"Birthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the old woman's plot began to seep into her mind. All unwittingly Martin Howe was made a party in a diabolical scheme to defraud her—the woman who loved him—of her birthright, of the home that should ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... those who have suffered injuries and wrongs at our hands, but the kindest-hearted of men harden their hearts and set their faces like a flint against us who have done the wrong. All Syria sympathised with Esau for the loss of his birthright, but I do not read that any one came to whisper one kind word to Jacob on his hard pillow. All the army mourned over Uriah, but all the time David's moisture was dried up like the drought of summer, and not even Nathan came to the King till he could not help coming. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... and out. He lingered in a gloomy reverie, after checking up his correspondence, and a half hour's sharp dictations, absorbed in the cautious letter of Hugh Worthington, Esq., the man who had robbed him of his birthright. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... ran off, K.'s eye fell on what he had written on the cement. At a certain part of his career, the child of such a neighborhood as the Street "cancels" names. It is a part of his birthright. He does it as he whittles his school desk or tries to smoke the long dried fruit of the Indian cigar tree. So K. read in ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Geological Survey of the Territories," Hayden, 1876, p. 440. Calculations made by Mr. Holmes. (42) Brinton's "Floridian Peninsula," p. 21. We think, however, this statement requires to be taken with some allowance. Personal liberty seems to have been the birthright of every Indian. ("Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," Carr, p. 24.) The council of the tribe is the real governing body of all people in a tribal state of society. ("Ancient Society," Morgan.) When the war-chief united in his person priestly powers also, he ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... OWN. Oh! how I lay and sobbed In my poor cradle—deeply, deeply cursing The rich man's pampered bantling, who had robbed My only birthright—an attentive nursing! Sometimes in hatred of my foster-brother, I gnashed my gums—which terrified ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... only to share, but even in a manner to exclude them from all employment; that such an adoption of vagrant Jews into the community, from all parts of the world, would rob the real subjects of their birthright, disgrace the character of the nation, expose themselves to the most dishonourable participation and intrusion, endanger the constitution both in church and state, and be an indelible reproach upon the established religion of the country. Some of these orators seemed transported even to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Ceylon; God will now countersign his other blessings, and ripen his possibilities into great harvests of realization, by superadding the one blessing of a dovelike religion; light is thickening apace, the horrid altars of Moloch are growing dim; woman will no more consent to forego her birthright as the daughter of God; man will cease to be the tiger-cat that, in the noblest chamber of Ceylon, he has ever been; and with the new hopes that will now blossom amidst the ancient beauties of this lovely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... of the sacred earth, while all the time, within their breasts and brains, the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but unrecognized, the spirit of freedom which ere long was destined to restore its birthright to the world. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... business was weeping. Who could once have imagined another reason for the laying of that round, good-humoured, contented face down on the book-board, than pure drowsiness from lack of work-day interest! Yet there was a human soul crying out after its birthright. Oh, to be clean as a mountain-river! clean as the air above the clouds, or on the middle seas! as the throbbing aether that fills the gulf betwixt star and star!—nay, as the thought of the Son of Man himself, who, to make all things ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... plainly birthright matters, For fables we to ancient Greece are debtors; But still this field could not be reap'd so clean As not to let us, later comers, glean. The fiction-world hath deserts yet to dare, And, daily, authors make discoveries ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... mingled ever with the grander passion of seeing life as a ruined thing; her birthright to aspiring cleanness sold for a mess of quick-lunch pottage. And as she walked in a mist of agony, a dumb, blind creature heroically distraught, she could scarce distinguish between sordidness and the great betrayals, so chill and thick was the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... that fact explains itself: he spent much of his time previously seeking, or at least expecting, promotion, & failing in a laudable way,—in defence of his own kindred & the home of his bosom companion!—he resorted to Yankeedom, and sold as it were his birthright for a mess of Abolition pottage. This helps confirm my view, that many take positions in Lincoln's Army with the expectation of military promotion, & the hope of an easy conquest of the South. Oh, how deluded! But as for many of ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... need adventitious aid to impress others. Look at the aesthetic simplicity of her pose on the single hill, which is all the mistaken kindness of her children has left of the three mountains which were her birthright. Behold the stately avenues that stretch by bridge and road, radiating her lavish favors in every direction; look at the spreading suburbs that crowd beyond her gates, more beautiful than the parks and pleasure ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... young men, whom I had known as a bright, attractive collegian, was sent to prison, eventually, in spite of all his family could do. Another died in an institution for incurables. All forfeited their birthright of home, family, decent associations and ended up in degradation ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... caught the rain an' our gullies gethered it together an' troughed it down the mountains an' made the river which would water all yo' lands. That you was a lot o' damn fools cuttin' down yo' trees an' a-plantin' terbaccer an' a-spittin' out yo' birthright in terbaccer-juice, an' that by an' by you'd come up here an' cut down our trees so that there wouldn't be nothin' left to ketch the rain when it fell, so that yo' rivers would git to be cricks an' yo' cricks branches an' yo' land would ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... found color. Finally he discovered the fountainhead of the hoarded yellow particles that spell Power. There in the fastness of those steep, purgatorial walls was the hermitage of the two voices—voices that no longer whispered of hope, but left him in the utter loneliness of possession and its birthright, Fear. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... quieter, and buried himself entirely in his books. When he read about Jacob dressing himself in sheep-skins to personify Esau, and so to usurp his brother's birthright, he would clench his little fist in anger against the deceiver; when he read of tyrants and of the injustice and wickedness of the world, tears would come into his eyes, and he was quite filled with the thought of the justice and truth which ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of which he is so mightily careful, the slave of his own fears, the slave of his own love of bodily comfort. Such a man does not dare serve God. He dare not obey God, when obeying God is dangerous and unpleasant. He dare not claim his heavenly birthright, his share in God's Spirit, his share in Christ's kingdom, because that would bring discomfort on him, because he will have to give up the sins he loves, because he will have to endure the insults and ill-will of wicked men. Thus cowards can never be free, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... their generosity and idealism is still untainted by motives of personal profit, and their powers of vital thought not yet decayed by disuse—these and worse things will happen; love, tolerance, and the independence which is the birthright of men, will all be engulfed in a mad welter of personal, class, and national selfishness. In such a society it really would not matter very much if political education were captured by the State; and the only way, as it seems to us, of preventing ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... Life, that to Lilias seemed a serious business, was a joyous venture to Dulcie; she had a happy knack of shaking off the unpleasant things, and throwing the utmost possible power of enjoyment into the nice ones. If innocent happiness is the birthright of childhood, she clung to it steadfastly, and had not yet exchanged it for the red pottage ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... private affairs. To this general statement of the case we agree; but we may point out that in terming our aristocracy a privileged class one material distinction has been passed over. For whereas the French noblesse constituted a caste partly exempted by birthright from the general taxation, and vested with certain vexatious rights to which no duties corresponded, the English aristocracy possessed legally no privileges at all. It was not an exclusive order, but an upper class that ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... flood gates open—laughed with tears in the laughter; drew a tragically amusing picture of her life—her anomalous position, her dependence, her hatred of the pretences, the shifts, the sordid bravado by means of which her impoverished Gaverick relatives clung on to their social birthright, the toadying of the Dowager, the worldly admonitions of Rosamond Tallant and her set—she used some of the phrases he had himself read in that letter. Had he been in any doubt as to its authorship that doubt ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... in a famine of desire for some of the new styles. Her pretty body cried out for appropriate adornment as its birthright. She was ashamed to go to the studio a third time in the same old suit. She ordered one little slip of a dress sent home "collect." She had hoarded the remnant of her Silsby dollars. When she reached home the delivery-wagon was at the curb and the man was up-stairs. Gilfoyle ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... prisoners. Thus England had the glory to make two Kings prisoners in one year. This reign is also memorable for the institution of the most noble Order of the Garter, and for the title of Duke of Cornwall being first conferred upon the Black Prince, and continued as a birthright to ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... subject. Since I have taken the case home to myself, I have felt that it was mean and wrong to send back fugitives from slavery; but it becomes painful, when I think of the possibility of having helped to send back my own brother,—and one, too, whom I have supplanted in his birthright." ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... bad one. I guess she looked forward to the time when a still grander race should look down into her shinin' face, a race of free men, and free wimmen; sons and daughters of God, who should hold their birthright so grandly and nobly that they will look back upon the people of to-day, as we look back upon the dark sons and daughters of the forest, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... like you at first. Who can help liking you? You seem to draw affection from all living things, as the trees draw the moisture from the ground. It comes to you as it were your birthright. Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert thought there was nobody like you. The sun rose and set in you. They thought I was the luckiest girl alive to win the love of a man like you. 'For it looks very much like it,' Uncle Robert used to say, wagging his head wickedly at me. Of course they ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... years, though I have thought much: and you must for once hear reason. The boy belongs—to his father as much as to you. I have said it! I cannot take it back. He belongs to the family of which he may one day be the head. You cannot throw away his birthright. And think, if you let him grow up like this, not knowing that he has a family or a—unaware ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... generous man. And now, resting from his labors, he was the genial and kindly gentleman whom his social acquaintances admire so sincerely. I believe he felt almost as badly as I did over the sad picture he had drawn of the proud old merchant yielding up his children's birthright. I felt grieved to the depths of my soul at Leonard Lewisohn's predicament, for I knew, as did all men connected with Wall Street or Copper, what a stalwart he was. He had the heart of an ox and the pluck of a lion, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... this Act, and as the uncles of the Queen, and the hereditary Earl Marshal of England, occupy their respective steps in the ladder of precedence, by the self-same title, there would be no greater violation of birthright in placing an individual without a status before the Duke of Sussex, than there would in placing him before the Duke of Norfolk; if there be any injustice at all, the difference would not be in the principle, but in its local or ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... brightest birth That sprang from his fair spouse, prolific earth! Great Hesper, say what sordid ceaseless hate Impels thee thus to mar my elder state. Our sire assign'd thee thy more glorious reign, Secured and bounded by our laboring main; That main (tho still my birthright name it bear) Thy sails o'ershadow, thy brave children share; I grant it thus; while air surrounds the ball, Let breezes blow, let oceans roll for all. But thy proud sons, a strange ungenerous race, Enslave my tribes, and each fair world ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... exploits of the gallant men who composed the American Navy, beginning with the Revolution and ending with the story of their wonderful deeds in our late war with Spain. You can never read a more interesting story, nor one that will make you feel prouder of your birthright. While our patriot armies have done nobly, it is none the less true that we never could have become one of the greatest nations in the world without the help of our heroic navy. Our warships penetrated into all waters of the globe, and made people, whether barbarous or civilized, respect and fear ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... have his head. God is leading him straight on the path of failure. It is this still-vague feeling, that he will never have power to add to the Prussian birthright, that makes him rush feverishly from one scheme to another; stirring up this question and that, ever testing, ever striving. It is this foreboding that has driven him to pursue fame, fortune and glory, and so to weary them with his importunities and haste, that they flee ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... have been because she was the Beauty's sister. A few slight indications of a rather petted and capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural endowment. If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees, they could not have been more ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Lindley from "out Tibbooburra way," and there was comely issue, and that issue is now at Eton; for Esau came into his birthright, as he said he would, at his own time. But he and his wife have a way of being indifferent to the gay, astonished world; and, uncommon as it may seem, he has not tired ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fairly out, and when From Saint Bartholomew we have saved our skin, To-morrow 'd see us in some other den, And worse off than we hitherto have been; Besides, I 'm hungry, and just now would take, Like Esau, for my birthright a beef-steak. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Thy birthright was not given by human hands: Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields, While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him, To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, And teach the reed to utter simple airs. Thou by his side, amid the tangled ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... man alike in Great Britain and in {50} the colonies this form of government seemed, as has been said, fit only for an independent nation, and inconsistent with the colonial status. To Howe it was the essential birthright of British freemen, and he determined to vindicate it for his ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... his mother, impatiently, "this is not selling but giving away one's birthright. Where is the advantage of birth if breeding is not supposed to go along with it? Where the parents have had intelligence and refinement, do we not constantly see them inherited by the children? and in an increasing degree from generation ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... speeds the emigrant pulls at the heart-strings of the immigrant; drawing home one son from the outposts, while thrusting out another toward the outposts, there to learn what England means, and to earn and deserve the glory of his birthright. That, in a nutshell, is the real history of ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... never seen so sweet a character, so sensitive a mind—a mind whose sorrow was imagination. And therein the little lady showed herself a person of wisdom. For none of them had yet reckoned with that one great element in Lali's character —that thing which is the birthright of all who own the North for a mother, the awe of imagination, the awe and the pain, which in its finest expression comes near, very near, to the supernatural. Lali's mind was all pictures; she never thought of things in words, she saw ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... THE SPECTATOR.—"'The Birthright' is, in its way, quite as well constructed, as well written, and as full of incident as any story that has come from the pen of Sir Conan Doyle or ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... do much. Your claim to interfere is a part of your birthright, and it is inalienable. You will have the countenance, doubtless, of your father's head-clerk, and confidential friends and partners. Above all, Rashleigh's schemes are of a nature that"—(she stopped abruptly, as if fearful of saying too much)—"are, in short," she resumed, "of the nature ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... quiet cell, listening to her story, and hearing again the great names his youth had reverenced, he felt himself an exile returning to his own, mounting the familiar heights and breathing the air that was his birthright. Looking back from this recovered standpoint he saw how far behind his early hopes had been left. Since his departure from Naples there had been nothing to remind him of that vast noiseless labour of the spirit going on everywhere beneath the social surface: that baffled ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... smoky; they also thought that they heard there a rumbling noise as of fire, and a cry of some tormented, and that they smelt the scent of brimstone. Then said Christian, What means this? The Shepherds told them, This is a by-way to hell, a way that hypocrites go in at; namely, such as sell their birthright, with Esau; such as sell their master, with Judas; such as blaspheme the gospel, with Alexander; and that lie and dissemble, with Ananias and Sapphira his wife. Then said Hopeful to the Shepherds, I perceive that these ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... weariness, to be returning from labor—do you mean to say that they are washerwomen and char-women? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken; they are nothing of the kind. I assure you they stand in a higher rank; for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... from Mozinkwa that Soana Molopo was the elder brother of Katema, but that he was wanting in wisdom; and Katema, by purchasing cattle and receiving in a kind manner all the fugitives who came to him, had secured the birthright to himself, so far as influence in the country is concerned. Soana's first address to us did not savor much of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... de Villerai. Your friends have brought to trial a perfectly innocent man—they have allowed him, for several months, to remain under the intolerable vexations of the ban of society, and to stand deprived of his birthright as a gentleman—have destroyed him at Court—have almost blighted his career—have forced him to expose his life to the ocean, to take far-off and highly perilous journeys to collect his defences—and have compelled him more than once to brave mortal combat. They have done all this, as ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... scripture did seize upon my soul: Or profane persons as Esau, who for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright: for ye know, how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. Heb. xii. ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... down, while such durst be, Shining northward, shining southward, as the aurorean flame, Not our mother, not Northumberland, brought ever forth, Though no southern shore may match the sons that kiss her mouth, Children worthier all the birthright given of the ardent north Where the fire of hearts outburns the suns that fire the south. Even such fire was this that lit them, not from lowering skies Where the darkling dawn flagged, stricken in the ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... one shall see the Lord, [12:15]taking care that no one may come short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up may make trouble and by it many be defiled, [12:16]that no one may be a fornicator or unholy person like Esau, who for one meal sold his birthright. [12:17]For you know that afterwards, wishing also to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for a change of mind, though he sought it with tears. [12:18]For you have not come to a mountain that may be touched, and to a burning fire, and blackness and darkness and a tempest ...
— The New Testament • Various
... mental disease known as Dementia Praecox, but I seriously doubt it. One often finds that the goody-goody boy of fifteen becomes the college fullback at twenty,—that is, once thrown on the world, the really normal get back their birthright of character. I think it likely that now and then a feeling of inferiority is bred in this way, a feeling that may cling and change the current of a boy's life. The real danger of too close a family life, in whatever way it manifests itself, is that it cuts into real social life, narrows the field ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... sign of the times, to find in a strictly scientific work a sentence truly religious! As I continued to read these works, I found them suffused with religion, religion of a kind and quality I had not imagined. The birthright of the spirit of man was freedom, freedom to experiment, to determine, to create—to create himself, to create society in the image of God! Spiritual creation the function of cooperative man through the coming ages, the task that was to make him divine. Here indeed was the germ ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... formed to force upon the people of England and of Scotland a virtual dissolution of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland. It would in any case have been a pleasure to afford aid, however small, to the Irish Unionists, whether Protestants or Catholics, engaged in the defence at once of their own birthright and of the political unity of the United Kingdom. Yet for a moment I doubted whether the republication of a forgotten criticism of a forgotten Bill would be of essential service to my friends. On reflection, however, I have come to see that, though ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... one of so military a profession as Mainwaring practiced could hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but Lucinda could not have married one not a member of the Society of Friends without losing her own birthright membership therein. She herself might not attach much weight to such a loss of membership in the Society, but her fear of, and her respect for, her uncle led her to walk very closely in her path of ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... of Norman, extraction. Some maintain that he was not born till after the time of Sir Charles, to whom we have before alluded. Others are of opinion that he was a legitimate son of old Lady Magna Charta, although he was long concealed and kept out of his birthright. Certain it is that he was a very benevolent person. Whenever any poor fellow was taken up on grounds which he thought insufficient, he used to attend on his behalf and bail him; and thus he had become so popular, that to take direct measures ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... love for the antiquities His honest hold, his birthright is! And things unheard of or unread, Defaced by moth or rust or mold, To him are treasures more than gold, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... and this was most noteworthy after the Civil War, which was also the end of the grand romantic period of the Pennsylvania wilderness. The mountaineer of Pennsylvania was of martial blood, his ancestors had fought in every state of Continental Europe—and the science of armorer was his birthright. David Lewis, the "Galloping Jack" or highwayman of Central Pennsylvania, used new pistols every year, and weapons which he is said to have carried are as plentiful as Ole Bull's violins. The frontiersmen of British origins always named their favorite rifles "My ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... taste for sculpture, painting, and architecture. Certainly if he had not possessed a feeling for art, he would have been a monster. To have been born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired with a spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored lands and in that golden age, had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the very first place among living poets and musicians; but he was sure that when they heard Ortensia they would exalt him above all his predecessors and all his contemporaries; at last he would enjoy that absolute supremacy which is the prime birthright of genius in all ages, and to which he firmly believed himself entitled. Ortensia alone could assure to him that final victory, and beside it all objections, all scruples, all petty questions of technical honour ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... the third. Till Lionel's issue fails, his should not reign; It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock.— Then, father Salisbury, kneel we together; And in this private plot be we the first That shall salute our rightful sovereign With honour of his birthright to the crown. ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... "all that glitters is not gold," it does not follow that nothing which glitters is gold. Because a statement is general, it does not follow that it is either untrue or unpractical. "Glittering generality" or not, the voice which proclaimed that the birthright of equality belonged to all mankind was the fiat lux of the new-born political universe. This, and the terrible series of logical consequences that flowed from it, threatening all the dynasties, menacing all the hierarchies, undermining the seemingly solid foundations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... and principles of Mr. Adams. He knew nothing of the jealousy and bitterness which are gendered, in little minds and hearts, by disparities of sentiment. Freedom of opinion he considered the birthright of every American citizen, and he would in no instance be the instrument of inflicting punishment upon the head of any man on account of its exercise. High and pure in all his aims, he sought to reach them by means of a corresponding character. If he could not succeed in ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... year. The power vested in the Government by means of the Public Meetings Act has been a menace to Your Majesty's subjects since the enactment of the Act in 1894. This power has now been applied in order to deliver a blow that strikes at the inherent and inalienable birthright of every British subject—namely, his right to petition his Sovereign. Straining to the utmost the language and intention of the law, the Government have arrested two British subjects who assisted in presenting a petition to Your Majesty ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... slowness of its processes which differentiates the typical novel from the typical play. If the novelist does not take advantage of the facilities offered by his form for portraying gradual change, whether in the way of growth or of decay, he renounces his own birthright, in order to trespass on the domain of the dramatist. Most great novels embrace considerable segments of many lives; whereas the drama gives us only the culminating points—or shall we say the intersecting ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... dead in six' weeks. If we will only let Nature and the God of Nature alone, persons will commonly learn their condition as early as they ought to know it, and not be cheated out of their natural birthright of hope of recovery, which is intended to accompany sick people as long as life is comfortable, and is graciously replaced by the hope of heaven, or at least of rest, when life has become a burden which the bearer is ready to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... views, and hidden qualities, and private conversations, only betray their absolute ignorance of actual conditions. King George is an honest, honourable and patriotic Englishman, guarding the greatest birthright that a man can have, watching over the evolution of the greatest of world-empires, sitting at the heart of vital and powerful political movements. The steps he takes, or does not take, will be carefully considered, and all public knowledge of the new ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... hast held Despair at bay. It was the bravest stand that thou hast ever made. And now, if thou hast lived through this one day, why not another? 'Tis only one hour at a time that thou art called on to endure. Come! By the bloodstone that is thy birthright, pledge me anew thou'lt keep thy oath until the going down of ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... By birthright higher than myself, Though nestling of the self-same nest: No fault of hers, no fault of ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... has temporarily intrusted its weal and woe, supporting a few multi-millionaires and their dependents, setting at naught—unpunished—the revered document of the Fourth of July, 1776, and daring to barter away the birthright of the white race. . . . We want to see whether the united voices of Germans and foreigners have not more weight than the hired writers of editorials in the newspapers; and whether the words of men who are independent will not render it impossible for a subsidised ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... practical will go down in England. A man of science may earn great distinction, but not bread. He will get invitations to all sorts of dinners and conversaziones, but not enough income to pay his cab fare. A man of science in these times is like an Esau who sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. Again, if one turns to practice, it is still the old story—wait; and only after years of working like a galley-slave and intriguing like a courtier is there any chance of getting a decent livelihood. I am not at all sure if...it would ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... I do not believe that it had entered the heart of either of them to understand how necessary they had become to each other, and when they saw that all was over it was a sad awaking. For a little while it was with both as if they had madly thrown a birthright away; for, though they had faith, they were not yet perfect in it. Not soon did either see that this life had a blessing for them every day—new every morning, fresh every evening—and that from everlasting to everlasting are the mercies of God. But at last he said, 'I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... to tell; though far renowned Th' Ionian gods—of Javan's issue held Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth, Their boasted parents;—Titan, Heaven's first-born, With his enormous brood, and birthright seized By younger Saturn: he from mightier Jove, His own and Rhea's son, like measure found; So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in Crete And Ida known, thence on the snowy top Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air, Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, Or in Dodona, and through all ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Speaks in my voice! Thine ignorance is thy bliss. Oedipus. A bliss that tortures! Jocasta. Miserable man! Oh couldst thou never learn the thing thou art! Oedipus. Will no one quicken this slow herdsman's steps The unquestioned birthright of a royal name Let this proud queen possess! Jocasta. Wo! wo! thou wretch! Wo! my last word!—words are ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... latent faculties, crying to be born into consciousness. Then there is that wonderful thing, the Will, which is but faintly understood by those ignorant of the Yogi Philosophy—the Power of the Ego—its birthright from ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... of her voice, the clinging touch of her hand, sent the blood pumping through his veins. Something besides duty inspired him; he was no longer merely a soldier, but had suddenly become transformed into a man. Years of repression, of iron discipline, were blotted out, and he became even as his birthright made him. "Molly McDonald," "Molly McDonald," he whispered the name unconsciously to himself. Then his eyes caught the distant flicker of Indian fire, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... animals; he excludes all who have not sinned: according to a sound rule of logic which lawyers know well. What St Paul meant, I believe, is most probably this: that Adam, by sinning, lost his heavenly birthright; and put on the carnal and fleshly likeness of the animals, instead of the likeness of God in which he was created; and therefore, sowing to the flesh, of the flesh reaped corruption; and became subject to death even as ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... clearly than the opinions of the ancients respecting their slaves. The most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece were never able to reach the idea, at once so general and so simple, of the common likeness of men, and of the common birthright of each to freedom: they strove to prove that slavery was in the order of nature, and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything shows that those of the ancients who had passed from the servile to the free condition, many of whom have left ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... average man, comes into the world still-born. It has nothing to say; its hearers know it all, and the exact value of it all, already. And in their heart of hearts, many even of those who have stooped to a lower ideal, and sold their birthright of hopes beyond the passing hour, for a mess of pottage in the form of material success and easy enjoyment, have a lurking contempt for the preachers of what they practise; as many a slaveholder in America probably had for the clerical ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... the work had in no instance been revolutionary in its character. It was not so much that the American people gained an increase of freedom by their separation from England, as that they kept the freedom they had always enjoyed, that freedom which was the inalienable birthright of Englishmen, but which George III. had foolishly sought to impair. The American Revolution was therefore in no respect destructive. It was the most conservative revolution known to history, thoroughly ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... myself; but that I will never betray my rights as a sovereign and a man, by taking this step to secure the favour of any one, or to purchase that allegiance which, if you owe it to me at all, is due to me as my birthright.' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... this very thing he desired presented the temptation by which he was deceived. And you might have mentioned, too, how Esau himself yielded to his appetite, and sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, Gen. xxv. 29. When we yield to these propensities of the flesh, we lay a snare for our own souls, and expose our weakness to an adversary, ever ready to take advantage of our infirmity. It is a common fault in children to desire with greedy ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... great man was a beauty and an heiress. Her husband was twenty-five years her senior. She ever regarded herself as one robbed of her birthright, and landed at high tide upon a barren and desert domestic isle. Honore, her first child, was born before she was twenty. Napoleon was at that time playing skittles with all Europe, and the woman whom Fate robbed of her romance worshiped at the shrine of the Corsican, because every good woman ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... was, so far as in him lay, to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. [Footnote: We cannot adduce St. Columba as another example in the same kind, seeing that this name was not his birthright, but one given to him by his scholars for the dove-like gentleness of his character. So indeed we are told; though it must be owned that some of the traits recorded of him in The Monks of the West are not columbine at all.] The Dominicans were well ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... nothing; the very traditions of his gigantic stature and enormous strength are dim and unhistorical. But the instinct of the Scotch people has guided it aright in choosing him for its national hero. He was the first to assert freedom as a national birthright, and amidst the despair of nobles and priests to call the people itself to arms. At the head of an army drawn principally from the coast districts north of the Tay, which were inhabited by a population of the same blood as that of the Lowlands, Wallace in September 1297 encamped ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Esau's servant; Mido, a boy who leads blind Isaac; Hanan and Zethar, two of his neighbours; Abra, a girl who assists Rebecca; and Debora, an old nurse. Esau and his servant Ragau set forth together on a hunt. While they are gone, Rebecca urges Jacob to secure his brother's birthright. Esau returns with a raging appetite, and Jacob demands his birthright as the condition of relieving him with a mess of rice pottage; he consents, and Ragau laughs at his stupidity, while Jacob, Rebecca, and Abra sing a psalm of thanksgiving. These things occupy the first two ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... raid, food was plentiful, even when later, in winter, they were awakened by some warm, bright day, and hunger, long sustained, had made them ravenous. Kweek, having no brother or sister to share his birthright, was fed and trained in a manner that otherwise would have been impossible, while his parents were particularly strong and healthy. These circumstances undoubtedly combined to make him what he eventually became—quick to form an opinion and to act, and able, once he was fully grown, to meet in fight ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the exclusive birthright of no age of people. The dirtiest Hindoo sings to his fetish the songs of the Brahmin muse, with as keen a relish as the most devout Christian does the hymns of Dr. WATTS. Melody comes of Heaven, and is a gift vouchsafed to all generations, and all kinds of men. In proof of this, let us adduce ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... in the world for Mervale, on returning from his Continental episode of life, to settle down to his desk,—his heart had been always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright, a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make this establishment first-rate was an honourable ambition,—it was his! He had lately married, not entirely for money,—no! he was worldly rather than mercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love; ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... by remembering that the highest reality is supra-temporal, and that the destiny which God has designed for us has not merely a contingent realisation, but is in a sense already accomplished. There are, in fact, two ways in which we may abdicate our birthright, and surrender the prize of our high calling: we may count ourselves already to have apprehended, which must be a grievous delusion, or we may resign it as unattainable, which is ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... society, which is so persistent and so deluding where money is concerned, to have been in the run of big affairs not because one has created them, but because one is a part of them and because they are one's birthright, like the air one breathes, could not help but create one of those illusions of solidarity which is apt to befog the clearest brain. It is so hard for us to know what we have not seen. It is so difficult for us to feel ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... and fought strenuously in a savage land for his existence, a bold, fearless frontiersman; while he, Nevil, knew in his secret heart that he had lost that caste, had thrown away that right—that birthright. He had, as these men also knew, "taken the blanket." He had become a white Indian. He lived by the clemency of that people, in their manner, their life. He was one of them, while yet his skin was white. He was regarded by his own race ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... prudence, was left Tutor by his brother to Sir Kenneth, his own brother-uterine, Duncan being of better hands than head. This Hector, hearing of Sir Kenneth's death, and finding himself in possession of an estate, to which those only now had title whose birthright was debateable, namely, the children begot by Kenneth the third, on the Lord Lovat's daughter, with whom he did at first so irregularly and unlawfully cohabit." The objection of illegitimacy could not apply to Duncan, or to his son Allan, and it is difficult ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our present government, if the spirit of American institutions had not been both the birthright and the birth-blessing of the Colonies? The Indians, the French, the Spaniards, and even England herself, warred in vain against a people, born and bred in the household, at the domestic altar of Liberty herself They had never been slaves, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... spite of itself. To complain that God does not prevent us from doing wrong is to complain because he has made man of so excellent a nature, that he has endowed his actions with that morality by which they are ennobled, that he has made virtue man's birthright. Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom, we are tempted by our passions and restrained by conscience. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the soul is immortal. There is, there can be no death! Receive the glad tidings, and cry it aloud! There is no death! Let all the earth hear, until there is none so base, so low, so poor, so ignorant, so sinful that he shall not be immortal. It is his birthright, for we are all born to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... let them sneer; I earn, before I eat, my bread and cheese; I love my language; and I like my beer. Content with what I have, so that it come Through honest sources: happy at my lot, I seek not—wish not—for a fairer home. Hard work: my Bible: children: wife: a cot: These are my birthright, these I'll strive to keep, And round my humble hearth affection bind: From Eisteddfodau untold pleasures reap; And try to live at peace with all mankind. Then glad am I that you your error see, Of sneering where you cannot understand: You've owned your fault: ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... save only the Parliament of Ireland; that we humbly conceive that in this right the very essence of our liberty exists, a right which we, on the part of all the people of Ireland, do claim as their birthright, and which we cannot yield but with our lives." The ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her anchor and the landing of her passengers—a kind of amphibious prophecy that the new-born nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the sea and over the land. [Great applause.] There, also, was Rose Standish, whose name is a perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds. And there, too, was Mrs. Winslow, whose name is even more than a fragrance; it is a taste; for, as the advertisements ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... idealist who finds himself brought into thrilling touch with the physical loveliness, the actual enchantment, the undeniable delight of certain things in life. The questions, "What have I missed? What have I lost? What birthright have I renounced?" are bound to make themselves heard. They beat upon the heart like hail upon the sand—and fall buried in the scars they cause. Things of the flesh may and do become dead sea fruit; but things of the spirit often become stale and meaningless ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... a multi-millionaire trained in the fine art of juggling corporations. In all probability you approached my father with an offer to buy the ranch and he declined. He was old and he was sentimental, and he loved me and would not sell me out of my birthright. You had to have that ranch, and since you couldn't buy it you decided to acquire it by foreclosure. To do that, however, you had to acquire the mortgage, and in order to acquire the mortgage you had to acquire a controlling interest in the capital stock of the First ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... freedom. But the disputants appear to forget the inseparable connection in the prediction between the wild, the Bedoween habits of the Ismaelites, with their national independence. The stationary and civilized descendant of Ismael forfeited, as it were, his birthright, and ceased to be a genuine son of the "wild man" The phrase, "dwelling in the presence of his brethren," is interpreted by Rosenmuller (in loc.) and others, according to the Hebrew geography, "to the East" of his brethren, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... livelihood from the sea with benumbed fingers and wrists pitted deep with scars of salt-water boils. He had seen them risk their lives for food on the black rocks, the grinding ice and the treacherous tide; and now his heart felt with their hearts, his eyes saw with their eyes. Their bitter birthright was the harvest of the coastwise seas; and he now realized their real and ethical right to all that they might gather from the tide, be it cod, caplin, herrings or the timbers and freights of wrecked ships. He saw that a wreck, like a good run of fish, ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... to day has been done openly before the Great Spirit and before the nation, and I hope I may never hear any one say that this treaty has been done secretly: and now in closing this council, I take off my glove, and in giving you my hand I deliver over my birthright and lands: and in taking your hand I hold fast all the promises you have made, and I hope they will last as long as the sun rises and the water ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... colonial experience and intelligence, which required to be entwined around the throne by the silken cords of kindness and interest, instead of being bandaged to England by 29 Acts of Parliament, every one of which indicated the loss of some sacred birthright or privilege of Englishmen and their posterity as soon as they emigrated from the eastern to the western shores of the Atlantic. Those who emigrated to or were born in America were no less Englishmen than those who remained or were born in England, and were entitled to all the rights and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... pen, was erected a government of millions of men,—and not ordinary men, either, but black men emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery, centuries old; and now, suddenly, violently, they come into a new birthright, at a time of war and passion, in the midst of the stricken, embittered population of their former masters. Any man might well have hesitated to assume charge of such a work, with vast responsibilities, indefinite powers, and limited resources. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... a professed atheist? Had he indeed been planning to take to wife, to make the mother of his possible children, one who openly flouted the idea of a personal God—he, who had drunk in at his mother's breast the burning love of the Faith which is the birthright of every ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... first-born was due to Jacob by reason of God's choice, according to Malach. 1:2, 3, "I have loved Jacob, but have hated Esau." Wherefore Esau sinned by selling his birthright, yet Jacob sinned not in buying, because he is understood to have freed ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... apt to judge from what thou hast seen, thou already expectest a scene of riot and debauchery; to see the candidates servilely cringing, meanly suing, and basely bribing the electors, depriving themselves of sense and reason, and selling more than Esau did for a mess of pottage; for, what is birthright, what is inheritance, when put in the scale against that choicest blessing, public liberty! O, Liberty! thou enlivener of life, thou solace of toils, thou patron of virtue, thou encourager of industry, thou spring of justice, thou something more than life, beyond the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... hound scorns to seek a mate from the herd of ravening wolves. When was it heard that the Cymry, the descendants of Brute, the true children of the soil of fair Britain, were plundered, oppressed, bereft of their birthright, and insulted even in their last retreats?—when, but since they stretched their hand in friendship to the stranger, and clasped to their bosoms the daughter of the Saxon? Which of the two is feared?—the empty water-course ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Africa, and men looked eagerly to see what the consular elections for the next year would produce. We hear of no candidate belonging to the highest ranks of the nobility who was deemed to have been defrauded of his birthright on this occasion; but the disappointment of Quintus Lutatius Catulus was deemed wholly legitimate, when Cnaeus Mallius Maximus defeated him at the poll. Catulus belonged to a plebeian family that had been ennobled by the possession of the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... commons cried out against this summary and arbitrary proceeding. This was pronounced to be such an alarming attack on the liberty of the prisoners, that every freeman in the prison ship was called upon to rise up and resist the daring encroachment on the birthright of an American. A strong party was at once formed in favor of the man who was imprisoned without a trial. On this occasion the names of Hamden, Sidney, and Wilks, were echoed from all quarters ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... should be planned at frequent intervals. There are few things more pathetic than the dread with which many of our city poor think of the country, and to teach them country pleasures is to restore to them a birthright of which they have been robbed. A love of plants and window-gardening is another healthful pleasure. Mignonette, geranium, wandering Jew, and saxifrage grow well in small spaces. To one family, living in tenement rooms where there was no sun, a visitor gave a pot of geranium. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... "Lohengrin," it is absolutely necessary to make a breach in the old routine of criticism, the long ears and short sight of "Philistia," as well as the stupid arrogance of that self-sufficient fraction of the public which believes itself the destined judge of works of art by dint of birthright. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... of existence prolonged beyond death sometimes almost oppressive, and it seems to me that there are times when one would be ready to consent to lie down in one's grave and become altogether as the clods of the valley, relinquishing one's immortal birthright simply for rest. To be sure you will answer that, for rest to be pleasurable, consciousness must accompany it; but oh, how I should like to be consciously unconscious for a little while!—which possibly ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... ever touch your life, I want you to remember then, that, as one of the race for whom Christ died, you have as high a citizenship in that spirit land as any creature there: that you are your own soul's warden, and that neither principalities nor powers can rob you of that your birthright." ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... her skirt and tore like fierce, sharp fingers at her legging-protected ankles. The great gray desert still stretched before her to the horizon's edge, and still she flung the miles behind her with the long, rhythmic stride that was her birthright from the hills. A strong man, unused to it, would have been staggering with stiff fatigue, but this slender girl held the trail with light grace, her weight still carried springily on her ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... with her head bowed upon her hand. Her first impulse was to go in and try to justify herself in the eyes of this girl, with whom she knew that Mr. Sawyer was in love; but no, she was but a waif, with no name, no birthright, no heritage; that woman had cut her off from her people. Truly, she had ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... son, I'm for it!" said Larry, with the assumption of outward calm, when heart and pulses are pounding, that has been claimed as one of the assets of a public school education, and is, even without that advantage, the birthright of such ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... their God-given birthright, their country to have and to hold, And not for the lust of conquest, and not for ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... good heart, and of no mean capacity, but with a haughtiness which threatens to dull the kinder passions, and to cloud the intellect. This is the inevitable consequence of an illustrious education. The glare of his birthright has dazzled his young faculties. Perhaps the first words he could distinguish were from the important nurse, giving elaborate directions about his lordship's pap. As soon as he could walk, a crowd of submissive vassals doffed their ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... completely, that in the years to come, he would never reach a greater height of artistic success than he had done just then. One such experience could justify many a year of halting indecision. Puritan to the core, he yet had proved true to his Slavonic birthright. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... stubborn desert that appears sterile and is not, it was a sprawling, ungainly, ill-begotten thing. In the night it came; in the dawn it grew; during the first day it assumed lustiness and an insolence that was its birthright. And, like any welcome child, there was a name awaiting it. Men laughed as the unceremonious christening was performed. A half-drunken vagabond from no one knew where had staked out his claim and drained his bottle. 'Here's lookin' at Sanchia's ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... night. What beauty her mother had ever possessed had been thoroughly English in its character—hers was wholly Indian. She turned away with a feeling of loathing for herself, and a fearful glance into her heart as if to seek there also for some proof of this hateful birthright. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... tells us that "he was a comely youth, not without some extraordinary dignity of grace and aspect." The fashion in which he retailed his sufferings, pleaded his youth, and appealed to the proverbial generosity of the Irish people, to protect a hapless prince, robbed of his throne and his birthright, seems to have produced an immense effect. Kildare, there is reason to suspect, was privy to the plot, but of others there is no reason to think this, and with a single exception—that of the Earl of Howth—all the lords of the Pale and many of the bishops, including the Archbishop ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... the dear creature has, for some thousands of years, been robbed of her birthright and relegated to an inferior position in matters mundane simply because her biceps are not so large as those of her big brother, and she has no ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... fled, the good old Abraham died, and Isaac succeeded him to the patriarchal honors. He had two sons, Esau and Jacob. The elder brother was irreligious, and married a heathen wife. God had rejected him, and promised to Jacob the birthright; in other words, he was to be the chief patriarch, through whose descendants the Messiah should come. He was his mother's favorite boy, while ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... must alienate me entirely from the ambition that yearns for fields in which, alas! it may perhaps never appropriate to itself a rood for culture,—only wander, lost in a vague fairyland, to which it has not the fairy's birthright. O thou great Enchantress, to whom are equally subject the streets of Paris and the realm of Faerie, thou who hast sounded to the deeps that circumfluent ocean called "practical human life," and hast taught the acutest of its navigators to consider ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... managed to marry off your daughters very young, though in my opinion they are none of them beauties. Your sons seem to be able to support themselves. You have contrived to sell your birthright to an oil trust and to lift the mortgage on Chatsworth. Your servants stay with you until they die on your hands; and your friends vie with each other ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... defeated of any part. The brain will hold out longer than it, and the liver longer than that; they will endure a siege; but an unnatural heat, a rebellious heat, will blow up the heart, like a mine, in a minute. But howsoever, since the heart hath the birthright and primogeniture, and that it is nature's eldest son in us, the part which is first born to life in man, and that the other parts, as younger brethren, and servants in his family, have a dependance upon it, it is reason that the ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... Abbie. Of course, marryin' late is better than not marryin' at all, though. Some of the rest of us—" he motioned toward the three captains and Celestina, "have got passed by altogether. But Delight an' Bob have found love early, while the bloom is still on it. You wouldn't wish to keep 'em from their birthright, ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... that seems the birthright of the gifted few, Mrs. Lee adjusted herself to the ways of the Marsh household. Some commotion had been caused by the arrival of four more trunks, of different shapes and sizes, but after they had been unpacked and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... this woman, and amid so much blood, so much dishonor, so many tears, so much humiliation, so much pride, arrogance, and treachery, of this renowned period of the world's history, shines forth the figure of Josephine as the bright star of womanhood, of love, of faithfulness—stars need no birthright, no nationality, they belong ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the other,—something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not: a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost hope to make the hills of heaven ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... There he first conceives 140 True being, and an intellectual world The same this hour and ever. Thence he deems Of his own lot; above the painted shapes That fleeting move o'er this terrestrial scene Looks up; beyond the adamantine gates Of death expatiates; as his birthright claims Inheritance in all the works of God; Prepares for endless time his plan of life, And counts the universe itself ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... here and there a personal example of spiritual infidelity ([Greek: pornos]) to the Lord, of that radically "secular" ([Greek: bebelos]) spirit (ver. 16) of which Esau is the type, to which some "mess of meat," some material advantage, proves overwhelmingly more momentous than the unworldly "birthright" given by the promise of God? Let them all watch as for their life against such symptoms. It is a matter of eternal import. The ancient Esau found too late that he was an outcast, irrevocably, from the great blessing, though then he cried for it with a cry great and bitter. In vain he asked ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... individuals received for having surrendered their original liberty to do as they pleased! After all, what would independent initiative have been worth without fire or arrow or earthern kettle, or cow or horse or wheel, or sword and shield? Who would not have forfeited the bare birthright of empty (although healthy) independence for participation in the ever richer conquest over the ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... citizen of the community. Rotation in office served not simply to allow the successful man to punish his enemies and reward his friends, but it also furnished the training in the actual conduct of political affairs which every American claimed as his birthright. Only in a primitive democracy of the type of the United States in 1830 could such a system have existed without the ruin of the State. National government in that period was no complex and nicely adjusted machine, and the evils ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... bond into which Cavour had persuaded him to enter. The contract was recognised as null. Rattazzi was notoriously opposed to any cession of territory, and had he known how to play his game it is at least open to argument that the House of Savoy might have been spared losing its birthright as the Houses of Orange and Lorraine had lost theirs. But his weak policy landed Italian affairs in a chaos which made Napoleon once more ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the Leland Stanford Junior University." The object was declared to be "to qualify students for personal success and direct usefulness in life." On the title page of the first register ever printed and of every one since, appear these words of Senator Stanford's: "A generous education is the birthright of every man and woman in America." This and President Jordan's favorite quotation, "Die Luft der Freiheit weht"—"the winds of freedom are blowing," reveal somewhat the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... great Satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of Mankind in all Nations and Ages, asserting, as with one Voice, this their Birthright, and to find it ratify'd by an express Revelation. At the same time if we turn our Thoughts inward upon our selves, we may meet with a kind of secret Sense concurring with the Proofs of our ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... study and research are never numerous; and it is principally as a man of action that the world at large will regard him. It is the story of his objective life that will forever touch and hold the heart of mankind. His birthright was privation and ignorance—not peculiar to his family, but the universal environment of his place and time; he burst through those enchaining conditions by the force of native genius and will: vice had no temptation for him; his course was as naturally upward as the skylark's; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... would be to make many. Where the treasure was, there would the heart be also. The movement for imperial preferential trade, then strong in the United Kingdom, would be for ever defeated if the American offer should be accepted. Canada must not sell her birthright for a ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... who, in the day of grace and mercy, despise those things which are indeed the birthright to heaven, who yet when the declining days appear will cry as loud as Esau, "Lord, Lord, open to us;" but then, as Isaac would not repent, no more will God the Father, but will say, "I have blessed these, yea, and they shall be blessed; but as for you, Depart, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... described! In sitting down now to my retrospective task, I find myself writing this, my second preface to the story of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," just thirty years from the date of its first publication. Then, I wrote when the struggle for the birthright independence of Poland was no more; when she lay in her ashes, and her heroes in their wounds; when the pall of death spread over the whole country, and her widows ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... much compensation, therefore, for the woman who gives herself to her child in old-fashioned ways of personal service. She gets the charm and the allurement of the growing bud on life's tree. If she misses that she loses something of her birthright and some "substitute-mother" gets something of satisfaction from the child that she ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... school education is included, by progressive communities, in the birthright of every child. Since only a small part of these children are preparing for college, the school must offer more than the traditional high school course. The principal of a great Western high school which housed nearly two thousand children, ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... daring for every legitimate and not unwonted species of trial and occasion. Still, he had learned little, beyond hauteur and querulousness, from the lessons of experience. Economy was not more the inmate of his dwelling than when he was blessed with the large income of his birthright; but, extravagantly generous as ever, his house was the abiding-place of a most lavish and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... fearful of losing that than all my fortune. It was the certificate of my honour and my son's birthright. I knew that if the Duke Waldemar once got it into his possession he could demand any price from me ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... extinguished, by unslaked desire Her tears—I view them with a lover's eye; And yet your Christ is mine—a Christian I! The healing, cleansing flood o'er me shall flow, I would efface the stain from birth I owe; I would be pure—my sealed eyes would see! The birthright Adam lost restored to me This, this, the unfading crown! For this I yearn, For that exhaustless fount I thirst, I burn. Then, since my heart is true, Nearchus, say— Shall I not grant to ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... poetry Lucretius inherited as part of his birthright. This is the sense of Roman greatness. It pervades the poem, and may be felt in every part; although to Athens, and the Greek sages, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Epicurus, as the fountain-heads of soul-delivering ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... monologue the machine-agent was silent, a dark frown of indecision on his face. As for his wife, she looked as if she had bartered her child's birthright for something that had disagreed with her mental digestion. Jason Wrinkle, however, reflections on the cost of his joke for the moment set aside, seemed to have fallen into his happiest mood. Unable to disguise his merriment at such close range from his victim, he had slipped out ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... a Catholic. But if you believe as much of Christian truth as you've ever had a fair opportunity of learning, and if you try to live in accordance with Christian morals, you are a Catholic, you're a member of the Catholic Church, whether you know it or not. You can't be deprived of your birthright, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... chemical inquiries, and hence they are wonderfully suited to the progressive nature of the human intellect, which by its increasing efforts to acquire a higher kind of wisdom, and a state in which truth is fully and brightly revealed, seems, as it were, to demonstrate its birthright to immortality. ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... upon me as a birthright, or a birth-duty, that I should wed no man who is not a Christian. You ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... before. His love for, and faith in, his own country were strong. Abroad he was a staunch defender of her free institutions, and foreigners deemed him more proud of his American birth than of his literary birthright of genius; and yet, at home he was voted "an enemy of all that the fathers of the Republic fought for." However, the opinion of those who knew Cooper best was given by his Bread and Cheese Club friend, Dr. John Wakefield Francis, as,—"He ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... With such a look as hermits throw, When angels stoop to soothe their woe He gazed, till fond regret and pride Thrilled to a tear, then thus replied: 'Loveliest and best! thou little know'st The rank, the honors, thou hast lost! O. might I live to see thee grace, In Scotland's court, thy birthright place, To see my favorite's step advance The lightest in the courtly dance, The cause of every gallant's sigh, And leading star of every eye, And theme of every minstrel's art, The Lady of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... inclusion of the Tenjin and the Tenson should have assured its precedence. The Kwobetsu comprised all Emperors and Imperial princes from Jimmu downwards. This was the premier class. The heads of all its families possessed as a birthright the title of omi (grandee), while the head of a Shimbetsu family was a muraji (group-chief). The Bambetsu ranked incomparably below either the Kwobetsu or the Shimbetsu. It consisted of foreigners who had immigrated from China or Korea and of aboriginal tribes alien to the Yamato ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... that baffled Crown'd and mitred tyranny: They defied the field and scaffold, For their birthright—so will we. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... unmoved behold When Hellas, for her birthright free Dappling with gore the dark Saronian sea, The Persian wave back, past Abydos, roll'd:— But in this murderous match of chief 'gainst chief No chivalry had part, No impulse of the heart; Nor any sigh ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... Dance!" And the maid saw with brightening face, The Steward of the night advance, And lead her to her birthright place. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al |
