"Humbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make this fact plain to her—and to witness her resigned acceptance of it—had been intolerably painful to him. He felt himself drawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity, as if her dumbly-confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling yet endearing her. He was glad it was to him she had revealed her secret, rather than to the cold scrutiny of Mr. Letterblair, or the embarrassed gaze of her family. He immediately took it upon himself to assure ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... have loved her then, and gone on loving her! And she would not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others. 'In half an hour,' she thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him struggling forcing himself to seem affectionate! It's too humbling! But I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wonder and admiration, and the news of it spread to the servants of Ibrahim Mahmud, who told their master of this cleverness of Mir Jan,—and Ibrahim, after a while, sent a message and a present to my brother, humbling himself, and asking that he too might ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... But, puh! the fellows did not give one pinch of snuff; so off they set, and in this manner were drummed through the bounds of the parish, a constable walking at each side of them with Lochaber axes, and the town-drummer row-de-dowing the thief's march at their backs. It was a humbling sight. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... doubt was entertained that Gibraltar now must fall and Great Britain receive the chastisement she deserved. The nobility of Spain sought in numbers the scene of action, eager to be present at the triumph of her arms. From Versailles came the French princes, full of expectation of witnessing the humbling of British pride. So confident of success was Charles III., king of Spain, that his first question every morning on waking was, "Is Gibraltar taken?" All Spain and all France were instinct with hope of seeing the pride ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... purified with them: "And all may know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee, are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law." The man who had defied a world, to submit to the humbling dictation of his colleagues, who were children in comparison with him—this is mortifying to the utmost. This is the time of which it is said in the Talmud that Paul or Acher narrated, that on passing behind the sanctum sanctorum ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... only innocent, but incapable of sin, could stand in no need of circumcision, as an expedient then in use for the remission of sin. He was pleased, however, to subject himself to this humbling and painful rite of the Mosaic dispensation for several reasons: as, First, to put an end in an honorable manner to a divine, but temporary, institution, by taking it upon his own person. Secondly, to prove the reality of his human body; which, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... him to submit to the humiliations which he had endured, and to make concessions to the queen. But he was disappointed in his hopes. The queen, elated a little with the triumph already attained, and, perhaps, desirous of the pleasure of humbling Essex still more, refused at present to renew his monopoly, saying that she thought it would do him good to be restricted a little, for a time, in his means. "Unmanageable beasts," she said, "had to be tamed by being ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Eliza Fiddle. Car after car poured out a contingent of glorious girls and men and was hustled off with ferocity by a row of gigantic and implacable commissionaires. Mr. Oswald Morfey walked straight into the building at the head of his guests. Highly expensive persons were humbling themselves at the little window of the box office, but Ozzie held his course, and officials performed obeisances which stopped short only at falling flat on their faces at the sight of him. Tickets ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... such glad certainty, For what, perhaps, may never be. For nothing of my state I know, But that t'ward heaven I seem to go, As one who fondly landward hies Along a deck that seaward flies. With every year, meantime, some grace Of earthly happiness gives place To humbling ills, the very charms Of youth being counted, henceforth, harms: To blush already seems absurd; Nor know I whether I should herd With girls or wives, or sadlier balk Maids' merriment or matrons' talk. But strait's the gate ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... taken from a subterraneous basilic, built by Pepin, have likewise been collected, and follow those which I have just mentioned. Next comes the tomb of CLOVIS, which exhibits that prince lying at length; he is humbling himself before the Almighty, and seems to be asking him forgiveness for his crimes. We likewise see those of CHILDEBERT and of the cruel CHILPERIC. The intaglio, relieved by inlaid pieces of Mosaic, of queen FREDEGOND, has escaped the accidents of twelve centuries. Just Heaven! what ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in righteousness He will carry us through. "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time." There are two hands there—God's hand pressing us down, humbling us, and then God's hand lifting us up. Cast all your care on Him, then His hand will lift you up, exalt you in due time. There are two cares in this verse—your care and His care. They are different in the original. One means anxious care, the other means ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... would he looke, to see his worke, so noble, Vildely bound vp? What would he say? Or how Should I (in these my borrowed Flaunts) behold The sternnesse of his presence? Flo. Apprehend Nothing but iollity: the Goddes themselues (Humbling their Deities to loue) haue taken The shapes of Beasts vpon them. Iupiter, Became a Bull, and bellow'd: the greene Neptune A Ram, and bleated: and the Fire-roab'd-God Golden Apollo, a poore humble Swaine, As I seeme now. Their transformations, Were neuer for ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... in the Mediterranean, he changed his opinion after the affair with the "Java." In fact, a gold medal was voted to the gallant captain by Congress. When the war with Great Britain was over, Bainbridge took a squadron to the Mediterranean to try his hand again at protecting American commerce, and humbling the pirates; but fortune did not favor him this time, for Decatur had already settled the matter with the Dey, the Bey, and the rest of them, and peace was declared before Bainbridge arrived on the scene. Our Jersey sailor did not do any ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... glided into his prison by the flood of light entering in and he trembled lest the light would again absorb her into itself." He knew not what power forced him to his knees and threw him at her feet with a prayer for forgiveness. She had however merely a scornful laugh for the man humbling himself in his love and the cruelly abusive word, "Creeping worm!" Then in his sense of affront there comes the thought that Gro was given into his power. While he tried the walls of his dungeon to ascertain if he was perhaps ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... her, and their wives, those deepest well-heads of Conservatism in the country, were loud in reprobation. Their astonishment that "them as calls theirselves ladies" should be found burning and breaking, was always, in Winnington's ears, a touching thing, and a humbling. "Violence and arson" they seemed to say, "are good enough for the likes of us—you'd expect it of us. But you—the glorified, the superfine—who have your meals brought you regular, more food than you can eat, and more clothes than ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him. Therefore he flies to the crowded haunts of men, and the porter touching his hat to him for a prospective twopence at the railway station, is the welcome confessor of his disallowed divinity. It is, alas! the most common and humbling feature of human nature that we all stiffen our backs with pride when the knee of some fellow-creature is crooked in homage to us, although that homage may be bought for twopence! No wonder that the man in whose character vanity is the chief essence cannot long endure contact with Nature; ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... a more perverse and evil and silly woman! I contented myself with assuring her that she was mistaken and had very much misunderstood me—took pains to repeat what I had really said, and then cut short an interview that had been painful and humbling to me on many grounds. I left the happy pair tete-a-tete, in their princely parlor together, little fancying that there was another argument which had been prepared to overthrow my feeble virtue. But all this had been arranged ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... pious king Ferdinand," observes Fray Antonio Agapida, "was humbling himself before the cross and devoutly praying for the destruction of his enemies, that fierce pagan, El Zagal, depending merely on arm of flesh and sword of steel, pursued his diabolical outrages upon the Christians." No sooner was the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... considered as his match. Confident in his talents, and in the royal favour, he neglected all those means by which the power of Walpole had been created and maintained. His head was full of treaties and expeditions, of schemes for supporting the Queen of Hungary and for humbling the House of Bourbon. He contemptuously abandoned to others all the drudgery, and, with the drudgery, all the fruits of corruption. The patronage of the Church and of the Bar he left to the Pelhams as a trifle unworthy of his care. One of the judges, Chief Justice Willes, if we remember ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Court—relieving the consciences of the Dissenters from the pressures of the penal laws—amending, in fine, the crying grievances of the time—while he showed him also, in prospect, revenge upon the Countess of Derby, and a humbling dispensation on the house of Peveril, from whom Bridgenorth had suffered such indignity, Christian did not neglect, in the meanwhile, to consider how he could best benefit himself by the confidence reposed in him ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... consequences of fasting and over-work. It was not the easiest thing in the world to reassure a woman whose pride, affection, and taste, had been so severely wounded; but Natalie tried to believe, or to appear to do so, and a sort of reconciliation ensued, not quite sincere on the part of the wife, and very humbling on the part of the husband. Under these circumstances it was impossible that he should recover his spirits or facility of manner; his gayety was forced, his tenderness constrained; his heart was heavy within him; and ever and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... though he was, there at the humble lodging of the Teacher from Galilee, he was in the presence of a Master. In the bewilderment of ignorance he asked, "How can these things be?" The reply must have been humbling if not humiliating to the man: "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?" Plainly a knowledge of some of the fundamental principles of the gospel had been before accessible; Nicodemus was held in ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... parts of the world, and feel ourselves partially free in relation to them, we can only receive effects from God without answering them; even our self-activity we have from him. Nevertheless the feeling of dependence is not to be depressing, not humbling merely, but the joyous sense of an exaltation and broadening of life. In our devotion to the universe we participate in the life of the universe; by leaning on the infinite we supplement our finitude—religion makes up for the needy condition ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... other instance of suffering; first, because it was for an example to us; second, because he suffered to save us; third, because he suffered innocently in all respects, never having committed any sin." In these three points we must leave to him alone the distinction, humbling ourselves before them; even had we suffered death in its every form, we must cry that all our suffering is nothing in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... Sultan Alaradin, king of Achen, instead of humbling him. Achen is the greatest kingdom of the island of Sumatra, distant about twelve leagues from the terra firma of Malacca. This prince was a Mahometan, an implacable enemy of the Christians by his religion, and of the Portuguese by interest ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... beaten by a baker, Housemaids humbling helpless HOOK; STONE surpassed by sausage-maker, COOPER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... Cherokee war, which was among the last humbling strokes given to the expiring power of France in North America.—Hewatt: An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... revival and renewal of my inner man, before I gave myself to prayer. But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, &c.; and often, after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began realty to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... possibly for you—to give them much in the shape of time and thought, for both with me are already tasked up to and beyond their powers.... I much wish we could execute some plan which without demanding much time would entail the discharge of some humble and humbling office.... If you thought with me—and I do not see why you should not, except to assume the reverse is paying myself a compliment—let us go to work, as in the young days of the college plan but with a more direct and less ambitious purpose.' Of this we may see something later. At a great service ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... far as Sooka was concerned; and him he never employed when he had to go off to vessels or land from them, but always went in the other boat belonging to the factory, which was steered by a much younger negro. In addition to humbling Sooka in this way, Bransome took the opportunity of disgracing him whenever he could do so. Therefore, one day when two pieces of cloth from the cargo-room were found in the boatmen's huts, it was no surprise to me that Sooka was at once fastened upon by Mr. Bransome as the thief ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... retain her for a time in order that she might go through the country and give her account of the work to quiet gatherings of women, young and old. The suggestion was acted upon, and for some months she was engaged in itinerating. It was not in the line of her inclination. She was very shy, and had a humbling consciousness of her defects, and to appear in public was an ordeal. It was often a sheer impossibility for her to open her lips when men were present, and she would make it a condition that none should be in ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... down connectedly and coherently the events which culminated in the humbling of Will Bigelow ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... fly as a bird in the air Despot man doth dare! His humbling cumbersome body at length Light as the lark upsprings, Buoyed by tamed explosive strength And ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... dismayed at the hostile appearance of a line of galleys, which boldly cast anchor in the front of the Imperial city. The forces of the Sicilian admiral were inadequate to the siege or assault of an immense and populous metropolis; but George enjoyed the glory of humbling the Greek arrogance, and of marking the path of conquest to the navies of the West. He landed some soldiers to rifle the fruits of the royal gardens, and pointed with silver, or most probably with fire, the arrows which he discharged against the palace of the Caesars. [111] This playful outrage ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... comprehension. One author, deeming the "Paradise Lost" deficient in harmony, was pleased painfully to turn it into rhyme; and more than one, conceiving the subject too serious to be treated in verse of any kind, employed their leisure in humbling it into prose. The names of these well-judging and considerate persons are preserved by Mr Todd in his edition of Milton's ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... it. How can I be, when I'm such a dunce at geometry? Although I'm really beginning to see through it a little, too. Miss Stacy makes it so clear. Still, I'll never be good at it and I assure you it is a humbling reflection. But I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose our own subjects; but next week we are to write a composition on some remarkable person. It's hard to choose among so many remarkable people who have lived. Mustn't ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... common], but there were countries in Europe in which the spirit of infidelity and the absence of supernatural faith had been increasing for many years. Men were coming to think they were quite sufficient in themselves for the working out of their own destinies, but the war had come, and it was humbling ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... time I grew more and more popular in the school. I cannot tell why; but popularity is a thing that grows upon its own growth. It was only a little while before my companions almost all made a pet of me. It is humbling to know that this effect was hastened by some of the French dresses my mother had sent me, and which convenience obliged me to wear. They were extremely pretty; the girls came round me to know where I got them, and talked about who I was; and "Daisy Randolph," was ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... whether he and Mrs. Ascher had made a satisfactory plan for running guns into Galway. According to Ascher it did not make much difference whether the Irish peasants had rifles in their hands or not. It was soothing, though humbling, to feel that, guns or no guns, Volunteers or no Volunteers, Ireland would not matter ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... seeking to win over and mitigate their fiery and warlike tempers. At times, also, he filled their imaginations with religious terrors, professing that strange apparitions had been seen, and dreadful voices heard; thus subduing and humbling their minds by ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... other hand, such limitation as this is no argument for agnosticism. For this our human experience in its humbling imperfection, however we interpret it, is as real within its own system of reference as anything else. It is our inevitably limited way of laying hold on the stuff of existence: and not less real for that than the monkeys' way on one ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... which we inhabit. The Gnosis, [430:3] or knowledge, which it supplied, and from which it derived its designation, was a strange congeries of wild speculations. The Scriptures describe the Most High as humbling Himself to behold the things that are on earth, [431:1] as exercising a constant providence over all His creatures, as decking the lilies of the valley, and as numbering the very hairs of our heads; but Gnosticism exhibited ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... continued to be rather hasty and headstrong, but the "Indian sulks" gradually melted out of his disposition like ice in a summer river. This exploit of running away had a humbling effect, no doubt; but more than that, as he grew older he learned to understand and love his father better. He found that those dreadful whippings had been given "more in sorrow than in anger,"—given as a help to make him better; ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... his, and decided that she would merely be laying herself open to a disastrous counter-attack if she hurled her sarcasm in that direction; therefore she sought another opening. She had made up her mind to begin humbling his conceit by voicing her contemptuous regard for newspaper men in general when he once more forestalled her by giving crisp expression to the very sentiments she was rehearsing. Of course, it was all affectation, like his slovenly disregard of fashion—and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... peoples to be swayed by sudden political gusts, they were not at the end of July, 1914, taken by surprise. For a long time past their King and statesmen had deliberated as to what ought to be Italy's course in case Germany should carry out her well-understood purpose of humbling England. The Italians were not deceived by the increase from year to year of the German Army. They knew perfectly well what the tremendous efforts of the Germans to create a great navy meant. They had no illusions as ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... head. "I don't happen to want her forgiveness. And even if I did, I shouldn't ask for it. I'm not particularly great at humbling myself." ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... inforced to spend more time in our inquiries, and in seeking of GOD a right way for us, that at length we may put into that high way, the way of holinesse, wherein Wayfaring men, though fools, shall not erre: And we will wait upon our GOD (before whom we have been this Day humbling of our souls) untill he lead us into all these Truths which we seek after; and we shall labour to be yet more vile in our own eyes, as finding by experience that it is not in man ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... calamity of her life had come. Then by degrees the wreck of her fortune had gone to pieces, and now at last the home of her own people, deeply mortgaged, was about to pass from her forever. Much that was humbling had fallen to her in life, but nothing as sore as this final disaster. At length she rose, took a lighted candle from the table, and walked slowly around the great library room. The sombre bindings of the books her childhood knew called back dim recollections. The great china bowls, the tall ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... I interrogatively. For the second time her face burned, and I saw in it shame and distress and fear. My lord was piling up a second account with me, and for humbling this proud beauty he should one day pay ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... it. For everything in our old self-confident, self-centred nature is up in arms against the conditions of entrance. We are not saved by effort, but we shall not believe without effort. The main struggle of our whole lives should be to cultivate self-humbling trust in Jesus Christ, and to 'fight ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... course on which he had entered, when they saw at his right hand, ostensibly first in power and trust among his counsellors, a man who notoriously regarded that course with strong disapprobation? Every step which had been taken with the object of humbling the Church of England, and of elevating the Church of Rome, had been opposed by the Treasurer. True it was that, when he had found opposition vain, he had gloomily submitted, nay, that he had sometimes even assisted in carrying into effect the very plans against which he ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a smoke rising from a hollow in the bluff of the stream. He went to see who was there. Upon drawing near to the fire, he discovered a mat stretched, and an old man of sorrowful aspect sitting under it, alone, and evidently humbling himself before the Great Spirit, by fasting and prayer. It proved to be his old friend, the father of his adopted son. Black Hawk seated himself beside him and inquired what had happened, but received no answer, ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... humble ourselves before Him and beseech Him: haply He shall grant us His succour and endue us with His grace, extolled and exalted be He!" Quoth he, "By Allah, thou sayest well!" So they began humbling themselves and supplicating Almighty Allah and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... continued to apply herself with great assiduity to public affairs until the middle of April, when she was obliged to take her bed. There is no "royal road" to death. After four weeks of suffering and all the humbling concomitants of disease and approaching dissolution, the empress breathed her last at nine o'clock in the evening of the 16th of May, 1727, after a reign of but little more than two years, and in the forty-second year of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... she continued more mildly: "It is not a question of like or dislike, my boy, but of saving your soul by humbling ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... thinks of these things, and the deeper one dives into the mysteries of nature, the more profoundly is one impressed at once with a humbling sense of the limited amount of one's knowledge, and an awe-inspiring appreciation of the illimitable fields suggested by that comprehensive expression: "THE WONDERFUL WORKS ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... And not less, I must needs think, for the sake Of humbling me for my vain opposition. You are ingenious, Loredano, in Your modes of vengeance, nay, poetical, A very Ovid in the art of hating; 'Tis thus (although a secondary object, Yet hate has microscopic eyes), to you I owe, by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... The humbling knowledge of seeing myself objectively, gave me courage to speak to the heart of you certain home truths which concern us all, in homely language which ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... said the cunning barbarian, comforting himself in mishap, "that the lot has come to me of humbling myself to a prince who may put on the pharaoh's cap any moment. The rulers of Egypt are magnanimous, especially in time of triumph. If I succeed then in moving my lord he will strengthen my position in Libya, and permit me to collect a multitude ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of art or science, the joys of rivers and green lanes—all these things are a closed book to them. Their interests are narrowed down to the purely human: a case of partial atrophy. For the purely human needs a corrective; it is not sufficiently humbling, and that is exactly what makes them so supercilious. We must take a little account of the Cosmos nowadays—it helps to rectify our bearings. They have their history, no doubt. But save for that one gleam of Periclean ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... minister, it was said, had been approached on the subject; but, after serious consideration, did not see his way to offering up a prayer. Finally old Hobart and two others tied a rope round the body, and dragged it from the farm to the cairn, a distance of four miles. Instead of this incident's humbling Tilliedrum into attending church, the next fast-day saw its streets deserted. As for the Thrums Auld Lichts, only heavy wobs prevented their walking erect like men who had done their duty. If no prayer was volunteered for ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... more speedily brought to a conclusion, and the lives of thousands saved, and people able to return to their peaceful and useful occupations. Morton, I look upon war as a terrible curse. The sooner it can be put an end to the better, but I am very certain that in this instance it can only be by humbling our proud foes to the very dust. Napoleon will bite till every tooth ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... view was strange, unique; and how few have looked upon the celebrated shrine! I may truly say that of all the worshippers there, not one felt for the moment a deeper emotion than did the Haji from the far north. But, to confess humbling truth, theirs was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm; mine was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... learned friend, whose door was opened to him in Christian charity, he there ended within a few months, his miserable life, a prey to shame, remorse and melancholy. A sadder tale the annals of persecution do not furnish, or one more humbling to the pride and confidence of human virtue. Many have failed under lighter trials; few have expiated a failure by sufferings so severe. How often must this victim of a wounded spirit have dwelt with envy, amid his slower torments, on the brief agonies and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... reenforcements, and Caesar's force was very small. Pothinus grew more insolent each day. For the first time, Drusus observed that his general was nervous, and suspicious lest he be assassinated. Finally the Imperator determined to force a crisis. To leave Egypt without humbling Pothinus meant a great lowering of prestige. He sent off a private message to Palestine that Cleopatra ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... great King in Heaven, acknowledging that they were all from Him, and must be held and used for Him; what great trouble he might have saved himself, and all those who looked up to him! How soon, by humbling himself, and how effectually he might have turned aside the threatened judgment! How the great and compassionate God above would have rejoiced to show mercy! And how the holy angels would have sung for joy over the repentant king, and the blotting out of his great ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... a few men out of your one hundred and twenty thousand, and were hid for two days in the marshes[253] of Orchomenus, and left Boeotia with all the roads made impassable by the heaps of dead?" Upon this Archelaus changed his tone, and humbling himself, entreated Sulla to give up the war and to come to terms with Mithridates. Sulla accepted the proposal, and peace was made on the following terms:—Mithridates was to give up Asia[254] and Paphlagonia, and to surrender Bithynia to Nikomedes, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... believe that Samuel really appeared on this occasion—that God sent him to deliver the sad message to the impious rebel, who instead of humbling himself in the time of his trouble, sinned ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... them, the kingdom of Macedonia was humbled, Antiochus was driven out; yet the merits of the Achaeans and Aetolians never secured for them permission to increase their power, nor did the persuasions of Philip ever induce the Romans to be his friends without first humbling him, nor did the influence of Antiochus make them agree that he should retain any lordship over the country. Because the Romans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought to do, who have to regard ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the fit of passion in which one is giddy, blind, and deaf, if there is a relief to the overcharged mind in saying the sharpest things and hitting the heaviest blows one can at the moment, the pleasantness is less than momentary, for almost as we strike we foresee the pains of regret and of humbling ourselves to beg pardon which must ensue. Our friends do not always pity as well as blame us, though they are sorry for those who were possessed ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... who dared to repeat an unproved accusation after the oaths of Purgation and Compurgation had been taken unchallenged. It is a fine, honest ordeal, very old, good for the right, only bad for the wrong, giving strength to the weak and humbling the mighty. But it would be folly and mummery in our day. The Church has lost its powers over life and limb, and no one capable of defaming a pure woman would care a brass penny about the Church's excommunication. ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... of last week at the Grove, where Clarendon talked to me a great deal about the Eastern Question, and Palmerston's policy in that quarter. Palmerston, it seems, has had for many years as his fixed idea the project of humbling the Pasha of Egypt.[11] In the Cabinet he has carried everything his own way; all his colleagues either really concurring with him, or being too ignorant and too indifferent to fight the battle against his strong determination, ...
— 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
... Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stern court of justice which passed a sentence too mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he walked once more in King street. Five years later, in the twilight of ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wealth, pleasure and salvation, of great soul and beholding this whole universe, above, below, and around, as if it were present before his eyes. He was master of both the Sankhya and Yoga systems of philosophy, ever desirous of humbling the celestials and Asuras by fomenting quarrels among them, conversant with the sciences of war and treaty, proficient in drawing conclusions by judging of things not within direct ken, as also in the six sciences of treaty, war, military campaigns, maintenance of posts against the enemy and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... character of the Indians. His keen perception promptly discovered the impossibility of the Iroquois being reconciled and assimilated to the French, and he at once saw the necessity of extirpating, or at least thoroughly humbling, these haughty savages. But beyond the present dangers and difficulties of Indian hostility, this clear-sighted politician discerned the far more formidable evils that threatened the power of his country from the advancing ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... especially when he kept it within certain limits. She did not credit him with any deep feeling; but in spite of her strong conviction that he was attracted by her money, she recognized a certain sincerity in his liking for herself. She enjoyed the idea of humbling his immense assurance, believing that any pain she might inflict would be short-lived, while he was amazed to find how swiftly the hours flew past when he allowed himself to spend a couple of days at Sandbourne—surprised to feel so little of the contemptuous ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... good brother," he said, looking curiously into the wrinkled face. "Humbling thy pride to beg at every door, forswearing thine own good in every way that others may be fed, and yet thy face speaks of an inward joy. I pray thee tell me how thou hast ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that had happened to herself, but so that she thought it concerned some other nun who she imagined must be living not far off, and who she supposed had experienced the same things as herself. She related all these details with a very strong feeling of compassion, humbling herself, without knowing it, before her own patience and sufferings. It was most touching to hear her say: 'I ought never to complain anymore, now that I have seen the sufferings of that poor nun; her heart is surrounded with a crown of thorns, but she bears it placidly and with a smiling ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... means unanimous in thinking that moment well chosen for the abolition; and even those Whigs who were most desirous to see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilities were fully determined not to forego the opportunity of humbling and punishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the Sherlocks into such a situation that they must either starve, or recant, publicly, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of time and thought, for both with me are already tasked up to and beyond their powers, and by matters which I cannot displace. I much wish we could execute some plan which, without demanding much time, would entail the discharge of some humble and humbling offices.... If you thought with me—and I do not see why you should not, except that to assume the reverse is paying myself a compliment—let us go to work, as in the young days of the college plan, but with a more direct and less ambitious purpose.... ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... stock,' I answered, 'and my folk have always fought for the liberty of the people and the humbling of tyranny. I come in the place of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grand-duke of Kiev and Novgorod, while to Andrew was given the far more important grand- duchy of Vladimir. In 1252, however, the Tatars themselves expelled Andrew and placed Alexander on the throne of Vladimir. Alexander henceforth did his best for his country by humbling himself before the Tatars so as to give them no pretext for ravaging the land again. Most of his spare money he devoted to the ransoming of the numerous Russian captives detained at the Golden Horde. But the men ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... stepped forward, and, humbling himself, with respect offered Salisbury some lard in pots, and a ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... coward, crouching by; O'erawed, rebuked, and humbled in the hour, The plenitude of his success and power! A pain the guilty never make us know, In all the miseries they cause below; A pain which they in every triumph feel, A humbling sense no glory yet could heal, The want of conscious worth, the poignant thought, That inwardly sets all pretence at naught! That curbs all self-applause—tears all disguise— When the subdued, the ruin'd can despise; And, ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... fear my reproaches; yet you have strangely erred in imagining the cause for which I should blame you. You are never tired, my good friend, of humbling me by injurious suppositions. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... contracted in those same days a temper of imperiousness and self-conceit, such as he showed afterwards when his pupil Fallopius dared to add fresh discoveries to those of his master. And yet, in spite of all Vesalius knew, how little he knew! How humbling to his pride it would have been had he known then—perhaps he does know now—that he had actually again and again walked, as it were, round and round the true theory of the circulation of the blood, and yet never seen it; that that ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... and unwearied tongue during the day. This happy circumstance afforded them an opportunity, and ample leisure for spending the Sabbath in a manner most agreeable to their feelings; by devoting the greater part of it to the impressive duties of their divine religion, in humbling themselves before the mercy seat of the great Author of their being, and imploring him to be their refuge and guardian, to shield them from every danger, and to render their undertakings hopeful ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... By humbling the supremacy of rank and wealth; by forbidding the State to encroach on the domain which belongs to God; by teaching man to love his neighbour as himself; by promoting the sense of equality; by condemning the pride of race, which was a stimulus of conquest, and the doctrine of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... health, Dr. Kittlepin!—Can it be for the puir body M'Durk's health to major about in the tartans like a tobacconist's sign in a frosty morning, wi' his poor wizzened houghs as blue as a blawort?—weel I wot he is a humbling spectacle. Or can it gie ony body health or pleasure either to see your ainsell, Doctor, ganging about wi' a claise screen tied to your back, covered wi' paper, and painted like a stane and lime wa'?—I'll gang to see nane o' their vanities, Dr. Kittlehen; ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... proposing such a plan. There was not a word or an accent of reproach in all she said, and I heartily forgave the little coquetry, affectation, and vulgarity I had formerly remarked in her, in consideration of the intuitive delicacy and good feeling she now displayed. Truly, thought I, it is humbling to us, the bearded and baser moiety of humankind, to contrast our vile egotism with the beautiful self-devotion of woman, as exhibited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... romancer. Unhappily, while the chronicles show the frequent emergency which attended his painful condition, they furnish nothing more. We are without details. The melancholy baldness and coldness with which they narrate events upon which one would like to linger is absolutely humbling to the imagination; which, kindled by the simple historical outline, looks in vain for the satisfaction of those doubts and inquiries, those hopes and fears, which the provoking narrative inspires only to defraud. ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... sound as of two knees falling upon the floor. And mad with love, stammering, humbling himself before her, he implored her to consent to marry him, to give him the right to go everywhere with her, to defend her; then words failed him, his voice was choked by a passionate sob, so deep, so heart-rending, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... humanity herself! To the merciful Sovereign of a free people I call aloud for mercy to the hundreds of thousands for whom half a million of her Christian sisters have cried aloud—I ask that their cry may not have risen in vain. But first I turn my eye to the throne of all justice, and devoutly humbling myself before Him who is of purer eyes than to behold such vast iniquities, I implore that the curse hovering over the head of the unjust and the oppressor be averted from us—that your hearts may be turned to mercy—and that over all ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... with the full expectation of humbling Bax, and with the further intention of following up his reply with the assurance that there was much greater probability of the moon being turned into green cheese than of his promotion taking place; but his intentions were frustrated by Bax starting, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... give in a vivid dramatic form the effect of the judgments on the sufferers. They recognise these as 'the sword of the Lord.' Their only thought is an impatient longing that the judgments would cease,—no confession of sin, no humbling of them selves, but only—'remove ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... of evil always stirs up, wherever the natural character is elevated enough to appreciate the beauty of Christian morality. It only prevails where there are refined and cultivated men, afraid of all belief in the supernatural, as a humbling of their intellect to superstition; and just at present a form of it is very prevalent in India, owing to the amount of education which the natives receive, which uproots the old belief, but does not ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Style[2] of reckoning time, the aggressive designs of Frederick the Great of Prussia caused such alarm that a grand alliance was formed by France, Russia, Austria, and Poland to check his further advance. Great Britain, however, gave her support to Frederick, in hope of humbling her old enemy France, who, in addition to her attempts to oust the English from India, was also making preparations on a grand scale ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... written this, not to confound you, but that the examples of kings may stir you up to put away this sin from your kingdom, for you will put it away by humbling your soul before God. You are a man, temptation has come to you; conquer it. Sin is not done away but by tears and penitence. Neither angel can do it, nor archangel. The Lord himself, who alone can say "I am with you," if we have sinned, does ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... pages I had written. They were only a few poems—nothing special, just a few small verses. Not that I am in the habit of reading such things aloud, but I seized on this for the moment because I wanted to prevent her from humbling herself, and telling me ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... with a constant Series of Petitions, she takes care to allow them a pious Respite, and relieves them with the Raptures of an Anthem. Nor can we doubt that the sublimest Poetry, softened in the most moving Strains of Musick, can ever fail of humbling or exalting the Soul to any Pitch of Devotion. Who can hear the Terrors of the Lord of Hosts described in the most expressive Melody, without being awed into a Veneration? or who can hear the kind and endearing Attributes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... thinking of the long winter, and the heavy doctor's bill, and feeling that, after all, suffering and humbling might not be so very far off; but she was too cheerful and full of trust to dwell on the thought, so she smiled and said, 'I only said I was thankful, boys, for the mercy that has kept us up. Go on now, Harold; ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sylvia Hepburn as was Sylvia Robson, she knows my mind,' said Alice, in grim indignation. 'She's humbling herself now, I trust and pray, but she was light-minded and full of vanity when Philip married her, and it might ha' been a lift towards her salvation in one way; but it pleased the Lord to work in a different way, and she mun wear her sackcloth and ashes in patience. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... very far behind them. Rutherford had plenty of trouble in his family life that he used to set down to the sins of his youth; and then the way he poisoned so many of his best friendships by his so poisonous party spirit is a humbling history to read. He quarrelled irreconcilably with his very best friends over matters that were soon to be as dead as Aaron's golden calf, and which never had much more life or decency in them. The matters were so small and miserable over ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... commendable, to see the modesty, attention, and reverence they observe during their worship. He asked some of their priests the purport of their prayers and ceremonies; their answer always was, That they adored God by prostrating themselves before him; that by humbling themselves, they acknowledged their own insignificancy, and farther intreated him to forgive their faults, and to grant them all good and necessary things as well as deliverance from evil." Jobson takes notice of several good qualities in ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... has been like a snare to their offspring, and though some have been affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the humbling power of truth, they have continued in these entanglements; expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply, and in answering this call, the faces of the poor have been ground away, and made thin through ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... cannot cure the disease itself. You will give opiates to the suffering, who must die nevertheless. Let him slip into his grave at least as painlessly as you can. And so you must use these charitable societies, remembering all along what a fearful and humbling sign the necessity for them is of the diseased state of this England, as the sportula and universal almsgiving was of the ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... (whither all members have a right to go, though not to vote, as it is select, not secret,) and plagued Lyttelton to death, with pressing him to inquire into the healths of the year '43. The ministry are now trembling at home, with fear of losing the Scotch bills for humbling the Highland chiefs: they have whittled them down almost to nothing, in complaisance to the Duke of Argyll: and at last he deserts them. Abroad they are in panics for Holland, where the French have at once besieged two towns, that must fall into their ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... friends, nor harrow their feelings, by a narrative of the injuries their colony had sustained at the hands of the French National Assembly. Those around him knew too well, that in return for their sympathy in the humbling of a despot, for their zeal in behalf of the eternal principles of freedom, the mother-country had, through the instrumentality of its National Council, endeavoured to strip its faithful whites in this colony of the power which they had always possessed, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... toward a collision, and were unconsciously playing into the hands of their arch-enemy, the leaders of the warlike faction in the Chamber and the Parisian press were clamouring with fury and vitriolic sarcasm against a faint-hearted and contemptible ministry that shrank from seizing the opportunity of humbling Prussia. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... with an enormous mass of material, too extensive to arrange, yet too important to neglect. Nor is he, like Shakespeare's biographer, reduced to choose between the starvation of nescience and the windy diet of conjecture. If a humbling thought intrudes, it is how largely he is indebted to a devoted diligence he never could have emulated; how painfully Professor Masson's successors must resemble the Turk who builds his cabin out ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... confusion and denial—to that glorious kingdom that Christ bought with his own dear blood, and has built upon Peter, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Yes, I know it is a flattering and a pleasant thought that this little nation should have her own Church; and it is humbling and bitter that England should be called to submit to a foreign potentate in the affairs of faith—Nay, cry they like the Jews of old, not Christ but Barabbas—we will not have this Man to reign over us. And yet this is God's will ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... teased his eyes with a picture of feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was bright and who knew so much that he had never known. At the same time, there was no malice in it—just the delight in making a strong man discover a strength beyond his own, and in humbling a masculine pride by the sheer superiority of a woman who had neglected no opportunity to satisfy a ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... travelled far along those vistas. Light is not abundant in them, is it? We are proud of having gone such a long way, but...peradventure, those who come after us will turn back, sooner or later, of their own accord. This is a humbling thought. If the wonders of our civilisation are doomed, we should prefer them to cease through lack of the minerals and mineral products that keep them going. Possibly they are not doomed at all. But this chance counts for little as against the certainty that, whatever ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... less profuse of money than of blood. A general assembly was convened to ratify the treaty: the stately chapel and place of St. Mark were filled with ten thousand citizens; and the noble deputies were taught a new lesson of humbling themselves before the majesty of the people. "Illustrious Venetians," said the marshal of Champagne, "we are sent by the greatest and most powerful barons of France to implore the aid of the masters ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of Nature's great mysteries was revealed to me, doubtless with the purpose of humbling my vanity, and of teaching me that nothing is impossible to God, and that it is in His power only to multiply our senses, and by so doing gratify those ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian |
