"Self-sacrificing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... literature. Here is your Nietzsche with his warrior pen slashing away at the conventional lies of civilisation, a terrific figure of outraged manhood, though in private life he was the gentlest of men, self-sacrificing, lovable, modest, and moral to a painful degree. But see what his imitators have made of him. And in all the tons of rubbish that have been written about Tolstoy, the story told by Anna Seuron is the most significant. But a human being ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... vision he has of a miraculous fount, from which his spirit may draw sacred joys, his heart receive ineffable refreshment. And never would he wish to trouble that fountain, never with criminal presumption stir those waters,—but offer himself up to it in self-sacrificing adoration, and shed for its sake the last of his blood. From these words the company may apprehend what he conceives to be the nature ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... her a benign and almost paternal glance. "You're tremendously sweet to put that flea in my ear, Kay. It's a wonderful prescription, but it lacks one small ingredient—the wealthy, courageous and self-sacrificing friend who will consent to run the sandy on your astute parent, as a favor ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the future generation. And more than this; it has sown in the hearts of young gentlemen and young ladies seed which will not perish; which, though it may develop into forms little expected by those who sowed it, will develop at least into a virtue more stately and reverent, more chivalrous and self-sacrificing, more genial and human, than can be learnt from that religion of the Stock Exchange, which reigned triumphant—for a year and a day—in ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... than an everyday attack, and that no fatal results need be feared. Relieved of her apprehension, she began to think less of the husband and more of the wife; for what resignation, what courage and strength she had shown since her unhappy marriage, and what self-sacrificing devotion to her weak unworthy life-partner! Or was it a mistake, she now asked herself, to regard him as weak and unworthy? Had not Constance, with a finer insight —her superior in this as in most things—seen the unapparent strength, the secret hidden ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... confidence with the most trustful souls of any age, we may believe His word, and to every promise add, like Abraham, our 'Amen'—IT SHALL BE SO!* When, a few days after his death, Mr. E. H. Glenny, who is known to many as the beloved and self-sacrificing friend of the North African Mission, passed through Barcelona, he found written in an album over his signature the words: "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and to-day and for ever." And, like the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting from ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the pillow of Julia's bed, and had reason to believe that the suspicious Mrs. Anderson confiscated it within five minutes. For the severity of maternal government was visibly increased thereafter, and Julia received many reminders of her ingratitude and of her determination to kill her self-sacrificing mother ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... sweet, loving, wise, good, self-sacrificing people, who really go there, can never tell you anything about it, save that it is the most beautiful place in all the world; and if you ask them more, they grow modest, and hold their peace, for fear of being laughed at; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... W. Cuney, of Texas, was a man of commanding presence, forceful and emphatic as a speaker; honest, tireless and self-sacrificing. His sterling qualities as a leader of men grows brighter as ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... all. "So this," he thought, "was the reason why these two held such self-sacrificing affection; this was the reason why one would persist in risking everything for the other. The priest would not leave the spy when freedom was offered; the priest had stood before the spy, interposing between him and the bullets; the spy had flung himself into the jaws of death ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... the mouth of Portia, speaks to him with heavenly eloquence: he insists on rigid and inflexible justice, and at last it recoils on his own head. Thus he becomes a symbol of the general history of his unfortunate nation. The melancholy and self-sacrificing magnanimity of Antonio is affectingly sublime. Like a princely merchant, he is surrounded with a whole train of noble friends. The contrast which this forms to the selfish cruelty of the usurer Shylock was necessary to redeem the honour of human nature. The danger which almost to the close of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of Heart rises on the Mount of Saturn the subject will be rather selfish in all questions of affection (4, Plate XVI.). These people are not self-sacrificing, like the previous type. They are inclined to be cynical, reserved, undemonstrative but very insistent in trying to gain the person they want. They will let nothing stand in their way, but once they have obtained their object they show ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... French missionaries of early days, peasants and apprentices who had forsaken the fields and workshops for the higher sphere of devoteeism and freedom from manual labor. These clerics, though often self-sacrificing and yearning for martyrdom, attributed all differences from their standards or preachments ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... overwhelmed with letters from old acquaintances who had half-forgotten her, from tried and trusted friends of her husband and herself, and from people whom she had never known, but who were struck by the magnitude of her self-sacrificing love. All these letters were pleasant. But she also received a number of letters of a very doubtful nature, which included begging letters and applications requesting to see her from quacks and charlatans of different kinds, who by professing ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... clever and domineering people a chance to plant themselves down as masters in our land; I don't imagine that they are going to give us an easy chance to push them out. To do that we shall have to be a little cleverer than they are, a little harder, a little fiercer, and a good deal more self-sacrificing than we have been in ...
— When William Came • Saki
... hope they may be always happy, and continue to do good, and when they come to die and go to St. Peter's gate, if there is any backtalk, and they have any trouble about getting in, the good old doorkeeper is hereby assured that we will vouch for the true goodness and self-sacrificing devotion of the Milwaukee Young Men's Christian Association, and he is asked to pass them in and charge it up ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... to Jean Marot in a vaguely kaleidoscopic way as a woman of no account possessing good points. Sometimes she appeared to be cold, sly, vicious, and wholly unconscionable; again, good-hearted, self-sacrificing, sympathetic. But he did not bother about her particularly, though he covertly watched her this morning preparing breakfast. It was true, her blonde hair did not look as if it had been touched by comb or brush, that she wore pantoufles ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... individualism of my boyhood. It has been a secret growth, not an educational programme. The Boer War, I think, revealed its presence, and the war we are now waging has testified to its mature strength. It has come partly by organisation, and still more through the workings of a more generous and self-sacrificing ideal. In any case it is a great and noble harvest; and I rejoice with all my heart that it has thus ripened and borne fruit, in courage and disinterestedness, and ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... contrast between their distant purity, out of great tribulation, and the unworthiness of those who are left. But neither to Jeremiah nor to any of his time was such inspiration possible as we draw from our brave, self-sacrificing dead. No confidence then existed in a life beyond the grave. Jeremiah himself can only weep for the slain of his people. His last vision of them is of corpses strewn on the field like sheaves left after the reaper which nobody ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... conflict between freedom and slavery; between national and State rights.' They saw that to provide lint, bandages, and supplies for the army, while the war was not conducted on a wise policy, was labor in vain; and while many organizations, active, vigilant, self-sacrificing, were multiplied to look after the material wants of the army, these few formed themselves into a National Loyal League to teach sound principles of government, and to impress on the nation's conscience, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... of their fullest support recall to me the generous, self-sacrificing help given by them in the ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... for what has happened to her is the coming of a totally new kind of love and not any change in her old love. The situation which arises is one of torturing anxiety for all concerned, and it is not less so when all concerned are animated by noble and self-sacrificing impulses. The husband in his devotion to his wife may even be willing that her new impulses should be gratified. She, on her side, will not think of yielding to desires which seem both unfair to her husband and opposed to all her ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... popularity, that it is the organ of average as distinguished from highest thought. Science and art are the goals of destiny, but rarely is there a thinker or writer who has an eye single to them. It is an heroic, self-sacrificing, and small platoon which in every age brunts Fate, and, fighting on the shadowy frontier, makes conquests from the realm of darkness. Their ideas are passed back from hand to hand, and become known in fragments and potent as tendencies ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... of a bad man who was human in spots without being repentant. For love of a girl, she had been taught to believe, the worst outlaw would weep over his past misdeeds, straighten his shoulders, look to heaven for help and become a self-sacrificing hero for whom audiences might be counted upon to ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... of nothing more touching in literary history than this noble, self-sacrificing, generous affection of the sister towards her eminent brother. Such instances of absolute self-denial and all-absorbing love elevate our opinion of human nature generally, and prove that something of the Divine image ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... to return to evening service. He, however, was kept by his superior, watching at a sick-bedside, and it was late at night before he got home, and was reported to Peter the Reader as having acquitted himself like 'a man of God,' as, indeed, without the least thought of doing anything noble or self-sacrificing, he had truly done, being a monk. And so he threw himself on a truckle-bed, in one of the many cells which opened off a long corridor, and fell fast ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... and stand they will in one sense: for whatsoever else they are not, this they are—the histories of good men. Their physical science and their daemonology may have been on a par with those of the world around them: but they possessed what the world did not possess, faith in the utterly good and self-sacrificing God, and an ideal of virtue and purity such as had never been seen since the first Whitsuntide. And they set themselves to realize that ideal with a simplicity, an energy, an endurance, which were altogether heroic. How far they were right in "giving ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... means a government not merely by numbers of isolated individuals, but by a Demos—by men accustomed to live in Demoi, or corporate bodies, and accustomed, therefore, to the self-control, obedience to law, and self-sacrificing public spirit, without which a corporate body cannot exist: but that a "democracy" of mere numbers is no democracy, but a mere brute "arithmocracy," which is certain to degenerate into an "ochlocracy," ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... sad affair, Victoria? Ah, I perceive you have, and that you come in haste to prevent it,—even to pursue these misguided beings, if necessary, as the fact that you come already dressed for the journey very eloquently shows. You are self-sacrificing, you possess a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... John leave us in doubt as to the witness of the Spirit to our conscious cleansing. "If we love one another" (i.e. with a true and pure and unselfish and self-sacrificing Christian love) "God dwelleth in us and His love is perfected in us." "Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit." Now to have God's love perfected in us, and to have Him to ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... progress which has been made in the civilization of the Indian I think will disclose the fact that the beginning has been religious teaching, followed by or accompanying secular education. While the self-sacrificing and pious men and women who have aided in this good work by their independent endeavor have for their reward the beneficent results of their labor and the consciousness of Christian duty well performed, their valuable services should be fully acknowledged by all who under the law are charged with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... minimum by the strain of bearing and rearing a large family. She approaches the menopausal stresses with anxiety and apprehension, having done her duty to family and race, often having lived an exemplary self-sacrificing life, the intolerable contemplation of a late pregnancy drives her to desperate measures often for the first time in ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... deadly weariness with them; but none with natural charity could fail to sympathize with them in their love for their calves, and to feel that it in no way differed from the divine mother-love of a woman in thoughtful, self-sacrificing care; for they would brave every danger, giving their lives for their offspring. Nor could we fail to sympathize with their awkward, blunt-nosed baby calves, with such beautiful, wondering eyes looking out on the world and slowly getting acquainted with things, all so strange to them, and ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... seen to-day in a handsome and flourishing village, interspersed and surrounded with well-cultivated fields,—the shire town of the county of Aroostook, in the State of Maine; which bears the name of the leader of this disinterested, self-sacrificing, and noble company. Three times was it the lot of this one family to encounter and conquer the difficulties, endure and triumph over the privations, and carry through the herculean labors, of subduing a rugged wilderness, and bringing it into the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... were still clasped across the narrow table. He looked into her eyes, and saw only calm, unflinching resolution. It piqued his self-love that she should be so unmoved. Warmly as he really loved her, self-sacrificing as he felt himself to be in giving her up, he could not yet rid himself of the thought of her Northern birth, and felt annoyed that she should excel him in the gentle quality of self control. He had no idea that ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... for Italy, disease for Europe, and the spreading of the very Renaissance spirit which he had toiled to destroy. But, when all is said as to his tragedy, personal and political, there remains this magnificent isolated figure, single-minded, austere and self-sacrificing, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... phrases which may be read, "the love of God hath flooded our hearts through the Holy Spirit given unto us."[21] The all-inclusive result is love. That marvelous tender passion—the love of God—heightless, depthless, shoreless, shall flood our hearts, making us as gentle and tender-hearted and self-sacrificing and gracious as He. Every phase of life will become a phase of love. Peace is love resting. Bible study is love reading its lover's letters. Prayer is love keeping tryst. Conflict with sin is love jealously fighting for its Lover. Hatred ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... gently, "that I am better, Conrad. I was very slow to recover from my severe illness, but I believe that I am quite sound again. I thank you for all your self-sacrificing devotion to me, during that season of suffering; and never while my heart beats will I forget it. Let me press your friendly hand within my own, for well I know that your highest reward is to be found in my esteem ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... second cable gave him new spirit and new courage, and in spite of a heavy heart he went into a canteen, and will any wonder who read this story that he has won the undying devotion of his entire regiment by his tireless self-sacrificing service ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... It is pathetic enough because we can do nothing for him; more hot food might do a little, but only a little, I fear. We none of us expected these terribly low temperatures, and of the rest of us Wilson is feeling them most; mainly, I fear, from his self-sacrificing devotion in doctoring Oates' feet. We cannot help each other, each has enough to do to take care of himself. We get cold on the march when the trudging is heavy, and the wind pierces our warm garments. The others, all of ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... he gets it? Rubbish, my dear! We are an intolerably self-sacrificing sex." Hilda felt around for pillows, and stretched her length along the bed. "They've taught us well, the men; it's a blood disease now, running everywhere in the female line. You may be sure it was a barbarian princess that hesitated between the lady and the tiger. A civilised one would have ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... speak so: little do you know—! No, Mr. Headley, it is you who are too good for me; too noble, single-eyed, self-sacrificing, to endure my vanity ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... was making a concession of which he was half-afraid, because of what he owed her, and while one half of her longed to be self-sacrificing and release him, the other half fiercely demanded the straw that yet might save. And still she said nothing, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... these Did Woman triumph ... turn not thou away Contemptuous from the theme. No Maid of Arc Had, in those ages, for her country's cause Wielded the sword of freedom; no Roland Had borne the palm of female fortitude; No Conde with self-sacrificing zeal Had glorified again the Avenger's name, As erst when Caesar perished; haply too Some strains may hence be drawn, befitting me To offer, nor ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... indeed made a solemn gift of his little boy to the daughter whom he trusted most; and for fifty years did she fulfil that trust. On her tombstone are engraved these brief but true words: "Faithful daughter, sister, friend, teacher." New England has been full of such devoted, self-sacrificing daughters and sisters, and still is. I do not single her out as exceptional, but to give her the tribute she merits, and that she may not be among the uncounted and unremembered where these pages shall ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... probably be cast,—you recover strength; and perhaps it will seem to you that the pain of lying a while in the Shadow of Death is more than compensated by this rare and touching experience of human goodness. How tirelessly watchful,—how navely sympathetic,—how utterly self-sacrificing these women-natures are! Patiently, through weeks of stifling days and sleepless nights,—cruelly unnatural to them, for their life is in the open air,—they struggle to save without one murmur of fatigue, without heed of their most ordinary physical wants, without a thought ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Father's house, and, therefore, close to its gates might nestle the poor dwellings of the poor,—too poor to find a shelter anywhere besides; because the central life and joy of the house of God was the suffering, self-sacrificing Son of Man; and dearer to Him, now and forever, as when He was on earth, was the feeblest and most fallen human creature He had redeemed than the most glorious heavenly constellation of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... not been changed by civilization. It has neither been leveled up nor leveled down, to an average mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been—a splendid fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a bloodthirsty savage. Human nature is at once sublime and horrible, holy and satanic. Apart from the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which are external and precarious acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... listening to men's theories upon this subject are left in doubt and darkness in reference to what is and is not conversion. You ask the Mormons, who fully believe their theory of conversion, and they will refer you to their own experience and the experience of the loyal, self-sacrificing devotees of their faith. Ask the Roman Catholic and he will give you an answer corresponding with his theory of religion. All Protestant parties give you their experience, and refer you to their loyal and self-sacrificing brethren for the truthfulness of their theories of conversion. In the midst ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... the mountains was a Catholic church and a school, round which a little village had grown up. The self-sacrificing efforts of the teachers have been productive of good among the natives, but there seems little hope of any co-operation between the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... seem to me that I can. A friend who has been so considerate, so kind, so self-sacrificing and disinterested, and whom I have allowed to go on with this implicit faith in me so long. Should you, James, think of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... has written such a nice letter, just like herself, though I did not understand it then. I think she was doubtful how much I knew, for she only said how thankworthy it must be to have such a self-sacrificing spirit among my sons, moral courage, in fact, of the highest kind, and how those who were lavish of strong words in their first disappointment would be wiser by-and- by. I was puzzled then. But oh, my dear, this must have been ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fulfilling his obligations towards those who have most claims upon him, he is more culpable than when he fails of his duty towards those who have less claims upon him. If a son comes short of his duty towards an affectionate and self-sacrificing mother, we say it is a greater fault, than if he comes short of his duty to a fellow-citizen. The parent is nearer to him than the citizen, and he owes unto her a warmer affection of his heart, and a more active ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... intense loyalty to Jesus, was, and still is, the redeeming thing in the life of mankind. There is not and never has been any other Atonement. The divine power that is breaking down selfishness, and transforming human desires in accordance with the eternal truth of things, is the spirit of self-sacrificing love. It is but a step from sinner to saviour. To cease to be a sinner is perforce to be a saviour. To escape from the dominion of selfishness is forthwith to become a power in the hand of God for the uplifting and ingathering of mankind to Himself; ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... earnest desire of the Editor, that this narrative may be the means, under God, of awakening in the hearts of all who read it, a sympathy for the oppressed which shall manifest itself in immediate, active, self-sacrificing exertion for their deliverance; and, while it excites abhorrence of his crimes, call forth pity for the oppressor. May it have the effect to prevent the avowed and associated friends of the slave, from giving such an undue importance to their own trials and grievances, as to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... And he had only meant to be comforting, not to say self-sacrificing. He'd be hanged if he could understand women nowadays. Not these women, at least. In high dudgeon he stalked from the room. In the door he ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... henceforth remain true to themselves, and to those whose happiness may depend upon them, whatever else may betide. The bride is a pure, sweet, generous woman, but the character of the book is decidedly Lotty. Childish, petite, and indulged, she is yet magnanimous, brave, and self-sacrificing; fiery, fearless, and frank, she is still patient, forbearing, and reticent; we love her as child, while we soon learn to venerate her as woman. She and her docile bloodhound, Bear, form pictures full ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that the poet triumphed over the social reformer, in spite of himself; and while in his own parish, at Luetzelflueh in the Canton of Berne—where he was installed as minister of the Gospel in 1832 after having spent some time there as a vicar—he is remembered to this day for his self-sacrificing activity in every walk of life, the world at large knows him only as one of the great prose writers of Germany in the nineteenth century. His first work, Bauernspiegel ("The Peasants' Mirror"), was published in 1836, when he was thirty-nine years old. From that time on until ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... not in the wind" so much as in "the still small voice." Omnipotent Love, in its blessed immanence in the believer's soul, shews its presence and power most of all in a life of love around. It is to come out not only in self-sacrificing energy but in the open sympathies of an affectionate heart, in the "soft answer," in the generous first thought for the interests of others—in short, in the whole character of 1 Cor. xiii. The spiritual "power" which runs rather in the direction of harshness and isolation, which expends ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... I understand love. Do you think she has read my play, or that she wants to see it? Oh, she is so good, so self-sacrificing and considerate, but to go out with me for a night's fun she would regard as sinful. Once I treated her to champagne, you know, and instead of feeling happy over it, she picked up the wine list to see what it cost. And when she read the price, she wept—wept because Marion ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... happy with some one," said Alfred. "I am not one of your self-sacrificing angels; thank Heaven! Your shall not sacrifice us to your mother's injustice nor to the caprices of fate. We have one another; but you would immolate me for the pleasure of immolating yourself. Don't provoke me too far, or I'll carry you ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... then stopped short, for Rosalind had lifted her eyes to his in a long, eloquent glance, and in that moment there were no secrets between them. Rosalind realised the patient, self-sacrificing love which had kept silence for her sake, and Arthur Saville knew that all that was best in Rosalind Darcy's nature was given to him, and that he held the key to the poor starved ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... distressed condition, when he said he was not going home then, but, if we would have breakfast, he would pay for it. How different the treatment received from this man—himself an exile for the sake of liberty, and in its full enjoyment on free soil—and the self-sacrificing spirit of our Rochester colored brother, who made haste to welcome us to his ample home,—the well-earned reward of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Bentley, the new parson, came—young, sincere, self-sacrificing, devoted, a poor preacher and a hard worker, who refused to batten on Redford bounty—all the old furniture of the parsonage was made over to him (on time payment), and the Goldsworthys began life in Melbourne on the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... September. Ann had an offer from Dr. Wilbur of Syracuse to teach at the great idiot asylum. She disliked it, but decided to go. Poor dear! so beauty-loving, timid, and tender. It is a hard trial; but she is so self-sacrificing she tries to like it because ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... enthusiasm even in apparent slackers. She worked thoroughly hard herself, and insisted that everybody else did the same. Her motto for the term was the athletic education of the rank and file. It was really very self-sacrificing of her, for she might have gained far more credit by concentrating her energies on a few, but for the ultimate good of the school it was undoubtedly far and away the best policy to pursue. The training of a number of recruits may not be as interesting as the polishing ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... thirsty; and I said so. Though Miss Hamilton did not wish me to leave her, you see, she was kind enough to tell me that I should find a spring of nice cold water under the cliff. I apologized for leaving the ladies, you see; but they were so self-sacrificing as to say that I needn't climb up the rocks to join them again; they would soon meet me on the beach. Isn't it strange how these girls will sometimes give up all their joys ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... countries. This was a great blessing for the Belgians, because their country is so small and weak, and so many battles used to be fought in it that it was called "the cock-pit of Europe." But whether the people of a neutral state are ever likely to be brave and self-sacrificing ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... 25 he cut his way through the streets of Lucknow. Late in the day he entered the British cantonments. The defence of the Residency at Lucknow was a glorious episode in British annals. It has been sung in immortal strains by Alfred Tennyson. The fortitude of the garrison was surpassed only by the self-sacrificing conduct of the women who nursed the wounded and cared for all. They received the thanks of Queen Victoria for their heroic devotion. For four months the garrison had watched for the succor which came at last. The surrounding city remained for two months longer in rebel ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... reward the varying degrees of virtue on earth, all these are dwarfed to nothing by the unimaginable abyss of difference which yawns between Heaven and Hell; and the practical upshot of the current eschatology is that all men—the self-sacrificing equally with the self-indulgent, the kind and compassionate equally with the hard-hearted, the spiritually-minded equally with the worldly, the aspiring equally with the indifferent—are to reap the same reward. If a man is a notoriously evil liver, those who have ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... philanthropic Belarmine, an individual who gave himself to the she-bear to save her and her young ones from starvation. Or, if the tale was known to him, he probably took it for what it was worth, and never foresaw that the British Government would emulate the action of the self-sacrificing lunatic, and spend precious blood for the sole purpose of nourishing and resuscitating the powers of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... that his decisions will certainly be right. He must rule all as though no man's special welfare were of any account, and yet must administer all so as to offend none. Friends he must have, but not favourites. He must be self-sacrificing, diligent, eager, and watchful. He must be strong in health, strong in heart, strong in purpose, and strong in purse. He must be economical and yet lavish; generous as the wind and yet obdurate as the frost. He should be assured that of all ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... surprise and amazement I found that not only did those ancient authors look upon women as inferior beings while I worshipped them, but in their descriptions of the symptoms of love I looked in vain for mention of those supersensual emotions and self-sacrificing impulses which overcame me when I was in love. "Can it be," I whispered to myself, "that, notwithstanding the universal opinion to the contrary, love is, after all, subject to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... had not caused Bill and Jim to forget their less fortunate little friends and proteges,—for Bill, too, had in his way been good to Tony and Matty, though he was not nearly so generous and self-sacrificing as Jim,—and they made them sharers in their improved circumstances so far as they were able. Jim had proposed that they also should be taken into our household, and nursed and cared for; but, as father and ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... pretty drooping head, and flashed a whole torrent of brilliant reflections over the sombre figure beside her. He felt himself glow under the sudden radiance of the look. To fancy this wilful imperious creature a meek self-sacrificing heroine, was equally absurd and impossible. Was there any virtue at all in that dauntless enterprise of hers? or was it simple determination to have ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... admired wisely; her first judgments and impulses were almost always generous; and, although she was subject to violent gusts of passion, she could be very patient with those she loved. Through her whole life she was the warmest and most self-sacrificing of friends, and her few antipathies were singularly devoid of rancour. One of those who knew her best pronounced her to be 'absolutely incapable ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... take care that foolish, extravagant curate should not come near him. There was no knowing to what he might persuade him! Poor Poldie was so easily led by any show of nobility—anything that looked grand or self-sacrificing! ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... work, her prayers, her daily life, you will find the sources of all that is self-sacrificing, prudent, patriotic, brave, and uplifting in American character. It is the influence of the American mother that has made the American Republic what it is; and it is in her heart ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... all hopes of ever being restored to her friends, when one day two Greek strangers landed on Taurica's inhospitable shores. These were Orestes and Pylades, whose romantic attachment to each other has made their names synonymous for devoted self-sacrificing friendship. Orestes was Iphigenia's brother, and Pylades her cousin, and their object in undertaking an expedition fraught with so much peril, was to obtain the statue of the Taurian Artemis. Orestes, having incurred the anger of the Furies for ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Florence's probable attitude. Still, it was a bracing attitude, heartily positive, like everything Florence did and said. And Florence was above everything else a church member, a prominent Christian in her self-sacrificing wifehood and motherhood, her social and charitable and civic work. She might be unflattering, but she would be right. Rachael's last conscious thought, as she went off to sleep, was that she would ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... provide for the training of our race to the highest possible intelligence, virtue, and happiness, by means of the self-sacrificing labors of the wise and good, and this with chief reference to a future immortal existence. The distinctive feature of the family is self-sacrificing labor of the stronger and wiser members to raise the weaker and more ignorant to equal advantages. The ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in the dictionary. It says," she read out with a gulp and a cough, "it means 'self-sacrificing devotion ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... meantime she would implore Conway Dalrymple to get himself married with as little delay as possible, and she would lay upon him her positive order to restrain himself from any word of affection addressed to herself. She, at any rate, would be pure, high-minded, and self-sacrificing,—although romantic and poetic also, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... bishop of Cloyne, born in Kilkenny; a philanthropic man, who conducted in a self-sacrificing spirit practical schemes for the good of humanity, which failed, but the interest in whom has for long centred, and still centres, in his philosophic teaching, his own interest in which was that it contributed to clear up our idea of God and consolidate our ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... intensity of her being, but out of the deep baptism of sorrow she had emerged with a new and nobler nature. The vain, trifling, laughing Undine had received a soul and was a true woman. She devoted herself to James's mother with an utter self-sacrificing devotion, resolved as far as in her lay to be both son and daughter to her. She read, and studied, and fitted herself as a teacher in a neighboring academy, and persisted in claiming the right of a daughter to place all the amount of her earnings in ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... said Lady Ruth. "Not a red cent, as that terrible young woman put it. His father left everything to the moneylenders, so to speak, and David couldn't bear to see his mother poverty-stricken. He did it entirely for her sake—got engaged, I mean—but I don't think he'd have been such a self-sacrificing son if he'd met Miss Juliet Byrne a ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... everybody seems to be at leisure, and these form the social centre of the day. For my part I would much rather be entertained in this way than to have my footsteps dogged all day by some well-meaning and self-sacrificing devotee who tries conscientiously to ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... Beowulf, the thane of Hygelac, King of the Geats. It is this grand primitive hero who embodies the ideal of English heroism. Bold to rashness for himself, prudent for his comrades, daring, resourceful, knowing no fear, loyal to his king and his kinsmen, generous in war and in peace, self-sacrificing, Beowulf stands for all that is best in manhood in an age of strife. It is fitting that our first British hero should be physically and mentally strong, brave to seek danger and brave to look on death and Fate undaunted, one whose life is a struggle against evil forces, and whose death ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... this story as she sat by the side of his couch, hand locked in hand, and he learnt by degrees the full measure of her self-sacrificing devotion, that did McKay so much good. It braced and strengthened him, giving him a new and stronger desire to live and enjoy the unspeakable blessing of ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... hands stopped their busy work among the bundles. Her cheeks paled and her lips parted to a gasping little intake of breath. It had not, once, occurred to her modest, self-sacrificing mind that, even as the bluegrass gentleman had found her heart and taken it forever and forever to be his own, no matter where she was or how great might the distance be which separated them, so, also, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... banners of Pulaski; in 1830-'31, on the battle fields of Grochow and Ostrolenka, show themselves more powerful than under the dictatorship of the disciple of Washington, and in 1863, fighting without a leader, without a centre, without arms, surprise the world with a heroism, a self-sacrificing devotion, unexampled even in the history of their former insurrections? Who has never heard of Russian batteries assaulted and carried by Polish scythes? Whose bosom is so devoid of the divine cords of justice and sympathy as never yet to have revibrated the strain of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... What is lovely to one is not always lovely to another. But there are qualities of mind and heart that are intrinsically lovely, and about which there can be no difference of opinion. What is virtuous, good, amiable, high-minded, generous, self-sacrificing and pure, we all admire. What goes to make a perfect character, a moralist, a Christian, a wise man or woman, is agreeable to us all. Now this is what we should love. This is what we should seek in our friends. It is not a beautiful person, or bland and polite ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... of their teachers were ever to offer them a holiday, they would reject it by a vote of the whole school. They never laugh at a fellow when he hurts himself or tears his clothes. They are noble and self-sacrificing friends, and they carry out all their undertakings. They often have very exciting adventures such as my boy and his mates never had; they rescue one another from shipwreck and Indians; and if ever they are caught in a burning building, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... takes in at one sweep without patience for the details of individual poor people. Then the preacher on the street corner, exposing himself to the gibes and sneers of the unsympathetic crowd, appeals to him instantly as a self-sacrificing champion of some "cause." It is his religious feelings, his chivalric feelings, that are reached; he would himself become a missionary, and the missionary is a hero that appeals especially to the adolescent. There is no inconsistency between his disapproval ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Britons have a proverb which declares that discretion is the better part of valour, and in my humble opinion— which, I repeat, I advance with the utmost diffidence—the present is one of those occasions when valour, as heroic and self-sacrificing as you will, should go ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Fountain; where she, on the 11th November, was delivered of a Boy. For almost four years the little Friedrich with Christophine and Mother continued in the house of the well-contented Grandparents (who had not yet fallen poor), under her exclusive care. With self-sacrificing love and careful fidelity, she nursed her little Boy; whose tender body had to suffer not only from the common ailments of children, but was heavily visited with fits of cramp. In a beautiful region, on the bosom of a tender Mother, and in these first years far from the oversight ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... do not call upon you for so great a sacrifice. It was not Miss Lucinda that I meant, but another, to whom I have reason to think I am not altogether disagreeable. Surely you cannot be ignorant of my profound affection for your self-sacrificing sister, the widow of my late respected ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... love of his profession and a high sense of faithfulness to duty, may interest himself most thoroughly in clients or patients without any special love to each, so servants of Christ may give themselves to their work with devotion and even self-sacrificing enthusiasm without the Christlike love to souls being strong. It is this lack of love that causes so much shortcoming in prayer. It is as love of our profession and work, delight in thoroughness and diligence, sink away in the tender compassion of Christ, that ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... management of the large property that had once belonged to his family. With pain and anger they saw his praiseworthy exertions baffled at every turn, and, unlike the rest of their relations, discovered more of his self-sacrificing spirit still, in the desperate step he took for the purpose of joining his betrothed upon a foreign shore—a step which they would have gladly prevented, had their own slender means been sufficient to have transported ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... which he had no means of paying; they refused justice, which he had no means of obtaining. The priest, then, was the only friend the peasant had. His friendship was disinterested—he gained nothing by his ministration but poor fare and poor lodging; his friendship was self-sacrificing, for he risked his liberty and his life for ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... indignation at the philanthropic vanity which would save its own soul by the sufferings of little children's tender bodies. Yet by an odd anomaly this ogre benefactor, this Brocklehurst, must have been a zealous and self-sacrificing enthusiast, with all his goodness spoiled by an imperious love of ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson |
