which it only conceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ which the Soul would work out into a splendid realisation in Devachan, and it would bring back with it to earth for its next incarnation that mental image, to be materialised on earth when opportunity offers and suitable environment ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... one musical echo and aspiration. He finds his theme and illustration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him: his lute is always by his side. Following the "Steps of the Temple," a graceful tribute to Herbert, we have the congenial title, "The Delights ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... levity and haste, even when he had full leisure to think of posterity. If he occasionally subjected himself to stricter rules, we owe it more to his ambition, and his desire to be numbered among the classical writers of the golden age, than to any internal and growing aspiration after the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... upholds his own dignity and rights in presence and despight of the Creator. Sahib the Sufi declares that the secret of man's soul (i.e. its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh declared himself god; and Al-Ghazali sees in his claim the most noble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Her dearest aspiration (believe it if you can) was to make gentlemen of us—of us, doomed to start in life as parish apprentices! And to this her curriculum recurred whether it had been divagating into history, geography, astronomy, English composition, or ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... truth about herself was in that melancholy aspiration. No relief in tears, no merciful oblivion in a fainting-fit, for her. The terrible strength of the vital organization in this woman knew no yielding to the unutterable misery that wrung her to the soul. It roused its glorious forces to resist: it ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... are imperiously present in meliorative enterprise as in other lines of conduct, and exercise a selective surveillance over the details of conduct and management in any enterprise. By guiding and adapting the method in detail, these canons of decency go far to make all non-invidious aspiration or effort nugatory. The pervasive, impersonal, un-eager principle of futility is at hand from day to day and works obstructively to hinder the effectual expression of so much of the surviving ante-predatory aptitudes as is to be classed under the instinct of workmanship; but ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... seeking the common welfare. And what about the unequal distribution of goods, the division of classes, the ability to work, and, above all, the struggle for existence, that the philosophers and poets of the oppressing classes paint as an indispensable condition of progress? Communism is the holiest aspiration of humanity, the divine dream of man since he began to think in the first dawn of civilisation. Religions had endeavoured to establish it, but religion had been shipwrecked and was moribund, and only science could enforce it in the future. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and Jewish interests. This accusation of Geiger's has since been repeated frequently. But a rift is appearing in the cloud. To-day as never before our intelligenzia as defined by university training and education is identifying itself more and more with Jewish life and aspiration in our country. And I feel that due credit should be given the Menorah movement in our colleges for this change of attitude of Jewish students and professors. This movement, still young, has accomplished much in bringing together the young men and women who form our ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... vouchsafed to this aspiration, the words being the words of faith, but the voice ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... a termination to change. Ah! my dear fellow, you don't know what these provincial fortunes are, accumulated penny by penny, especially when to the passion for saving is added the incessant aspiration of that leech called commerce. We must make up our minds to some course; the bourgeoisie are rising round us like a flood; it is almost affable in them to buy our chateaus and estates when they might guillotine us as in 1793, and get ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... my new happiness, there had been moments when my resolution faltered—moments when I was tempted to be safely content, now that the dearest aspiration of my life was fulfilled in the possession of Laura's love. For the first time I thought faint-heartedly of the greatness of the risk, of the adverse chances arrayed against me, of the fair promise of our new life, and of the peril in which I ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... life would never suit me, life must mean to me more than ease, luxury and indulgence, it must mean aspiration and consecration, endeavor ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... a Government exist for? Merely to keep national sentiment in order. Ministers know well enough, that despite the various 'Bills' brought in for material advantage and improvement, they have always to deal with the imaginative aspiration of the populace, rather than their conception of logic. For truly, the masses have no logic at all; they will not stop to count the cost of an Army, but they will shout themselves hoarse at the sight of the Flag! The Flag is the Sentiment; the Army is ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... fanaticism is joined to debauchery, superstition to incredulity, cultured intelligence to depravity of heart. This wholly unbalanced character—which stretches evil to its utmost limits while preserving the knowledge of what is good, which mistrusts everybody and yet has at least the aspiration toward friendship and love, if not its experience—is it not the symbol and living ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... it is a misadventure," he continued rapidly, with growing excitement. "You came to this miserable hole—this Wallencamp—resolved to view everything in a new light—the light of unselfish devotion to great ends, and exalted aspiration, and ideal perfection, and all that. Well, how has the wretched, giggling, conniving little community shown out in that light? I suppose there's one—that larking Cradlebow—who has stood the test and come out creditably, by reason of an uncommonly ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... and unity alone has the Khilafat brought to India. The great block in the way of Indian aspiration for full freedom was the problem of external defence. How is India, left to herself defend her frontiers against her Mussalman neighbours? None but emasculated nations would accept such difficulties and responsibilities as an answer to the demand for freedom. ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... that he answered, "Alexander, king of Macedonia; because, with a small band, he defeated armies whose numbers were beyond reckoning; and because he had overrun the remotest regions, the merely visiting of which was a thing above human aspiration." Scipio then asked, "to whom he gave the second place?" and he replied, "To Pyrrhus; for he first taught the method of encamping; and besides, no one ever showed more exquisite judgment, in choosing his ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... soldier with aeolian melodies marches to his own accompaniment while the evening breeze softly thrums its anthem of divine love. We wished our lives might be pierced by the mystery of their gleaming javelins that we too might learn their lessons of strength, endurance and noble aspiration. As we stood at the base of these glorious forest-crowned mountains, gazing in rapt admiration and wonder at God's "handiwork," we were conscious of a revelation whispered through the myriad needles of the pine. How small seem the honors, customs, cares, and petty bickerings of men seen through ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... part, that the tears fell from the girl's eyes while her lips were smiling at the tender humour. The undercurrent of meaning threw new light on the lonely life of the rich, but wretched man. The joy depicted in simple, friendly intercourse, the aspiration of the Beetle, the grateful appreciation for the plain, common happenings that in most lives were taken for granted, but which in his rose to monumental importance, endeared him to her anew. It brought back to her what Boswell ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... represented, to a certain extent, as a conflict of interests, has become a conflict of principles. In a way, the Germans were beaten because, from that moment, they had to struggle against unseen and inflexible forces. Whatever you choose to call them—democratic instinct, Christian aspiration, or the conscience of the civilised world—they will do their work relentlessly, every day of the year, every hour of the day. It is their doing that, in spite of the immense financial influence and the most active propaganda, Germany has become unpopular all over the world. Other facts, ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure, and therefore insincere, what must be the comment upon him? If he had reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for such comment. If we feel the aspiration, humility, gratitude, and love which our words express—this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive ourselves or others, for "there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed." Professions and audible prayers are like charity in one respect—they "cover ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... upon his ear like a spirit of consolation, speaking of peace, of love which needs no reward save its own sweetness, of aspiration which looks forever beyond the thing of the hour to find attainment in that which is eternal. So insidiously did it whisper these things, so delicately did the simple and perfect melodies creep upon ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... and with a sharp sound upon the first and last words, leaving the middle one little more than an aspiration. Like all its compeers which had been extensively popular, it was applicable to almost every variety of circumstance. The lovers of a plain answer to a plain question did not like it at all. Insolence made use of it to give offence; ignorance to avoid exposing itself; and waggery to create ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... barges, stopping his sculls in the air to feather accurately, in the hopes of deceiving spectators into the belief that he was an old hand just going out for a gentle paddle. The manager watched him for a minute, and turned to his work with an aspiration that he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... ready by humility and love,—"In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." In the quietness that waits for God to act, the confidence that knows that He will act when the time comes. It is well if our aspiration is to be of the number of those who live lives hid with Christ in God; who are seeking nothing but that the love of God may be shed abroad in their hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the love of Jesus. It is true that this simplicity of ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... despite probability, she could not help thinking John interesting. That one speech of his about government had meant something. He was a man with a strong personality, with a great interest in the world led by a dominant aspiration of some sort; and Josephine, in her heart, loved power and admired those who possessed it. Political power especially had that charm for her which it has for most English people of the upper class. There is some quality in the English race which breeds an inordinate admiration for all kinds ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... not nurture the virtues of the soul more than physical defect does that of the body, and the withdrawal of the curtain divulges a very sad sight of discontent and envy. Homer himself is recorded to have ejaculated his aspiration to be the favourite of the Greek girls and boys. A poet seer loves no brother near his throne, and is but too apt to complain of non-appreciation of his muse on the part of the world. The fault rather is in their own too sensitive souls; and it is a fact that there is ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... holds the history of some devout seekers after God, of sincere aspiration, in some cases of beautiful thought and life. This deepest blot is acknowledged and condemned by its better members. Yet in countless temples, under the brightness of the Indian sun, the iniquity, protected by vested ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... fellow senator once openly accused him of shaping his course as a public man to accord with his private interests. He denied and disproved the charge, but proudly added: "I implore my enemies, who so ruthlessly invade the private sanctuary, to do me the favor to believe that I have no wish, no aspiration, to be considered purer or better than she who was, or they who ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... from six years of blockade. They do not agree with M. Clemenceau that "revolution is a disease attacking defeated countries only." Or, to put it as I have heard it stated in Moscow, they believe that President Wilson's aspiration towards a peace in which should be neither conqueror nor conquered has been at least partially realized in the sense that every country ended the struggle economically defeated, with the possible exception of America, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... understand the Sea, until He knows all passions of the senses; all The great emotions of the heart; and each Exalted aspiration of the soul. Then may he sit beside the sea and say: 'I, too, have flung myself against the rocks, And kissed their flinty brows with no return; And fallen spent upon unfeeling sands. I, too, have gone forth yearning, to far shores, Seeking that ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... forgotten sequence; the words he had uttered as he—or what he had once been—sat in the old-time parlour in the mellow half light of faded brocades and rosewood, repeating to a child the programme of his future. Lofty aim and high ideal, the cultivated endeavour of good citizenship, loyalty to aspiration, courage, self-respect, and the noble living of life; they had also spoken of these things together—there in the golden gloom of the old-time parlour when she was fourteen and he master of his fate ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... and so is ours. But he fills it as he can with the Spirit of God. He is not content that men should be as sheep, and look downward to earth for all the food they need. He bids them to a Banquet of another kind, whose dishes are of knowledge for the mind and heavenward aspiration ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... Franklin enjoyed seven years of what he called leisure, but they were years of study and application; years of happiness and sweet content, but years of aspiration and an earnest looking into the future. His experiments with kite and key had made his name known in all the scientific circles of Europe, and his suggestive writings on the subject of electricity had caused ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... article of the Constitution. The President, he thought, should receive no salary. Honor was enough reward; a place which gave both honor and profit offered too corrupting a temptation, and instead of remaining a source of generous aspiration to "the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust," it would be scrambled for by "the bold and the violent, the men oL strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits."[97] ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the aspiration of all peoples, even as physical health is the aspiration of all living beings, there are wars which cannot be avoided, as there are diseases which help us to overcome an organic crisis to which we might otherwise ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... most of the country youth who could manage to get to school in winter were content if they learned to read and write, and to wade through figures as far as the Rule of Three. Of course there were exceptions, as also with the teachers, but generally this was the extent of the aspiration of the rising generation, and it was not necessary for the teacher to be profoundly learned to lead them as far as they wished to go. I knew an old farmer of considerable wealth who would not allow his boys to go to school, because, he said, if they learned to read ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... shall give account of himself to God." In our consciousness of sin, in our penitence, in our faith, others may stimulate and inspire us, may point the way saying, "Behold the Lamb of God," may go with us in a common confession of guilt and a common aspiration towards the Most High, but we are hardly conscious of their fellowship; it is the living God with whom ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... that feeling, we shall perceive it to be, primarily, one of uneasiness, of expectation, of looking forward, of aspiration. It is a source of constant discomfort, for it behaves like a skeleton at the feast of all our enjoyments. We go to the theatre and laugh; but between the acts it raises a skinny finger at us. We rush violently for the last train, and while we are ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... ambition save to be master of what he was doing and of the men who were part of his world of responsibility. Then John Grier had pulled him back into industry and he had since desired to ascend, to "make good." Also, he had seen Junia often, and for her an aspiration had sprung up in him like a fire in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... own class. I agree with them. I share their instincts. In my undergraduate days I was a Republican-a Socialist. I tried hard to feel toward a common man as I do towards a duke. I couldnt. Neither can you. Well, why should we be ashamed of this aspiration towards what is above us? Why dont I say that an honest man's the noblest work of God? Because I dont think so. If he's not a gentleman, I dont care whether he's honest or not: I shouldnt let his son marry my daughter. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... the undesigned, but all the more spontaneous and authentic, biography of a very rare spirit. It contains the record of a short life, into which was crowded far more of keen experience and high aspiration—of the thrill of sense and the rapture of soul—than it is given to most men, even of high vitality, to extract from a life of twice the length. Alan Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the German trenches on the field ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... who were closest to the full-hearted singer know that beneath and within all his exquisite wit and ludicrous raillery—so often directed against the shallow formalist, or the unctuous hypocrite—there were an aspiration toward the divine, and a desire for what is often slightingly called "religious conversation," as sincere as it was resistless within him. My own first remembrance of him brings back a conversation which ended in a prayer, and the ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... to occupy the highest realm of knowledge attainable by man, hence will not attract those who have no aspiration toward such knowledge. No brief notice would convey a good idea of the worth ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... from her than the common and instinctive affection of a child for its parent? If to this she added intelligent love, appreciation, and sympathy, would he care? If she should be able to say, "Papa, I am kin to you, not merely in flesh and blood, but in mind, hope, and aspiration; I share with you that which makes your life, with its success and failure, not as the child who may find luxurious externals curtailed or increased, but as a sympathetic woman who understands the more vital changes in spiritual vicissitude,"—if she could truthfully say all this, would he be pleased ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... a statue of the Elevated or Goblin School, in which the Honourable Elijah Pogram was represented as in a very high wind, with his hair all standing on end, and his nostrils blown wide open. But Mr Pogram thanked his friend and countryman for the aspiration to which he had given utterance, and the Committee, after another solemn shaking of hands, retired to bed, except the Doctor; who immediately repaired to the newspaper-office, and there wrote a short poem suggested by the events of the evening, beginning with fourteen stars, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... these women to their bullies is as remarkable as the brutality of their bullies is abominable. Probably the primary cause of the fall of numberless girls of the lower class, is their great aspiration to the dignity of wifehood;—they are never "somebody" until they are married, and will link themselves to any creature, no matter how debased, in the hope of being ultimately married by him. This consideration, in ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... however, had not looked for happiness to love and loveliness, and need not therefore be disappointed on that score. She had never really determined what it was that might make her happy,—having some hazy aspiration after social distinction and literary fame, in which was ever commingled solicitude respecting money. But at the present moment her great fears and her great hopes were centred on her son. She would not care how grey might be her hair, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... will still want to do something for yourselves; if you cannot rest content with Palladio, neither will you with Paxton: all the metal and glass that ever were melted have not so much weight in them as will clog the wings of one human spirit's aspiration. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... proceeded) whom, in spite of kindly treatment, I perceive to be persistently bent on evil-doing, in the end I treat as desperate cases. Incurable self-seekers, [10] plain enough to see, whose aspiration lifts them from earth, so eager are they to be reckoned just men, not by reason only of the gain derivable from justice, but through passionate desire to deserve my praise—these in the end I treat as free-born men. I ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... gave them, must have made the part of any such means of arriving at truth as the already discredited theistic argument most insignificant. They, themselves, had no need for it. All it had been able to do for them, as for those to whom they wrote, was to raise an aspiration which "would not down"—to bring them to the hypothesis (substituted for polytheism, now outgrown) of an "Unknown God," and they felt that their message to their contemporaries was, like that of St. Paul to the Athenians on Areopagus: "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... fact enhanced my pleasure! I sunned myself in the beams, which penetrated my barred window; and tasting the early freshness with a keen and insatiable appetite, I experienced to the full that peculiar aspiration after goodness which Providence allows such moments to awaken in us in youth; but rarely when time and the camp have blunted ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... attempt—an effort to broaden out into a universal system applying to all men at all times. This is also the real spirit of pure Christianity which is so often over-clouded by theological partisanship. A true interpretation must stand the test of not only religious aspiration, but also philosophical thought ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... Republic, whether by open assault or by sinister stratagem, which engrosses the attention of those and kindred convocations throughout Europe. "Put out the light, and then put out the light," is the general aspiration; and the fact that the actual Republic is reasonably moderate, peaceful, unaggressive, so far from disarming their hostility, only inflames it. Haman can never feel safe in his exaltation so long as Mordecai the Jew is seen ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... death of Mahomet, the ode was an allegory of his life from its beginning to its triumphant close when he passed from the present with the consciousness that he had won to his faith the nation from which he had sprung. But it also undoubtedly expressed the aspiration of the poet himself. The ambition to impress himself on the world, and the consciousness of powers to give effect to his ambition, were indeed the ruling impulses behind all his distracted activities. But he was thwarted in his ambition alike by external circumstances and by his ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... of "Aspiration," by Leo Lentelli, is suspended - as is all aspiration - over the main entrance ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... International Authority, even on the general aspiration of Europe towards some form of supernational judicature, war will cease to have any more attraction or justification than the street brawl. For war is actually in the community of nations what the street fight is between ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... in 1836 remembered most distinctly about Napoleon were his despotism and his taste for war; and the most lasting impression of him amongst the most intelligent in the working-classes was that whilst sowing the seeds of democratic aspiration throughout Europe, he had carefully weeded out all democratic tendencies ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... should cover the field of human intellectual activity. You have recognised the importance of encouraging research. You propose to provide means by which young men, who may be full of zeal for a literary or for a scientific career, but who also may have mistaken aspiration for inspiration, may bring their capacities to a test, and give their powers a fair trial. If such a one fail, his endowment terminates, and there is no harm done. If he succeed, you may give power of flight to the genius of a Davy or a Faraday, a Carlyle or ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... this confession of feeling for the man who had sacrificed his dearest aspiration to the one consideration of her happiness, might have provoked a sharp reply. But by this time Romayne had really become alarmed. "You speak as if Arthur was going to leave ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... has been said, [Footnote: Professor Barrett Wendell, 'William Shakspere,' p. 36.] 'Tamburlaine' expresses with 'a profound, lasting, noble sense and in grandly symbolic terms, the eternal tragedy inherent in the conflict between human aspiration and human power.' ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... a Nation, the like of which no man living before our day had ever fancied. Nearly three centuries of intermingling and intermarrying, has made the traditions and the hopes of either the heritage and aspiration of us all. Common sufferings, common triumphs, common pride, make the whole glorious history the property of every American citizen, and it is provincial folly to glorify either faction at the expense ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the son of Robert Douglas, a labourer in the village of Strathmiglo in Fife, where he was born on the 17th June 1771. Early discovering an aptitude for learning, he formed the intention of studying for the ministry,—a laudable aspiration, which was unfortunately checked by the indigence of his parents. Attending school during winter, his summer months were employed in tending cattle to the farmers in the vicinity; and while so occupied, he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... much to be free, not under the compulsion of any need for unification, or tortured by unsatisfied desire. Desire and aspiration should find their object without all this torture, as now, in a world of plenty of water, simple thirst is inconsiderable, satisfied almost unconsciously. And he wanted to be with Ursula as free as with himself, single and clear ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... comparison the coarsest writer of his time. In this as in other matters of possible comparison that "vessel of deathless wrath," the implacable and inconsolable poet of sympathy half maddened into rage and aspiration goaded backward to despair—it should be needless to add the name of Cyril Tourneur—stands midway between these two more conspicuous figures of their age. But neither the father and master of poetic pessimists, the splendid and sombre creator of Vindice and his victims, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... easily have secured more pupils had he so desired, for there were many friends, moving in higher circles than his own, who were ready to assist him; but it is just here that we get a glimpse of Schubert's true character. He had no aspiration to mingle with those whom, in his modest, unaffected way, he considered to be above him. He valued friendship, from whomsoever it came, but his whole nature was opposed to turning the advances of the rich or great to his own advantage. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... undervaluing his opponent, these could have been but secondary hopes. He must have known that to penetrate into Western Numidia without a serious battle, or at least without an effort of Jugurtha to harass his march or to cut his communications, was an event beyond the reach of purely human aspiration. ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... must be in lofty friendship not only congenial tastes, and an aspiration after the imperishable and true, but some common end which both parties strive to secure, and which they love better than they love themselves. Without this common end, friendship might wear itself ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... German Gesetz. It has been attempted to derive the Latin lex, too, from the same root, though there is this difficulty, that the root of liegen and legen does not elsewhere occur in Latin. The mere disappearance of the aspiration would be no serious obstacle. If, however, the Latin lex cannot be derived from that root, we must, with Corssen, refer it to the same cluster of words to which ligare, to bind, obligatio, binding, and the Oscan ablative lig-ud belong, and assign to it the original meaning of bond. On ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... if reduced to such limits devotes herself in vain, feels that a higher aspiration has been stifled within her. She is yet the mother ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... for a moment on the outside. The spire points upward and teaches its lesson of aspiration. "Lift up your hearts," it seems to say, and holds up the Cross as that by which alone we are to be "exalted unto everlasting life." Whenever we {19} lift up our eyes to it, it ought to repeat for us that lesson—rebuke downward ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... Caucasian. His hair was smooth and black, but lacked the coarseness of his mother's race, while his brain and method of thinking were wholly that of his father. With this endowment there had come to him, early in life, an aspiration to rise above his own sort, a desire to be a thorough white man. And in this he had always been supported by his mother, who, knowing her past, carried in her heart bitterness fully the equal of Angus ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... flanks denote lawyers toiling late at their briefs, or mining stock promoters planning a new cast of the net? Must we be forever told that this is not a spire in praise of God but a monument in praise of Mammon? Aspiration is in its lines, beauty in its sky-borne shaft of blue and gold, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... so uplifted my childish spirit. The University, which was celebrating it's fiftieth anniversary, had honored me with a doctor's degree, and in the midst of the academic pomp and the rejoicing, the dome again appeared to me as a fitting symbol of the state's aspiration even in its high ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... poisoning have been observed to follow its use. If they manifest themselves, an injection of warm olive oil should be given; the oil, left in for twelve hours or so, forms an emulsion with the bismuth, which can be withdrawn by aspiration. Iodoform suspended in glycerin may be employed in a similar manner. When these and other non-operative measures fail, and the whole track of the sinus is accessible, it should be laid open, scraped, and packed with bismuth or iodoform gauze until ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... see!" he patiently explained, for he knows that it is vain to be angry with people because they are not so clever as—as other people. "It's the direct aspiration of Fate. He wants it, does he? Well, he ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... great soldier of reaction, he showed in his early life a decided inclination for new ideas. The truth that the wildest extravagances of youthful aspiration are a better omen of a vigorous and enlightened manhood than the decorous and ignoble faith in the perfection of existing arrangements, was not belied in the case of De Maistre. His intelligence was of too hard and exact a kind to inspire him with the exalted schemes that present themselves ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... sleep their last sleep under the greensward of St. Peter's Church. To many of us it is the one spot in Bournemouth most worth visiting. Climbing the wooded hill we stand by the Shelley grave, and think of how much intellect, aspiration, and achievement lies there entombed, and of the pathetic cenotaph to the memory of the greatest of all the Shelleys in the fine old Priory of Christchurch, five ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... Cynthia, the Moon, though aware that his aspiration must remain for ever hopeless. Tellus, the Earth, herself enamoured of Endymion, jealously resolves to punish his indifference to her by deep melancholy. Accordingly she visits the witch, Dipsas, by whose ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... obtaining all the support I might, perhaps, have had on the present occasion, from a very scrupulous delicacy, which I think became and was incumbent upon me, but which I by no means conceive to have been a fit rule for others, I cannot repent it. While the slightest aspiration of breath passed those lips, now closed for ever,—while one drop of life's blood beat in that heart, now cold for ever,—I could not, I ought not, to have acted otherwise than I did.—I now come with a very embarrassed feeling to that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... by what she says respecting her wish that, when she marries, her husband will, at least, have a will of his own, even should he be a tyrant. Tell her, when she forms that aspiration again, she must make it conditional if her husband has a strong will, he must also have strong sense, a kind heart, and a thoroughly correct notion of justice; because a man with a WEAK BRAIN and a STRONG WILL, is merely an intractable brute; you can have no hold of him; you can never ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... agent by whom, from the actual, living world, is to be wrought an imagined consistent world of Art,—not fantastic, or objectless, but having a purpose, and that purpose, in all its figments, a distinct relation to man's nature, and all that pertains to it, from the humblest emotion to the highest aspiration; the circle that bounds it being that only which bounds his spirit,—even the confines of that higher world, where ideal glimpses of angelic forms are sometimes permitted to his sublimated vision. Art may, in truth, be called the human world; for it is so far the work of man, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... trade more ennobling than home building. It is a vocation which touches every man and woman, and to make it really an art is, or should be, the true aspiration of ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... that was of Themistocles," said Kennedy, "who rejected the offer of a Memoria Technicha, with the aspiration that some one could teach him to forget. Lethe is the grandest of rivers ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Paradise—that is, they live in unclouded love, blessed by God with four boys and two girls; they live in growing prosperity, for the blessing of God is their luck; their name has good repute in the land, and far and wide they stand in high esteem; for their aspiration is high, so high as to try to write their names in Heaven. But not in a day, but after many a severe conflict did they reach the level road and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... what, above all else, she had wanted; and Linda realized that to marry him was still the crown of whatever happiness she could imagine. But her horror of the past recreated by his beating down of her gossamer-like aspiration, the vision of him flushed and ruthless, an image of indiscriminate nameless man, made it impossible for her to reply. An abandon of shrinking fear numbed her heart ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... is laid in the thought that every member of the body is equally close to the Head, and equally recipient of the life. There is none now who has a Spirit which others do not possess. The ancient aspiration of the Jewish law-giver: 'Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them,' is fulfilled in the experience of Pentecost; and the handmaiden and the children, as well as the old men and the servants, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... centre works them all together into varied beauty. To live is common; but art belongs only to the finest minds and the best moments. Life is a burden of present multitudinous phenomena; but art has the simple unity of perfect science, and is a goal and aspiration. Life comes by birth, art by thought, and the travail that produces art is ofttimes the severer. The fashions of life are bubbles on the surface, and pass away with the season; but the creations of art belong to the depths of the spiritual world, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... fathomless azure tint; I had studied the warm hues of Titian; I had felt ready to float away in the air with the marvellous 'Angel of the Annunciation'—and with all these thoughts in me, how could I content myself with the ordinary aspiration of modern artists? I grew absorbed in one subject—Colour. I noted how lifeless and pale the colouring of to-day appeared beside that of the old masters, and I meditated deeply on the problem thus presented to me. What was the secret of Correggio—of Fra Angelico—of ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... he has expressed his deepest thoughts, his most impressive views, and even foreshadowed those intimate convictions which he never expressed, but which he desired to record in such a manner that those that can read between the lines might find them there; and certainly there we find them. His aspiration has been to present to the world a picture of the physical world from which he would exclude everything that relates to the turmoil of human society, and to the ambitions of individual men. A life so full, so rich, is worth explaining in every respect, and it is really instructive to see with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... "no," when his child may marvel at what to him must seem a mere arbitrary or even unkind refusal of an innocent desire. That hapless man of genius, the late John Davidson, condensed the truth into one illuminating phrase when he spoke of prayer rightly uttered as {215} "submissive aspiration"; it would be difficult to devise another form of words equally brief yet containing so much of the essence of the matter. Even short of actual fulfilment, it is an immeasurable privilege simply to speak to God about all the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... duties, their king, their country, their laws, that they might become more sensible of their happiness under every government they live, and in every station they occupy, I should deem myself the happiest of men!" Such was the pure aspiration of the great author who studied to preserve, by ameliorating, the humane fabric of society. The same largeness of mind characterises all the eloquent friends of the human race. In an age of religious intolerance it inspired the President DE THOU to inculcate, from sad ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... nature as a sensuous activity drives us to the ideal, it throws us still more into the world of ideas by the terrible. Our highest aspiration is to be in good relations with physical nature, without violating morality. But it is not always convenient to serve two masters; and though duty and the appetites should never be at strife, physical necessity is peremptory, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... greeted Maud's pensive aspiration, that Miss Mills smiled over her solitary cup of tea, and little Nick burst into a perfect ecstasy of song, as he sat on ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were. Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might know the benefits of the Christian religion. "I have to say, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... material and possibility of development. The idea of no countenance is yet carried out, and this kind will take more developing for the completion of its idea, and may result in a greater beauty. I would therefore advise any young man of aspiration in the matter of beauty, to choose a plain woman for wife—IF THROUGH HER PLAINNESS SHE IS YET LOVELY IN HIS EYES; for the loveliness is herself, victorious over the plainness, and her face, so far from complete and yet serving her loveliness, has in it room for completion ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... like a shadow to the desk, the preacher, in a voice that was in singular harmony with the expression of his face, began to read a hymn. His voice had a remarkable cadence, rising and falling with yearning tenderness and sober pathos. It seemed to impart every feeling, every thought, every aspiration of the hymn. It was full of reverence, gratitude, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis |
