"Self-abasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... footsteps of their great progenitor, the Babylonians and Assyrians became a most pious race, constantly rendering to their gods the glory for everything which they succeeded in bringing to a successful issue. Prayer, supplication, and self-abasement before their gods seem to have been with them ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... feature to the splendour of the season. The dreary Lenten time was over, with its vigils and fasts, its self-abasement and penitence. The dread Holy Week had gone, with its plaints and laments, its confession of sins and cries for mercy, its darkened windows and stripped altars, its quenched tapers and hushed bells, its fourteen stations of that Via Crucis which rehearses ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... next great step of the way was practically taken. For there by the gliding river, and in view of the distant Oxford spires, which his fancy took to witness the act, he had vowed himself in prayer and self-abasement to the ministry of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Emily, had I the same skill to show the sentiments of mine, you would there see what I cannot express—how I admire this noble candour, this generous self-abasement—" ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... babbie ever beheld by mortal eyes.' For babies, as some of his later volumes testify, he had a sort of idolatry. After Mazzini had followed Landor to Elysium, and Victor Hugo had followed Mazzini, babies were what among live creatures most evoked Swinburne's genius for self-abasement. His rapture about this especial 'babbie' was such as to shake within me my hitherto firm conviction that, whereas the young of the brute creation are already beautiful at the age of five minutes, the human ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... himself to be landed as though it were a pleasure. Only miserable casuists will ask whether this was fair play on Madeleine's part; whether flattery so gross cost her conscience no twinge, and whether any woman can without self-abasement be guilty of such shameless falsehood. She, however, scorned the idea of falsehood. She would have defended herself by saying that she had not so much praised Ratcliffe as depreciated Webster, and that she was ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... God has cast down my pride with this blow. I was insolent in my arrogance, and the scorn of this man was necessary to my self-abasement. Could I be more humbled or more resigned than I am now? Don Luis is right: I am not worthy of him. However great the efforts I might make, I could not succeed in elevating myself to him and comprehending him, in putting my spirit into perfect communication with his. I am a rude country girl, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... She couldn't say any more. And the father, smiling at her, thought he understood the emotions which tied her tongue, which underlay her fervent good night kiss. But he could never have guessed all the love, gratitude, repentance, self-abasement and high resolves at ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... 2: As stated (ad 1), humility, in so far as it is a virtue, conveys the notion of a praiseworthy self-abasement to the lowest place. Now this is sometimes done merely as to outward signs and pretense: wherefore this is "false humility," of which Augustine says in a letter (Ep. cxlix) that it is "grievous pride," since to wit, it would seem to aim at excellence of glory. Sometimes, however, this is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... head fell upon his breast in extreme self-abasement, then he slowly lifted his eyes and seeing in her face a full knowledge of his sin, murmured ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... doctrinal dissertations have at least the merit of sincerity. They were put forth in behalf of what he regarded as truth; and the success which they met with, while it called into exercise his profoundest gratitude, only served to deepen the humility and self-abasement of their author. As the utterance of what a good man believed and felt, as a part of the history of a life remarkable for its consecration to apprehended duty, these writings cannot be without interest even to those ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mere lump of vanity," said the count, after waiting a moment for Oscar's excuses. "A proud man humiliates himself because he sees there is grandeur in a certain self-abasement. I am afraid that you will never make ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... said the man, with a soft chuckle intended for self-abasement. "I go, thou goest, he goes. 'I'll skedaddle,' as the felleh says. And yit it do seem to me sorter like,—if my moral sense is worthy of any consideration, which is doubtful, may be,—seems to me like it's sort o' jumpin' ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... and self-abasement crept into the letter to Ted, together with a passionate remorse for having doubted him and her even more vehement regret for having gone out with Willis Hubbard. The whole complex story of her emotional reactions was of course not written down for Ted's eyes; but he read quite enough to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to occasion this state of mind. His life had been without great troubles, but with many mortifications; he had never been long satisfied with himself or his pursuits, his ardour had only been the prelude to vexation and self-abasement, and in his station in the world there was little incentive to exertion. He had a strong sense of responsibility, with a temperament made up of tenderness, refinement, and inertness, such as shrank from the career set before him. He had seen just enough of political life to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... than the account given in the Magnalia of various young souls in whom the love of God was remarkably budding, especially this same unwholesome Nathaniel Mather. His diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in detail his covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and directions in his various religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a day, and "did not slubber over his prayers with hasty amputations, but wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... wished to have her for his wife; he had never thought of her, and did not now think of her, in connexion with himself; but he experienced an inward, indefinable feeling of deep regret, a gnawing sorrow, an unconquerable depression of spirits, and also a species of self-abasement that he—he, Mr. Arabin—had not done something to prevent that other he, that vile he whom he so thoroughly despised, from carrying ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 'saints' make up for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, but because the main set and current of the life was evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and conquered by strenuous effort. Better a life of Godward aspiration and straining after purity, even if broken by such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward grubbing, undisturbed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... instant in replying to Clemens's letter, and assuring him that there had not been the least offence, and entreating him never to think of the matter again. "He said that he was a fool, but he was God's fool," Holmes quoted from the letter, with a true sense of the pathos and the humor of the self-abasement. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and stood at one of the dim, shuttered windows for a while. He spoke of places, too, and of happenings in them, from Westchurch to Constantinople, from a nautch at Singapore to a country fair at Farley Row. But, recurrent through all his wanderings, were allusions, unsparing in revolt and in self-abasement, to a woman whom he had loved and who had dealt very vilely with him, putting some unpardonable shame upon him, and to a man whom he himself had very basely wronged. The name, neither of man nor woman, did Katherine learn.—Madame de Vallorbes' name, for ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Zulus. To encounter death, or the danger of death, for the sake of duty—when the choice is there; but duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which shall bring with it self-abasement—that is grand. When I hear that a man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If it be that he has chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was Catiline's case, I recognize him as having ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... moment, Rachel entered with a small tea-tray: she could carry only little things, and a few at a time. She cast a glance of almost loving solicitude at the young man who now sat before her uncle with head bowed, and self-abasement on his honest countenance, then a look almost of expostulation at her uncle, as if interceding for a culprit, and begging the master not to be too hard upon him. But the little man smiled—such a sweet smile ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... ye on faith's pinion, leave all creature things behind, And approach yon throne of glory. Love in Light ye there shall find; For with thrill of joy behold One—woman-born—upon that Throne, And, with deepest self-abasement, in His beauties read ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... Popery. By exalting Christ and his sufferings, and renouncing all claim to independent merit in ourselves, it was calculated to become popular, and coincided with those principles of panegyric and of self-abasement which generally ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... side scene with a glass of stiff brandy and water that some commiserating friend had administered to her for her support, rocking herself piteously to and fro, and, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, uttering between sobs and sips, in utter self-abasement, her peccavi in the form of oaths and imprecations of the finest Billingsgate vernacular (all, however, addressed to herself), that would have made a dragoon shake in his shoes. The original form of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... bigoted, nor yet can he be indifferent; he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable feelings as to cast truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so pursue truth and justice as to lose sight of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement, reverence, devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any one of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of Christ our Saviour. Let us look into our hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we indolent, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... the Graian Alps and beyond the reach of his father's information, Bernard was safe. In Aosta he was kindly received by Pierre, the Archdeacon. He entered into the service of the church, and there, in spite of his humility and his self-abasement, he won the favor of all with whom he had to deal. "God wills," the chronicle says, "that His ministers should shine by their sanctity and their science." "Saint Paul commends prudence, gravity, modesty, unselfishness, and hospitality," and to these ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... of moral imperfection and guilt,—and that humility and devout self-abasement which arise out of it. This must be a prominent feeling in every one who views his own conduct, and his mental emotions, in reference to the purity of God. It naturally leads to supplication for his mercy and forgiveness; and, in the wondrous display of his character, ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... imperceptible as the throbbing of a heart at ease. "So like, so very like, is day to day,"—one primrose scarce more like another. Whoever saw their first grey hairs, or marked the crow-feet at the angle of their eyes, without a sigh or a tear, a momentous self-abasement, a sudden sinking of the soul, a thought that youth is flown for ever? None but the blessed few that, having dedicated their spring of life to Heaven, behold in the shedding of their vernal blossoms, a promise that the season of immortal fruit is near. It is a frailty, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... may call me all the names you like," she cried with great self-abasement, "but you shan't—you SHAN'T go away ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... junior part of the company, went down last, how we could. I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters. Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the gloom of Hamlet's aunt. The dinner was very long, and the conversation was about the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... my class; and shall I take merit to myself, because God has shown me, a little earlier perhaps than to them, somewhat more of the true duties and destinies of The Many? Oh, that they could see the depths of my affection to them! Oh, that they could see the shame and self-abasement with which, in rebuking their sins, I confess my own! If they are apt to be flippant and bitter, so was I. If they lust to destroy, without knowing what to build up instead, so did I. If they make an almighty idol of that Electoral Reform, which ought ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... again to-day. His usual bearing is ostentatiously rough and brutal. He has sunk to a depth of self-abasement in which he takes a delight in his degradation. This condition ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... fact, there is not a single element in the new faith which had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of conduct still survived. It received a further rebuff at the hands of men like Benedict, who ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... re-read them with a devouring eagerness. She never paused to ask herself why this was. She avoided any investigation into her feeling for Horace. It was enough that, in spite of all the self-accusation and self-abasement which she carried in her heart, this being who knew the very worst of her could still think her worthy of kindness and respect. When she thought of this she felt as if she could go on ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... Our Lady. Some fifty years after their defeat the Bohemians erected a church and monastery to St. Mary on the White Mountain. You may see this church, looking somewhat dilapidated—I should say ashamed of itself—as it stands there a monument to the Bohemian nation's self-abasement. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... tell, and sad to trace, Each step from splendor to disgrace: Enough—no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell; Yes! self-abasement paved the way ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... I. There are women to whom you say, 'I love you.' To me you have never said more than 'You are a good girl.' Certain speeches of yours, though you do not know it, gnaw at my heart. Clever men sometimes ask me what I am thinking.... I am thinking of my self-abasement—the prostration of the poorest outcast in the presence ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... have been favoured by their priests with some good orthodox doctrine, as to divine appointment on the subject. Indeed, the case of these islanders is one in which the necessary effect of that consciousness of impotence and self-abasement, is scarcely in any degree counteracted by other principles. We see it literally exemplifying ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... innocent by force of self-accusation and self-abasement, suffer at once the torment of the victim and ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... essential power of stoicism, which does not, like the great oriental religions, tame personality by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of adversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance, its sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to self-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance is medical ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... reaching a conclusion which tallies with our rarest moments of super-normal insight we discover that we have reached a conclusion which tallies with our moments of profoundest self-abasement. In these recurrent moods of humiliation it seems ridiculous to speak of the creative or the destructive energy of the mind. What presents itself to us in such moods is a world of forms and shapes that we can neither modify nor obliterate. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... is converted; and ready to justify both his early belief in his own mission, and the abnormal means by which he has chosen to carry it out. Their positions are reversed, and he combats his friend's self-abasement as he once combated his too great confidence in himself. He grieves over what seems to him the depression of an over-wrought mind, and what he will not regard as due to any deeper cause. But Paracelsus will take no comfort; and when, finally, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... utterly misunderstood the scheme of things. Divinity is not a sad, a solemn, a solitary autocrat demanding selfish tribute, blind allegiance, inexorable self-abasement. It is not an insecure tyrant offering bribery for the ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... 1. Puritans. (80-84.) a. They excited contempt. However b. They were no vulgar fanatics; but c. They derived their peculiarities from their daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. d. Thus the Puritan was made up of two men,—the one all self-abasement, the other all pride. e. Resume of character of Puritans. 2. Heathens were passionate lovers of freedom. (85.) 3. Royalists had individual independence, learning, and polite manners of the Court. B. But he alone fought the battle for the freedom of the mind. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Wolfe was, in spirit, a rare combination of the humblest self-abasement and of fierce spiritual denunciation. Like so many others of his sacred calling in the Colony he inhabited, he was not only the descendant of a line of priests, but it was his greatest earthly hope that he should also become the progenitor of a race in whom the ministry was to be perpetuated as ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... At the thought of the education she must have had, and the accomplishments she must possess, the soul of Hill became abject within him. She had spoken to him first over a difficulty about the alisphenoid of a rabbit's skull, and he had found that, in biology at least, he had no reason for self-abasement. And from that, after the manner of young people starting from any starting-point, they got to generalities, and while Hill attacked her upon the question of socialism—some instinct told him to spare her a direct assault upon her religion—she was gathering ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... his companion in surprise. Then he spoke, and a feeling of self-abasement was reflected in his words. "George McCloud," he echoed. "Did you say George? Why, I must know that man. I turned him down once for a job. He looked so peaceable I thought he was too soft for us." The president laid down his cigar with a gesture of disgust. "And yet there ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... the wrath and to heal the wounded pride of the Chief Magistrate? If he be really the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all grovelling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject, with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the Secretary of the Senate will preserve the pen with which he may inscribe them, and ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... cousin's grief and self-abasement touched the tender heart of Catharine; for she was kind and dove-like in her disposition, and loved Louis, with all his faults. Had it not been for the painful consciousness of the grief their unusual absence would occasion at home, Catharine would have thought nothing of their present adventure; ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... caused a weaning of affections from the things of this world, a healing of controversies and animosities, a confession of wrongs, a breaking down before God, and penitent, broken-hearted supplications to Him for pardon and acceptance. It caused self-abasement and prostration of soul, such as we never before witnessed. As God by Joel commanded, when the great day of God should be at hand, it produced a rending of hearts and not of garments, and a turning unto the Lord with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. As God said by Zechariah, a spirit of ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Oliver turned up as usual in his place. He looked pale, but otherwise unconcerned, and those who looked-for traces of shame and self-abasement in his face ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... constantly and consciously deferring to it. It was easy enough after the habit was formed. Twentieth-century civilization is decently peaceable, and it isn't especially difficult to dodge the personal collisions. I have succeeded in dodging them, for the greater part, paying the price in humiliation and self-abasement as I went along. God, Stuart, you don't know what that means!—the degradation; the hot and cold chills of self-loathing; the sickening misery of having your own soul turn upon you to rend and tear you like ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... servant.] they favour us with a glance, and that must be happiness enough. By the more ambitious spirits, an obeisance is expected; this is not performed at a distance, after the Persian fashion—you go right up, and make a profound bow, testifying with the angle of your body to the self-abasement of your soul; you then kiss his hand or breast—and happy and enviable is he who may do so much! And there stands the great man, protracting the illusion as long as may be. (I heartily acquiesce, by the way, in the churlish sentence which excludes us ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... slight flush that gave colour and animation to his cheeks, and though his eyes were bright their expression was more natural than it had been for many days. He was in one of the strangest humours which can have sway over that unconsciously humorous animal, man. In the midst of the deepest self-abasement his heart was overflowing with joy. The combination of sorrow and happiness is a rare one, not found every day, but the condition of experiencing both at the same time and in the highest degree ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... gaily, Diana felt that she and her husband were at home. It was the first home she had known—the first time she had been sole mistress and centre of a household. She looked back at all the old desolation, the dreary shifting from lodging to lodging, the degradation, the self-abasement, the dull apathy of despair; and then she looked across at her husband as he lounged in his easy-chair, contemplating her with dreamy adoring eye, in a kind of lazy worship; and she knew that for this man she was the centre ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... again self-violence and self-abasement!" Pao-y interposed. The other day, I was outside the garden, consulting with the gentlemen about paintings, and, when they came to hear that we had started a poetical society, they begged of me to let them have the rough copies to read. So I wrote ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Herr Mueller, which lost none of their weight by his unaffected and quiet manner, excited curiosity. At first, most of the listeners were disposed to believe him one of those exaggerated spirits who exalt themselves by a pretended self-abasement, but his natural, quiet, and thoughtful deportment soon produced a more favorable opinion. There was a habit of reflection, a retreating inward look about his eye, that revealed the character of one long and truly accustomed ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... seemed impossible to talk about Priscilla because she was sacred to him, and she was sacred to him because he adored her so. He adored her to an extent that amazes me to think of, worshipping her beauty with all the headlong self-abasement of a very young man who is also a poet. His soul was as wax within him, softest wax punched all over with little pictures of Priscilla. No mother is happy while her child's soul is in this state, and though he was extremely decent, and hid it and smothered it and choked it with all the energy ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... from a willing heart. The bondage in which they really lived was ennobled by that conventional code of honor which dictated and enforced it. They prostrated themselves before their fellow-man with no sense of self-abasement, and the chivalrous homage with which they gratified him, was considered as ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... been for myself, Miss Mollie, not for my people. What am I to my race? Aye," he continued, with a glance at his withered limbs, "to the least one of them not—not—" He covered his face with his hands and bowed his head in the self-abasement which hopeless ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... for all hope, for all success in our work, for all growth in Christian grace and character, this disposition of lowly self-abasement and recognised unworthiness and infirmity is absolutely indispensable. The mountain-tops that lift themselves to the stars are barren, and few springs find their rise there. It is in the lowly valleys that the flowers grow and the rivers run. And it is they who are humble and lowly in heart to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weil as he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words; yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him, as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... than he could have entertained for one horrible instant the thought of sullying what God had made so white. He had a bitter scorn of that word security, so soon as it had flashed unspoken through his mind; he cursed his own soul for the contemptible thought. And in his self-abasement, he was heroic, unconsciously, as heroes are. He was to die, but it was for honour's sake, and not for any foul wrong ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... thought of him that obsessed her. A liar, always. Why not now? Men of his kind were unusual to women of hers, but even in the midst of his confession—as near self-abasement as a man of his type could come, the note of egotism rang clear above the graceful phrases—too graceful to be anything but manufactured in that clear ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... and profaneness sat in the high places. If Charles Stuart and his courtiers ever came back to London they would return sobered and chastened, taught wisdom by adversity. The Puritan spirit would reign once more in the land, and an age of penitence and Lenten self-abasement would succeed the orgies of the Restoration; while the light loves of Whitehall, the noble ladies, the impudent actresses, would vanish into obscurity. Angela's loyal young heart was full of faith in the King. She was ready to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... nervous agitation, she unconsciously opened a book of her father's that lay upon the table,—the words that caught her eye in it, seemed almost made for her present state of acute self-abasement:— ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all his shamelessness, his pensiveness, his elegance, I felt that somehow our national triumph was not complete in him,—that there were yet more finished forms of self-abasement in the Old World, till one day I looked out of the window and saw at a little distance my veteran digging a cellar for an Irishman. I own that the spectacle gave me a shock of pleasure, and that I ran down to have a nearer view of what human eyes have ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... resort to another. Here, a certain varnish of necessary politeness restrains the throng of men; they are all armed and in the flush of physical power; they dash their thousands against impregnable and exciting gambling combinations at the tables. With no feeling of self-abasement, leading officials, merchants, bankers, judges, officers, and professional men crowd the royal El Dorado. Here they relax the labors of the day with every distraction known ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... figure veiled and motionless, yet instinct with glad life, every vein throbbing with love and thankfulness—to the arms of her husband, more joyful, and at the same time, in the middle of his joy, more full of yearning sorrow and self-abasement than ever ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... us, and I acknowledge I am one of the many, have developed a form of ascetic mania for self-abasement, a desire for truth which knows no limits in the dissection of its own condition and the disclosure of social and personal shortcomings and disadvantages. This tendency may be easily discerned in much ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... the distinction of being the sole individual learned and powerful in the Gospel, all others to be insignificant and useless, he would willingly do it; he would be glad could he alone be regarded as Mister Smart. At the same time he affects deep humility, great self-abasement, and preaches of love and faith. But he would take it hard had he, in practice, to touch with his little finger what he preaches. This explains why the world is so filled with fanatics and schismatics, and why every man would master and outrank all others. Such as these are haughtier ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... offence' itself, beside which all others were comparatively venial: where there was physical purity, must not all other virtues follow in its wake? All other failings were invisible under the dazzling veil of that great loveliness; and in his self-abasement ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... occasion, with feelings of timorous self-abasement, he ventured to remonstrate with his friend, but the effort was repelled. Possibly the thought of another reproof from Phil was the cause of Aspel's decision not to look him up ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... gaze away from the blinking light in the hills, a queer, guilty smile on her lips. The wistful, shamed smile faded as she looked upon the couple who had given her so much trouble a week ago. She felt, with a hot flash of self-abasement, as if she was morally responsible for the consequences that seemed likely to attend ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... of marvelling and rapture, with chill of self-abasement. When, years ago, he saw Irene in the dress of ceremony, she seemed to him peerlessly radiant; but it was the beauty and the dignity of one still girlish. What he now beheld was the exquisite fulfilment of that bright promise. He had not erred in worship; she who had ever been to him ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... According to him man, in a lifetime, is characterized by the following tendencies: Fear, anger, sympathy, affection, play, imitation, curiosity, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, self-assertion (leadership), self-abasement, rivalry, envy, jealousy, pugnacity, clannishness, the hunting and predatory instincts, the migratory instinct, love of adventure and the unknown, superstition, the sex instincts, which express themselves ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... Romish penances, satisfactions, and work-righteousness. Says Luther in the Smalcald Articles: "Here, too, there was no faith nor Christ, and the virtue of the absolution was not declared to him, but upon his enumeration of sins and his self-abasement depended his consolation. What torture, rascality, and idolatry such confession has produced is more than can be related." (485, 20.) The chief parts of Christian doctrine but little taught and nowhere correctly ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... some reason he had no objection whatever to servility in a nice-looking maid—indeed, rather enjoyed it. But now, in the person of Joseph, he saw that there were human or half-human beings born to self-abasement, and that, if their destiny was to be fulfilled, valetry was a necessary institution. He had no pity for Joseph, no shame in employing him. He scorned Joseph; and yet his desire, as a man-about-town, to keep Joseph's esteem, was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... And Ernest,—with what deep self-abasement he acknowledged the errors into which blind passion had led him. With what anguish he reflected on the disgraceful charge he had brought against me. Yes; even with tears, he owned his injustice and madness, and begged ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the most selfish motives, as he was able to take care of me. I find that sea-sickness develops the worst part of one's character with startling rapidity, and, as far as I am concerned, I look back with self-abasement upon my callous indifference to the sufferings of others, and apathetic absorption in ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... self-sacrifice seems best, then we should practice that; while if self-assertion seems best, then we should assert ourselves. The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self-abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe subjection is woman's duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or to many men. Women have the right of independence, of conscience, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... "Why didn't you tell me? The nights are cold in these northern latitudes even in summer, and I'm a proper chump to have allowed you to sit still so long." He clucked his tongue in self-abasement. "You're chilled right through." ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... her, but which she had not noticed at the time. She brushed the vision aside haughtily, as she would have done had the man himself intruded. But she could not stem so easily the wave of self disgust that swept her back from this other man, a prince of Europe. And when she smothered that self-abasement, it was a matter of will. She recalled her interview with the Sphinx in the Tuileries. She recalled her country, and the empire she meant to win, a gift to France, worthy of Napoleon, of the Great Napoleon. Then her will became as a master outside ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... equalled or surpassed, the ecstasies of St. Theresa, or of St. Hildegardis, or any other sweet dreamer of sweet dreams; have founded a new order of charity, have enriched the clergy of a whole province, and have died in seven years, maddened by alternate paroxysms of self-conceit and revulsions of self-abasement. Her own preachers and class-leaders, indeed (so do extremes meet), would not have been sorry to make use of her in somewhat the same manner, however feebly and coarsely: but her innate self-respect and modesty had preserved her from the snares of such ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... frightened every time he throws the lead. There is nothing to be frightened at. This is a manly world we live in. Our reverence is good for nothing if it does not begin with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from that as its basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of climate. Whether the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... obligation to attend to little things, the impossibility of escaping from duty, the inability to choose or change one's religion, an interference with the enjoyment of life, a melancholy view of the world, sense of sin, horror at guilt, apprehension of punishment, dread, self-abasement, depression, anxiety, and endeavor to be at peace with heaven, and error and absurdity in the methods chosen for the purpose. Such, too, had been the idea of the Epicurean Velleius, when he shrunk with horror from the "sempiternus dominus" and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... own accord the laurelwater provided by the elder Magny, more violent means of death would be instantly employed upon him, and that a file of grenadiers was in waiting in the courtyard to despatch him. Seeing this, Magny, with the most dreadful self-abasement, after dragging himself round the room on his knees from one officer to another, weeping and screaming with terror, at last desperately drank off the potion, and was a corpse in a few minutes. Thus ended this wretched ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... laughter to the heart of God. Deacon Phoebe is one trait in a gentleman. Sidney Carton is of the same sort, save that the hero element stands more apparent. His is a larger field, a more attractive background, thus throwing his figure into clearer relief. Deacon Phoebe was the self-abasement of humility, Sidney Carton is the supreme surrender of love; but the end of both is service. There ought to be a gallery in our earth from which men and women might lean and look on nobilities like Sidney Carton. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... had the chances which had come to him, if she could have gone to Smith, for instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have come out of the mill a finished little product, clever, adaptable, and not a gawky, under-nourished, over-strenuous bumpkin like himself. In the depths of his self-abasement, Scott Brenton did not hesitate to ply himself with ugly adjectives. Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards the removal of his doubts concerning ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Lieutenant Bray. This is not self-abasement; it is not the parading of misfortune. It is because you have made the mistake of loving me. If you care less for me now than you did before, you will spread ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... knowing what happiness really meant than she ever had before. What a wonderful thing is the love of a woman in its simplicity and strength, and how it gilds all the poor and common things of life and even finds a joy in service! The prouder the woman the more delight does she extract from her self-abasement before her idol. Only not many women can love like Jess, and when they do almost invariably they make some fatal mistake, whereby the wealth of their affection is wasted, or, worse still, becomes a source of misery or shame to themselves ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... specifications that would invest them in their naturally hideous colors, beneath the searching light of God's holy and spiritual law, wear the lovely garb of unfeigned humility. The reader, coming to such self-condemnatory clauses, is struck with admiration at the saintly writer's marvellous self-abasement, only lamenting that he should, in the excess of his lowly-mindedness, have written such, bitter things against himself, at a time when he was grieving, resisting, almost quenching the Holy ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... girl closed the avenues of sympathy and consolation, and shut herself up with her own corroding thoughts, for the transient feelings of humility and self-abasement had passed away with the low, sweet echoes of the voice of Clinton, leaving nothing but the sullen memory of her grief. And yet the hope that he still loved her was the vital spark that sustained and warmed her. His last words ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... insulting you. If he reformed, you'd give him up at once and cease to love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there's a great deal of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from pride.... I am too young and I've loved you too much. I know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am going far away, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... latter signification of the term, is that soberness of mind which teaches a man not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, and should be distinguished from humility, because humility is a kind of self-abasement. A modest man often conceives a great plan, and tenaciously adheres to it, conscious of his own strength, till success gives it a sanction that determines its character. Milton was not arrogant when he suffered a suggestion of judgment to escape him that proved a ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... ascetic Durvasa, following the bent of his own will, arrived at the city of the Kurus with ten thousand disciples. And seeing the irascible ascetic arrived, Duryodhana and his brothers welcomed him with great humility, self-abasement and gentleness. And himself attending on the Rishi as a menial, the prince gave him a right worshipful reception. And the illustrious Muni stayed there for a few days, while king Duryodhana, watchful of his imprecations, attended on him diligently by day and night. And sometimes the Muni would ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... know him, or whose interest it was to make the most of the advantage given them. They seem to have expected that the picture which they presented of their friend's transparent sincerity and singleness of aim, manifested amid so much pain and self-abasement, would have touched readers more. They miscalculated in supposing that the proofs of so much reality of religious earnestness would carry off the offence of vehement language, which without these proofs might naturally be thought to show mere random ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... self-abasement Frank failed to take into the accounting the stupendous effect which the New York influences and the handling of great affairs had had upon his own character. Day by day he had learned more plainly the lessons of responsibility, of continued and concentrated action, and even McDermott himself ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... at the depth of Sahwah's self-abasement. "Cheer up, sister," she said kindly, "it's not as bad as all that. You were thoughtless, that was all, for I will not believe that you were ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... had been startled into knowledge, the whole truth must be confronted, the better to be combated;—the truth that she loved him—with everything in her—with every thought, every instinct of soul and body. Nay, more, in the very teeth of her shame and self-abasement, she knew that she was glad and proud to have loved him, and no lesser man, even though the fair promise of her womanhood were doomed to go down ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Greek civilisation was the problem of freedom, the realisation of self-dependence and self-determination. In the pursuit of these ends Greece garnered conclusions which are the undying possessions of the world. If to the graces of self-abasement, meekness and charity it remained a stranger, it gave a new worth to the individual, and showed that without the virtues of wisdom, courage, steadfastness and justice man could not attain to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... once know what it is to be consumed, harried, driven by a deep, inextinguishable, unassuageable craving to write a song. You 'll never know the heartburn, the unrest, the conscience-sickness, the self-abasement that I know when I 'm not writing one, nor the glorious anguish of exhilaration when I am. I can get no conception of your state of mind—any more than a nightingale could conceive the state of mind of a sparrow. In a sparrowish ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... in self-abasement, and beat his chest with his great fists. But Grom, who would allow no dissensions in ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... stamped with all the honesty of conviction, and her own creed taught that such a degree of spiritual elevation might be attained; while her father listened with a sad admiration, not unmixed with self-abasement and almost envy. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... and degradations, the impulse manifestly came not from above, but from the mistaken imaginings of an over-wrought mind encased in a frail and delicate frame; and these morbid fancies were based on her intense passion for self-abasement. We must remember that at this critical time, when she most needed counsel, she had really no one to guide her—no one, that is, who possessed ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... reception-room and stood for an instant looking at Olga. He showed that he, too, had suffered during the night. His face was white and drawn. When he saw Olga standing there, a mute statue of despair, he was filled with pity for her and self-abasement. He stepped quickly to her side, caught her hands ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... long since announced that he was superior to plain virtues, and the list of his paramours was daily growing longer and better known. But all this self-abasement on the part of Josephine and all the self-indulgence of Napoleon could not do more than postpone the judgment day. "My enemies," the Emperor was accustomed to cry out—"my enemies make appointments at my tomb." He could not rest content with an empire for himself which he knew would ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... resigned to the will of God. "Prayer is the only key that will open the door of difficulty." The king fasted for a whole week and was assiduous in his devotions. One night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than the sun and the envy of a pert. He clasped her in his embrace, exclaiming, "There is no strength, no power, save in God!" and he felt assured in his heart that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... polluted thing! you go from my presence never to return. Hold! not just yet, I have a parting word to say before you leave. I confess, with self-abasement, that I once loved you, and with deep humiliation, amounting to agony, that that love was the cause of my ruin. The vail is now torn from my eyes, and I behold you as you are, a corrupted, debased, unfeeling demon, in the human form; and I would not even touch ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... magic crystal of her mother's words, absolutely, helplessly foolish. It is difficult for a genie in a bottle to look contrite or stricken with anything deeper than astonishment; nor is it practicable in such a situation to fall upon one's knees,—if a genie were to feel such an impulse of self-abasement. It was perhaps a comfort to all concerned, including a new-comer, that Imogen should be reduced to the silence of sheer stupefaction; and as Sir Basil appeared among them it was not at him, after her first wide glance, that ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of his love and rage and self-abasement. He had failed; he was too weak to do the deed. But God—Would God permit ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... and do nothing but what is wicked and base, &c. We may also say, that a man thinks too meanly of himself, when we see him from excessive fear of shame refusing to do things which others, his equals, venture. We can, therefore, set down as a contrary to pride an emotion which I will call self-abasement, for as from self-complacency springs pride, so from humility springs self-abasement, which I ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... moment you understand why men were glad to give up their lives and their fortunes for the sake of their kings, and you would be glad to drop on your knee or perform some act of self-abasement to relieve your own feelings. If these are the sensations that attack men when ordinary-looking people in ordinary-looking costumes come into the apartment, how much greater must the effect be after the long theatrical preparation which the Sultan ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... right tack, both nautically and spiritually. Whatever view we take of this tale (storms being frequent, and fervent prayers of the righteous availing much), the historic peep into King Henry's mind is worth our notice. The simplicity and self-abasement of his ejaculation shew a more religious mind than some would ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... shadowy existence in another world inspires in him no pleasing hope. He displays no trace of the faith in the supernatural which accompanies the Christian hope of happy immortality. He contains none of the expressions of yearning for communion with the divine, of self-abasement in the presence of the eternal, which belong to Christian poetry. The flights of his muse rarely take him into the realm of a divine love and providence. His aspirations are for things achievable in this world: for faithfulness in friendship, for enduring ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... was actually cheered by the Committee. One sentence of common sense brought the absurd embroilment to a rational conclusion. Mr. Hill saw his mistake; begged that no further evidence might be taken; and, at the next sitting of the House, withdrew his charge in unqualified terms of self-abasement and remorse. Lord Althorp readily admitted that he had acted "imprudently as a man, and still more imprudently as a Minister," and stated that he considered himself bound to accept Sheil's denial; but he could not manage so to frame his remarks as to convey to his hearers ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the other, she had a keen appreciation of the applause which the sacrifice of her fortune and her acts of piety had gained for her. Mortal vanity takes many shapes. Sometimes it arrays itself in silk and jewels; sometimes it walks in sackcloth, and speaks the language of self-abasement. In the convent, as in the world, the fair devotee thirsted for admiration. The halo of saintship glittered in her eyes like a diamond crown, and she aspired to outshine her sisters in humility. She was as sincere as Simeon Stylites on his column; and, like him, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... and barren speculations; to persistently withdraw our thoughts from the unknowable, the inevitable, and the irreparable; to concentrate them on the immediate present and on the nearest duty; to waste no moral energy on excessive introspection or self-abasement or self-reproach, but to make the cultivation and the wise use of all our powers the supreme ideal and end of our lives; to oppose labour and study to affliction and regret; to keep at a distance gloomy thoughts and exaggerated anxieties; 'to see the individual in connection and co-operation ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... face vanished quick, As if blasted, from the casement, And my shame and self-abasement ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... depths of self-abasement when I heard a sound behind me. It was a long breath, quite audible, that ended in a groan. I gripped the parapet and listened, while my heart pounded, and in a ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
