"Birth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years had passed since young Quincy's birth, and Alice was still at Fernborough Hall. She could not leave it now, for Aunt Ella was again a widow. Her mind was troubled about her boy. He had recurrent attacks of throat trouble, and was not strong as ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the son of a pastry-cook, of a Marseilleise pastry-cook. It is a pity that people who give themselves hoity-toity airs—and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted to giving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better than themselves with their birth {6} and their country—it is a great pity that such people do not look at home-son of a pastry-cook, of a Marseilleise pastry-cook! Well, and what was Scott himself? Why, son of a pettifogger, of an Edinburgh pettifogger. "Oh, but Scott was descended from the old cow-stealers of Buccleuch, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the manly liberality due to a warrior, that there was little in common between them in the way of character as well as of interests. One served for money and preferment; the other, because his life had been cast in the wilderness, and the land of his birth needed his arm and experience. The desire of rising above his present situation never disturbed the tranquillity of Pathfinder; nor had he ever known an ambitious thought, as ambition usually betrays itself, until ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... an hour before the children felt like sitting down to breakfast. Before they began the repast Mr. Bobbsey brought forth the family Bible and read the wonderful story of Christ's birth to them, and asked the blessing. All were ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... won, when men merit least: If Merit look not well, Love bids stand by; Love's special lesson is to please the eye. And Hymen soon recovering all he lost, Deceiving still these maids, but himself most, His love and he with many virgin dames, Noble by birth, noble by beauty's flames, Leaving the town with songs and hallow'd lights, To do great Ceres Eleusina rites Of zealous sacrifice, were made a prey To barbarous rovers, that in ambush lay, And with rude hands enforc'd their shining spoil, Far from the darken'd city, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... act with Justine, and come back by Granville to Boulogne. If the old gang is to be found there, I may get one of them to spy the whole thing out. All these Jersey people are half French in their birth and ways. I can sneak some fellow in from Granville. There might be a chance. I'll get to the old fellow, or the girl, or the jewels—by God! I will! For ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... any notoriety must have gone through this. Dante's poem is not an isolated work; it is the noblest result of a condition which had given birth to hundreds of compositions, and Alighieri had little more to do than to co-ordinate the works of his predecessors and vivify them with the breath ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... observer—meaning me. Yes, David, that aquiline beak, that long and waxed moustache, that impassible mask of a face, I had seen them, Sir, conspicuous (though their owner be of alien and even hostile birth) among England's special chivalry. The foremost he had charged on the Ides of April (I mean against the ungentlemanly Chartist throng) and in the storied lists of Eglinton. The new-comer, in short, was the nephew of him ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... a provision for the safety of the young in the pipe-fish may be compared to some extent, as I hinted above, with the pouch in which kangaroos and other marsupial animals carry their cubs after birth, till they have attained an age of complete independence. But the strangest part of it all is the fact that while in the kangaroo it is the mother who owns the pouch and takes care of the young, in the pipe-fish it is the father, on the contrary, who thus specially provides ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... they were, in the hands of a Master, who with his entire entourage had become sick with a mania which took the form of militarism, imperialism, and pan-Germanism. But after the death of his two fellow-countrymen—for at heart he was still true to the land of his birth, although to save her he had just renounced the flag—he felt that he was justified in what he ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Nicholas, and his parents, long before they became his parents, traced their origin to some obscure Czechoslovakian province—long before we became so glib with our Czechoslovakia. His first name was Dewey, knowing which you automatically know the date of his birth. It was a patriotic but unfortunate choice on the part of his parents. The name did not fit him; was too mealy; not debonair enough. Nick. Nicky in tenderer moments (Miss Bauers, Miss Olson, Miss Ahearn, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... physical fact that has been discovered since his day. Thus, the science of electricity, which was not yet in existence when he wrote, is there anticipated; and not only does Behmen describe all the now known phenomena of that force, but he even gives us the origin, generation and birth of electricity itself. Again, positive evidence can be adduced that Newton derived all his knowledge of gravitation and its {320} laws from Behmen, with whom gravitation or attraction is, and very properly so, as he shows ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... race is much greater than is usually assumed by those whose views of the past are still regulated by mediaeval systems of chronology. Archaeology and linguistic science, not to speak here of geology, make it certain that the period between the beginning of the human race and the birth of Christ would be more accurately stated if the centuries counted in the longest estimate of the rabbinical chronologies should be changed to millenniums. And they present also another fact, namely, that the antiquity of civilization is very great, ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... enters deepest into the soul; and a minister can scarce miss to have peculiar tenderness and warmth of divine affections to those whose father he is after the Spirit; and hath been honoured of God, in bringing them to the kingdom of his Son, and begetting them through the gospel; whose heavenly birth is now the highest pleasure and brightest triumph of his life, and will be one day his crown of glory and rejoicing. And doubtless, when Mr. Guthrie preferred Fenwick, a poor obscure parish, to the most considerable charges in the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... oversupply of unskilled immigrant labor in this country has had at least two injurious results. First, it has kept the standard of living of American workmen from rising as rapidly as would otherwise have been possible. Second, it has caused the birth rate to ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in the islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and when she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm, had remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means of life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had pursued; he feared, cumbered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... part of men who had been known as reformers in the early days of 1848; but the old order was represented by Count Wessenberg, who had been Metternich's assistant at the Congress of Vienna, and by Latour, the War Minister, a soldier of high birth whose career dated back to the campaign of Austerlitz. Whatever contempt might be felt by one section of the Cabinet for the other, its members were able to unite against the independence of Hungary as they had united against the independence of Italy. They handed in to the Emperor a memorial ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... matter is not, of course, one of exterior only. Some interest, at least, attaches to the contents, however dull the subject, however obscure the author. A new book is a new birth, not only to the aesthetic but to the literary sense. It contains within it boundless possibilities. There are printed volumes which are books only in form—which are mere collections of facts or figures, or what not, and which do not count. But if a volume be a genuine specimen ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... destined leader must come from across the sea. They have offered the crown to me, but I am too old to undertake such great affairs, and my son is native-born, which precludes him from the choice. You, equally by birth and time of life, and fame in arms, pointed out by the gods, have but to appear to be hailed at once as their leader. With you I will join Pallas, my son, my only hope and comfort. Under you he shall learn the art of war, and strive to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... old Corey began, in the gentle way he had, and with a certain involuntary sibilation through the gaps between his front teeth. "It's a much more heroic thing than an ordinary theft; and I can't let you belittle it as something commonplace because it happens every day. So does death; so does birth; but ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... us, we could not be sad; Our comfort was near if we ever were crost; But the comfort, the blessings, and wealth that we had, We slighted them all,—and our birth-right ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... thymus gland attains a considerable development in the embryo and shrinks away to the merest vestige in the adult. It begins to form early in the embryo life as an epithelial ingrowth from the throat, and extends from the neck into the chest. It continues to grow after birth, but later begins to shrink and nearly disappears ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... old ages was full of the throes of birth, but was not yet born. It was still essentially Oriental, it had no independent development of its own, though it was moving toward independence. The earliest objects dug out of the long buried cities of Greece show ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... but testifying to the great truth, that man is the creature, in a greater or less degree, of circumstances; that he is great or small, polished or rude, wise or simple, according to the accident of his birth, or the surroundings in the midst of which his journey of life lays. True, there are intellects that will work themselves into position, men who will hew their way upward in spite of the difficulties which beset them, as there are others who will plunge down to degradation ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... mystery of life. A puff-ball is before him, and he muses on its forming. The little puff-ball stands at one end of the scale of life and he, man, at the other, "close to the realm where angels have their birth, just on the boundary of the spirit land." From the things visible in our garden we learn of the things invisible, and strong the faith of him who kneeling in adoration of the growing plant looks from nature to nature's God and finds the peace ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... colossal struggle, and out of it came the blessed fulfilment of the prophecy of the immortal Gettysburg speech which said: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to do any homage, or pay any penalty, for his admission into society. In these circles in New York we are spared the humiliating spectacle of men of genius or intellect cringing and uneasy in the presence of their patronising inferiors, whom birth or wealth may have placed socially above them. Of course there is society in New York where the vulgar influence of money is omnipotent, and extravagant display is fashionable; it is of the best that I ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Query of your correspondent L., I beg to inform him that he may find the name, if not the birth-place, of incumbents and patrons of Church Livings in the county of Norfolk, long prior to 1680, in the Institution Books at Norwich, consisting of numerous well preserved folio volumes. Blomefield ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... acquainted with and see each other frequently before marriage. The business of selection, betrothal and marriage is attended to by the parents or friends of the pair, who carry on negotiations by means of a third factor, a middleman or go-between. Children are often betrothed at birth or when on their nurses' backs (there are no cradles in Japan). Of course the natural results, mutual dislike and severance of the engagement at mature age, or love and happy marriage, or marriage, mutual dislike and subsequent divorce, happen, as the case may be. In general, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... and their King. Not much is heard of their work, not often are they mentioned in despatches; only one of them has ever received the Victoria Cross, but most of them are heroes, and deserve well of the country that gave them birth. It is sufficient for them that they receive the praise of God, and there can be no higher reward for them ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... "you see one from whom Zicci himself learned many of his loftiest secrets. Before his birth my wisdom was! On these shores, on this spot, have I stood in ages that your chronicles but feebly reach. The Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard,—I have seen them all!—leaves gay and ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... repeated, with all the dainty sarcasm of a disappointed old maid. 'Well! since you will know, child, I may as well tell you—the brave Mr. Dalton is not alone in the field; he has a powerful rival; one of those dark, heroic-looking Frenchmen of high birth and fierce tempers. He swears he will have Mlle. Campuzano's hand, or Ernest Dalton's heart-blood—at least this is the story I have heard; she, in all her rich southern foreign loveliness, plays a becomingly passive ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... should certainly not be there now,—nor your whole heart. On you the circumstances of your birth have imposed duties quite as high, and I will say quite as useful, as any which a career in the House of Commons can put within ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the journey back she had felt a gnawing longing for Germany, nay, nothing had troubled her more than the thought of dying and being buried outside of its frontier. Her mother, a native of the Rhine country, had given her birth during the fair at Cologne on the Spree; but, whenever homesickness assailed her, it was always the steeples of St. Sebald and St. Ulrich which beckoned to her, and she had longed for the Frank ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sign that Christians realize that wealth is a sacred trust, for which they shall give an account. We rejoice more that they are giving that personal service which is a law of His kingdom. Men and women of culture and gentle birth are going into the abodes of sickness and sorrow to comfort stricken homes and lead sinful folk to the Saviour. Brotherhoods, Sisterhoods, and deaconesses are multiplying. Never was there greater need for their holy work. Many of our own baptized children ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... appeared to announce that dinner was served; African dusk drew its swift curtain over the desert, and a gun spoke sharply from the Citadel. In silence the party watched the deepening velvet of the sky, witnessing the birth of a million stars, and in silence they entered the gaily ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... at the second election, which according to the old county system, occurred every three years, he suffered defeat. Political party considerations and government influence sustained another candidate. So Abonyi was again relegated to private life, but his birth and the office he had filled gave him sufficient personal distinction to induce his village, immediately after, to compensate him in some degree for his overthrow by a unanimous election to ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... like a whip seized him, convulsing his heart and shaking his powerful frame as if he had been attacked by sudden ague. Was his daughter going to die? She could not die—God would not take her from him! He remembered Teola's birth, with a groan of pain: remembered how he had taken the dark-haired babe, so tiny and helpless, into his study alone, and had uttered the sincerest prayer of a father's life, that the blessings of Heaven would cover his new-found ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... prescribed.' I said that this description of him (which I had no doubt was true) only proved what I already thought—that, with all his talents, he never would be a great man. He said he always must be very considerable; his powers, integrity, birth, and fortune could not fail to raise him to eminence. All this I admitted—that nothing could prevent his being very considerable, very important, as a public man—but I argued that one who was animated by motives so personal, and so ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... well-beloved guest; and when I am there, and telling my tidings, and asking them of theirs, if there be any tales concerning the Well at the World's End working in their bellies, then shall I be the midwife to bring them to birth. ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... lascivious masterpieces where the night before Hawtry had laid it, Mr. Vandeford looked down into the gray eyes of the girl who had had it all in her blood for generations, and who had so brilliantly given it birth, and felt a prophecy rise within him that soon the American drama would begin to draw on the wealth of tradition which had been piling up in a vast storage for it, and that when it did, dramatists and actors, men and women, would rise to interpret ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... emigration to the West, the flood which followed the parallels of latitude, and made the Northwest like the Northeast, did not begin until after the War of 1812. It was no accident that made Harrison, the first governor of Indiana and long the typical representative of the Northwest, by birth a Virginian, and the son of one of the Virginian signers of the Declaration of Independence. The Northwest was at this time in closer touch with Virginia ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... not its inspiration, its modes of expression—to the teachings of the textile system. This appears reasonable when we consider that the weaver's art, as a medium of esthetic ideas, had precedence in time over nearly all competitors. Being first in the field it stood ready on the birth of new forms of art, whether directly related or not, to impose its characters upon them. What claim can architecture, sculpture, or ceramics have upon the decorative conceptions of the Digger Indians, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... daily movements of the spheres and the providential arrangements of the world; in the blossoming life of spring, and the withered death of winter; in the dear relations of domestic life, and the more showy fraternities of nations; in birth, and life, and death; in every provision for happiness found in the wide range of the physical and spiritual universe; secondly, a conscience void of offense toward God and man; in love with right, bound to righteous principle in a wedlock ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... midwifery and kindred subjects. The scheme was a great success, and the benefit it has been to thousands of native women is indescribable, as regards both their general treatment and the care of themselves and their children at birth. Little was known about the subject in England, and much less about all that was done to mitigate the evil; but it was a wonderful piece of administration, though perhaps not one that appealed specially to him; and when some one, knowing what ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... which looked green one minute, and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered. Being short-necked and asthmatic, however, he respired principally through this feature; so, perhaps, what it wanted in ornament, it ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... back from their continent to her own Black Islands, and to you and me—that is, to me—I ax your pardon, Harry Ormond; for you know, or I should tell you in time, she is engaged already to White Connal, of Glynn—from her birth. That engagement I made with the father over a bowl of punch—I promised— I'm afraid it was a foolish business—I promised if ever he, Old Connal, should have a son, and I should have a daughter, his son should marry my daughter. I promised, I say—I took my oath: and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... I should not have done it. By birth, by instinct, by training, by habit, I am a man of action. Or I was. It is queer that an old man cannot remember that he is no ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... this man believed in God, and that the desire of his own heart brought him into some real, however undefinable, relation to him who was yet nearer to him than that desire itself, and whose presence had caused its birth. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... his mountain home, where the religion and teaching of the old Shepherd had been felt for a generation, where every soul was held a neighbor—with a neighbor's right to the assistance of the community, and where no one—not even the nameless "wood's colt"—was made to suffer for the accident of birth or family, but stood and was judged upon his own life and living, the story of Grace Conner was a revelation almost too hideous in its injustice ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... his own character, it was beyond his conception that a man of Colonel Dumont's lofty and Christian views could have lived so many years in the practice of this deception. He had no means of disproving the illegitimacy of Emily. The family had been unknown to him at the period of her birth. The house-servants, with the exception of Hatchie, were all younger than Emily. Then, the statement was made in the will, and was, therefore, the statement of Colonel Dumont himself,—for the genuineness of the will he did not call in question. In accordance with his general character, ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... cultivation, abandoned to the marl. It is a little place, perched upon the ledge of a long sliding hill, which commands the vale of Orcia; Monte Amiata soaring in aerial majesty beyond. Its old name was Cosignano. But it had the honour of giving birth to AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who, when he was elected to the Papacy and had assumed the title of Pius II., determined to transform and dignify his native village, and to call it after his own name. From that time forward Cosignano has been ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the provincial felt sometimes the claims of his province and raised a cry that sounds like 'Africa for the Africans' he acted on a geographical, not on any native or national idea. He was demanding individual life for a Roman section of the Empire. He was anticipating, perhaps, the birth of new nations out of the Romanized populations. He was not attempting to recall the old pre-Roman system. Similarly, if his art or architecture embodies native fashions or displays a local style, if special types of houses or of tombstones or sculpture occur in special districts, that does ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... increase only in an arithmetical ratio. Geometrical ratios were just then in fashion.[218] Price had appealed to their wonderful ways in his arguments about the sinking fund; and had pointed out that a penny put out to 5 per cent. compound interest at the birth of Christ would, in the days of Pitt, have been worth some millions of globes of solid gold, each as big as the earth. Both Price and Malthus lay down a proposition which can easily be verified by the multiplication-table. If, as Malthus said, population doubles in twenty-five years, the number ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... rev'rence tread These sacred mansions of the dead. Not that the monumental bust, Or sumptuous tomb, here guards the dust Of rich, or great,(let wealth, rank, birth, Sleep undistinguished in the earth.) This simple urn records a name, That shines with more exalted fame. Reader! if genius, taste refin'd, A native elegance of mind; If virtue, science, manly sense; If wit that never ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... what God's plan is? The gift of a Soul to each of us at birth, with this simple law—there shall be no immortality except through the Soul. In that law see the necessity ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... birth to a girl; she had suffered terrible pains. Philippina had seen and heard it all. She had run back and forth, from the kitchen to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the kitchen, for hours; she was like an insane person; she kept ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the aid of my friends, and of the evidence tendered at the coroner's inquest. But for the moment I knew nothing of all that. I was a newborn baby again. Only with this important difference. They say our minds at birth are like a sheet of white paper, ready to take whatever impressions may fall upon them. Mine was like a sheet all covered and obscured by one hateful picture. It was weeks, I fancy, before I knew or was conscious of anything ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil authorities, but for the presence there of the troops of the United States.... They are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the State of Tennessee, or of the South, who have been in the Union army, than they are to men of Northern birth." ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... we must not forget that civilization as compared with the duration of human life on the planet began but yesterday: even our own Indo-European race dwells as it were on the forest edge. And the forest still reaches out and twines itself around our deepest spiritual truths: home—birth—love—prayer—death: it tries to overrun them all, to reclaim them. Thus when we build our houses, instinctively we attempt by some clump of trees to hide them and to shelter ourselves once more inside the forest; in some countries whenever a child is born, a tree is planted ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... materialists to use language with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter," whatever the phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken nothing. The pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is there any birth from unquickened matter. Animals bear young, trees bear fruit, but force produces results. What then quickens protoplasmic matter? Neither vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are to credit the materialists. ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... maintained in exile. After some years of silence, during which the heir apparent had reached a marriageable age, King Stovik sent again to his native land, to that nobleman in fact who had aided his escape, beseeching that from the maidens of noble birth a bride should be selected and sent back under the care of the messenger, who was none other than the faithful servant who had shared all the tribulations of the royal family. Bribes, threats, and coaxing of ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... animals may carry the fetus through the normal period of pregnancy, giving birth to either a normal or a weak colt, or again abortion may take place at any time during pregnancy, mostly, however, from the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... immemorial in their possession. I mention these particulars that the reader may see at once that I am not altogether of low and plebeian origin; the present age is highly aristocratic, and I am convinced that the public will read my pages with more zest from being told that I am a gentillatre by birth with Cornish blood {1b} in my veins, of a family who lived on their own property at a place bearing a Celtic name, signifying the house on the hill, or more strictly the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... strangers. They strongly dislike using sheets, blankets, and towels which are in a certain sense public property, just as we should strongly object to putting on clothes which had been already worn by other people. And the feeling may be developed in people not Russian by birth. For my own part, I confess to having been conscious of a certain disagreeable feeling on returning in this respect to the usages of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... abode—I would call it 'The Saint's Rest' were it not for the presence of others than saints, and for the additional fact that there is little rest for the saint who makes her dwelling here—in this abode there prevails the quaint custom of watching the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It is made the occasion of religious and heart-searching rite. As the solemn hour of midnight draws on, a silence falls upon the family, all of whom, with the exception of the newest infant, are present. It is the family festival of ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome—then no planets strike, No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... patron saint, thou hast misunderstood me!" exclaimed the young count warmly. "Nisida will not oppose her brother's happiness; and her strong mind will know how to despise those conventional usages which require that high birth should mate with high birth, and wealth ally itself to wealth. Yes; Nisida will consult my felicity alone; and when I ere now repeated her name as it fell from your lips, it was in a manner reproachful to myself, because I have retained my love for thee a secret from her. A secret from Nisida! ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Hammerstein may have had visions of future triumphs for its composer, for a few weeks before (on February 5, 1908) he had brought forward the same composer's "Siberia," which gave some promise of life, though it died with the season that saw its birth. ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... mother, sir; for she could only blush at the birth of her daughter, at the time she lost her; while now circumstances are such, that my sister, if her child still lived, could own her, be proud of her, never leave her. Thus, this incessant regret, joined to other griefs, makes ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... into the cities of the Mississippi valley, the native population was startled by the appearance of men who often could not speak our language. In Cincinnati in 1840 one half the voters were of foreign birth. The cry was now raised that our institutions, our liberties, our system of government, were at the mercy of men from the monarchical countries of Europe. A demand was made for a change in the naturalization law, so ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... last birth I am an Arab lady of royal blood, a descendant of the Kings of the East. There I dwelt in the wilderness and ruled a people, and at night I gathered wisdom from the stars and the spirits of the earth and air. At length I wearied of ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... gave birth to a child, a little boy, which proved a great addition to their happiness, and drew still closer the bonds of their affection. Indeed no people can be fonder of their children than are the ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... staff had saved Turin to us by a most daring enterprise, by which he informed the garrison of the citadel that help would soon reach them, and mentioned that for that service he had appointed Monsieur Campbell a captain. You are Scottish by birth, are you not?" ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... bestirred themselves and founded some schools. Many tradesmen, who had accumulated fortunes in London, (then the almost exclusive province of commercial enterprise,) retired in their later years to the country-town which had given them birth, and gratefully provided for the better education of their neighbours, by furnishing it with a grammar-school. And even the honest yeoman, a person who then appears to have appreciated learning, and often to have brought ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... stray, left at one of your homes for the friendless here in Chicago. When he grew up the superintendent bound him to a brutal man. He ran away and landed in one of my lumber camps. He has no name or knowledge of legal birth. The Angel—we have talked of her. You see what she is, physically and mentally. She has ancestors reaching back to Plymouth Rock, and across the sea for generations before that. She is an idolized, petted only child, and there ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... envy pompous pow'r, The luxury of courts, or wealth of cities? Let there be joy through all the house this day! In ev'ry room let plenty flow at large! It is the birth day of my royal master! You have not visited the court, Chamont, Since ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... of the multitude. But there are edifices of this description which cry aloud to the gods by the force of their own ugliness and malposition. As to such, it may be said that there should somewhere exist a power capable of crushing them in their birth. This new obelisk, or picture-building at ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... was the song that she herself had taught me how to sing: .... As immigrants come toward America On their continual ships out of the past, So on my ship America have I, by birth, Come forth at last From all the bitter corners of the earth. And I have ears to hear the westward wind blowing And I have eyes to look beyond the scope Of sea And I have hands to touch the hands Of shipmates who are going Wherever ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... magistrates, but the rogue was already gone from Pompeii. So I was forced to go home in a very ill humor, I assure you; and the poor girl felt the effects of it too. But it was not her fault that she was blind, for she had been so from her birth. By degrees, we got reconciled to our purchase. True, she had not the strength of Staphyla, and was of very little use in the house, but she could soon find her way about the town, as well as if she had the eyes of Argus; and when one morning she brought us home a handful of sesterces, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... of the great Cistercian monastery that this chronicle of old days must take its start, as we trace the feud betwixt the monks and the house of Loring, with those events to which it gave birth, ending with the coming of Chandos, the strange spear-running of Tilford Bridge and the deeds with which Nigel won fame in the wars. Elsewhere, in the chronicle of the White Company, it has been set forth what manner of man was Nigel Loring. Those who love him may read ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... (Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscrip.) supposes that the French maires du palais had their origin from these German military leaders. If the kings were equally conspicuous for valor as for birth, they united the regal with the military command. Usually, however, several kings and generals were assembled in their wars. In this case, the most eminent commanded, and obtained a common jurisdiction ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... She had good abilities, well cultivated for the time when she was young; she was rather pretty, and her countenance was engaging from its expression of mingled thoughtfulness and brightness; she was as lady-like as became her birth and training; and her strength of character was so tempered with modesty and good taste that she was about the last woman that could have been supposed likely to become celebrated in any way, or, yet more, to be passionately ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Burns were accused of no crime but birth from a mother whom some one had stolen. They had only a mock trial, without due process of law, with no judge, no jury, no judicial officer. But I, accused of a grave offence, am to enjoy a trial with due process of law. It is an actual ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... drop into disuse. And as regards the admission of poor boys it was done only in cases where a boy showed himself quick and studious. It has been the glory of the Church in all ages that she has refused to recognise any barrier of birth: but she has also been careful to preserve her distinctions for those who deserve them. Most of the brethren in a rich Foundation were of gentle birth and good family. If a poor boy asked to join a monastery he ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... for itself in San Francisco, and was already organized and doing wonders at Honolulu. Its ministrations had been gladly accepted by the scores of officers and men among the volunteers, to whom the somewhat bare and crude conditions of camp hospitals were doubtless very trying. Women of gentlest birth and most refined associations donned its badge and dress and wrought in ward, kitchen, or refectory. It was a noble and patriotic purpose ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... this last letter a morning visit from Chantrey, the eminent sculptor, who was among our frequenter. His appearance and manners were simple and almost rustic, and he was shy and silent in society, all which may have been results of his obscure birth and early want of education. It was to Sir Francis Chantrey that my father's friends applied for the design of the beautiful silver vase which they presented to him at the end of his professional career. The sculptor's idea ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... more than content, with one wife. On the other hand, Froude does at least give a clue when he suggests that these frequent marriages were political moves. A female sovereign reigning in her own right had never been known in England, and up to the birth of Jane Seymour's son Edward the whole kingdom passionately desired that there should be a Prince of Wales. Edward himself was but a sickly child, and was not expected to live even for the short span of his actual career. Credulous ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... hundred had gathered in company to sing the long Christmas hymns they had learned as little children far away at home—endless canticles with endless repetitions, telling the story of the Christ-Child's birth at Bethlehem, of the adoration of the shepherds, and of the ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... for the moment. It seemed as if vaguely in his mind some strong purpose had already taken birth and was struggling to subjugate his will. His bronzed face marked clearly the workings of his thoughts: at first there had been a dulled, sombre look in his dark, deep-set eyes; then gradually a flame seemed to ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... greatness. A word escaped me in speaking to him, and I repent myself that I so spoke to him. But tell him,—and tell him truly,—that were my days fixed here for the next fifty years, were I sure of the rudest health, I would not carry my birth, my manners, my habits into that young lord's house. How long would it be, Mrs. Roden, before he saw some little trick that would displease him? Some word would be wrongly spoken, some garment would be ill-folded, some awkward movement ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... prevent him from putting you or anybody else into his place if he likes? Do you think that vernment or the Opposition would make any bones about accepting the seat if he offered it to them! Why should you be more squeamish than the first men, and the most honourable men, and men of the highest birth and position in the country, begad?" The Major had an answer of this kind to most of Pen's objections, and Pen accepted his uncle's replies, not so much because he believed them, but because he wished to believe them. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... worst, Ere we conquer and win the precious prize!— The struggle may last for a thousand years, And only with blood shall the field be bought; But the sons shall inherit, through blood and tears, The birth-right for 'which their old ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Catholic, and which should have for its purpose the defense of society against radicalism, of the states against the central government, and of the schools against secularization. A favorite saying of the founders was that "at the birth of the Empire Justice was not present." The party, gaining strength first in the Rhenish and Polish provinces of Prussia and in Bavaria, was able in the elections of 1871 to win a total of sixty seats. Employed by the Catholic clergy during the decade that followed to maintain the cause ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... difficulties through want of a passport, from which he was rescued by the American consul and sent home. He now entered the military academy at West Point, from which he obtained a dismissal on hearing of the birth of a son to his adopted father, by a second marriage, an event which cut off his expectations as an heir. The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his name was not mentioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this regard, and he committed himself at once to authorship for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... even at that moment, while thus I mused and murmured, my poor wife had been unexpectedly and prematurely delivered of an infant son—a tiny creature, in whom life was but a passing gleam, as of the imperfect moonlight, and of whom death took possession in the very instant of its birth. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... new conviction,—new at least to me,—that Christianity is an out-of-doors religion. From the birth in the grotto at Bethlehem (where Joseph and Mary took refuge because there was no room for them in the inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city wall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors. Except the discourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... right to live, a right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense. He quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that "she bids him begone," for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for them, and has, moreover, a good deal of truth in it under ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... to martiall men, Arthur claimeth the first mention, a Cornishman by birth, a King of Britaine by succession, & the second of the three Christian worthies by desert: whom (if you so please) that Captayne of Armes and Venery, Sir Tristram, shall accompany. From them, I must make a great leap (which conuinceth me an vnworthy associat of the antiquary Colledge) ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... little was written about the pathology of the appendix, the writers describing more the lesions of the cecum and surrounding structures. After the birth of the surgical craze, the exciting cause was located, or supposed to be located in the appendix, and the abnormal condition of the cecum was and is considered to be secondary or due to the lesions found in the appendix. ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... it. I say, if even some earth-born fire Have ever lured the loftiest head that earth Sees royal, toward a charm of baser birth And force less godlike than the sacred spell That links with him my mother, what were this To ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Spanish voyages was that made by De Quiros, who left Callao in December, 1605, in charge of an expedition of three ships. One of these vessels was commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres. De Quiros, who is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after the ships commanded by De Quiros became separated from the other vessels, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... I am not precisely clear as to what I mean when I say God. I don't know whether it is spirit, matter, or force; it is that big thing that brings forth worlds, establishes their orbits, and gives us heat, light, food, and water. To me, that is God and His love. Just that we are given birth, sheltered, provisioned, and endowed for our work. Evolution is the natural consequence of this. It is the plan steadily unfolding. If I were you, I wouldn't bother my head over these questions, they never have been scientifically explained to the beginning; ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... sow the wind we must reap the whirlwind. Terrible was the mortification and mental suffering which Franklin endured from the governor of New Jersey. He had lived down the prejudices connected with his birth and had become an influential and popular man. He, with increasing tenacity adhered to the British Government, and became even the malignant opponent of the Americans. He pronounced the idea of their successfully resisting the power of Great Britain, as utterly absurd. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... ever most exemplary; and it seems probable, that the amiable demeanour of Lady Hamilton, whose tender regard for Sir William could not fail to excite the admiration of every virtuous visitor, first gave birth to that ardent friendship by which Lord Nelson unquestionably felt himself attached to her ladyship. When the Queen of Naples found, that nothing could induce Sir William to leave his lady behind, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... on account of Qxe5 attacking the King and the Rook at the same time). Now, whatever White plays, he will have to retire again with his Queen as soon as Black attacks her with Kt-f6, and so he loses his birth-right of attack; for it will be Black who is a move ahead in the development instead of White, as it ought ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker
... Heatherstone would be constantly going over to the cottage; and he now asked himself the question, whether, after all the kindness and confidence which the intendant had shown him, he was right in any longer concealing from him his birth and parentage. He felt that he was doing the intendant an injustice, in not showing to him that confidence ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... neighbor, as oracle and leader. The earliest political division in Georgia was between the Clarke and Crawford factions. General John Clarke, a sturdy soldier of the Revolution, came from North Carolina, while William H. Crawford, a Virginian by birth and a Georgian by residence, led the Virginia element. The feud between Clarke and Crawford gave rise to numerous duels. Then came George M. Troup to reenforce the Crawford faction and defend States' Rights, even at the point of the sword. Troup and Clarke were rival candidates for Governor ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... an injurious influence over their general constitution. When taken to live with white men, they have larger families, and at the same time are liable to more disease consequent upon it, than in their wild and wandering state. They have customs, such as separation for forty days at the birth of a child, setting apart the female in a separate lodge at peculiar seasons, and forbidding her to touch any articles in common use, which bear a strong resemblance to the laws of uncleanness, and separation commanded to be observed towards Jewish females. These strongly corroborate the idea, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... They buried him at Dumpelsheim, And as they sorrowing set about A "Short Memoir," the Truth came out. He had been older than he knew. The Parish Clerk had put a "2" In place of "Nought," and made his Date Of Birth a Brace of Years too late. When he had written Book the Last, His true ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... not describe our first greeting—I could not do so even if I would. We did not know each other, and yet how near we felt! I doubt whether it will ever fall to my share again to be one of a number of human beings so different in birth and station in life, yet so nearly related, so closely tied to each other as we were on the day when we ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... interesting a way that children may read it with pleasure. It does not confine itself to the history of one section or period, but tells the story of all the principal events from the Indian occupancy through the Spanish and Mission days, the excitement of the gold discovery, the birth of the state, down to the latest events of yesterday and to-day. Several chapters, also, are devoted to the development of California's great industries. The work is designed not only for children, but also for older people interested in the story of California, including the tourists who ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... exhalations of sweet verse. Know, too, that he hath of late composed a notable and admirable epic in praise of the Sun, which, if it please Heaven to bring him, ere the year fall, to London, thou mayest have the high honour of setting in print, thereby assisting at the birth of ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... were doing. I told him, then he talked about Turenne. I said I thought he was our greatest general. He, that Turenne was only a learner in the art of war. I upheld him, and spoke of the battles and sieges in which he had taken part. Then he asked me about myself, and I told him my birth and bringing up, and he said he might be of assistance to me, and would call ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... the father and mother of Ab, and such was the boy himself. His surroundings have not been indicated with all the definiteness desirable, because of the lack of certain data, but, in a general way, the degree of his birth, the manner of his rearing and the natural aspects of his estate have been described. That the young man had a promising future could not admit of doubt. He was the first-born of an important family of a great race and his inheritance had no ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... another person on board, of whom I must by no means omit to speak, and that is Captain Willis. He was a very gentlemanly man, both in appearance and manners, as indeed he was by birth; nor had the rough school in which he was educated ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... life in abject slavery from an ignorance of the mode of acquiring their emancipation, notwithstanding they may be justly entitled to their freedom by birth and by ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... we may say that a sun-myth first represents the death of the day at sunset, when the sky is radiant as if dyed in blood. In the flushing morn light wins its victory again. Then this same myth becomes transferred to the death and birth of summer. Once more it is lifted into a higher sphere, while still holding on to its physical interpretation, and is applied to the world year. Finally, it is clothed with ethical attributes, becomes thoroughly anthropomorphized, and typifies the good and the evil, the ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... Here is a great people, great with every force that has ever beaten in the lifeblood of mankind. And it is secure. There is no one within its borders, there is no power among the nations of the earth, to make it afraid. But has it yet squared itself with its own great standards set up at its birth, when it made that first noble, naive appeal to the moral judgment of mankind to take notice that a government had now at last been established which was to serve men, not masters? It is secure in everything except the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... in this country of the Russian Information Bureau, which opposes the Soviet Government, has this to say in his book, The Birth of the Russian Democracy: The Bolsheviks organised their own cabinet, with Nicholas Lenine as Premier and Leon Trotsky Minister of Foreign Affairs. The inevitability of their coming into power became evident almost immediately after the ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... referred to at length by Father Sahagun.[11-[]] He distinguishes them from the naualli, though it is clear that they corresponded in functions to the nagualistic priests of the southern tribes. From the number and name of the day of birth they forecast the destiny of the child, and stated the power or spiritual influence ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton |
