"Self-sacrificing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... noble and as self-sacrificing as was Esther, as self-respecting and as brave as was Vashti, are hampered in their creative office by the unjust statutes of men; but God is marching on; and it is the seed of woman which is to bruise the head ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... a sensitive conscience kept you tongue-tied. This is probably one of the most self-sacrificing acts which will be performed the present summer. But you will remember that Mephistopheles on a certain occasion was ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... endowed with the gift of second-sight, for at that moment the door of his employer's room opened, and Mr Lowstoft came out, saying to his visitor, in the most friendly tones, that he had the deepest sympathy with his self-sacrificing efforts, and with the noble work to which he ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... thoughts which I never have been in the habit of giving them, but people here talk of little else and I am borne on with the current. I think that to give happiness in married life a woman should possess oceans of self-sacrificing love and I, for one, haven't half of that self-forgetting ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Battalion reached "Hilltop Farm" in the early morning, entraining later for Hospital Camp in the Vlamertinghe area. The casualties were particularly heavy among Officers and N.C.O.s, and gives trenchant evidence of their self-sacrificing gallantry in seeking by utter disregard for danger to turn a forlorn hope into victory, and by personal example and incentive to make still richer the honourable traditions of the 17th in the face of such overwhelming odds, and amidst such overaweing devastation. ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... which I belong, and that you are incapable of betraying a confidence reposed in you. I am the Abbess of Vatteville. Driven forth from the plundered and ruined abbey, I am living in the town under an assumed name. I have been stripped of everything; and but for the self-sacrificing attachment of a faithful servant, I must have died of want. However, I have still one resource, and only one. I know not if I am right in availing myself of it, but at my age the power to struggle fails. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... discovering that his love had become insensibly transformed into a very tender but perfectly peaceful friendship. No one but him had ever touched her heart, and she had no interest in life besides him. Since she was not to be his wife, she was glad to be his lifelong, tender, self-sacrificing friend. So she raked the ashes over the fire in her heart, and left him to suppose that it had gone out as in his. Nor was she without compensation in their friendship. It was with a delightful thrill that she felt how fully in mind and heart he leaned ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the west. Powerful Mohammedan states had arisen in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and the Crusaders alone arrested the progress of these triumphant armies. The enthusiasm which the doctrines of Mohammed had kindled, cannot easily be explained; but it was fresh, impetuous, and self-sacrificing. Successive armies of Mohammedan invaders overwhelmed the ancient realms of civilization, and reduced the people whom they conquered and converted to a despotic yoke. But success enervated the victorious conquerors of the East, the empire of the Caliphs ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... her mount an old-fashioned carry-all, saw her turn to wave a farewell. The carry-all disappeared. He started toward the Hill ambulance, but he was still thinking, "Now what is the thing which a girl like that would consider more self-sacrificing ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... nine, he had learned to walk on his hands in a manner that caused acute envy to rankle in the bosom of every boy in the neighborhood. Also, as is most unusual among boys of whatever station, color or instinct, he was self-sacrificing, and more than generous, and ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... certain Leopold would never yield himself to public shame! But she must take care that foolish, extravagant curate should not come near him. There was no knowing to what he might persuade him! Poor Poldie was so easily led by any show of nobility—anything that looked grand or self-sacrificing! ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... Nightingale began her great work in the hospital wards at Scutari in 1854, she little realised how far-reaching would be the effect of her noble self-sacrificing efforts. Could she to-day visit the war-stricken countries of Europe she would be astonished at the great developments of the work of caring for the wounded soldiers which she inaugurated so long ago. Her fine example is being emulated to-day by hundreds ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... water which he gives, can spring up within a man's heart to everlasting life—all such texts we may, and shall, understand more and more, if we will bear in mind that everlasting life is the life of God and of Christ, a life of love; a life of perfect, active, self-sacrificing goodness, which is the one only true life for all rational beings, whether on earth or ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... be confronting a bullet, or have fallen into the water, or stand in danger of being burnt, or have had your heart broken in a love affair—well, for all these things they are prepared if the occasion should arise. Moreover, people addicted to love of such a self-sacrificing order are invariably proud of their love, exacting, jealous, distrustful, and—strange to tell—anxious that the object of their adoration should incur perils (so that they may save it from calamity, and ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... we prove that they were in truth and in fact fighting for their liberty, and instead of branding their leaders with the dishonoring name of traitors against a righteous and legal government we elevate them in history to the rank of self-sacrificing patriots, consecrate them to the admiration of the world, and place them by the side of Washington, Hampden, and Sidney. No; let us leave them to the infamy they deserve, punish them as they should be punished, according to law, and take upon ourselves no share ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... of the rolling Vanator his faithful warriors clung to their lashings all unconscious of the fate of their beloved leader; nor was it until more than an hour later, after the storm had materially subsided, that they realized he was lost, or knew the self-sacrificing heroism of the act that had sealed his doom. The Vanator now rested upon an even keel as she was carried along by a strong, though steady, wind. The warriors had cast off their deck lashings and the officers were taking ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... driven in on the centre, helped to save Paris, and finally helped to defeat von Kluck's army. It wasn't only by pluck and endurance that British officers and soldiers did that; it was by a considerable display of self-sacrifice. What's this but a self-sacrificing plan on your part? And you think that we are going to agree?—that Jules and I will accept the proposal, and leave you here alone to face all the difficulties of escaping from Germany—you, who besides being big, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... persons, but their number was not large. There were many professing loyalty, who possessed very little of the article, and whose record had been exceedingly doubtful. Prominent among these were the politicians, than whom none had been more self-sacrificing, if their own ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... was silent for a minute or two. He had a very sincere friendship and liking for his companion, a thorough confidence in his judgment and principles. He knew his self-sacrificing nature, and that he was only speaking from ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... Majorities never have ruled. It is the brave minority of thinking, self-sacrificing people that decides the tomorrow of communities that go upward. Majorities are not willing to make the effort to rule themselves. They are content to drift and be amused and follow false gods that promise something for nothing. They ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... she contrasted Dick in the essential point of manliness most favorably with the male butterflies of society that hovered around her. What one of them was so essentially chivalrous as the Western man; so modest, so self-sacrificing, so brave and resolute and resourceful? Dick Lane, or Jack Payson, for that matter, in all save the adventitious points of education and culture was the higher type of manhood, and Jack, at least, if not poor Dick, could hold his own in mental and ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... sense should warn against the assumption of an office without the slightest special preliminary training. Politics is an art that can be mastered not in the leisure hours of the brain, but only by the passionate, self-sacrificing devotion of a whole lifetime. Now ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... our country is open, and will always be so, but never has been and never can be traversed for good in a spirit of sectionalism and uncharitableness. The founders of the Republic dealt with things as they were presented to them, in a spirit of self-sacrificing patriotism, and, as time has proved, with a comprehensive wisdom which it will always be safe for us to consult. Every measure tending to strengthen the fraternal feelings of all the members of our Union has had my heartfelt approbation. To every theory ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Victoria? Ah, I perceive you have, and that you come in haste to prevent it,—even to pursue these misguided beings, if necessary, as the fact that you come already dressed for the journey very eloquently shows. You are self-sacrificing, you possess a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... until the foot of the conqueror had tracked it from one end to the other, accomplished its objects in time. Even the women, whose heroism outshone any ever displayed upon the battlefield, whose devoted self-sacrificing charity and benevolence can never be justly recorded, whose courage had seemed dauntless, were at last overcome by the misery which surrounded them, and a power which ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... of a totally new kind of love and not any change in her old love. The situation which arises is one of torturing anxiety for all concerned, and it is not less so when all concerned are animated by noble and self-sacrificing impulses. The husband in his devotion to his wife may even be willing that her new impulses should be gratified. She, on her side, will not think of yielding to desires which seem both unfair to her husband ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... they are not, this they are—the histories of good men. Their physical science and their daemonology may have been on a par with those of the world around them: but they possessed what the world did not possess, faith in the utterly good and self-sacrificing God, and an ideal of virtue and purity such as had never been seen since the first Whitsuntide. And they set themselves to realize that ideal with a simplicity, an energy, an endurance, which were altogether heroic. How far they were right in "giving up the world" ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... After mamma died I don't know what we should have done—two girls left alone in this old house—if it hadn't been for Aunt Sharley. She petted us, she protected us, she nursed us when we were sick. Why, Harvey, she couldn't have been more loyal or more devoted or more self-sacrificing than she has been through all these years while we were growing up. I know she loves us with every drop of blood in her veins. I know she'd work her fingers to the bone for us—that she'd die in her tracks fighting for us. We try to remember the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Pulaski; in 1830-'31, on the battle fields of Grochow and Ostrolenka, show themselves more powerful than under the dictatorship of the disciple of Washington, and in 1863, fighting without a leader, without a centre, without arms, surprise the world with a heroism, a self-sacrificing devotion, unexampled even in the history of their former insurrections? Who has never heard of Russian batteries assaulted and carried by Polish scythes? Whose bosom is so devoid of the divine cords of justice and sympathy as never yet to have revibrated the strain of the Polish exiles: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... the promptitude with which he communicated his enthusiasm to a few comrades around, and rushed forward to meet danger in its most appalling form, risking himself to save others, and secure a triumph which he could scarcely hope to share, gave earnest of the military talent, the self-sacrificing courage, and the soldierly sympathies which have drawn to him the nation's esteem. The close of the battle of the 18th gave another instance in which these latter traits of Gen. Butler's character were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... that the poet triumphed over the social reformer, in spite of himself; and while in his own parish, at Luetzelflueh in the Canton of Berne—where he was installed as minister of the Gospel in 1832 after having spent some time there as a vicar—he is remembered to this day for his self-sacrificing activity in every walk of life, the world at large knows him only as one of the great prose writers of Germany in the nineteenth century. His first work, Bauernspiegel ("The Peasants' Mirror"), was published ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... somewhere, where at least we should have the blessing of our mutual love and presence. The thought was magnetic,—it showed me there was some good left in my poor scoffing soul; that I possessed capacity for happiness, for self-sacrificing devotion to my noble Belmont,—that made our future seem a canticle. Oh! how delicious was the release ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the appeal. The Percy Parrotts threw open their three-roomed residence and made arrangements to sleep in the hay, while their self-sacrificing example was quickly followed by others. Neither the Cowboy Band nor the neighbors knew either rest or sleep until they had mastered a Sousa March, while Mrs. Tutts showed her public spirit by rehearsing Crowheart's talented ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... has been known to take the fur cloak off her own back, and lay it over the form of a sick beggar, while she went home in the cold to send her warm blankets. Yes, and known to have done scores of deeds as good and self-sacrificing as that. She do the thing they accuse her of! Why, sir, she no more did it than I, or you, or your own sweet wife did it! And Satan burn me! when I hear of any man accusing her of it, if I don't feel just like knocking his dull ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... during the few days when war was still trembling in the balance, suggested to Lord Kitchener that they should repair together to the Prime Minister and propose that Lord Kitchener should be commander-in-chief of the field army, with him (French) as Chief of Staff. That was a self-sacrificing suggestion; but it surely indicates an absence of what Lord Haldane calls "clear thinking." Sir J. French had been organizing and training the Expeditionary Force for some years previously, knew all about it, was acquainted with its generals and staffs, was up-to-date ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... share it with him, need not have had me shout into her ears that Hur has garnered honors and dignities enough, during his long existence, to be able to spare a portion of them without any loss of esteem. It is not the man who holds the chief command, but the one who shows the most self-sacrificing love for the people that is greatest in the eyes of Jehovah. You desire a high place, you seek to be honored by the multitude as one who is summoned by the Lord. I shall not forbid it, so long as you do not forget what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Grace, bitterly, "she is better employed than to come near me. She is not a self-sacrificing fool like me. When I had the advantage, I gave it up; now she has got it, she uses it without mercy, decency, or gratitude. And that is the way to love. Oh! if my turn could but come again. But it ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and coldness wore away, it required little penetration to discover the benevolence and warmth of his mind. But none ignorant of his original disposition, or the misfortunes of his life, could ever have pierced the depth of his self-sacrificing nature, or measured the height of his lofty and devoted virtue. Many men may perhaps be found who will give up to duty a cherished wish or even a darling vice; but few will ever renounce to it their rooted ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... service and practice of sin. He buys us from the despot whose slaves we were, and makes us His own in the hatred of evil and the doing of righteousness. Moved by His death, we become capable of heroisms and martyrdoms of devotion to Him. Brethren, it is only as that self-sacrificing love touches us, which died for our sins upon the Cross, that the diabolical chain of selfishness will be broken from our affections and our wills, and we shall be led into the large place of glad surrender of ourselves ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... do not pretend to be perfect myself. Heaven knows I have to struggle hard enough every day with what the Germans call my higher impulses. I know too well the temptation to be moral, to be self-sacrificing, to be loyal and patriotic, to be respectable and well-spoken of. But I wrestle with it and—as far as human fraility will allow—conquer it, whereas the German abandons himself to it without scruple or reflection, and is actually proud of his pious intemperance and self-indulgence. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... many and ingenious measures adopted by Hoover and Julius Barnes, the self-sacrificing and highly efficient head of the Grain Corporation, to acquit themselves and the Government with fairness to all interests of the tremendous responsibility and undertaking thus imposed on them would carry us beyond the limits of our space. These controllers of the American wheat had in ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... speculation about it; and even when he found Annie regarding him with her whole soul in her face, he failed to understand, as he always had done, the noble love which had been so long and so faithfully his—a love holding itself above endearments; self-repressed, self-sacrificing, kept down in the inmost heart-chamber a dignified prisoner behind very real bars. Yet he was conscious that the letter was of more than usual interest, and when the servant had closed the door behind him, he asked, "Whom is your letter ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... subordination of selfish instincts to group-demands, the service of other individuals or of the group. These habits are later in development than some of the personal virtues, but long antedate the differentiation of man from the other animals. Instances of self-sacrificing devotion of parent to offspring among birds and beasts are too common to need mention. Devotion to the mate, though less developed, is early present in many species. The strict subordination of ants and bees to the common welfare is a well-known marvel, the latter enthusiastically ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... newer and younger Helen is always gently pushing her from the throne. Of all seasons that of blossoms is the briefest, and the maturer Helen, of whom the sex is composed, is not wayward and selfish, is no longer "uncertain, coy, and hard to please," but patient, self-sacrificing, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... in; by degrees forming the idea of turning him into a steady, respectable young fellow. He could almost fancy that his brother Quenu had grown little again, and that they were both in the big room in the Rue Royer-Collard once more. The life which his self-sacrificing nature pictured to him as perfect happiness was a life spent with some young being who would never grow up, whom he could go on teaching for ever, and in whose innocence he might still love his fellow man. On the third day of his acquaintance with Muche he brought an alphabet to the office, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... was filled with visitors only on Sundays, and there refreshed myself with some bread and cheese and a bottle of wine. A crowd of hens surrounded me, and I kept throwing them pieces of bread, and was touched by the self-sacrificing abstemiousness with which the cock gave all to his wives though I aimed particularly at him. They became bolder and bolder, and finally flew on to the table and attacked my provisions; the cock flew after them, and noticing that ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... time he had a valuable thing to offer. His labors had racked his body, his nerves were on edge, his temper was short. When they refused to help he cursed them and tore out. That they allowed his personal appearance to influence their judgment stirred his fury—it was so unjust to his self-sacrificing devotion to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and bring some of the amenities of shore life within the reach of those afloat. Religion is among its influences, but only in an unsectarian way. Its work in Canadian waters is directed by two able and self-sacrificing men: Dr Grenfell, whose base is at St Anthony's in North-East Newfoundland, and whose beat goes straight down north along the Newfoundland Labrador, which faces the Atlantic; and Dr Hare, whose base is Harrington, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... in rights wrested from ignorance and prejudice but never enjoyed by past generations, be too selfish and small to rejoice in the possibility of bettered conditions those ahead may live under as the fruits of the self-sacrificing labour of those now fighting ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... idyllic love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love; the friendship that gives freely without return, and the love that seeks first the happiness of the object. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... going over on the steamer sailing that day to give their services to the French. The newspaper spoke of him in glowing terms. His name stood out above all the others, for he was the one most notably in the public eye at the moment. The others, just as brave and self-sacrificing as he, were briefly mentioned and that was all. He alone was in the headlines, he alone was discussed. No one was to be allowed to forget that he was the clever young surgeon who had saved the great Marraville. The account dwelt upon the ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Bible fared not well at the hands of those who were unwilling that the Scriptures should be studied in the vulgar tongue by the lay-folk, and foremost among that brave band of self-sacrificing scholars stands William Tyndale. His life is well known, and needs no recapitulation; but it may be noted that his books, rather than his work of translating the Scriptures, brought about his destruction. His important work called The Practice of Prelates, which was ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... misery. Nor is this at all remarkable, for the mass of the people are kept helpless and divided by their religious divisions, which are too often used as a weapon to prevent them from combining for higher wages and shorter hours. Religious fanaticism is not quite so self-sacrificing in its commercial results as ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... mind all the time there was the image of her father in the judgment-hall. There he stood, the innocent man, betrayed by his friend, and yet standing there in his simple faith and truth to save that friend, obstinate in his self-sacrificing fidelity, true to faith when the other had proved himself worthless, suffering what can only be suffered by a generous nature as the hours and the days passed and the end approached, and still the traitor allowed ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... a much better woman, too, if it were not for the heroine. The adventuress makes the most complete arrangements for being noble and self-sacrificing—that is, for going away and never coming back, and is just about to carry them out, when the heroine, who has a perfect genius for being in the wrong place at the right time, comes in and spoils it all. No stage adventuress can be good while the heroine ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... must have yielded to this long and crushing imprisonment. The Cardinal-Archbishop of Albi ascended a raised platform: he read the confessions of the Knights, the proceedings of the court; he enlarged on the criminality of the order, on the holy justice of the Pope, and the devout, self-sacrificing zeal of the King; he was proceeding to the final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand master advanced; his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awestruck apprehension. In a calm, clear voice Du Molay spoke: "Before heaven and earth, on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... difficult matter to estimate the good that a true teacher can do, be he of whatever race-variety. But to calculate on the noble work of the majority of the self-sacrificing and virtuous Negro teachers is a task beyond the ability of man. Bishop Daniel A. Payne, the apostle of an educated ministry, is known throughout the country for the noble work he did in teaching the people at large as well as his immediate pupils both how to live and how to die. Almost ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and desirable. The one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy. No one can have any other motive than that. There is no such thing as unselfishness. We perform the most "generous" and "self-sacrificing" acts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of least reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human happiness is worth having; ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... us, young still, and still without self-knowledge, resounded a hundred discordant notes in the harsh angle of that shock. We were furiously angry with each other, tender with each other, callously selfish, generously self-sacrificing. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... "Self-sacrificing girls! We'll have to make it up to you somehow. When I see Ferry I'll—Hold on, I've an idea. How are ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... enduring all their magnificent strength and courage stand ready for those who would go to the wall without it. A lame dog, a man down in his luck, an old soaker, little women any woman in need or sickness—each and all call forth this protectiveness; but nothing calls it forth in all its self-sacrificing tenderness like the helplessness of a strong man stricken ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... side of the case. I am the only competent witness to my own virtues. In order to appreciate me, a woman would need to have a fine discrimination. My beauty might have been revealed to such a woman if she had concentrated by absent treatment on my lofty, self-sacrificing character, evidenced by my pursuit of the chaste in art and the sane in philosophy. But all hope had then well-nigh departed. I realized that there were inconsistencies in the theories of the survival of the fittest and natural selection. I was an example of the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... works in this spirit, he does not understand how sacred and solemn a trust is placed in his hands. No teacher is worthy of the name who does not realise that he serves God most truly and his country most faithfully when he lives and works with his boys. His self-sacrificing life, lived amongst them, inspires them to perform their duties well, as they see him performing his, and thus they grow in reverence and patriotism. These boys are God's children entrusted to his care; they are the hope of the nation placed in his hands. ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... the United States is not a spontaneous growth, but has been carefully fostered and directed, goes without saying. It is the result, first, of a wise interest and support on the part of the state, which early recognized the importance of educating its citizens, and, second, of the self-sacrificing efforts of a number of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... All else was as nothing. Family and friends, home and humanity, were of importance only as they furthered this object. It is in this spirit that she mentioned her father's illness and death, and the heroic, self-sacrificing death, by shipwreck, of her brother Benjamin, to which she could resign herself from a conviction that the stroke was sent as a chastisement to her, and was a merciful dispensation to draw his young wife nearer to God. We read not one word of solicitude for mother, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the father of the self-sacrificing Menaeceus, succeeds on the death of the rival brothers, to the administration of Thebes. A second siege takes place, conducted by Adrastus, and the sons of those who had been slain. Thebes now falls, and Thereander, the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... him are correct, that the high favor in which he was held by the emperor did not awaken in the hearts of the native nobles of the land any considerable degree of that jealousy and ill-will which they might have been expected to excite. Le Fort was of a very self-sacrificing and disinterested disposition. He was generous in his dealings with all, and he often exerted the ascendency which he had acquired over the mind of the emperor to save other officers from undeserved or excessive punishment when they displeased ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... to her relief, and she sobbed pitifully. "If you had only known her goodness," she cried, "her self-sacrificing devotion, her pure, kind heart! She was the best friend I ever had, and how she loved that unhappy boy! She was more his mother than I, for she gave him all a mother's love and all a mother's care and attention. Why did I let her go with him? Why did I not keep her ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... and kneeling reverentially before her he said: "Yes, I weep, but not over you. I weep over your great, self-sacrificing soul. I do not pity you—your grief is too great, too sacred—it is above pity. But I bow profoundly before you, for your suffering is worthy of all reverence. To me you appear much more beautiful than all the women of this court who dance giddily through life. It is ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... it, and so he relinquished a post which was, every day, becoming more onerous and difficult. There was another Cardinal whose high character had endeared him to the Romans. Ability and learning were not his only qualities. He was energetic and resolute, faithful, straightforward and self-sacrificing. When the dread scourge of cholera swept over his episcopal city and impoverished his people, Cardinal Ferretti gave up for the relief of the sufferers all that he possessed—money, clothing, plate, furniture, and remained in his empty Palace, as destitute as a pauper. To this eminent Cardinal Pius ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... Representation was included in it. The most vehement criticism came from Lord BRYCE, who viewed with alarm the addition of six million women to the electorate. Women, he declared, neither met nor talked—an assertion which surprised the more married peers. Lord BURNHAM supported "P.R." with the self-sacrificing argument that the Press would become too powerful if minorities had no way of expressing their views except in the newspapers. Perhaps he doesn't want another letter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... before the eyes of men. At one time it is a species of bloody sweat, like that of Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemani; at another, a visible print of the cross is impressed upon the shoulders; or angels present a mystic cup of suffering to the hands of the self-sacrificing Saint. Then follows what is termed stigmatisation, or the renewal of the actual wounds of the Crucified, accompanied with the bloody marks of the crown of thorns upon the sufferer's head; for the most part one by one, until ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... almost contemptuous. It is very certain that William of Orange was not yet the "father William" he was destined to become—grave, self-sacrificing, deeply religious, heroic; but it was equally evident from this language that he had small sympathy, either in public or private, with Lutheranism or theological controversy. Landgrave William was not far from right when he added, in his quaint style, after recalling this well-known reply, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... THE RAINBOW. The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. It is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... German literature a fine reserve which I like; but its chief glory is the recognition I find in it of the redeeming potency of woman's self-sacrificing love. This thought pervades all German literature and is mystically ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... of human infirmity, it is likewise often intolerant of all forms of human excellence which do not square with its own conceptions of right; and its philanthropy in the abstract is apt to secrete a subtile misanthropy in the concrete. Brave, unselfish, self-sacrificing, and flinching from no consequences which its principles may bring upon itself, it flinches from no consequences which they may bring upon others; and its attitude towards the laws and customs of instituted imperfection is almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... earliest history of our country, woman has shown herself as patriotic as man in every great emergency in the nation's life. From the Revolution to the present hour, woman has stood by the side of father, husband, son and brother in defense of liberty. The heroic and self-sacrificing deeds of the women of this republic, both in peace and war, must not be forgotten. Together men and women have made this country what it is. And to-day, in this one-hundredth year of our existence, the women—as members of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... as the Princess and the Geni burn each other to nothingness, in the Arabian Nights. On that happy day there will be one less of the roads leading to failure. If the pair can carry with them the self-sacrificing characters who take the blame of all the felonies that they did not do, and the nice girl who is jilted by the poet, and finds that the squire was the person whom she really loved, so much the better. ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the telling of this story as she sat by the side of his couch, hand locked in hand, and he learnt by degrees the full measure of her self-sacrificing devotion, that did McKay so much good. It braced and strengthened him, giving him a new and stronger desire to live and enjoy the unspeakable blessing ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... will be determined by a jury. This means justice, nothing more, nothing less—justice to the tenant, justice to the landlord. It is not to be inferred that our real estate owners have lacked anything as a class in patriotism. They are our most loyal, most self-sacrificing, most commendable citizens. Massachusetts by its Homestead Commission is encouraging its citizens to own real estate because such ownership is a sheet anchor to self-government. But it is a proclamation of warning to profiteers, of approbation and approval ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... which certainly appear to be self-sacrificing, and which the moral judgments of men generally do not hesitate ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... his wife looked at her, then at one another in dumb amaze. What could he say? How could he force himself to tell this brave and spirited and self-sacrificing girl of the cloud of suspicion with which she had ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... self-sacrificing ardour of Joseph there was no trace in Leopold's character; yet his political aims were not low. During twenty-four years' government of Tuscany he had proved himself almost an ideal ruler in the pursuit of peace, of religious enlightenment, and ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... me one of the most significant and memorable things connected with our Revolutionary struggle, that it attracted the attention, elicited the sympathy, inspired the enthusiasm, and drew out the self-sacrificing co-operation of so many noble spirits, loving freedom, in different parts of Western and Central Europe. [Applause.] You remember that Lord Camden testified from his own observation in 1775, about the time of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... have not been a self-sacrificing friend to me in vain. I can honestly say that I have grown happier every year. Betty is good and willing; and if I were to tell you how, in the course of years, she has learned to model her character on the lines ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... snapped asunder? Would he be as kind to the boy as now when she could commend him with her own lips to his care—when she could place that precious charge into his hands? With these thoughts, she formed one of those resolutions which have all the strength of self-sacrificing love. She would put the boy from her, her last solace and comfort; ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was making a concession of which he was half-afraid, because of what he owed her, and while one half of her longed to be self-sacrificing and release him, the other half fiercely demanded the straw that yet might save. And still she said nothing, gazing, gazing, into ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... with a long letter, setting forth the wishes, hopes, and plans of the grantor, in the formal and diffuse rhetoric peculiar to his generation, and, perhaps, too much contemned by ours. To say the least, we are no more warranted in despising the utterances of noble, self-sacrificing philanthropists, because they are clothed in phrases now deemed verbose and stilted, than we would be in disparaging the deeds of historic heroes, because they wore armor now antiquated and struck their doughty blows with weapons ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... accompany them to lectures on the suffering in Siberia; they agitate together over the forgotten region of East London. In addition to this, from babyhood the altruistic tendencies of these daughters are persistently cultivated. They are taught to be self-forgetting and self-sacrificing, to consider the good of the whole before the good of the ego. But when all this information and culture show results, when the daughter comes back from college and begins to recognize her social claim to the "submerged tenth", and to evince a disposition ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the 'Sea Breeze' was again in harbour; and on the 15th, after mature consideration, was written this self-sacrificing letter:— ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mourned for his dead and finally found comfort in the words of the Bible—the only source of comfort in this world for the sorely wounded heart. The whole poem, as his son Hallam says, emphasizes the poet's belief "in an omnipotent and all-loving God, who has revealed himself through the highest self-sacrificing love in the freedom of the human will and in the immortality ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... during this little episode displayed such touching devotion that it is with feelings of the most profound admiration and gratitude I call to mind their self-sacrificing courage. On this (as on many other occasions) they kept close round me, determined that no shot should reach me if they could prevent it; and on my being hit in the hand by a spent bullet, and turning to look round in the direction it came from, I beheld one ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... likely to be much larger than among the stricter reformers. The investigator will occasionally meet on the astral plane students of occultism from all parts of the world (belonging to lodges quite unconnected with the Masters of whom Theosophists know most) who are in many cases most earnest and self-sacrificing seekers after truth. It is noteworthy, however, that all such lodges are at least aware of the existence of the great Himalayan Brotherhood, and acknowledge it as containing among its members the highest Adepts now known ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... was. The two ladies, I had no doubt, had frequently communicated with each other; and since such women, full of intelligence and enthusiasm, were labouring in the cause, it must, I felt sure, in the end be successful. Would that all the men were like them, so disinterested, so self-sacrificing, so devoted,—ready, like Dona Paula, to lay down their lives for their country's good! But, alas! too many even among the Patriots were self-opinionated—seeking their own aggrandisement, and how to fill their coffers, without ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... I will not hear you say such dreadful things. Michael is a gentleman, well-educated, with the highest ideals and principles. If you knew how self-sacrificing ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... which could so easily read the heart, was not mistaken there; the painter had in his wife's brother a friend of self-sacrificing devotion. He could exact anything of the Mameluke, or, rather, of that slave, for it was the blood of the slaves, of his ancestors, which manifested itself in Chapron by so total an absorption of his personality. The atavism of servitude has these two effects which ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... devoted, self-sacrificing by nature, the whole existence of the pastor's wife was pervaded by a Christian life that exalted her naturally lovely traits, and made her shortcomings the source of a sweet, childlike penitence that was almost as lovely and attractive as her virtues. She had soon found that ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... her, and he gave me the task of getting it. I never found her and I have never been able to gain any knowledge of her, so cunningly did she arrange this flight of hers—this flight which was so noble and so self-sacrificing. [Changing his tone.] But I don't know why I repeat all this. You know it just as well as I do, for I have told it to ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... we should bring to bear on the colonists would be invaluable, especially in the early days of these colonies. The example of our Officers, their self-sacrificing devotion to the interests of the people, the knowledge that they would gain nothing by the success of the enterprise and that they were actuated solely by the highest motives, the facts that they were sharing the homes of the people, enduring the same hardships and ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... not speak so: little do you know—! No, Mr. Headley, it is you who are too good for me; too noble, single-eyed, self-sacrificing, to endure my vanity ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... prayerlessness, our self indulgences, our inactivity and all else which mars our Christian lives, is because we do not have the Love of Christ before our hearts. If we were constantly enjoying His Love and this mighty Love would constrain us, what self-sacrificing lives we would live! How we would love one another and in love serve one another. What peace there would be among those of like precious faith. With a better heart knowledge of the Love of Christ, ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... a true heroine—warm-hearted, self-sacrificing, and, as all good women nowadays are, largely touched with the enthusiasm of humanity. The illustrations are unusually good, and combine with the binding and printing to make this one of the most attractive gift-books of the ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... for me to speak too highly of the skill evinced by the two general officers commanding army corps; the self-sacrificing and devoted exertions of their staffs; the direction of the troops by divisional, brigade, and regimental leaders; the command of the smaller units by their officers; and the magnificent fighting spirit displayed by non-commissioned ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... village baker's son near Dijon now studying for the Bar—one instance out of many. In one of her clever novelettes, 'Un Gascon,' Madame Th. Bentzon gives us for hero the village doctor, son of a peasant. The portrait of this young man, devoted to duty, high-minded, self-sacrificing, is no mere ideal, as experience proves. But if readers, compelled to make the acquaintance of French peasants on paper, will accept Zola and certain English writers as a guide to his moral and ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... matter with herself. Diana had mourned with all the vehement intensity of her being, but out of the deep baptism of sorrow she had emerged with a new and nobler nature. The vain, trifling, laughing Undine had received a soul and was a true woman. She devoted herself to James's mother with an utter self-sacrificing devotion, resolved as far as in her lay to be both son and daughter to her. She read, and studied, and fitted herself as a teacher in a neighboring academy, and persisted in claiming the right of a daughter to place all the amount of her ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Lionel Tremayne and his headmaster, Bob might have answered this question in the affirmative; but he had the public-school boy's terror of seeming to pose or do anything theatrical. He would have done a good deal to put matters right, but he could not do the self-sacrificing young hero business. It would not be in the picture. These things, if they are to be done at school, have to be carried through ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... and other mourners—a long mournful procession. A vault had been prepared, and the coffins, covered with flowers, were laid within it, and the latter part of the Burial Service read. Thus the good, kind-hearted, self-sacrificing Bishop, the first Bishop of this wild Missionary diocese, and his afflicted yet devoted wife, who had laboured so earnestly for the welfare of the Indians during the latter part of their lives, were now laid side by side in the Indian ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... volunteer as soldiers, and who have found more honest paymasters than the United States Government, now exulting in well-filled pockets, and able to buy the little homesteads the soldiers need, and to turn the soldiers' families into the streets. Is this a school for self-sacrificing patriotism? ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the truth of my words when I saw with what care Miss Locke had prepared the invalid's meal, and how gently she helped to place her in a proper position. There was evidently no want of love between the sisters; only on one side the love was more self-sacrificing and unselfish than the other. It needed only a look at Susan Locke's spare form and thin, careworn face to tell me that she was wearing herself out in her sister's service. Phoebe looked in her face and broke into a harsh laugh, to poor Susan's ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... more than anything on earth. I do now! You think I am brave and uncomplaining, but it is all a sham. I am too proud to whine, but in reality I am seething with bitterness and rebellion. I am longing to get well, not to lead a self-sacrificing life like Rachel Greaves, but to feel fit again, and wear pretty clothes, and dance, and flirt, and be admired—that's what I want most, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... watching at a sick-bedside, and it was late at night before he got home, and was reported to Peter the Reader as having acquitted himself like 'a man of God,' as, indeed, without the least thought of doing anything noble or self-sacrificing, he had truly done, being a monk. And so he threw himself on a truckle-bed, in one of the many cells which opened off a long corridor, and fell fast ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... wider, and extended over a much longer period of time. Wilson, too, contemplated a work upon our quadrupeds, but did not live to begin it. Audubon was blessed with good health, length of years, a devoted and self-sacrificing wife, and a buoyant, sanguine, and elastic disposition. He had the heavenly gift of enthusiasm—a passionate love for the work he set out to do. He was a natural hunter, roamer, woodsman; as unworldly as a child, and ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... marriage, and love. To my growing surprise and amazement I found that not only did those ancient authors look upon women as inferior beings while I worshipped them, but in their descriptions of the symptoms of love I looked in vain for mention of those supersensual emotions and self-sacrificing impulses which overcame me when I was in love. "Can it be," I whispered to myself, "that, notwithstanding the universal opinion to the contrary, love is, after all, subject to the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a jewel he was, all the way through! And he'd have marched straight to the altar, too, with never a flicker of an eyelid, I know—self-sacrificing martyr that ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... gone, and feel the contrast between their distant purity, out of great tribulation, and the unworthiness of those who are left. But neither to Jeremiah nor to any of his time was such inspiration possible as we draw from our brave, self-sacrificing dead. No confidence then existed in a life beyond the grave. Jeremiah himself can only weep for the slain of his people. His last vision of them is of corpses strewn on the field like sheaves left after the reaper which nobody gathers, barren of future harvests; and the last word he has ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and Coronel, of the Falkland Isles and Zeebrugge, of the Fleets behind the Fleet; without the services of Smith-Dorrien at Mons, French at Ypres; without the dogged endurance, the inflexible will and the self-sacrificing loyalty of Haig; the dash of Maude and Allenby; the steadfast leadership in defence and offence of Plumer and Byng, Home and Rawlinson ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... and Paulo had retreated into the background. Occasionally also the bloody image of poor Carlo presented itself to her mind, and she secretly reproached herself for having mourned him for so short a time, for having so soon forgotten that faithful, self-sacrificing friend. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... souls wander about in the jungle and in the clearings trying to pick up a living by eating what roots and fruits they can find. This joyless Hereafter is calculated to make those who contemplate suicide, rather perform some self-sacrificing act of bravery whereby they will not only benefit those whom they leave behind, but also gain for themselves a more pleasant position in the world to come; therefore suicide is ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... and when one of these fits of passion seized him, he became as ungovernable as a wild animal. You can scarcely realize that, now. Sorrow has chastened him; trouble has softened him; I have nothing to say against the Judge William Conway of to-day. He is a self-sacrificing patriot, a gentleman of irreproachable courtesy, and sweetness of character; but, as a young man, he was a firebrand, and I think the fire is still unquenched beneath the gray hairs of the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... a devoted daughter, a most self-sacrificing character, and one scrupulously exact in her dealings with others; but she never forgot "that red ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... still young, and messages were confined to diplomatic secrets, horse-racing, and the rise and fall of stocks, lovers used to indulge in rapturous expressions which would run over pages; but the pith and strength of laconic diction has now been taught to us by the self-sacrificing patriotism of the Post Office. We have all felt the vigour of telegrammatic expression, and, even when we do not trust the wire, we employ the force of wiry language. "Wilt thou be mine?—M. N.," is now the ordinary form of an offer ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... to Paris, the headquarters of the League. With thirteen thousand soldiers he besieged this town of 220,000 inhabitants, garrisoned by fifty thousand troops. With their usual self-sacrificing devotion, the people of Paris held out against the horrors of famine. The clergy aroused the fanaticism of the populace, promising heaven to those who died; women protested that they would eat {226} their children before they would surrender. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... other countries. This was a great blessing for the Belgians, because their country is so small and weak, and so many battles used to be fought in it that it was called "the cock-pit of Europe." But whether the people of a neutral state are ever likely to be brave and self-sacrificing is ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... had unconsciously yearned for each one of them more than for anything else in my life, and now it had been put into my head in all its fatal fascination, I couldn't possible exist another day without sending for it, to one in that procession of noble, self-sacrificing, American advertisers. I felt, too, that if anything disagreeable should happen to me, like a railway or motor car accident, I could spend the rest of my existence lying down, and still the splendid things would ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a fact not in the Union soldier's letter at all; that only through his masterful, self-sacrificing intercession in military court had Hilary escaped the death of a spy. But then her thought came back to Miranda's request: "I can't tell you, for I can't tell Con. Flora's her cousin, through Steve, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... as I said last week, national standards can't be as self-sacrificing as individual standards: and never can be until all the individuals in a nation are so Christian as to choose unanimously the ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... practical wisdom was sometimes mistaken for the offspring of selfish prudence; yet his hope was steadfast, like that hope which rests on the Rock of Ages, and his conduct was as unerring as though the light that led him was a light from heaven. He never anticipated action by theories of self-sacrificing virtue; and yet, in the moments of intense activity, he from the abodes of ideal truth brought down and applied to the affairs of life the principles of goodness, as unostentatiously as became the man who with a kite and hempen string drew lightning from the skies. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... before. We must take into consideration the average of the sex, at the same time not forgetting that in the highest type of individual, the qualities of both sexes are balanced, uniting the spiritual, self-sacrificing and unselfish love-element of the female principle, with the wider scope, the inclusive element of the male. Let us remember that we are dealing with principles and not merely ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... language of the Kingdom of God. Remember, the Kingdom of Heaven is where God is. God is where Love is, where trustful, self-sacrificing, ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... gifts showered on Miss Nightingale on all sides, and everybody was eager to show how highly they valued her self-sacrificing labours. If money had been wanted, it would have poured in from all quarters; but when the queen had made inquiries on the subject a year before Miss Nightingale's return, Mr. Sidney Herbert replied that ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... given, but I saw that matters must be hastened. Having business in Chicago about that time, I visited almost every hospital in the city, telling Mary's story in my most dramatic newspaper style. I made it understood that it was very noble and self-sacrificing of the young woman, when she might live in the lap of luxury,—for thus did I unblushingly describe my own modest establishment,—to embrace a nurse's vocation and labor for the good of humanity, including herself, of course. The education—or the lack of it—was the drawback everywhere, ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... policy to keep us from seeing the prisoners; it just sets us wild about them. Put a creature you don't care for in the least, in a situation that commands sympathy, and nine out of ten girls will fall desperately in love. Here are brave, self-sacrificing, noble men who have fought heroically for us, and have been forced to surrender by unpropitious fate, confined in a city peopled by their friends and kindred, and as totally isolated from them as though they inhabited ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... I knew of her, I am certain that if such was the case, she fully believed that she was employing a lawful means for a good end. The more I saw, however, of Mrs Tarleton, the more I learned to admire her high-minded, noble, self-sacrificing disposition. The love of freedom was with her a passion, and she held in utter scorn all who submitted to, what she considered, tyranny. She was indeed a person of the old heroic stamp, ready to dare and to do ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... three years' conscription is very small. The schoolboy in his most impressionable years is brought to these sacred shrines; he listens to the story of the Forty-seven Ronins and other tales of Japanese chivalry; his soul is fired to imitate their self-sacrificing patriotism. The bloody slopes of Port Arthur witnessed the effect of such ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... ethical ideas. Chaucer's notion of a "parfit gentil knight," and his "poure parsoun of a toun" could not be bettered for anything discovered in all the five centuries since. It is not easy to see how science can stimulate us to warm-hearted charity, to self-sacrificing love and loyalty, to patriotism, and other manifestations of qualities which we universally recognize as virtues, and as things without which human life would be a dreary and intolerable waste. Without them suicide were almost best. And the cultivation of the emotions belongs to literature, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... of her loving, constant heart, every fiber of her self-sacrificing nature, would fight for him; prejudices, even the most deeply-rooted, must yield, in time, to love. When he should come again it would be to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland |
