"Self-sacrifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Court, however, was not slow to notice the attentions paid by the King to this young English princess, and Monsieur, wholly indifferent though he was as regarded his wife, deemed it a point of honour to appear offended thereat. Ever a slave to the laws of good breeding, the King showed much self-sacrifice in curbing this violent infatuation of his. (I was Madame's maid of honour at the time.) As he contemplated a Dutch expedition, in which the help of England would have counted for much, he resolved to send a negotiator to King Charles. The young ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and also for successful commerce, for statesmanlike international dealings, for the effective treatment of every political and social question. The inspirations that come to us from a glorious piece of music or from an heroic act of self-sacrifice, from some new discovery or from a novel sensitiveness of conscience, are all inspirations from the one God. At every moment and in every situation we must keep the same fundamental attitude towards ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... too warm; but does not our holy religion teach us lessons of self-sacrifice and mortification?" said the princess, with a touching expression ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... like a yellow moss. It was of no value, he said, but in the course of ages it had taken the place of the offering of actual gold in forest worship: a once universal custom of adorning the tree with everything most precious to the giver in token of his sacrifice and self-sacrifice. Even in Jeremiah is an account of the lading of the sacred tree with gold and ornaments. Herodotus relates that when Xerxes was invading Lydia, on the march he saw a divine tree and had it honored with golden ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... She had seen all our troubles and our poverty: we knew that she knew all about us: she had helped us with the most precious help—what more was there necessary to knit her to us?—and it is worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, and her noble self-sacrifice, so far from putting us, in her opinion, in her debt, only seemed to her a reason why she should be more deeply ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... Wright, the Bursar of Trinity: and every one who speaks of her says she is a very delightful Lady. Donne himself seemed very well, and in very good Spirits, in spite of all his domestic troubles. What Courage, and Good Temper, and Self-sacrifice! Valentia (whom I had not seen these dozen years) seemed a very sensible, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... who received her last sigh. If Lady Somerset causes us to shrink with horror from the depth of depravity of which woman's nature is capable, let us thank God that in Lady Rachel Russell we have a witness of the purity, self-sacrifice, and holiness a true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... vastly greater than, the considerations of the interest or the security of either Great Britain or the United States—is the claim of humanity. The two peoples have it in their hands to give to the whole world no less a gift than that of Universal and Perpetual Peace. It involves no self-sacrifice, the giving of this wonderful boon, for the two peoples themselves would share in the benefit no less than other peoples, and they would be the richer by the giving. It involves hardly any effort, for they have but to hold out their hands together and give. It matters not that the world ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... remain a model of devotion and self-sacrifice for all time, and we feel that the highest tribute we can pay her is to endeavour, however humbly, to follow in the footsteps of this unassuming, ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... the manner of the "courts of trade;" that is, in a summary way, without appeal, and by experts (317 ff). All the relations of property should be determined by the decision arbitrale des chefs d'industrie (326). Bazard everywhere insists that the reign of genius and of self-sacrifice on the one hand, and on the other of confidence and obedience, is the only true policy (330). Saint Simonism ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... salvation realised in Him." In order to render such a mixture possible, everything is tried in order to remove the vicarious character of the sufferings of the Servant of God, since that character is peculiar to Christ, and excludes every comparison. "Of a priestly self-sacrifice of the Servant of God"—says Hofmann, S. 101, 2—"I cannot find anything. The assertion that the words [Hebrew: izh gviM], denote a priestly work, no longer requires a refutation. His [Pg 325] vocation is to be the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Americans to care for their fellow countrymen had been organized. All that was asked of the stranded Americans was to keep cool and, like true sports, suffer inconvenience. Around them were the French and English, facing the greatest tragedy of centuries, and meeting it calmly and with noble self-sacrifice. The men were marching to meet death, and in the streets, shops, and fields the women were taking up the burden the men had dropped. And in the Rue Scribe and in Cockspur Street thousands of Americans ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... then, he saw that I had been simply exploited by this heartless and unprincipled scoundrel, Prince Adalbert of Rittersheim. But your father," she proceeded, turning to Dolores and placing her hand on hers, "your father, my dear, by his self-sacrifice and the pure affection which he ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... crying out in the hope of luring the creature into trying to reach you—as he can, if he happens to be one of the exceptional jumpers—and so give me a chance to get away. How noble that is of you! I shall take the chance, my brave preserver, that your self-sacrifice gives me—and I shall collect, and bedew with tears of gratitude, all that the savage monster leaves me of your bones! Heaven bless you—and good-bye!" And away the Hen cut—leaving Boston high and dry on the roof of the 'dobe, so scared he just lay ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... clung weeping to her knees, as her father threatened to turn her out of doors, never to see them again; and she thought of her mother's last words—her decision was made; and with a heavy heart she performed the self-sacrifice. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... character of the spinster as peevish, selfish, given to queer fancies, and unpleasant eccentricities. In many a case we are glad to say this is untrue. Instances of noble devotion, broad and generous sympathy, and distinguished self-sacrifice, are by no means rare in single women. But take the whole class, the popular opinion, as it often is, must be granted to be correct. Deprived of the natural objects of interest, the sentiments are apt ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... half price, then of converting it into a bonded debt to be perpetuated for a full generation, and finally of compelling the people to pay it in a dollar worth four times as much as the dollar with which it was purchased. It was a beautiful scheme of devotion and self-sacrifice the like of which history has never before recorded. It was a speculation which involved the life of the American Republic. The Union was on trial. All nerves were strained, and all hearts were torn. The nation was bleeding at ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... infernal band, indeed, is very feebly and heavily pourtrayed. They are a set of stupid, undignified, miserable wretches, quarrelling with each other, and trembling in the prospect of inevitable destruction. None of them even appears to have obtained the price of their self-sacrifice in worldly honours and advancement, except Mohareb; and he, though assured by destiny that there was one death-blow appointed for him and Thalaba, is yet represented, in the concluding scene, as engaged with him in furious combat, and aiming many a deadly blow at that life on which ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... birth to some of the greatest charities of the present age, whether we take into the account the number of the beneficiaries or the faith and self-sacrifice of the founders and their successors. Even during the period of religious indifference there were here and there celebrated institutions designed for the amelioration of the suffering classes. They contended ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... your mother's name were defiled, would not your heart bound to her defence? When a prince is a dethroned exile, his throne is fixed deeper in the hearts of his adherents 'though his back be at the wall' and common souls become heroes because their devotion has been heightened to sublimity of self-sacrifice by a nation's rebellion. And when so many voices are proclaiming that God has never spoken to men, that our thoughts of His Book are dreams, and its long empire over men's spirits a waning tyranny, does cool indifference become ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... manifest a single emotion of gentleness, of tender feeling or sentiment, of love of children, of nature, or any domestic affection, in his last will desires to be held in loving remembrance by the fresh young souls for whose benefit he declares he has led his long career of toil, of self-sacrifice, and devotion, to gain. The association of sweet flowers, sprinkled over a green grave by the hands of innocent children, with the life and character of one of the most intense, hard and severe devotees to Mammon that ever lived, is a strange and incongruous one, but it was a picture which appears ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from equality and from the feeling for others' rights, and the very supremacy which the slaveholders enjoyed was fatal to this feeling. Virginia and Kentucky were rich in independent character, but public spirit is better than this, for it cares for the independence of all through the self-sacrifice of each. That was the secret which Ohio early learned from New England, and which kept her safe from slavery when it pressed so hard upon her in the friendship as well as ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... honest and innocent soldier dragged away by the traitor Dexippus; but that he now willingly gave himself up as a victim, to avert from the army the displeasure of the Lacedaemonians. This generous self-sacrifice, which at the moment promised nothing less than a fatal result to Agasias, was accepted by the army: and the generals conducted both him and the soldier whom he had rescued, as prisoners to Kleander. Presenting himself as the responsible party, Agasias ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... interesting thing in life. Also it is true that they have had other occupations—fox-hunting, preaching, editing magazines, what not. Yet to them literature must, as their own main task, have had a peculiar interest and importance. No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. It is nonsense to imagine that our great novelists have just forged ahead or ambled along, reaching their goal, in the good old English fashion, by sheer divination of the way ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... ago, from the text: "The poor ye have always with you," in which the preacher dwelt on the virtues of benevolence and gratitude called out on either side. Poverty, said he, has been the wise schoolmaster, to teach the people industry, economy, self-sacrifice, patience, and humility, all those beautiful virtues that best fit the human soul for the life hereafter. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Thus the lessons of submission ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... above it all should abound. The invisible, full of awe, is also full of teaching, it is pregnant with whispers. The mind, tuned up to a new tension, receives all kinds of Marconi-like messages. What sends such whispers? Is it that in the moment of supreme self-sacrifice and splendid devotion to duty that spiritual perceptions are sharpened? Who shall say? "He was hit, and he rushed forward shouting, 'Why, there's my——' then he dropped dead, but he saw someone, of that I am sure." So spoke a man ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... themselves with these public manifestations of self-sacrifice. They formed a regular religious order, with officers and laws, and property in common. At night, before sleeping, each indicated to his brothers by gestures the sins which weighed most heavily on his conscience, not a word being spoken until absolution was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... in which he merges himself. So the one Sacrifice of the New Covenant gets its essential value in that it is the surrender of the Son to the will of the Father. "I am come to do Thy will, O God." Christ's sacrifice is self-sacrifice: the voluntary surrender of the whole life to the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... may be absorbed in subserving the lives of other individuals... Neither the ant nor the bee can be supposed to have a sense of duty, in the acceptation we give to that word; nor can it be supposed that it is continually undergoing self-sacrifice, in the ordinary acceptation of that word... [The facts] show us that it is within the possibilities of organization to produce a nature which shall be just as energetic in the pursuit of altruistic ends, as is in other cases shown in the pursuit of egoistic ends;—and ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... can't go to the country without saying to you once more that your self-sacrifice and manliness throughout this campaign have endeared you to me to a degree that ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... shall grow old-fashioned too, while we, like antiquity, shall have enjoyed that which never grows old—the sunshine and the stars, love and friendship, the smiles of little children, and the freshness of flowers, aspiration and achievement, thought and worship, struggle and self-sacrifice. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... yet quite seventeen. Not yet seventeen! the reader will say. She was still such a child, and yet arguing to herself about spendthrift debtors and self-sacrifice! All this bombast at sixteen and a half. No, my ungentle reader, not all this bombast at sixteen and a half. The bombast is mine. It is my fault if I cannot put into fitting language the thoughts which God put into her young heart. In her mind's soliloquy, Charley's vices were probably ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... from the Valley of Virginia, it was decided to mislead the enemy by sending out a courier with false dispatches to be captured. There was a call for a volunteer for this service. Charley was the first to offer, with that spirit of generous self-sacrifice that was one of his pleasantest traits when a boy. He knew what he had to expect. Capture meant imprisonment at Andersonville; our men had now a pretty clear understanding of what this was. Charley took the dispatches and rode into the enemy's lines. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... through eyes brimming with tears, read the verses, although she had known them all by heart for years. She meant to give the book to Sylvia for a birthday present—one of the most precious gifts ever given, if the value of gifts is gauged by the measure of self-sacrifice involved. In that little book was immortal love—old laughter—old tears—old beauty which had bloomed like a rose years ago, holding still its sweetness like old rose leaves. She removed the telltale fly-leaf; and late on the night before Sylvia's birthday, the Old Lady ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and Bruce, and of the virtual extinction of the men of Paraguay in the war against Brazil and Argentina; but history records no resistance on the part of a considerable population inhabiting an extensive region, under an organized government, worthy to compare in resolution, endurance and self-sacrifice, with that of the Southern Confederacy to the forces of the Union. When the war closed the South was prostrate. When the Governor of Alabama was asked to join in raising a force to attack the rear of Sherman he answered, no doubt truthfully, that only cripples, old men and children remained ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... inevitable death is the only counterpart to their action. And their unfaltering fulfillment of the work allotted them is the more remarkable as each works independently. It is one thing to be impelled forward by the frenzy and madness of battle; to be nerved to deeds of valor and self-sacrifice in the face of impending disaster, such as shipwreck and fire; but it is quite another thing to deliberately carry out a plan that taxes the will, the heart and the conscience, and that too, totally unaided by ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... depends upon the personnel of the women doctors, and, as things become easier for the students, it becomes more and more difficult to convince the new recruits of the strenuousness of the fight in earlier years and of the need for constant vigilance and self-sacrifice at the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... subsequently to the grounds of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, from whence it was finally taken to its present site. This obelisk has a special interest because it commemorates one of the most beautiful and touching examples of self-sacrifice which the annals of paganism afford. We are apt to judge of Antinous from the languid beauty of the statue of him in the Roman galleries, as simply the pampered sycophant of a court. But behind his sensual beauty and softness there was an unselfish devotion ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Happily for me, I had visible guardian angels to guide me in this matter; they chose books suitable to my age, which interested me and at the same time provided food for my thoughts and affections. I was only allowed a limited time for this favourite recreation, and it became an occasion of much self-sacrifice, for as soon as the time had elapsed I made it my duty to stop instantly, even in the middle of a most ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... time, in August, 1805, he was, deservedly, the object of such widespread popular devotion, and his stay was so short, that the voice of censure was hushed amid the general murmur of affectionate admiration. The noble qualities of the man, the exalted spirit of self-sacrifice and heroic aspiration that breathed in his utterances, and was embodied, not only in his brilliant deeds, but in the obscure, patient endurance of the last two years, evoked a sentiment which spread over him and her a haze of tender sympathy that still survives. In the glory of Trafalgar, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... pride work the cure of that wasted devotion, madame," said Victor, earnestly. "Do not submit any longer to be the dupe, the tool, of this man. Do you know how dearly your self-sacrifice has cost you? I am sure you do not. You do not know that this house is beginning to be talked about as a place to be shunned. You have observed, perhaps, that you have had few visitors of late. Day by day your visitors will grow fewer. This house is marked. It is talked of at the clubs; and ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... unimpaired the unity, the purity, the glory of our nation. So far as I have turned over the leaves of the volume of time, I have found nothing in all the past like this. Therefore, standing before the highest manifestation of earthly patriotism, viewing it crowned in all the glory of self-sacrifice, by a faithfulness which was literally in the case of hundreds of thousands "unto death," we ask: "What is there that justifies a nation in exacting or accepting (when freely offered) such tribute of the life-blood of ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... raised to strike, there the white hand of Pity has been stretched forth to solace. Wherever else there may have been division, here there has been no division. Love, the essence of Christianity, self-sacrifice, the life of God, have forgotten their names, have left the beaten ways, have embodied themselves in institutions, and lifted the whole nation to the heights of a divine beneficence. Old and young, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... with the spirit of self-sacrifice, but later you will see that I am right. I am not discouraged. A thousand things may happen. Who knows what to-morrow may bring? Let's wait and see if we can't find a way out. Now that I know you love me, I have the ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... noteworthy, withal, how some of them are so secure in the spirit and substance of the moral law, that they do not scruple, in certain circumstances, to overrule its letter and form. Thus Isabella feigns to practise sin; and she does so as a simple act of self-sacrifice, and because she sees that in this way a good and pious deed may be done in aid of others: she shrinks not from the social imputation of wrong in that case, so her conscience be clear; and she can better brave the external finger of shame ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... him back to the original elements. The quiet days he had spent in Chaudiere, the self-sacrifice he had been compelled to make, the human sins, such as those of Jo Portugais and Louis Trudel, with which he had had to do, the simplicity of the life around him—the uncomplicated lie and the unvarnished truth, the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... John, "which appeals above all to the senses, and lives on the emotions, and fosters jealousy and vanity and backbiting, and develops duplicity, and exists on lies, and does nothing to encourage self-sacrifice or to help suffering humanity, is a bad ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... should abandon not parents and brethren merely, but also wife and children as well in order to enter the priesthood; in Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9 this is adduced only as an extreme instance of the spirit of self-sacrifice. In any case it is not to be inferred that celibacy was demanded, but only that the priestly office was often barely sufficient to support the man, not to speak of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... almost eagerly, and told him—nearly all. The old man was deeply affected. He murmured in a broken voice, "Your story is the story of your sex, self-sacrifice, first to your mother, then to ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... him with the fiery zeal of the convert, and particularly of the convert to heresy, had blinded him to every other element in the gigantic self-delusion of civilized man. The will to power was his answer to Christianity's affectation of humility and self-sacrifice; eternal recurrence was his mocking criticism of Christian optimism and millennialism; the superman was his candidate for the place of the Christian ideal of the "good" man, prudently abased before the throne of God. The ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... sublime enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and devotion, not only by the patriots but by loyalists who conscientiously adhered to the crown. In our admiration of those who secured the independence of the Colonies, we have overlooked the sacrifices and sufferings of the loyalists;—their distress during the siege ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... his realm. Fierce spirits, unfortunately, sometimes forgot the truth and gave themselves up to a cruel lust for persecution which was at variance with their creed, but the holiest now condemned warfare and praised the virtues of obedience and self-sacrifice. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... taste, of art and of sentiment; she felt, somehow, as if she had gained the growth of years in a few months. She felt within herself the stirring of dim aspiration, the uprising of a new power of self-devotion and self-sacrifice, a trance of hero-worship, a cloud of high ideal images,—the lighting up, in short, of all that God has laid, ready to be enkindled, in a woman's nature, when the time comes to sanctify her as the pure priestess of a domestic temple. But, alas! it was kindled by one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... to myself—"here is the result of half a century of devotedness and self-sacrifice!... Ah! if by any happy chance this inexorable Therese had once in her whole life, only once, failed in her duty as a servant—if she had ever been at fault for one single instant, she could never have assumed this inflexible authority ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the baby and left Rena to her own reflections, to which his presentation of the case had given a new turn. It had never before occurred to her to regard silence in the light of self-sacrifice. It had seemed a sort of sin; her brother's argument made of it a virtue. It was not the first time, nor the last, that right and wrong had been ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Yudhi-sthira's self-sacrifice sufficiently tested, the gods proclaimed that it was all but an illusion shown to make him enjoy the more, by contrast, the blisses of heaven. The king Yudhi-sthira then bathed in the great river flowing through three worlds, and, washed from all sins and soils, went ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... action, never forsook a friend, nor allowed a labour to go unrewarded. In testimony to his sympathy to those about him and his self-sacrifice for the cause of science, it may be stated that in the old days, when the professors took the fees and disbursed the working expenses of the laboratories, he, doing this at a loss, would refund the fees of students whose position, from friendship ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... who is chafing in his chain. Not only is a husband still liable for the wrongs committed by the wife whom he has no longer the power to restrain from committing them, but in many ways—in one very important way—his obligation to her remains intact after she has had the self-sacrifice to surrender all obligation to him. Moreover, if his wife has a separate estate he has to endure the pain of seeing it hedged about from her creditors (themselves not altogether happy in the contemplation) with ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... alternative programme on the part of the Social Democrats themselves. "If I had to make out a school report for the Social Democratic Movement," said Prince Buelow in the Reichstag on one occasion, "I should say, 'Criticism, agitation, discipline, and self-sacrifice, I. a; positive achievements, lucidity of programme, V. b.'" The taunt is not undeserved. The Socialist Movement in Germany has suffered, like so many German movements, through a rigid adherence to logical theories. Under the leadership of old revolutionary thinkers like Bebel ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... thing that a burst of self-sacrifice often leaves us in a bad temper. Diana was no model heroine, only a very ordinary and rather spoilt girl. The reaction after giving up her pony had sent her spirits down to zero, and if all her doings are to be faithfully chronicled, it must be confessed that for a day or ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... more glorious title to fame is that of those who are remembered for some act of justice or self-devotion: the self-sacrifice of Leonidas, the good faith of Regulus, are ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... said, in reply to sympathetic greeting, "I am a little hipped; situation growing too heavy for me. Patriotism all very well; public spirit desirable; self-abnegation, as OLD MORALITY says, is the seed of virtue. But you may carry spirit of self-sacrifice too far. Read my speech at dinner to HARTINGTON, of course? Put it in the right light, don't you think? We Dissentient Liberals, as they call us, are the Paschal Lambs of politics; except that, instead ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... like a high-spirited charger as he could. Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, and there was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind. It was a new side of life for Margaret. She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient or modern, watching it. It was a very busy ride,—something to do at every farmhouse: a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margaret noticed,—the pearly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... "This sounds like self-sacrifice," said Sir George. "I sincerely hope it may answer. We are going different ways, I think. Good-morning." He raised his hand to his hat in a perfunctory way, and hurried off. The next time he saw Mrs. Kilroy, he described this ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the spirit of self-sacrifice, a different sense of responsibility, and the same strength of imagination and power of purpose devoted to purely material objects, might have raised up another multi-millionaire, or a mob-leader, or a self-seeking despot. But, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... great battle with evil which he has been carrying on in the city, and to which he means to return after a fortnight or a month or six weeks, as the case may be. We fear, in fact, that very few indeed of our summer cottages contain half so much noble endeavor and power of self-sacrifice as ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... destiny under the leadership of men whom Nature had gifted with less trenchant minds. He was in succession Foreign Secretary to Congress and clerk to the Pennsylvania Assembly, and we find him converting despair into triumph by the magic of self-sacrifice. He it was who in 1780 saved the finances of the war in a moment of despair, by starting the patriotic subscription with the gift of his own salary, and in 1781 proved his diplomatic gift in a journey to Paris by obtaining money-aid from the ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... poor outcasts are capable of noble self-sacrifice, the story I am about to relate will testify. Not far from this very gipsy settlement, in a wild romantic glen, is a steep overhanging rock, which is known throughout the country as the "Gipsy's Rock," and came to be so called from the following ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... Jewish, the ethical, the thought of doing, rather than giving. Righteousness earns God's favor. The higher conception blossomed into Christianity with its trust in the love of God and of serving him and fellow-man, self-sacrifice being the highest expression of harmony with him. Following this general advance from giving and doing to being, we have the altar, the ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... extremely sick man. And for two weeks he was forced to fight against the effect of the deadly toxins he had been inhaling for so long. He had saved others from the risk of handling the Adresol. Now he was called upon to pay for his self-sacrifice. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... awful Power! I call thee: I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; O let my weakness have an end! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy Bondman ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Roger Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who for two or three years past had been settled in the town. It was understood that this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered of late by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labours and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Africa, and amidst savages. Among his companions were his ward, who chanced also to be the lady whom he loved and desired to make his wife, but who, as he thought, cared nothing for him; and a priest who was enamoured platonically of the same lady, and yet wished, with rare self-sacrifice, to bring about her union with another man. Here were materials enough for a romance, leaving the journey and the fabled treasure out of it; only then the scene should be ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... justice due to a wronged people who have proved themselves capable of self-government, even then it could not be justified in the present crisis abroad. But it is not so. Ulster will fight for the same cause as did the Northern States of America, and may well show the same self-sacrifice. It will be civil war in a country peculiarly adapted to the movements of irregular troops, well acquainted with its features; it will be accompanied by atrocities which will be remembered for centuries. And this is the tremendous risk ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... and heroic self-sacrifice these humble toilers at the Bethlehem-Nazareth "Economy" are unsurpassed in the history of the Brethren's Church. They built their own houses; they made their own clothes and boots; they tilled the soil and provided their own meat, vegetables, bread, milk, and eggs; they sawed their own wood, spun ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... your sakes, but I cannot;" then she calmly and sweetly bade them good-bye, and no earthly cares touched her afterwards. Very sad hearts were left behind, but her example remained to us and called us upwards. Her short life had been continual self-sacrifice. She gave up her beautiful home in Scotland for love, and the prospect of doing good to Sarawak. On her arrival there the most rigid economy was practised, on account of the losses in the Chinese insurrection. A mat house, called ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... is Mary Carolyn Davies, poet of Oregon and Brooklyn. She knows both coasts of America, she understands the American spirit of idealism and self-sacrifice, and her verses have a direct hitting power that will break open the hardest heart. In her book, The Drums in Our Street (1918), the glory and the tragedy of the world-struggle are expressed in terms of individual feeling. There is decided ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... cutting slipped from Owen's hand, and he talked for a long time about her walk and her smile, and then about her "Iphigenia," which he declared to be one of the most beautiful performances ever seen, her personality lending itself to the incarnation of this Greek idea of fate and self-sacrifice. But Gluck's music was, in Owen's opinion, old-fashioned even at the time it was written—containing beautiful things, of course, but somewhat stiff in the joints, lacking the clear insight and direct expression of Beethoven's. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... the group of which his own family was a part and with the task of standing guard over wife and child as against all physical dangers. Man has developed under this social pressure a sense of chivalry and a tendency to "save women and children first" which give noble examples of courage and self-sacrifice to fire the imagination of each new generation. Has the father-office developed such many-sided and adequate protective service to childhood that mothers have been able to "lay down their arms" and rest ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... fact that he was outraging his own instincts in beating with bitter words the girl who bowed before him with drooping head and disheveled hair made him but the more harsh. To fall from the height of self-sacrifice into a pool of vulgar intrigue! Bah! His disgust at himself for ever having known this woman seemed too ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... smiled and as she laid out her best black silk she made a mental note of the fact that Fanny Foster was to have, sometime or other, a silk petticoat, made up to her for this day's work and self-sacrifice. For Grandma was one of those rare practical people who yet believed in respecting the foolish ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... capable of discharging them. He ought to dedicate his whole life to his mistress, but he always ends by deserting her; both parties are aware of this, and, from the beginning of social life, the one has always been sublime in self-sacrifice, the other an ingrate. The infatuation of love always rouses the pity of the judges who pass sentence on it. But where do you find such love genuine and constant? What power must a husband possess to struggle successfully against a man who casts over a woman a spell strong enough ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... we have a perfectly socialized condition of things I do not believe we shall ever have a more perfect society. The instincts which governed it were not such as can arise from the sordid competition of interests; they flowed from a devotion to letters, and from a self-sacrifice in material things which I can give no better notion of than by saying that the outlay of the richest college magnate seemed to be graduated to the income ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "there is so much crime and cowardice, so many dreadful things, printed, that I think stories of self-sacrifice and brave deeds like yours should be given the widest publicity—a kind of antidote—you know ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... obedient to death, even to the most fearful and shameful of all deaths, the death of the cross; not for Himself, but for those who did not know Him, hated Him, killed Him. In short, He sacrificed Himself for us. That is God's likeness. Self-sacrifice. Jesus Christ, the babe of Bethlehem, proved Himself the Son of God, and the express likeness of the Father, by sacrificing Himself for us. Sacrifice yourselves then for each other! Give up your own pride, your own selfishness, your own interest for each other, and you will be all ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... the rear guard, to save his retreating army, thus exemplifying the highest quality of man, self-sacrifice for others, and such devotion and fortitude as made Ney the grandest figure in Bonaparte's ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... week advocated, should be helped by the State. But the point is this: Whatever plan is fixed upon by the experts and those responsible, are we ready to rise to it? Does the law of kindness touch us in our municipal work? Are we prepared, as a great Christian city, to rise to the self-sacrifice which it involves? We believe that all these schemes eventually will pay, but undoubtedly at the first there may be a call upon the self-sacrifice of Londoners to carry them out. And I would ask you to put it to your consciences whether we should gauge the rates only according ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... "duty" to children is great; far greater than the child's duty to parent; but parental self-sacrifice should certainly not be continued for life. A grown daughter is an Individual, who should stand on her own feet and make her own happiness without curtailing the ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... with Nietzsche that individualism is the only salvation of the race. My husband, Mr. Vibert, believes in altruism, self-sacrifice and all the old-fashioned flummery ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... himself shared the gladness that touched the mood of the girl, for he experienced a sudden pride in his accomplishment of the night, a pride that delighted a starved part of his nature. Somewhere in him were the seeds of self-sacrifice, the seeds of a generous devotion to others. But those seeds had been left undeveloped in a life that had been lived since early boyhood outside the pale of respectability. To-night, Joe Garson had performed, perhaps, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... he sat on his trunk in the tiny hall bedroom, and in the afternoon papers read of his suicide, his eyes were lit with pleasurable pride. Not at the nice things the obituaries told of his past, but because his act of self-sacrifice, so carefully considered, had been carried to success. As he read Jimmie smiled with self-congratulation. He felt glad he was alive; or, to express it differently, felt glad he was dead. And he hoped Jeanne, ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... was yet but the constant fate that attends those who would place Mind BEYOND the earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it. Ignorance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, from nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link itself to another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the absent. For rightly had she said that it was not the faithless wife, it WAS the faithful mother that fled from all in which her earthly ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to Susan Brundon. Jasper Penny saw her blue gaze lifted to his face, the hesitating smile; he felt again the pervading influence of her delicate yet essentially unshrinking spirit. She would possess an enormous steadfastness of purpose, he decided; a potentiality of immovable self-sacrifice. Yet she was the gentlest person alive. An unusual and resplendent combination of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was commonly frustrated by her old beast of a mother, who, when the girl's answers did not suit, would beat her unmercifully. So he took to meeting Feodora on the highway, and giving her coppers carefully marked. For months he kept this up with wonderful self-sacrifice—the girl being a mere uninteresting angel. He met her daily in the roads and forest. His patience never wearied, his vigilance never flagged. Her most careless glances were conscientiously noted, her lightest words treasured ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the young man ventured timidly to observe, "it seems to me that art, however exacting it may be, cannot take entire possession of the woman. What would she do with her affections, with the craving for love, for self-sacrifice, which is in her, far more than in man, the motive ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice, supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... and dialects; what percentage of the original vital force will be consumed in experiencing each new pleasure, or surmounting each new pain; how much nerve treasure it takes to conquer each temptation or endure each self-sacrifice. Too often society forgets that the song, law or reform has cost the health and life of the giver. Tradition says that, through much study, the Iliad cost Homer his eyes. There is strange meaning in the fact that Dante's face was plowed deep ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... sternly. "What do you suppose you gain by standing by him in this fashion? Sooner or later he must come within grip of the law, and so all your sufferings will be futile. If there was anything to gain by this self-sacrifice I would say nothing. But to spoil your life for a ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... regrets for the life they might have led had they sacrificed their loyalty. . . . No great monument is raised to their memory; none is needed; it is enshrined forever in the hearts of every Canadian and of every one who admires fidelity to principle, devotion and self-sacrifice." ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... heartache, little one, in this old world, and self is at the bottom of it all, when we stop to analyze it. We want to be first, to be thought much of, to be loved best. No wonder that the selfless life seems impossible to most people. Think what a continuous self-sacrifice Christ's life was! So utterly alone and lonely among such uncongenial surroundings with people uncouth and totally foreign to his tastes. Ah! we don't realize it. We look at him doing the splendid things amidst the plaudits of the ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... long enough to keep up her popularity, though, with touching resignation, she frequently offered to spend the summer at Grandchaux, even if the consequences should be her death, like that of Pia in the Maremma. Her husband, of course, peremptorily set his face against such self-sacrifice. ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... rack were irresistible. My soul would succumb as well as my body. This would seem wild, wicked talk to Mr. Eltinge; it would seem weak and irrational to any man. But I'm only Ida Mayhew, and such is my nature. I've been made all the more incapable of patient self-sacrifice by self-indulgence from my childhood up. Oh, will it be very, very wrong to win him if I can?" and the passionate tears and sobs that followed these words would seem to indicate that she understood her nature ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... completely secluded from all places of public instruction, and subjected to laws which repress all their energies, both of mind and heart. India furnishes examples of conjugal devotedness, worthy a more enlightened direction. Alas! that such a spirit can find no purer modes of self-sacrifice, than casting the body on a funeral pile, or beneath the wheels of Juggernaut. Profane History, in its wide range, gives us indeed but an occasional gleam of the genuine virtues of woman. How unlike ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... taught the South a great lesson in many ways. It demonstrated the fact that it was possible to be matched in generalship, it was possible to meet men upon the field equal in courage and endurance to themselves. But it also proved to what point of forbearance and self-sacrifice the Southern soldier could go when the necessity arose, and how faithful and obedient they would remain to their leaders under the severest of tests. The Confederate soldier had been proven beyond cavil the equal in every respect to that of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... somewhat outspoken young lady from her foreign bringing up, which puts her beyond the pale of boarding-school punctiliousness, she would probably urge that she estimated poor Ivan's sagacious instinct combined with his courage and noble self-sacrifice, at a far higher level than the paltry apology for a soul that passes current for the genuine article with matter-of-fact religionists of the stamp of ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... of affectionate appreciation, showed how wholly she divined his spirit of self-sacrifice. "We wouldn't care in the least for it," she declared. "We enjoy being a little party by ourselves every whit as much as you do—and we both hate the people you get at table d'hotes—and besides, for that matter, if there are ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Foster and others of their school, it is the species-subserving qualities that Nature selects; and these, in the higher grades of life, are equivalent to the altruistic, social, and ethical qualities. It is in virtue of the parental and maternal instincts of self-sacrifice, self-diffusion, self-forgetfulness in the interests of the offspring, that species are preserved and prevail. Selfish egoism leads eventually (as we see in some modern countries where laizzez-faire liberalism prevails) to social ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... aviation service is now fully as strong as that of the Allies as far as numbers are concerned. The superiority in the air can only remain in the hands of the Allies because of the spirit of self-sacrifice of their aviators and their ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... which had waited upon me comprised not merely politicians, but some of our best citizens. Although a man who is invited to run for Congress in a district hopelessly hostile is likely to cherish secret suspicions as to the sincerity of those who offer him the nomination, the bait of self-sacrifice for the public good has lured many a cleverer man than I to his destruction. Besides, a fighting chance invariably seems more prodigious to the one who is said to have it, than to anyone else. There were certainly weak joints in the armor ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... new. For thousands of years women had rebelled. They had made a fortress of religion — had buried themselves in the cloister, in self-sacrifice, in good works — or even in bad. One's studies in the twelfth century, like one's studies in the fourth, as in Homeric and archaic time, showed her always busy in the illusions of heaven or of hell — ambition, intrigue, jealousy, magic ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... imagine that self-sacrifice and self-denial are precisely the same. Many persons seem to think that because self-sacrifice is a noble thing, everything in which self is given up must be noble. Self may sometimes be sacrificed when ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... name carries with it sighings and groanings, nation-murder, brilliance, beauty, patriotism, splendors, self-sacrifice through generations of gallant men and exquisite women; indomitable endurance of bands of noble people carrying through world-wide exile the sacred fire of wrath against the oppressor, and uttering in every clime a cry of appeal to Humanity to ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the second angel, and his smile was fair to see, 'Of all the sights on earth is the noblest one to me; No brutelike men are these, nay, rather to my eyes, Men raised to angels' heights of calm self-sacrifice.' Yet he wept, and weeping prayed, 'Oh, may these sons of men Keep faith and strength and patience, till ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... sake he scraped and saved, denying himself the least luxury, so that if she came to him he could at least offer her a decent home; and every act of petty self-sacrifice was sweet to him because it was endured ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... upon Mr. Braham in a transport of gratitude; they kissed him again and again, the young as well as the advanced in years, the married as well as the ardent single women; they improved the opportunity with a touching self-sacrifice; in the words of a newspaper of the day ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... held on the evening of August 3 it was agreed that the self-sacrifice of the ancient aristocracy of France, and the institution in its place of a society absolutely democratic, should be made by the Duke d'Aiguillon, the owner of vast domains, who was about to forfeit several thousands a year. But on August ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... her voice smote him as the edge of a sword. "Drive on, Johnson!" she sharply cried. "These vagabond people must face the General himself." Then came the insane self-sacrifice of his reckless downfall, but he had spared ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... impulse. The difference is perhaps not entirely in favour of the countries of the Romish faith; but there is no denying that it leads to our being presented with pictures of heroic self-devotion and generous self-sacrifice, such as it would be gratifying to see in our own country. Many of the forms of charity met with in Catholic states had their rise in one enthusiastically benevolent man, the celebrated Vincent de St Paul. Born in 1576, on the skirts of the Pyrenees, and brought ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... just, pure, lovely, of good report; whatsoever is true virtue, whatsoever is truly worthy of praise, that is the likeness of Christ; the likeness of him who was full of all purity, all tenderness, all mercy, all self-sacrifice, all benevolence, all helpfulness; full of all just and noble indignation also against oppressors and hypocrites who bound heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, but touched them not themselves with one of their fingers; who kept the key of knowledge, and neither entered in themselves, or let those ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... of any kind—generous, open-handed, charitable to a fault; always taking the large and generous view of everything and everybody; a little impulsive perhaps, but not often having to regret her impulses; of unwearied devotion to her husband, and capable of any heroism or self-sacrifice for his sake; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... some are making, and proceed to indicate how the paternal endowment of motherhood can be enforced in every class, as public opinion practically enforces it in the upper and middle classes, let us meet the objection that, if fatherhood is to be made so serious an act, and if so much self-sacrifice is to be exacted from those who undertake it, the marriage-rate and the birth-rate will fall more rapidly. And as regards the marriage-rate, the answer is that marriage and parenthood are not inseparable, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... total of delight nearly as exquisite as that which may be obtained in a variety of other ways. The mere circumstance of there being invariably included in a just or generous action more or less of self-denial, self-restraint, or self-sacrifice, must always sober down the gratification by which virtue is rewarded, and make it appear tame beside the delirium of gladness caused by many things with which virtue has nothing to do. We will charitably ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... years." Mr. Landon goes on to say: "Voluntary this self-immolation is said to be, and perhaps technically speaking it is possible for the pluckier souls to refuse to go on with this hideous and useless form of self-sacrifice, but the grip of the Lamas is omnipotent, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... hold my shawl in position. Only my brother-in-law remained. He did not go down without a struggle, but after a vigorous but vain appeal "to our better natures," he compared himself to a lion beset by jackals, commented bitterly upon "the hot air which is breathed about self-sacrifice," and, directing that after death his veins should be opened in the presence of not less than twelve surgeons, as a preliminary to his interment in the Dogs' Cemetery, opened the door and stepped sideways ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Thompson, one of the most esteemed citizens of Troy, N.Y., though hardly in a condition physically to make the long journey to San Francisco, yet felt it his duty to be in his seat in the Convention. So he counted not his life dear unto himself, but with that sense of duty and spirit of self-sacrifice which always had characterised him he was found in his place at the opening and organising of the Convention, in Trinity Church, and answered the roll call. Exposures by the way had made inroads on his health and gradually he lost his strength until death finally ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... and honors it with its votes, but it can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however, the man who can say, "I sacrifice ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... so gentle and earnest, so frank and full of trust in him, that it was not to be wondered at that each day only fixed her more firmly in his heart Nothing of his conscientious labor was lost upon her; nothing of his self-sacrifice and trial was passed by indifferently in her thoughts of him; his pain and his effort went to her very heart. Her belief in him was so strong that she never hesitated to carry any little bewilderment to him or to speak to him openly upon any subject. ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... found them poor, had suddenly made them wealthy, and now, with equal suddenness, threatened to make them poor again. It was like war—kill or be killed. It occurred to Dave that it was even worse than war. War has in it the qualities of the heroic; splendid bravery; immeasurable self-sacrifice; that broad spirit of devotion to a vague ideal which, for lack of a better name, is called patriotism. This System had none of that. It was more like assassination. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... "unobjectionable," to use the words of Southey, and versed in all the polite dissipation of a prosperous slave-mart capital. Nelson looked upon all English-speaking women as angels of light and models of sympathy, insight and self-sacrifice. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... been more particular how we did things than what things we did.... All human beings are under obligations first to themselves. If self-sacrifice seems best, then we should practice that; while if self-assertion seems best, then we should assert ourselves. The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self-abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Nature could have let us off more easily the conflict would have been less searching; but nothing weaker would have secured the perpetuation of the race, and all that it involves in struggle, anxiety, and self-sacrifice. ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... not quite sure yet whether I loathed the man or liked him. He was the most extraordinary mixture of charity and drunkenness, lechery and self-sacrifice that I had ever come across. But he brought into the house with him a whiff of cheeriness and hope for which I could not but be grateful. He had a large brown paper parcel under his arm, which he unwrapped upon my table, displaying a great brown jar. This he carried over and deposited ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro |
