"Ennobling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... purifies this soul of all natural, distinct, and perceived operations, that at last He makes it more and more conformed to Himself, and then uniform, raising the passive capacity of the creature, enlarging it and ennobling it, though in a hidden and unperceived manner, which is termed mystical. But in all these operations the soul must concur passively, and in proportion as the working of God becomes stronger, the soul must continually yield ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... the unveiling of his inmost self in response to what he knew would be an eager desire for news of his welfare. This whole section appears to me to be a wonderful revelation of his prison thoughts, an example of what we may call the ennobling power of a passionate enthusiasm for Christ. Remember that he is a prisoner, shut out from his life's work, waiting to be tried before Nero, whose reign had probably, by this time, passed from its delusive morning of dewy promise to its lurid noon. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... natives would gladly settle round it, and engage in that peaceful pursuit of agriculture and trade of which they are so fond, and, undistracted by wars or rumours of wars, might listen to the purifying and ennobling truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Manganja on the Zambesi, like their countrymen on the Shire, are fond of agriculture; and, in addition to the usual varieties of food, cultivate tobacco and cotton in quantities more than equal ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... characteristic difficulties of the subject are resolutely faced and expounded with as much simplicity as their nature will admit. As a literary effort this work is admirable, both on account of its picturesque language and the ennobling conceptions of the universe which it unfolds. The student who desires to become acquainted with those recondite departments of astronomy, in which the effects of the disturbing action of one planet ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the thought of using a rich wife as an advancement; but then, on the other hand, he would gain a companion whose divine sweetness would be an ennobling inspiration. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... among the anabolic emotions, love is the queen of the emotional empire; that the touch of her magical scepter is so potent and penetrating as to render the individual receptive and responsive to all of the ennobling, purifying, progressive and exalting elements of the universe: but, on the other hand, what is still more marvelous: that the same touch renders the individual negative to the inflowing currents from all of the baser elements. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... of the Doctrine of Descent, as the new era in which began a period of human development, rich in blessings,—a period which was characterized by the victory of free inquiry over the despotism of authority, and by the powerful ennobling influence of the Monistic Philosophy." At the end of the lecture, next to the last, in the same Vol. II, page 332, he pays the following compliment to the antagonists of monism: "The recognition of the theory of development and the Monistic Philosophy based upon it, forms the best ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the peaceful scene which lay before them; and, as they noted the peculiar outline of the lake, what wonder that the thought came—this was indeed the heart of the Mississippi, pulsating with life for the great stream flowing onward and ever onward, enriching and ennobling the land, until at last it loses itself, by reason of its own vastness, in the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... add, after this avowal of my former condition, my most fervent desire has all along been to seize the first favourable opportunity of performing some action that would eventually elevate me to a position in which I might, without blushing for the absence of the ennobling qualities of birth and condition, avow myself his friend, and solicit that distinction from my equal which was partially extended to me by my superior? The opportunity I sought was not long wanting. At the memorable affair with ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... indestructibility of the spirit, to strip off from it all that wounds and disables it, not by drearily toiling against haunting faults, but by rising as often as we can into serene ardour and deep hopefulness. That is the principle of beauty, to feel that there is something transforming and ennobling us, which we can lay hold of if we wish, and that every time we see the great spirit at work and clasp it close to our feeble will, we soar a step higher and see all things with a wider ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... however, does not rest upon their antiquity, but upon the vital message they contain for all times and all peoples. There is nothing peculiarly racial or local in them. The ennobling lessons of these Scriptures are as practical for the modern world as they were for the Indo-Aryans of the earliest Vedic age. Their teachings are summed up in two Maha-Vakyam or "great sayings":—Tat twam asi (That thou art) and Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman). ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... its wind-waved mass one can get little glimpses of the thing that backs it all, the storm-defying shaft, the enduring rigid living growing trunk of massive timber that gives it the nobility of strength, and adds value to the rest; sometimes it must be sought for, but it always surely is there, ennobling the lesser ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... of which it is the body. It is as if a glorious anthem had passed into outward solid form in the very ecstasy of its grandest chorus. Milton has told us of such a miracle, wrought by fallen angels, it is true, but in a description rich with all his opulence of caressing and ennobling language:— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... the recollections of the first eighteen years of a boy's life, in Hawaii, where that life was ushered into being. They are told after the mellowing lapse of half a century, which has been very full of satisfying labors in an ennobling profession... Pure boyhood recollections, unadulterated by later visits to the scenes in which they had their birth"—The ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... love thee, my sacred country! And I swear that I will love all thy sons like brothers; that I will always honor in my heart thy great men, living and dead; that I will be an industrious and honest citizen, constantly intent on ennobling myself, in order to render myself worthy of thee, to assist with my small powers in causing misery, ignorance, injustice, crime, to disappear one day from thy face, so that thou mayest live and expand tranquilly in the majesty of thy right and of thy strength. I swear ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... this terrace, and it has witnessed many terrible scenes, fire and slaughter and religious strife, but it has also seen more that is ennobling and inspiring. In its strength this terrace has supported those who passed their days upon it, imbuing them, and those who live there yet, with the serenity that comes of a faith built on a sure foundation. This terrace is a bridge to the "Abiding ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... foundation of their moral character if they should later chance to doubt the doctrine of verbal inspiration or some of the miracles, or even get confused about the Trinity, because their religious nature is not built on the sand. The art of leading young men through college without ennobling or enlarging any of the religious notions of childhood is anti-pedagogic and unworthy philosophy, and is to leave men puerile in the highest department of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was enceinte which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... measure. That this connection between music and morals really does exist is recognised, in a rough and general way, by most people who have any musical sense. There are rhythms and tunes, for example, that are felt to be vulgar and base, and others that are felt to be ennobling; some music, Wagner's, for instance, is frequently called immoral; Gounod is described as enervating, Beethoven as bracing, and the like; and however absurd such comments may often appear to be in detail, underlying them is the undoubtedly well-grounded sense ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... patriot's tear Starts from thine eye, and thy extended arm In fancy hurls the thunderbolt of Jove To fire the impious wreath on Philip's [Endnote W] brow, Or dash Octavius from the trophied car; Say, does thy secret soul repine to taste The big distress? Or wouldst thou then exchange Those heart-ennobling sorrows for the lot Of him who sits amid the gaudy herd 760 Of mute barbarians bending to his nod, And bears aloft his gold-invested front, And says within himself, I am a king, And wherefore should the clamorous voice of woe Intrude upon mine ear?—The baleful dregs ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... well as a most irreverent, view of the question: it is to confine the pleasure and improvement to be derived from works of art within very narrow bounds; it is to seal up a fountain of the richest poetry, and to shut out a thousand ennobling and inspiring thoughts. Happily there is a growing appreciation of these larger principles of criticism as applied to the study of art. People look at the pictures which hang round their walls, and have an awakening suspicion that there is more in them than meets the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... multitude, Jesus admonished them to give heed to the teachings of the Twelve, and continued with a discourse embodying the sublime principles He had taught among the Jews in the Sermon on the Mount.[1470] The Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, and the same splendid array of ennobling precepts are set forth, and the same wealth of effective comparison and apt illustration appear, in both Matthew's and Nephi's versions of this unparalleled address; but a significant difference is observed in every reference to the fulfilment of the Mosaic law; for ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... quote Mr. Skinner's stirring remarks to show that probably Jim and Li Tee ran away only in anticipation of a possible lynching, and to prove that advanced sentiments of this high and ennobling nature really obtained forty years ago in an ordinary American frontier town which did not then dream ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... man and best in his ideal of his Maker—strength and kindness, power and mercy. With an added reward also, if the struggle lead you to perceive (what he did not perceive), as the light of your darkness, the sweet of bitter, that real struggling is itself real living, and that no ennobling thing of this earth is ever to be had by man on any other terms: so teaching him, none too soon, that any divine end is to be reached but through divine means, that a great ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... apart, watching her and listening to her in silence. Not a look that had crossed her face, not a word that had fallen from her, had escaped him. Unconsciously on her side, unconsciously on his side, she now wrought on his nature with a purifying and ennobling influence which animated it with a new life. All that had been selfish and violent in his passion for her left him to return no more. The immeasurable devotion which he laid at her feet, in the days that were yet to come—the ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... dogmatism, his petulance, his "evil behaviour," he remains the master spirit of his time, its Censor, as Macaulay is its Panegyrist, and Tennyson its Mirror. He has saturated his nation with a wholesome tonic, and the practice of any one of his precepts for the conduct of life is ennobling. More intense than Wordsworth, more intelligible than Browning, more fervid than Mill, he has indicated the pitfalls in our civilisation. His works have done much to mould the best thinkers in two continents, in both of which he has been the Greatheart ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... the thanes, who were merely large landlords; the law became that a man that had five hides of land, five or six hundred acres, with a farm, should by the mere fact of having that land become a thane, an earl. That method of ennobling a man by land got to be a way, at that time the only way, by which a churl or a villein could become a nobleman or even be emancipated. Exactly as now with our American Indians; when an Indian gets one hundred and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... rhythm of things and their reason for being. Beginning in wonder, it sees the familiar as if it were strange, and its mind is full of the air that plays round every subject. Spacious, humane, eloquent, it is "a blend of science, poetry, religion and logic"[174]—a softening, enlarging, ennobling influence, giving us a wider and clearer outlook, more air, more room, more ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... machinations of the European statecraft which has borne its lamentable fruits in the recent cataclysm we have all witnessed. He was thrown on the resources with which he was more familiar: those of an ennobling idea and of the exactions of self-devotion in its cause. Immediately after his eyes had been opened at Szczekociny to the new peril that had burst upon his country he sent out another order, bidding his commanders to "go over the Prussian and Russian boundaries" into the provinces that ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... are not excited, inspired, and thrilled as we are by Jane Eyre or Esmond. We enjoy a beautiful book with a fine moral, set in exquisite prose, with consummate literary resources, full of fine thoughts, true, ennobling thoughts, and with no weak side at all, unless it be the sense of being over-wrought, like a picture which has been stippled over in ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the titled, the powerful, had met the fate he anticipated, at hangman's hands, in the dark and silent recesses of Spanish dungeons. To the long list of illustrious victims, he, an insignificant one, would be added unnoticed. And the remembrance of those who had preceded him, ennobling an ignominious death, gave Federico courage. "Yes!" he exclaimed aloud. "I will die, as so many great and good men have died before me! Would that I had done service to my poor oppressed country, something to deserve the tyrant's hate! But for thee, Rosaura, will I gladly perish, and to thee only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Phoebe less open. It was no slight preferment to be Robert Fulmort's motherly friend; and far beyond her as he had soared, she might still be the softening element in his life, as once she had been the ennobling one. If she had formed Robert, or even given one impulse such as to lead to his becoming what he was, the old maid had ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... steeped in every vice against which the Christian missionary has to set his face—a most difficult people to work among. But there I saw scores and scores of baptized Christians living a life clean and ennobling, endeavoring honestly to break away from their degrading customs of centuries, some ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... is notwithstanding in its general character no other than that habit which has grown out of the instinct of self-preservation—elevated into a wakeful and affectionate apprehension for the whole, and ennobling its private and baser ways by the generous use to which they are converted. Nor ever has a good and loyal man such a swell of mind, such a clear insight into the constitution of virtue, and such a sublime sense of its power, as at the first tidings ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... glittering pinion in an atmosphere as bright as its own plumes. Fortunate the youth, the romance of whose existence is placed in a scene befitting its fair and marvellous career; fortunate the passion that is breathed in palaces, amid the ennobling creations of surrounding art, and quits the object of its fond solicitude amidst perfumed gardens and in the shade of green and silent woods'—woods, that is, which ornament the stately parks of the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... like to have had them written of me. Whether his criticisms of the Bible fluttered the faith of the flappers in Oxford, or whether his long silences made the undergraduates more stupid than they would otherwise have been, I care little: I only know that he was what I call great and that he had an ennobling influence over my life. He was apprehensive of my social reputation; and in our correspondence, which started directly we parted at Gosford, he constantly gave me wise advice. He was extremely simple-minded ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... Coleridge, that hast mixed so much with the trepidations of our own agitated life, mixed with the beatings of our love, our gratitude, our trembling hope; name destined to move so much of reverential sympathy and so much of ennobling strife in the generations yet to come, of our England at home, of our other Englands on the St. Lawrence, on the Mississippi, on the Indus and Ganges, and on the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... contemplative spirits, and these only in their hours of tranquillity and expansion. The thought is too vague, too far, to bring comfort and refreshment to the mass of travailing men, or to invest duty with the stern ennobling quality of being done, "if I have grace to use it so as ever in ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... opinion, and if we want to help give it that place, we should aim to be living representatives of the principles, maintain a dignified attitude regarding it, and if we can answer any questions pertaining to it, let our answer and manners be ennobling and Christ-like. ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... liberated from a continual temptation to the sympathies with cruelty, into a demand for gentler and purer excitement. Her purpose had been one of luxury; but, by the benignity of nature still watching for ennobling opportunities, the actual result was a development given to the higher capacities of her heart. In the same way, when the brutal right (and in many circumstances the brutal duty) of inflicting death upon prisoners taken in battle, had ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of war. Officers who were ungodly men found themselves restrained alike by the grandeur of the piety of the great chiefs, and the earnestness of the humble privates around them. Thousands embraced the Gospel, and died triumphing over death. Instead of the degradation so dreaded, was the strange ennobling and purifying which made men despise all the things for which they ordinarily strive, and glory in the sternest hardships, the most bitter self-denials, cruel suffering, and death. Love for home, kindred, and friends, intensified, was denied the gratification of ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... the moment my thoughts went back to New England. A throng of fair and well-remembered faces rose, vividly as life, before me. "There are good things," thought I, "in the savage life, but what can it offer to replace those powerful and ennobling influences that can reach unimpaired over more than three thousand miles ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... beyond hazard or jeopardy. The guaranty of religious freedom, of the freedom of the press, of the liberty of speech, of the trial by jury, of the habeas corpus, and of the domestic institutions of each of the States, leaving the private citizen in the full exercise of the high and ennobling attributes of his nature and to each State the privilege (which can only be judiciously exerted by itself) of consulting the means best calculated to advance its own happiness—these are the great and important guaranties of the Constitution which the lovers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... ceasing to be great proprietors, they will cease to be a great power. The court is already no more than a palace where people beg; by and by it will become an antechamber, when it will be composed only of those who constitute the suite of the King. Great names will begin by ennobling vile offices; but, by a terrible reaction, those offices will end by rendering great names vile. Estranged from their homes, the nobility will be dependent upon the employments which they shall have received; and if the people, over ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... little volume imbue you with a taste for the beautiful and ennobling science of Geography, my object will be gained; and that such may be the result of these humble endeavors is ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... in the solid rock, but as loose grains in sand-beds. True jewel mines are few, unproductive, and easily exhausted. From this one would be inclined to suppose that precious stones actually undergo an ennobling process in the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... seemed easy to reach that conclusion while this little sleeping form lay in his arms. Perhaps it had quickened into life that ennobling spirit of parenthood which is all sacrifice and love and self-renunciation. The ends which seemed so all-desirable a few hours ago now seemed sordid and mean and unimportant. Reaching out for some means of self-justification Grant turned to the Big Idea; that was his; that was ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... as well as to the happiness of others, will at times awaken a natural pang, but he looks forward with gladdened heart to that glorious period when justice shall have established the universal fraternity of love. These soul-ennobling views bestow the virtues which they anticipate. He whose mind is habitually impressed with them, soars above the present state of humanity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of the Most High. Regarding every event, as he that ordains it, evil vanishes from before him, and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... had one of our little disagreements. I shall always feel grateful to him for his great toleration of me, but I am sure this arose from his feeling that I saw there was an underlying idea in the minds of the people he loved well enough to lay down his life for in the hope of benefiting and ennobling them, and that I did not, as many do, set them down as idiotic brutes, glorying in an aimless cruelty that would be a disgrace to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... there is an expression of great power, or of great good humour, or both, you do not regret its absence." This picture, in which every touch is correct, tells all that there is to be told. He had a massive head, and features of a powerful and rugged cast, but so constantly lit up by every joyful and ennobling emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely quiescent, his face was rather homely than handsome. While conversing at table no one thought him otherwise than good-looking; but, when he rose, he was seen to be short and stout in figure. "At Holland House, the other day," writes his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... not the perfect simplicity of the circle it has, at least, the charm of variety which the circle has not. The oval curve has also the beauty derived from an outline of perfect grace and an association with ennobling conceptions. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... degradation, and premature death. They will indulge In the most degrading of all vices with prostitutes on the street. They will defile the atmosphere of social life with filthy talk and ribald jest. Even a clean and ennobling passion can do little to redeem them. The pure stream of human love is made turbid with lust. After a temporary uplifting in marriage the soul is again dragged down, marriage vows are broken and the blessings of home life are turned ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... be sometimes lost to society, they are all the more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'I think there must be an ennobling influence in Alpine travel, or in the vast solitudes of the Dark Continent. A man finds himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest forces of the universe. Professor Tyndall ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... has also its features of solemnity and grandeur, filling the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller, and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... qualify Barbara Palmer for such a position, it was necessary she should be raised to the peerage. This could only be accomplished by ennobling her husband, unless public decency were wholly ignored, and she was created a peeress in her own right, whilst he remained a commoner. After some faint show of hesitation, Roger Palmer accepted the honours thrust upon him by reason of his wife's infamy. On the 11th of December, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... telephoned an invitation to mother," she explained. "I was so glad you happened in. You have had wonderful experiences; it must be inspiring—ennobling—to take such part in the building of a new city; something that will be here forever as a monument to the men of this generation. Mr. Conward is charming, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... realization of democratic ideals. Unconsciously it assumes that these ideals are unrealizable; it assumes that in the future, as in the past, getting a livelihood, "making a living," must signify for most men and women doing things which are not significant, freely chosen, and ennobling to those who do them; doing things which serve ends unrecognized by those engaged in them, carried on under the direction of others for the sake of pecuniary reward. For preparation of large numbers for a life of this sort, and only for this purpose, are mechanical efficiency in reading, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... occupied by his generation, and he should 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may aid in illuminating the darkness of the present, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may have some influence in building up and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks,' regardless of the contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them. What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the sensual, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... in touch with conscience and neither to ourselves, nor to others, does it inspire ennobling sentiments. A proper name for it is ambition—a selfish quality, whose essence bears no relation to the aspiration of boy and girl, man and woman, toward what is finest ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... galleys were equipped; every citizen contributed according to his power; in the entire want of commercial resources—for Venice had not a merchant-ship during this war—private plate was melted; and the senate held out the promise of ennobling thirty families who should be most forward in this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... bless the world as it never has been blessed; they will usher in a period of moral and intellectual grandeur such as the world has never witnessed; they will exert a strong woman-influence in every sphere of thought and action which will be at once refining, ennobling, and redeeming; they will so establish correct habits of living, so sanctify the altars of home, so adorn the walks of social life, that the very heart of the great body of society will throb anew with fresh impulse of life and send out ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... by a virtuous, thrifty, cheerful, and cleanly woman, may be the abode of comfort, virtue, and happiness; it may be the scene of every ennobling relation in family life; it may be endeared to a man by many delightful associations; furnishing a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from the storms of life, a sweet resting-place after ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... pitiful vanity. I perceived that such virtues as patience and self-denial—which, clad in russet dress, I had often passed by unnoticed when I had found them amongst the poor or the humble—were more precious and more ennobling to their possessor than poetic yearnings, or the power to propound rhetorically to the world my ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... to fit himself to put on immortality. The passion of his boyhood has now become the ennobling ideal of his life. Sustaining and stimulating him, saving him from himself, ever leading him upward and onward, his angelicized lady is an abiding presence with him whether he is deep in the contemplation of the study of philosophy and the learning of the ancients, or engaged in the activity of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... religion; and though many people, probably from lack of knowledge, hold the view that the Moslem faith is a debased one, it is in reality a fine religion, teaching many wise and beautiful doctrines, and ennobling the lives of all who live up to the best that ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... sense of his own individuality. He was instinctively conscious of his own existence, he was experimentally conscious of the existence of a complicated world outside of him. But it was to him rather a depressing than an ennobling thought, that he was one of a class, fettered by the same disabilities, the same weaknesses, as millions of similar objects. Perhaps it was a wholesome humiliation, but it was none the less humiliating. On the one hand he was conscious of the vast power of imagination, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... subjects of American law and beneficiaries of American institutions, by making them first American citizens, and clothing them as rapidly as their advancement and location will permit, with the protecting and ennobling prerogatives of such friendship." ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... qualities. It does not, indeed, follow that the influence of the great sculptors upon the religious ideals of the people was a negligible quality; we have abundant evidence, both direct and indirect, that it was very great. But it was exercised chiefly by following and ennobling traditional notions rather than by daring innovation, and therefore can only be understood in relation to the general development both of religious ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... at great length upon the delights and benefits afforded the members of families whose leisure is given to the study and practice of an art so ennobling as music. How charming are those homes in which it is, in its purest style, cultivated! what refinement reigns therein! and what a gentle yet potent aid it is in parental government! The allurements to outside and often harmful pleasures lose their power over the children of that household ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... of materials, etc., as if the danger were in the execution, and not in the main intention. So they fool us for a while longer, and we praise their fine doings, and even persuade ourselves there is something liberal and ennobling in their influence. But we tire at last of these exotics. A million of them is not worth one of those sober flowers of homely growth where use has by chance, as it were, blossomed into beauty. This is the only success in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... inflicted upon others, and to stimulate her resolution to persevere in her search for the woman. Conscious that wealth and luxury does not always bring happiness, and that without a spotless character, woman is but a feeble creature in this world, she would now sacrifice everything else for that one ennobling charm. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... together. The songs they sung were full of noble sentiment. Their voices mingled until they almost sounded like one rich and perfect note, as they sang of love which is undying and self-sacrifice which is ennobling. Quentyns felt a glow of elation filling his breast as his eyes rested on his lovely wife, and the tormentings of Hilda's conscience were soothed, and ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... Wilt thou see Afric like old Priam sue, The bones of children as in nature due, And foully craven, ingrate-like forget, Thy life, thy learning's her dishonored debt? Say; wilt not thou, whose time-ennobling sons— Thy Jay's, thy Franklin's and thy Washington's, Caught the bright cestus from fair freedom's God, And bound it as a girdle to thy sod; Ah! wilt not thou with generous mind confess The might of woe, the strength of helplessness? High-Heaven's almoner to a world oppressed, Who ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... the truth. During the whole of this half-year there has been a spirit of unhappiness, of mischief, and of suspicion in our midst. Under these circumstances love cannot thrive; under these circumstances the true and ennobling sense of brotherly kindness, and all those feelings which real religion prompt must languish. I tell you all now plainly that I will not have this thing in Lavender House. It is simply disgraceful for one girl ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... library. He went so far as to procure the services of a poet laureate, whose business it seems to have been to sing his praises. Surrounded with splendors like these, the plain title of "Mr." Dexter would have been infinitely too mean and common. He therefore boldly took the step of self-ennobling, and gave himself forth—as he said, obeying "the voice of the people at large"—as "Lord Timothy Dexter," by which appellation he has ever since been known to the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... It was that first great grief which makes a man acquainted with his deepest feelings, which detracts something from the buoyancy of the youngest life, and dims, to a certain degree, the lustre of existence. But even that bereavement was mitigated by distractions alike inevitable and ennobling. The sternest and highest of all obligations, military duty, claimed him with an unfaltering grasp, and the clarion sounded almost as he closed her eyes. Then he went forth to struggle for a cause ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... they have a real innate harmony, something not dependent on the number of syllables in each line, or capable of being dissected out into feet, but growing in them, as it were, and created by the fine ear of the writer. Their sentiments, too, are exalted and ennobling; eminently genial and honest, they stamp the author for a good man and true,—Nature's aristocracy.... For some unexplained reason Halleck has not written, or at least not published, anything new ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... experienced ugliness; it remained a picture, seen but not felt by him, so that it was not difficult for him to see it with the eyes of faith as glorified and uplifted. It constituted a splendid burden, an ennobling duty, for those who possessed beauty, and without that grave and happy right to serve, beauty itself would lose all meaning. He often talked about democracy to Imogen. She understood what he felt about it more firmly, more surely, than he himself did; for, where he sometimes suspected ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is to make everything good, man's highest privilege, as well as duty, is to co-operate with him in realizing that purpose. Are men to-day as a whole growing happier and nobler? In what practical ways may a man contribute to the happiness and ennobling of his fellow men? ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... wrong, the beauty of virtue, and the ugliness of sin. Whatever there was in life to raise men above their earthly struggles, their evil passions, and the despair of a hard and dangerous existence, was supplied by her. The consolations of religion, the ennobling acquaintance with the character of Christ, and the hope of salvation through Him were incalculable blessings. Her aid in suppressing disorder and in establishing a respect for law and government is not to be overlooked. She presented in her own ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... in us by such things as are beautiful, works of art or of nature, recollections and thoughts as well as sights and sounds, the emotion of aesthetic pleasure, has been recognised ever since the beginning of time as of a mysteriously ennobling quality. All philosophers have told us that; and the religious instinct of all mankind has practically proclaimed it, by employing for the worship of the highest powers, nay, by employing for the mere designation of the godhead, beautiful sights, and sounds, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... became in Jane's mind a vision of poetic beauty. Religion was the inspiration of enthusiasm and of sentiment. The worship of the Deity was blended with all that was ennobling and beautiful. Moved by these glowing fancies, her susceptible spirit, in these tender years, turned away from atheism, from infidelity, from irreligion, as from that which was unrefined, revolting, vulgar. The consciousness ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... gives to each one his part. It makes no distinctions. High and low, rich and poor, have equal share in the service. It teaches to worship reverently, and in spirit and in truth. "Everything in the Prayer-Book is solemn, humble, reverential, as it respects man, and ennobling and glorifying as it respects God." And this is meet and right. For, as has been truly said, "Worship is the concentration and consecration of whatever is noble in the world. It is the dedication to the Most High of all that is best in what the eye can see, the ear hear, the voice sing, the hand ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... jumping to conclusions; of thinking critically and independently, or of taking things unquestioningly on the authority of others. We may form the habit of carefully reading good, sensible books, or of skimming sentimental and trashy ones; of choosing elevating, ennobling companions, or the opposite; of being a good conversationalist and doing our part in a social group, or of being a drag on the conversation, and needing to be "entertained." We may form the habit ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... Colonel Dabney, who greedily seized the mysterious elixir and took such a draught of it that he perished on the spot; then, through the simple old Grandsir, anxious to live for Pansie's sake; and, perhaps, through Pansie herself, who, coming into the enjoyment of some ennobling love, would wish to defeat death, so that she might always keep the perfection of her mundane happiness,—all these forms of striving to be made the adumbration of a higher one, the shadow-play that should direct our minds to the true ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... faith in Jesus Christ, God's sacrifice for a world's sin, it brings to us the clear consciousness of pardon, the calm sense of communion, the joyful spirit of adoption, righteousness rooted in our hearts and to be manifested day by day in our lives; it brings all elevation and strengthening and ennobling for the whole nature, and is the one power that makes us really men as God would have us ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... should he leave the matter in suspense, some more enterprising rival might supplant him during his absence, as in the case of Miss Philipse, at New York. He improved, therefore, his brief opportunity to the utmost. The blooming widow had many suitors, but Washington was graced with that renown so ennobling in the eyes of woman. In a word, before they separated, they had mutually plighted their faith, and the marriage was to take place as soon as the campaign against Fort ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... that reverence, too, for self, which is expressed in stateliness and self-restraint, in grace and courtesy; when all these, I say, can lend themselves, even for a day, to the richest enjoyment of life—to the enjoyment of beauty in form and sound, and of relaxation, not brutalising, but ennobling. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... people whose cuticle is not white. It is, however, but bare justice to say that, as Negroes are by no means deficient in self-love and the tenderness of natural affection, such gratifying fulfilment of a family's hopes exerts an elevating and, in many cases, an ennobling influence on every one connected with the fortunate household. Nor, from the eminently sympathetic nature of the African race, are the near friends of a family [38] unbenefited in a similar way. This is true, and distinctively human; but, naturally, no apologist of Negro depreciation would admit ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... and clearness of our impressions; on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them." As to religion, he says, "There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an omnipotent God." On the contrary, evidence proves that there are and have been numerous races without gods and without words to express the idea. The question, he says, is "wholly distinct from that higher one, whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... should possess, or rather that he should not be without. But it is not language that is, in the highest sense of the word, poetical, being neither of the imagination nor of the passions; I mean the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense passions. I do not mean to say that there is nothing of this in Dryden, but as little, I think, as is possible, considering how much he has written. You will easily understand my meaning, when I refer to his versification of Palamon and Arcite, as contrasted with ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... me a great deal of good, and it has affected me much and opened my eyes in many ways. It is an ennobling thing to think that God is more in the soul of man than He is in aught else outside of Himself. They are happy people who have once got a hold of this glorious truth. In particular, the Blessed Augustine testifies that neither in the ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... of time, we conceive that we are attempting something more than a passing entertainment, if we propose to enter on a consideration of the works produced by the most distinguished nations in their most brilliant periods, and to institute an inquiry into the means of ennobling and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and sobbed and cried. It was a beautiful and restful place, covered with old acacia trees. The inscription over the gateway was one of my earliest puzzles. Tod ist nicht Tod, ist nur Veredlung menschlicher Natur (Death is not death, 'tis but the ennobling of man's nature). On each side there stood a figure, representing the genius of sleep and the genius of death. All this was the work of the old Duke, Leopold Friedrich Franz, who tried to educate his people as he had educated himself, partly by ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... what was gained by the warriors of science for religion? Certainly a far more worthy conception of the world, and a far more ennobling conception of that power which pervades and directs it. Which is more consistent with a great religion, the cosmography of Cosmas or that of Isaac Newton? Which presents a nobler field for religious thought, the diatribes of Lactantius or the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... do, totally disagree with the advanced views of Miss Anthony in regard to the proper sphere of women, and yet it is impossible to deny to her the possession of many of the ennobling qualities which tend to the making of great lives. She has given the most unselfish devotion of a long life to what she has considered would tend most for the benefit and practical improvement of her sex, and she ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... that book!" groaned Dr. Gowdy. Alas for the refining and ennobling influences of art! Threatened and hectored in his own house ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... wounded spirit. She had never been accustomed to lavish the best feelings of her nature on frivolous pursuits or fictitious distresses, but had early been taught to consecrate them to the best, the most ennobling purposes of humanity—even to the comforting of the weary soul, the binding of the bruised heart. Yet Mary was no rigid moralist. She loved amusement as the amusement of an imperfect existence, though her good sense and still better principles taught her to reject it as the business ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... not one of them touched her heart. Her acquaintance with Alfred had made her fastidious. He had had sense enough to respect her, and his companionship had given her a fine foretaste of the love that is ennobling, the love that makes for high ideals of character and conduct, for fine purpose, spiritual power, and intellectual development, the one kind worth cultivating. In these more sophisticated youths she found nothing soul-sustaining. She philandered with some of them up to the point where comparisons ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... interrupted the king, "are not unknown to us. I do honour thee by ennobling him; for though our ladies' brightness be all too dazzling to receive a glory from us, yet peradventure for their sakes our courtesy is vouchsafed. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby |
