"Lowliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and again most perrumptallee beg leave, in all lowliness by the grace and blessin of God in his infinit goodness ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... we shall never fully attain it). It requires that we should bear the confusion of defeat without desisting from the struggle, that we should accept the progressive illumination of what is still unaccomplished, and keep the habitual lowliness of a beginner with the unconquerable hopefulness which comes of a fixed resolution to win what is worth winning. Let those who have tried say whether this ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... thoughts of being of service to my wronged people, because my life belies it. But I am sincere, Silas; believe me," and Molly reached over and laid her hand upon the arm of Mr. Wingate, whose look betrayed his incredulity. "In spite of the lowliness of my birth, and the life I have chosen, some good remains in me." She went on: "My fair complexion and life of ease have not made me forget that I am identified with the oppressed and despised." "Thank God! thank ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon his lowliness gleam down the rosy and purple lights of rare old wines aloft, yet from his altitude he can look below upon a profane crowd in thick array of depth immeasurable, and rejoice that he is not stagnant water nor exasperated vinegar nor disappointed buttermilk. Nay, I am not only content, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... from Radicals, and several Tories stood up to speak in favour of the measure. Opposition was really left to poor Mr. Webster, of St. Pancras; but, then, everybody knew what poor Mr. Webster meant, and nothing could better express the lowliness of the Tory party than that opposition to anything should be led by the hapless representative of St. Pancras. The consequence of all this was that the Registration Bill passed in the course of a few hours—the debate illumined by an excellent maiden speech from our John Burns—delivered ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... can be, He fights alone for Liberty; Nor will he rest till Italy Shake off her tyrants' chains. This done he seeks not high estate; Success does not his soul elate; In lowliness he can be great, For meanness ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... expressions, 'the gospel of the glory of God,' leads up to that great thought that the true glory of the divine nature is its tenderness. The lowliness and death of Christ are the glory of God! Not in the awful attributes which separate that inconceivable Nature from us, not in the eternity of His existence, nor in the Infinitude of His Being, not in the Omnipotence of His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... lowliness is described in the two clauses which we have just been considering. They express His identification with us from a double point of view, and that double point of view is continued in the final clauses of our text which state the double purpose of God in sending His Son. He became one with us that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the idea is the chief reason for our dislike of it. This lowliness of origin should not be distasteful to us. Nothing about Abraham Lincoln seems to us more wonderful than that a man who towered head and shoulders above his generation, indeed above most generations of men, in his fineness of life, in his nobility of purpose, in the integrity of his aims, should ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... breach, a chasm between the people and the church, that will be difficult to bridge over. They are positively bringing their calling into disrepute. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory but in lowliness of mind, is a divine injunction they ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... daughter happy. His very soul had smiled within him when she had smiled in his presence. But he had been subject to one weakness, which had marred a manliness which would otherwise have been great. He, who should have been proud of the lowliness of his birth, and have known that the brightest feather in his cap was the fact that having been humbly born he had made himself what he was,—he had never ceased to be ashamed of the stable-yard. And as ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... discovering the simple fact that it is exactly as impossible by our own striving to develop the Christ-life in our hearts as to form the seed in the pod! We have not to produce out of our higher nature a lowliness and a patience and a purity of our own, but simply to let the pure, patient, lowly life of Jesus have its way in us by yieldingness to it and by faith in its indwelling might. "All that God wants from man is opportunity." The whole of our relationship to His power, whether for ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... ministry. We are of the opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterward by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ in lowliness of mind, peaceably, and with all modesty, and for a long time have borne a good report with all—these men we consider to be unjustly thrust out of their ministrations.(18) For it will be no light sin for us, if we thrust out those who have offered the gifts of the bishop's office ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the beautiful words of the Magnificat, that we sing at Vespers while the priest incenses the altar. (3) The Nativity, or birth of Our Lord, which reminds us how He was born in a stable, in poverty and lowliness. (4) The Presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple. According to the law of Moses, the people were obliged to bring the first boy born in every family to the temple in Jerusalem and offer him to God. Then they gave some offering to buy ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... of divine love, for which he has been preparing in all the preceding. Note that he has not named 'the Word' since verse 1, but here he again uses the majestic expression to bring out strongly the contrast between the ante-temporal glory and the historical lowliness. These four words, 'The Word became flesh,' are the foundation of all our knowledge of God, of man, of the relations between them, the foundation of all our hopes, the guarantee of all our peace, the pledge of all blessedness. 'He tabernacled among us.