"Self-devotion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consciously a Godward aspiration at all. It was essentially a humane movement. It was a melting and flowing forth of men's hearts toward one another; a rush of contrite, repentant tenderness; an impassioned impulse of mutual love and self-devotion to the common weal. But 'if we love one another, God dwelleth in us,' and so man found it. It appears that there came a moment, the most transcendent moment in the history of the race of man, when with the fraternal glow of this world of new-found embracing brothers there seems to have ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... strong language. Mr. Venner, I must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful teacher, whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence. Will you look ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... conspicuous successes. The classical poems Pheidippides, Echetlos, Pan and Luna, idyls heroic and mythological, invite us by their beauty to return to them again and again. Browning's sympathy with gallantry in action, with self-devotion to a worthy cause, was never more vividly rendered than in the first of these poems. The runner of Athens is a more graceful brother of the Breton sailor who saved a fleet for France; but the vision of majestical Pan in "the cool of a ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... betrayed any design of infringing the truce. Falkenberg, a Swedish ambassador, who visited the courts of Holland and Germany, obtained the most flattering promises from several Protestant princes, though none of them yet possessed courage or self-devotion enough to enter into a formal alliance with him. Lubeck and Hamburg engaged to advance him money, and to accept Swedish copper in return. Emissaries were also despatched to the Prince of Transylvania, to excite that implacable ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... Homer, and other poets of his country, because they had aided in degrading the idea of the Divinity; and also to his faith in human nature, his rejection of the principle of concealing truth from the multitude, and his self-devotion in diffusing it among all at a risk of liberty and life. He wandered from country to country, withstanding polytheism to its face, and imparting wisdom in rhapsodies and hymns, the form, above all others, calculated most quickly in those times ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... in society; he was not sure yet that her unknown relations were not horribly vulgar people; even yet, he was almost wholly ignorant of the circumstances and conditions of her life. But how he saw her only in the enrapturing light of his daring for her sake, of a self-devotion that had seemed to make her his own; and he behaved toward her with a lover's self-forgetfulness,—or something like it: say a perfect tolerance, a tender patience, in which it would have been hard to detect the lurking ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... sprang from the treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there, this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion, drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, by crying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering those words of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while the Empress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floated to ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... and sadly finished her note, saying that she would herself attend the party, but that her brother was unavoidably prevented from doing so. I fear that she did not admire as she should have done the self-devotion ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... courage, and willingness for self-sacrifice, and devotion to the right as it was given them to see the right, belonged both to the men of the North and to the men of the South. As the years roll by, and as all of us, wherever we dwell, grow to feel an equal pride in the valor and self-devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, so this whole nation will grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the man whose blood was shed for the union of his people and for the freedom of a race; ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... and the pomp and circumstance of war. But the echo of the fife and drum comes very faintly up to us, and moves us not at all. The soldier has had his day, and passed away forever with the ideal of manhood which he illustrated. But that group yonder stands for a type of self-devotion that appeals to us profoundly. Those men risked their lives when they flung down the tools of their trade, as truly as any soldiers going into battle, and took odds as desperate, and not only for themselves, but for their families, which ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... conquered. The light of courage was rekindled again in her father's eye, and his lofty brow was lifted once more under the sentiment of dignity and self-devotion that struggled for life in his suffering heart. Lenora looked at him with a heavenly smile, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... Miriam lay awake, pondering the new aspect which things had assumed, and gazing down the fearful abyss into which, in a spirit of self-devotion, she was seeking to ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... words, in any sacrament, or in any book or any place, as if He were first and foremost to be found there; no, life is first and foremost—life as we win it from the depths of despair, in the victory of the light, in the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with living human kind. God's supreme word to us is life, our highest worship of Him is love for the living. This lesson, self-evident as it is, was needed by me more than by most others. This it is that in various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto rejected,—and ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... Father Urban, a very skilful Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she routed the Jesuit; and she refused Charles VI; and she married the little Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom she tended with love, and with every manner of sacrifice, with artful kindness, with tender flattery, with entire self-devotion, thenceforward ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... church and ample revenues gave him perhaps less real influence, than his commanding and resolute character, which had enabled him to triumph over every obstacle devised by his more crafty adversary, the grand master of St. James. The prelate, however, with all his generous self-devotion, was far from being a comfortable ally. He would willingly have raised Isabella to the throne, but he would have her indebted for her elevation exclusively to himself. He looked with a jealous eye on her most intimate friends, and complained that neither ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... a right to interpret "friends of the slave," to include women as well as men. In such circumstances, we do not think it just or equitable to that State, nor to America in general, that, after the trouble, the sacrifice, the self-devotion of a part of those who leave their families and kindred and occupations in their own land, to come three thousand miles to attend this World's Convention, they should be refused a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... under to go. That pledge to knighthood, on the sea-shore, had not been either lightly taken or lightly given. If chivalry was not equal to sacrifice, it was equal to nothing. There was keen wisdom, too, in the act. The king could count all the more on the enthusiasm, self-devotion and valor of the knights and men-at-arms, in whose keeping he had placed so precious a charge. That whole first battalion would be nerved to tenfold effort because the prince was among them, for every one would be as deeply concerned as the father ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... to our benefactors. "I honor," says Vaughan, "that temper which can lay by the garland when he might keep it on; which can pass by a rosebud and bid it grow when he is invited to crop it." This is the spirit of self-devotion in every worthy action, and especially of the pains and penalties by which poets have enriched our daily life. We are indebted to the poets, too, for something more than the alleviation of sorrow. ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... circumstances, where, had there been establishments previously formed for affording prompt relief, and encouragement given to those who might volunteer in such a cause, in all probability the greater part would have been rescued from destruction. At other times I have seen the noblest instances of self-devotion; men have saved the lives of their fellow-creatures at the peril of their own, without a prospect of reward if successful, and with the certainty that their families would be left destitute ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... to each his due, and therefore not more than his due to oneself, seems to hold the balance between selfishness and love, being as it were, equidistant from the greed and self-indulgence of the former and the lavishness and self-devotion of the latter. If this is so, and if the sense of duty is, as I have suggested, an offshoot from the sense of justice, one can understand why, on the one hand, the sense of duty should be needed to hold ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... "This self-devotion," he added, "is the very highest Christian life, and seems, I dare say, very hard for you even to understand, and much more so to put in practice. But we must all try for it in the best way we can, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Death' is a drama full of excitement and beauty, of passion and power, of scenes whose enthusiastic affection, self-devotion, and undying love are drawn with more intense colouring than we find in any ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... ritual, yielding herself to him "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health; to love, honour, and obey, till death us do part," it brings to my mind the beautiful and affecting self-devotion of Ruth:—"Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... whose achievements all men look up with despairing admiration, and in whose acknowledged and recorded excellence they see the full embodiment of their own desire, or by the thousand nameless fidelities to duty, and obscure victories of self-devotion, and hidden glories of purity, that pass away without celebration? If you, my brethren, have any stoutness of heart to resist mean temptation, if you are conscious of any uplifting of desire towards better and more stable things than form the common stuff of life, if any quiet ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is in vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Hurdly had put to her credit in the bank. She would get all she could and send it—anonymously, of course—to the famine fund which she had casually heard mentioned. But, oh, what a pitiful offering it seemed compared with what this man was giving with such lavish self-devotion! From the fervor of his printed words, and his report of what had so far been accomplished, she saw that the very passion of his heart was in it. Of his ardent temperament, his quick sympathies, she had knowledge in her own experience. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... this one,—absolute sincerity of belief and motive. Brigham Young is the farthest remove on earth from a hypocrite; he is that grand, yet awful sight in human nature, a man who has brought the loftiest Christian self-devotion to the altar of the Devil,—who is ready to suffer crucifixion for Barabbas, supposing him Christ. Be sure, that, were he a hypocrite, the Union would have nothing to fear from Utah. When he dies, at least four hostile factions, which find their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... that "the decision was so sudden that no fit preparation could be made," Under the existing conditions, it was indeed a desperate daring, expressive of grand faith and self-devotion, worthy of the cause in peril, and only limited in its immediate and assured triumph by the simple ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the finding food for it, mental or bodily, for the present moment.' This letter the reader will find in full elsewhere.[53] The missionary impulse, the yearning for some apostolic destination, the glow of self-devotion to a supreme external will, is a well-known element in the youth of ardent natures of either sex. In a thousand forms, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, such a mood has played its part in history. In this case, as in many another, the impulse in its first shape did not endure, but ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... longed for Edgar, his words brought vague yearning and distress, while Felix's very tone gave support. How could Edgar say patient, silent, self-devotion was not to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not least, the perfect naturalist should have in him the very essence of true chivalry, namely, self-devotion; the desire to advance, not himself and his own fame or wealth, but knowledge and mankind. He should have this great virtue; and in spite of many shortcomings (for what man is there who liveth and sinneth not?), ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... like one petrified. Gradually, however, the generous rivalry and self-devotion of the two beautiful beings before him produced its effect on his savage nature. The expression ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... stairs and was gone. Kendal walked back slowly into his room and stood meditating. It seemed to him that Wallace did not quite realise the magnificence of his self-devotion. 'For, after all, it's an awkward business,' he said to himself, shaking his head over his own temerity. 'How I am to come round a girl as frank, as direct, as unconventional as that, I don't quite know! But she ought not to have that play; it's one of the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her purpose strong and holy, Faith and self-devotion high; These Life's common by-ways brighten Every hope intensify. Teach her all the brave endurance That the sons of earth require; May she, with a patient labor, To ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... glimpse of Hawthorne's mother. "Madame Hawthorne," she says, "always looked as if she had walked out of an old picture, with her antique costume, and a face of lovely sensibility and great brightness—for she did not seem at all a victim of morbid sensibility, notwithstanding her all but Hindoo self-devotion to the manes of her husband. She was a woman of fine understanding and very cultivated mind. But she had very sensitive nerves." Elizabeth, Hawthorne's sister, was strong-minded but abnormally retired, jealous of her brother, and not much disposed to have him stolen out of the house. Louisa was more ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... upon by sophistry. She was unacquainted with the refinements of sentiment, but she distinctly knew right from wrong, and had sufficient resolution to abide by the right. Perhaps many romantic heroines might have thought it a generous self-devotion to have become in similar circumstances the mistress of Tracassier; and those who are skilled "to make the worst appear the better cause" might have made such an act of heroism the foundation of an interesting, or at least a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... which he turned upon Peter. Not that he was without feeling. There is strong sense of outrage in his words, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil, but if well, why smitest thou me?" It was not the quietness of stoic indifference, but of perfect self-devotion to the Father's will. He maintained it from the time of his arrest to the last cry of trust with which he committed his ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... family state is one of daily self-devotion of the stronger and wiser to elevate and support the weaker members. Nothing could be more contrary to its first principles than for the older and more capable children to combine to secure to themselves the highest advantages, enforcing the drudgeries ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... der Werff's house, nurse the sick whole they had lovingly received, and even went with Sister Gonzaga to the houses of the Catholic citizens, to collect alms for the little hospital. But all this was done without joyous self-devotion, sometimes with extravagant zeal, sometimes lazily, and for days not at all. She had become excessively irritable, but after being unbearably arrogant one day, would seem sorrowful and ill at ease the next, though without ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... saw my father on his knees praying, he thought it would soon be all over with them; then seeing him go to bed and fall asleep, he felt no more fear. In the morning the coast was strewed with wrecks. There were no life-boats in those days; now the lives of hundreds are annually saved by the noble self-devotion ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... dress for the world, and look for a harvest of concupiscent glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved miracles of true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses love and courtesans—women who, having rolled in mire and impurity, thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and who practice exclusiveness—the only word for an idea so little known ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... would seem that the full meaning of the word marriage can never be known by those who, at their first out-spring into life, are surrounded by all that money can give. It requires the single sitting-room, the single fire, the necessary little efforts of self-devotion, the inward declaration that some struggle shall be made for that other one, some world's struggle of which wealth can know nothing. One would almost wish to be poor, that one might work for one's wife; almost ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... affords an almost infinite variety of opportunities for spiritual development, and no greater mistake could be made in connection with the present movement than to suppose the teaching of the Adepts merely addressed to persons capable of heroic self-devotion. Assuredly it does not discourage efforts in the direction of the highest achievement of occult progress, if any Western occultists may feel disposed to make them; but it is important for us all ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... sorrows! Well and good. Many a time have I seen that trial can elevate the soul. It can teach a brave heart to feel the woes of others more deeply; it can rouse a desire to assuage the griefs of others with beautiful self-devotion. Those who have known pain and affliction enjoy ease and pleasure with double satisfaction; sufferers learn to be grateful for even the smaller joys of life. But you?—I have long striven for courage to tell you so—you derive no benefit from suffering because ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his, one immense and glorious blackbird. Mozart, in 'The Magic Flute', as Goethe seems to have recognized, sings the very song of union between the unreflecting joy of the natural man and the strenuous self-devotion of the awakened spirit. Beethoven, greatest of them all, plumbs the lowest depths of suffering and then astounds and comforts us by ineffable vistas of happiness. After years of personal misery he crowns the glorious series of his symphonies by ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... me to concur in restoring to France the liberty, the power, and the glory of which the country had been unjustly deprived. I enjoyed, by anticipation, the public eulogiums, which, after his success, he would bestow upon my courage, my self-devotion, my patriotism. In short, I abandoned myself with rapture and with pride to all the thoughts, and all the generous resolutions which can be inspired by the love of fame and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... inclined to extend our admiration to the feelings of self-devotion which governed the conduct of Captain M—- it cannot be a matter of surprise that the officers of the frigate did not coincide with his total indifference to self, in the discharge of his duty. Murmur they did not; but they looked at each ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the Romish Church thrive with so many errors in it? It is because of those godly men in her who live Christ's life, and who, like as Zoar was spared for Lot's sake, bring a blessing on the whole community. For self-devotion, for self-denial, the Roman Catholic Church is in advance of our present-day Protestantism. What is it if you know the sound truths and do not act up to them? Actions speak loudly and are read of all; words are as the breath ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... "Now," cried he to the pilot, "is the moment for revenge!" and, setting fire to the powder-magazine, he blew up himself, his ship, and the pirates who had boarded her. Next morning the bodies of seventy Greeks lay on the sea-shore, showing the success of his self-devotion. The pilot, who, with four sailors, was saved, received the decoration of the Legion of Honour. On the pedestal of Bisson's statue is an inscription, concluding with these words: "Mort en heros, pour son roi et sa patrie, ses amis le pleurent, la France le regrette, et ses freres d'armes ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... expect security and equality of livelihood to leave men without incentives to effort? Your contemporaries did not really think so. When it was a question of the grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they depended on quite other motives. Not higher wages, but honour and the hope of men's gratitude, patriotism, and the inspiration of duty were the motives they set before their soldiers. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... fail in communicating to men their self-devotion, their gentleness, their piety; all that they manage to communicate amounts to little more than a respect for the observances of religion, and a nervous ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... crucifix as hateful as the image of Ashtaroth; obstinate old people of limited vision, who wanted Mr. Scobel to stick to what they called the old ways, and read the Liturgy as they had heard it when they were children. In the minds of these people, Mr. Scobel's self-devotion and hard service were as nothing, while he cut off the ten commandments from the Sunday morning service, and lighted his altar candles ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... the honour. She died in January, 1888, at Cambridge Barracks, Portsmouth, and in making her death known to the regiment the colonel said:—'Mrs. Fox died a soldier's death, as her fatal illness was the result of a wound received in action, and aggravated in consequence of her noble self-devotion afterwards.' ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... was thin with the work and the care of many weeks past; the traces of that were plain enough; yet it was delicately fair all the same, and perhaps more than ever, with the heightened spirituality of the expression. The writing on her features, of love and purity, habitual self-devotion and self-forgetfulness, patience and sweetness, was so plain and so unconscious, that it made her a very rare subject of contemplation, and, as her companion thought, extremely lovely. Her attitude spoke the same unconsciousness; her dress was of the simplest description; her brown hair ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... near Atlanta, defending the soil of his native State—a death of all others he would have chosen. I have dwelt somewhat on his character, because it was one of the strangest I have met. No enterprise was too rash to awaken his ardor, if it necessitated daring courage and self-devotion. Truly, he might have come forth from the pages of old Froissart. It is with unaffected feeling that I recall his memory and hang before it ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Rabindranath Tagore, whom the British Government has recently knighted for his poetical gifts and for his political loyalty. Members of the Brotherhood have thought this leaving of their body a mistake of judgment, and too great a concession to a rival religion, while they still admire the self-devotion which leads their former brother to carry his advocacy of Christianity into what he regards as the most promising school of Hinduism. With this explanation I proceed to ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... a child like that for so long, when his own strength was hourly weakening, and when every additional pound of weight told heavily upon him. The tears come into the eyes of the countess and myself every time we think of it. It was an act of self-devotion beyond words; altogether beyond the understanding of those who know not how terrible were the sufferings ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... own protested against in vain. He showed his taste again in buying a cheap copy of the book, which he meant to give her, and of course he had to be all the more attentive to her because of my deprecating his self-devotion. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of clapping Fray Antonio into a strait-jacket; and had the opportunity arisen for bringing their difference of opinion to a practical issue I am confident that we should have witnessed an exceedingly curious conflict, in which heroic self-devotion would have struggled with a rough but very honest love. And that Fray Antonio anticipated such a conflict was shown by his taking effective measures to render it impossible. During the remainder of that day he steadfastly refused ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... supinely in the enervated hearts of the higher classes in France, corrupted by long habits of indulgence in selfish gratifications. The lesson at once awoke even the most callous; while those, and there were many such, who required it not, furnished the noblest examples of high courage and self-devotion to the objects dear ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... of ancient days have displayed more courage, self-devotion, and firmness, than has this high-souled and heroic woman. It is not generally known in this country, that in an action in La Vendee, where the partizans of the Duchess were opposed to the regular troops, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... her choice: when I hear her, in the good old language of the ritual, yielding herself to him "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honour and obey, till death us do part," it brings to my mind the beautiful and affecting self-devotion of Ruth: "Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... his side, palsied with fear, yet without one thought of craven flight. At last, when every aide but Washington was struck down; when the lives of the vast majority of the officers had been sacrificed with a reckless intrepidity, a sublime self-devotion, that surpasses the power of language to express; when scarce a third part of the whole army remained unscathed, and these incapable of aught save remaining to die or till the word to retire was given—at last, Braddock abandoned all hope of victory, and, with a mien undaunted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... arm with the katar or crease; the forearms of those who were in the habit of becoming security had generally several cuts from the elbow downwards. The Charans, both men and women, wounded themselves, committed suicide and murdered their relations with the most complete self-devotion. In 1812 the Marathas brought a body of troops to impose a payment on the village of Panchpipla. [303] The Charans resisted the demand, but finding the Marathas determined to carry their point, after a remonstrance against paying ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... fired the melancholy verse of Leopardi, the letters of Foscolo, the novels of Guerrazzi, and the tender melody of Bellini. Recent literature has exhibited the conditions under which Italian Liberals strive, and the method of expiating their self-devotion. The novels of Ruffini, the letters of the Countess d'Ossoli, the rhetoric of Gavazzi, and the parliamentary reports of Gladstone, the leading reviews, the daily journals, intercourse with political refugees, and the personal observations of travel, have, more or less ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Pathfinder: his hardy self-devotion had brought him into a situation of unusual exposure, the hazards of which were much increased by the fact that, just as he drifted nearest to the enemy the party on the shore rushed down the bank and joined their friends who still stood in the water. The ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... notions of their just rights, stood up in the hour of trial prepared to defend them to the last. The counsels and the prayers of mothers mingled with their deliberations, and added sanctity to all their patriotic efforts for American independence. They animated the courage, confirmed the self-devotion, and shared in the sacrifices of those who, in the common defence, "pledged their lives, their ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... hint of her possible self-devotion to the coming "squire" with very little philosophy, little temper, and no allowance for the feelings of an only daughter expecting to see a white-headed, fond father, dragged from his home to a jail. He had been incensed; he had wronged her by imputations of sordid motives—of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... apartment. He himself had not had time to put on his cuirass, but he seized his sword and buckler and defended himself valiantly, killing four of his adversaries and wounding several others. One of his assailants, in a spirit of self-devotion, attracted to himself the blows of Pizarro. Meanwhile the other conspirators made their way in and attacked him with such fury that he could not parry all the blows, being so exhausted that he could ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... all religions as indifferent, serious amid many fopperies and through many languid days, and made him anticipate all his life long as a thing towards which he must carefully train himself, some great occasion of self-devotion, such as really came, that should consecrate his life, and, it might be, its memory with others, as the early Christian looked forward to martyrdom at the end of his course, as a seal of worth ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... hand; true, he might have reserved himself for a more deliberate and stronger effort; but he felt that hesitation might be ruin—that all depended upon his example of dauntless courage—of fearless self-devotion. Had it pleased Divine Providence to spare his invaluable life, who will say that his effort would have failed? It is true his gallant course was arrested by a fatal wound—such is the fortune of war; ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... at Red Cross Hall, Southwark, to commemorate her heroism; but the best memorial is her own expression: "I tried to do my best"—for this will live in the hearts of all who read of her self-devotion. She had tried to do her best always. Her loving tenderness to the children committed to her care and her pure gentle life were remarked by those around her before there was any thought of her dying a heroic death. So, when the great trial came, she was prepared; and what seems ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he hated ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... so-called chivalrous woman-worship. That artificial mood of emotion, though glorified by the literary art of greatest poets, has something pitiably unreal, incurably morbid, in its mysticism. But, putting this aside, we are still bound to notice the absence of that far more human self-devotion of man to woman which forms a conspicuous element in the Arthurian romances. The love of Tristram for Iseult, of Lancelot for Guinevere, of Beaumains for his lady, is alien to the Goliardic conception ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... feelings which this task excited were speedily lost in the necessity which he now saw of bidding farewell to Flora Mac-Ivor, perhaps for ever. The pang attending this reflection were inexpressible; for her high-minded elevation of character, her self-devotion to the cause which she had embraced, united to her scrupulous rectitude as to the means of serving it, had vindicated to his judgement the choice adopted by his passions. But time pressed, calumny was busy with his fame, and every hour's delay increased the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... excepted, and a dog wore the medal with conscious pride. We have selected the following examples out of thousands, not because they are more deserving of admiration than the rest, but because they are fair specimens of the acts of self-devotion which have won the medals of the Society in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and decent, and then children and stout honest work for them, work too for the State in which they live; a life of self-devotion, indeed, and for sunset a decent pride—that is the happy life. Rest assured that is the happy life; the life Natural Selection has been shaping for man since life began. So a man may go happy from the cradle to the grave—at least—passably ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... the side of the self-devotion and public spirit, the vices and meannesses of troubled times have shown themselves, as they will and must. We have had shoddy, we have had contracts, we have had substitute-brokerage, we have had ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... moral magnetism. Emerson called him 'the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.' His absolute superiority to all selfish aims and narrowing pride of opinion touched an answering chord in the self-devotion of Mr. Stearns. A little anecdote illustrates the modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together certain friends to meet Captain Brown at his home in Medford, he found that Sunday was the only day that would serve ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... his standard, and he had the faculty of gaining the hearts of his followers. At Borrodaile occurred his first interview with the chivalrous Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who was perfectly persuaded of the desperate character of his enterprise, but nevertheless aided it with generous self-devotion. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... excellent cook and a most respectable person. Pierrette ought to learn how to cook, and rub floors, and sweep, said the lawyer; every girl should be taught to keep house properly and go to market and know the price of things. The poor little soul, whose self-devotion was equal to her generosity, offered herself willingly, pleased to think that she could earn the bitter bread which she ate in that house. Adele was sent away, and Pierrette thus lost the only person who might have ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... me. Love me? Love is self-devotion without the hope of recompense. Love is the wish to live in the light of a sun which the lover trembles to approach. Do not deck out your egotism in the lustre of genuine love. A married woman, Laura de Nova, said to ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... herself the best of mothers—as she was the best of wives, during her short time of wedlock—in the self-renunciation and self-devotion with which, through all difficulties, and in spite of every opposition and misconception, she pursued the even tenor of her way. Not for two or ten, but for well-nigh twenty years, she gave herself up ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... began to talk of the domestic service, and I ventured to hint some of the things that I have so plainly said to you. She frankly consented to my whole view of the matter, for if she wishes to make an effect or gain a point she has a magnanimity that stops at nothing short of self-devotion. "I know it," she said. "You are perfectly right; but here we are, and what are we to do? What do you do in Altruria, I should ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... stream and was lost. On the following morning the snow had melted, and every trace of the enemy was obliterated. This affair must be regarded as highly honorable to the skill, address, and activity of the Indians; and the self-devotion of the rear guard, is a lively instance of that magnanimity of which they are at times capable, and which is more remarkable in them, from the extreme caution, and tender regard for their own lives, which ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... than the power of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions, and is threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all noble aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, and Christian self-devotion, in its muddy flood. Surely never was Gideon's test more wanted for the army of the Lord of hosts than ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-devotion which were characteristic of the Society, great vices were mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the European statecraft which has borne its lamentable fruits in the recent cataclysm we have all witnessed. He was thrown on the resources with which he was more familiar: those of an ennobling idea and of the exactions of self-devotion in its cause. Immediately after his eyes had been opened at Szczekociny to the new peril that had burst upon his country he sent out another order, bidding his commanders to "go over the Prussian and Russian boundaries" into the provinces that were lawfully Poland's but which had been ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... she had embraced the lesson of humility, the once despised Emma Brandon had been rising in her estimation. The lowliness of her manners, and the heart-whole consistency of her self-devotion, had far outweighed her little follies, and, together with remorse for having depreciated and neglected her, had established her claim to respect ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an unsalable horse on his hands; outcast, deserted, homeless, hopeless: and by whose fault? He owned even then that he had committed some follies; but in his sense of Marcia's all-giving love he had risen for once in his life to a conception of self-devotion, and in taking herself from him as she did, she had taken from him the highest incentive he had ever known, and had checked him in his first feeble impulse to do and be all in all for another. It was she who ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... was a beautiful thing to find the loving sweetness and kindness refined into self-devotion and patience, and growing into something brighter and purer as it came near the last. It will ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well and have learned to think more beautiful than "any light that falls on land or sea." "Know her! Why, but for her I must have died." Thus to become of blessed memory is worth a lifetime of toil and self-devotion. And yet the cause and its defenders were worth it all, and more. As far as the wounded and sick soldiers are concerned, I am sure that Mrs. Caldwell, equally with myself and all others, who during ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defense was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion into imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile the race he hated sat again ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of a happiness for all, procured by the self-sacrifice of each, if the abnegation is really felt to be a sacrifice, is a contradiction. Such spontaneity by no means excludes sympathetic encouragement; but the encouragement should take the form of making self-devotion pleasant, not that of making everything else painful. The object should be to stimulate services to humanity by their natural rewards; not to render the pursuit of our own good in any other manner impossible, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... as to the impoverished condition to which the Nassau family had been reduced by the self-devotion of its chief. They were obliged to ask alms of England, until the "sapling should become a tree."—"Since it is the will of God," wrote the Princess to Davison, "I am not ashamed to declare the necessity of our house, for it is in His cause that it ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was felt even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was unguessed even by many of his friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits? It was not merely that he saw, through the ensanguined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the unstained excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready to take her to his own home with reverential affection, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the Queen's antechamber, where he repeated all that he had just heard, or had had the imprudence to say. Unfortunately, at the same time that the Queen sent away M. de Goguelat, she still believed that, in a dangerous predicament, requiring great self-devotion, the man might be employed advantageously. In 1791 he was commissioned to act in concert with the Marquis de Bouille in furtherance ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... tell of stormy passions, profligate habits, thrilling disasters, and violent deaths on the sea, also chronicle the manifold deeds of philanthropy, heroism, self-devotion, and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... cry of alarm by striking him dead. The noise reached the royal chamber; a rush of the assassins followed; and Catharine Douglass, one of the queen's maids of honor, springing forward to bolt the door, found the bar had been clandestinely removed. With resolute self-devotion she supplied the place with her naked arm.—To present a view of the interior of the room, and the passage outside, it will be necessary to place a partition from the front of the stage, near the footlights, to the left hand corner in the background. In the smallest ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... eyes challenged his, half-puzzled, half-defiant. Her quick perception detected his critical attitude, and in her present mood the undernote of antagonism acted as a spur rather than a check upon the dare-devil strain in her, which was responsible for her odd mingling of folly and heroic self-devotion. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... trees. Her heart was strengthened by her pious confidence in her heavenly Father. She remembered also that Edith looked to her for protection; and all personal fears were absorbed by that generous and elevating feeling of self-devotion, which is shared even by the lower and weaker animals when their offspring are in danger. So Helen forgot herself, and felt strong to guard her child, and strong to seek and obtain aid for him whose peril was more ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... arranged, as to occasion less consternation at his departure. Adrian and Idris were together. The sadness with which the former had first heard that the plague was in London had vanished; the energy of his purpose informed his body with strength, the solemn joy of enthusiasm and self-devotion illuminated his countenance; and the weakness of his physical nature seemed to pass from him, as the cloud of humanity did, in the ancient fable, from the divine lover of Semele. He was endeavouring to encourage his sister, and to bring her to look on his intent in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... survival of an ancient religion, many of the beliefs and rites of these early religions are to be found in it. Of these the principal are: the voluntary substitute, the temporary transference of power to the substitute, and the self-devotion to death. As times changed and the ceremonies could no longer be performed openly, the sacrifices took on other forms. I have already suggested that the child-murders, of which the witches were often ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... was willing to send the hostages if Sabinianus would swear that they should return in safety. This, however, for some reason or other, the general surlily and stubbornly refused to do, and Adamantius saw the earnestly desired interview fading away into impossibility. At length, with courageous self-devotion, he succeeded in finding a by-path across the mountains, which brought him to a fort, situated on a hill and strengthened by a deep ditch, in sight of Dyrrhachium. From thence he sent messengers to Theodoric ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... and high moral tone. The Army as organized must be the nucleus around which in every time of need the strength of your military power, the sure bulwark of your defense—a national militia—may be readily formed into a well-disciplined and efficient organization. And the skill and self-devotion of the Navy assure you that you may take the performance of the past as a pledge for the future, and may confidently expect that the flag which has waved its untarnished folds over every sea will still float in undiminished honor. But these, like many other subjects, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the mother parted with her child. It was a great trial for Mrs. Bacon, but she now fully comprehended the great use to flow from Mary's self-devotion, and, therefore, with her last kiss, breathed a ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... the Company of Jesus consciously pursued one object while they pretended to have another in view. The impulse which moved Loyola was spontaneous and romantic. The world has seen few examples of disinterested self-devotion equal to that of Xavier. Yet the fact remains that Jesuitry, taking its germ and root in the Spanish character, persisting as an organism within the Church, but separate from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, devised the doctrine of Papal absolutism, and became the prime agent ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... high-bred people drop their personal distinctions and become brothers and sisters of conversational charity. Nor are fashionable people without their heroism. I believe there are men who have shown as much self-devotion in carrying a lone wall-flower down to the supper-table as ever saint or martyr in the act that has canonized his name. There are Florence Nightingales of the ballroom, whom nothing can hold back from their errands of mercy. They find out the red-handed, gloveless undergraduate ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great pleasure in speaking of Captain Glazier in the highest terms, not only on account of the self-devotion he has manifested in a noble cause, but of his indomitable perseverance and energy. We trust he will, wherever he goes, receive the unanimous support of ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... her niece to the prelate, to make her profession of self-devotion, and to utter the irrevocable vow. As the lovely novice knelt at his feet, the archbishop fixed on her his dark, beaming eyes, with a kind but earnest expression. "Sister!" said he, in the softest and most benevolent tone of voice, "What ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... like manner, whether applied to a soldier or to any human being, not mere courage; not the mere doing of duty: but the doing of something beyond duty; something which is not in the bond; some spontaneous and unexpected act of self-devotion. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... treating the sick and the wounded, and in winning to themselves a very rare amount of personal confidence and trust. They had all risen to be distinguished soldiers; they had all done deeds of great heroism; they had all combined with their valour and self-devotion a serene cheerfulness, a quiet modesty, and a truly Christian spirit; and they had all been ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... she mocks at death, and laughs at life. After having astonished the Emperor Alexander, she can still amaze the Emperor Nicholas by the splendor of her entertainments. She can still bring tears to the eyes of a youthful lover, for her age is whatever she pleases, and she has the exquisite self-devotion of a grisette. In short, she is herself a fairy tale, unless, indeed, ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... headache. Unspeakably sad and barren does life look to those who a few months ago were dazzled with the splendor of the promise of the times. "There is now no longer any right course of action nor any self-devotion left among the Iranis." Objections and criticism we have had our fill of. There are objections to every course of life and action, and the practical wisdom infers an indifferency, from the omnipresence of objection. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in millions is the still small voice which comes forth from the sanctuary of a woman's breast, and from the retirement of a woman's closet—the simple but unequivocal expression of her unfaltering faith, and the evidence of her generous and unshrinking self-devotion. In the same spirit, and as deeply impressed with the retired character of female exertion, the ladies who have so warmly greeted your arrival in this country have still felt it entirely consistent with the most sensitive delicacy to make a public response to ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... say when the exact opposite happens? When it is an act of nobility, of splendid heroism, of magnificent self-devotion, that brings to pass a man's moral downfall? It is horrible to admit such a thing as possible, is it not? And yet, the same man who may be capable of one sudden immense act of heroism, may be quite incapable of keeping up the prolonged, daily, yearly struggle ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... confirm this opinion. Yet had this historian been an ordinary compiler, he could not have incurred a more mortifying fate; for he was compelled to retail in shilling numbers that invaluable history which we have only learned of late times to appreciate, and which was the laborious fruits of self-devotion. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli |
