"Forgetfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have never seen him angry. You have never confessed to him! A little, little sin—no larger than the eye of a fly—a little bite of a calf's sweetbread on Friday in mere forgetfulness, and Sancta Maria! what a penance is required! What suffering! It is a purgatory to have ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... answered laughing, as she leaned back on the seat, throwing her arm behind her and resting her head on it. She caught him looking at her again with marked and almost startled intensity. He was rather strange with his alternations of apparent forgetfulness and this embarrassing scrutiny. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... and denied his rights in a Christian land, can help the whites of the North and South to rise, can be the inspiration of their rising, into this atmosphere of generous Christian brotherhood and self-forgetfulness, he will see in it a recompense for all that he has suffered in ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly around it. She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even then—as if in forgetfulness or indifference—permitted her hand to rest unresponsively in his. It was scarcely an encouragement to gallantry, neither was it a rejection of an ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... It was a deceiving thought. Let him prove it false. Come to my garden to-morrow, and I will bring him to you there. I would not say this unless I were sure of him. And I tell you again, his salvation is in you. You have driven him to the drug of forgetfulness. You owe it to his soul to give him justice. For the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fountain of spiritual replenishment at which the saints refresh their parched throats. An acute sensitiveness to the suffering of others, without a corresponding power to reach the sources of comfort, leads to the abyss of madness. Nature imposes limits to sympathy in most minds, barriers of forgetfulness without which healthy thought is impossible. The danger to the mind of indulging in unlimited sympathy has been emphasized by the most divergent students of psychological law. Herbert Spencer analysed it with characteristic thoroughness. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... take too many things for granted. You should not assume that your thoughtless word, or harsh manner, or forgetfulness of little and delicate attentions will have no effect, and will be duly passed by as unmeaning. No such thing! Every word or look which is incompatible with genuine love and respect weighs like a millstone. Gentle attentions will be remembered, not only through the day, ...
— The Wedding Day - The Service—The Marriage Certificate—Words of Counsel • John Fletcher Hurst
... the law deal. In life Captain Davis was our friend. His assailant was our enemy. In death they take on the proportions of common humanity. Upon the bier of one we will lay the myrtle of never-dying remembrance. Over the coffin of the other let the mantle of forgetfulness rest. The Times-Herald makes no war ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to the grey stars, and singing from its deep heart as it bounds along. Beside it is the Senate, proud of its solemn triflers, and there the cloistered Tomb, in which as the loftiest honour, some handful of the fiercest of the strugglers may gain forgetfulness and a grave! There is no moral to a great city like the River that washes ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friendship was riveted between these two men which still remains bright and untarnished by either absence or forgetfulness. They bent over the cases, agreed and disagreed, the one with the sharp gestures, the other with the rise and fall of the voice. For them nothing else existed; ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... open grounds, skirted with hills and dotted with silent, two-penny cottages. Sometimes Picton mounted his pyramid of trunk-leather for a mile or so of nods; sometimes I essayed the high perch, and holding on by a cord, dropped off in a moment's forgetfulness, with the constant fear of waking up in a mud-hole, or under the wagon-wheels. But even these respites were brief. It is not easy to ride up hill and down by rock and rut, under such conditions. We were very soon convinced it was best to leave the wagon to its load of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... and the elopement of an only child from an aged father, that we marvel how any one can treat lightly the outraged feelings of a confiding parent. Earnest tender love so deeply rooted in a father's heart may pardon, but cannot reach forgetfulness as quickly as it is the custom of play-writers and novelists to tell ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... sincere; yet she knew that if he had not obliterated the thought of her mother from his mind he would not have let slip that reference to parental sins. His forgetfulness was ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... baby," said Vickers, hastily, as though unwilling to admit that her illness had been the cause of her forgetfulness. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... embarrassed. The Duc de Lauzun, as though to relieve him from his embarrassment, said, in a gentle and respectful tone, "Monsieur, he will do better another time," and with this sarcasm rendered the Regent dumb, and went away smiling. The story got abroad, and M. le Duc d'Orleans repaired his forgetfulness by the bishopric of Laon, and upon the refusal of M. de Marseilles to change, gave him a ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... I had returned to my house, before it occurred to me that Mrs. Winterfield had not mentioned your address. My only excuse for this forgetfulness is, that I was very much distressed while I was writing by her bedside. I at once went back to the lodgings, but she had fallen asleep, and I dared not disturb her. This morning, when I returned to the ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... at first answer. He sat in one of the wooden chairs, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, calling himself, mentally, all sorts of things for his idiotic forgetfulness. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... may exhibit them in their actual strife; to deal with questions, not in an abstract shape, but mixed up with the affections, passions, relations of human creatures, is a course which must lead him, it is thought, into a great forgetfulness of his office, and of all ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... calamity, until the crack of doom. It simply amounts to a promise of pardon to any person who will start a quarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The moment any man assaults any other man he makes all the other men as bad as himself. He has only to stab, and to vanish in a fog of forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron, the predatory Empires, will be delighted with this doctrine. They will applaud the Labour Concert or Committee, or whatever it is called. They will willingly take all the crime, with only a quarter of the conscience: they will be as ready to share the memory as they ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... of kind in him, it is the breadth of reason, it is the circumference of conscience, it is the grandeur of duty which this author arrays here scientifically against that oblivion and ignoring of the whole, that forgetfulness of the world, and the universal tie which the ignorance of the unaided sense and the narrowness of passion and private affection create, whether in the one, or the few, or the many. It is the Weal of the whole against ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... love-longing for her sweet sake I took upon myself, The railers flocked to me anon, on blame and chiding bent; But on no wise was I affrayed nor turned from love of her; So let the railer rave of her henceforth his heart's content. By God, forgetfulness of her shall never cross my mind, What while I wear the bonds of life nor when of death they're rent An if I live, in love of her I'll live, and if I die Of love and longing for her sight, O rare! ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... had fairly come, and that the dreaded iceberg was at least not close at hand, Cabot again sought forgetfulness of his misery in sleep. When he awoke some hours later, aching in every bone, and painfully hungry, he was also filled with a delicious sense of warmth; for the sun, already near its meridian, was shining as brightly as ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... as deeply nor flies as high as his freer and stronger ancestry. A daring spirit in the nineteenth century would have been but a timid nursery soul indeed in the sixteenth. We want tumult and war to give us forgetfulness, sublime moments of peace to enjoy a kiss in; but we are expected to be home to dinner at seven, and to say and do nothing that might shock the neighbours. Respectability has wound itself about society, a sort ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... father of our great William Penn won his laurels as an admiral, was now the scene of the exploits of an American captain fighting beneath an American flag for American rights inherited from old mother England, who, in a moment of forgetfulness, had sought to deprive her offspring of liberty. I know of no more thrilling incident in revolutionary naval annals than the fight between the Serapis and the Bon Homme Richard, when Paul Jones, on the burning deck of a sinking ship, lashed ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... his "vanity" and forgetfulness was humiliating, and Archibald Mackie shut himself up in his chamber, and suffered, and prayed, and struggled alone; and came forth with a radiant brow, and a cheerful, peaceful heart. He had done with the things of this life. The dearest and best he had dropped ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... said aloud, "Poor things! Poor dears!" and discovered that it was not forgetfulness exactly in Mrs. Hawthorne, but that general optimism which insists on believing in a loophole of possibility through which things can slip and somehow turn ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... there at her window for moments greatly differing from those vaguely happy ones just passed. She had sustained a shock that had left her benumbed with a dull pain. What a rude, raw break the voice of Kells had made in her brief forgetfulness! She was returning now to reality. Presently she would peer through the crevice between the boards into the other room, and she shrank from the ordeal. Kells, and whoever was with him, maintained silence. Occasionally she heard the shuffle of a boot and a creak of the loose ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... many people want to bring their faith, their works, their good deeds to Him for salvation. Bring your sins, and He will bear them away into the wilderness of forgetfulness, and you will never see ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... was the cause of the Negro's fall from his high state of civilization? It was forgetfulness of God, idolatry! "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... of his fate with Homer's, and his complete forgetfulness of the distinction between Christianity and idolatry, under the general feeling of some religion, is very interesting. It is amusing to observe, how familiar Chapman's fancy has become with Homer, his life and its circumstances, though the very existence of any such individual, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the monk's ambition. The ideal, he knew, was the perfect direction of every part of his being, of hands and eyes, as well as of the great powers of the soul; what God had joined together man must not put asunder, and the man who had every physical movement under control, and never erred through forgetfulness or impulse in these little matters, presumably also was master of his will, and retained internal as well as ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... had probably forgotten all about her since last winter—young men were like that. She sighed as she confessed it, remembering one who had declared he would come back—but who had remained away in forgetfulness. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... embraces, rained kisses on a face that was seductively screened by roughly dishevelled hair, and which smiled back at him with a look of intoxication almost equal to his own. And then at last, concluding instinctively that the moment had come for complete forgetfulness, he even thought he might proceed to discount bills of intimacy before they had become due,—a practice not uncommon in England,—and he held her in a way that was at least novel to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... she said. "But there are others who want to forget, too. Cannot we bury the whole thing in forgetfulness?" ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... subjection of her unfortunate tenderness. Nor was her task so difficult as she had feared; resolution, in such cases, may act the office of time, and anticipate by reason and self-denial, what that, much leas nobly, effects through forgetfulness and inconstancy. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... arms again, but the movement and the touch of his hand roused her to the fearful consciousness that she had no longer a right to seek consolation in his companionship. She broke away, terrified and oppressed, with a feeling of guilt at her momentary forgetfulness. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... was her embarrassment. What could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable, told but too plainly of forgetfulness ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... little as compared with what I judged to be the value of the property. It was well within the sum at my disposal. I wished to write a cheque out there and then; but he forbade me, saying: 'Allah knows I might mislay the paper or destroy it in a moment of forgetfulness. Do thou in kindness pay my creditor and ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... some are nobly and some are basely born. I have often contemplated what a terrible thing it must be to possess a delicate, sensitive soul and a body disowned; to long for the glories of the world from behind the bar sinister, an object of scorn, contumely and forgetfulness; to be cut away from the love of women and the affection of men, the two strongest of human ties; to dream what might and should have been; to be proved guilty of a crime we did not commit; to be laughed at, to beg futilely, always subject to that mental conflict between ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... other hand, consider how many are there among us who can be said to watch and pray? Is not the utmost we do to offer on Sunday some kind of prayer in Church to God; or sometimes some short prayer morning and evening in the week; and then go into the world with the same incaution and forgetfulness as if we had never entertained a serious thought? We go through the business of the day, quite forgetting, to any practical purpose, that all business has snares in it, and therefore needs caution. Let us ask ourselves this question, "How often do we think of ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... saw of our old friends, and he was much hurt by such ingratitude. So were we all, and though we soon acquitted the head of the family of more than the forgetfulness of over occupation, the soreness at his wife's coldness was not so soon passed over. Yet from her own point of view, poor woman, she might be excused for a panic lest her second daughter might go the way of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... generally represented as a tall, beautiful, and stately woman, crowned with heron plumes, the symbol of silence or forgetfulness, and clothed in pure white robes, secured at the waist by a golden girdle, from which hung a bunch of keys, the distinctive sign of the Northern housewife, whose special patroness she was said to be. Although she often appeared beside her husband, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... cases the hallucinated idea is so powerfully excited, that it is not to be changed suddenly by occular sensation, or reason. Yet great perseverance in the frequently presenting contrary ideas will sometimes slowly remove this hallucination, or in great length of time oblivion, or forgetfulness, performs a cure, by other means in ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... a remarkable victim in the ill fated Cassier. When grief falls on the irreligious soul, it seeks relief in crime. The shadow of death that fell on his family circle, and the flight of his son in daring forgetfulness of his parental authority, which he had overrated, broke the last link of Christian forbearance in his unbelieving heart; when wearied of blaspheming the providence of God, he quaffed the fatal cup which hell gives as a balm ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... his pretended forgetfulness, Venier remembered every word that Beroviero had told him, and indolently as he talked, his whole nature was roused to defend Zorzi. In his heart he despised Contarini, and hoped that his marriage might never take place, for he was sincerely sorry for Marietta; ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... rugged face in the centre of it would break into a smile, or some boyish speaker would elicit the low spontaneous laugh in which there was such a sound of human fellowship, such a genuine note of self-forgetfulness. Sometimes the conversation strayed into politics, and then Mr. Grey, an eager politician, would throw back his head, and talk with more sparkle and rapidity, flashing occasionally into grim humour which seemed to throw light on the innate strength ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honor enjoined revenge, and stigmatized the forgiveness of insults; in others it imperiously commanded men to conquer their own passions, and imposed forgetfulness of self. It did not make humanity or kindness its law, but it extolled generosity; it set more store on liberality than on benevolence; it allowed men to enrich themselves by gambling or by war, but not by labor; it preferred great crimes to small earnings; ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... and sweet and serviceable, but as they are not thinking of themselves, but only how they may serve, they are blest with that loveliest of all adorning, a meek and quiet spirit and a joy of living and content that only forgetfulness of self and communion with ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected—the second postal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment's forgetfulness in the longer absence of news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife's desire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a campaign. Enfeebled in body, heartbroken at the horrible fate of Gertrudis, and foreseeing the speedy termination of the war, consequent on the concluded treaty of Bergara, he threw up his commission, and left Spain to seek forgetfulness of his misfortunes in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... unpleasant happenings, we are able to fix our thoughts upon a photograph or picture that may be there, and by studying it we are able to imagine ourselves far, far away, in some spot where nature makes everything pleasant and soothes us into forgetfulness of all that can disturb our happiness. Many an invalid—many an unfortunate one is thus made content by pictures during hours that would otherwise be wretched. This is the result of cultivating the perceptive and ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... something had happened to their minds; then with a dumb and yearning solicitude they would softly caress each other's hands in mutual compassion and support, as if they would say: "I am near you, I will not forsake you, we will bear it together; somewhere there is release and forgetfulness, somewhere there is a grave and peace; be patient, it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... such weariness of labour without end, it has such infinitude of woe to regard in its prisons, in its homes, in its battlefields, in its harlotries, in its avarices, in its famines; it is so heart-sick of them all, that it would fain be lulled to forgetfulness of its own terrors; it asks only to laugh for awhile, even if it ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and in total forgetfulness of Prince Rupert and his brutal troopers went to sleep, not waking until the morning, when she recommenced her journey in renewed hope, and with a calm trust in ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... a passion of burning tears, threw himself upon the deck of the bark; and a deep swoon soon wrapped the wretched man in a blessed forgetfulness of misery. ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... described before both Houses of Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation about lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposing insanity to be merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like forgetfulness, is simply a quality which enters more or less into all human beings; and for practical purposes it is more necessary to know whose mind is really trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint. We have therefore reversed the existing method, and people now have to ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... theory in England, believed perhaps by some, half believed by many more, which is only consistent with original ignorance, or complete subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the contest. There are people who tell us that, on the side of the North, the question is not one of slavery at all. The North, it seems, have no more objection to slavery than the ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... a beauty that is always present to hear her-self flattered, is flattered by every one. But the absent and silent goddess, Forgetfulness, has no votaries, and is never thought of: yet we owe her much. She is the goddess of ease, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... ill. Literary error is in their eyes the most dangerous of errors, and it is just on this account that they excel in the true style of writing. St. Sulpice is now the only place where, as formerly at Port-Royal, the style of writing possesses that absolute forgetfulness of form which is the proof of sincerity. It never occurred to the masters that among their pupils must be a writer or an orator. The principle which they insisted upon the most earnestly was never to make any reference to self, and if one had anything to say, to say it plainly and in undertones. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... resistance, material cause for producing the sense of hearing, and the unoccupied portions of the human body. These are the fifty properties, as declared, that constitute the essence of the five elementary entities.[1106] Patience, reasoning or disputation, remembrance, forgetfulness or error, imagination, endurance, propensity towards good, propensity towards evil, and restlessness,—these are the properties of the mind. Destruction of both good and evil thoughts (i.e., dreamless slumber), perseverance, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... not taught me that at all. He came here to 'seek forgetfulness'—so it is said in the words he carved on the panel in his study,—but we do not know that he ever really forgot. He only 'found peace,' and peace is not happiness—except for ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the wine the wondrous juice of a plant which banishes sadness and wrath from the heart and brings with it forgetfulness ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment, she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... extolling surviving Kings, from whom their panegyrist might hope for a reward. He extended his labours to our remote ancestry, learning from books that which the hoary memories of our old men scarcely retained. He drew forth from their hiding-place the Kings of the Goths, hidden by long forgetfulness. He restored the Amals in all the lustre of their lineage, evidently proving that we have Kings for our ancestors up to the seventeenth generation. He made the origin of the Goths part of Roman history, collecting ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... There was no allusion to the past, no begging for forgiveness, no hint of a wish to return home. His father seldom looked at the lad's letters, but flung them to Will to be read, the quarrel between him and his son, instead of dwindling into forgetfulness, seeming to grow and widen in his mind with each succeeding year, as trifling disagreements frequently do in weak but ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... had scarce a mark of life. Her breathing stirred her not. The deadliest fatigue was thus confessed in every language of the sleeping flesh. The traveller smiled grimly. As though he had looked upon a statue, he made a grudging inventory of her charms: the figure in that touching freedom of forgetfulness surprised him; the flush of slumber became ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Monster of forgetfulness! murderer of memory!" spoke the spirit, sternly. "In this, the last rough resting place of the impecunious dead, do you dare to discuss commonplace topics with one of the departed? Look at me, uncle, clove-befogged, and shrink ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... desirous of such a benefit from your fine sky." "Do not believe, however," replied Corinne, "that our character is light, or our mind frivolous; it is only vanity that causes frivolity. Indolence may introduce some intervals of sleep, or of forgetfulness into our lives, but it neither wears out nor dries up the heart; and unfortunately for us we may be aroused from this state by passions more deep, and more terrible than those ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... question," I went on. "Why are we worn out? Why are we, at first so passionate so bold, so noble, and so full of faith, complete bankrupts at thirty or thirty-five? Why does one waste in consumption, another put a bullet through his brains, a third seeks forgetfulness in vodka and cards, while the fourth tries to stifle his fear and misery by cynically trampling underfoot the pure image of his fair youth? Why is it that, having once fallen, we do not try to rise up again, and, losing one thing, do not seek something ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... realized the certainty of his return. However courteous it would have been for them to have hidden their displeasure and to have extended their greetings to him, not one came forward. The loss of their fortune was too distasteful to them; the awakening from a happy dream, from a life of joyous forgetfulness of right and duty, to a life of hard work was too revolting for them. Mr. Bond had been obliged to seat himself to recover his strength. Some swooned and had ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... Absolvers Foible is very plain, but that Author has not made the Case parallel with the others Remark upon Mr. Congreve's Comedy the Old Batchelor, which shews his contradiction of himself, and his fallacy undeniable, for there he seems to roar at young Belmour for his forgetfulness of Religion, at a minute when he is desiring Letitia to give him leave to swear by her Lips and Eyes, when he is kissing and telling her, Eternity was in that moment. [Footnote: Collier, p. 63.] ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... great war-sword and handed it to Noel le Jolys, who, for one of the few times in his life, astonished into forgetfulness of courtly etiquette, had been staring, open-mouthed, at the astonishing revelation that had just been made to him. The gleam of the war-worn weapon recalled him to himself and he took it from the hands of the doomed ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pellucid water one can clearly see them swim along. As they pass a rocky place a trout will dart out and catch his prey. A flutter at once passes through the whole school. Yet, strange to say, the trout will sometimes swim around such a body and either stupify them with fear, or hypnotize them into forgetfulness of their presence, for they will float quietly in the center of the mass, catching the minnows one by one as they need them without exciting the least fear or attention. The minnows generally remain in fairly shallow ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... would meet the suggestion that he should tell him about it, with the hurried interposition, "Yes, I have heard that; good story." This would make Hewson think that he was beginning to tell his story too often, and that perhaps the friend who suggested his doing so, was playing upon his forgetfulness. He wondered if he were really something of a bore with it, and whether men were shying off from him at the club on account of it. He fancied that might be the reason why the circle at the five-o'clock cocktails gradually diminished as the winter passed. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... of his attempt at suicide. He felt the dizziness which follows great moral crises as well as a heavy blow on the head, and which distracts the attention from exterior things. But Jenny's words, "the handsomest woman in France," attracted his notice, and he could, that very evening, repair his forgetfulness. When he returned to Valfeuillu, his friend had not returned; Mme. Sauvresy was alone reading, in the brilliantly lighted drawing-room. Hector seated himself opposite her, a little aside, and was thus able to observe her ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... turn poor Kid was mutely reminded of her loss, and her heart was at the breaking point day by day, and she begged for her old life, to seek forgetfulness in toil and get away from herself. So we went back to the old road, as we went away—Jim Wainright and Kid Reynolds—and glad enough they were to get us again for ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... was taken up into this epoch as one of its elements, being modified to conform to it: e.g. the Benedictines were accustomed to labor in agriculture and in the transcribing of books, and this contradicted the idea of monachism, since that in and for itself tends to an absolute forgetfulness of the world and a perfect absence of all activity in the individual. The begging orders were public preachers, and made popular the idea of love and unselfish devotion to others. They labored toward self-education, especially by means of the ideal of the life of ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... forgetfulness on their part, let it be remembered, is wholly voluntary and culpable, at least in its cause. They may not have been attentive at the precise moment that the flames of passion reached the mine of their affections; but they were well aware that ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... not, among their other human qualities, the least. As is well known, this difference is expressed not only in the vigor, reliability, and promptness of their memory, but also in the field of memory, in the accompaniment of rapid prehensivity by rapid forgetfulness, or slow prehensivity and slow forgetfulness, or in the contrast between narrow, but intense memory, and broad ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... lie embalmed in hideous and grotesque semblance of their living shapes, their lifeblood dried that lent them all their little dignity, their action and their glow, and exhaling only a faint, sickening odor of the venom that has kept them from crumbling into forgetfulness,—these law-papers are now held by some to have special interest Shakespeare-ward, as having to do with a profession for which he made preparatory studies, even if he did not enter upon its practice. Yes, in spite of our alleged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... huddling on their clothes, or are already up and about their occupations, content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale, we choose to linger abed, and digest our dreams. It is the very time to recombine the wandering images which night in a confused mass presented; to snatch them from forgetfulness; to shape and mold them. Some people have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp them too grossly to taste them curiously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Lady, "I pray and beseech you that the Law of the Saviour be not set aside in forgetfulness and neglect there where you may exalt it, for better Lord in no wise may you serve, nor one that better knoweth how to bestow fair guerdon. Fair son, none may be good knight that serveth Him not and loveth Him. Take heed that ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... carelessly replies that the gold is still in the Neidhole, guarded by the body of the dragon, while the ring now adorns a woman's fair hand. As he finishes this statement, Gutrune timidly draws near, and offers him a drinking horn, the draught of welcome, in which, however, the magic potion of forgetfulness has been mixed. ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... the next Aid meeting, and suggest that they wait in a body on the minister and protest. Miss Cornelia said that she, for her part, gave up. There was no use worrying over the manse fry any longer. Even Mrs. Dr. Blythe felt a little shocked, though she attributed the occurrence solely to Faith's forgetfulness. Susan could not immediately begin knitting stockings for Faith because it was Sunday, but she had one set up before any one else was out of bed at Ingleside ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... companions had retired to rest. I gave Lucy in charge to the Countess's attendant, and then sought repose from my various struggles and impatient regrets. For a few moments the events of the day floated in disastrous pageant through my brain, till sleep bathed it in forgetfulness; when morning dawned and I awoke, it seemed as if my slumber had ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... native of the city of New York, produces this historical essay."[1] Like the great Father of History, whose words I have just quoted, I treat of times long past, over which the twilight of uncertainty had already thrown its shadows, and the night of forgetfulness was about to descend for ever. With great solicitude had I long beheld the early history of this venerable and ancient city gradually slipping from our grasp, trembling on the lips of narrative old age, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... first intercourse with strangers they are shocked or frighted at seeing the improprieties and sins, which are openly countenanced. Alas! there are persons, doubtless (though God forbid it should be the case with any here present!), whose consciences have been so early trained into forgetfulness of religious duties, that they can hardly, or cannot at all, recollect the time I speak of; the time when they acted with the secret feeling that God saw them, saw all they did and thought. I will not fancy this to be the case with any who hear me. Rather, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... which in Court was a strange device of recovery, but that he knew there was some ill office done him, that he durst not attempt to mend any other ways than by going aside, thereby to teach envy a new way of forgetfulness, and not so much as to think of him; howsoever, he had it always in mind never to forget himself; and his device took so well, that, at his return, he came in, as rams do by going backwards, with the greater strength; ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the final temptation. She was indeed so impulsively ready to forgive (without waiting to see if the event justified the exercise of mercy) that she owns to having given her hand to Miss Westerfield, at parting, not half an hour after that young person's shameless forgetfulness of the claims of modesty, duty and gratitude had been first communicated to her. To say that this was the act of an inconsiderate woman, culpably indiscreet and, I had almost added, culpably indelicate, is only to say what she has deserved. On the next occasion ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... known, with his volatile, Lucifer-like charm of light-hearted recklessness in the face of destiny. Instead, a thinned, shy face rose before her, a face full of awkwardness and dreaming, troubled and absent; a face that one moment appealed by its defenseless forgetfulness, and the next, coerced by a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... matter; and in a somewhat extended preaching service. At night we slept on a mat laid for us, or tried to sleep; but my thoughts were too busy; and the clear night sky was witness to a great many restless movements, I am afraid, before I lost them in forgetfulness. The occasion of which, I suppose, was the near prospect of sending letters home to England by the ship. At any rate, England and the South Seas were very near together that night; and I was fain to remember that heaven is nearer yet. But the remembrance carne, and with it sleep. The next day was ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... result, Salicetti thought that with Napoleon's arrest he had furnished sufficient proof of his patriotic sentiments; it seemed to him enough to have obscured the growing fame of the young general, and to have plunged back into obscurity and forgetfulness him whose first steps in life's career promised such a ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... runaway I was the creature of a fixed idea. A fiery energy spurred me on all my time. I was determined now to find out my father's murderer. I was determined to shake off the atmosphere of doubt and forgetfulness. I was determined to recall those first scenes of my life ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... which his fanciful ideas are prompted by a wit so gayly sharp, and expressed with a neatness and pointedness so unusual, that it is to be regretted that these pieces should be condemned to speedy forgetfulness, as they must be, from the temporary interest of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the hearts, so many different struggles going on in the souls, that sought to manifest their personal and independent life have often caused forgetfulness of the great mass of the faithful who were neither Jansenists nor Quietists. Bossuet was the real head and the pride of the great Catholic church of France in the seventeenth century; what he approved of was approved of by the immense majority of the French ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... love and wifehood; the beauty of passion; the pride of surrender; the forgetfulness of self that creates self; the crying of the spirit from its delicate marble minaret to the flesh in its grassy covert, and the wistful, ascending answer of flesh to spirit—all these were hers. And as she lay and wept, and remembered how many a time Edward had stood on her threshold ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... almost as forlorn as a funeral. Dead silence succeeds tumult and bustle; those left behind sit down blankly, feeling a gap in their circle, a loss never to be repaired. It was worse than usual at Danton Hall. The wintry weather, precluding all possibility of seeking forgetfulness and recreation out of doors, the absence of visitors—for the Cure, Father Francis, Doctor Danton, and the Reverend Mr. Clare comprised Kate's whole visiting list now—all tended to make dismalness more dismal. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... was wrapping her shawl around her to go up to bed, when she thought she heard a groan—then footsteps, followed by a peculiar muffled sound. In a moment she was in the hall, where she heard it more distinctly, and springing up the staircase, rushed into her uncle's room. By some rare forgetfulness, or bewilderment, he had left his door unfastened. The candle was still burning, and May saw him lying on the floor, where he had fallen in his endeavor to reach the door to call for assistance; his face purple and swollen, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... quoth she, "another, and that perhaps the greatest, cause of thy sickness: thou hast forgotten what thou art. Wherefore I have fully found out both the manner of thy disease and the means of thy recovery; for the confusion which thou art in, by the forgetfulness of thyself, is the cause why thou art so much grieved at thy exile and the loss of thy goods. And because thou art ignorant what is the end of things, thou thinkest that lewd and wicked men be powerful and happy; likewise, because thou hast forgotten ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... as the reader may suspect, a little inclined to forgetfulness, never wanted more than a hint to remind him, overhearing their discourse, immediately suggested to himself that this was his own horse, and that he had forgot to pay for him, which, upon inquiry, he was certified of by the gentlemen; who added, that the horse was likely to have more rest ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... simple transgression of the Law does not constitute us in guilt; we must transgress deliberately, wilfully. Full inadvertence, perfect forgetfulness, total blindness is called invincible ignorance; this destroys utterly the moral act and makes us involuntary agents. When knowledge is incomplete, the act is less voluntary; except it be the case of ignorance ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... some method of escaping. Thanks to his foresightedness, he still had his knife, and this might prove to him to be salvation as far as escape was concerned. He laid down on the cot, thinking, and after nearly a half of an hour jumped to his feet, inwardly calling himself names for his forgetfulness. ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... the soul to drink nepenthes of forgetfulness. Hardships, wounds, blood, pain, menace of death faded under that spell. That the Legionaries were trapped at the bottom of a vast rabbit-warren, with swarms of Moslem ferrets soon to rush upon them, now ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... it forgetfulness, heedlessness or ignorance perhaps—(blessed he who is ignorant! a fool he who is wise!)—in other days in relating the story which I am going to tell you to-day I would, without pausing at the place where the first scene of this book occurs, have accorded it but a superficial ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... after his father's return home that these injunctions must be taken quite seriously. The father's appearance brought an instantaneous change in the atmosphere of the place, the boy strove instinctly to be as little noticeable as possible. If his mercurial temperament lured him into temporary forgetfulness, a single stern word from the father sent him back into silence and the refuge of his ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... them, had I not lost the memory of all the injuries they had heaped upon me. The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance of the harm inflicted on him; forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... capability, yet none of my works have ever sold. The "Wallenstein" went to the waste. The "Remorse," though acted twenty times, rests quietly on the shelves in the second edition, with copies enough for seven years' consumption, or seven times seven. I lost L200 by the non-payment, from forgetfulness, and under various pretences, by "The Friend"; [Footnote: Twenty-seven numbers of The Friend were published by Coleridge at Penrith in Cumberland in 1809-10, but the periodical proved a failure, principally ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... could not help noticing the beautiful and easy manner in which this Christian woman fell upon her knees, leaving the folds of her robe to spread themselves at random about her. I had never before seen any lady kneel down with such frankness and such forgetfulness of self, except two fair Polish exiles, one evening long ago, in ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... who, but a short time before, were his agents, his confederates, his accomplices, his colleagues, and his friends. At the same time that he published memorials and circulars showing the necessity of clemency and forgetfulness of the past, he placed before the Royal Council a list of one hundred and ten names, to be excluded from all amnesty; and when strict inquiry had reduced this number to eighteen, subject to courts-martial, and to thirty-eight ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had," replied the duc, with careless naivete, and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. "Now, here is poor Raoul, who is your son, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... gradual disillusionment of the many was disheartening, and Latimer's worn, unhappy face was a constant reminder. Arthur Latimer! That blithe Southerner—believer in men—and women! Philip knew what had made him seek forgetfulness in the law and politics. The success of his friend, who had reached his goal, on the supreme bench, had gratified Danvers, and Latimer's enthusiasm and persistent belief in the ultimate good, when the builders ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... great honor, for his coming had been announced to Gudrun in dreams, which had in part been interpreted to her by Brynhild. The mother, knowing of Sigurd's relations to the latter, gives him a potion which produces forgetfulness, so that he no longer remembers his betrothed, and accepts the hand of Gudrun, which the king offers him at the queen's request. The marriage is celebrated with great pomp, and Sigurd remains permanently attached to Giuki's court, ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... the hurried and brief meeting between Bartlett and Gertie Higgins, but he had seen enough to cause forgetfulness of mundane things. For an instant he stared after the vanished vision. Then he stepped blindly forward, tripped over something—"his off hind leg," so Captain Sol afterwards vowed—and fell sprawling, the ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bind the wounds of drunken stokers? The groans were probably a trick, to entice him, unarmed, into the night. And so, just before the dawn, when the mists rose, and the groans ceased, Everett, still arguing, sank with a contented sigh into forgetfulness. ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... not call me a star! 'Tis too cold and bright, and too far Away from your arms; I would be, The life drops that flow in your veins, The pulses that throb in your heart. My bosom should be the warm sea Of forgetfulness, tinged with the stains Of the sunset, when day-dreams depart; You should drink at its fountain of kisses, Drink mad of its ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... of testifying love and homage was employed; but modesty kept her wonted place in his heart, and counsels of peace were, as ever, on his tongue. His prowess in conflict was no more admirable than his self-forgetfulness in triumph. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... train the stagnation of nations, and hampering them in that march to the unknown which we call "progress." But such an attitude shows not only an absolute ignorance of the teaching of the Prophet, but a blind forgetfulness of the evidence of history. The Islam of the earlier centuries evolved and progressed with the nations, and the stimulus it gave to men in the reign of the ancient caliphs is beyond all question. To impute to it the present decadence of the Moslem world is altogether too puerile. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... of the work, as though, bored by a fixed attention that had taken him out of himself, yet highly applauding the result, he had scrawled and daubed his brush about in a sort of intoxication of self-glory... In Haydon's work there is not sufficient forgetfulness of self to disarm criticism of personality. His pictures are themselves autobiographical notes of the most interesting kind; but their want of beauty repels, and their want of modesty exasperates. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... law of good breeding is unselfishness, that thorough forgetfulness of one's own wants and comforts, and thoughtfulness for the happiness and ease of others, which is the Christian gentleman's rule of life; which makes him yield the easy chair to another older and weaker than himself, and sit ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... of the French, or such his forgetfulness of good manners in his anger, that he spat right and left on ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... beneath his pillow. But suddenly his interest had faded: these phantoms fled before a rationalistic cock-crow, and Eugenius Philalethes and Robert Fludd went with Mejnour and Zanoni into a twilight forgetfulness. There was no hand to show the hidden way to the land that might be, and there were hands beckoning and voices calling him along the highway to the land that is. So, dream-light passing, he must, perforce, reconcile himself ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... how she sits outside life's gate and cannot enter into the light; cannot hear the music or enjoy the friendly speech of the world. When these gloomy ideas come to her mind she remembers, "There is joy in self-forgetfulness," and tries to find her happiness in the lives ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... assures us that certain underlying but indefinable laws of society, as indicated by statistics, control human action irrespective of choice or moral responsibility. Even accidents, the averages of forgetfulness or neglect, are the subjects of computation. To support his position he cites the averages of suicides, or the number of letters deposited yearly in a given post-office, the superscription of which has been forgotten. Thus, underlying all human activity there ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... novel. Word came of Alice Windham's death in Massachusetts. Robert urged his father to return to San Francisco, but Benito sought forgetfulness in European travel. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... never come. Across the years of busy action and world-wide service he treads the path that leads to "palms of victory, crowns of glory." In the joy of service he is finding the peace which the world cannot give nor take away. In self-forgetfulness he is growing daily into His likeness, until he shall at last ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... certain, that my generous Clarinda[73] will not think my silence, for now a long week, has been in any decree owing to my forgetfulness. I have been tossed about through the country ever since I wrote you; and am here, returning from Dumfries-shire, at an inn, the post office of the place, with just so long time as my horse eats his corn, to write you. I have been hurried with business and dissipation almost equal to the insidious ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Sleep fled from him, and confused ideas again ascended to his brain. As the dawn appeared, yellowishly dirty, like a splash of liquid mud on the window-panes, he started, fancying that he heard a loud voice calling to him from the far end of the studio. Then, irresistibly, despite a few brief hours' forgetfulness, all his old thoughts returned, overflowing and torturing him, hollowing his cheeks and contracting his jaws in the disgust he felt for mankind. Two wrinkles imparted intense bitterness to the expression of his face, which looked like the wasted countenance of an old man. And suddenly ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Am I—am I, really? I'm so glad!" cried Rowena, smiling. But Dreda noticed with amazement that she didn't seem a bit conceited; if such a curious thing could be believed true, there was a hitherto unknown modesty and self-forgetfulness about her manner. "You look a darling yourself," Rowena added affectionately. "Are you going to get a lot of prizes to make us proud of ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said, "Whoever he may be who says that Don Quixote of La Mancha has forgotten or can forget Dulcinea del Toboso, I will teach him with equal arms that what he says is very far from the truth; for neither can the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso be forgotten, nor can forgetfulness have a place in Don Quixote; his motto is constancy, and his profession to maintain the same with his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... For Grace At Morning Evening Another For Evening In Time of Rain Another in Time of Rain Before a Temporary Separation For Friends For the Family Sunday For Self-Blame For Self-Forgetfulness ...
— A Lowden Sabbath Morn • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unhandsomeness and the direct crimes; for all things are laid up safely, and tho we draw a curtain of cobweb over them, and a few fig-leaves before our shame, yet God shall draw away the curtain, and forgetfulness shall be no more, because, with a taper in the hand of God, all the corners of our nastiness shall be discovered. And, secondly, it signifies this also, that not only the justice of God shall be confest by us in our own shame and condemnation, but the evil ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... genial image, of men we love—an image of men warm and true of heart, direct and unhesitating in courage, generous, magnanimous, faithful, steadfast, capable of a deep devotion and self-forgetfulness. But the age changes, and with it must change our ideals of human quality. Not that we would give up what we have loved: we would add what a new life demands. In a new age men must acquire a new capacity, must be men upon a new scale, and with added qualities. We shall need ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... Father, did he hail the rising faith of that Samaritan and rejoice in bringing to her the message of salvation. Hence I say his evident excitement, if we may use the phrase. Hence his obliviousness to hunger. Hence his forgetfulness of his former fatigue. "Lift up your eyes," he cried to his disciples, "and look on the fields, for they are white already unto harvest." The Father's will would be accomplished, and in the joy of service his soul found its ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... GOD that it shall henceforth be quite impossible to understand a single Bible story, or discover the sequence of a single connected portion of narrative,—seems to have been the guiding principle of their deliberations. With reckless eclecticism,—entire forgetfulness of the requirements of the poor brother,—strange disregard for Catholic Tradition and the claims of immemorial antiquity;—these Commissioners, (evidently unconscious of their own unfitness for their self-imposed task,) have given us a ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... lonely widows are left, each seeking to sacrifice herself for the other. Who shall decide which was the more noble and truly womanly in her self-forgetfulness,—the elder, sadder heart, which strove to secure for the other some joy and fellowship at the price of its own deepened solitude; or the younger, which steeled itself against entreaties, and cast away ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sees the windows and the paintings in a great cathedral in the first fulness of reverence. To her this was a sacred place. That grief had lost its poignancy, that youth and health with cruel insistence had reasserted their sway over her life, did not mean forgetfulness, unfaith. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... five, and ten, must certainly have been unfettered by them: to the less brilliantly endowed, however, they have a use as being compendious safeguards against error. Let me then lay down as the best of all rules for writing, "forgetfulness of self, and carefulness of the matter in hand." No simile is out of place that illustrates the subject; in fact a simile as showing the symmetry of this world's arrangement, is always, if a fair one, interesting; every simile is ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... apologise to him. He was gone to bed. I don't know what makes me take this so much to heart. I suppose it's nerves or pride or something; but I am unhappy about it. I am going to drown my sorrows in Consuelo and burn some incense in my pipe to the god of Contentment and Forgetfulness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... converse....[909] But the third road is of those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams of murky night belch forth endless darkness, which receive those that are to be punished and conceal them in forgetfulness and oblivion. For vultures do not always prey on the liver of wicked persons lying on the ground,[910] for it is destroyed by fire or has rolled away; nor does the carrying of heavy burdens press upon and tire out the bodies of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... seen the Larchers. It satisfied and relieved him to know that human sorrow was not beyond human endurance: as the greatest of their gifts, the gods have vouchsafed to man a happy forgetfulness. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... have seldom seen. Though so young, he was a complete wreck, with hollow eyes, sunken chest and a nervous twitching in every muscle. I spoke to him, and learned that six months before he had lost his whole patrimony by gambling, and came hither to quaff forgetfulness from these Lethean cups; hoping, he said, to find death as well as oblivion. By far the larger proportion of the smokers were so entirely under the influence of the stupefying poison as to preclude any attempt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... condition of the unconscious sleeper, who lay in happy forgetfulness of all her sorrows, her fair curls spread in unbound luxuriance over the dark shaggy neck of the faithful Wolfe, who seemed as if proud of the beloved burden that rested so trustingly upon him. Sometimes the careful dog just unclosed his large eyes, raised his nose from his shaggy paws, snuffed the ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... wounds. This renewal of Greek courage pleases Juno, who, fearing Jupiter will again interfere in behalf of the Trojans, proceeds by coquettish wiles and with the aid of the God of Sleep to lull him into a state of forgetfulness. This feat accomplished, Juno sends Sleep to urge the Greeks to make the most of this respite, and, thus stimulated, they fight on, until Ajax hurls a rock which lays Hector low. But, before he and his companions can secure this victim, Hector is rescued by his men, who ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the narrative of his own adventures, he had, in imitation of Rita, asked her to tell him "everything"; but the name of Williams, her four-months' friend, had not been mentioned. Dic could not know that the girl had forgotten Williams's very existence in the moment of her joy. Her forgetfulness was the best evidence that Williams was nothing to her; but, I confess, her failure to speak of him had an ugly appearance. Williams turned to Rita, and, with a feeling of satisfaction because Dic was present, handed her ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... thither must I fare. There is a path, that whoso treads hath ease (Men say) from love; Forgetfulness is there. But if I drain that chalice to the lees, I may not quench the love I have for you; Now at your gates ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus |
