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More "Aspire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... masterly treatises on the subject which have from time to time appeared, or to take the place of exhaustive histories, such as that of Professor Leonello Venturi on the Italian primitives. It should but serve to pave the way to deeper and more detailed reading. It does not aspire to give a complete and comprehensive list of the painters; some of the minor ones may not even be mentioned. The mere inclusion of names, dates, and facts would add unduly to the size of the book, and, when without real bearing ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... prejudice had erected round the pulpit, the bar, and the bench. From the same cause there was very little encouragement to acquire property, to seek education, to labor for the graces of cultivated manners, or even to aspire to ordinary respectability, since not even the poor favor of social intercourse with the whites, of participating in the civilities and courtesies of every day ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... her charms, could not aspire to become one of the Forest set, though she had hopes she might be reckoned a descendant from the famous Roses so well known in the reigns of some of our Henrys, Edwards, and Richard III., though she assuredly was ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... to preserve to the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the problem ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... philosophy could never do: it shews the equal dealings of heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it; but if the rich have the advantage of enjoying pleasure here, the poor have the endless satisfaction of knowing what it was once to be miserable, when crowned with endless felicity hereafter; and even though this should be called a small advantage, yet being an eternal ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... in itself, meritorious; and, in common with many sects, he regarded the highest life as the life of the mendicant teacher. His doctrine of poverty passed on into the Church that bears his name, and one of the three vows taken by those who aspire to lead "the angelic life" is the vow of poverty. The mendicant friars of the Middle Ages, the "sturdy beggars," are the lineal descendants of the Eastern mendicants, and are the fruits of the morality taught by Christ. On this ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... away by the general enthusiasm, nodded all sparkling to Compton, and that made his heart beat and his soul aspire. So next over he claimed his rights, and took the ball. Luck still befriended him: he bowled four wickets in twelve overs; the wicket-keeper stumped a fifth: the rest were "the tail," and disposed of for a few runs, and the total was no more ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the radical moisture and fountain-head from whence every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth." To think meanly of one's self, is to sink in one's own estimation as well as in the estimation of others. And as the thoughts are, so will the acts be. Man cannot aspire if he looks down; if he will rise, he must look up. The very humblest may be sustained by the proper indulgence of this feeling. Poverty itself may be lifted and lighted up by self-respect; and it is truly a noble sight to see a poor man hold ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... as Renan says in his posthumous work, that there will always be materialists and spiritualists, inasmuch as it will always be observable on the one hand that there is no thought without brain, while, on the other hand, instincts of man will always aspire to higher beliefs. But this is just what ought to be if religion is true, and we are in a state of probation. And is it not probable that the materialistic position (discredited even by philosophy) is due simply to custom ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... the sempiternal loveliness of figures who stood with raised arms, by the streams of Paradise. It seemed a profanation to turn from these aspirations to the enjoyment of material love, and Evelyn looked at Ulick questioningly. But he said that life only became wrong when it ceased to aspire. In an Indian temple, it had once been asked who was the most holy man of all. A young saint who had not eaten for ten days had been pointed out, but he said that the holiest man who ever lived stood yonder. It was then noticed that the man pointed to was drunk ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... ten I was sent to a well-known school at Cheam, in Surrey, the master of which, Dr. Mayo, has turned out some very distinguished pupils, of whom I was not fated to be one; for, after a year or so of futile attempt on my part to learn something, and give promise that I might aspire to the woolsack or the premiership, I was pronounced hopeless; and having declared myself anxious to emulate the deeds of Nelson, and other celebrated sailors, it was decided that I should enter the navy, and steps were taken to send me at once ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... lads of the fancy I needs must aspire To be quite au fait; and I have scarcely seen Of mills half a score, ere I'm fore'd to retire— O thou greenest among all the green ones, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... loudly. Carson's thin face was beaming. Even Mrs. Carson's face had lost some of its tension. Sommers could watch her manner from his position in the upper hall. She was dismissing a minor guest with a metallic smile. 'To aspire to this!' he murmured unconsciously. 'This, the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Midsummer. You may commit a greater evil, to guard against a less which is merely contingent, and may never happen. You may do what you have done a century ago in Ireland, make the Catholics worse than Helots, because you suspected that they might hereafter aspire to be more than fellow citizens; rendering their sufferings certain from your jealousy, while yours were only doubtful from their ambition; an ambition sure to be excited by the very measures which were taken ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... wits to an admiration of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened to by beasts, indeed, stony and beastly people, so among the Romans were Livius Andronicus, and Ennius; so in the Italian language, the first that made it to aspire to be a treasure-house of science, were the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower and Chaucer; after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... admire The snug domestic fire, The comfortable hearth, the glowing coals, Nor in the least aspire To emulate those strong heroic souls Who get up while it's dark And haste to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... images important and useful, but when we come to consider the phenomena of the astral plane we begin to see what an important part is played there by strong mental images or visualized ideas. The better you know what you desire, wish or aspire to, the stronger will be your thought vibrations of that thing, of course. Well, then, the stronger that you are able to picture the thing in your mind—to visualize it to yourself—the stronger will be your actual knowledge and thought-form of that thing. Instead ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... the artless praise, Which due to worth like thine the Muse bestows, Who with prophetic extasy surveys These early wreaths of fame adorn thy brows. Aspire like Nassau in the glorious strife, Keep thy great fires' examples full in eye; But oh! for Britain's sake, consult a life The noblest triumphs are too mean to buy; And while you purchase glory—bear in mind, A prince's truest fame is to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... reminded Kassandane. "A woman must submit with humility to her quiet destiny, and not aspire to imitate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... never dreamed that these pretended warriors, whose bloodless swords had rusted in their scabbards, would attempt to snatch the staff of command from the veteran generals of France; and that nobles who had grown old in sloth and ignorance would aspire to ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of crime, the new methods of identification devised by Bertillon and Anfosso, and all modern aids for the detection and apprehension of criminals, such as rapid communication and publicity, should be utilised in all countries where the police aspire to be ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... to the time when they should be numbered among those brave soldiers, whose arms had maintained for a long series of years the supremacy of the crescent. There was no rank, no dignity in the Turkish army to which a Janissary could not aspire—a strong incentive to the display of bravery. Such was the constitution of the army when it was the most powerful in Europe: then it gained its victories, not by force of numbers, but by superior military discipline and valor. In the middle of the nineteenth century the capture ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... tail in the mud?" "It would rather be alive and wagging its tail in the mud," said the officials. "Begone" said Chung. "The tortoise is a symbol of longevity and great wisdom. It would not befit me to aspire to greater wisdom than the tortoise. I, ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... honors and delights, Distrustful days and sleepless nights, To struggle, suffer and aspire, Like Israel, led by ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... you, my lord," said Varney—"that is, in the case supposed, if such be her disposition; since you think you cannot aspire to become her husband. Her favourite you are, and may remain, if the lady at Cumnor place continues in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting of volcanic fires, with ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... joys in his union with poverty that he held it for proven that one needed only to be a man to aspire after the same happiness, and that the Saracens would be converted in crowds to the gospel of Jesus, if only it were announced to them in all its simplicity. He therefore quitted Portiuncula for this new kind of crusade. It is not known from what port he embarked. It was probably in the autumn ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... from which only a year ago they were wont to sally forth on the passing caravans. When they were exterminated by the government, the head of their chief, with its dangling queue, was mounted on a pole near-by, and preserved in a cage from birds of prey, as a warning to all others who might aspire to the same notoriety. In this lonely spot we were forced to spend the night, as here occurred, through the carelessness of the Kuldja Russian blacksmith, a very serious break in one of our gear wheels. It was too late in the day to walk back the sixteen miles to ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... bright-coloured pigments. The idea of representation fascinates you, but in your case it's representation in oils—or do you practise water-colours and pastel too? You even go much further than I, for I study my art of predilection only in the works of others. I don't aspire to leave works of my own. You're a painter, possibly a great one; but I'm not an actor." Nick Dormer declared he would certainly become one—he was so well on the way to it; and Sherringham, without heeding this charge, went on: "Let me add that, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... scarce and difficultly attainable in Chili, their talents have no opportunity of being developed, and are mostly employed in trifling pursuits; and as the expence of printing is enormous, they are discouraged from literary exertion, so that few among them aspire to the reputation of becoming authors. The knowledge of the civil and canon law is held in high estimation, so that many of the youth of Chili, after completing their academical education in their own country, proceed to Lima to study ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... "Oxford English Dictionary" has not yet unfolded the last of its coils, which yet are ample enough to enfold us in seven words for every three an active man can grapple with. Yet the warning has point, and a particular point, for those who aspire to write poetry: as Francis Thompson has noted in his Essay ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... transition from an order of things in which everything belonged to individuals, to another in which everything was to belong to the nation. That night changed the face of the kingdom; it made all Frenchmen equal; all might now obtain public employments; aspire to the idea of property of their own, of exercising industry for their own benefit. That night was a revolution as important as the insurrection of the 14th of July, of which it was the consequence. It made the people masters of society, as the other had made them masters of the government, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... George upon a thousand points; was always for the advice that seemed palatable to the Prince, no matter if it was good or bad; and seems upon the whole (like the gambler he was all through life) to have had less regard to the chances of the campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire to, if, by any luck, it should succeed. For the rest, he did very well in the field; no one questioned that: for he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to aspire to the second prizes; to be a profound interpreter and commenter, to be a sharp champion and defender, to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is the unfortunate succession of wits which the world hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of all knowledge goeth not on husbanded ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... the beginning, Paine did not aspire to be the political Prometheus of England. He rather looked to the Whig party and to Mr. Burke as the leaders in such a movement. As for himself, a veteran reformer from another hemisphere, he was willing to serve as a volunteer in the campaign against the oppressors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... dreams of going back to England to fill some great railway post, but he had reached his sixties and his dreams were over. Often, when we talked familiarly together, he would say: "Joseph, if you aspire to be a general manager in England you ought never to have come to Ireland. They don't think much on the other side of Irish railways or Irish railway men." This, I daresay, was true, though he, well known, liked and admired as he was, ought to have been ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... ideas and identity of purpose which exist between us might be the trustworthy sign of a spiritual bond which we could not afford to ignore. I feel that without you the joy and power of my life will be incomplete. With you at my side I shall aspire to great things. You are to me the embodiment of what is charming and ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... are a Carol, my boy," he said; "remember that you come of an unalloyed descent, and that your scutcheon bears the motto Cil est nostre; with such arms you may hold your head high everywhere, and aspire to queens. Render grace to your father, as I to mine. We owe it to the honor of our ancestors, kept stainless until now, that we can look all men in the face, and need bend the knee to none save a mistress, the King, and God. This is the greatest of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... in a poet-fire, We see thy woman-heart beat evermore Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire! ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... too, that you make the objects of your pursuit in all cases square with justice. Let your purposes be unvarying, nor be presumptuous to your equals. Beware lest you fall into the company of boisterous talking and strong drinking men, such as aspire to the control of the nation at this day; and, though they may not have been many months in the country, kindly condescend to teach us how to live. Also let those who most busy themselves with making presidents for us keep other company than yours, for their ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... entitled to any more attention than her loveliness and ladylike conduct will command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... laughter of the Turk, Mae Thurston's welcome, experiments in the physics laboratory. And he was sure that he was progressing toward the state of grace in which he might aspire ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... their Lakeland neighbours; for whereas Hawes Junction, which is only about seven miles south of Muker, has an average yearly rainfall of about 62 inches, Mickleden, in Westmorland, can show 137, and certain spots in Cumberland aspire towards 200 ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... worthy hosts, attempt to describe the inexpressible distress which seized my soul at seeing myself thus deserted. There are some philosophers who aspire to triumph over human feelings, and consider all tender affections as disgraceful weaknesses; for my part, I have never pretended to that degree in insensibility. I have, indeed, opposed as criminal that habitual acquiescence in sorrow which renders us unfit for the discharge ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... manifest to the world, where it is held in check by such bonds as have been mentioned. Everyone can see examples of this in potentates and kings who are subject to no such restraints and bonds, but rush on and subjugate provinces and kingdoms so far as they are successful, and aspire to power and glory without limit; and still more strikingly in the Babylon of this day, which has extended its dominion into heaven, and has transferred to itself all the Divine power of the Lord, and continually lusts for more. That such men, when they have entered after ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... object to be attained in these cases is a transfer of the conceptions, notions, or theories of writers from languages which we do not understand to one which we do; and therefore the best translator is he who has absolutely no higher aim than this, and does not aspire to make his task a stalking-horse for his own ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... yet no shadows blur the magic light, The glamour that surrounds the opening date. Illusions yet undashed my soul excite And of success in luring whispers prate. I see myself in form; my thoughts aspire To reach the giddy summit of desire. Lovers and such may sing a roundelay, Whate'er that be, to greet returning May; For me, not much—the season's all too short; I hear the mower hum and scent the fray. Cricket in sooth is Sovran King ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries. Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled about the origin or destiny ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... I aspire to no such elevated and difficult situation. I declare myself not only undesirous of it, but deeply conscious of a constitutional unfitness for it. Age and hygienic necessities bind me to a somewhat anchoritic life in pure air, with abundant leisure to meditate upon ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... eight sergeants, twenty corporals, one hundred and seventeen "first-class policemen," and one hundred and sixteen "policemen" (West Indian negroes without exception, though none but an American citizen could aspire to any white position); not to mention five clerks at headquarters, who are quite worth the mentioning. "Policemen" wore the same uniform as "first-class" officers, with khaki-covered helmet instead of "Texas" ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... has been steadily, calmly, and prosperously advancing its career, a model of order and reason, and the hive from which swarms of industrious, hardy and enlightened yeomen have since spread themselves over a surface so vast, as to create an impression that they still aspire to the possession of the immense regions included in their ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... parties equally, seem to have thought that this would have been the best result for the state. But the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican government, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... trusted they were safe in the haven for half a dozen good years to come. Those who were moved by professional ambition, those whose object was social advancement, those who thought only of upright public service, the keen party of men, the men who aspire to office, the men with a past and the men who looked for a future, all alike found themselves adrift on dark and troubled waters. The secrets of the Bill had been well kept. To-day the disquieted host were first to learn ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... of our history. Milan saw entering its gates, bearing the proud name of King, the same hero who had already been proclaimed conqueror, liberator, peace-maker, and legislator, and who to-day, under his august Empire, assures that greatness to which his victories and his genius permit us to aspire. The Emperor entered by the gate named after his most glorious ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to this ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... in righteousness and holiness, but is created with a capacity of receiving more of God by communion with him. Other creatures have already all they will have,—all they can have,—of conformity to him, but man is made liker than all, and is fitted and fashioned to aspire to more likeness and conformity, so that his soul may shine more and more ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... my other Niece, Sir, (cry'd Friendly.) How! how! presumptious Youth! How are thy Eyes and Thoughts exalted? ha! To Bliss your Majesty must never hope for, (reply'd Goodland.) How now! thou Creature of the basest Mold! Not hope for what thou dost aspire to! Mock-King; thou canst not, dar'st not, shalt not hope it: (return'd Valentine in a heat.) Hold, Val, (cry'd Sir Philip) you grow warm, forget your Duty to their Majesties, and abuse your Friends, by making us suspected. Good-night, dear Philibella, and my Queen! Madam, I am your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... not think we shall pretend to treat you as a conquered people? such a desire could have entered into the heads of none but those who are inimical to our common happiness. We only aspire to see you free and happy; yourselves will frame your own government, choosing that form which is most consistent with your customs, your situation, and your wishes. Consequently, you will constitute a nation as free and ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... care; the vanity of earthly things startles us suddenly, like a new truth; the friends we love drop away from our side into silence; desire fails; the grasshopper becomes a burden; until, at length, we feel that our only love is not here below,—until these tendrils of earth aspire to a better climate, and the weight that has been laid upon us makes us stoop wearily to the grave as a rest and a deliverance. We have, even through our tears, admired that discipline which sometimes prepares the young to die; which, by sharp trials of anguish, and long days ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... labor against adverse fortune—a struggle in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which are now as common to us as air and sunshine, have come from that law of our nature which makes us aspire toward indefinite improvement, enriches each successive generation by the labors of the last, and, in free countries, often lifts the child of the laborer to a place among the rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the mother ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... impression, which rather expresses itself by silent and passionate actions than by ingenious language. In general our literature is not characteristic of our national manners[23]. We are much too modest, I had almost said too humble a nation to aspire to tragedies taken from our own history, and bearing the stamp ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the prince replied. "Once, foolishly, I did aspire to rule; but it is long ago. Now they have made a priest of me, and I seek peace only. Can I and my brethren help it if, mutilated though we are, some still wish to use us against the Emperor? I tell you that Irene herself ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... rats which wear their teeth away in gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on the point of touching your sceptre, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... his achievements which was pronounced, and then replaced. "I receive with sincere gratitude the wish to expressed by the Tribunate. I desire no other glory than having completely performed the task impose upon me. I aspire to no other reward than the affection of my fellow-citizens. I shall be happy if they are thoroughly convinced, that the evils which they may experience, will always be to me the severest of misfortunes; that life is dear to me solely for the services which I am to render ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count Dominic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire to the hand of a duchess, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the dews that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters—lone and dead, Their still waters—still and chilly With the snows of the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... girl nearly so much, for she knew no matter how sweet and lovely and good a cat might be, it could only aspire to that honor in catland. She did so hate to hear Mr. Clay called old and poor when he was neither. To her he was brave Harry of the West, ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... "in comparison with this life of realities!" He saw that Lorry, instead of being without ambitions, was inspired by the highest ambitions. "A good son, a good lover, a good workman," thought Arthur. "What more can a man be, or aspire to be?" Before his mind's eyes there was, clear as light, vivid as life, the master workman—his father. And for the first time Arthur welcomed that vision, felt that he could look into Hiram's grave, kind eyes without flinching and without the slightest ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... independence in the sixteenth century against the most formidable regular army in Europe, and also did their fair share of fighting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they have long ceased to aspire to the rank of a military Power. The separation from Belgium in 1830-31 put an end to the Orange policy of creating a powerful Netherland State from Lorraine to the North Sea which could hold its own with either France or Prussia, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... fine thing to be a public character," observed her father; "but even I aspire to some notice from the True Blue next week in consequence of having ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... for purity and peace, go to Nature. She will give you more than ye ask. Ye who long for strength and perseverance, go to Nature. She will train and strengthen you. Ye who aspire after an ideal, go to Nature. She will help you in its realization. Ye who yearn after Enlightenment, go to Nature. She will never ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... dream utterly, and aspire to nothing higher than colonel. It must really be an awful bore to be commander-in-chief. Fancy having to go down to your office every morning, and go into all sorts of questions, and settle all sorts of business. No, I think that, when ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... contempt, give yourself, as we do, wholly to the cultivation of your mind. You have for an example our mother, who is everywhere honoured with the name of learned. Try, as we do, to prove yourself her daughter; aspire to the enlightened intellectuality which is found in our family, and acquire a taste for the rapturous pleasures which the love of study brings to the heart and mind. Instead of being in bondage to the will of a man, marry ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... contentment inough for my selfe, and I hope much benefit for the whole Kingdome; how euer or whatsoeuer it is, it is all your Lordships, vnder the couert of whose fauourable protection if it may finde grace it is the vttermost aime whereunto my wishes aspire, nor shall I feare the malignitie of the curious, for it is not to them but the honest plaine English Husbandman, I intend my labours, vvhose defender you haue euer beene, and for whose Honorable prosperitie both they ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... on the winds of delight, may they beat With their palpitant wings at the hearts of the Young, And in bosoms of Age find as warm a retreat!— Yet sweetest of all of the musical throng, Though least of the numbers that upward aspire, Is the one rising now into wavering song, As I sit in the silence and gaze in ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... can only be achieved through arduous and persevering endeavour. Without a genuinely divine element—without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator—we could not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out of His ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... you are overdoing it. It is quite right that woman should be a mystery to man, but she should not aspire to become a mystery to her sister woman. Are you just making fun, or is there something in all this more ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... that he was more worthy than I. I told myself that I was a country bumpkin, an ignorant clown, and unworthy to aspire to a maiden like Ruth Morton. That I was under a curse, that I dared not leave the Trewinion lands for six months at a time, and that it was better she should love Wilfred. This however, did not satisfy me. Try as I would to stifle it, I ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... Miss Westonhaugh, I neither condescend to call myself primitive, nor aspire to call ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... he had been very unwise—that he had no right to aspire to the hand of the beautiful heiress, for he could offer her nothing but his true heart, and this, he well knew, would be scorned by Violet's ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... their size Measure we men Or things. Wisdom, with eyes Washed in the fire, Seeketh the things That are higher— Things that have wings, Thoughts that aspire. ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... and lift me higher, Josephine! From the Eternal Hills hast thou not seen How I do strive for heights? but lacking wings, I cannot grasp at once those better things To which I in my inmost soul aspire. Lean down ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a more lofty career," said the old gentleman. "You aspire to the senate: and to literary honours. You wield the poet's pen, sir, and move in the circles of fashion. We keep an eye upon you at Clavering. We read your name in the lists of the select parties of the nobility. Why, it was only the other day that my wife was remarking ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exercises. My father did not altogether discourage such acquirements, whether mental or personal. He had too much good sense not to perceive, that they sate gracefully upon every man, and he was sensible that they relieved and dignified the character to which he wished me to aspire. But his chief ambition was, that I should succeed not merely to his fortune, but to the views and plans by which he imagined he could extend and perpetuate the wealthy inheritance which he ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... suppression of slavery may modify it profoundly. What degrades the free negro to-day, is the existence of the negro slave. To be respectable, we all need to be respected. The poor, free negro is ashamed of himself; he dares not aspire to any thing noble and great; he preserves, besides, as the legacy of slavery, the idea that labor is dishonoring, that idleness is a sign of independence. This is enough to make him remain a stranger to honorable occupations, and confine himself to the practice of vile trades. ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... should sacrifice his future to his present welfare; and in obtaining a power to which it has no claim, it risks that authority which is rightfully its own. When a religion founds its empire upon the desire of immortality which lives in every human heart, it may aspire to universal dominion: but when it connects itself with a government, it must necessarily adopt maxims which are only applicable to certain nations. Thus, in forming an alliance with a political power, religion augments its authority over a few, and forfeits ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... woman present who regarded Madame with a friendly eye, nor a man who did not aspire to become her devoted slave. She brought an atmosphere of unreality with her, dominating old and young alike by virtue of her splendid pagan beauty. The lawn, with its very modern appointments, became as some garden of the Golden House, a pleasure ground ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... it the more. I have suppressed many details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced me to undertake ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... accorded to it after the rejection of all such peccant poems. As already intimated, I have not in a single instance excised any parts of poems: to do so would have been, I conceive, no less wrongful towards the illustrious American than repugnant, and indeed unendurable, to myself, who aspire to no Bowdlerian honours. The consequence is, that the reader loses in toto several important poems, and some extremely fine ones—notably the one previously alluded to, of quite exceptional value and excellence, entitled Walt Whitman. I sacrifice them grudgingly; ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... regal head as if the earth belonged to her, he really saw no reason why he, with his qualifications of comparative youth, good looks (his sort of good looks), and notorious pulpit eloquence, should not aspire to rush in where so many feared to tread. His rush had been checked at the outset, but he was still unaware of the nature of the barrier that Deb held rigid between them. He continued to gaze at her with his ardent little black eyes as if no barrier were there. And it was because he ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... holiday amusement; our puppets to admire, and greasy poles to climb for prizes by men who have been prudently required first to declare and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must be very useful. There are our water tournaments at St. Cloud and at Boulogne-sur-Seine; where they who have informed the police of their combative propensities, may thrust at each other with long-padded poles from boats which are being rowed forcibly into collision. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... for me, and on the assurance of my faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... came over her that she could not aspire to aristocracy and allow negro hall-boys to send men up in the elevator and telephone her afterward. She snatched up the telephone ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... have you to make? And if you had any that were worthy of the least attention of so great a monarch, what proportion could they bear to the favor you would ask? Therefore, reflect well on what you are about, and consider, that you aspire to an object which it is impossible for you ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the brilliant aspire To sing what I gaze on in vain, For sorrow has torn from my lyre The string ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... pleaseth she all those approaching nigh her, * * * * * Which goeth saying to the soul, 'Aspire!'" ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... voice which had become natural to him since his illness began; "my love for you proved too strong to be restrained just now: but believe me, I had fully made up my mind never to open my lips to you on the subject; for what right have I, a helpless, and, I fear, hopeless, invalid, to dare to aspire—" ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... at their backs neither people nor army; the English had been able to accomplish a revolution; the Fronde failed before the dexterous prudence of Mazarin and the queen's fidelity to her minister. In vain did the coadjutor aspire to take his place; Anne of Austria had not forgotten the Earl of Strafford.—Cardinal de Retz learned before long the hollowness of his hopes. On the 19th of December, 1652, as he was repairing to the Louvre, he was arrested by M. de Villequier, captain of the guards on duty, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... stories. On a perusal of those that Mr. RICHARD DEHAN has collected in volume form under the title of The Cost of Wings (HEINEMANN), I am bound to record my conviction that most of them are profoundly unworthy of the author of The Dop Doctor. Few of them even aspire to anything beyond "first serial" quality; and though there is often present a certain easy flippancy of phrase it impressed me only as the crackling of thorns in a pot-boiler. Perhaps the best is the first or title tale, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... room in the cabin to my mother and sister, and slept and lived with me. Most of all he cheered us by the lofty, spiritual words with which he bade us look with contempt upon the troubles of life and aspire after immortal happiness. Yes, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... opportunities when the dictates of justice may be unrelentingly enforced, and the beauty of the inner mind substantiated in the outward act;—for a visible standard to look back upon; for a point of realized excellence at which to aspire; a monument to record;—for a charter to fasten down; and, as far as it is ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed. She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, Not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... songs. They had no horses, but assembled in their canoes, racing and betting precisely as the Cheyenne lads run horses at sunset in the valley of the Lamedeer. All about the village the grass was rich and sweet, uncropped by any animal, for these poor fishermen do not aspire to the wonderful wealth of owning a horse. They had heard that cattle were coming over the trail and all inquired, "Spose when Moos-Moos come?" They knew that milk and butter were good things, and some of them had hopes of ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... purpose? Men say strange things concerning the extent of his communications with other beings, whom our fathers worshipped with prayer and sacrifice. I am determined, however, to know the road by which he climbs so high and so easily towards the point to which all men aspire at court, and it will go hard but he shall either share his ladder with me, or I will strike its support from under him. Thee, Hereward, I have chosen to assist me in this matter, as the knights among these Frankish infidels select, when going upon an adventure, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... insensible, illustrious madam; but mousing owls and bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic as is found in ye downy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... part they may have played in the development of character in the past, they seem doomed to play less and less part in the future. Poetry and religion, so called, seem doomed to play less and less part in the life of the race in the future. We shall still dream and aspire, but we shall not tremble and worship as in ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... in society into which they could not gain entrance before. Now, if you marry Stanley Ginsling, as he is first cousin to Lord Fitzjinkins, we will have the entree to society to which they dare not aspire; and then the airs of superiority can be ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... passion of the father of Emilius. It had prompted him to aspire to every distinction granted to the successful by the state, but it had not gifted him with the powers requisite to turn his aspirations in any instance into acquisitions. He passed through existence ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... critics are right who hold that Art is exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to Life, and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For there is poetry everywhere; ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... sense to a wondrous degree; Your old-fashion'd faith does but fetter the mind, And it 's wrong not to seek to be free." Says the sage Politician, "Your natural share Of talents would raise you much higher, Than thus to crawl on in your present low sphere, And it 's wrong in you not to aspire." ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... inquiry, they are nevertheless radically different, as well as easily distinguishable, from each other. It is the favorite doctrine of the Positive school in France that the knowledge of "causes" is utterly interdicted to man, and that the only science to which he should aspire consists exclusively in the knowledge of "phenomena," and their cooerdination under "general laws." M. Comte explicitly avows this doctrine, and Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes give it their implied sanction.[189] According to their theory, all Science is limited to "the laws of the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms and caves and Titan woods, 10 With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, 15 Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their still waters, still and chilly With the snows of the lolling ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... 'it is no such easy matter, Harmonides, to become a public character, or to gain the prestige and distinction to which you aspire; and if you propose to set about it by performing in public, you will find it a long business, and at the best will never achieve a universal reputation. Where will you find a theatre or circus large enough to admit ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Venetian constitution, in an individual who aspired to a post so eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and mitres and official seals, which were periodically apportioned to them, the Marney family did not aspire to the somewhat graceless office of being their distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in their order; and promotion to the highest class. They observed that more than one of the other great "civil and religious liberty" families,—the families who in one century ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Cupid, which doth aspire to be god of Desire, Swears he "gives lawes; That where his arrows hit, somejoy, some ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... and the transmutations of matter; if life is, in reality, but a brief and passing moment, eternally repeated, from the flush of youth, "the gilded salon to the bier and the shroud, then why, O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" Why aspire to penetrate the inward realities of life and enter the Holy of Holies—to seek and find out God? As the rushing torrent of this thought swept o'er the mental chambers of the soul and saturated the spirit with its icy sting, as it lay still chained within the prison house of matter, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... wheel. What were they, these figures? I knew not, and yet gazing upon them, thought which took no words to clothe itself mutely read their meaning. Here were the culminations of the human, towering images of the good and evil man may aspire to. I looked at the face of the evil adept. His bright red-brown eyes burned with a strange radiance of power; I felt an answering emotion of pride, of personal intoxication, of psychic richness rise up within me gazing upon him. His face was ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... wonder, for you see it's a poll-cat." This noted baronet was, in the metropolis, a retailer of brick-dust; and, his Garrat honours being supposed to be a means of improving his trade and the condition of his ass, many characters in similar occupations were led to aspire to the same distinctions. ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... of course, I shall be grateful to them for their kindly interest. Then, the next year I shall devote to music, and if, by practising for nine hundred hours, I cannot acquire a good degree of facility in manipulating a piano or a violin, I must be too dull to ever aspire to the favor of Terpsichore. If I but measure up to my hopes during this year I shall be saved the expense of buying my music ready-made. The next year I shall devote to art, and by spending one entire evening with a single artist I shall thus become acquainted ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Johannes, in Victoria, is of humble birth, which counts in extenuation of his unmannerly frankness in early years. Later he becomes a poet, and as such is exempt in some degree from the conventional restraint imposed on those who aspire to polite society. All these well-chosen characters are made to serve the author's purpose as channels for poetic utterance that might otherwise seem irrelevant. The extent to which this is done may be seen from the way in which Hamsun lets ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... in America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life as a drummer. Public life and the Church offer honourable careers; and both of them have traditional affinities with literature. So has the Law, still in England a profession and not a trade. One may even be a don or a schoolmaster without serious ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... beyond that which you see around you, if they have been to you the hints of a wonder and glory beyond what visits you now, you must not call them silly, for they are just what the scents of Paradise borne on the air were to Adam and Eve as they delved and spun, reminding them that they must aspire yet again through labour into that childhood of obedience which is the only paradise of humanity—into that oneness with the will of the Father, which our race, our individual selves, need just as much ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... seemed too good for them, and as if thrown among them from association. There was no doubt that he and Bertha were much in love, but there was sure to be strong opposition from her father, and even her brother had shown symptoms of thinking his friend had no business to aspire to his sister's hand. Moreover, it appeared afterwards that the Captain was heavily in debt to Arthur Morton. It was under these circumstances that the accident occurred. Bertha had mistrusted the horse's eye and ear, and implored her brother not to venture on driving it, and had been bantered ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is obvious;—they who, like Mr. Sheridan, aim only to be men of wit, lie a bed; while they who, like Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Burke, and a very few others, aspire to be men of wisdom, rise with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... among the priests, to whom we owe 'Les Relations des Jesuites,' among other less notable productions. The Roman Catholic Church, being everywhere a democracy, the humblest habitant might enter its ranks and aspire to its highest dignities. Consequently we find the pioneers of that Church, at the very outset, affording the Canadian an opportunity, irrespective of birth or wealth, of entering within its pale. But apart from this class, there was no inducement ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... dearest young lady, that worldly joy claims no kindred with the joys we are bid to aspire after. These latter we must be fitted for by affliction and disappointment. You are therefore in the direct road to glory, however thorny the path you are in. And I had almost said, that it depends upon yourself, by your patience, and by your resignedness to the dispensation, (God enabling you, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... injuries to which they are not accustomed, and on seeing them inflicted before their very eyes; and where least inclined for reflection, rush with the greatest heat to action. The Athenians are the very people of all others to do this, as they aspire to rule the rest of the world, and are more in the habit of invading and ravaging their neighbours' territory, than of seeing their own treated in the like fashion. Considering, therefore, the power of the state against which we are marching, and the greatness of ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole? But he may perhaps aspire to know at least the parts to which he bears some proportion. But the parts of the world are all so related and linked to one another, that I believe it impossible to know one without the other and ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... is so precious, and death on the wing, Oh! shelter me, Jesus, secure from his sting; Now open the fountain, and wash out my stain, That to live may be Christ, and to die may be gain. This, this is the honour to which I aspire, The grace to attain it is all I desire; Oh! fill me with heaven, through faith in Thy blood, Then crown me with glory, and ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... Duke says the King purposes to forbid any of their ships coming into the river. The Duke also told us of several Christian commanders (French) gone over to the Turks to serve them; and upon inquiry I find that the King of France do by this aspire to the Empire, and so to get the Crown of Spayne also upon the death of the King, which is very probable, it seems. Back to St. James's, and there dined with my Lord Barkeley and his lady, where Sir G. Carteret, Sir W. Batten, and myself, with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... all this fury leading to? What does this heroism aspire to? This force of will, bitter and strained, grows faint when it has reached its goal, or even before that. It does not know what to do with its victory. It disdains it, does not believe in it, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Plato, that the government of our flocks and herds is always committed to beings of a superior species; and that the conduct of nations requires and deserves the celestial powers of the gods or of the genii. From this principle he justly concluded, that the man who presumes to reign, should aspire to the perfection of the divine nature; that he should purify his soul from her mortal and terrestrial part; that he should extinguish his appetites, enlighten his understanding, regulate his passions, and subdue ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... improve, And antedate the bliss above. This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. When the full organ joins the tuneful quire, Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear; Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire, While solemn airs improve the sacred fire; And angels lean from Heav'n to hear. Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell, To bright Cecilia greater pow'r is given; His numbers rais'd a shade from Hell, Hers ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... The ways they wait in, Whose spirits greaten And hearts aspire. The world may dwindle, And summer brindle, So love but kindle ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... if, being a Christian, from weakness he enters into marital relations with the ceremonies of the church, or without them, he has no other alternative than to abide with his wife (and the wife with her husband, if it is she who is a Christian) and to aspire together with her to free themselves of their sin. This is the Christian view of marriage; and there cannot be any other for a man who honestly endeavors to shape his life in accordance ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... had written these lines, she summoned a youthful esquire, who had been a page in the service of her father. 'Saddle thy steed,' said she, 'and if thou dost aspire to knightly honor, or hope for lady's grace—if thou hast fealty for thy lord, or devotion to his daughter—speed swiftly upon my errand. Rest not, halt not, spare not the spur; but hie thee day and night until thou reach ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... a reason for his present attack upon Roosevelt, that he did not wish to give him (Roosevelt) an opportunity to plead that no defense of the Third Term tradition had been made in 1912 should he aspire to another term in 1916. Asked as to how he reconciled his act with the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," he replied that, "religion is the fundamental law of human order, but to kill to try and do a good thing, and to avenge McKinley's murder, ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... you that I was fit for nothing except to play the lute beneath a lady's window. But if you will believe me, I am not without business knowledge. Gentleman as I am, I have long cherished an ambition to become a merchant prince (it is well to aspire high),—a genuine merchant-prince, however, and not the counterfeit article who accumulates millions for his children to squander. I have views upon the subject. I am an idealist, as I have told you, and there was a time when I thought my ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... to follow, Through the labyrinth of night! Clod of clay with heart of fire, Things that burrow and aspire, With the vanishing desire, For the perishing delight,— Only the old clue to follow, Through the labyrinth ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... are a fisherman, and aspire to the study or conquest of the big game of the sea, go to Catalina Island once before it is ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... painting, his work mostly differs but little from his imagination, which is generally somewhat worse; for if he knew how to imagine well or in a masterly manner in his fantasy, he could not have a hand so corrupt as not to show some part or indication of his good will. But no one has ever known how to aspire well in this science, except the mind which understands what good work is, and what he can make of it. It is a serious thing, this distance and difference which exist between the high and ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... much disliked Roscoe Conkling and all his ways. Conkling once said to him: 'If you will join us and act with us, there is nothing in the gift of the State of New York to which you may not reasonably aspire.' To which Wheeler replied: 'Mr. Conkling, there is nothing in the gift of the State which will compensate me for the forfeiture of my own self-respect.'"—Hoar, Autobiography, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... small state; that her population does not exceed half a million of souls; and that more than one half are not of the European race. The facts are so. I know she never can be a great state, and that the only distinction to which she can aspire must be based on the moral and intellectual acquirements of her sons. To the development of these much of her attention has been directed; but this restrictive system, which has so unjustly exacted the proceeds of her ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... expending in useless waste and vain luxuries, the fruits of prosperous labour; they are employed in establishing their sons and in many other useful purposes: strangers to the honours of monarchy they do not aspire to the possession of affluent fortunes, with which to purchase sounding titles, and ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... abilities to the bounty, and all his goodness to the grace of God. May his example extend its influence to his admirers and followers! May those who study his writings imitate his life! and those who endeavour after his knowledge, aspire likewise ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... last we have received intelligence that the king of Navarre has this very day declared himself favourable to the Prince's love, and that a number of fresh troops will reinforce his army, ready to be employed in the service of her to whom his wishes aspire. As for me, I am surprised at their ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... source of all particular acts of transgression,—when he attempts to overcome and extirpate the original and inveterate depravity of his heart,—he feels his bondage more thoroughly than ever. If it is wretchedness for the drunkard to aspire after freedom from only a single vice, and fail of reaching it, is it not the depth of woe, when a man comes to know "the plague of his heart," and his utter inability to cleanse and cure it? In this case, the bondage of self-will ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... ask of your Eminence a favour, it is that you would kindly moderate those anticipations. Would it were in my power to do, what I do not aspire to do! At present certainly I cannot look forward to the future, and, though it would be a good work if I could persuade others to do as I have done, yet it seems as if I had quite enough to do ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... operation in India. If my existence, either officially or corporeally, were prolonged twenty times longer than either of them is likely to be, a Parliamentary system in India is not at all the goal to which I would for one moment aspire. ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... joined the outside of the circle of men who had gathered round Wingrave. He was answering their questions readily enough, if a little laconically. He was quite aware that he occupied in society the one unique place to which princes might not even aspire—there was something of divinity about his millions, something of awe in the tone of the men with whom he talked. Women pretended to be interested in him because of the romance of his suddenly acquired wealth—the men did not trouble to deceive themselves or anyone ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... them he was ignorant, professing no interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries. Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... stories, people had acquired the habit of remaining in the condition in which they were placed; they were not irritated by being obliged to stay in it; the soldier who enlisted did not aspire to become an officer; the young officer of the lower noblesse and of small means did not aspire to the post of colonel or lieutenant-general; a limited perspective kept hopes and the imagination from fruitlessly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... teeth, and replied with great bitterness and emotion: "I think, sir, you are the last man who ought to congratulate yourself on the affliction that has fallen on that unhappy family I aspire to enter, all the more that now they have calamities for ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... unconcern; "is not that the name of your former protege, the love-stricken swain who ventured to aspire to the hand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the lads of the fancy I needs must aspire To be quite au fait; and I have scarcely seen Of mills half a score, ere I'm fore'd to retire— O thou greenest among all the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... superior to deceit; and to be ignorant of this would be to shew myself unworthy of her. The lover should disdain to excite his mistress to any action which he would disapprove in a wife; and this was a rule not to be infringed, by him who should aspire to the noble-minded Olivia. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... am far from deeming myself qualified to compensate her for the loss of property, reputation, and friends. I aspire to nothing but to console her under that loss, and to husband as frugally as I can those few meagre remnants of happiness which shall be left ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Germany and the popular intellect, and the final result was inevitable. Once aware that they were insulted, once enlightened to the full consciousness of the scorn which trampled on them as intellectual and predestined Helots, even the mild-tempered Germans became fierce, and now began to aspire, not merely under the ordinary instincts of personal ambition, but with a vindictive feeling, and as conscious agents of retribution. It became a pleasure with the German author, that the very same works which ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... her counter, sorting silks. Not rich piece silks that are made into gowns; Mrs. Duff's shop did not aspire to that luxurious class of goods; but humble skeins of mixed sewing-silks, that were kept tied up in a piece of wash-leather. Mrs. Duff's head and a customer's head were brought together over the bundle, endeavouring to fix upon a skein of a particular shade, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... has become an ethical preacher. She does not describe life as something outside of herself, nor does she regard human sorrows and sufferings and labors merely as materials for the artist's use; but she lives in and with all that men do and suffer and aspire to. Hers is not the manner of Homer and Scott, who hide their personality behind the wonderful distinctness of their personalities, making the reader forget the author in the strength and power of the characters ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... other respects. The passions of mankind are similar every where; the same instincts are active in the slave and the prince; consequently the history of their effects must ever be the same in every country." It is both mortifying and consolatory to think, that the utmost height to which ambition may aspire, will not exempt one from the polluting agency of "mire and dirt." Death, we see, is not the only leveller ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... mine is! to be torn like this between my desire to rise in the world and my love for a girl in a—in a humbler position than that to which I aspire!" ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... rash verse! and don't abuse A bashful Maiden's ear with news Of her own virtues. She'll refuse Praise sung so loudly. Of that same goodness, you admire, The best part is, she don't aspire To praise—nor of herself desire To think ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... more our patterns are in number, the better seems the chance; until, if we be acting in concert with a whole civilised nation, there are surely a majority of chances that we must be acting right. And again, how true it is that we can never behave as we wish in this tormented sphere, and can only aspire to different and more favourable circumstances, in order to stand out and be ourselves wholly and rightly! And yet once more, if in the hurry and pressure of affairs and passions you tend to nod and become drowsy, here are twenty-four hours of Sunday set apart for you to ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there is no need to become parents and that we live in an age when it is not difficult to avoid becoming a parent. The world is not dying for lack of parents. On the contrary we have far too many of them—ignorant parents, silly parents, unwilling parents, undesirable parents—and those who aspire to the high dignity of creating the future race, let them be as few as they will—and perhaps at the present time the fewer the better—must not refuse the responsibilities of that position, its pains as well ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... he yet remains. Behold his dwelling! this poor hut he hires, Where he from view, though not from want, retires; Where four fair daughters, and five sorrowing sons, Partake his sufferings, and dismiss his duns; All join their efforts, and in patience learn To want the comforts they aspire to earn; For the sick mother something they'd obtain, To soothe her grief and mitigate her pain; For the sad father something they'd procure To ease the burden they themselves endure. Virtues like these at once delight and press On the fond father with a proud ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... to describe the impotent ardour with which these malignant spirits aspire to the honour of being ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... have suppressed many details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced me to ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... at that stage in America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life as a drummer. Public life and the Church offer honourable careers; and both of them have traditional affinities with literature. So has the Law, still in England a profession and not a trade. One may even be a don or a schoolmaster without serious discredit. Under ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... that these pretended warriors, whose bloodless swords had rusted in their scabbards, would attempt to snatch the staff of command from the veteran generals of France; and that nobles who had grown old in sloth and ignorance would aspire to the direction of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... give recognition to the full meaning of the Protestant idea of the worth of the individual soul, and its right to communicate directly with God. It remained for the persecuted Baptists and Independents, too feeble and despised to aspire to state influence, to work out the Protestant principle to its full expression in the spirit of toleration, to declare for liberty of conscience, the voluntary maintenance of worship, and the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... not long; a week is the longest in the city, and after their arrival, little longer in the country, which past they melt like butter, or match a pipe, and so burn. But indeed, most commonly it is the height of their ambition to aspire to the employment of stopping mustard-pots, or wrapping up pepper, powder, staves-aker, &c., which done, they expire. Now for his habit, Wapping and Long Lane will give him his character. He honours nothing with a more endeared ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... love for you proved too strong to be restrained just now: but believe me, I had fully made up my mind never to open my lips to you on the subject; for what right have I, a helpless, and, I fear, hopeless, invalid, to dare to aspire—" ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... discovered, and though at present I must not reveal anything farther to you, I tell you, without hesitation, to set your mind at ease, to pursue your suit towards Lady Laura, if you have really any regard for her, and to aspire to her hand. In a very few months more you shall ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar and near, Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here; Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that the ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... gathering, was a decided success. Every portion of the spacious and elegant building was completely filled. Madame presented herself in that black velvet costume which seems to be the only alternative to white muslin for ladies who aspire to be considered historic. Not Marie Stuart herself could have become it better than Lola Montez. Her face, air, attitude, and elocution are thoroughly and bewilderingly feminine. Perhaps her smartest and happiest remark was the one in which, with a pretty affectation, she says, "If ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Surrey, the master of which, Dr. Mayo, has turned out some very distinguished pupils, of whom I was not fated to be one; for, after a year or so of futile attempt on my part to learn something, and give promise that I might aspire to the woolsack or the premiership, I was pronounced hopeless; and having declared myself anxious to emulate the deeds of Nelson, and other celebrated sailors, it was decided that I should enter the navy, and steps were taken to send ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... toying with fingers at the circus. No more evening walks along the Tiber. No more hiding in chests or jumping from windows. I, the favoured suitor of half the white stoles in Rome, could never again aspire above a freed-woman. You a man of gallantry, and think of such a thing! For shame, my dear Coelius! Do not let ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... yet exactly what she could resolve to accept for the girls—she looked high for them, she owned—she thought she had a right to look high. Girls in fashion should not take the first offers—they should hold up their heads: why should they not aspire to rank, why not to title, as well as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... entirely overlooking the truth or the falsehood of an opinion, appeals to prejudice by the use of an odious name, is unworthy of a serious and candid inquirer after truth, and therefore should be laid aside by all who aspire to ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... superior, he was ready to leave his pillar; nor did he consider this undertaking as any thing great or singular, by which he should appear distinguished from others. By humility he looked upon himself as justly banished from among men and hidden from the world in Christ. No one is to practise or aspire after virtue or perfection upon a motive of greatness, or of being exalted by it. This would be to fall into the snare of pride, which is to be feared under the cloak of sanctity itself. The foundation of Christian perfection is a love of humiliation, a sincere spirit of humility. The heroic practice ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... said he, "I'm sorry, but I cannot possibly accede to your request for the following reasons: First, it would not be fair to my constituents; secondly, it would hardly be seeming to barter the noble gift of the people to which we both aspire; thirdly, you might lose with me out of the way; and fourthly, I'm going to win whether you are in the ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... acknowledged the truth of my impression, and, without explaining the reasons for her conduct, deeply regretted the construction I had been led to place upon the circumstance. Yes, my lord, I felt it necessary to apologize to Emily Moseley for presuming to aspire to the honor of possessing so much loveliness and virtue. The accidental advantages of rank and wealth lose all their importance, when opposed to her delicacy, ingenuousness, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Control of thoughts, and this will lead to Control of actions, the thought being, to the inner eye, the same as the action: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."[197] He must acquire Endurance, for they who aspire to tread "the Way of the Cross" will have to brave long and bitter sufferings, and they must be able to endure, "as seeing Him who is invisible."[198] He must add to these Tolerance, if he would be the child of Him who "maketh His sun to rise on the evil, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... Ten thousand hearts aspire; In this life, sorrow-laden, Thee only they desire; In thee they hope for healing; In thee expect true rest, When thou, their safety sealing, Shalt clasp them ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... thus when Freedom's ills I state, I mean to flatter kings, or court the great: Ye powers of truth that bid my soul aspire, Far from my bosom drive the low desire. And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel 365 The rabble's rage and tyrant's angry steel; Thou transitory flower, alike undone By proud contempt or favor's fostering sun, Still may thy blooms the ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... ground for such a hope, exclaimed, "the state of the Campanians must be desperate indeed, when the highest office shall come to my son." But even this expression, in which the response was turned into ridicule, turned to be true, for those persons whose birth allowed them to aspire to high offices, refusing to accept them when the city was oppressed by sword and famine, and when all hope was lost, Lesius, who complained that Capua was deserted and betrayed by its nobles, accepted the office of chief magistrate, being the last ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... heart on winged wealth, Or unto honour's towers aspire; But give me freedom and my health, And there's the sum of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... claims to fashion in Dublin are judged by the intimacy you affect with the dressmaker, she shook her warmly by the hand, and addressed her as dear Mrs. Symond. To the Christian name of Helen none less than a Countess dare to aspire. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Sally," moans the lady, catching at her dress entreatingly. "As you are hopeful, and I am hopeless; as a fair way in life is before you, which can never, never, be before me; as you can aspire to become a respected wife, and as you can aspire to become a proud mother, as you are a living loving woman, and must die; for GOD'S sake hear ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... utterly, and aspire to nothing higher than colonel. It must really be an awful bore to be commander-in-chief. Fancy having to go down to your office every morning, and go into all sorts of questions, and settle all sorts of business. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to succeed there must be a common vehicle of expression and a common plane of thought. It is for this essential preparation that theoretical study alone can provide; and herein lies its practical value for all who aspire to the higher responsibilities of the ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... but the want of one or more of these will not invalidate the election, nor the union of all four insure it. It must be very pleasant to serve in the compagnie d'elite. They have privileges to which the Line may not aspire. It does not much matter what they do. Their victories make them no enemies, and their defeats raise them up hosts of sympathizers and apologists. When they err gravely, if you hint at the misdemeanor, a "true believer" looks at you indignantly, not to say contemptuously, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... over the heads of guests, occasionally, when he was vehement, throwing his head up, shooting his words at the ceiling as if they had been Greek fire. Now, as he got up to leave her, his eyes dwelt earnestly on her. "It will be a pleasure, to which I shall aspire—that of meeting you again. There ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... no other. His father had been a man of education and talent, drawn from a profession in his earlier manhood to the goldfields, who remained a miner and a poor man to the day of his death. His wife was not able to induce their sons to aspire to anything above the occupations of the class with which they had always associated, so they were miners and stockmen with the rest. But the young men, even as boys, noticed in their mother a refinement and a clearness of intellect that were not characteristic ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... aspire to have a work on the First Philosophy in Boston. I hope, or wish rather. Those that are forward in it debate upon the name. I doubt not in the least its reception if the material that should fill it existed. Through the thickest understanding will the reason throw itself instantly ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... such as is inevitable between a State that has long held something like the first place in the world and a State that feels entitled in virtue of the number of its people, their character and training, their work and their corporate organisation, to aspire to the first place. The German nation by the mere fact of its growth challenges England for the primacy. It could not be otherwise. But the challenge is no wrong done to England, and the idea that it ought to be resented is unworthy of British traditions. It must be cheerfully ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... originality) depending mainly on the same objections, and defending them by the very same critical arguments*, delude themselves with the idea that they have but purified and embalmed Christianity; not aware that they have first made a mummy of it. They are so greedy of paradox, that they, in fact, aspire to be Christians and infidels at the same time. Proclaiming the miracles of Christianity to be illusions of imagination or mythical legends,—the inspiration of its records no other or greater than that of Homer's 'Iliad,' or even 'Aesop's Fables;'—rejecting ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... atmosphere and of the modern regime, the others keep back their sons, retaining them for the world and denying them to the Church; ambition, even low down on the scale, has developed itself and changed its object. No longer do they aspire for their sons to become a cure but a school master, a railroad employee, or a commercial clerk.[5263] It was necessary to go descend further, a lower stratum has to be attained, in order to extract from it the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined resolution, towards that side which already draws too much, by the bias and propensity of the natural temper. It is certain that, while we aspire to the magnanimous firmness of the philosophic sage, and endeavour to confine our pleasures altogether within our own minds, we may, at last, render our philosophy like that of Epictetus, and other Stoics, only a more refined system ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... you, Mr. Yorke, that for a mere penniless adventurer to aspire to a rich woman's ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... murmured. For almost an hour she sat looking fixedly at the unlit logs, hardly conscious of the wasted time. Much might have gone into that hour. There was tea for her at one of the college houses—the hostess had a "day," and went so far as to aspire to the exclusive serving of a certain kind of tinned fancy biscuit every Friday—if she wanted to drop in. This hostess invited favored students to meet the faculty and townspeople on these occasions, and the two latter classes were expected to effect a social fusion with the former—which ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... doubtless already received answers and chosen. There must be so many others looking like herself for a haven of safety, for deliverance from lives that were unendurable. Who was she that she should aspire to this thing? To such a man she could bring but health impaired, but the remnants of her former strength. In a bit of looking-glass she saw her dark-rimmed eyes and deemed that she had lost all such looks as ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... free communities. A polity under which the United States has grown up and flourished, and fought the biggest war which has been fought during the century, and come out of it victorious, and with renewed strength, must, it is felt, be a constitution suited for all nations who aspire to freedom. There is nothing therefore surprising in the fact that Federalism is supposed to be the panacea for all social evils, and all political perplexities, or that it should be thrust upon our attention as the device ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... have dared to aspire to her love—the beautiful, petted daughter of a millionaire, and I only an assistant cashier on a very humble salary—ay, a salary so small that my whole year's earnings is less than the pin money she spends ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... accustomed them from their childhood to judge of the virtues, to enter into the affairs of their countrymen. For if one of them was asked, "Who is a good citizen, or who an infamous one," and hesitated in his answer, he was considered a boy of slow parts, and of a soul that would not aspire to honour. The answer was likewise to have a reason assigned for it, and proof conceived in few words. He whose account of the matter was wrong, by way of punishment had his thumb bit by the Iren. The old men and magistrates often attended these little ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... calls it an immorality and a dishonor, "a playing with loaded dice;" which in good part it surely was. Nor can even Friedrich, who has many pleas for himself, obtain spoken acquittal; unspoken, accompanied with regrets and pity, is all even Friedrich can aspire to. My own impression is, Smelfungus, if candid, would on clearer information and consideration have revoked much of what he says here in censure of Friedrich. At all events, if asked: Where then is the specifical not "superstitious" WANT of "veracity" you ever ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Nature, and on what compulsion must we obey her? The imperative mandates of our own hearts? But what if our hearts are at war with our heads? Are we to follow no higher law than the blind instinct that moves the house-fly? Or will we aspire to the indomitable soul of the mocking-birds that feed their young in captivity until they see they are prisoners for life, and then bring them poisonous spiders that they may die rather than live under such conditions? Shall we give hostages to Nature when ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... of Grenada, heir to the Spanish throne, imprisoned by order of the Crown for fear he would aspire to the throne, was kept in solitary confinement in the old prison at the Palace of Skulls, Madrid. After thirty-three years in this living tomb, death came to his release, and the following remarkable researches, taken from the Bible, and marked with an old nail on the rough walls of his cell, told ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... that God who was at once Father and Son, and who chose for His mother her who was His daughter and handmaiden, I beg you to have mercy upon me!" "Ah, knight!" the maid exclaims, "pay no attention to what this traitor says! May God give thee all the joy and honour to which thou dost aspire, and may He give thee good success in thy undertaking." Then the knight is in a predicament, as he thinks and ponders over the question: whether to present to her the head she asks him to cut off, or whether he shall allow himself to be touched by pity for him. [417] He ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... without offence. Johannes, in Victoria, is of humble birth, which counts in extenuation of his unmannerly frankness in early years. Later he becomes a poet, and as such is exempt in some degree from the conventional restraint imposed on those who aspire to polite society. All these well-chosen characters are made to serve the author's purpose as channels for poetic utterance that might otherwise seem irrelevant. The extent to which this is done may be seen from the way in which Hamsun lets a character in one book enter upon a theme ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... "I aspire to nothing, madam, but your daughter's hand; and even that I will not venture to solicit until you are acquainted ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... world thou burnest in a poet-fire, We see thy woman-heart beat evermore Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire! ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... first she flashed upon his dazzled vision, splendid in a scarlet dinner gown, and carrying her regal head as if the earth belonged to her, he really saw no reason why he, with his qualifications of comparative youth, good looks (his sort of good looks), and notorious pulpit eloquence, should not aspire to rush in where so many feared to tread. His rush had been checked at the outset, but he was still unaware of the nature of the barrier that Deb held rigid between them. He continued to gaze at her with his ardent little black eyes as if no ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... tremble. He himself owns that, if the priest who adjures the demon does not take care, the Devil will change his lodging only to pass into the priest himself, feeling all the more proud of dwelling in a body dedicated to God. Who knows but these simple Devils of Witches and shepherds might even aspire to inhabit an inquisitor? He is far from easy in mind when in his loudest voice he says to the old woman, "If your master is so mighty, why do ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... more friendly with others than with me—I have often said to myself that it is unworthy of a man to allow himself to be subjected by love, unworthy to make a woman the mistress of his thoughts, of his desires; that a man should strive for higher aims, aspire ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... foibles, with which woman has been accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all oppression and injustice practised upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... modest position in life and scanty gains were no grievances. As an artist he must have known his own value; but he probably rested content in the sense of his superlative powers as an executant, and did not aspire to the rank of a great inventor or leader, for which, indeed, he had no vocation. He led a social sort of life among his compeers of the art, was intimate with the sculptor Rustici, and joined a jolly dining-club ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fellow of two or three and twenty aspire to? Anything, everything. He has only to ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of any secret society, association or organization, whatever. Beside the white man at the hospitable board, they cannot, they dare not sit; and to a seat in the white man's parlor, and social converse, they dare not aspire. The carpet of the white man was not spread for them, and around his cheerful hearth, before his crackling fire, there is no place for them. They are not suffered to participate in any of the festivities or amusements of ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... nephews; his dowager was only left with three hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur l'etat—a handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count Dominic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire to the hand of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my Services are paid, In the possession of this Royal Maid, To whom my guilty Heart durst ne'er aspire, But rather chose ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... thinking, Thad, when you belong to a ball club like Scranton High," he said, earnestly. "Now we all know what Nick is, and few fellows like to play in a game where he has any part; but remember that he is one of the high-school students, and on that account has just as much right to aspire to a place on the representative team ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... administrator. It was still more important that his tenure of the praetorship had added him to the ranks of the official nobility. His birth was now no bar to any social distinction to which his simple and resolute soul might think it profitable to aspire: and a family of the patrician Julii was not ashamed to give one of its daughters to the adventurer from Arpinum.[816] Thus Marius remained for a while; to Roman society an interesting specimen ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... friendship with his roommate, John Lothrop Motley. He studied law with Charles Sumner, in the office of Judge Story, a legal star of the first magnitude. He was counted one of the handsomest youths in Boston. There was nothing too bright or too hard for Wendell Phillips to aspire to, or hope for. At the critical moment, when he had to decide upon his future career, ambition sang to him, as to every noble youth. George William Curtis represents Phillips as sometimes forecasting the future, as he saw himself "succeeding Ames, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... his own, and Miriam's image again appeared in all its loftiness and beauty. The thought of gaining this splendid maiden was fairly intoxicating, and he wondered whether he was worthy of her, and if it would not be presumptuous to aspire to the hand of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ascendent ranks would, in this nation at least, secure that, as long as the world lasts, there never would be any formidable commotion, or violent sudden changes. All those modifications of the national economy to which an improving people would aspire, and would deserve to obtain, would be gradually accomplished, in a manner by which no party would be wronged, and all would be ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... again, though it was hoped that Fire Mountain would be reached and the treasure secured before that event occurred. But, save for an ever-growing indignation against the haughty Englishman, for daring to aspire to Ruth LeMoyne's hand, Martin gave the matter small thought; he was ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Tiefel was but a stepping-stone; he was not made for the desk of a counting-house. No heights dazzled him; he saw himself being made a peer or a prince, being granted wide domains by a grateful monarch. He was not too low to aspire to the hand of a king's fair daughter; he was a hero, every inch a hero. Great is the power of beer. Avaunt! ye sallow teetotalers, ye manufacturers ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... investigation, and I shall ever stand ready to respond to the call. But they have made no such call. I make the assertion boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank. It has doubled the prices of the products of their farms, and filled their pockets with a sound circulating medium, and they are all well pleased with its operations. No, Sir, it is the politician who is the first to sound the alarm (which, by the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... authority of great names, and expect to find those charms in tranquillity which have allured statesmen and conquerors to the shades: these likewise are apt to wonder at their disappointment, for want of considering, that those whom they aspire to imitate carried with them to their country-seats minds full fraught with subjects of reflection, the consciousness of great merit, the memory of illustrious actions, the knowledge of important events, and the seeds of mighty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... thin face was beaming. Even Mrs. Carson's face had lost some of its tension. Sommers could watch her manner from his position in the upper hall. She was dismissing a minor guest with a metallic smile. 'To aspire to this!' he murmured unconsciously. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the room, and Mrs. Mangan, in her husband's big chair, by his big fire, fell into tired yet peaceful ease of body and mind. How wonderful was Francis! Who but he would have dared to aspire for his children as he had? He had secured for Tishy the very pick of the country; and now, her own darling Barty! Was it possible? Yes! It was, if Francis said so! But what was "the argument he had up his sleeve?" Never mind! ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... had made no impression upon him. Frank, honest and brave, an Auersperg was nevertheless in the boy's mind an Auersperg, something superior, a product of untold centuries, a small and sublimated group of the human race to which nothing else could aspire, not even talent, learning, courage and honesty. To all Auerspergs, Napoleon and Shakespeare were mere men of genius, to be patronized. John smiled, too. He did not feel hurt at all. In his turn he felt a superiority, a superiority of perception, and a superiority ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his well-spent life,—pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often shall I be with you, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... feels, when one has scribbled for weeks and months about that animal with two legs which has the only right to be represented in novels! I see Maurice quite refreshed and rejuvenated when he returns from his beasts and his pebbles, and if I aspire to come out from my misery, it is to bury myself also in studies, which in the speech of the Philistines, are not of any use. Still it is worth more than to say mass and to ring the bell for the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... her as he spoke, until the arm which rested on the back of the seat almost touched her shoulder. "Lady Margot is pleased to be friendly and gracious, but she does not belong to my world. She is a star far above the head of a poor struggling barrister, even if he were fool enough to aspire to her, which he certainly would not do so long as there are inhabitants of his own sphere a hundred times more beautiful ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... plane of theories, and we can remain on the level of observable facts. We have to question men who take a very active part in the real revolutionary movement amidst the proletariat, men who do not aspire to climb into the middle class and whose mind is not dominated by corporative prejudices. These men may be deceived about an infinite number of political, economical, or moral questions; but their testimony is decisive, sovereign, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... loved, but you? So loved, that even my crown, and self are vile, While you are by. Try me upon despair; My kingdom at the stake, ambition starved, Revenge forgot, and all great appetites That whet uncommon spirits to aspire, So once a day I may have leave— Nay, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... had often thought of her, and each time that her image had appeared to his inward eye he had felt as though daylight had shone in his soul. To have met her he regarded as the greatest joy of his life, but he dared not aspire to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... still his measures run, And still abides the British Press, Which men must credit, more or less, To tell how things are done. So by all bards with hearts of fire Cheerfully be it sung, That still our people may not tire In doing well, but yet aspire; Let these renew TYRTAEUS' lyre, Let others hold ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... dazzle with brightness, As our thoughts forever aspire, For a mantle of perfect whiteness, Shall cover the youth and ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... and chaff for his comrades' benefit. This much annoyed the officer in question, and he spiced his rebuke with the remark that he didn't know how a man who couldn't observe the first rudiments of discipline could aspire to ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... to be cherished in the mind of a woman: would not Mdlle. Henri be much safer and happier if taught to believe that in the quiet discharge of social duties consists her real vocation, than if stimulated to aspire after applause and publicity? She may never marry; scanty as are her resources, obscure as are her connections, uncertain as is her health (for I think her consumptive, her mother died of that complaint), it is more than probable she never will. I do not see how she ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... distant deeps or skies Burned that fire within thine eyes? On what wings dared he aspire? What the hand dared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... upon Nature, but that it is the Reality which is ever trying to make itself known to us by bombarding our sense organs with the particular physical impulses to which those organs can respond, and, if we aspire to gain a knowledge of what is behind the physical, it is clear that all our endeavours must be towards weaving these impulses into garments and then learning from them the sublime Truths which the Reality is ever trying to divulge ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... good American will admit it to be a part of our national social scheme, I think,—if we have a social scheme,—that everybody shall aspire to all the refinements ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... praised Him who is the Lord of glory and honour and replied, still standing, 'O mighty Vizier and illustrious lord, hear what I say. Verily we are of the subjects of King Suleiman Shah and are ennobled by his alliance and aspire ardently thereto. My daughter is one of his handmaids, and it is my dearest wish that he may become my stay and my support in time of need.' Then he summoned the Cadis and the witnesses, who took act that King Suleiman had deputed his Vizier his proxy to conclude the marriage, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... room, he should not have done as he did. But now to my remark, those who strive to do best have the most tender consciences, and the more one strives after right the more scrupulous and tender does the conscience become, and the more does it aspire after noble feelings and honourable thoughts and actions. This is a work of the Divine Spirit and of no mortal power, and it is a training for glory, purifying our hearts for a divine home, obtained for us through our Saviour's death and righteousness, and in familiar language we will liken ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... foreigners, derived from the Portuguese, signifying to "command," to Chinese official functionaries, of which there are some nine orders, distinguished by the buttons on their caps, and they are appointed chiefly for their possession of the requisite qualifications for the office they aspire to. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... feelings ceased not all: In that last moment could a word recall Remorse for the black deed as yet half done, And what he hid from many showed to one: When Bligh in stern reproach demanded where Was now his grateful sense of former care? 160 Where all his hopes to see his name aspire, And blazon Britain's thousand glories higher? His feverish lips thus broke their gloomy spell, "Tis that! 'tis that! I am in hell! in hell!"[362] No more he said; but urging to the bark His Chief, commits him to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... popular monument; he spoke to his fellow-citizens, and in return he received inspiration; he appealed to the multitude in the same way as did the nave, the pillars, the stained windows, the statues, and the carved doors. Nowadays the greatest honour a painter can aspire to is to see his canvas, framed in gilded wood, hung in a museum, a sort of old curiosity shop, where you see, as in the Prado, Murillo's Ascension next to a beggar of Velasquez and the dogs of Philip II. Poor Velasquez and poor Murillo! Poor Greek statues which lived ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... body or spirit, whomsoever we serve—men or women, goddesses or gods; to such must we submit and lose our will in that of the greater. Serve, then, the one thou likest best. For myself, I think I like Diana as Hecate. She, I am told, rules the underworld. I aspire no higher; my pinions were shorn away, and I now grovel on the earth, and wish to ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner, who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, would have been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Oregon Indian was old enough to aspire to a place among the braves, he was sent into the hills alone. There he fasted, prayed, and danced, chanted the medicine-chant, and cut himself with knife or thorn till he fell exhausted to the ground. Whatever he saw then, in waking delirium or feverish sleep, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... bounds to the everlasting variety of nature, as she has recorded her creations in the heart of man? Most of these instances are recent, and sufficiently shew that the enterprising adventurer, who would aspire to emulate the illustrious men from whose writings these examples are drawn, has ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... suitable match,—so as to enable the agreeable detrimentals to make love to us, with perfect safety—as you were doing just now, for instance. And after that, we develop into bulbous chaperones, and may aspire eventually to a kindly quarter of a column in the papers, and, quite possibly, the honour of having as many as two dinners put off on account of our death. Yes, it is very simple. But, in heaven's name," Stella demanded, with a sudden lift of speech, "how can any woman—for, after all, a woman is ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... dedicated to a service," she continued, her pale face flushing with enthusiasm, "to which nobles and kings, the proudest and noblest of earth, might aspire. Do thy devoir, and incalculable will be thy reward; fail therein, and the doom of Judas ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... transmit with honour to our successors. Ido not suggest the adoption, for present use, of an obsolete system. But, while I earnestly repudiate the acceptance and the maintenance amongst ourselves of a most degenerate substitute for a noble Science, Ido aspire to aid in restoring HERALDRY to its becoming rank, and consequently to its early popularity, now in our own times. This is to revive the fine old Heraldry of the past, to give to it a fresh animation, and to apply it under existing conditions to existing uses and requirements: ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... grew no less famous for his administration of justice, than for his military skill. This obtained him the office of leader and founder of two colonies which were sent into the cities of Narnia and Cossa; which filled him with loftier hopes, and made him aspire to step over those previous honors which it was usual first to pass through, the offices of tribune of the people, praetor and aedile, and to level his aim immediately at the consulship. Having these colonies, and all their interest ready ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... burst out, "amazes me. I am incredulous that I really see you in my home, that you really have the shamelessness to force yourself into my presence! It is an unforgivable affront that you should pretend love for me and aspire to be my husband and all the while be philandering after a freedwoman; but that you should parade yourself on the high road with her all the way from your villa to Rome, with the hussy enthroned in your own travelling carriage, is far worse. That you should get ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... is a novel of human virtue purely, and teaches that true virtue can find its reward in itself and in the austere enjoyment of duty accomplished. "It is a work that will endure, and be a comfort as well as a guide to those who aspire to a high morality which ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... to affirm it is altogether absent, but it would be shutting one's eyes to potent facts to suppose it furnishes the greater part of the motive power. Owing to various causes, such as the want of opportunity, of capacity, and diligence, the great majority of students do not aspire higher than the Entrance examination; but even to pass this successfully is considered a great feat, and many are proud of achieving it. The Calcutta University has a high standard for degrees, and those who acquire them are entitled ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... a fire And motion of the soul which will not dwell In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire; And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire Of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... play a good knife and fork; hunger after, thirst after, crave after, lust after, itch after, hanker after, run mad after; raven for, die for; burn to. desiderate^; sigh for, cry for, gape for, gasp for, pine for, pant for, languish for, yearn for, long, be on thorns for, hope for; aspire after; catch at, grasp at, jump at. woo, court, solicit; fish for, spell for, whistle for, put up for; ogle. cause desire, create desire, raise desire, excite desire, provoke desire; whet the appetite; appetize^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate ye! I feel my heart new open'd; O how wretched Is that poor man, that hangs on princes' favours! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and our ruin, More pangs and fears than war and women have; And when he falls, he falls like ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... rigor, your minds' desire, Then probe, in tremor, your souls' intent; With hands and hearts clean and pure, aspire To Him who knows what, within, you meant. Yet, thither, mortals, Your way is wending, Where, on the portals, Till time be ending, There stands this sentence, without reprieve: Here all ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... something to aspire to! Such a team as that, and "Teacher" to sit by his side and drive out with him, all in her pretty flat hat with a pink rose on it and green ribbons flying, and her green parasol over her head—sitting ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... present meeting, to whom a fanatical hatred of everything catholic, coupled with a profound sense of personal injury, had prevailed over avarice, causing them to leave the part of acquisition to their wives, and aspire to that of pure destruction. It was the same company, almost to a man, whose misadventures in their search of Raglan for arms, under the misguidance of Tom Fool, I have related in an early chapter. In their hearts they nursed a half-persuasion that Raglan had fallen because of their wrongs within ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Gregory, "there are many men who, owing to the kindness shown them by others, forget their position and aspire to a more exalted one; having already been placed so ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a world of restless passions, having thy mind troubled with the tenor of thy father's testament, and thy heart fired with the hope of present preferment! By the one thou art counselled to content thee with thy fortunes, by the other persuaded to aspire to higher wealth. Riches, Saladyne, is a great royalty, and there is no sweeter physic than store. Avicen, like a fool, forgot in his Aphorisms to say that gold was the most precious restorative, and that treasure was the most excellent ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Yukiko, "do not, I entreat you, say such strange things to me! You well know that I am of poor and mean condition:—how could I ever dare to aspire to become ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the "cold, chaste moon." The danger of this stage in the ascent toward beauty is that one is likely to be content with the fragmentary glimpse of beauty gained through the loved one, and by losing sight of its other embodiments fail to aspire to more complete vision. So Shelley says of this period, "I was laid asleep, spirit and limb." By a great effort, however, the next step was taken,—the agonizing one of breaking away from the bondage of this individual, in order that beauty in all its ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin; Some Washington again may head them, Or some Montgomery, fearless, lead them, Till God knows what may be effected When by such heads and hearts directed, Poor dunghill sons of dirt and mire May to Patrician rights aspire! Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville, To watch and premier o'er the pack vile,— An' whare will ye get Howes and Clintons To bring them to a right repentance— To cowe the rebel generation, An' save the honour o' the ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... rather beneath the rank that a person of his name and honour might aspire to, the daughter of Thos. Topham, of the city of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, taking the Parliamentary side in the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the property which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who devised his money to his second ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... celebrated lighthouse in Scotland is that situated on the dangerous reef called the Inch Cape or Bell Rock. This lighthouse may fairly aspire to the title of the Eddystone of Scotland, whether we regard its high importance to navigation, the danger and difficulty of its erection, the beauty of its form, or its ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... Westminster Hall; and there, at the privileged door between the lamps on his left hand, he saw busy men going in and out, some slow and dignified, others hot, hasty, and anxious, and he felt as though the regions to and from which they passed must be far out of his reach. Could he aspire to pass those august lamp-posts, he whose very name depended on what in truth might have been the early doings of a low scoundrel who was now ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom: What dost thou in this ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... I don't perceive that there are any obstacles to prevent anybody from becoming a Catholic, as there are to prevent his becoming rich. What a high ambition, to aspire to be a Catholic! While nobody anywhere does anything but laugh at Catholics; and it has become an axiom: 'A Catholic country is a ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... girl, "between that man, my affianced husband before God, and myself, rose a terrible obstacle. He was poor: he thought my father very rich; and he had asked me a delay of three years to conquer a fortune which might enable him to aspire to my hand." ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... wife lest haply she take some coin therefrom and expend it upon her household. O my lords, I am certified of your goodness and graciousness, but poverty and penury are writ in my Book of Fate; how then can I aspire to possessions and prosperity? Withal, never while I breathe the breath of life, shall I be forgetful of this your generous favour." Quoth Sa'di, "Meseemeth I have disbursed four hundred Ashrafis to no purpose in giving them to thee; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... were left," says Milton, "to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into your hands, and subsists only in your abilities. To your virtue, overpowering and resistless, every man gives way, except some who, without equal qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of merit, greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that, in the coalition of human society, nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... know more of ourselves. Always more! Ever more! Never quite satisfied! Fortunately, the immortality of the wisdom loving human soul embraces all time, and all eternity! Therefore, through the law of eternal progression, we may naturally and rightfully aspire to the acquirement of all possible knowledge. In cultivating these aspirations, we may rest assured that we shall constantly gain new conceptions and new meanings for the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... said Girofle. "And the hand of a Princess is an honour to which I do not aspire, since I am ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... learn, can be taught. As she had given these matters of civilization intelligent thought she knew where to begin—at the humble, material foundation, despised and neglected by those who talk most loudly about civilization, art, culture, and so on. They aspire to the clouds and the stars at once—and arrive nowhere except in talk and pretense and flaunting of ill-fitting borrowed plumage. They flap their gaudy artificial wings; there is motion, but no ascent. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... toils, and as your nerves 'grow firm, to hardier, by just steps aspire. 'The prudent, even in every moderate walk, 'at first but saunter, and by slow degrees 'increase ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... issuing from its gulf, And diving back, a living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a strange burlesque is all this! instead of two noble youths, rich in all that nature and fortune can endow them with, here I have a pupil, poor little fellow! deaf, dumb, a castaway; the son of a robber, who at most can aspire only to the rank of an under-jailer, and which, in a little less softened phraseology, would mean to say a sbirro. {2} This reflection confused and disquieted me; yet hardly did I hear the strillo {3} of my little dummy than I felt my ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... reflection: and, without troubling himself about other people's affairs, went silently and properly about his own business; more solicitous to discharge his duty, than to recommend himself to notice, and not seeming to aspire to any higher office than that of a serving man. This old man would fix his eyes upon Edmund, whenever he could do it without observation; sometimes he would sigh deeply, and a tear would start from his eye, which he strove to conceal ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... scarcely possible to describe the impotent ardour with which these malignant spirits aspire to the honour of being ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... heart to death aspire, When all must die? Nay, death beyond belief Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief, Since in my sum of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... small place," said Mr. Montgomery, modestly, "but my tastes are plain and unobtrusive, and I do not aspire to a more conspicuous post. However, that is not to the purpose. A lady parishioner, desiring to donate a portion of her wealth to the poor, has placed in my hand a diamond ring, the proceeds to be devoted to charitable objects. I desire to sell it, and, knowing the high reputation of your ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... until he makes himself obnoxious even to his nearest friends; another is made to gamble until he either wins or loses a fortune, generally the latter; but all must 'jump,' and if they break their necks, well and good! It was proposed to 'jump' you in courtship; you refused to aspire to Diodora. In a duel you are not afraid of a fight, and so this course was decided on. You had been 'jumped' already—at the election—but the triumph and your downfall were not complete. Your vanity—don't start—was not yet wounded ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... heart is not so easily won. I can assure you that I never aspire to so mighty a personage as a Covent Garden star. Don't you know that she gets a salary of five hundred pounds a week, and wears ropes of pearls which would represent ten times my entire income? Heaven alone knows what ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Modeste, which slipped like a ray of light between his heavy half-closed eyelids. He perceived, in this unexpected incident, a chance of interrogating the heart of his sovereign. Dumay thought for a moment that the clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he exchanged a rapid glance with the others, who understood him, and began to eye the little man with a species of terror ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... on everything he did and said. His dexterity in the use of tools, and his varied accomplishments as a watch-maker and a horse-doctor, filled Bonnyboy with ungrudging amazement. He knew it was a hopeless thing for him to aspire to rival such genius, and he took the thing philosophically, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... other meets me in the public throng: Her hair streams backward from her loose attire; She hath a trumpet and an eye of fire; She points me downward steadily and long— 'There is thy grave—arise, my son, be strong! Hands are upon thy crown; awake, aspire To immortality; heed not the lyre Of the enchantress, nor her poppy-song; But in the stillness of the summer calm, Tremble for what is godlike in thy being. Listen awhile, and thou shalt hear the psalm Of victory sung by creatures past thy seeing; ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Ann Chappell, at about the time when he became engaged to her:* (* Flinders' Papers.) "Learn music, learn the French language, enlarge the subjects of thy pencil, study geography and astronomy and even metaphysics, sooner than leave thy mind unoccupied. Soar, my Annette, aspire to the heights of science. Write a great deal, work with thy needle a great deal, and read every book that comes in ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... not aspire to deal with the wide issues or significances of the war. It is an endeavour to trace the threads of certain lives a little way through a loosely-woven fabric of great events. At the conclusion there will be ends unfinished; the colours ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... voluntarily take this very troublesome one of rearing a few children who serve only to exercise the patience." Joseph strove to imitate the fathers as much as possible, in self sacrifice and austerity, and desired to become a donne, "which was the most to which he could aspire, since he was only an Indian." That, however, being denied him, he was enrolled in the confraternity of the Correa or girdle, and admitted as a spiritual brother of the Recollect order. He acted as teacher of boys for over fifty years, teaching them reading, writing, arithmetic, and music. At his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... can practise it call thought. And the theory or thought is the very last to which English people are accustomed, either by their social structure or their traditional teaching. It is the theory of equality. It is the pure classic conception that no man must aspire to be anything more than a citizen, and that no man should endure to be anything less. It is by no means especially intelligible to an Englishman, who tends at his best to the virtues of the gentleman and at his worst to the vices of the snob. The idealism of England, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... her life. It might be that, on the higher plane of reasoning, he was by no means justified; there might have been found a middle way, which, whilst guarding Alma from obvious dangers, still left her free to enjoy and to aspire. What he had done was very much like the clipping of wings. Practically it might be needful, and of safe result; but there is a world beyond the barnyard, for all that; and how should he know, with full assurance, whether ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... probability, if you love dancing and aspire to make it a career, you possess an innate sense of rhythm. You feel the swing of music and love to move your body to the strains of a lilting melody. The first great possessions of the successful stage dancer are ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... of that lyre Which the stars hear and tremble with desire, The ninefold light Pierian is made one That here we see divided, and aspire, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... worship, for I cannot answer, save in one word—Somewhere! Man, be not afraid. Do you think that such as you and I can be lost in the aching abysms of space? I know but little, yet I tell you that we are its rulers. I tell you that we, too, are gods, if only we can aspire and believe. For the doubting and timid there is naught. For those who see with the eyes of the soul and stretch out their hands to grasp there is all. Even ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... perhaps as they hoped. An honorable defeat is better than a mean victory, and no one is really the worse for being beaten, unless he loses heart. Though we may not be able to attain, that is no reason why we should not aspire. ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... riches, and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... community are impressed with a fact so obvious as this. The consequence is, that Catholics who aspire to be on a level with Protestants in discipline and refinement of intellect have recourse to Protestant Universities to obtain what they cannot find at home. Assuming (as the Rescripts from Propaganda allow me to do) ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Come to me to-morrow morning." She then took up her fan which lay on the ground, and without even looking at Jones walked very majestically out of the room; there being a kind of dignity in the impudence of women of quality, which their inferiors vainly aspire to attain to in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... not asking them to go up! George was excessively disappointed. He watched Miss Wheeler and Laurencine disappear into the rich and guarded interior with envy, as though they had entered a delectable paradise to which he could not aspire; and the fact that Miss Wheeler had vaguely invited him to call did not brighten him very much. He had assumed that he would see Lois the angel ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Sabbath-schools and other institutions, the presage of unexampled good to the nations. Who, then, of the rising race, is so dead to generous feeling, so deaf to the voice of Providence, so blind to the beauty of moral excellence, that he will not now aspire to some course of worthy action? Let this motto, then, stand out like the sun in the firmament: HE THAT STRIVETH FOR THE MASTERY, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... poetical passages to memory is a valuable contribution to our stock of material for emotional resuscitation in after years. It also aids in adorning our style, even although we may not aspire to compose in poetry. But the burden of holding the connection of a long poem should be eschewed. Children can readily learn a short psalm or hymn, and can retain it in permanence; but to repeat the 119th psalm from the beginning is the mere tour-de-force of a strong natural memory, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... ignorant of the fact, that there are at least as many as two or three individuals to a town throughout the North who think much as the present speaker does about him and his enterprise. I do not hesitate to say that they are an important and growing party. We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in. Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... gallops by, And in the breeze her fair tresses fly! Or when with her mother in church she bows low And on devout faces a red flush doth flow! Then for the joys of lawful wedlock I aspire, And follow her and her mother with ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Light, Into the heart of the fire! To the innermost core of the deathless flame I ascend—I aspire! Under me rolls the whirling Earth, With the noise of a myriad wheels that run Ever round and about the Sun,— Over me circles the splendid heaven, Strewn with the stars of morn and even, And I, the queen Of my soul serene, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Caedmon entered "cum omnibus suis," which is generally taken to mean that his whole family were received with him. We see from it, too, how earnest was the desire of the superiors of the monasteries to instruct the ignorant; how rich and poor alike in the C7 might aspire to the monastic life, the only passport being the honest desire to serve God in ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... behind her counter, sorting silks. Not rich piece silks that are made into gowns; Mrs. Duff's shop did not aspire to that luxurious class of goods; but humble skeins of mixed sewing-silks, that were kept tied up in a piece of wash-leather. Mrs. Duff's head and a customer's head were brought together over the bundle, endeavouring to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... art of love uses a vast amount of evangelical phrases in the service of the Devil. Passion is martyrdom. Both parties aspire to the Ideal, to the Infinite; love is to make them so much better. All these fine words are but a pretext for putting increased ardor into the practical side of it, more frenzy into a fall than of old. This ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... protozoa, multiplication commences with a mechanical rupture, and with the passage of time and the influence of outside elements, the sects thus born undergo visible modifications. By turns sublime or outrageous, simple or depraved, they either aspire heavenwards or debase the human spirit to the ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... could a poor devil like myself ever aspire to the hand of the daughter of the Baron de Hetzendorf? The name doesn't convey much ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... knowing that claims to fashion in Dublin are judged by the intimacy you affect with the dressmaker, she shook her warmly by the hand, and addressed her as dear Mrs. Symond. To the Christian name of Helen none less than a Countess dare to aspire. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... all things had their Birth, And mount my prying Soul 'twixt Heaven and Earth, Thus the sweet Harmonv o' th' whole admire, } And by due Search new Learning still aquire, } So nearer ev'ry day to Truths Divine aspire. } ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... Australian, All that is Lovely Rose, Bridal, Happy Love Rose, Burgundy, Unconscious Beauty Rose, Cabbage, Ambassador of Love Rose, Campion, Deserve my Love Rose, Carolina, Love is dangerous Rose, China, Beauty Unfading Rose, Daily, I Aspire to thy Smile Rose, Damask, Beautiful Complexion Rose, Deep Red, Bashful Modesty Rose, Dog, Pleasure and Pain Rose, Guelder, Age Rose, Hundred-Leaved, Pride, Dignity Rose, Japan, Beauty only Rose, Maiden Blush, Show me Love ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... intended to support, of him whom it was intended to reprobate, and whom I consider as the arch-enemy of Ireland—I mean Mr. H. Flood—that I should have been happy to have spoken it verbatim et literatim), and to inform you of the terms upon which I aspire to so much of your confidence as to flatter myself that you will be kind enough to give me the most convincing proof of it that a public station is capable of affording, which is that of remaining in the Lieutenancy of Ireland. This request is certainly premature, and very possibly ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... political position of the king her son, and as the time of his majority approached, Queen Blanche gave her attention to his domestic life also. She belonged to the number of those who aspire to play the part of Providence towards the objects of their affection, and to regulate their destiny in everything. Louis was nineteen; he was handsome, after a refined and gentle style which spoke of moral worth without telling of great physical strength; he had delicate ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... having for its object the enlarging of the bargaining power of the wage earner in the sale of his labor. Its opportunism was instrumental—its idealism was home and family and individual betterment. It also implied an attitude of aloofness from all those movements which aspire to replace the wage system by cooperation, whether voluntary or subsidized by government, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... light, leaving not a scar behind. The upper boughs have reached at once the light and their natural term of years. They are content to live, and little more. The central trunk no longer sends up each year a fresh perpendicular shoot to aspire above the rest, but, as weary of struggling ambition as they are, is content to become more and more their equal as the years pass by. And this is a law of social forest trees, which you must bear in mind whenever I speak of the influence of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... to the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the problem of ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... this pin-fold here, Strive to keep up a frail, and Feaverish being Unmindfull of the crown that Vertue gives After this mortal change, to her true Servants 10 Amongst the enthron'd gods on Sainted seats. Yet som there he that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that Golden Key That ope's the Palace of Eternity: To such my errand is, and but for such, I would not soil these pure Ambrosial weeds, With the rank vapours of this Sin-worn mould. But to my task. Neptune besides the sway Of every salt Flood, and each ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of the year, so ordinary, he had spoken against his will. He asked himself angrily why he had said flame, and again the doctor saw the flame of Valentine's soul trying to leap higher, to aspire to some strange and further region than that in which it seemed to dwell. Julian sat looking at Valentine with a gaze that was surely new in his eyes, the dawning gaze of inquiry which a man directs ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... world, your high thoughts scorne, Vouchsafe this moniment of his last praise With some few silver dropping teares t'adorne; And as ye be of heavenlie off-spring borne, So unto heaven let your high minde aspire, 685 And loath this ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... same potent agency finds a field, narrower, indeed, but scarcely less operative. And this object—of causing a whole assembly to think the same thoughts and turn their attention to a common topic—is often well attained even when the speeches do not aspire to great excellence or ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... departure, Eustace, jealous of Rinaldo, whom he was fearful Armida might admire, had persuaded him to aspire to the place of Dudon, to whom a successor must be elected. Gernando of Norway desired the same place, and, angry that the popular Rinaldo should be his rival, scattered through the camp rumors disparaging to his character: Rinaldo was vain and arrogant; Rinaldo was rash, not brave; Rinaldo's ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... period. The compositions in verse belonging to this epoch, of which there are several, hardly deserve to be dignified with so high a title. At no part of his life had Bunyan much title to be called a poet. He did not aspire beyond the rank of a versifier, who clothed his thoughts in rhyme or metre instead of the more congenial prose, partly for the pleasure of the exercise, partly because he knew by experience that the lessons he wished to inculcate were more likely to be remembered in that form. Mr. Froude, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... my ambition made me always aspire to much higher things and so did the treatment which I always received from you heretofore; but now, that you talk of abandoning me to 'lie upon a hard bed,' and intimate that, unless I give up the object of my choice, I am not to expect any ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... civilization is the correct thing for mortals to aspire to. As a boy, while I hated it with a bitter hatred, I accepted it as inevitable because my elders approved it and because it seemed indissolubly linked to the school, the church and the things of good repute. As I grow older the yoke sits easier on my shoulders, but doubts ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... friends we love drop away from our side into silence; desire fails; the grasshopper becomes a burden; until, at length, we feel that our only love is not here below,—until these tendrils of earth aspire to a better climate, and the weight that has been laid upon us makes us stoop wearily to the grave as a rest and a deliverance. We have, even through our tears, admired that discipline which sometimes prepares the young to die; ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... their attachment from her father; as Ramsay wished first, he asserted, to be possessed of a certain property which he daily expected would fall to him, and, until that, he did not think that he had any right to aspire ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... pounds sterling, was everywhere neglected. The sea inundated the country, and threatened to resume its ancient dominion. No object of ambition, no source of professional wealth or distinction, remained to which a Hollander could aspire. None could voluntarily enter the army or navy, to fight for the worst enemy of Holland. The clergy were not provided with a decent competency. The ancient laws of the country, so dear to its pride and its prejudices, were replaced ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... of the factory population, the ordinary workingman of the ordinary workingman's street, whose attitude is best described as that of "acquiescence," who lives through the aimless passage of the years without incentive "to imagine, to design, or to aspire." These men are totally untouched by all the educational and philanthropic machinery which is designed for the young and the helpless who live on the same streets with them. They do not often drink to excess, they regularly give all their wages to their wives, they have a vague ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Chicago are now doing, ally themselves with those men who are fairminded and considerate of the man far down, and seek to embrace their many opportunities for economic progress, a foundation for political recognition, upon which the race must learn to build. Every race in the universe must aspire to becoming a factor in politics; but history shows that there is no short route to such success. Like other despised races beset with the prejudice and militant opposition of self-styled superiors, the Negroes must increase their industrial efficiency, improve their opportunities ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... book does not aspire to be classed with either of the above classes of able writers; the most he would like to claim is that he should be able to write a really good handbook on the subject, wherein such topographical, historical, and economic information as was presented should have the stamp of correctness. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Lee, daughter of the earl of Lichfield, and widow of colonel Lee. His connexion with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already mentioned, with lady Anne Wharton, who was coheiress of sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to aspire to the arms of nobility, though not with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... begot in him a new desire, For that is restlesse alwaies in extreames, Nought but saciety can quench loues fire. Now throgh the christal casem[e]t Phoebus beames Dazled those twinckling starres that did aspire, To gaze vpon his brightnesse being a louer. Tasting her petulans in waking dreames, To hide her from the ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... reign, And, purged by pain, For aye endure! Let Felix sacrifice me to thine ire, Yea, let my rival captivate the soul Of her who now with Decius doth conspire To chain immortal hope to earthly goal; Let earth-bound men pursue the world's desire, Sense charms not him who doth to Heaven aspire! Hail pain! Disdain All Earthly love, To seek above A holier fire! Oh, Love that passeth knowledge be my stay, And fire my heart to beat alone for thee! Sun of my soul?—oh, flash one purest ray In that last ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... be all he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone: no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please God, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler way upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey, I might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than he had thought me when I found some favour in his eyes, at the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... feverishly about his bed all through the silent watches of the night. He was very miserable, but he was also twenty-six. That is an age when the blind bow-god deals no fatal wounds. It is an age to suffer poignantly, if you will; an age wherein to aspire to the dearest woman on earth, to write her halting verses, to lose her, to affect the cliches of cynicism, to hear the chimes at midnight—and after it all, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... you will not leave this field without pastors, where the gospel is being received as the greatest benefit to which the people can aspire for ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... measures run, And still abides the British Press, Which men must credit, more or less, To tell how things are done. So by all bards with hearts of fire Cheerfully be it sung, That still our people may not tire In doing well, but yet aspire; Let these renew TYRTAEUS' lyre, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as a local editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day." There's a comment on human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lord," said Varney—"that is, in the case supposed, if such be her disposition; since you think you cannot aspire to become her husband. Her favourite you are, and may remain, if the lady at Cumnor place continues in her ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... from the writings of Hitler, or other Nazi leaders direct statements indicating that they aspire to the domination of the entire world. Such expressions, however, may be inferred not only from the direction of German foreign policy and the effusions of the geopoliticians but also from the following statement ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... you up, Rosie," said Annie in a loud voice. "Don't aspire to it; you'd never come ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... this perilous society. "It altered my affection, and made me address my prayers to Thee, O Lord, and gave me other desires and purposes than I had before. All vain hopes did instantly grow base in myne eyes, and I did, with an incredible heat of hart, aspire towards the Immortality of Wisdom." Thus it was really "Saint Tully," and not the mystic call of Tolle! Lege! that "converted" Augustine, diverting the current of his life into the channel of Righteousness. "How was I kindled then, oh, my God, with a desire ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... their own accomplishments, borrow their pens and aspire to their successes. "We have recovered from those old Gothic and absurd prejudices against literary culture," says the Prince de Henin;[4319] "as for myself I would compose a comedy to-morrow if I had the talent, and if I happened ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I did not see him. He is regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.—there seems, indeed, to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service. I could not but envy the position ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... the offspring of mere concubines or foreign princesses, and possessed but a secondary rank in comparison with himself; but by his union with his sisters Nofritari Maritmut and Isitnofrit, he had at least half a dozen sons and daughters who might aspire to the throne. Death robbed him of several of these before an opportunity was open to them to succeed him, and among them Amenhikhopshuf, Amenhiunamif, and Ramses, who had distinguished themselves in the campaign against the Khati; and some of his daughters—Bitaniti, Maritamon, Nibittaui—by becoming ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he said, folding up the newspaper, "a beggar, in rags, good for nothing! Even working-class people and peasants obtain education in order to become men, while you, a Poloznev, with ancestors of rank and distinction, aspire to the gutter! But I have not come here to talk to you; I have washed my hands of you —" he added in a stifled voice, getting up. "I have come to find out where your sister is, you worthless fellow. She ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... country about it, grew no less famous for his administration of justice, than for his military skill. This obtained him the office of leader and founder of two colonies which were sent into the cities of Narnia and Cossa; which filled him with loftier hopes, and made him aspire to step over those previous honors which it was usual first to pass through, the offices of tribune of the people, praetor and aedile, and to level his aim immediately at the consulship. Having these colonies, and all their interest ready at his ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... our minds will dazzle with brightness, As our thoughts forever aspire, For a mantle of perfect whiteness, Shall cover the youth and ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... love dancing and aspire to make it a career, you possess an innate sense of rhythm. You feel the swing of music and love to move your body to the strains of a lilting melody. The first great possessions of the successful stage dancer are a love of harmonious sounds ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... the honor, the wealth and general interest and success of his employer he gives proof of his honesty in the service, and also of love in his heart for him. These two principles underlie all right work for the Lord,—honesty and love; childlike simplicity and sincerity. Brethren, let us not aspire to the high things of the world, but to the meekness ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... If you both aspire to wed her, Is it not an act most wicked, Most unworthy, thus beforehand Her unspotted fame to injure? What will say the world, if one Of you two shall marry with her After having killed the other For her sake? The supposition ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... it was very strange, but the last thing that happened to me before leaving America was to receive the degree of A. M. from Cambridge, but I did not venture to aspire to the other one. And now the first thing that happens to me on my return is to receive your invitation. Gentlemen, ambition can no further go. [Laughter.] As Horace says, a man may change his skies, but not his disposition, and I wish to show you that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... generations—it was possible under the singular combination of election and inheritance which regulated the succession to the throne, for almost any citizen of the Empire, if not of barbarian blood or heretical creed, to aspire. Diocletian, the second founder of the Empire, was the son of a slave; Justinian—an even greater name—was the nephew of a Macedonian peasant, who with a sheepskin bag containing a week's store of biscuit, his only property, tramped down from his native highlands to seek his fortune in the capital ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... important had the London settlement become in the eyes of the Flemings, that in a charter granted to the Flemish town of Damme by Joan of Constantinople in 1241, it is specially provided that no one shall aspire to the office of alderman of that place unless he had been previously admitted a member of ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More aery: last the bright consummate flower Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit, Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd, To vital spirits aspire: to animal: To intellectual!—give both life and sense, Fancy and understanding; whence the soul REASON receives, and reason is her being, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... supersede, the masterly treatises on the subject which have from time to time appeared, or to take the place of exhaustive histories, such as that of Professor Leonello Venturi on the Italian primitives. It should but serve to pave the way to deeper and more detailed reading. It does not aspire to give a complete and comprehensive list of the painters; some of the minor ones may not even be mentioned. The mere inclusion of names, dates, and facts would add unduly to the size of the book, and, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... covered with striped-green Utrecht velvet placed in a square recess just behind their private counter (the counter of their forewoman being similar and directly opposite) the brother and sister consulted as to what they should do. All retail shopkeepers aspire to become members of the bourgeoisie. By selling the good-will of their business, the pair would have over a hundred and fifty thousand francs, not counting the inheritance from their father. By placing their present available ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... said," cried Sir Jacob.—"But yet this comes not up to the objection," said Mr. B. "The setting an example to waiting-maids to aspire, and to young gentlemen to descend. And I will enter into the subject myself; and the rather, because as I go along, I will give Sir Jacob a faint sketch of the merit and character of my Pamela, of which he cannot be so well informed as he has been of the disgrace which he imagined I had ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Wonderful sagacity! to unravel easily such a bewildering "puzzle"! And so to the close. Between the uncultivated whom Dickens moved, and the cultivated he failed to move; between the power that so worked in delft as to stir the universal heart, and the commonness that could not meddle with porcelain or aspire to any noble clay; the pitiful see-saw is continued up to the final sentence, where, in the impartial critic's eagerness to discredit even the value of the emotion awakened in such men as Jeffrey by such ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... could I wake a thrilling strain That would with mystic power enchain, But now, alas! my untaught lyre Can to no lofty themes aspire. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... you know, is our gold. That will give out eventually, when the majority will again depart. Those strangers, who then elect to remain with us, might be admitted to full burgher rights. In the meantime it behoves us to reserve the full franchise, nor will many aspire to it if they are only treated well as strangers should be, as we should wish to be treated if we were in their place. This is what they expect from us, and it can well be done without giving full franchise, ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... memories to the overworked slaves of our great cities, and that he may deserve those thanks which are all the more grateful that they are rather divined by the receiver than directly expressed by the giver. The reviewer cannot aspire to all the merit of this confidential privacy and pleasing shyness of gratitude, but he may fairly lay claim to a part of it, inasmuch as, though obliged to speak his thanks publicly, he need not do it to the author's face. We are again indebted to Mr. Whittier, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... be expected from his well-spent life,—pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often shall I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth—when its passions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are opening fresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade, young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspire to be saddened with the first failure—is the season when the seeds of disquiet and unhappiness are sown in the soul. And in the most gifted and sensitive souls these seeds are oftenest sown. Those ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... already begun a course of vice and wickedness we have little hope of reforming; but we are anxious to offer a few words of counsel and warning which may possibly help to save as brands plucked from a blazing fire, those whose moral sense is yet alive, who have quick and tender consciences, who aspire to be ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith Seem'd it unto me turn'd from ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... man. They strenuously upheld the gradations of civil society: but they did, indeed, affirm that these gradations were, both ways, both as they ascended and as they descended, limited. There was an existence of power, to which no good king would aspire; and there was an extreme condition of subjection, to which man could not be degraded without injustice; and this they would maintain, was the condition of the African, who was torn ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... thought of leaving my sweet Jeanette alone in that gloomy house. But, on the other hand, how could I aspire to help ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Commissioner was down the river, and I did not see him. He is regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.—there seems, indeed, to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service. I could not but envy the position of this young fellow, and marvel at the success which attends ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... to frown on me, Abraham, thou honest "Rail Splitter!" Arise not, warlike, Ulysses, thou "Tanner." Hide thyself away! Shake not thy cottony locks at me, thou pale-faced "Bobbin Boy!" Be not too jealous of your unique titles. I shall never aspire to so glorious a one as "Hod Carrier." I have not earned it. I did it but once, and shall never do it again! ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... to engage a carriage for his expedition. It was a street of livery stables, gambling dens, drinking houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its sidewalks. The more pretentious canaille of the city harbored there to prey on the hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance acquaintance of gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this street, just as the evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset, he saw something pass which made his heart start to his throat and fastened him to the spot. Veiled and walking fast, as if escaping ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... la source ou j'aspire; La, je retrouverais et l'espoir et l'amour, Et ce bien ideal que toute ame desire, Et qui n'a pas ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... proved a most infortunate match to him and his Posterity, and all Christendome, for all his Alliance with so many great Princes, which put on him aspiring thoughts, and was so ambitious as not to content himselfe with his hereditary patrimony of one of the greatest Princes in Germany; but must aspire to a Kingdome, beleeving that his great allyance would carry him through any enterprise, or bring him off with honour, in both which he failed; being cast out of his own Country with shame, and he and his, ever after, living upon the devotion of other Princes; but had his Father ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... continued he, "of the temerity of my wishes, but if a crown be wanting to deserve her, let me flatter myself with the hope that this sword, already successful over your enemies, may one day, enforced by love, make my fortune worthy of the glory to which I aspire." The joy which appeared in the face of the Count at this demand, would be impossible to represent: he raised Thibault, and again tenderly embracing him, "My son," said he, "for so henceforth I call you, I pray heaven to dispose my daughter to receive your vows as favourably ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... mother maiden, Ten thousand hearts aspire; In this life, sorrow-laden, Thee only they desire; In thee they hope for healing; In thee expect true rest, When thou, their safety sealing, Shalt ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... excellency," replied Gregory, "there are many men who, owing to the kindness shown them by others, forget their position and aspire to a more exalted one; having already been placed so high, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... constant struggle there is going on here below. Some aim at "fortune's gaudy show," while others strive to catch the wreath of fame, and crown themselves with that. Few are so indifferent, unless besotted by ignorance and degradation, as not to aspire, in some shape or other, to something more or better than they ever had, or better than others have; and, in this age of the world—at any rate in this country—money seems to be esteemed the chief good. Not the miser's money, for, while that is locked up, and he hoards, and hoards, and still ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... purged by pain, For aye endure! Let Felix sacrifice me to thine ire, Yea, let my rival captivate the soul Of her who now with Decius doth conspire To chain immortal hope to earthly goal; Let earth-bound men pursue the world's desire, Sense charms not him who doth to Heaven aspire! Hail pain! Disdain All Earthly love, To seek above A holier fire! Oh, Love that passeth knowledge be my stay, And fire my heart to beat alone for thee! Sun of my soul?—oh, flash one purest ray In that last hour supreme—to ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... there," answered the girl, "who does not love the royal dignity?—what person who does not aspire to the happiness of marriage? However, I wish to become a nun. With respect to the riches and glory of this world, my heart is as cold as a dead cinder, and I feel a keen desire to make it ever purer ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... with inspiring vehemence, "and is not the utterly unworthy person before you indebted to you in a double measure that life is still within him? Is not the strength which now promotes him to such exceptional audacity as to aspire to your lovely hand, of your own creating? Only encourage Ling to entertain a well-founded hope that on his return he shall not find you partaking of the wedding feast of some wealthy and exceptionally round-bodied Mandarin, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... which rather expresses itself by silent and passionate actions than by ingenious language. In general our literature is not characteristic of our national manners[23]. We are much too modest, I had almost said too humble a nation to aspire to tragedies taken from our own history, and bearing the stamp of our ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... knowledge—and the manners, so far as is practicable, trained with a view to what is decorous and proper in social life. Punish by your frowns, by public scorn and private avoidance, the wretch who would cast dishonour on you by the dishonesty of his dealings. The poorest youth of character may justly aspire in this country to the honours of every station, and he will be the more honoured and sought as his fair fame expands itself—an example to his fellows—an ornament to his friends—an honour to his country. One false step in early life (which, had he possessed that education we contend for, might ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... body,—the right of a man to himself. Both are condemned; but their relative condemnation must be measured by their relative characters. As Freedom is more than property, as Man is above the dollar that he owns, as heaven, to which we all aspire, is higher than earth, where every accumulation of wealth must ever remain, so are the rights assailed by an American Congress higher than those once assailed by the British Parliament. And ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... conceived would fit his needs, and an ambition. This last was nothing less than to strike it rich and set himself up among the eminently bourgeois of London. It seemed that the situation of the wealthy English middle class, with just enough gentility above to aspire to, and sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, appealed to his imagination, though of course he did not put it ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar and near, Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here; Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that the dawn ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sometimes almost wild in its eagerness. How could I mistake these sounds? The chimney was immediately above us, and it was towards this goal, as I well knew, that the hapless and legless Bubbles was destined fruitlessly to aspire. At last one bound more frantic than the rest, followed by a sudden clatter of displaced tiles, unloosed my tongue, and I fairly ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust, When the morning calls us to life and light, But our hearts grow weary, and, ere the night, Our lives ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on the point of touching your sceptre, fling her back to the ground, quite gently and with infinite grace, saying to her: ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... here he glanced very wildly round him), "my prayers are not heard, if after Saumur's field, life be still left within my body's sanctuary, I will return to seize you as my own, though hosts in armour try to stop my way. I will not live without you. I will not endure to see another man aspire to the hand which has been refused to me. Adieu, Agatha, adieu! I trust we shall meet no more; in thinking of me, at any rate, your memory shall not call me despicable," and he rushed out of the door and down stairs, without waiting to hear whether Agatha intended making any answer to this poetical ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... calculated to elevate the mind and ennoble the ambitions of mankind could aspire to a higher climax; no writer of a series of admonitions, in escaping "a lame and impotent conclusion," could rest more calmly than he who, having built his tower upon the solid duties of to-day, peers out with the great lenses of Religion, into the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... or a Franklin, May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin; Some Washington again may head them, Or some Montgomery, fearless, lead them, Till God knows what may be effected When by such heads and hearts directed, Poor dunghill sons of dirt and mire May to Patrician rights aspire! Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville, To watch and premier o'er the pack vile,— An' whare will ye get Howes and Clintons To bring them to a right repentance— To cowe the rebel generation, An' save the honour ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... in a voice choking with emotion; "a pitiful, beggarly Irish cornet aspire to the hand of Julia Jowler! Gag, Gahagan, are you mad, or laughing at us? Look at these letters, young man—at these letters, I say—one hundred and twenty-four epistles from every part of India (not including one from the Governor-General, and six from his brother, Colonel ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... command. But for the dwarfs who live in the gloom of Niebelheim he chooses deep shades of red, the lowest vibrating colour of the solar spectrum. For it is in the nature of the spiritual part of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand, a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with their strange fight against all the laws of gravity, striving ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... misery that might come to Alma through the conditions of her life. It might be that, on the higher plane of reasoning, he was by no means justified; there might have been found a middle way, which, whilst guarding Alma from obvious dangers, still left her free to enjoy and to aspire. What he had done was very much like the clipping of wings. Practically it might be needful, and of safe result; but there is a world beyond the barnyard, for all that; and how should he know, with ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... o'er river and o'er plain, Till far away,—no need of spur or rein. The child, half rapture, half solicitude, Looks back anon, in fear to be pursued; Shakes lest some raging brother of his sire Leap from those rocks that o'er the path aspire. ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... men's complexions [Note 1], and some find it a deal easier to control them than other. And after all, Edith, there is a sense wherein no man can ever be fully satisfied in this life. We were meant to aspire; and if we were entirely content with present things, then should we grovel. To submit cheerfully is one thing: to be fully gratified, so that no desire is left, is an other. We shall not be that, methinks, till we ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... am as well aware, ma'am, as you, or Mad. de Coulanges, can be, that if you should recover your hereditary property, the heiress of the house of Coulanges would be a person to whom my son should not presume to aspire." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was a venerable edifice, partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter having been brought from Holland in the early days of the province, before the arts in the New Netherlands could aspire to such a fabrication. On a stone above the porch were inscribed the names of the founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty patroon of the olden time, who reigned over a wide extent of this neighborhood and held his seat of power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the no ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Moorcroft, and Trebeck, Masson, and Sir Alexander Burnes, convey most valuable information concerning the wild regions through which they travelled, and I am bound in simple honesty to confess that my little book does not aspire to rank with publications of such standard merit. An author's apology, however humble and sincere, is seldom attended to and more rarely accepted. Surely I am not wrong in assuming that a feeling of mournful interest will pervade the bosom of those who have the patience to follow my perhaps ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... their kinsmen or friends. Joel Strides was of too low a class to get his name enrolled very high on the list of heroes, nor was he at all ambitious of any such distinction; but he was not so low that he could not and did not aspire to become the owner of the property of the Hutted Knoll. In an ordinary state of society, so high a flight would seem irrational in so low an aspirant; but Joel came of a people who seldom measure their pretensions by their merits, and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... To be at ease, take breath, and prudence prize; Apprentice in a shop you now are bound Next 'prentice go to some gallant around; You'll not so soon his pleasing art require, Nor to your tutorage can I now aspire. Friend Nicaise take some neighb'ring servant maid, You're quite a master in the shopping trade; Stuffs you can sell, and ask the highest price; And to advantage turn things in a trice. But opportunity ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... their lives out of special royal mercy—for they ought really to be put to death along with their fathers—but they are to receive no inheritances. Let them be paupers forever; let the infamy of their father ever follow them; they may never aspire to office; in their lasting poverty let death be a relief and life a punishment. Finally, any one who tries to intercede for these with us is also to be infamous."[284] However, to the daughters of the condemned these emperors graciously granted one fourth of their mother's but not ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... a child to a flower is the reality to which we now aspire; though even this is a privilege reserved for the more fortunate children. But let us beware of so grave an error. The babe is a man. That which suffices for a plant cannot be sufficient for him. ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... not leave this field without pastors, where the gospel is being received as the greatest benefit to which the people can aspire for their civilization." ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... of this would be to shew myself unworthy of her. The lover should disdain to excite his mistress to any action which he would disapprove in a wife; and this was a rule not to be infringed, by him who should aspire to the noble-minded Olivia. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... in the dawn Of a new freedom, glowing o'er his lyre, Refining, as with great Apollo's fire, His people's gift of song. And thereupon, This Negro singer, come to Helicon Constrained the masters, listening to admire, And roused a race to wonder and aspire, Gazing which way their honest voice was gone, With ebon face uplit of glory's crest. Men marveled at the singer, strong and sweet, Who brought the cabin's mirth, the tuneful night, But faced the morning, beautiful with light, To die while shadows yet ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... Being evidently exceeds the utmost strength of any, even of any collective, human force, its necessary constitution and its peculiar function endow it with the truest sympathy towards all its servants. The least amongst us can and ought constantly to aspire to maintain and even to improve this Being. This natural object of all our activity, both public and private, determines the true general character of the rest of our existence, whether in feeling or in thought; which must be devoted to love, and to know, in order rightly to serve, our Providence, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... treating sense and matter with contempt, give yourself, as we do, wholly to the cultivation of your mind. You have for an example our mother, who is everywhere honoured with the name of learned. Try, as we do, to prove yourself her daughter; aspire to the enlightened intellectuality which is found in our family, and acquire a taste for the rapturous pleasures which the love of study brings to the heart and mind. Instead of being in bondage to the will of a man, marry ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... limited training in the home, the tyrannical and sterile education of the rare centers of learning, that blind subordination of the youth to one of greater age, influence the mind so that a man may not aspire to excel those who preceded him but must merely be content to go along with or march behind them. Stagnation forcibly results from this, and as he who devotes himself merely to copying divests himself of other qualities suited to his own nature, he naturally ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... to what new qualifications I should aspire, I was summoned into the country, by an account of my father's death. Here I had hopes of being able to distinguish myself, and to support the honour of my family. I therefore bought guns and horses, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... finished product, divinity of character; but the latter can only be achieved through arduous and persevering endeavour. Without a genuinely divine element—without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator—we could not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... thing to be seen and not recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its force. Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar; a gleeful vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so unconscious of the states of mind caused by him in the household, was the evoker of flutters in yet another female breast. The girl, Molly, had read toilsomely through "Pamela," and saw no reason why an equally attractive housemaid should not aspire to an equally high destiny on this side of the ocean. But, often as she artfully contrived that the black boy should forget some part of the guest's dinner, and timely as she planned her own visits with the missing portion, she found the officer heedless of her smiles, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... affection. This sublime privilege of prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those who aspire to such an immortality. ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... possess much wealth without setting one's heart on it. But it is also true that this greed may possess one who has little or nothing. It may be found in unrestrained excess under the rags of the pauper and beggar. They who aspire to, or desire, riches with avidity are covetous whether they have much, little, or nothing. Christ promised His kingdom to the poor in spirit, not to the poor in fact. Spiritual poverty can associate with abundant wealth, just as the most depraved ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... take lessons, from a master. To such, one-third, at least, of our preceding observations are applicable; and we recommend an attentive perusal of what we have said, as to Mounting, the Aids, &c., before they aspire to the saddle. Our other remarks they will find useful when they ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... are very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money,—the "spoils," so called, "of office." And why not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that if I meet with difficulty, I may not go backward, nor stand still, and fear to go forward. Unfold to me the depth and breadth of the ideal and beautiful, that I may not be content to succeed in the shallowness of life: but may I aspire to the height of the soul, even if I fail to acquire great ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... it is not the best. It does not follow, because we all are compelled to take on faith at second hand most of the rules on which we base our action and our thought, that each of us may not try to set some corner of his world in the order of reason, or that all of us collectively should not aspire to carry reason as far as it will go throughout the whole domain. In regard to the law, it is true, no doubt, that an evolutionist will hesitate to affirm universal validity for his social ideals, or for the principles which he thinks should be embodied in legislation. ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... me to set about writing a History of Ireland, and archly remarked, there had been some good Irish writers, and that one Irishman might at least aspire to be equal to another. He had great compassion for the miseries and distresses of the Irish nation, particularly the Papists; and severely reprobated the barbarous debilitating policy of the British government, which, he said, was the most detestable mode of persecution. To a gentleman, who hinted ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... India and Russia in Asia—she has still a part to play in history. And I may again note that Al-Islam is based upon the fundamental idea of a Republic which is, all (free) men are equal, and the lowest may aspire ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... hair until it fell down. She was not a person to be judged—she was one of the unexplained incidents of existence. The hour has passed when the clearly moral can sum up the responsibilities of a creature born apparently without brain, or soul or courage. Those who aspire to such morals as are expressed by fairness—mere fairness—are much given to hesitation. Courage had never been demanded of Feather so far. She had none whatever and now she only felt panic and resentment. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... position before the fireplace, after casting a glance at Modeste, which slipped like a ray of light between his heavy half-closed eyelids. He perceived, in this unexpected incident, a chance of interrogating the heart of his sovereign. Dumay thought for a moment that the clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he exchanged a rapid glance with the others, who understood him, and began to eye the little man with a species of terror mingled ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... for the bread of sympathy and they would give her a stone. He wished he might carry her away, shielding her and comforting her against the storm. He knew he would willingly give his life to make her happier. Of course she did not care for him. How could she? Who was he—Jim Dodge—to aspire to a ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... a tin tomato can with a string bail; the dull ache of mortification when she became old enough to understand their position as the borrowing Passmores. Yet all human desire is sacred, and of God; to desire—to want—to aspire—thus shall the individual be saved; and surely in this is the salvation of the race. And Johnnie felt vaguely that at last she was going out into a world where she should learn what to desire and ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... trust that this plain memorial also will endure; and, while it guides the dutiful votary to the spot where his ashes are deposited, will teach to those who survey it the supremacy of intellectual and 'moral desert, and encourage them, too, by a like munificence, to aspire to a name as bright as that which stands engraven ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... enthusiasm which sustains a man in the performance of great actions. It is the 'lion heart' with which the reason makes a treaty. On the other hand it is negative rather than positive; it is indignant at wrong or falsehood, but does not, like Love in the Symposium and Phaedrus, aspire to the vision of Truth or Good. It is the peremptory military spirit which prevails in the government of honour. It differs from anger (Greek), this latter term having no accessory notion of righteous indignation. Although Aristotle has retained the word, yet we may observe that 'passion' (Greek) ...
— The Republic • Plato
... luck would have it, there was hung A stocking by the fire To wear which no one over-young Could fittingly aspire: Long, slender, graceful—it was just The thing to fill the heart Of Mrs. C. with deep distrust; ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... government contribute equally to the enslaving of the people. A wise republic ought not to run any hazard which may expose it to good or ill fortune; the only happiness the several individuals of it should aspire after is to give perpetuity to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... influence in other countries, where the pursuit of science is regarded as a profession, and where those who are successful in its cultivation are not shut out from almost every object of honourable ambition to which their fellow countrymen may aspire. Having, however, already expressed some opinion upon these subjects in another publication,(1*) I shall here content myself ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... tidings were received with astonishment and a joy that was dashed with reflections on the strength and mettle of colonists supposed already to aspire to independence. Pepperrell was made a baronet, and Warren an admiral. The merchant soldier was commissioned colonel in the British army; a regiment was given him, to be raised in America and maintained by the King, while a similar recognition was granted ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... now. Genius, intellect, imagination, courage, pride, scorn, all the intensities of his nature, all that he supposed he possessed, all that lay hidden and unsuspected, arose in their might to overcome him now. He did not think, he did not aspire, or hope, or fear, or dream, or remember: he only felt, and bled, and moaned low, hopeless, helpless moans. If it is given to some natures to enjoy intensely, so such correspondingly suffer; and Bart, alone with his pale, cold, dead brother, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... I so lingered where those rocks aspire, I saw a dwarf guide two of goodly strain; Whose coming added hope to my desire (Alas! desire and hope alike were vain) Both barons bold, and fearful in their ire: The one Gradasso, King of Sericane, The next, of youthful vigour, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... which is anxiously looked for by every Anglo-Indian. The little khunjunee makes his appearance in the early part of November, and departs as the hot season approaches—I think in March or April. The note of this little bird can hardly aspire to be called a song; I used, however, to think it a pleasing twitter. I paid particular attention to two khunjunees, which used to return every season and haunt our habitation: they would pick up insects from the pavement, and eat the crumbs with which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... me, O love, which reachest but to dust; And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things; Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: What ever fades but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... took my leave. But, not before the astute lady of the world had contrived to impress me with the consideration that Mrs Clyde moved in a very different circle to that of Mr Lorton; and, that, if I had the assurance and audacity to aspire to the hand of "her daughter," I need not nurse the sweet belief that she would lend a favourable ear to my suit. I must, in that case, be prepared to wage a war a outrance, in which there would be no quarter allowed, on ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... spirit hath gathered wisdom from the changes that shift below. Looking upon the tribes of earth, I have seen how the multitude are swayed, and tracked the steps that lead weakness into power; and fain would I be the ruler of one who, if abased, shall aspire ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was the transition from an order of things in which everything belonged to individuals, to another in which everything was to belong to the nation. That night changed the face of the kingdom; it made all Frenchmen equal; all might now obtain public employments; aspire to the idea of property of their own, of exercising industry for their own benefit. That night was a revolution as important as the insurrection of the 14th of July, of which it was the consequence. It made the people masters of society, as the other had made them masters of the government, and ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... do, however, draw certain lines of character and manners and occupation. You see the sort of people we are. Of course we have no prejudice against color, and we regard all labor as honorable, provided a man does the best he can. But we must have standards that will give our people something to aspire to." ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... as a spur to our energies. Aspiration is the cure for being "at ease in Zion." Aspirations are good or bad according to the motive that prompts them. Some are essentially selfish, and such are necessarily evil. If we desire to be or do for selfish advantage, for glory and praise; if we aspire to be leaders, as so many religious people do, only that they may have authority or honor—our aspirations are evil. But each one of us owes it to himself and to God to desire strongly to be and to do his ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... We are always disappointed in them. Nothing great can be accomplished in the short space of human life; wherefore also we look forward to another (Republic). As we grow old, we are sensible that we have no power actively to pursue our ideals any longer. We have had our opportunity and do not aspire to be more than men: we have received our 'wages and are going home.' Neither do we despair of the future of mankind, because we have been able to do so little in comparison of the whole. We look in vain for consistency ...
— Laws • Plato
... so to aspire Above our brethren, to ourselves assuming Authority usurped from God, not given. He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation: but man over man He made not lord—such title to himself Reserving, ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... definition of man's reasoning power. His sole object was to show that, if one accepted this definition, one must not go as far as Hume in the application of this power. All that Kant could aspire to do was to protect the ethical from attack by the intellectual part of man, and to do this by proving that the former belongs to a world into which the latter has no access. For with his will man belongs to a world of purposeful doing, whereas the reason, as our quotations ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... phantoms of the brain, and never, by system, put into action; but, repeatedly indulged, they were practised by casual occurrences; and the dear-bought experiment of being loved in spite of her faults, (a glory proud women ever aspire to) was, at present, the ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... and entertain me, though, of course, I shall be grateful to them for their kindly interest. Then, the next year I shall devote to music, and if, by practising for nine hundred hours, I cannot acquire a good degree of facility in manipulating a piano or a violin, I must be too dull to ever aspire to the favor of Terpsichore. If I but measure up to my hopes during this year I shall be saved the expense of buying my music ready-made. The next year I shall devote to art, and by spending one entire evening with a single artist I shall thus become ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... his wanderings in the Dago Republics; but all of them had, at least, the saving grace of frankness. The aim and end of their policy was to arrive safely in Paris, with the contents of the national treasury as their baggage. They did not hunger after honours, such as knighthoods, or aspire to speak at Sunday afternoon gathering in pseudo-places of worship. Certainly, they told a number of flamboyant falsehoods before getting into office, but that was the only respect in which they copied civilised political methods; ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... this precious son ought [or, is likely] to aspire; and the new splendor of your dignity ought to inflate his heart with another [higher] vanity. Exercise that [dignity], sir, and instruct the prince. Show him how it is necessary to rule a province: to make the people tremble everywhere under his law; to fill ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... world, where it is held in check by such bonds as have been mentioned. Everyone can see examples of this in potentates and kings who are subject to no such restraints and bonds, but rush on and subjugate provinces and kingdoms so far as they are successful, and aspire to power and glory without limit; and still more strikingly in the Babylon of this day, which has extended its dominion into heaven, and has transferred to itself all the Divine power of the Lord, and continually lusts for more. That such men, ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... happines can be in that ambition promiseth, is but suffering much ill, to get ill. Men thinke by dayly climing higher to plucke themselues out of this ill, and the height wherevnto they so painefully aspire, is the height of misery it selfe. I speake not heere of the wretchednes of them, who all their life haue held out their cap to receiue the almes of court fortune, and can get nothing, often with incredible heart griefe, seeing some by lesse paines taken haue ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... whenever freedom has existed, been the cause of freedom. If it is this principle, that has always prompted the princes and nobles of the earth, by every species of fraud and violence, to shake off all the limitations of their power; it is the same that has always stimulated the common people to aspire at independency, and to endeavour at confining the power of the great, within the limits ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... have produced this crisis to see the folly before they feel the misery of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... young man a listless hand. He couldn't forgive Herr Lippheim. That he should ever, under whatever encouragements from Karen's guardian, have dared to aspire to ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the men, those who aspire to European garments seem to have no perception of the relation subsisting between the various parts of a gentleman's costume. To the wearer of a coat, for instance, pantaloons are by no means indispensable; and a bell-crowned hat and a girdle are full dress. The ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... of actions, the thought being, to the inner eye, the same as the action: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."[197] He must acquire Endurance, for they who aspire to tread "the Way of the Cross" will have to brave long and bitter sufferings, and they must be able to endure, "as seeing Him who is invisible."[198] He must add to these Tolerance, if he would be the child of Him who "maketh His ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... Parson with imprudent warmth, "it is not the character of the aristocracy of this country to keep people down. They make way amongst themselves for any man, whatever his birth, who has the talent and energy to aspire to their level. That's the especial boast of the British ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... George Eliot's readers whether it constitutes the best and completest ethical teaching that fiction can attain, to bring before its readers such high ideals of the possibilities of humanity—of the aim and purpose of life toward which it should ever aspire. Were the author's canvas occupied with such portraitures alone—with Romolas and Fedalmas, Dinah Morrises and Dorothea Brookes, Daniel Derondas and Adam Bedes, even Mr Tryans and Mr Gilfils—the question ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... its tail in the mud?" "It would rather be alive and wagging its tail in the mud," said the officials. "Begone" said Chung. "The tortoise is a symbol of longevity and great wisdom. It would not befit me to aspire to greater wisdom than the tortoise. I, too, ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... I will enchant thine ear, Or like a fairy, trip upon the green, Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell'd hair, Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen: 148 Love is a spirit all compact of fire, Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire. ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... state. What learning there was could only be found among the priests, to whom we owe 'Les Relations des Jesuites,' among other less notable productions. The Roman Catholic Church, being everywhere a democracy, the humblest habitant might enter its ranks and aspire to its highest dignities. Consequently we find the pioneers of that Church, at the very outset, affording the Canadian an opportunity, irrespective of birth or wealth, of entering within its pale. But apart from this class, ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... came. Her view coincided with his own; she recommended him to take the opportunity, and pointed out that with his growing legal reputation there was no office in the State to which he might not aspire, when he had once proved himself a capable member of Parliament. Geoffrey read the letter through; then immediately sat down and wrote to his friend the whip, accepting the suggestion of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
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