"Aspiration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reading, and possessing a warm heart, and a mind capable of steady growth." Probably James was first attracted to her by intellectual sympathy and a community of tastes; but as time passed he discerned in her something higher and better than mere intellectual aspiration; and who shall say in the light that has been thrown by recent events on the character of Lucretia Garfield, that he was not ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the marvellous pervades the book from beginning to end. The prose facts of life had but a remote and indistinct existence to the poet, and he blundered along miserably in his youth, supported and upheld by a dim but unquenchable aspiration. He commiserated himself, and yet felt that there was something great in store for him because of his exceptional endowment. Every incident in his career he treated as if it were a miracle, which required the suspension of the laws of the universe for its performance. God was a benevolent ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... I know it's contrary to the doctrine laid down in the 'History of Fifty Years' Misrule.' I am only trying to be sensible. But my sense seems always to give you cause for offence. Have I startled you very much with this perfectly reasonable aspiration?" ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... they were. Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might know the benefits of the Christian religion. "I have to say, Most Serene Princes," ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Mobile and Baltimore. In general the F.M.C.'s were industrious and they almost monopolized one or two avenues of employment; but as a group they had not yet learned to place themselves upon the broad basis of racial aspiration. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Alfred's invitation in the hope of hearing Miss Pink's views. There would be opportunities, she trusted, for a little instructive conversation on that subject. It was, perhaps, ridiculous to talk, at her age, of feeling as if she was Miss Pink's pupil; and yet it exactly expressed the nature of the aspiration which ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the door, so he knew the house from its neighbours. Baker's Terrace as a whole was a defeated aspiration after gentility. The more auspicious houses were marked by white stones, the steps being scrubbed and hearthstoned almost daily; the gloomier doorsteps were black, except on Sundays. Thus variety was achieved by houses otherwise as monotonous and prosaic as a batch of fourpenny loaves. This ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... accused him of shaping his course as a public man to accord with his private interests. He denied and disproved the charge, but proudly added: "I implore my enemies, who so ruthlessly invade the private sanctuary, to do me the favor to believe that I have no wish, no aspiration, to be considered purer or better than she who was, or they ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... tranquillity and consolation, came clustering round his heart like seraphs. He thought of Edith in her hours of fondness; he thought of the pure and solemn moments when to mingle his name with the heroes of humanity was his aspiration, and to achieve immortal fame the inspiring purpose of his life. What were the tawdry accidents of vulgar ambition to him? No domestic despot could deprive him of his intellect, his knowledge, the sustaining power of an unpolluted conscience. If he possessed the intelligence ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... truth about herself was in that melancholy aspiration. No relief in tears, no merciful oblivion in a fainting-fit, for her. The terrible strength of the vital organization in this woman knew no yielding to the unutterable misery that wrung her to the soul. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... control of his musical self by his efforts to interpret their work to others, and to create new works which shall be inspired by their ideals. Thus he acknowledges their control of his own powers. Such control over the spirit of man is that of the Church over the social body; it stirs the spiritual aspiration of man, it directs his ambition. It fixes upon a standard, the Cross; upon a Hero, the Christ, and reaches unto all the world its arm of power, drawing unto itself the loyalty, the faith, the affection, and the royal service ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... are stimulated and awakened as well as where knowledge is communicated. There can be but little stimulation in a school of only a few children. The pupils feel it and so does the teacher. Life, activity, mental aspiration are always found where large numbers of persons congregate. For these reasons the idea of consolidating the small schools into important centers, or units, is forcing itself upon the people of the country. Where the schools are small and the roads are ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... and an untutored people lies in the application of experiences. The civilized man builds upon the foundations of the past, with hope and ambition for the future. The savage has neither past nor aspiration for the future. To keep the flame of patriotism alive, we must keep the memory of the ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... Himself; and the end of all religion is the complete accomplishment of that purpose. There is no religion without these elements—consciousness of kindred with God, recognition of Him as the sum of all excellence and beauty, and of His will as unconditionally binding upon us, aspiration and effort after a full accord of heart and soul with Him and with His law, and humble confidence that that sovereign beauty will be ours. 'Be ye imitators of God as dear children' is the pure and comprehensive ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Mr. Chase's public employments and the large capacity, absolute probity, and unbounded energy which he had shown in them, justified his aspiration to the presidency, and the public calculations of great benefit from his accession to it, may not be doubted. In this state of things it is obvious, that he would necessarily be greatly in the minds of men, as a candidate for ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... which I read His word; in the willingness to suffer all things for the glory of His name, and to be damned for ever, if such be His purpose; I feel it in that, through His grace, I can trample the world under foot, and bear whatever cross His decree imposes; in the struggle and the aspiration to be more like Him, and in that His sovereign grace hath chosen me to reveal unto me His salvation and the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... musical echo and aspiration. He finds his theme and illustration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him: his lute is always by his side. Following the "Steps of the Temple," a graceful tribute to Herbert, we have the congenial title, "The Delights of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... maiden mind, and how her after-worship exalted it into something thrilling and passionate, not to be described even by a tongue more facile than hers. Letty had a vivid nature, capable of responding to those delicate influences which move to spiritual issues. There were throes of love within her, of aspiration, of an ineffable delight in being. She never tried to understand them, nor did she talk about them; but then, she never tried to paint the sky or copy the robin's song. Life was very mysterious; but one thing was quite as mysterious as another. She did sometimes brood for ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... solitude, hysteria, and haunting of the grave, is nothing else than naked, ignorant selfishness. It is himself that he sees dead; those are his virtues that are forgotten; his is the vague epitaph. Pity him but the more, if pity be your cue; for where a man is all pride, vanity, and personal aspiration, he goes through fire unshielded. In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy; and this poor, laughable, and tragic fool has not yet learned the rudiments; himself, giant Prometheus, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with infinite patience. He recalled to mind something that he had always tried to keep in the background of his hopes, the foundation-stone of his life, which he had hidden out of sight. Deep in his heart was the hope that he might one day write a valiant book; he scarcely dared to entertain the aspiration, he felt his incapacity too deeply, but yet this longing was the foundation of all his painful and patient effort. This he had proposed in secret to himself, that if he labored without ceasing, without tiring, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... receive the seal of the divine approbation. However natural this mode of thought may seem to us, it is utterly foreign and indeed incomprehensible to the savage. If he resists on occasion the sexual instinct, it is from no high idealism, no ethereal aspiration after moral purity, but for the sake of some ulterior yet perfectly definite and concrete object, to gain which he is prepared to sacrifice the immediate gratification of his senses. That this is or may be so, the examples I have cited are ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of their examiners,—among these we find the veritable chair a canon of the wars of learning, the unfit in the academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or else, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a sentence of doom ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... of absolutism and the inauguration of freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but created the force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one supreme sphere, to reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased to be an aspiration of patient reasoners, and was made the perpetual charge and care of the most energetic institution and the most universal association in the world. The new law, the new spirit, the new authority, gave to liberty a meaning and a value ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... If they have it at all, it has been diluted by tradition and so-called culture into a mere sensation. Agnes's passion is an arrested one, so that what there is of it is easily diverted into an expression of religious aspiration. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... more confidential record than its annals and chronicles, and more accessible to the young, who can often understand feelings before they can take account of facts in their historical importance. In any case the facts are clothed in living forms there where belief and aspiration and feeling have expressed themselves in works of art. If we value for children the whole impression of the centuries, especially in European history, more than the mere record of changes, the history of art will allow them to apprehend it almost ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... commonplace; for Lena was not common as servants are, either in her personality or in the atmosphere she created in her room. Even her visitor, absorbed as she was in her own purpose, was not unconscious of the cleanliness of the place, of the artistic aspiration represented by the few prints ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... cross," she pleaded. "I 'm not mad, and I 'm not sly. But I 'm free and independent. What's the good of being free and independent," she largely argued, "if you can't do the things you want to? I 'm going to Craford to realise the aspiration of a lifetime. I 'm going to find out my cousin, and make his acquaintance, and see what he 's like. And then—well, if he 's nice, who knows what may happen? I planned it ever so long ago," she proclaimed, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... girls to play sonatas by Beethoven, and to paint from nature after Creswick, and walked through a dull, out-of-the-way village to the humble little church, three times every Sunday, as contentedly as if she had no higher aspiration in the world than to do so all the rest of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... their pensioners), and if invited to drink as the guest of another, he would drain tumbler after tumbler continuously, until his entertainer stopped him, and would appear no further over-seas at the end than at the outset. There was something pathetic in his comparative sobriety, like an unfulfilled aspiration. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... read your riddle, Allan; the answer came to me quite of a sudden. In all those sin-stained hearts there is a seed of good and an aspiration towards the right. For every one of them also there is at last mercy and forgiveness, since how could they learn who never had a teacher? Your dream, Allan, was one of the ultimate redemption of even the most evil of mankind, by gift ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... son of Robert Douglas, a labourer in the village of Strathmiglo in Fife, where he was born on the 17th June 1771. Early discovering an aptitude for learning, he formed the intention of studying for the ministry,—a laudable aspiration, which was unfortunately checked by the indigence of his parents. Attending school during winter, his summer months were employed in tending cattle to the farmers in the vicinity; and while so occupied, he read the Bible in the fields, and with a religious sense, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... truth once more. It was not Wilson who failed there, but humanity itself. It was not the statesmen that failed so much as the spirit of the peoples behind them. The hope, the aspiration for a new world order of peace and right and justice—however deeply and universally felt—was still only feeble and ineffective in comparison with the dominant national passions which found their expression ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... sacred chant, the prayer or thanksgiving, uttered in melodious song by the choir or by all the congregation,—these cause the sordid world with all its cares and wild passions to be for the while forgotten, and the soul, charged with the influences of divine harmony and most holy aspiration, is lifted to heaven. And so music, with its gentle, its ever-winning power, has constantly been used by the churches to secure the attendance of those who without it had been indifferent. This has been especially the practice of the Roman-Catholic Church for inducing ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... nothing else. The legists—with mechanical fidelity, full of obstinacy, enemies of philosophy, buried in literalities—have always mistaken for the last word of science that which was only the inconsiderate aspiration of men who, to be sure, were ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... energies of the nation." By Wilhelm von Humboldt the modern Prussian school system was created; while by Fichte, Arndt, and a galaxy of other writers there was imparted a stimulus by which the patriotism and aspiration of the Prussian people were raised to (p. 248) an ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... hand a great piece of birch-bark of the hardest, upon which she strikes as it were a drum; and to that dull sound which the bark returns, they all dance, spinning round on their heels, quivering, with one hand lifted, the other down: other notes they have none, but a guttural loud aspiration of the word Heh! Heh! Heh! as often as the old female savage strikes her bark-drum. As soon as she ceases striking, they set up a general cry, expressed by Yah! Then, if their dance is approved, they begin it again; and when weariness obliges the old woman to withdraw, she first pronounces ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... severest training of the horseman will involve; and for this reason, that the greater part of gymnastic exercises are performed "in the sweat of the brow," while equestrian exercise is performed with pleasure. Indeed, there is no accomplishment which so nearly realises the aspiration of a man to have the wings of a bird than this of horsemanship. (7) But further, to a victory obtained in war attaches a far greater weight of glory than belongs to the noblest contest of the arena. (8) Of these ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... more warm and vivid color, richer sensual effects of tone, more wild and bizarre combination, perhaps even greater sweetness in melody; but we look in vain elsewhere for the spiritual passion and poetry, the aspiration and longing, the lofty humanity, which make the Beethoven sonatas the suspiria de pro-fundis of the composer's inner life. In addition to his symphonies and sonatas, he wrote the great opera of "Fidelio," and in the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... this letter was a most wise and full expression of sympathy with the aspiration, given with the deep consideration of a peculiarly calm and devotional spirit, which perceived that it is far better for a man to work up to his fullest perception of right, and highest aims, than to linger in a sphere ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... in its due place in relation to the religious and philosophical history of the time, but simply to preserve a contemporary memorial of what seems to me to have been a true and noble effort which passed before my eyes, a short scene of religious earnestness and aspiration, with all that was in it of self-devotion, affectionateness, and high and refined and varied character, displayed under circumstances which are scarcely intelligible to men of the present time; so enormous have been the changes in what was assumed and acted upon, and thought practicable and ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Rolland came to her impregnated with Tolstoyan ideas, and with her wide knowledge of men and movements she helped him to discover his own ideas. In her "Memoires d'une Idealiste" she wrote of him: "In this young Frenchman I discovered the same idealism, the same lofty aspiration, the same profound grasp of every great intellectual manifestation that I had already found in the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... aspiration of the religious sentiment in man is to become united with God. In his earliest development, the wish and its fulfillment were simultaneous, through unquestioning belief. In proportion as the conception of Deity was exalted, the notion of His terrestrial presence ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... He left Lyons and took Jane with him, she having no idea of the reason of his devotion. He called himself her intendant, and was anxious to perform the most menial offices, and in these felt as if he were in a measure making amends for the past. He had one aspiration, that of paternal martyrdom. Gently and with paternal affection Sanselme soothed the girl's shame and despair. He had preserved much of the persuasiveness of a priest, his language stirred and softened at one and the same time. But now every word ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... situation produced in many minds the most marvelous development. "Every glance westward was met by a new ray of intelligence; every drawn breath of western air brought inspiration; every step taken was over an unknown field; every experiment, every thought, every aspiration and act were original ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... measure of his real power. I am sure of this, that God can see what neither you nor I can see. Sometimes people feel something of it; but in proportion as a man has in reality, not as a sentiment or an aspiration, or a thought, but in reality, the very spirit and presence of Jesus upon him, there comes out from him an unseen silent influence. That secret ...
— 'Jesus Himself' • Andrew Murray
... notwithstanding this, the resolution not to let the work appear until after his death became more confirmed is the best proof that no vain, paltry longing for praise and distinction, no particle of egotistical views, was mixed up with this noble aspiration for ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... of the royal princess, thus enhancing the ties that bound him to the throne, and throwing to the winds his Perdita whose charms had once held him in folly's chains. Did he regret the step? Has ravening aspiration any compunction; any contrite visitings of nature? What did the player expect; that he would violate precedence; overthrow the fashionable maxims of good George IV; become a slave to a tragi-comic performer and cast his high destiny to the winds? Had ever a gentleman entertained such a project? ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... repeated, with vague aspiration. The aspiration seemed to disengage her from herself, and from this earth, which had nothing more to offer her. Ah! how far away was now the time when she had entered churches, full of happiness and hope, to offer a candle that her prayer might be granted, which she ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... such a girl and such a home for him as she could make was going not only to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant betterment for himself—straighter living, perhaps straighter thinking—the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even aspiration—or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... in Browning's poetry, and one that results from his spiritual theory, is, that the present life is a tabernacle-life, and that it can be truly lived only as a tabernacle-life; for only such a life is compatible with the ever-continued aspiration and endeavor which is a condition of, and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... strike you, Bertie, as being a very eerie thing? It is a disease of the soul. To think that you may have a man of noble mind, full of every lofty aspiration, and that a gross physical cause, such as the fall of a spicule of bone from the inner table of his skull on to the surface of the membrane which covers his brain, may have the ultimate effect of turning him into an ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... desire to understand the wonders of mechanics. Something in his attitude—in the immobility, the almost animal repose of limb; something in the expression of his features, the self-contained oblivion, so to say, suggests an Oriental absence of aspiration. Only by negatives and side-lights, as it were, can any idea be conveyed of his contented indifference. He munches his crust; and, when he has done, carefully, and with vast deliberation, relaces his heavy shoe. The sunshine ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... every one I meet discontented with themselves; I should like to awaken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent first of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... defined, I think, as the recurrence of impressions and images connected with physical sanity and daintiness; of aspiration after orderliness, congruity, and one might almost say hierarchy; moreover, a certain exclusiveness, which is not the contempt of the craftsman for the bourgeois, but the aversion of the priest for the profane uninitiated. Some day, perhaps, a more scientific study of aesthetic ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... humbler in aspiration, is prepared to specialise on rabbits. He is ready to continue the fight until "Peace terms dictated in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... to be free, not under the compulsion of any need for unification, or tortured by unsatisfied desire. Desire and aspiration should find their object without all this torture, as now, in a world of plenty of water, simple thirst is inconsiderable, satisfied almost unconsciously. And he wanted to be with Ursula as free as with himself, single and clear and cool, yet balanced, polarised with her. The ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the very frequent expression of the Old Testament about 'going after idols' so Israel here is to 'go after God.' What does that mean? Communion, the consciousness of being judged by God, will lead on to aspiration and loving, longing effort to get nearer and nearer to Him. 'My soul followeth hard after Thee,' said the Psalmist, 'Thy right hand upholdeth me.' That element of yearning aspiration, of eager desire to be closer and closer, and liker and liker, to God must be in all true religion. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... matter in a midwife, temper in a servant, affection in a daughter, and the repetition of a shibboleth fulfils the law. Common decency is at times forgot in the same page with the most sanctified advice and aspiration. Thus I am introduced to a correspondent who appears to have been at the time the housekeeper at Invermay, and who writes to condole with my grandmother in a season of distress. For nearly half a sheet she keeps to the point with an excellent discretion ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is it that has made the people corrupt? What is it that has kept them in ignorance? What is it but your gold? It lies upon them like a mountain's weight! It crushes every aspiration for freedom... every effort after light! Teach them... help them... then see ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... we understood but the concluding phrase, and that was the bitter and blasphemous carajo! that hissed through his teeth with the energetic aspiration of rage and revenge. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... performed seven times on the same woman, and in Philadelphia three times. Doctor Bretoneaux, of Tours, has performed it six times on the same woman; and this woman his wife. 'The brutal epoch of craniotomy has certainly passed. The legitimate aspiration and tendency of science is to eliminate craniotomy on the living and viable child from obstetric practice.'—Barnes' words as quoted by Busey. Tyler Smith is in perfect accordance with Barnes. Barnes ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... of society" as well as its dregs, are thus living on the low plane of animal life! The grand distinction between man and the brute creation is in his spirit nature. Without spiritual culture, every thought, every aspiration, every gratification, is of the earth earthy. How sad, then, to see the gaudy "butterflies of society" spending their lives without a thought above that which alone can lift them forever above the plane of animal life! It is sad thus to think, but sadder still 'tis true. The enjoyment of ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... ghost divest himself of his encumbrances, or know that it was John Gardener, till that rosy-cheeked worthy, his clenched hands still flaming with brimstone, danced round him, and shouted scornfully, and with that vehemence of aspiration in which he was ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... is a symbol. It stands for the finest thing in a human being—aspiration—the seed of the Divine. It represents the noblest hope of a thwarted and untiring people. It makes a call to the heart of every generous-minded man, and gives vivifying impulse to the home-loving of all faces. It is a symbol ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... from six years of blockade. They do not agree with M. Clemenceau that "revolution is a disease attacking defeated countries only." Or, to put it as I have heard it stated in Moscow, they believe that President Wilson's aspiration towards a peace in which should be neither conqueror nor conquered has been at least partially realized in the sense that every country ended the struggle economically defeated, with the possible exception ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... and her aspiration to share all with her husband that the exigences of his busy life deprived him of any knowledge of this newly-opened well of sweet waters, that he had nothing from his parenthood but an amused, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... unkind refusal of an innocent desire. That hapless man of genius, the late John Davidson, condensed the truth into one illuminating phrase when he spoke of prayer rightly uttered as {215} "submissive aspiration"; it would be difficult to devise another form of words equally brief yet containing so much of the essence of the matter. Even short of actual fulfilment, it is an immeasurable privilege simply to speak to God about all the things that weigh on our minds, assured of His hearing, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... But tell me in what manner will this fellow tranquillize the senses, assuage the woes of the spirit, compensate the heart and give its just debts to the mind, so that with this aspiration of his he come not to ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... mistaken. Examining the society around her, men and women: everywhere was feverish excitement, dissipation, and nullity. You might rummage through their brains without finding one practical idea; in all their hearts, there was not one lofty aspiration. These people, in their daily life were like squirrels in a cage, and because they moved, they thought they were progressing. In them scepticism had killed belief; religion, family, country, were, as they phrased it, all humbug. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... The cherished aspiration for national unity which for ages has inspired the many millions of people speaking the same language, inhabiting a contiguous and compact territory, but unnaturally separated and divided by dynastic jealousies and the ambition of short-sighted rulers, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... and Roman literature, had extended its influence to England early in the century, but only after the accession of Elizabeth did it bring full harvest. The names that crowd the next fifty years represent fine native endowments, boundless aspiration, and also novelty,—as Spenser in poetry, Bacon in philosophy, Hooker in theology. In commerce as well as in letters there was this same activity and innovation. It was a time of commercial prosperity, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... emancipation, in utter ignorance of book lore or a pure gospel. To this people the American Missionary Association, through the Avery Institute and its consecrated workers, has brought the light of knowledge and a pure gospel, and awakened aspiration and hope of a better life. The beneficial effects of this work upon such a people, and indirectly upon the city and state, are incalculable. Intelligent Christianity and Christian education has ever been the motto of Avery, and faithfully has it been realized ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... instincts. The individual and society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and importance of the other. The individual and social instincts,—the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... of animal delight, the restless exactingness of undirected imagination, was never recognised by Rousseau distinctly enough to modify either his conduct or his theory of life. He filled up the void for a short space by that sovereign aspiration, which changed the dead bones of old theology into the living figure of a new faith. "From the surface of the earth I raised my ideas to all the existences in nature, to the universal system of things, to the incomprehensible Being who embraces all. Then with mind lost in that immensity, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... own sheltered progress from Dorset village to school, from school to University, and thence to my present street-bound routine in London. His views were clearly no less opposite to that vague tumult of resentment, protest, and aspiration which represented my own outlook upon life. Indeed, his speech that day was an epitome of the sentiment and opinions which I had chosen to ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... in regard to Literature. One of Christophine's Letters to her Brother, written at her Father's order, fell by accident on Reinwald's floor, and was read by him,—awakening in his over-clouded, heavy-laden mind a gleam of hope and aspiration. "This wise, prudent, loving-hearted and judicious young woman, of such clear and salutary principles of wisdom as to economics too, what a blessing she might be to me as Wife in this dark, lonely home of mine!" Upon which hint ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Duchess. But then something deep down in her knew it was not so. To need much—that is greater and better, even if the need brings that sorrow which perhaps many know nothing of. At that moment she connected desire with aspiration, and felt released from her ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... European fleets could absolutely control the issue and no question of Continental partition need arise. In Crete the Sultan could, Sir Charles believed, have been compelled to accept a nominal sovereignty, such as he retained over Cyprus; and the aspiration towards Hellenic unity, the need for Hellenic expansion, might thus ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... narrow dark canals, and now the only thought that solicited me was the vague reflection that it would be pleasant to recline at one's length in the fragrant darkness on a garden bench. The odor of the canal was doubtless at the bottom of that aspiration and the breath of the garden, as I entered it, gave consistency to my purpose. It was delicious—just such an air as must have trembled with Romeo's vows when he stood among the flowers and raised his arms to his mistress's balcony. I looked at the windows ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... marrow of Americanism. He is as intensely and as typically American as Franklin or Emerson or Hawthorne. He has not a little of the shrewd common-sense and the homely and unliterary directness of Franklin. He is not without a share of the aspiration and the elevation of Emerson; and he has a philosophy of his own as optimistic as Emerson's. He possesses also somewhat of Hawthorne's interest in ethical problems, with something of the same power of getting at the heart of them; he, too, has written his parables and apologs wherein the moral ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... returned to myself and thought, reclining in rapt thought, full of aspiration, steeped to the lips of my soul in desire. I did not then define, or analyses, or understand this. I see now that what I laboured for was soul-life, more soul-nature, to be exalted, to be full of soul-learning. Finally ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the Imitation of Christ. But was it not often a blind struggle in the dark, an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... not send me out with the girl and, in the interval, give Edward a hell of a time. Having discovered what he wanted—that the girl should go five thousand miles away and love him steadfastly as people do in sentimental novels, she was determined to smash that aspiration. And she repeated to Edward in every possible tone that the girl did not love him; that the girl detested him for his brutality, his overbearingness, his drinking habits. She pointed out that Edward in the girl's eyes, was already pledged three or four deep. He was pledged to Leonora ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... quivering with rage, and spoil the calm of a whole day, when no good of any sort can come of it? What is it to me if nations fall a-slaughtering each other? Let the fools go to it! Why should they not please themselves? Peace, after all, is the aspiration of the few; so it always; was, and ever will be. But have done with the nauseous cant about "dire calamity." The leaders and the multitude hold no such view; either they see in war a direct and tangible profit, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... fiction; and, in the episode entitled the Napoleon of the people,—the narration of an old soldier of the First Empire,—there is a topical realism that makes one regret the never-achieved Battle. Add to these excellences the writer's having put into his work, for the nonce, a sincere aspiration towards the idea; and, despite flaws, the whole can be ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity[661] and people without perception. Then I have the same title to write on prudence that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not possess. The poet admires the man of energy and tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the bar; and where a man is not vain and egotistic ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... observed by the Sramanas, and the dignified demeanour in their societies which he remarked under all occurring circumstances, he sadly called to mind in what a mutilated and imperfect condition the rules were among the monkish communities in the land of Ts'in, and made the following aspiration:—"From this time forth till I come to the state of Buddha, let me not be born in a frontier land."(10) He remained accordingly (in India), and did not return (to the land of Han). Fa-hien, however, whose original purpose ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... estimation, the good sense and moral consistency of Washington and his compatriots naturally offered the most remarkable problem. Accordingly, Guizot bears witness chiefly to this unprecedented union of comprehensive designs and prudential habits, of aspiration and patience, in the character of Washington; and, doubtless through the contrast with the restless ambition which marks the lives of his own illustrious countrymen, is mainly struck with the fact that, 'while capable of rising to the level of the highest destiny, he might have lived in ignorance ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... virtue,—not in the spirit of a tragic truth, but in a glorification of the senses; just as in Wagner's final work, the ascetic, sinless type becomes a figure almost of ridicule, devoid of human reality. It is significant that with the revival of a sound art, fraught with resolute aspiration, is imminent a return to an idealistic ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... from hypotheses not to be tested by any known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis claims support from intuition, aspiration or general plausibility. And, again, this method turns aside from ideal standards which avow themselves to be lawless, which profess to transcend the field of law. We say, life and conduct shall ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... discomfort had vanished. The frugal supper was that night a jovial meal; the very look of a cheerful blaze beneath a walled roof was reviving to the wanderers; the jest passed round, the wine-cup sparkled to the health of the countess, and many a fervent aspiration echoed round for the speedy restoration of her strength; for truly she was the beloved, the venerated of all, alike from her ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... listening to him. The Latin words, the sentiment of which had been traditional in the Church from time immemorial, had to her a sacred fragrance and odor; they were words apart from all common usage, a sacramental language, never heard but in moments of devotion and aspiration,—and they stilled the child's heart in its tossings and tempest, as when of old the Jesus they spake of walked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... new, or, rather, revived democracy was an aspiration rather than an actuality, was—as to the part above the soil, at least—a not very vigorous looking forced growth through sordid necessity. In this respect it was like many, perhaps most, human aspirations—and, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... that the limb was injured and tenderly rested the foot upon his knee, the owner thereof making no objection, gently turned down the stocking and spent a minute or two in inspecting the swollen ankle. Then with a sympathetic aspiration he slowly stroked it with his hand. In doing so he drew downward each time and never ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... smooth and black, but lacked the coarseness of his mother's race, while his brain and method of thinking were wholly that of his father. With this endowment there had come to him, early in life, an aspiration to rise above his own sort, a desire to be a thorough white man. And in this he had always been supported by his mother, who, knowing her past, carried in her heart bitterness fully the equal of Angus Fitzpatrick's. It was only when ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... followed, trade unionism suffered a temporary eclipse. It was a period of social unrest in which all sorts of philanthropic reforms were suggested and tried out. Measured by later events, it was a period of transition, of social awakening, of aspiration tempered by the bitter experience ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... metaphysical imagination has for its prime motive the need of a total or complete explanation. The latter is no longer an endeavor on a restricted group of phenomena, but a conjecture as to the totality of things, as aspiration toward completely unified knowledge, a need of final explanation that, for certain minds, is just as imperious as any ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... to speak) 'a mighty stream of tendency' to good in the human mind, upon which all objects float and are imperceptibly borne along; and though in the voyage of life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is 'a tide in the affairs of men,' a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which, 'with sails and tackle torn,' the wreck and scattered fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our desires! In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for the deed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... all sympathy, before whose power we tremble, and whose mercy we might strive to propitiate by sacrifices or entreaties; but from the Bible we learn that he is near at hand, watching every pulsation of the heart, listening to every aspiration that we breathe; that we walk with him so long as we obey his commandments, and that though we may turn from him, he never turns from us; that when we approach him in prayer, it should not be with fear, but with ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... his thoughts, yet implied something more than their plain meaning. They uttered more than one regret, more than one aspiration. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... entries in a general account-book, and the forenoon was gone. Friends, interests, regard for life in any of its various aspects, all were nonexistent for Liddell. Money was his only thought, his sole aspiration—to accumulate, for no object. This miserliness had grown upon him since he had lost both wife and son. Fortunately for Katherine, his ideas of expenditure had been fixed by the comparatively liberal standard of his late cook. When, therefore, he ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... enabled him to read a short psalm. Then they sang a most wailful tune, and John prayed. If I were to give the prayer as he uttered it, I might make my reader laugh, therefore I abstain, assuring him only that, although full of long words—amongst the rest, aspiration and ravishment—the prayer of the cheerful, joke-loving cottar contained evidence of a degree of religious development ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... conception of the Infinite, of the Eternal, of God, which is inborn in the human mind,—the aspiration towards an ideal impossible of realization in the brief stage of our earthly existence,—the instinct of free will,—all that constitutes the mysterious link within us to a world beyond the visible,—defy all analysis by a philosophy exclusively ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... power, to a rapid succession of images, and to a constant projection of the observer's own personality into phenomena. This peculiar characteristic of our race is never wholly overcome, and to it is added a proud self-consciousness, an energy of thought and action, a constant aspiration after grand achievements, and a haughty contempt for ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... friendly or hostile, is to receive from her in like measure out of her fullness. With whatever face we approach the mirror a similar face approaches ours. "Let him approach it, saying, 'This is the Mighty,' he becomes mighty," says an ancient scripture, teaching us that as our aspiration is so will be our inspiration and power. Out of this comradeship with earth there came a commingling of natures, and we do not know when we read who are the Sidhe and who are human. The great energies are all ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... to be Ik (aspiration, breath, life). (Compare Foerstemann, Die Tagegoetter der Mayas, Globus, Vol. ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... greatest captain?" and that he answered, "Alexander, king of Macedonia; because, with a small band, he defeated armies whose numbers were beyond reckoning; and because he had overrun the remotest regions, the merely visiting of which was a thing above human aspiration." Scipio then asked, "to whom he gave the second place?" and he replied, "To Pyrrhus; for he first taught the method of encamping; and besides, no one ever showed more exquisite judgment, in choosing his ground, and disposing his posts; while he also possessed the art of conciliating mankind ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Skipwith, looking from Roderick's frank eager face to Vixen's downcast eyelids and mantling blushes. "I had hoped such a different fate for you. I thought the thirst for knowledge had arisen within you, that the aspiration to distinguish yourself from the ruck of ignorant women would follow the arising of that thirst, in natural sequence. And here I find you willing to marry a gentleman who happens to have been the companion of your childhood, ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... is in this sense less religious than the mediaeval, that the antithesis of phenomenal and real is less present to it. But the pungency of this antithesis comes from an imperfect realization of its meaning. Just so far as the subjection of the finite remains no longer a postulate or an aspiration, but is carried into effect,—its finiteness no longer resisted or deplored, but accepted,—just so far it ceases to be opaque and inert. The present seems trivial and squalid, because it is clutched and held fast,—the fugitive image petrified into an idol or a clod. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... offering, and that from his sister. She drew the bay leaf, of which the wreath to adorn the conqueror and the poet is made, and, while the eyes of the two women rested on her, drew forth also the pale, but sweet-scented mountain pink, signifying aspiration, beautifully expressed by ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... It is an aspiration of which the loftiness is in no way affected by the lowliness of the means employed to ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him where all soul-aspiration lifts us—lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will. Let him read the "Student," ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... of the city was an outgrowth of that of the home. Virtue, courage, duty, justice—these became the great civic virtues. Their religion, both family and state, lacked the beauty and stately ceremonial of the Greeks, lacked that lofty faith and aspiration after virtue that characterized the Hebrew and the later Christian faith, was singularly wanting in awe and mystery, and was formal and mechanical and practical [8] in character, but it exercised a great influence on these early peoples and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Rome—that was his political creed. That Consuls, Censors, and Senators might go on to the end of time with no diminution of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and honor and truth among them—that was his political aspiration. They had made Rome what it was, and he knew and could imagine nothing better; and, odious as an oligarchy is seen to be under the strong light of experience to which prolonged ages has subjected it, the aspiration ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... it; penetrating into its laws, its very language, its mere habits of decorum, in a thousand half-conscious ways; yet still felt to be, in part, an unfulfilled ideal; and, as such, awakening hope, and an aim, identical with the one only consistent aspiration of mankind! In the apprehension of that, just then, Marius seemed to have joined company once more with his own old self; to have overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had come to Rome, with absolute sincerity, on the search for perfection. It defined not ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... inconceivable power, the absurdity of which he sought to demonstrate by comparing the magnitude claimed for it with the capacities of man. He remained silent for a moment, as though seeking an answer. He found none, and what he said expressed an aspiration and ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Schiller. The lives of great men are the lives of martyrs; we cannot regard them as examples to follow, but rather as types of human excellence to study and to admire. The life of Schiller was not one which many of us would envy; it was a life of toil and suffering, of aspiration rather than of fulfillment, a long battle with scarcely a moment of rest for the conqueror to enjoy his hard-won triumphs. To an ambitious man the last ten years of the poet's life might seem an ample reward for the thirty years' war of life which he had to fight ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... longer a struggle between genius and the bailiffs. What was once a desperate venture is now a lucrative business. What was once a martyrdom is now its own reward. What once had saintly unearthliness is now a powerful motor among worldly interests. What was once the fatality of genius is now the aspiration of fools. The people have turned to reading, and have become a more liberal patron than even the Athenian State, monastic order, or noble lord. No longer does the literary class wander about the streets, gingerbread in its coat-pockets, and rhymes written on scraps of paper from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... of philosophical and scientific method that will go on with this great increase in man's control over himself, another issue that is now a mere pious aspiration above abysses of ignorance and difficulty, will come to be a manageable matter. It has been the perpetual wonder of philosophers from Plato onward that men have bred their dogs and horses and left any man or woman, however vile, free to bear offspring in the next generation of men. Still ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... seems to me that her intellect is merely a matter of brain, and not of soul, and that in reality she does not care for anything except her beauty and the comforts of life. I have often met women who seem full of lofty aspiration; upon closer acquaintance it seems that religion, philosophy, art, and literature, are only so many items of their toilet. They dress themselves in either as it suits their style of beauty. I suppose ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
