"Birthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and is not God's ordinance originally descending from him and depending upon him." In strict accordance with the royal theory these doctors declared sovereignty in its origin to be the prerogative of birthright, and inculcated passive obedience to the Crown as a religious obligation. The doctrine of passive obedience was soon taught in the schools. A few years before the king's death the University of Oxford decreed solemnly that "it was in no case lawful for subjects to make use ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Bill of 1829, by which liberty of conscience, which was so proudly called the birthright of every Englishman, was extended to Catholics, tended powerfully, no doubt, to promote the development of the Catholic church. It grew also by emigration from Catholic Ireland, and there were some conversions occasionally from the Protestant ranks. It was ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... came over me. Then my life was one long lie! He was never my father. He had concocted a vile plot. He had held me in this slavery so many years to suit his own purposes. He had crushed my mother to death, and robbed me of my birthright. Even before that night, I never loved him. I thought it very wicked of me, but I never could love him. As he spoke to you and grew cynical, I began to loathe and despise him. I can't tell you how great a comfort it was to me to know—to hear from ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... come to light, the elder lively and vigorous, the younger gentle and prudent. The former becomes the father's, the latter the mother's, favorite. The strife for precedence, which begins even at birth, is ever going on. Esau is quiet and indifferent as to the birthright which fate has given him: Jacob never forgets that his brother forced him back. Watching every opportunity of gaining the desirable privilege, he buys the birthright of his brother, and defrauds him of their father's blessing. Esau is indignant, and vows his brother's death: ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... a kindly feeling in our favor, and cause a respectful regard for the effort we were making to maintain the independence of the States which Great Britain had recognized, and her people knew to be our birthright. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... a hardihood of speech, a contempt for the polite word and the pretty conventional turning of a phrase, a lack of reticence in the expression of ideas and feelings, which jar, in spite of my gratitude, on my unstrung nerves. Her ignorance, too, of a thousand things, a knowledge of which is the birthright of such women as Eleanor Faversham, causes conversational excursions to end in innumerable blind alleys. I know that she would give her soul to learn. This she has told me in so many words, and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... uninhabited, but finally Teneiya, who claimed to be descended from an Ah-wah-nee'-chee chief, left the Mo'nos, where he had born and brought up, and, gathering of his father's old tribe around him, visited the Valley and claimed it as the birthright of his people. He then became the founder of a new tribe or band, which received the name "Yo-sem'-i-te." This word signifies a full-grown grizzly bear, and Teneiya said that the name had been given to his band because they occupied the mountains and valley which were the favorite ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... blood dominated his tiny person? Only the exquisite soft, pale brown of his satiny skin called loudly and insistently that he was of a race older than the composite English could ever boast; it was the hallmark of his ancient heritage—the birthright ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the exclusive birthright of no age of people. The dirtiest Hindoo sings to his fetish the songs of the Brahmin muse, with as keen a relish as the most devout Christian does the hymns of Dr. WATTS. Melody comes of Heaven, and is a gift vouchsafed to all generations, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... Frederick, by my mountain birthright Prince O' th' Romans, chosen king, crowned emperor, Heaven's sword-bearer, monarch of Burgundy And Arles—the tomb of Karl I dared profane, But have repented me on bended knees In penance 'midst the desert twenty years; My drink the rain, the rocky herbs my food, Myself a ghost ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... mitigate its horrors and gild its glories. And now, think you, we have no souls to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments; that, after education such as this, we can stand silent witnesses while you sell our birthright of liberty to save from a timely death an effete political organization? No, as we respect womanhood, we must protest against this desecration of the magna charta of American liberties; and with an importunity not to be repelled, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Simonides of whom you speak, by birthright a Jew," the man made answer, in a voice singularly clear. "I am Simonides, and a Jew; and I return you your salutation, with prayer to know ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... men, whom I had known as a bright, attractive collegian, was sent to prison, eventually, in spite of all his family could do. Another died in an institution for incurables. All forfeited their birthright of home, family, decent associations and ended up ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the other,—something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not: a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost hope to make the hills of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... tongue. Mastery of his mother tongue is the birthright of every child. He should first of all be able to speak it correctly and with ease. He should next be able to read it with comprehension and enjoyment, and should become familiar with the best in its literature. He should be able to write it with facility, both as to its spelling ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... morning, that the well-known successful man of business was weeping. Who could once have imagined another reason for the laying of that round, good-humoured, contented face down on the book-board, than pure drowsiness from lack of work-day interest! Yet there was a human soul crying out after its birthright. Oh, to be clean as a mountain-river! clean as the air above the clouds, or on the middle seas! as the throbbing aether that fills the gulf betwixt star and star!—nay, as the thought of the Son ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... historians, as priests, prophets, and kings—we do cheerful obeisance, yet with the look of one who but half hides a happy secret in her heart that compensates for all she resigns. There is not a true-hearted woman alive who would give up her birthright to become—we ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... A delicious egoism, the birthright of his youth, had him safe in its grasp. But sometimes, when Rosamund was alone in the room of the Hermes, learning her lesson, and he was among the ruins, or walking above the buried Stadium where the flocks were at pasture, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... reveal'd To you her history, and did make known The mark by which I might be recognised— That mark, so oft the theme of idle wonder In the convent. Before I took my vows You therefore must have known my station, The rank I held by birthright, and the name Which I inherited. Why did you press me then To take those vows? It was ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... great man was a beauty and an heiress. Her husband was twenty-five years her senior. She ever regarded herself as one robbed of her birthright, and landed at high tide upon a barren and desert domestic isle. Honore, her first child, was born before she was twenty. Napoleon was at that time playing skittles with all Europe, and the woman whom Fate robbed of her romance worshiped ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... a man from whom something valuable is about to be taken by violence, and who, that he may defend it without incombrance, lays it on the ground, and stands over it with his weapon in his hand. Our birthdom, or birthright, says he, lies on the ground, let us, like men who are to fight for what is dearest to them, not abandon it, but stand over it and defend it. This is a strong picture of obstinate resolution. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... contagious and had been adopted elsewhere, running riot indeed in its novelty. And out of all this confusion there had arisen the nation which he had presided over, already become great, and factious in its greatness, with a noble birthright, noble virtues, energies, and intellect; with great faults and passions that, unchecked, would, as in lusty individual ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... with that struggle for the moral reformation of the world, in which these men were such distinguished actors, and to whose influence we ourselves owe that religious liberty, which is the most precious part of our birthright. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... example, is emblematic of death; and we are told that every human being must pass through the river. But Faithful does not pass through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's birthright, and about his own convictions of sin, as Bunyan might have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels at the House Beautiful catechise Christiana's boys, as any good ladies might catechise any boys at a Sunday ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... lain dormant, unsuspected by his friends, unknown to the reading public, only to disclose itself, and that by the merest hazard, as a last resource?—It did not seem fair that he had not earlier found and enjoyed his literary birthright. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of the spirit of the Great Unrest is born. But, underneath, the English people are a sane, healthy stock in mind and body, and when education has opened their minds and broadened their understanding, they will surely allow their birthright of common sense among the nations to have sway again. Instead of standing aside and lamenting that times are evil and that the nation is going down hill, it behoves all thinking people to gather their forces together and seriously ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... than a dozen stories high dwarfs the highway of trade. The vestibule limited, the ocean grey-hound, the Atlantic cable, and the voice-bearing telephone have made all nations kin, and bid fair to amalgamate society. Even the newly created species condescends to swap her birthright for a coronet. ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... been done openly before the Great Spirit and before the nation, and I hope I may never hear any one say that this treaty has been done secretly: and now in closing this council, I take off my glove, and in giving you my hand I deliver over my birthright and lands: and in taking your hand I hold fast all the promises you have made, and I hope they will last as long as the sun rises and the water flows, as you ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... unconventional as to be another proof of her son's unnatural tastes. In her estimation he should spend social evenings only in aristocratic parlors; and she mourned over the fact that from henceforth he was excluded from these privileged places of his birthright, with a grief only less poignant than her sorrow over what seemed to her a cognate truth, that his course and character also excluded him ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... much, could not have been mine to suppress or to make public, as I thought best, for the vindication of Laura's rights. In common honesty and common honour I must have gone at once to the stranger whose birthright had been usurped—I must have renounced the victory at the moment when it was mine by placing my discovery unreservedly in that stranger's hands—and I must have faced afresh all the difficulties ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of the gallant men who composed the American Navy, beginning with the Revolution and ending with the story of their wonderful deeds in our late war with Spain. You can never read a more interesting story, nor one that will make you feel prouder of your birthright. While our patriot armies have done nobly, it is none the less true that we never could have become one of the greatest nations in the world without the help of our heroic navy. Our warships penetrated into all waters of the globe, and made people, whether barbarous or civilized, respect and ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... were a numerous and warlike tribe, dwelling in unwalled villages, as though it was their birthright as a Lacedaemonian colony to be brave and fearless. Yet when they found themselves bound by such hostages to keep the peace, and in fear for their daughters, they sent an embassy to propose equitable and moderate terms, that Romulus should give back their daughters to them, and disavow the violence ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Shah beheld Rustem from afar, he stepped down from off his throne and came before Pehliva, and craved his pardon for that which was come about. And he said how he had been angered because Rustem had tarried in his coming, and how haste was his birthright, and how he had forgotten himself in his vexation. But now was his mouth filled with the dust of repentance. ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the name of the Most High our faith in the power of justice as opposed to the force of arms. May it be said of us that we found the world burdened with militarism, but left it blessed with peace; that we found liberty among the strong alone, but left it the birthright of the weak; that we found humanity a mass of struggling individuals, but left it a united brotherhood. May it be said of us that we found peace purchased by suffering, but left it as free as air; that we found peace bruised ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... showed the same discretion. She did do no gratuitous mischief. She did not take the wine-cellar key, which would have irritated the good father confessor; she took those keys only that belonged to her, if ever keys did; for they were the keys that locked her out from her natural birthright of liberty. 'Show me,' says the Romish Casuist, 'her right in law to let herself out of that nunnery.' 'Show us,' we reply, 'your right to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... answer as this! Thou didst set lightly by Me and My law in the day of thy prosperity, and I will now set as light by thee in the day of thy adversity. Read Prov. i., 24, to the end. Thou that, as Esau, didst sell thy birthright for a mess of pottage, shalt then find no place for repentance, tho thou seek it with tears. Do you think that Christ shed His blood to save them that continue to make light of it? and to save them, that value a cup of drink or a lust before His salvation? ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... grief—the taste of that last dish that we have eaten before a duel or some such supreme meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the bagnio was a rude picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of Esau's birthright. The ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... keep my faith inviolate to you. He threatens me with exile, and with shame, To lose my birthright, and a prince's name; But there's a blessing which he did not mean, To send me back to love and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... shining, even through his glasses, and he didn't seem to mind papa one bit. "So that's what you're up to, is it?" he said to Phil, "trying to give me your birthright!" By this time he'd reached Phil's side, and he threw his arm right across Phil's shoulders. "Dear old Lion-heart!" he said,—how his voice did ring out! "And I ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... who trusted me! Why could I not hate her as I should? There had been a time when I looked on to this act of vengeance with somewhat of a righteous glow of zeal. And now—and now—why, I would frankly give my royal birthright to be free from its necessity! But, alas! I knew that there was no escape. I must drain this cup or be for ever cast away. I felt the eyes of Egypt watching me, and the eyes of Egypt's Gods. I prayed to my Mother ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... When every hour is big with destiny, and each delay but complicates our difficulties, it is high time for the daughters of the Revolution, in solemn council, to unseal the last will and testaments of the fathers, lay hold of their birthright of freedom, and keep it a sacred trust for ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... particularly in New York City and Philadelphia. In June, 1776, the "mechanicks in union" in New York protested against putting the new state constitution into effect without their approval, declaring that the right to vote on the acceptance or rejection of a fundamental law "is the birthright of every man to whatever state he may belong." Though their petition was rejected, their spirit remained. When, a few years later, the federal Constitution was being framed, the mechanics watched the process with deep ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... money to vote the Democrat ticket. I told him, no. I didn't think that was principle. The colored man ain't got no representive now. Colored men used to be elected to the legislature and they'd go and sell out. Some of 'em used to vote the Democrat ticket. God wants every man to have his birthright. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... pass away, but freedom does not pass, Thrones crumble, but man's birthright crumbles not, And, like the wind across the prairie grass, A whole world's aspirations fan this spot With ceaseless panting after liberty, One breath of which would make dark Russia fair, And blow sweet summer ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... hand, sent the blood pumping through his veins. Something besides duty inspired him; he was no longer merely a soldier, but had suddenly become transformed into a man. Years of repression, of iron discipline, were blotted out, and he became even as his birthright made him. "Molly McDonald," "Molly McDonald," he whispered the name unconsciously to himself. Then his eyes caught the distant flicker of Indian fire, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... and I will hear her. I can't see how all these ideas are comin' out, and 'pears to me, it looks as ef we'd got to meet, and have a battle somewhere before long. The troubles are simmerin' over the fire of different minds, and I shall never sell my birthright over a mess of pottage; that's jest what I shan't do. It has stuck to me where everything else has failed, and I'm never agoin' to let go ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... with the courage of the present, we shall avert the dangers of the future. It has been said—and truly said—that the sun never sets upon the British Empire. Let us believe in that sun, and find in its rays an earnest of that glory which was the birthright of our ancestors, and which, should be the birthright of our descendants ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... He had killed them; he, John Churchill, who loved them, had killed them as surely as though his hand had struck them down in cold blood. His sister had taken the baby, his little son whom he had never seen, but for whom he had prepared such a birthright of dishonour. She had never forgiven her brother and she never wrote to him. He knew that she would have brought the boy up either in ignorance of his father's crime or in utter detestation of it. When he came back to the world after ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unfalteringly maintains: That private property in land is public robbery. It is public robbery because, the land being the source of all the necessaries of life, it should belong equally to all, by birthright of our common inheritance in the brotherhood of the world. 'Let them know that the earth from which they were created is the common property of all men, and that therefore the fruits of the earth belong ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... us that some birds build nicer nests, sing sweeter songs, than their companions of the same species. Can experience add wisdom to instinct? or is it the right of the elder-born,—the birthright of the young robin who first breaks the shell? Who has rightly looked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... individuals received for having surrendered their original liberty to do as they pleased! After all, what would independent initiative have been worth without fire or arrow or earthern kettle, or cow or horse or wheel, or sword and shield? Who would not have forfeited the bare birthright of empty (although healthy) independence for participation in the ever richer conquest over the physical ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... By birthright higher than myself, Though nestling of the self-same nest: No fault of hers, no fault of mine, But stubborn ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... been admired and honored among all nations, especially among the Greeks. It was the handmaid of music and poetry when the divinity of mind was adored—perhaps with Pagan instincts, but still adored—as a birthright of genius, upon which no material estimate could be placed, since it came from the Gods, like physical beauty, and could neither be bought nor acquired. Long before Christianity declared its inspiring themes and brought peace and hope to oppressed millions, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... I, and know it well. Farewell, my birthright! farewell, liberty! In wretched slavery and chains I dwell, For love's sad ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... is escaped by remembering that the highest reality is supra-temporal, and that the destiny which God has designed for us has not merely a contingent realisation, but is in a sense already accomplished. There are, in fact, two ways in which we may abdicate our birthright, and surrender the prize of our high calling: we may count ourselves already to have apprehended, which must be a grievous delusion, or we may resign it as unattainable, which is ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... was full of historic beauty and deep significance. Rows and rows of people who are rarely seen at any public function, whole families of those who are certain to be out of town on a holiday, crowded the place to overflowing. The city was at her birthright fete in the persons of hundreds of her best citizens, men and women whose names and lives stand for the virtues that make for ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... plays are Down or Kerry, Galway or Wicklow. A tinker is a tinker wherever you find him, a strong farmer a strong farmer, a landlord a landlord. The same emotions dominate rival brothers in "The Turn of the Road" and in "Birthright," though the Orangeman turned actor wrote the one and the Cork schoolmaster the other. Mr. T.C. Murray is one of those to whom Mr. Yeats has given the name "Cork Realists." His first play, "The Wheel o' Fortune," was produced by the Cork Dramatic Society ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... tell thee"—for with him she always drifted into the sweet speech which was hers by birthright and his for all his life—"shall I tell thee how it seems to me, as if thee had learned every single lesson life and God has had to teach. Thee has had poverty and sorrow, and endured the wrong that others have done ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... 1,017 votes, against 1,070 by Mr. Cardwell; and was thus again saved by his good fortune from attempting to fill a situation in which he would not have shone. There are, no doubt, many to whom a seat in Parliament comes almost as the birthright of a well-born and well-to-do English gentleman. They go there with no more idea of shining than they do when they are elected to a first-class club;—hardly with more idea of being useful. It is the thing to do, and the House of Commons is the place where a man ought to be—for a certain number ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... undoubtedly, and yet more sinned against than sinning. Cautions and expostulations were unavailing with this spirited young creature, smarting under continued injustice and seeing with her uncompromising clearness of vision the selfish jealousy which would keep her out of her birthright indefinitely. "You want to be real careful, Diantha," said Persis, realizing the futility of her words. "Thad's a nice boy and you're a nice girl, but it don't look well for young folks to ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... God. Kind-hearted men comfort and console those who have suffered injuries and wrongs at our hands, but the kindest-hearted of men harden their hearts and set their faces like a flint against us who have done the wrong. All Syria sympathised with Esau for the loss of his birthright, but I do not read that any one came to whisper one kind word to Jacob on his hard pillow. All the army mourned over Uriah, but all the time David's moisture was dried up like the drought of summer, and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... which he had learned to trust completely, that in the years to come, he would never reach a greater height of artistic success than he had done just then. One such experience could justify many a year of halting indecision. Puritan to the core, he yet had proved true to his Slavonic birthright. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... persons,—beings with intellect, affections, and will,—and a strong specific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small measure of personal variation. All robins, we say, look and act alike. But so do all Yankees; yet it is part of every Yankee's birthright to be different from every other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it would seem, almost as badly as she abhors a vacuum. Perhaps, if the truth were known, a copy is ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... personal qualities. It was hinted by one that the ancient barony of the Talbots would be revived by the king; and the gratitude of a free and grateful country, with the consciousness of having materially aided in acquiring that independence which should be the birthright of every Englishman, was eloquently portrayed by the other. When to the last plea was added the personal preference of Katharine Wilton, the balance was overcome, and the hopes of the mother ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... description appearing high-flown and exaggerated. It bore an impress of loftiness, totally removed from pride; a moral superiority, which impressed all. With this was united an innate purity, that seemed her birthright; a purity that could not for an instant be doubted. If the libertine gazed on her features, it awoke in him recollections that had long slumbered; of the time when his heart beat but for one. If, in her immediate sphere, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... this bloody warfare is a logical result of the unnecessary conquest of California. To lose their nationality is galling. To see Mexico, which abandoned California, get $15,000,000 in compensation for the birthright of the Dons is maddening. It irritates the suspicious native blood. To be ground down daily, causes continual bickering. Ranch after ranch falls away under usury or unjust decisions. In this ably planned brigandage, Valois discerns some young resentful Californian of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... toil," he said, "from morn till night With bleeding hands and blinded sight For gold, more gold! They have betrayed The trust that in their souls was laid; Their fairy birthright they have sold For little disks of mortal gold; And now they cannot even see The gold upon the greenwood tree, The wealth of coloured lights that pass In soft gradations through the grass, The riches of the love untold That wakes the day from grey to gold; And howsoe'er the moonlight weaves Magic ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... except such as the royal power saw fit to grant. Then the Commons drew up their famous Protest, in which they declared that their liberties were not derived from the King, but were "the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the people of England." In his rage James ordered the journal of the Commons to be brought to him, tore out the Protest with his own hand, and sent five of the members of the House to prison (S419). This ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... that cookery then began to become a science, though luxury had not brought it to the height of an art. Thus we read, that Jacob made such palatable pottage, that Esau purchased a mess of it at the extravagant price of his birthright. And Isaac, before by his last will and testament he bequeathed his blessing to his son Esau, required him to make some savoury meat, such as his soul loved, i.e., such as was ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... mother, who was an heiress. It is indeed sufficient to have given me a pretence to any lady I should have made choice on, and to provide for what children I might have had by her: but the pride of blood being not abated in me by being cut off from my birthright, inspired me with an unconquerable aversion to marriage, since I could not bequeath to my posterity that dignity I ought to have enjoyed myself:—I resolved therefore to live single, and that the misfortune of my family should dye ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... give him the release he coveted." Christian! can you dread that which your Saviour has already vanquished? Death! It is as the angel to Peter, breaking the dungeon-doors, and leading to open day; it is going to the world of your birthright, and leaving the one of your exile; "it is the soldier at night-fall, lying down in his tent in peace, waiting the morning to receive his laurels." Oh! to be ever living in a state of holy preparation! the mental eye gazing on the vista-view of ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... or political superior, absorb considerable bodies of immigrant settlers with a quickness unknown to the ancient world, where the original citizens of a commonwealth always believed themselves to be united by kinship in blood, and resented a claim to equality of privilege as a usurpation of their birthright. In the early Roman republic the principle of the absolute exclusion of foreigners pervaded the Civil Law no less than the Constitution. The alien or denizen could have no share in any institution supposed to be coeval with the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... of these sunny skies Has freedom as his birthright, and may know Rich fellowship with comrades brave and wise; Into the realms of ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... as people still called him—though, like Esau, he had sold his birthright—went away quite happily now that his pockets were once more filled with gold, and went on in his old ways, drinking, and gambling, and rioting, with his boon companions, as if he thought that this money ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... grimly humorous twinkle in his eyes, but through the smears of perspiration and the charcoal grime Deringham now recognized the expression of quiet forcefulness and the directness of gaze which was his birthright. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... seemed to cloud the lovely features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill!—ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to my human birthright, if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate had ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... expect support from this old, decrepit king, whose object was to dismember the flourishing kingdom of France, and to divide it among as many tyrants as he had sent viceroys to the Indies. The crown was his own birthright. Were it elective he should receive the suffrages of the great mass of the electors. He hoped soon to drive those red-crossed foreigners out of his kingdom. Should he fail, they would end by expelling the Duke of Mayenne and all the rest who ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the antiquities His honest hold, his birthright is! And things unheard of or unread, Defaced by moth or rust or mold, To him are treasures more than gold, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... As spruce a maid as there es in the country, my deear. An' I forgot, you dunnaw Jasper, do 'ee, Tamsin? This es Jasper Pennington, a godly young man who, like Esau of ould, 'ave bin rubbed of his birthright an' hes blessin'. He's a-goin' to jine us, Tamsin, 'n' then 'ee'll git back the birthright, an' laive Nick Trezidder 'ave the blessin'. Aw! Aw! Now, then, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... power to strike from the meanest Indian trapper, the basest trader or camp-follower, as the senator from New York styled these people, their equal privileges, this sovereignty of right, which is the birthright of every American citizen. This sovereignty may—nay, it must—remain in abeyance until society becomes sufficiently strong and stable to be entitled to its full exercise, as sovereignty does not belong to the general government, and its ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... the decision. The lot pronounced against them. I do not believe that it had entered the heart of either of them to understand how necessary they had become to each other, and when they saw that all was over it was a sad awaking. For a little while it was with both as if they had madly thrown a birthright away; for, though they had faith, they were not yet perfect in it. Not soon did either see that this life had a blessing for them every day—new every morning, fresh every evening—and that from everlasting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... dawning for Ceylon; God will now countersign his other blessings, and ripen his possibilities into great harvests of realization, by superadding the one blessing of a dovelike religion; light is thickening apace, the horrid altars of Moloch are growing dim; woman will no more consent to forego her birthright as the daughter of God; man will cease to be the tiger-cat that, in the noblest chamber of Ceylon, he has ever been; and with the new hopes that will now blossom amidst the ancient beauties of this lovely island, Ceylon will but too deeply fulfill the functions of a paradise. Too subtly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... he gaue me his hand and swore he had no more hearts but one, and I should haue halfe of it, in that I so inhanced his obscured reputation. One thing, quoth he, my sweete Jacke I will intreate thee (it shalbe but one) that though I am wel pleased thou shouldest be the ape of my birthright, (as what noble man hath not his ape & his foole) yet that thou be an ape without a clog, not carrie thy curtizan with thee. I tolde him that a king could do nothing without his treasury, this curtizan was my purs-bearer, my countenance and supporter. My earldome ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... if his friend was subjected to that indignity, and of thus encouraging the storm of popular indignation, that, without any such encouragement, would probably have led to consequences which the Government, already hated by all Englishmen who loved their birthright, dared not brook. But the unworthy vengeance of his persecutors was amply satisfied in other ways. He had already suffered more than most men. "Neglect," he said, "I was accustomed to. But when an alleged ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... who knelt to receive it. His aspect was gloomy as he received this symbol of successful ambition, for the mass of the people was silent and he was uneasy at the usurpation of a privilege which was not his birthright. The authority of the Pope had confirmed his audacious action, but he was afraid of the attitude of his army. "The greatest man in the world" Kleber had proclaimed him, after the crushing of the Turks at Aboukir in Egypt. There was work to do before he reached the summit whence he might ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... or cuts from his emaciated trunk the filthy excrescences which, like poisonous fungus, suck the sap of honour and of life. The colonel hath had many trials in this life, and much to break down a noble and a proud spirit. In earlier days, a question of birthright, while it cut off one entail, brought on another, which entailed a name, not the ancient gift of a monarch, but one still more ancient, and, according to Dodsley's Chronology of the Kings of England, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... king but Caesar." What a word to come from the representatives of a nation to which pertained "the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises!" It was the renouncement of their birthright, the abandonment of their destiny. Pilate well knew what it had cost their proud hearts thus to forswear the hopes of their fathers and acknowledge the right of their conqueror; but to compel them to swallow this bitter draught was some compensation for the cup of humiliation they had ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... great, but their souls are greater." Caesar had a remarkable method of eulogizing his own generalship by praising the valor and strength of the vanquished foes. "Liberty," wrote Lucanus, "is the German's birthright." And Florus, speaking of liberty, said: "It is a privilege which nature has granted to the Germans, and which the Greeks, with all of their arts, knew not how to obtain." At a later period Montesquieu was led to exclaim: "Liberty, that lovely thing, was ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... last few days he had transferred, all unknown to himself or the other man, a measure of the gentility and chivalry that were his birthright, for, unrealizing, Billy Byrne was patterning himself after the man he had hated and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have not expressed a hope that the guardianship of our intellectual and spiritual birthright may pass into the hands of the National Church. I heartily wish that I could cherish this hope. But organised religion has been a failure ever since the first concordat between Church and State under Constantine the Great. The Church of England in its corporate capacity has never seemed to respect ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... "born soldiers," and, in the piping time of peace, out of unison with the bustling crowd around them. Life seemed a muddle, and of course they went astray. But when the great guns sounded, and the bugles rang, they came at once to their birthright, and many a ne'er-do-well made himself a patriot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... hypocrisy permanently out of place, or of filling up with courage and sense those offices which naturally devolve upon decorous imbecility and flexible cunning: give us only a little time to keep off the hussars of France, and then the jobbers and jesters shall return to their birthright, and public virtue be called by its own name of fanaticism." Such is the advice I would have offered to my infatuated countrymen: but it rained very hard in November, Brother Abraham, and the bowels of our enemies were loosened, and we put our trust ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... for my sake she did this naughty deed; yet, since the truth has been known, it seems to me as if I had been the only sufferer by it; remembering no time when I was not Harriot Lesley, it seems as if the change had taken from me my birthright. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... all draw near, I pray, And hear a poor man's parting from his child. Matilda, still my unstain'd honour's joy, Fair ornament of old Fitzwater's coat,[341] Born to rich fortunes, did not this ill-age Bereave thee of thy birthright's heritage, Thou see'st our sovereign—lord of both our lives, A long besieger of thy chastity— Hath scatter'd all our forces, slain our friends, Razed our castles, left us ne'er a house Wherein to hide us from his wrathful eye: Yet ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... high places. Whatever may be one's view of the final value of the recent American productions in literature and the fine arts, the social, democratic tendency in them is unmistakable. The company of enthusiastic men and women who are preaching the gospel of beauty as a common human birthright is neither small nor feeble. The fine arts are emerging from the studios, professional schools, and coteries; they are no longer conceived as the special prerogative of privileged classes; not even is the creation of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... elsewhere as a man who went as far as man could go in crime. But he was arrested and saved in a moment. And mark you, he was not coerced. No violence was done to his perfect freedom. Every man is free; that is his birthright; in Saul's case he was not asked to surrender an iota of it. Yet by some mysterious divine power he changed in a moment of time. Henceforth he was a new man, with a new heart, new ideals, new hopes, new ambitions, ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... his poetry Lucretius inherited as part of his birthright. This is the sense of Roman greatness. It pervades the poem, and may be felt in every part; although to Athens, and the Greek sages, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Epicurus, as the fountain-heads of soul-delivering culture, he reserves his most ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... exercise natural rights as an equal citizen of the community. Rotation in office served not simply to allow the successful man to punish his enemies and reward his friends, but it also furnished the training in the actual conduct of political affairs which every American claimed as his birthright. Only in a primitive democracy of the type of the United States in 1830 could such a system have existed without the ruin of the State. National government in that period was no complex and nicely adjusted machine, and ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... that blood is thicker than water had again proved itself true, though from the variety of names one argued a certain adulteration of the Bowden traits and belongings. Clannishness is an instinct of the heart,—it is more than a birthright, or a custom; and lesser rights were forgotten in the claim to a ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... devil got we in? And when we once were fairly out, and when From Saint Bartholomew we have saved our skin,[282][ez] To-morrow'd see us in some other den, And worse off than we hitherto have been; Besides, I'm hungry, and just now would take, Like Esau, for my birthright a beef-steak. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... hate you!" exclaimed Gerardin, turning round in his saddle, and shaking his clenched fist at the English lieutenant. "You have foiled me again and again. I know you, and who you are; you stand between me and my birthright; you shall not foil me again. I have before sought your life; the next time we meet we will not separate till one ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... put, offered and carried. Dick Prescott stepped down from the platform, a man restored to his birthright of esteem ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... all that was fresh and spontaneously gentle and natural in him, was flooded with the magnetic splendor of her beauty. And yet, in his pride (and it was not a false pride, but rather a noble regard for his birthright) he vaguely realized how far she ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... and with a ring of defiance in it. 'And no cutting off the entail, my Lord Kilgobbin! no escape from that cruel necessity of an heir! I may carry my musket in the ranks, but I'll not surrender my birthright!' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... not only sheds a generous tear for the fate of Charles I., but conceals or glosses the villanies of Stuarts far worse than Charles. The liberties of England consist, in his eyes, of wise concessions made by the sovereign, rather than as the inalienable birthright of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... that the dear creature has, for some thousands of years, been robbed of her birthright and relegated to an inferior position in matters mundane simply because her biceps are not so large as those of her big brother, and she has no ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... rich in some of those natural gifts which are considered the birthright of the New Englander. He had not the mechanical turn of the whittling Yankee. I once questioned him about his manual dexterity, and he told me he could split a shingle four ways with one nail, —which, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... dated April 23, 1800, to Robert Lloyd, which treats of obedience to parental wish. Lloyd seems to have objected to attend the meetings of the Society of Friends, of which he was a birthright member. Lamb bids him go; adding that, if his own parents were to live again, he would do more things to please them than merely sitting still a few hours ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after page is full of thought—for, vast as the strain may be, it is never empty—but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tells himself, "we arrive at something definite: some allusion, however small, to ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... has beauty for a birthright, how should you know me more than another!" said the Voice—"Beauty is common to all in our city—as common as health, because we obey the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... only have been because she was the Beauty's sister. A few slight indications of a rather petted and capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural endowment. If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees, they could not have been ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... is offered to American youth in the confident belief that as they study the wonderful history of their native land, they will learn to prize their birthright more highly, and treasure it more carefully. Their patriotism must be kindled when they come to see how slowly, yet how gloriously, this tree of liberty has grown, what storms have wrenched its boughs, what sweat of toil and blood has moistened ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... infection of evil. While, therefore, I resigned myself to recognize the existence of the hereditary maternal taint, I firmly believed in the counterbalancing influences for good which had been part of the girl's birthright. They had been derived, perhaps, from the better qualities in her father's nature; they had been certainly developed by the tender care, the religious vigilance, which had guarded the adopted child so lovingly in the Minister's household; and they had served their ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... together in the grave. Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light 90 A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that doth leaven Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, 95 And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense 100 Of some ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... at it if necessary. The Review is fighting for a principle; it will back you to any extent. Isn't it worth a year, two years, of hard labor, to awaken the American people to the knowledge that they are being robbed of their birthright? I have several men whom I could send, but I chose you because your work along this line has given you a standing. This is your chance, Eliza—to make a big reputation and to perform a real service to the country. It's a chance ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... almost a lifetime of patient attendance upon a loved but exacting invalid, inclined to him to study the movements of society and the world, without especial reference to himself, or the narrow circle of his family or class. To his mind, honor—that honor which he accounted the dearest birthright his native South had given—required that from and after the day of his surrender he should seek and desire, not the gratification of revenge nor the display of prejudice, but the success and glory of the great republic. He felt that the American ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... worshipping the sepulchre whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and with cargoes of the sacred earth, while all the time, within their breasts and brains, the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but unrecognized, the spirit of freedom which ere long was destined to restore its birthright to the world. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was one of those bright nights when the very aspect of nature suggests thoughts of the Eternal and the Infinite; when the most untutored being, gazing up into the deep blue void, finds his mind struggle vainly to grasp the hidden secrets those depths conceal; when the soul seems to claim her birthright, and dreams of an existence boundless, illimitable, as the starry wastes around. Such were, perhaps, the ideas which animated the philosophers of the old heathen world when they placed their departed heroes amongst the constellations; ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... briskly. He was one of these meddlesome persons who would sell his birthright to gratify his curiosity. Presently he returned, cupped his hands over his mouth, and ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... give up their lives as martyrs In religious attestation Of the faith, faith's highest marvel. Of an Irish cavalier, And of his chaste spouse and partner, A French lady, I was born, Unto whom I owe (oh, happy That 'twas so!), beyond my birthright Of nobility, the vantage Of the Christian faith, the light Of Christ's true religion granted In the sacred rite of baptism, Which a mark indelibly stampeth On the soul, heaven's gate, as it Is the sacrament first granted By the Church. My pious parents, Having thus the debt exacted From all ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... institution the poorhouse. That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet "pauper" is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the "pauper"—oh, inexpressibly wicked word!—it is the well-to-do, who are the criminal classes. It matters not in the least ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... creation as to call upon us to lay aside our peculiar attributes of reason, common sense, and reflection, and to receive without inquiry any doctrine that may be offered to us. On this principle, we should be as likely to believe in the impostor as in the true saint, and having yielded up our birthright of judgment, become incapable of distinguishing between them. I have thought much on the subject with the assistance of better authorities and scholars than myself, and will now endeavour to explain what I consider St. Paul meant ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... picked up at the Acredale Academy. At his entrance to the sequestered quadrangles of Dessau Hall, Jack's frame of mind was very much like the passionate discontent of the younger son of a feudal lord whose discrepant birthright doomed him to the gown ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... income. Mrs. Eyrecourt, Monsieur and Madame Villeray—and even Matilda—entreated her not to send the letter. To my thinking, Stella acted with becoming spirit. Though there is no entail, still Vange Abbey is morally the boy's birthright—it is a cruel wrong ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Turkey were nations—this republic a union of sovereign states. Prussia was presided over by a king and was a nation—the United States was a republic and the citizens ruled themselves. Calhoun distinguished also between sovereignty and government; sovereignty is a birthright, a natural and inalienable right vouchsafed by God; government is an artificial right established by law. Sovereignty is an inexpungable and inherent privilege; government is a secondary and artificial privilege. When any sovereign State is injured, it has not only the right but ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... her head slowly, and her eye wandered along the lines of standing courtiers till it fell upon a young man who was very quietly dressed; then her face lighted joyously, and she ran and threw herself at his feet, and clasped his knees, exclaiming in that soft melodious voice which was her birthright and was now charged with deep and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his late Majesty's death was inserted in a Philadelphia paper, and happened to be noticed by one of the politicians present, when the landlord asked me how we elected our king in England. I replied that he was not elected, but that he became king by birthright, &c. A Kentuckian observed, placing his leg on the back of the next chair, "That's a kind of unnatural." An Indianian said, "I don't believe in that system myself." A third—"Do you mean to tell me, that because the last king was a smart man and knew his duty, that his son, or his brother, should ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... the land, he left to Diana. I am bound to say that Lydia behaved very well in this matter, as she could have had all the money and land, but she was content with the assurance money, and did not rob Diana Vrain of her birthright. Yet Diana hated her, and still hates her; but I ask any one who reads this confession if my dear Lyddy is not the better woman of the two? Who dares to say that such a sweet girl is guilty of the crimes she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Esau's pathetic story? He sold his birthright for one mess of lentils. Nor was he at all displeased with his bargain. At least that was true for a little while, but there came a time when he was sorry. There came a time when his foolish bartering broke his heart. And the story says that he found no place ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... room and a kitchen. Perforce the greater part of our time was spent out of doors. Isolation kept us moderately free from visitors. Those who did violate our seclusion had to put up with the consequences. We had purchased liberty. Large liberties are the birthright of the English. We had acquired most of the small liberties, and the ransom paid was the abandonment of many things hitherto deemed to form an ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... they care for the same things, cultivate similar tastes, have corresponding aspirations? If they differed in thought and life and expression, let them differ—it was of no consequence. She found her husband's exactions tiresome. He had her birthright, she had his pottage; let the matter end there, and each ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... with him, I thought him incapable of a noble action. The leading trait in his character was intense selfishness. I think he was fully aware of this fact himself, and often tried to conceal it. Capt. Auld was not a born slaveholder—not a birthright member of the slaveholding oligarchy. He was only a slaveholder by marriage-right; and, of all slaveholders, these latter are, by far, the most exacting. There was in him all the love of domination, the pride of mastery, and the swagger of authority, but his ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... religious, status fixed unchangeably for him before his birth; and woe be to him who tries to shake off this bondage, or even in a small degree to kick against the pricks. No better system than this has been devised under heaven to rob man of his birthright of independence and self-respect. And the population of India bears, in its character and conduct, ample testimony to the truth ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... next morning wake. And with a natural and fervent sigh, Such as you never heaved, I shall exclaim 'What an unlucky dog I am!'" And here He broke into a laugh. "But as for you— You! on all hands you have the best of me; Men have not robbed you of your birthright—work, Nor ravaged in old days a peaceful field, Nor wedded heiresses against their will, Nor sinned, nor slaved, nor stooped, nor overreached, That you might drone a useless life away 'Mid half a score of bleak and barren farms And half a dozen ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... nobility to need adventitious aid to impress others. Look at the aesthetic simplicity of her pose on the single hill, which is all the mistaken kindness of her children has left of the three mountains which were her birthright. Behold the stately avenues that stretch by bridge and road, radiating her lavish favors in every direction; look at the spreading suburbs that crowd beyond her gates, more beautiful than the parks and pleasure grounds of her less favored ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... Jewish fellows. Now we see, and our younger brothers of the Menorah fellowship have caught the vision, that no Jew can be truly cultured who Jewishly uproots himself, that the man who rejects the birthright of inheritance of the traditions of the earliest and virilest of the cultured peoples of earth is impoverishing his very being. The Jew who is a "little Jew" is less of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... put in Bulstrode, "as being entitled to lead the lady of the house to the table, in virtue of his birthright. So much for being the fourth son of an Irish baron! Do you know Harris's father has ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... known. She is beautiful as the angels above, and as innocent, and she loves you with a mad abandon that is worse than idolatry—as only women ever love. And you? You are grand and noble, a milor Inglese, and you take her love—her crazy worship—as a demi-god might, with uplifted grace, as your birthright; and she is your pretty toy of an hour. And then careless and happy, you are gone. Sunny Spain, with its olives and its vineyards, its pomegranates and its Zenith the Gitana, is left far behind, and you are roaming, happy and free, through La Belle France. And lo! Zenith the forsaken lies ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming |
