"Self-renunciation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to board with her. Mary was now more comfortable than she had heretofore been. She was, comparatively speaking, prosperous. She had much work to do, but by it she was supporting herself, and at the same time advancing towards her "clear-purposed goal" of self-renunciation. Then she had cause for pleasure in the fact that Eliza was now really free, Bishop having finally agreed to the separation. Mary Wollstonecraft, at the head of a house, and mistress of a school, was a very different person from Mary Wollstonecraft, simple companion ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... out of profound experience heart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, and the inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them. The bent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this or a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation,— reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling Spirit, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the fact that she has married a being destitute of sympathy, wholly careless and ignorant of others' needs and requirements, full of caprices, allowing every impulse to carry him away, and thoroughly bent on having his own will and bending everybody about him to his own purposes. Self-renunciation and absolute devotion and self-sacrifice are natural to women of a certain quality of intellect and heart, and possess the most powerful charm to their imagination, provided they can have a dash of romance or a kindling of sentiment. Hence this form of martyrdom offers the female sex the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... live, therefore, in a unity of feeling, love, confidence, and faith in one another, and, in a relation of mutual love, the one individual has the consciousness of himself in the consciousness of another; he lives out of self; and in this mutual self-renunciation each regains the life that had been virtually transferred to the other—gains, in fact, the other's existence and his own, as involved with that other. The ultimate interests connected with the necessities and external concerns of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... judgment, and a horror and remorse for the fatal results of his error. Then, like the steadfast and upright old Puritan that he was, he publicly acknowledged his terrible mistake. It is one of the finest instances of true nobility of soul and of absolute self-renunciation that the world affords. And the deep strain, the sharp wrench of the step is made more apparent still by the fact of the disapproval of his fellow-judges of his public confession and recantation. The yearly entries in his diary, simply expressed yet deeply ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Marcia the sun seemed to have shined out once more with something of its old brightness. The terrible deed of self-renunciation was over, and familiar faces actually were smiling upon her and wishing her joy. She felt the flutter of her heart in her throat beneath the string of pearls, and wondered if after all she might hope for ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... to believe it. It is too good to be true. My brother's chief characteristic was neither egotism nor self-renunciation, but a strict mean between the two. He never sacrificed himself for any one else; but not only always avoided injuring others, but also interfering with them. He kept his happiness and his sufferings entirely ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... Noel Brulart de Sillery, Knight of Malta and courtier of Marie de Medicis, turned from the vanities of this world and became a priest, Canada was the fashionable mission of the day, and the noble neophyte signalized his self-renunciation by giving of his great wealth for the conversion of the Indian heathen. He supplied the Jesuits with money to maintain a religious establishment near Quebec; and the settlement of red Christians took his musical name, which the region still keeps. It became famous at once ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... years before Christ a religion of an entirely new sort. It is a religion without a god and without rites; it ordains only that one shall love his neighbor and become better; annihilation is offered as supreme recompense. But, for the first time in the history of the world, it preaches self-renunciation, the love of others, equality of mankind, charity and tolerance. The Brahmans made bitter war upon it and extirpated it in India. Missionaries carried it to the barbarians in Ceylon, in Indo-China, Thibet, China, and Japan. It is today the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... preached—it seemed to his people—as he never preached before. His subject was self-renunciation, and he spoke as one who saw the waving palms of the martyrs and heard their shouts of joy. There were few dry eyes in the little meeting-house. Tears rolled down Draxy's face. But she looked up suddenly, on hearing Elder Kinney ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... unwitnessed and unratified, but he held it inviolable nevertheless. And it lay but lightly upon him, joyfully almost—rather as a ridding of himself of possible perturbations and obsessions, than as an act of most austere self-renunciation. In his ignorance he merely went forward with an increased freedom of spirit. All of which is set down, not without underlying pathos, in the diary ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... taught her; and the one bitter truth of self-renunciation she had wrung out of it must tell itself somehow. No man's history is dumb. It came out vaguely, an inarticulate cry to God and man, in the songs she sang, I think. That very night, as she stood there with her gray eyes very sparkling and happy, (they were dramatic eyes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and the deep heart of domestic love,—with, what ease, what mastery, what graceful disposition, do the seeming trivialities of life fall into order, and drop a blessing as they take their place! how do the hours steal away, unnoticed but by the precious fruits they leave! and by the self-renunciation of affection, there comes a spontaneous adjustment of various wills; and not an innocent pleasure is lost, not a pure taste offended, nor a peculiar temper unconsidered; and every day has its silent achievements of wisdom, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... able to discover Tiphaine seems to have shared his patriotic ideals—was inclined to remain at home rather than to continue his gallant, though at times almost hopeless struggle against the English. Although it must have been a matter of great self-renunciation on her part, Tiphaine felt that it would be much against her character for her to have any share in keeping her husband away from the scene of action, and by every means in her power she endeavoured to re-animate his former enthusiasm. In this her success was complete, and resuming his great responsibilities ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home |
