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Beneficence   Listen
noun
Beneficence  n.  The practice of doing good; active goodness, kindness, or charity; bounty springing from purity and goodness. "And whose beneficence no charge exhausts."
Synonyms: See Benevolence.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beneficence" Quotes from Famous Books



... or indirect influence as to penetrate entire communities. In this connection I will say Odd-Fellowship is not a religious organization. Our work pertains particularly to this life, educating the heart of man to practical beneficence, alleviating the sufferings of humanity and elevating the character of man. Odd-Fellowship was not organized for the purpose of ridding the world of all its sorrows, but to ameliorate and to soften the suffering to which ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... should not have made him see, in this very craving after self-examination, caused by his inclination for truth; and in that extraordinary susceptibility of conscience which lead to self-reproach for egotism, only because he felt pleasure in exercising beneficence and that it did not contain enough sacrifice; it is singular, I say, that this same spirit of equity did not make him see how he shone in the only two faculties that can have no alloy of egotism, and which were very evidently the most striking qualities of his character. But he ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... selfish and uninteresting person. He is often a man who labours conscientiously and faithfully at an accomplishment, the exercise of which has become pleasurable to him. And thus a bore is the hardest of all people to convert, because he is, as a rule, conscious of virtue and beneficence. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... fields about Ramleh was the most luxuriant I ever saw, and the olive and fig attain a size and lusty strength wholly unknown in Italy. Judea cursed of God! what a misconception, not only of God's mercy and beneficence, but of the actual fact! Give Palestine into Christian hands, and it will again flow with milk and honey. Except some parts of Asia Minor, no portion of the Levant is capable of yielding such a harvest of grain, silk, wool, fruits, oil, and wine. The great disadvantage ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... generosity even nobler. Here and there, too, were book-men, in their little leisure; and, among the Germans, music-men. And these, with the others, worshiped Bigness and the growth, each man serving for his own sake and for what he could get out of it, but all united in their faith in the beneficence and glory ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... fell to kissing his hand and blessing him said, "Know that I am a stranger in this your city and the completion of kindness is better than its commencement; wherefore I pray thee of thy favour that thou make perfect to me thy good offices and generosity and bring me to the city-gate. So will thy beneficence be accomplished unto me and may God Almighty requite thee for me with good!" Ahmad replied, "No harm shall betide thee: go; I will bear thee company till thou come to thy place of safety." And he left him not till he brought him to the city-gate and said to him, "O youth, go in Allah's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... brought forth more acts of beneficence than charity herself; but, like an unkind parent, she disowns her offspring, and charges ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... the stress of my own illness of the previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which had necessitated a significant change in my life—a visit to Cromer. The chapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts of convalescence, wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as to the beneficence of the Deity, was already done, and one of the finest I had ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... representatives of the monastic orders. Thus the native Celtic Church, undermined by internal decay, was extinguished by external change and a course of aggression which rolled from St. Andrews until it reached the far-off shores of Iona. All that remained to speak of its vitality and beneficence to the people of Scotland consisted of the roofless walls of an early church, or an old churchyard with its Celtic cross; the names of the early pastors by whom the churches were founded, or the neighbouring wells at the old foundations, dedicated to their memory; the village fairs, stretching ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... Pressed again and again, however, he had been constrained finally to accede, and thus his relatives also had benefitted, as my grandfather, Tokimasa, and my father, Yoshitoki, who owed their prosperity to the beneficence of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... and originality as to give new interest to the ancient forms, and with such a wealth of appropriate symbolism in color, sculpture and mural painting as to make its great courts, towers and arches an inspiring story of Nature's beneficence and Man's progress. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... when practically the whole known world was brought under the sway of Rome. "War has ceased," Plutarch was able to declare in the days of the Roman Empire, and, though himself an enthusiastic Greek, he was unbounded in his admiration of the beneficence of the majestic Pax Romana, and never tempted by any narrow spirit of patriotism to desire the restoration of his own country's glories. But the Roman organization broke up, and no single state will ever be ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... But, ere the Gascon practice on great Harry, Sparkles of virtue shall shoot forth in him, In equal scorn of labours and of gold. His bounty shall be spread abroad so widely, As not to let the tongues e'en of his foes Be idle in its praise. Look thou to him And his beneficence: for he shall cause Reversal of their lot to many people, Rich men and beggars interchanging fortunes. And thou shalt bear this written in thy soul Of him, but tell it not; "and things he told Incredible to those who witness them; ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... wretches, both executioners and judges, have been strictly just! how little have they cared what gentleness, what generosity, what genius, their sentence have removed from the earth! Temperance and beneficence contain all other virtues. Take them home, Plato; split them, expound them; do what thou wilt with them, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... Tribunal: "Madame, your return has aroused the keenest joy. The memory of that delicate kindness which knew how to temper so many woes; of that active beneficence which repaired so many misfortunes, is imprinted on every heart. Every one says: 'Providence in giving to us the hero, whose vast designs are crowned with the most constant and prompt success, desired to complete his kindness, by placing near him ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... the master here pointed out the defectiveness of Rupert's logic and the beneficence of patience and study, as became their relations of master and pupil, but with the addition of a certain fellow sympathy and some amusing recital of his own boyish experiences, that had the effect of calling Rupert's dimples into action again. At the end of half an hour the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... If it be true that we must not follow a multitude to do evil, it is equally true that we must not follow a multitude even to do good, if it involve the neglect of our own peculiar duties. Our first, most peremptory, and most urgent duty, is, the improvement of our own character; so that public beneficence may not be neutralized by private selfishness,—public energy by private remissness,—that the applause of the world may not be bought at the expense of private and domestic wretchedness. So frequent and so lamentable are the proofs of human weakness ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... great, blessed purpose of gladdening and filling up the needs of the perfected spirits that wait, expectant of their food, upon Him. His girding Himself for service expresses not only the lowliness of His majesty and the beneficence of His power, but His use of all which He has and is for the blessing of those whom He keeps ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of Pleasure and Pain; theory of the Will. Doctrine of Happiness or the Good:—Pain no evil; discipline of endurance—Apathy. Theory of Virtue:—Subordination of self to the larger interests; their view of active Beneficence; the Stoical paradoxes; the idea of Duty; consciousness ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... observation, none noticing so humble a creature, Alban found Lois and made himself known to her. The amiable civilian with his two or three hundred words of English seemed as guileless as a child when he announced Master Zaniloff's message and dwelt upon his honorable master's beneficence. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... said Lady Ellinor, who had followed us into the room, unheard by us. "I can tell you what your father does more than like,—what he loves and serves every hour of his noble life,—justice, beneficence, honor, and his country. A man who loves these may be excused for indifference to the last geranium or the newest plough, or even (though that offends you more, Fanny) the freshest masterpiece by Lanseer, or the latest fashion honored by ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of the observations contained in the foregoing pages were derived from a lady, who is now beyond the reach of being affected by any thing in this sublunary world. Her beneficence of disposition induced her never to overlook any fact or circumstance that fell within the sphere of her observation, which promised to be in any respect beneficial to her fellow-creatures. To her gentle influence the public are indebted, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... fear of God, and has assured himself, by the strongest evidences, that he possesses confidence in the Eternal. His reign possesses a glory, the crown whereof is placed on the forehead of Orion, and an illumination which covers the Milky Way with the skirts of his robe; a beneficence which has given a new youth to the age; a justice which incloses the righteous within its vast tent; a liberality similar to a cloud which waters at once the leaves that have fallen from the trees and the trees themselves; a courage which, even when the clouds shed torrents of rain, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... this affection of those in humbler life that seems to speak the more eloquently for the beneficence and the triumph of his life's work. No funeral could have been less ostentatious, yet none could have been more impressive in the multitude that overflowed the church, or more conformable to his tenacious belief in the ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... revenue laws?' 'Let it be so,' says Carolina; 'what right exists to adopt a national policy that does not equally benefit all sections?' 'The very object of the policy,' replies Massachusetts, 'is, that it should benefit all sections; and the most desirable object of all, in the eye of beneficence, would be, that it should benefit the laboring white population of the cotton States, as well as others.' 'But,' says Carolina, 'this diversified industry can not be introduced, to much extent, where slavery exists.' 'That is an argument by implication,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... that Eugene was brought up in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord," as he would often declare with a mock severity of tone, that left a mixed impression as to the beneficence of the nurture and the abiding quality of the admonition. Here he spent his school days, not in acquiring a broad or deep basis for future scholarship, but in studying the ways and whims of womankind, in practising the subtile arts whereby the boy of from six to fifteen attains a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... of the responsibilities attached to their birth and station; and, addressing them affectionately as "children of the Sun," he exhorted them to imitate their great progenitor in his glorious career of beneficence to mankind. The novices then drew near, and, kneeling one by one before the Inca, he pierced their ears with a golden bodkin; and this was suffered to remain there till an opening had been made large enough for the enormous pendants which ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... fable if it were symbolic of truth; and here is fable, which, according to its author, is symbolic of the little regarded truth, that our pride rests mainly on our ignorance, for, as he sagely says, 'the good mouse knew not that there are also winged cats.' If she had her speculations concerning the beneficence of Deity would have been less orthodox, mayhap, but decidedly more rational. The wisdom of this pious mouse is very similar to that of the Theologian who knew not how sufficiently to admire God's goodness in causing large rivers almost always ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... find the ideal." And so one thing after another is put away. Family life attracted him perpetually. "I cannot escape," he writes, "from the ideal of it. A companion, of my life, of my work, of my thoughts, of my hopes; within a common worship—toward the world outside kindness and beneficence; education to undertake; the thousand and one moral relations which develop round the first—all these ideas intoxicate me sometimes." But in vain. "Reality, the present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much imagination, conscience, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... only in preserving the rights of property, but still more in preserving those belonging to the person, which arise from the prerogative of birth and of position.... From this rule of law and equity it follows that every system which, under an appearance of humanity and beneficence, would tend to establish between men an equality of duties, and to destroy necessary distinctions, would soon lead to disorder (the inevitable result of equality), and would bring about the overturn of ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... ages of the world, except the social, yet irrational ancient superstitions of Greece and Rome, mankind have vainly thought to propitiate the Almighty beneficence, by ridiculous acts of austere self-torment; and even the ignorant or designing followers of the pure and rational religion of Jesus, have copied all the monstrous mummery, and abominable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... who might well pose for a statue of peace, and whose loveliness is a mirror of the countless and untiring benefactions with which the people who work here are surrounded. Both the powers and the people of Germany may well be proud of the Krupps, for if sane beneficence were to be raised to the rank of statehood this great colony would well deserve the honor. The gross profits for the last year were $9,000,000, half of which was written off and the rest devoted to the reserve, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... the military representative only of the United States to make any promises such as you request. As you have already been informed, you may depend upon the good will of the Americans out here and the Government, of which you already know the beneficence, to determine these matters in ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... head, dressed in solemn black, and knee buckles; his linen beautifully clean, and with a peculiar bland expression of countenance. When he smiled he showed a row of teeth white as ivory, and his mild blue eye was the ne plus ultra of beneficence. He was the beau-ideal of a preceptor, and it was impossible to see him and hear his mild pleasing voice, without wishing that all your sons were under his protection. He was a ripe scholar, and a good one, and at the time we speak of had the care of upwards of one hundred boys. He was celebrated ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... into the country, visited the saints, and enjoyed the orange-groves for about two weeks. In the ocean we saw God's hand exhibited in might and power. Here we saw God's hand none the less, although exhibited in gentleness and beneficence. The orange-trees were a beautiful sight. They were loaded with fruit in various stages of development. On the very same tree there would be blossoms and oranges ranging in size from the small green ones to the ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... that I would demand a great deal of her," went on Mr. Cruger, in his best after-dinner manner. "I thank you for giving me everything I could desire! You are the daughter of a man whose charity and beneficence we all respect and admire, and—" Here he ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... accept the burden, not knowing that it would ever be lifted, and with this acceptance the sense of humiliation left her, so that she could more clearly see that she had had a right to her dismay. Her crippled life would hurt not only herself, but all that she meant to others—her beneficence, her radiance, her loving power; so hurt it, that, for one dark moment, had come just a dart of severity toward her father. The memory of her mother's implied criticism had repulsed it; dear, wonderful, transcendentalist, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... are on this subject," said Alwyn, with a tinge of satire in his tone, "if you grant a God, and make Him out to be supreme Love, why in the name of His supposed inexhaustible beneficence should we ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... knowledge of cultivation and the arts to the aboriginals of the country," thus preserving and civilizing them [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., pp. 53, 57, 60, 77, 79, 81, etc.]; and the public men who represented districts remote from the frontier shared these views of large, though vague, beneficence. But neither the white frontiersmen nor their red antagonists possessed "philosophic minds." They represented two stages of progress, ages apart; and it would have needed many centuries to bring the lower to the level ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... caused by the motion of beauty, music, poetry, beneficence, compassion, &c. may be ranked as the highest intellectual pleasure the mind is capable of perceiving, and brings with it a sort of undetermined consciousness of the delicacy of our own perceptions in making the discovery, a degree of that glorying that Longinus observes always ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds

... had ill-treated him when the Arato sailed under Cardatas, and he fully agreed with his fellow-blacks that the scoundrel should have been shot. But now his feelings began to undergo a change. A man with a bottle of spirits might prove to be an angel of mercy, a being of beneficence, and if he would share with a craving fellow-being his rare good fortune, why should not all feelings of disapprobation be set aside? Inkspot could see no reason why they should not be, and softly slipping from ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... whether virtue and duty go along with it or no. Grant it; but surely these observations may be of use if they tend to check unreasonable expectations. One of the most difficult tasks is to keep benevolence in alliance with beneficence. Of the former there is no want, but we do not see our way to the latter. Tenderness of heart is indispensable for a good man, but a certain sternness of heart is as needful for a wise one. We are as impatient under the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the marble altar, and which, if unassisted by the vista of the dark aisle, the dimly-seen procession, the choral hymn, the banner, and the relic, faints, and sees no God: no, none of these will be the piety of a heart exulting in the beneficence of the All-Good. Then and there, why should I have wished to have crept and grovelled under piled and sordid stone? Since first the aspiring architect spanned the arch at Thebes, which is not everlasting, and lifted the column at Rome, which is not immortal, was there ever dome like ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... our author is very conspicuous in his last will, in favour of his widow and son; in which he commands them to extend that beneficence to his poor relations, which they always found from him; and not to suffer any of those to want, whose necessitous merit, had shared in all the external advantages he possessed. As he may be proposed (considered meerly as a writer) for an example worthy of imitation; so in the character ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... or, if this world of ours could be conceived to be so changed as that the practice of killing, stealing, or telling lies would be conducive to the general good, the practice in question would obtain a new name in the Utilitarian vocabulary. Crime would become beneficence; and to kill, to steal, or to tell lies would be not wrong, but right. These are propositions which, without abjuring the prime articles of his creed, the most timid Utilitarian has no alternative but to endorse; but how, then, can he shut ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... her life, if she becomes your wife! Unfortunately it does not suffice that you should think it fit. Though you loved each other as well as any man and woman that ever were brought into each other's arms by the beneficence of God, you cannot make her happy,—unless you can assure her the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... found difficult. It must be good to live on earth if everyone loved his neighbor as she loved him and he loved her; and life could not be a great hardship if in every trouble there was some one who was always ready to hear our cry and help us, out of pure beneficence. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the poet, who had hitherto remained silent, his mind apparently absorbed in thought, exclaimed, 'Whatever the king hath ordained is only an additional proof of his beneficence and condescension'; and then in ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... parlor, the returning soldier is still master of the situation. Thank heaven for the beneficence which surrounds the birth of love with the supervisory ministration of no meddling old woman! Were it otherwise, the ancient and honorable profession of which Mrs. Sairy Gamp is the faithful exponent would never have been called into being. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... to go back to the Perdu and claim Celia. He resolved that he would buy property near the Perdu and settle there. He had no wish to live in the world; but to the world he would return often, for the sake of the beneficence of its friction,—as a needle, he thought, is the keener for being thrust often amid the grinding particles of the emery-bag. He resigned his situation and went aboard an up-river boat,—a small boat that would stop at every petty landing, if only to put ashore an old woman or a bag of meal, ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... exile of the Pope, the French occupation, and many similar accidents, were supported with a noble resignation, and forgotten with the readiness of good taste. 1815 passed a sponge over some years of very foul history. All the inscriptions which recalled the glory or the beneficence of France were conscientiously erased. It was even proposed to do away with the lighting of the streets, not only because they threw too strong a light upon certain nocturnal matters, but because they dated from the time of Miollis and De Tournon. Even ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... replied, "I appreciate something of what such a course must mean to you—a clergyman." He paused, and a look came upon his face, a look that might scarce have been called a smile—Hodder remembered it as a glow—reminiscent of many things. In it a life was summed ups in it understanding, beneficence, charity, sympathy, were all expressed, yet seemingly blended into one. "I do not know what my testimony may be worth to you, my friend, but I give it freely. I sometimes think I have been peculiarly fortunate. But I have lived a great many years, and the older I get and the more I see of human ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet's ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering by the father's foolish fondness. He would ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... in my happiness, and my after reception with the public; none have shared my sorrow more kindly; and I am proud to say that one of the most excellent men which Denmark possesses feels towards me as towards his own child. His beneficence was conferred without his making me feel it painful either by word or look. That was not the case with every one to whom, in this change of my fortunes, I had to offer my thanks; I was told to think of my inconceivable happiness and my poverty; in Collin's ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... "Personal God" as he means. In no way inconsistent with that chapter are my concluding remarks, contrasting with the spasmodic Jewish Divinity a Supreme Being manifested in the operation of invariable laws—whose very invariability is the guarantee of beneficence and security. If Dr. Lightfoot, however, succeeded in convicting me of inconsistency in those final expressions, there could be no doubt which view must logically be abandoned, and it would be a new sensation to secure the approval ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... Frivolity Lote Tree, Concord Lotus, Eloquence Lotus Flower, Estranged Love Lotus Leaf, Recantation Love in a Mist, Perplexity Love Lies Bleeding, Desertion Lucurn, Life Lupine, Voraciousness Madder, Calumny Magnolia, Love of Nature Maiden Hair, Secrecy Mallow, Wildness Mallow, Marsh, Beneficence Marrow, Syrian, Persuasion Manchineal Tree, Duplicity Mandrake, Rarity Maple, Reserve Marianthus, Hope for Better Marigold, Grief, Chagrin Marigold, French, Jealousy Marigold and Cyprus, Despair Marjoram, Blushes Marvel of Peru, Timidity ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... not to touch her with vulgar hands, to leave her alone with her wounds and her memories, not prating in the market-place either of her troubles or her hopes, but waiting as a man should wait, for the slow process, the sensible beneficence, of time—this was the desire of Ransom's heart, and he was aware of how little it could minister to the entertainment ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... They show no marked departure from the theology of the Vedas, though many of the old gods continue to be dethroned either to disappear altogether, or to reappear in new shapes, like Varuna, who turns into a god of night to be worshipped no longer for his beneficence, but to be placated for his cruelty; whilst, on the other hand, Prajapati is raised to the highest throne, with Sun, Air, and Fire in close attendance. What the Brahmanas do show is that the Brahman has acquired the overwhelming ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... unwillingly, from a sense of obligation, I should respect them deeply and profoundly. But I have not often found that the people who complain most of their social duties, and who discharge them most sedulously, complain because such duties interrupt a course of Christian beneficence. It is, indeed, rather the other way; it is generally true that those who see a good deal of society (from a sense of duty) and find it dull, are the people who have no particular interests or ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sympathy with the pleasure of his guests and the success of his own strategy. These few insignificant Spaniards dislodged, a half-dozen forts in this harbor, and the combined navies of the world might be defied; while a great chain of hungry settlements fattened and prospered exceedingly on the beneficence of the most fertile ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... master to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay in the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or less illicit, there are few men who never do good ones. If only from self-love, curiosity, or by way of variety, or by chance, every man has his moment of beneficence; he may call it his error, he may never do it again, but he sacrifices to Goodness, as the most surly man sacrifices to the Graces once or twice in his life. If Moreau's faults can ever be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent kindness in succoring ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... shall be thy privilege to make sashtangam at the feet—which are the true lilies of Nilufar— of us the Lord Brahmin, who are endowed with all the virtues and all the sciences, who are great as Mount Meru, to whom belongs illustrious knowledge of the four Vedas, the splendor of whose beneficence is as the noon-flood of the sun, who are renowned throughout the fourteen worlds, whom the fourteen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... "beneficent" doing well; now, "benevolent" includes both kinds of feelings and actions, and "beneficent" is restricted to acts of kindness on a great scale, and generally performed by some one of exalted station and character: hence, we speak of the "beneficence" rather than the "benevolence" of the Creator. It may perhaps be said to follow from this, that "benevolent" draws our attention more to the character of the agent; "beneficent," to that of the act performed—retaining, so far, a tinge ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... fourth dimension or on making gold from sea-water, or on using moonlight to run dynamos, or on Pope Joan or Prester John. And with it all he must retain his simple-hearted faith in the great art of writing and in the beneficence ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... cannot yet help thinking that it had its share in that development of the character of Falconer which has chiefly attracted me to the office of his biographer. There may have been in it the exercise of some patronage; probably it was not pure from the pride of beneficence; but at least it was a loving patronage and a vigorous beneficence; and, under the reaction of these, the good which in Robert's nature was as yet only in a state of solution, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... verbatim. "In Madame T———," said she, "beauty, wit, goodness of heart, grace, talents, all are united. In a gay world, where malice subsists in all its force, her inconsistencies alone have been talked of, without any mention being made of the numerous acts of beneficence which have balanced, if they have not effaced, her weakness. Would you believe," continued she, "that, in Paris, the grand theatre of misconduct, where moral obligations are so much disregarded, where we daily commit actions which we condemn in others; would you ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... Such wide-spread beneficence as this had not, of course, excluded her sister-in-law's daughters. It was really to her aunt Lydia that Rosamund Marshall was indebted for her year at the New York school; her mother had unquestioningly accepted Mrs. Rhodes's declaration that the institution ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... sufferer be a stranger, a foreigner, an enemy even? Nature in trouble, in consternation, shrieks 'He is a man!' and every heart and hand is prompt to the rescue.' 'To a high office and ministry, to a life of beneficence, pity and love, each man should deem himself called by a divine vocation, by the appointment of nature; and otherwise living, should judge himself to be an abortion, a mistake, without signification or use in a world like ours. And the beauty, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... penny in the world he could very honestly accept Moll's hospitality, but that now being well-to-do, thanks to her bounty, he blessed Heaven he had sufficient good breeding, and valued himself well enough not to take advantage of her beneficence. However, hearing I had a house of my own, and could offer him a bed, he willingly agreed to be my guest for the night, regarding me as one of his own quality. We stayed to sup at the Court, where he entertained us with a lengthy account of his late voyage, and how being taken in a tempest, his ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... served in Germany and Britain, and under his father in Judaea; on his father's elevation to the throne persecuted the Jews, laid siege to Jerusalem, and took the city in A.D. 70; on his accession to the throne he addressed himself to works of public beneficence, and became the idol of the citizens; his death was sudden, and his reign lasted only three years; during that short period he won for himself the title of the "Delight of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... chief donors belong to the class of philanthropists who do not care to advertise their beneficence. I, therefore, respect their wishes and ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... conferences have been held in Italy during the year. At the Geographical Congress of Venice, the Beneficence Congress of Milan, and the Hygienic Congress of Turin this country was represented by delegates from branches of the public service or by private citizens duly accredited in an honorary capacity. It is hoped that Congress will give such prominence to the results of their participation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... divide moral duties into two classes, denoted by the ill-chosen expressions, duties of perfect and of imperfect obligation; the latter being those in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to our choice; as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeed bound to practise, but not towards any definite person, nor at any prescribed time. In the more precise language of philosophic jurists, duties of perfect obligation are those duties in virtue of which a correlative right resides in some person or persons; duties of imperfect ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill

... volume I shall present, more in detail, the labors of the Christian Fathers in founding the new civilization which still reigns among the nations. And in the creation which succeeded destruction we shall be additionally impressed with the wisdom and beneficence of the Great First Cause, through whose providences our fallen race is led to the new Eden, where truth and justice and love reign in perpetual beauty ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... best housekeepers are they that are the most widely beneficent. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." God will take care of the stockings, if you take care of the heads! [Laughter and applause]. Universal beneficence never hinders anybody's usefulness in any particular field of duty. Therefore, woman's sphere should not be limited to the household. The public welfare requires that she should have a thought of affairs outside of the household, and in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... were wont to say that he devoted too much of his patrimony to pleasure. This word was calumniously interpreted. Merard Saint Just has given the true sense of it: "Bailly's pleasure was beneficence." ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... athwart the wastes of the ocean, often forgetting that the spirit of the Creator is abroad equally on the ocean and on the land, ready to receive that homage of his creatures, which is a tribute due to beneficence without bounds, a holiness that is spotless, and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... no great memories, I will so live, it shall remember me For deeds of such divine beneficence As rivers have, that teach men what is good By blessing them— And make their name, now but a badge of scorn, A glorious banner floating in their midst, Stirring the air they breathe with impulses Of generous pride, exalting fellowship Until it ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... Rock of our salvation. Even our deepest humiliations he makes the occasion of spiritual pride. Thus we fall into darkness, and thrust ourselves through with many sorrows. If we have performed any extraordinary acts of self-denial, or of Christian beneficence, he stirs up in our hearts a vain-glorious spirit. If we have overcome any of the corruptions of our hearts, or any temptation, he excites a secret feeling of self-satisfaction and self-complacency. He puts on the mask of religion. Often, during ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... last upon Clayton that his Detroit patron had certainly followed a singular course in his apparent beneficence. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... blessing on our labors, we have ventured to make an important addition to our original plan, and do therefore earnestly solicit the support and assistance of all who can feel the tender emotions of sympathy and compassion or relish the exalted pleasure of beneficence. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... by the divine beneficence of Providence, your organism is so ordered as to adapt itself within certain wide limits to ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... 'tis of his poverty. O dear my son, be content with thy grade and thy good, nor covet aught of thy fellow. O dear my son, be not neighbourly with the ignorant nor do thou break with him bread, and joy not in the annoy of those about thee and when thy foe shall maltreat thee meet him with beneficence. O dear my son, fear the man who feareth not Allah and hold him in hate. O dear my son, the fool shall fall when he trippeth; but the wise man when he stumbleth shall not tumble and if he come to the ground he shall rise up quickly, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... problems of his life; and of these Flossie was the most insoluble. And now that he had given up thinking of her, had abandoned her to her own mysterious workings, it too had been solved and in the same simple, inevitable way. His contempt for Flossie's methods could not blind him to the beneficence ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... or intellect on mundane questions might be met by appeal to the mysteries of a universe which may conceivably be other in reality than to us it appears. But it is to be supposed that divine beneficence would give its creatures all powers of intelligence necessary to their moral welfare, above all those entailing reward or punishment ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... that he stood in need of them, nor wanted them; but he manifestly declared his glory in creating, and producing, and commanding, without being under any obligation, nor out of necessity. Loving-kindness, and to show favor, and grace, and beneficence, belong to him; whereas it is in his power to pour forth upon men a variety of torments, and afflict them with various kinds of sorrows and diseases, which, if he were to do, his justice could not be arraigned, nor would he be chargeable with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... child has a keepsake in his hands, something which might betray the wrongs done by your beneficence, your kindness in deserting him. You might have to blush if you saw him struggling for life, and chanced to recollect that once you clasped him to your breast. When you read these words the keepsake will be in your own safe keeping; you are ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Admiral and the Commandant, how shall we appreciate the beneficence of their visit, the urbanity of their attentions to us, and the happy and hearty manner in which they have accepted our hospitality. Why the Admiral—a greater triumph, let me say, than he could ever ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... for Lady Ralegh and young Walter, should Ralegh so long live. This boon, following the rest, went far towards remedying the overwhelming pecuniary consequences of a judicial crime. The King is entitled to share the credit with Cecil. He was not incapable of caprices of beneficence. Pity, rather than a sense of justice, moved him. He loved to be magnanimous at small cost. He chose to regard Ralegh as a traitor when he was innocent. He reaped from the injustice the additional satisfaction ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... inculcate a better feeling between the poor, and rich, declaring that the latter are 'reservoirs in which the Most High makes to flow the rich streams of his beneficence, to be laid up and husbanded for his all-wise and all-seeing purposes, and for seasons of distress and affliction to the poor. Instead, then, of looking on them as their greatest enemies, they should, on the contrary, consider them as they really are, their best friends. This is the position ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... first assertion of the usefulness and beneficence of the institution from a southern man of political repute came from the governor of South Carolina in 1830[324]. How then are we to explain the profound change of sentiment indicated by the leading ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... her children yet another lesson of beneficence, she desired me on New Year's eve to get from Paris, as in other years, all the fashionable playthings, and have them spread out in her closet. Then taking her children by the hand, she showed them all the dolls ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... sun! The beneficence of a warm, golden finger that reached gently through the port-hole and rested on my eye. What had happened? Oh—yes. "Like a blackbird in the spring." Slowly I fought my way back to consciousness. Triplett was sitting in a corner still clutching the hammer. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... their household, and indifferent to all legitimate objects of charity and benevolence. These are indeed but the necessary fruits of unfaithfulness to this law; for the course of God's providence indicates the impossibility of our faithfulness to the duty of Christian beneficence, and at the same time lay up for our children more than a sufficiency. We find indeed, that in almost every instance in which parents have transcended the limits of competence, and thus raised their children above the necessity of doing anything themselves for a ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... reserved:—As a Friend, constant, open, facetious, and cheerful:—In the Relations of a Husband, Father, and Master, the deep and real Sorrow of his Widow, the mournful Tears of his Children, and the unusual Cries and Lamentations of his Servants, are invincible Proofs in his Favour. His Beneficence is witnessed by the Sighs of the Poor and Thanks of the Tradesmen: And his Death is universally lamented, because his ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various

... struck by the beneficence and breadth of the great designs which inspire and support him. The Encyclopaedia, it has been said, was no peaceful storehouse in which scholars and thinkers of all kinds could survey the riches they had acquired; it was a gigantic siege-engine ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... king, the son of a king, and my name is Agib, son of Khesib. My father died, and I took the kingdom after him and ruled my subjects with justice and beneficence. My capital city stood on the shore of a wide spreading sea, on which I had fifty merchant ships and fifty smaller vessels for pleasure and a hundred and fifty cruisers equipped for war; and near at hand were many great islands in ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... The angel whose beneficence once hovered above this quarter being dead, usury, on the lowest scale, rushed in and took his place. To the old judge, Popinot, succeeded Cerizet; and strange to say,—a fact which it is well to study,—the effect produced, socially speaking, was much the same. Popinot loaned money without ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... remembrance of my father [I learned] modesty and a manly character; from my mother, piety and beneficence, abstinence not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts. . . . From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... we set out in the same way. We invite him to admire our versatility, to laugh at our wit, to frequent our house, to sit at our table; through it all, our desire to shine breaks forth. Sometimes, also, with a patron's prodigality, we offer him the beneficence of a public entertainment of our own choosing, unless we ask him to find amusement at our home, as we sometimes do to make up a party at cards, with the arriere-pensee of exploiting him to our own profit. Do you think it the height of pleasure for others to admire us, to admit ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... and to earn more pay,—and to let them amuse themselves. From that time on he refused to be looked upon as the deus ex machina of the town. He decided that the best way to give English lessons to foreigners was to improve the school. His beneficence in supplying them with pure water at the mill did not prevent a ravaging typhoid epidemic because the town water was not watched. He saw that the best way to improve health was to strengthen the health board and to make ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... little; the command of an excellent master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to be useful. The slave repines, and such is the domestic destitute of any personal attachment for his master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him whose beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp? The master dresses and wages highly his pampered train; but this is the calculated cost of state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, for a Hercules in the hall, or an Adonis for the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... The band of harvesters appears, bearing in triumph the last sheaf, adorned with flowers and ribbons. The grandfather, Remy, full of joy, pronounces a discourse of rude and simple eloquence on the beneficence of Providence, and of the sun He causes to shine, after which a collection is proposed in favor of the orator and his granddaughter. Every one gives his offering. Dame Rose puts in a new five-franc piece, the father Fauveau a penny, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... It has done away a part of my ignorance of the world in which I live. It has led me to the situation in which I am now placed. It has introduced me to the knowledge of many good people. It has made me the witness and the subject of many acts of beneficence and generosity. My knowledge of Welbeck has been useful to me. It has enabled me to be useful to others. I look back upon that allotment of my destiny which first led me to his door, with gratitude ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... hotter every minute; but it was good. The vistas stretched far—all satisfying. Bhanah said the monsoon was close. "Beneficence"; the Indian idea of a deluge. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... as vital and even more pressing than the Panama Canal. It is worthy of the great Republic and of the great engineer—an achievement if successful which would twin with Panama and make Colonel Goethals immortal and our country's beneficence and enterprise famous ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... man's debt. Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult. Frugality is not only the basis of quiet, but of beneficence. No man can help others that wants help himself; we must have enough before we ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... nation largely depends. Doubtless most of us would prefer that the supply of teachers should be maintained by voluntary enlistment, and that their training should be undertaken, like that of medical students, by institutions which owe their origin to private or public beneficence rather than to the State; nevertheless, the obligation to secure adequate numbers of suitable candidates and to provide for their professional training rests ultimately on the State. The obligation has been partially recognised as far as elementary education is concerned, but it ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... a larger sphere than justice. The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind, but kindness and beneficence should be extended to creatures ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... first and most powerfully swayed the Aryan mind." The chief gods were the Father-heaven; Indra, the god of thunder and of rain, from whom the refreshing showers descended; Varuna, the encompassing sky; and Agni, the god of fire. Among these Indra, from his beneficence, more and more attracted worship. Soma, too, was worshiped; soma being originally the intoxicating juice of a plant. Brihaspati, the lord of prayer, personifying the omnipresent power of prayer, was adored. Thirty-three gods in all were invoked. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... one?" repeated I, in a tone that must have expressed but little alacrity of beneficence, although I was ready to do the old man any amount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself. "A very great favor, do you say? My time is brief, Mr. Moodie, and I have a good many preparations to make. But be good enough to tell ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... before. As for himself he took to wife the procuratrix and lay with her that night: and next day he set apart for her an apartment in his Serraglio, with handmaidens for her service and a fixed daily allowance And the people marvelled at their Caliph's generosity and natural beneficence and princely widsom; nor did he forget to send all these histories to be recorded in his annals. When Shahrazad ceased speaking Dunyazad exclaimed, "O my own sister, by Allah in very sooth this is a right pleasant tale and a delectable; never was heard the like of it, but prithee ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Godd in tier cloud of Olympian beneficence; a large and ample lady, especially built for the role of divinity. Peter felt suddenly awe-stricken. How had he dared come here? Neither in the Hotel de Soto, with its many divinities, nor in the palace of Nelse Ackerman, the king, had he felt such a sense of his own lowliness ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... my landlady)—and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre. By this, if by nothing else, I recognise the beneficence of the high gods—they have ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... to draw; and in our own day we have seen Cyrano de Bergerac coining money all around the world. There were not any endowed theatres in Elizabethan London. Give the crowd the sort of plays it wants, and you will not have to seek beneficence to keep your theatre floating. But, on the other hand, no endowed theatre will ever lure the crowd to listen to the sort of plays it does not want. There is a wise maxim appended to one of Mr. George Ade's Fables ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... life and happiness to so many afflicted hearts." "Madame," said the king, altho' in a tone less firm, "you force me to do what my principles condemn; but since it must be so, I yield; and only rejoice that the first personal favor you request of me is to perform an act of beneficence. Ladies," added he, turning towards the comtesse de Moyau and her sister-in-law, "you owe the lives of your parents to the generous mediation of the comtesse du Barry." The joy of the Louernes was only equalled by the base calumny ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... no man ever manages a legitimate business in this life, that he is not doing a thousand-fold more for other men than he is trying to do even for himself. For, in the economy of God's providence, every right and well organized business is a beneficence and not a selfishness. And not less is it so because the merchant, the mechanic, the publisher, the artist, think merely of their profit. They are in fact working more for others than ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... place in the thoughts and actions of Louis. All the chroniclers of the age, all the historians of his reign, have celebrated his charity as much as his piety; and the philosophers of the eighteenth century almost forgave him his taste for relics, in consideration of his beneficence. And it was not merely legislative and administrative beneficence; St. Louis did not confine himself to founding and endowing hospitals, hospices, asylums, the Hotel-Dieu at Pontoise, that at Vernon, that at Compiegne, and, at Paris, the house of Quinze-Vingts, for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... absolute SHALL?' not marking his own absolute WILL to take everything from them, his impatience of the slightest opposition to his own pretensions being in proportion to their arrogance and absurdity. If the great and powerful had the beneficence and wisdom of Gods, then all this would have been well: if with a greater knowledge of what is good for the people, they had as great a care for their interest as they have themselves, if they were seated above the world, sympathizing with the welfare, but not feeling ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt



Words linked to "Beneficence" :   free grace, good, goodness, grace of God, benevolence, maleficence, beneficent, grace



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