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Good Shepherd brings His wandering sheep back home. "I will bring them ... to their own land." We return from the land of pride to the home of lowliness, from hard indifference to gracious sympathy, from the barrenness of sin to the beauty of holiness. We come back to God's beautiful "lily-land" of eternal light ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... however, shows he is not blind to the rise of an evil which has been the bane of the Church of Christ since the beginning, the spirit of rivalry, and this is evident from the prominence he gives in chapter ii. 5-8 to the self-sacrificing lowliness of Christ, and by the counsel he gives them in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the formal fable or allegory. In Tolstoy's story are two historical characters of so pronounced individuality that their names always suggest definite ideas—Croesus, riches and worldly greatness; Solon, wisdom and worldly poverty and lowliness. These ideas are brought into conflict, and the outcome allows us to see which is the basic one in Tolstoy's theory of life. Who is the happy warrior? One would merely have to quote some words from the story to have an answer. And if the reader feels the force of the answer, as Tolstoy ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in Zechariah 9, 9: "Behold thy king cometh unto thee lowly (or afflicted)." Our translation renders it "meek." Likewise in Psalms 132, 1: "Jehovah, remember for David all his affliction." From the same root is derived the expression, "low estate," or "lowliness," used by the Virgin Mary in her song, Lk 1, 48. This fact induces Sanctes to ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... neighbor. Napoleon, the master of Europe, whom emperors and kings gladly called "brother," could now proudly remember his past; he had now risen so high that he no longer had cause to deny his humble origin; this very lowliness had now become a new triumph ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... strength to the assurance, for the facts of the Christian life are such as to demand, both by its greatness and by its littleness, by its loftiness and by its lapses into lowliness, by the floodtide of devotion that sometimes sweeps rejoicingly over the mud-shoals and by the ebb that sometimes leaves them all black and festering, a future life wherein what was manifestly meant to be, and capable of being, dominant, supreme, but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... sorrow. He had it in his heart to wish that they could possess, in some small measure, her goodness and glory. And not for the world could he hurt them because of their outreaching. He was not flattered by it; he even felt a slight shame at his lowliness that permitted it. He knew, did he belong in Ruth's class, that there would be no overtures from these girls; and with each glance of theirs he felt the fingers of his own class clutching at him to ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... die with the crown on her head than to live robbed of her crown in lowliness and in a, subject condition. Thus thought Marie Antoinette, as at the close of that dreadful day she went to rest; this was her prayer as ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... of Parker and Ann Clare, commonly called "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet," was born at Helpstone, near Peterborough, on the 13th of July, 1793. The lowliness of his lot lends some countenance to the saying of "Melancholy" Burton, that "poverty is the Muses' patrimony." He was the elder of twins, and was so small an infant that his mother used to say of him that "John might have ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... according to its degree and special circumstances, the Quiet, the Desert of God, the Divine Dark, represents the utmost that human consciousness can do of itself towards the achievement of union with Reality. To some it brings joy and peace, to others fear: to all a paradoxical sense of the lowliness and greatness of the soul, which now at last can measure itself by the august standards of the Infinite. Though the trained and diligent will of the contemplative can, if control of the attention be really established, recapture this state ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... companion was observed to have continual access to the royal ear. That saintly and soft-spoken messenger (says Agapida) received the reward of his humility; for the queen, moved by his frequent representations, made in all modesty and lowliness of spirit, granted a yearly sum in perpetuity of one thousand ducats in gold for the support of the monks of the Convent ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... God's instrument. 'I will send thee' must have come like a thunder-clap. The commander's summons which brings a man from the rear rank and sets him in the van of a storming-party may well make its receiver shrink. It was not cowardice which prompted Moses' answer, but lowliness. His former impetuous confidence had all been beaten out of him. Time was when he was ready to take up the role of deliverer at his own hand; but these hot days were past, and age and solitude and communion with God had mellowed him into humility. His recoil was but one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... own things, but every man also on the things of others." That is, even in the exercise of his choicest gifts and graces, let a man forget his own in his desire to employ and bring forward the gifts of others. "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." That is, in your own mind take a humble view of yourself, your own powers, and your own worthiness, and hold your comrades in higher esteem than you hold yourself, in honour preferring one another to yourself. That would be ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... springing, is used for the lower side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf; so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every subordinate leaf throughout the tree is made to depend on its confession of its own lowliness ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... it remembered) may be, through the Indwelling of Christ, "filled unto all the fulness of God"; and then the fourth chapter begins at once with the appeal to him to live "therefore" a life of "all lowliness, meekness, longsuffering, and forbearance in love." In Colossians we have the same sequence of thought in one noble sentence (ver. 11) of the first chapter: "Strengthened with all strength, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... remain here for the consecrated until to-morrow morning. It oft happens that the lofty even must come down, and the brilliant obscure themselves. To-day I must descend from my spiritual height, and humble myself in the dust of lowliness. When the unholy and unconsecrated essay to behold that which they should not with their earthly eyes; they must be blinded with earthly dust, and for those which are not worthy of miracles, we must ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... make the long days sweet?' She looked very proudly upon him, smiling all the time; she put her hands up and crowned his head with them. 'Oh, my dear life, my pride and my master,' said Jehane, 'let all come to me that must come now; I am rich above all my desires, and my lowliness has been of no account with God. Now let ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... sin no more; nay, you may behold him sometimes in prayer, for a proper delivery of the great truths he is to utter, humble himself with a very well turned phrase, and mention his unworthiness in a way so very becoming, that the air of the pretty gentleman is preserved, under the lowliness of the preacher. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... numberless purposes lets him surprise in her the purpose to accord with him, and lets him suspect further harmonies which he has not yet learnt to understand—then man becomes conscious of having received a token from her lowliness, and a favour from her loveliness, compared with which the care wherewith his tailor himself has fitted him might leave ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... of mind, love of splendor and munificence. One of the fine traits of his character that he is acknowledged to have possessed, was his never-failing kindheartedness and his deep gratitude towards those persons who had ever done him a service. In all humility and lowliness of spirit I will imitate him in this, and begin with himself by blessing his memory and addressing my prayers for him to the God of Mercy who has so ordered things that nations ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... suffice, so parched and torrid is it within." Well wist the scholar by her voice how spent she was; he also saw a part of her body burned through and through by the sun; whereby, and by reason of the lowliness of her entreaties, he felt some little pity for her; but all the same he made answer:—"Nay, wicked woman, 'tis not by my hands thou shalt die; thou canst die by thine own whenever thou art so minded; and to temper thy heat thou shalt have just as much water from me as I had fire from thee ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... poverty. On 6th day evening R.B. addressed us in such a way as proved to me that the Divine word is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The chief purport was the necessity of a willingness to learn daily of the great Teacher meekness and lowliness and faithfulness in the occupation of the talents intrusted; "for where much is given, much will be required." Yesterday his parting "salutation of brotherly love" was such as cannot be effaced from my memory; and oh, I pray that it may not from my heart. ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... the Nazarene, who was crucified.' Do you not catch a tone of wonder and a tone of triumph in this threefold particularising of the humanity, the lowly residence, and the Ignominious death? All that lowliness, suffering, and shame are brought into comparison with the rising from the dead. That is to say, when we grasp the fact of a risen Christ, we look back upon all the story of His birth, His lowly life, His death of shame, and see a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... account; nor can you expect it of me. My brother's daughter, unfettered by worldly ties, had been the welcome sharer of my poor solicitude. But this house is too mean for the residence of the vowed bride of a mighty baron; nor do I, in my lowliness and inexperience, feel fitness to exercise over such an one that authority, which must belong to me over every one whom this roof protects. The grave tenor of our devotions, and the serener contemplation to which the females of this house are devoted," ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... manners noble. Low may he bow, not with loss, but with access of dignity, who bows with an elevated and ascending heart: there is nothing loftier, nothing less allied to abject behavior, than this grand lowliness. The worm, because it is low, cannot be lowly; but man, uplifted in token of supremacy, may kneel in adoration, bend in courtesy, and stoop in condescension. Only a great pride, that is, a great and reverential repose in one's own being, renders possible a noble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... to improvements in my own dress. I should have liked to have pulled down the galleries and lowered the high pews; that, however, I could not do. So I have lowered the pulpit some six feet. Now by doing so, first I give a pattern in my own person of the kind of condescension or lowliness to which I would persuade my people. But this is not all; for the consequence of lowering the pulpit is, that no one in the galleries can see or hear me preach; and this is a bonus on those ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... yet still be Consular. Therefore we have thought fit to bestow on the Illustrious and Magnificent Patrician Maximus, the Primiceriatus which is also called Domesticatus, from this fourteenth Indiction, that the lowliness of the honour may be raised by the merit of the wearer. He is an Anicius, sprung from a family renowned throughout the whole world. He is also honoured with the affinity of our own illustrious race. Receive him, welcome him, rejoice at these nuptials, which ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... nature's works, one who might move The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser thou! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love, True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, Can still suspect, and still revere himself, In lowliness of heart. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... of lowliness! Happy enjoyments of such minds As, rich in self-contentedness, Can, like the reeds in roughest winds, By yielding make that blow but small At which proud ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... her bed In large-eyed hope and bended lowliness, To crave that He, the Giver, may impart Enough of strength to bind her trembling heart Steadfast and true; and that her will be led To own His chastening cares pain but ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth: all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty has magnified me: and holy is his Name. And his mercy is on them that fear him: throughout all generations. He hath showed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... tones of the organ had penetrated the humble homes. They looked up at the organ silently and seriously; for its exalted melodies had, without their being prepared for it, carried them away from their everyday existence, and lifted them up above its abject lowliness. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... and inaptitude to religious duties, and a just sense of our great weakness and numerous infirmities. This cannot be an unbecoming temper, in those who are commanded to "work out their salvation with fear and trembling." It prompts to constant and earnest prayer. It produces that sobriety, and lowliness and tenderness of mind, that meekness of demeanor and circumspection in conduct, which are such eminent ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... point of view is continued in the final clauses of our text which state the double purpose of God in sending His Son. He became one with us that we might become one with Him. The two elements of this double purpose are stated in the reverse order to the two elements of Christ's lowliness. The redemption of them that were under law is presented as the reason for His being born under law, and our reception of the 'adoption of sons' is the purpose of the Son's being sent and born of a woman. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... murder is not only a sport, but a subject of vainglorious triumph? Let those whose rank claims as its right such bloody homage take pride and pleasure in it; we, who have no share in the sacrifice, may the better pity the sufferings of the victim. Let us thank our lowliness, since it secures us from temptation. But forgive me, father, if I have stepped over the limits of my duty, in contradicting the views which you entertain, with so many others, on ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott |
