"Birthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the nature of the object; whereas the other treatment applies itself to what is casual and vanishing in the history (or the origin) of Protestantism. For, after all, it would be no great triumph to Protestantism that she should prove her birthright to revolve as a primary planet in the solar system; that she had the same original right as Rome to wheel about the great central orb, undegraded to the rank of satellite or secondary projection—if, in the meantime, telescopes should ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... are indeed my son; your father's son! And have you no reproach for your mother, who so weakly, so criminally, concealed your birthright, till, alas! discovery may be too late? Oh! reproach me, reproach me! it will be kindness. No! do not kiss me! I cannot bear it. Boy! boy! if as my heart tells me, we fail in proof, do you understand what, in the world's eye, I ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... office, and who gained the rewards of the world because they sought "first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." As it was, their favorite measure, "negro suffrage," was defeated for that time, and several of those who sold their birthright of truth and justice for a miserable mess of pottage in the shape of office and emoluments, lost even the poor reward for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... used—and who have the most powerful hereditary claims upon the sympathy and consideration of Christians. The time is surely at hand, when the badge of ignominy shall be removed from them—at least in Britain—where, but for the exception to which we refer, Freedom is the birthright of every native of the soil. Cromwell knew their value to a state; and had he lived a few years longer, the Jew would have been at liberty to cultivate his own lands, and manure them (if it so pleased him) with his own gold, any where within ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... striven from the first to awaken thoughts of higher things, and turn remorse into repentance; but every attempt resulted in strange, sad wanderings about Esau, the birthright, and the blessing. Indeed, these might not have been entirely wanderings, for once he said, 'It is better this way, Bill. You don't know what you wish in trying to bring me round. Don't be hard on me. She drove me to it. It is all right now. The ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was declared to be "to qualify students for personal success and direct usefulness in life." On the title page of the first register ever printed and of every one since, appear these words of Senator Stanford's: "A generous education is the birthright of every man and woman in America." This and President Jordan's favorite quotation, "Die Luft der Freiheit weht"—"the winds of freedom are blowing," reveal somewhat the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... That letter brought a holiday to the house. They arranged the country dwelling afresh: Desiderius took up his residence in the town, handing over to his elder brother his birthright. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... purely chronological. The different sections and the individual incidents and teachings each contribute to the great argument of the book, namely, that Jesus was the true Messiah of the Jews; that the Jews, since they rejected him, forfeited their birthright; and that his kingdom, fulfilling and inheriting the Old Testament promises, has become a universal kingdom, open to all races and freed from all Jewish bonds. [Footnote: Cf. e.g., x. 5, 6; xv. 24; viii. 11, 12; xii. 38-45; xxi. 42, 43; ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... imagination, all that was fresh and spontaneously gentle and natural in him, was flooded with the magnetic splendor of her beauty. And yet, in his pride (and it was not a false pride, but rather a noble regard for his birthright) he vaguely realized how far she was from him, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... voters in the Valley for the Doctor's cause and scorn his task with a hissing; for Dick read Karl Marx and dreamed of the day of the revolution. Yet he dwelled with the sons of Essua, who as they toiled murmured about their stolen birthright. When a decade had passed in Harvey the social crystal was firm; the hill and the valley were cast into the solid rock of things as they are. No one could say why; it was a mystery. It is still a mystery. As society forms and reforms, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... from sunrise till sunsetting thou hast held Despair at bay. It was the bravest stand that thou hast ever made. And now, if thou hast lived through this one day, why not another? 'Tis only one hour at a time that thou art called on to endure. Come! By the bloodstone that is thy birthright, pledge me anew thou'lt keep thy oath until the going down of one ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... society, which is so persistent and so deluding where money is concerned, to have been in the run of big affairs not because one has created them, but because one is a part of them and because they are one's birthright, like the air one breathes, could not help but create one of those illusions of solidarity which is apt to befog the clearest brain. It is so hard for us to know what we have not seen. It is so difficult for us to feel what we have not experienced. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... your own grave," he declared. "The idea is perfectly scandalous. You propose to sell your political birthright for ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was another sign of the times, to find in a strictly scientific work a sentence truly religious! As I continued to read these works, I found them suffused with religion, religion of a kind and quality I had not imagined. The birthright of the spirit of man was freedom, freedom to experiment, to determine, to create—to create himself, to create society in the image of God! Spiritual creation the function of cooperative man through the coming ages, the task that was to make him divine. Here indeed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... birthright immortal, And my being expands like a rose, As an odorous cloud of incense Around and above ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... greater strength, but she let him go, and though for several days she did not see him, she had no sense of liberty. He would come back, she knew, and she found herself planning unworthy little shifts, arranging how she would manage him if he did this or that, losing her birthright of belief that man and woman could meet and traffic honestly together. They could not do it, she found, when either used base weapons: she, her guile, or he, his strength; but if he used his strength, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... of the truth, and makes way for the utter consolation which the birth of that truth in himself will bring. As yet Mr. Galbraith was but overwhelmed with care for a self which, so far as he had to do with the making of it, was of small value indeed, although in the possibility, which is the birthright of every creature, it was, not less than that of the wretchedest of dog-licked Lazaruses, of a value by himself unsuspected and inappreciable. That he should behave so cruelly to his one child, was not unnatural ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... blessed with something of "the divine afflatus," to be born utterly without which is to require at the Maker's hands a compensation. Thus He gives in a lower form the trick of money-making, the rank of birthright, the cheap distinction of a high place in society; with poverty He joins the peace of humble content, a solid faith in the bliss of a future state, and the rough enjoyment of perfect health. But the poetic temperament is the choicest gift of all; it may have occasional glimpses of the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and year, year. It was a weary monotony of manual labor, poverty, restless travel, on foot, and hopeless attempts to recover my birthright—the privileges of excess—which had gone from me forever. Cities and their bright lights ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... so abjured his birthright, and forsworn his rank—if this heritage, which is so dangerous from its grandeur, pass, in case of his pardon, to some obscure Englishman—a foreigner—a native of a country that has no ties with ours—a country that is the very refuge of levellers and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... unconsidered trifles—an indifferent "yes" or "no"—turn the poised scales of life. For one other day the two Southwestern representatives put up at the Grand Union, Copah's tar-paper-covered simulacrum of a hotel; and during that day Ford contrived to sell his birthright for what he, himself, valued at the moment as a mess ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... he roared. Roared is the accurate expression. He was not a large man, and his hair was sandy, and his eye mild blue. But undoubtedly his kinsmen were dumb and he had as birthright the voice for the entire family. It had been subsequently developed in the shouting after the wild cattle of the hills. Now his ordinary conversational tone was that of the announcer at a circus. But his heart ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... that deep principle of all true life which represents the affinity—latent, oppressed by circumstances, repressed by sin, but always there—between our human nature and the Divine, and through subjection to which we reassume our birthright as "the sons of God"; conscience to see and will to choose—not what shall please ourselves, but—the highest and purest aim ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... the title and prerogatives of despot, which bestowed the purple ornaments and the second place in the Roman monarchy. It was afterwards agreed that John and Michael should be proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the buckler, but that the preeminence should be reserved for the birthright of the former. A mutual league of amity was pledged between the royal partners; and in case of a rupture, the subjects were bound, by their oath of allegiance, to declare themselves against the aggressor; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... that Soana Molopo was the elder brother of Katema, but that he was wanting in wisdom; and Katema, by purchasing cattle and receiving in a kind manner all the fugitives who came to him, had secured the birthright to himself, so far as influence in the country is concerned. Soana's first address to us did not ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... had committed because she was so confident that the chief crime of all had been the act resulting from Caleb Patten's abysmal ignorance. Nor now could she blame Norton that, embarked upon this flood of his life, he saw himself forced to make her his prisoner for a few hours. It was a man's birthright to protect himself, to guard his freedom. And her heart gave him high praise that toward her he acted with all deference, that with things as they were, while he was man enough to hold her here, he was too much the gentleman to make ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... remained, and, for the lucky mice surviving the raid, food was plentiful, even when later, in winter, they were awakened by some warm, bright day, and hunger, long sustained, had made them ravenous. Kweek, having no brother or sister to share his birthright, was fed and trained in a manner that otherwise would have been impossible, while his parents were particularly strong and healthy. These circumstances undoubtedly combined to make him what he eventually became—quick ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... resent what concerns myself; but it was his leaving me a burden on my grandmother that drove me to become a clergyman, and a consistent one I will be, not an idle heir-apparent to this estate, receiving it as his gift, not my own birthright.' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Unitarians a new spiritual effectiveness. The same causes have led to the adoption of the rite of confirmation in a considerable number of churches. Gradually the idea has grown that what Rev. Sylvester Judd called "the birthright church" is the true one, and that it is desirable that all children should be religiously trained, and admitted to the church at the age of adolescence. Mr. Judd gave noble utterance to this conception of a church in a series of sermons published after ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... with these schemers, whose sole idea lay in party patronage, in manipulating every political opportunity—in short, in reaping where they had sown. The question now confronting him was this: was he prepared to sell his political birthright for the mess ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... bend your ear to its red lips to hear it, had been lying wearied with dancing and mischief-making and shouting and toddling and falling, resting the night from a happy to-day till the dawn woke it betime for a happy to-morrow. All this it should have had as a birthright, with the years stretching in front of it, on through fiery youth, past earnest manhood, to a loved and loving old age. This is the due, the rightful due, of every child to whom life goes from us. And that child who is born to sorrow and ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... old names still left in Massachusetts,— Jingleberry Hill and Chillyshally** Brook sound as if they once meant something; Spot Pond, named by Governor Winthrop, has not lost its birthright; Powder-Horn Hill records its purchase from the Indians for a hornful of powder—probably damp; Drinkwater River is a good name,—Strong Water Brook by many is considered better. It is well to record these names before they are effaced by the commercialism ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... I hate you!" exclaimed Gerardin, turning round in his saddle, and shaking his clenched fist at the English lieutenant. "You have foiled me again and again. I know you, and who you are; you stand between me and my birthright; you shall not foil me again. I have before sought your life; the next time we meet we will not separate till ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... that went with that estate, unless for some cause there should be an exception to the rule. Esau having been born a few moments before his brother Jacob, under the operation of this rule would be the successor to the Abrahamic promise and heir to his father. His birthright, therefore, would include the promise made to Abraham. But the Lord clearly indicated that there should be an exception to the rule in this case and that Jacob should be the heir and not Esau. When it was known that ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... ever with the grander passion of seeing life as a ruined thing; her birthright to aspiring cleanness sold for a mess of quick-lunch pottage. And as she walked in a mist of agony, a dumb, blind creature heroically distraught, she could scarce distinguish between sordidness and the great betrayals, so chill and thick ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... our ease have wrought; They sowed in tears—in joy we reap; The birthright they so dearly bought We'll guard, till ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... the Lorde eke, who is merciful and just: And loth would I be his majesty to offend; But by me (I doubt not) to work he doth intend. Assay, if thou canst at some one time or other, To buy the right of eldership from thy brother: Do thou buy the birthright, that to him doth belong, So may'st thou have the blessing, and do him no wrong. What thou hast once bought, is ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... the bottom of his soul, as if a good piece of his manhood had been scooped out of him. His hollow aching did not explain itself in words, but it grumbled and worried down among the unshaped thoughts which lie beneath them. He knew that he had been trying to reason himself out of his birthright of reason. He knew that the inspiration which gave him understanding was losing its throne in his intelligence, and the almighty Majority-Vote was proclaiming itself in its stead. He knew that the great primal truths, which each successive revelation only confirmed, were fast becoming ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and Honor. They were not in a hurry. The race for wealth had never interested them. They took time to play, to rest, to worship God, to chat with their neighbors, to enjoy a sunset. They came of a race of world-conquering men and they felt no necessity for hurrying or apologizing for their birthright. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... their God-given birthright, their country to have and to hold, And not for the lust of conquest, and not for the hunger ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... much-despised and wholly misunderstood Jewish fellows. Now we see, and our younger brothers of the Menorah fellowship have caught the vision, that no Jew can be truly cultured who Jewishly uproots himself, that the man who rejects the birthright of inheritance of the traditions of the earliest and virilest of the cultured peoples of earth is impoverishing his very being. The Jew who is a "little Jew" ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... HER OWN. Oh! how I lay and sobbed In my poor cradle—deeply, deeply cursing The rich man's pampered bantling, who had robbed My only birthright—an attentive nursing! Sometimes in hatred of my foster-brother, I gnashed my gums—which terrified ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... birthright citizenship—natural claims upon the country—claims common to all others of our fellow citizens—natural rights, which may, by virtue of unjust laws, be obstructed, but never can be annulled. Upon these do we ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... show More then a Mistris to me, no more anger As you love any thing that's honourable: We were not bred to talke, man; when we are arm'd And both upon our guards, then let our fury, Like meeting of two tides, fly strongly from us, And then to whom the birthright of this Beauty Truely pertaines (without obbraidings, scornes, Dispisings of our persons, and such powtings, Fitter for Girles and Schooleboyes) will be seene And quickly, yours, or mine: wilt please you arme, Sir, Or if you feele your selfe not fitting yet ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... still new enough to be repeated with vigour to certain people. Let us get out-of-doors and have our wits sharpened and see more, and do more, and be more! No one can permanently starve her whole body for the want of fresh air and exercise, which are the body's birthright, and expect to have a clear head or do well-balanced and helpful work in the home, or in school, or in some wage-earning career. If the girl attempt this impossibility she will be like the frog which jumped up one foot and fell back two. She will get to the bottom soon ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... yet, thou high Dunedin! Shalt thou totter to thy fall; Though thy bravest and thy strongest Are not there to man the wall. No, not yet! the ancient spirit Of our fathers hath not gone; Take it to thee as a buckler Better far than steel or stone. Oh, remember those who perished For thy birthright at the time When to be a Scot was treason, And to side with Wallace, crime! Have they not a voice among us, Whilst their hallowed dust is here? Hear ye not a summons sounding From each buried warrior's bier? "Up!"—they say—"and keep the freedom Which we ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... the family, when the elder, and head of the house, proving rakish and extravagant, has wasted his patrimony, and is obliged to make out the blessing of Israel's family, where the younger son bought the birthright, and the elder ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... long have lain dormant, unsuspected by his friends, unknown to the reading public, only to disclose itself, and that by the merest hazard, as a last resource?—It did not seem fair that he had not earlier found and enjoyed his literary birthright. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into her birthright and into ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... properly, as nature intended him to do, but civilization has changed him in this and other respects. He has contracted improper methods and attitudes of walking, standing and sitting, which have robbed him of his birthright of natural and correct breathing. He has paid a high price for civilization. The savage, to-day, breathes naturally, unless he has been contaminated by the habits ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... of the long train of agony that must result, rival the heartless ingenuity of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Beyond this generation of debilitated and invalided mothers, rises a countless posterity robbed of its birthright of health while yet unborn.[4] A possible genius deformed and dwarfed by the weight of a fashionable dress; a brain which might have been brilliant rendered idiotic by the constant pressure of a corset, and the wearisome weight of a "stylish" dress pressing about the hips; a child ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... frequently enrolled themselves as warriors among the American Indians; but they have rarely gained the full confidence of the Indians, who, naturally very proud of their birthright, view with a jealous ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... George III. and the Czar ceased not to press the claims of the House of Savoy, yet no more tempting offer came from Paris, except a hint that some part of European Turkey might be found for him; and the young ruler nobly refused to barter for the petty Siennese, or for some Turkish pachalic, his birthright to the lands which, under a happier Victor Emmanuel, were to form the nucleus of a United Italy.[219] A month after the absorption of Piedmont came the annexation of Parma. The heir to that duchy, who was son-in-law to the King of Spain, had been raised to the dignity of King ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... new land which New York gives so generously. Somehow, he had never felt himself more alone—not even by night in the solemn plains of Manchuria—and he threw off the feeling, almost with contempt. Was not this city his very own? Had he not a birthright in every stone of it, from pavement to loftiest pinnacle? This was his home-coming, too, more real, more literally complete, than in the case of any but the few born New Yorkers who might figure among the two thousand passengers carried by ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... waiter is never possessed of that familiarity of speech with those he serves, which the American negro waiter takes for granted is his birthright. It's all very well to have a cheerful-countenanced waiter bobbing about behind one's chair, indeed it's infinitely more inspiring than such of the old brigade of mutton-chopped English waiters as still linger in some of London's City eating-houses, but the disposition ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... than the opinions of the ancients respecting their slaves. The most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece were never able to reach the idea, at once so general and so simple, of the common likeness of men, and of the common birthright of each to freedom: they strove to prove that slavery was in the order of nature, and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything shows that those of the ancients who had passed from the servile to the free condition, many ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... He made it betrayal, and selling the birthright. Billy saw it at once. As Clem said, where would Billy be the minute they questioned an article of his, or gave him something for insertion, or cut his proof? And how would the thing SOUND—a railroad magnate owning ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... 'mutato nomine,' the chances of success would have seemed to all but truly prophetic eyes very doubtful, if not decidedly against him. Too many brilliant young novel-readers and lovers of poetry, excused by their admirers for their shortcomings on the strength of their supposed birthright of "genius," have ended where they began; flattered into the vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty, and finding out at fifty that they were and always had been nothing more than boys. It was but a tangled skein of life that Motley's book showed ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tongues. His attitude has been one of manly protest, wherever he was allowed to vote, or made to sulk in silence and indignation. And here has been and here is the rub. When you cannot coax a man against his will, as Jonathan did David, or purchase his birthright as Jacob did Esau, if you have the power you terrorize and shoot him into compliance. That is what the political enemies of the Afro-American have done and are doing, but patient as the ass and with the faith of Job, which passes all understanding, he ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... which we turned our eyes, part and parcel of my inheritance, formidable with the courage of my countrymen, humming with my native speech—and as foreign to my purposes as if I had forfeited forever my birthright in her protection. I had drifted into a sort of outlaw. You may not break the king's peace and be made welcome on board a king's ship. You may not hope to make use of a king's ship for the purposes of an elopement. There was no room on board that ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... them an air of independence rather apt to repel a stranger. I use this expression "self-sufficiency" in the largest sense. Conscious of the strong sagacity and the dogged power of will which seem almost the birthright of the natives of the West Riding, each man relies upon himself, and seeks no help at the hands of his neighbour. From rarely requiring the assistance of others, he comes to doubt the power of bestowing ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Smith, the mother of Joseph the Prophet, plead with Brigham, with tears, not to rob young Joseph, her grandchild, of his birthright, which his father, the Prophet, bestowed upon him previous to his death. Young Joseph should have succeeded his father as the leader of the Church; it was his right in the line ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... reproducing on the scale of the individual the same creative power of Thought which first brought the world into existence, "so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Let us, then, confidently claim our birthright as "sons and daughters of the Almighty," and by habitually thinking the good, the beautiful, and the true, surround ourselves with conditions corresponding to our thoughts, and by our teaching and example help ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... seemed to cloud the lovely features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill!—ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to my human birthright, if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... not rich in some of those natural gifts which are considered the birthright of the New Englander. He had not the mechanical turn of the whittling Yankee. I once questioned him about his manual dexterity, and he told me he could split a shingle four ways with one nail, —which, as ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the serene, haughty house, the repose of the well-ordered garden, still blooming with belated flowers, seemed at once to deride and to invite the young outcast plodding along the dusty road. "This is your birthright," whispered the clambering rose-trees by the gate; and the closed portals of carven bronze said: "You have sold it for a ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... myths of Greece and the grandeur and power of Rome. It is this race, broken-hearted and scattered, to which the Czar of all the Russias adds the enormities of his rule upon the victims of the ignorance and slander of the ages. The birthright of this race is thus despoiled; and, Sir, have we no word of protest? Struggling against adversities which no other people have encountered, do they not yet survive—the wine ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... told what England proposes, that you should renounce your birthright, retaining the monarchy of Spain and the Indies, or renounce the monarchy of Spain, retaining your rights to the succession in France, and receiving in exchange for the crown of Spain the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, the states of the Duke of Savoy, Montferrat, and the Mantuan, the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... day finished, and his father away at one of the many precarious tasks that kept the household together—he would draw close to his mother, as she sat industriously sewing, and beg her for the hundredth time to recount the story of the grim Scotch home where his father had lost his birthright; of the stern old grandfather who had died inexorably unforgiving; of the unknown uncle of whom rumor told many eccentric stories. And, roused by the recital, his boyish face would flush, his boyish mind leap ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... disease infecting the immediate neighbourhood of Nice are far more appalling. Nor are symptoms wanting of the spread of that moral disease. The municipal council of this beautiful city, like Esau, had just sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. They had conceded the right of gambling to the Casino, the proprietors purchasing the right by certain outlays in the way of improvements, a new public garden, and so on. As yet roulette and rouge-et-noir are not permitted at Nice, the gambling at ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a roof Neither wind nor water proof— That's the prose of Love in a Cottage— A puny, naked, shivering wretch, The whole of whose birthright would not fetch, Though Robins himself drew up the sketch, The bid ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... from a family of distinction among the Virginia colonists. Mr. Paulding says of her: "As a native of Virginia, she was hospitable by birthright, and always received her visitors with a smiling welcome. But they were never asked to stay but once, and she always speeded the parting guest by affording every facility in her power. She possessed all those domestic habits and qualities that confer value on women, and had no desire ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... followed she saw but one path open to her: in it lay her work for Christ and her woman's birthright to be a wife and mother (for Kitty, ever since she was a baby nursing dolls, had meant to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... were shining, even through his glasses, and he didn't seem to mind papa one bit. "So that's what you're up to, is it?" he said to Phil, "trying to give me your birthright!" By this time he'd reached Phil's side, and he threw his arm right across Phil's shoulders. "Dear old Lion-heart!" he said,—how his voice did ring out! "And I thought you ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... vainly doth the earnest voice of man Call for the thing that is his pure desire! Fame is the birthright of the living lyre! To noble impulse Nature puts no ban. Nor vainly to the Sphinx thy voice was raised! Tho' all thy great emotions like a sea, Against her stony immortality, Shatter themselves unheeded and amazed. Time moves behind her in a blind eclipse: Yet if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... experience. He looks at the landscape, and lo! the beauty has dropped out of it. The stream has lost its power, and the meadow its meaning. Summer has stopped. His next thought is: "But it is I who had lent the landscape this beauty. That landscape was myself, my dower, my glory, my birthright," and so he breaks out with "Give me back the light I threw upon you," and so on till the bitter word flung to the woman in the last line. The same clearness of thought and obscurity of expression and the same passion is to be found in the famous sonnet—"Non ha l' ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... The Genius of Liberty, standing on the threshold of her besieged temple, pale, fettered, betrayed in the house of her very friends, but resolute and dauntless as ever, her eye calm and steadfast, her hand firmly grasping the Magna Charta of our birthright, and the birthright of all the race. While a raging and vindictive foe bays her in front, and the leal and true are pressing in countless hosts around her at her call, a false and craven crew are basely creeping in at undefended passages, and, with lies and slanders ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... escaped by remembering that the highest reality is supra-temporal, and that the destiny which God has designed for us has not merely a contingent realisation, but is in a sense already accomplished. There are, in fact, two ways in which we may abdicate our birthright, and surrender the prize of our high calling: we may count ourselves already to have apprehended, which must be a grievous delusion, or we may resign it as unattainable, which is ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the works. Athos is the dignified, retired nobleman, whose only concerns are debts left unpaid and the launching of his son into the world. Porthos is a great baron, ever ready to help, ever seeking another title, ever seeking the noble airs that were not his birthright, but to which he came upon his wife's death. And D'Artagnan is a hardened soldier, casting a cynical eye everywhere, still loyal, but somewhat embittered, trading in his customary "mordioux!" for the "bah!" ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... the chief to himself; "it was the sale of a birthright for a mess of pottage! I would have turned it back into the right channel, the good of my people! but after all, what can money do? It was discontent with poverty that began the ruin of the highlands! If the heads of the people had but lived pure, active, sober, unostentatious ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... intensely earnest. "I want to do the best thing, but I'm puzzled. I wonder if I'm selling my birthright ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and an apothecary, and the list of his patients is entirely hypothetical. This simple-hearted, benevolent man was persuaded by the proprietress of the coal-shed that she had been defrauded of her birthright by her kinsman, a man of fortune. Levett, then nearly sixty, married her; and four months after, a writ was issued against him for debts contracted by his wife, and he had to lie close to avoid the gaol. Not long afterwards his amiable wife ran away from him, and, being taken up for ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... tell thee"—for with him she always drifted into the sweet speech which was hers by birthright and his for all his life—"shall I tell thee how it seems to me, as if thee had learned every single lesson life and God has had to teach. Thee has had poverty and sorrow, and endured the wrong that others have done thee. Thee has seen thy kindred ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... a man of birth, an aristocratic nature, who wants to get back into the highroad to honors and recover his social birthright, his blighted position.—You, at this moment, are playing both parts. You are suffering from the pangs of having lost your position, and think yourself justified in throwing over a hapless lover whose misfortune it has been that he fancied you so far superior as to understand that, though ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... slave of his own fears, the slave of his own love of bodily comfort. Such a man does not dare serve God. He dare not obey God, when obeying God is dangerous and unpleasant. He dare not claim his heavenly birthright, his share in God's Spirit, his share in Christ's kingdom, because that would bring discomfort on him, because he will have to give up the sins he loves, because he will have to endure the insults ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... as Southerners we wish to see the power of the State retained, yet as women we are equally determined to secure, as of paramount importance, the right which is the birthright of an American citizen. We, therefore, appeal to you gentlemen vested with the power largely to shape conditions to confer with us and influence public opinion to adopt woman suffrage through State action. Failing to accomplish this, the onus of responsibility will rest upon the men of the South ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... elaboration has ruined that blessing. Goodwill? Had she seen any example of it in the hordes of purchasers? Or in herself. She had failed to respond to this invitation merely because it was a little queer and imaginative—she, whose birthright it was to nourish imagination! Better to have accepted, to have tired themselves a little by the journey, than coldly to reply, "Might I come some other day?" Her cynicism left her. There would be no other day. This shadowy woman would ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... swung steadily through the heather with that reaching stride the birthright of moor-men and highlanders. They talked but little, for such was their nature: a word or two on sheep and the approaching lambing-time; thence on to the coming Trials; the Shepherds' Trophy; Owd Bob and the attempt on him; and from that to ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... destroying you. At last God granted them one day to push forward their dominion on the sea, and then in an instant you completely succumbed to them. (5) Is it not self-evident that your safety altogether depends upon the sea? The sea is your natural element—your birthright; it would be base indeed to entrust the hegemony of it to the Lacedaemonians, and the more so, since, as they themselves admit, they are far less acquainted with this business than yourselves; and, secondly, your risk in naval battles would not be for equal stakes—theirs involving ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... said Pigtop, with much feeling—"you shall never suppose that the old sailor sold the birthright of his honour ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... about the Allies? Have they lost nothing?" This was Clayton's attorney, an Irishman named Denis Nolan. There had been two n's in the Denis, originally, but although he had disposed of a part of his birthright, he was still belligerently Irish. "What about Rumania? What about the Russians ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... made this man to be in physical strength and spiritual prowess, a comrade and leader of men—a man's man—a man among men. The same student, looking more closely, might have added that in some way—through some cruel trick of fortune—this man had been cheated of his birthright. ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the reckless fearlessness which was her birthright, she laughed at him coolly, laughed as the two stood against the sky-line, upon the barren breast of a ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... million people in the States could have known these women. Something would have happened then, and the sisterhood of half a continent—possessing the power of the ballot—would have opened their arms to them. Men like John Graham would have gone out of existence; Alaska would have received her birthright. For these women were of the kind who greeted the sun each day, and the gloom of winter, with something greater than hope in their hearts. They, too, were builders. Fear of God and love of land lay deep in their souls, and side by side with their men-folk ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... faith inviolate to you. He threatens me with exile, and with shame, To lose my birthright, and a prince's name; But there's a blessing which he did not mean, To send me back to love ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... stirred the depths of an intense love for his beautiful home. True, if he held to it, the caving of the bank, at its present fearful speed, would let the house into the river within three months; but were it not better to lose it so, than sell his birthright? Again,—coming back to the first thought,—to betray his own blood! It was only Injin Charlie; but had not the De Charleu blood just spoken out ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... practical will go down in England. A man of science may earn great distinction, but not bread. He will get invitations to all sorts of dinners and conversaziones, but not enough income to pay his cab fare. A man of science in these times is like an Esau who sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. Again, if one turns to practice, it is still the old story—wait; and only after years of working like a galley-slave and intriguing like a courtier is there any chance of getting a decent livelihood. I am not at all sure ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... be president, lad," he said, "because you wasn't born in this country." He seemed to think that was the only reason. He turned to my uncle and explained regretfully: "Of all my boys, only one has got the full American birthright. My youngest boy, Will, is the only ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Shah beheld Rustem from afar, he stepped down from off his throne and came before Pehliva, and craved his pardon for that which was come about. And he said how he had been angered because Rustem had tarried in his coming, and how haste was his birthright, and how he had forgotten himself in his vexation. But now was his mouth filled with the dust of ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the tide, waiting for Anton Dormeur, who sought to bring his daughter Mathilde and her husband, with their child, to be his companions in flight. But Bartholde delayed, loath to part from the farms and land that were his birthright. He and his little boy—the first and only child—were on a visit to the old lonely house and its grave master, when a messenger, his horse covered with blood and foam, came thundering at the door, with the fearful intelligence ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... the midst of one of the mightiest epochs earth has ever seen, an epoch which will live in history hereafter side by side with the Athens of Pericles, the Rome of Augustus, the Florence of Lorenzo, the England of Elizabeth. Don't throw away your birthright by ignoring the fact. Live up to your privileges. Gaze around you and know. Be a conscious partaker in one of the great ages ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... stroke of the pen was erected a government of millions of men,—and not ordinary men either, but black men emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery, centuries old; and now, suddenly, violently, they come into a new birthright, at a time of war and passion, in the midst of the stricken and embittered population of their former masters. Any man might well have hesitated to assume charge of such a work, with vast responsibilities, indefinite powers, and limited resources. Probably no one but a soldier would have answered ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... seem to think you're—smart, my dear," Aunt Olivia said, and she would scarcely have believed it could be so hard to say it. For the life of her she could not keep the pride from pricking through her tone. The wild temptation to sell her Plummer birthright for a kiss assailed her. But she groped in the dimness for Duty's cool touch and found it. In the Plummer code of laws it was writ, "Thou shalt ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... except such as the royal power saw fit to grant. Then the Commons drew up their famous Protest, in which they declared that their liberties were not derived from the King, but were "the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the people of England." In his rage James ordered the journal of the Commons to be brought to him, tore out the Protest with his own hand, and sent five of the members of the House to prison (S419). This rash act made the Commons more determined than ever not to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... matron ought to be the best—open as she should be, by her womanhood, to all tender and admiring sympathies, accustomed by her Protestant education to unsullied purity of thought, and inheriting from her race, not only freedom of mind and reverence for antiquity, but the far higher birthright of English honesty. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... make no reply but hung his head and was silent. And, thus silent, he heard no more the bewildering music of his youth, but instead there came to his ears the sound of a broken-hearted woman's sobs, and the weeping of children mourning the birthright that had been lost for them in their father's wayward youth. And ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... disturbed, and they are led into exaggerations, and so the ugly side of the spirit of the Great Unrest is born. But, underneath, the English people are a sane, healthy stock in mind and body, and when education has opened their minds and broadened their understanding, they will surely allow their birthright of common sense among the nations to have sway again. Instead of standing aside and lamenting that times are evil and that the nation is going down hill, it behoves all thinking people to gather their forces together and seriously ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... the splendor of these sunny skies Has freedom as his birthright, and may know Rich fellowship with comrades brave and wise; Into the realms of ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... is in antagonism to the principles of the Declaration, and the spirit of the Constitution, and that these and the principles of the common law gravitate toward each other with irrepressible affinities, and mingle into one? The common law came hither with our pilgrim fathers; it was their birthright, their panoply, their glory, and their song of rejoicing in the house of their pilgrimage. It covered them in the day of their calamity, and their trust was under the shadow of its wings. From the first settlement of the country, the genius of our institutions and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... never been struck with the argument of the Apostle, who, warning others from the corrupt example of the fleshy Esau, said, "Lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own birthright. For ye know that even afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears." Terrible and striking words are these. His birthright sold for a mess of meat. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... thyself, O son of Jahdai, call me as I have instructed thee to speak of me—call me Prince. At the same time I would have thee know that on my eighth day I was carried into a temple and registered a son of a son of Jerusalem. The title I give thee for my designation did not ennoble me. The birthright of a circumcised heritor under the covenant with Israel is superior to every purely human dignity ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... his acceptance of a royal commission rankled in the minds of his countrymen; and his ability, his friendly policy, his desire to leave things pretty much as they had been, counted for nothing because of his compact with the enemy. In the opinion of the old guard, he had forsaken his birthright and had turned traitor to the land of his origin. Time has modified this judgment and has shown that, however unlovely Dudley was in personal character and however lacking he was at all times in self-control, he was an able administrator, of a type common enough in other colonies, particularly in ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... the degenerate Yank With his blood-spattered idol of gold, Who, his birthright, for cash in the bank, And political pottage has sold. Then we send our poor boys to the war With a prayer that they keep themselves clean, And we purchase a shining new car, Praying ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... from his feverish slumber and stare down into the block of moonlight that fell across his bed through the half-curtained window of the room, and wonder whether he had just dreamed it all, or whether he had, indeed, at last, a birthright and ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the elder brother, and when the challenge came was entitled to fight first,—a birthright out of which Charles tried in vain to talk him. The brothers told their father, Sir William Brandon, and at the appointed time father and sons repaired to the place of meeting, where they found Judson and his two seconds ready for ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den, In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men, Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut, Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these,—but,— Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees Softens away: yet, last of their line, the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... Goanese were given leave to march with the band twice a day for the sake of exercise. They refused indignantly. The commandant flew into the rage that is the birthright of all German officials, but suddenly checked himself; he had ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy |
