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Beneficent   Listen
adjective
Beneficent  adj.  Doing or producing good; performing acts of kindness and charity; characterized by beneficence. "The beneficent fruits of Christianity."
Synonyms: See Benevolent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beneficent" Quotes from Famous Books



... varied views as they do when dealing with the name of Osiris. Some give Ashur a geographical significance, urging that its original form was Aushar, "water field"; others prefer the renderings "Holy", "the Beneficent One", or "the Merciful One"; while not a few regard Ashur as simply a dialectic form of the name of Anshar, the god who, in the Assyrian version, or copy, of the Babylonian Creation myth, is chief of the "host of heaven", and the father of Anu, Ea, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... get double wages: the odd hundred and twenty would, of course, be driven into other trades, after suffering much distress. And, on this account, I would call in Parliament, because then there would be a temporary compensation offered to the temporary sufferers by a far-sighted and, beneficent measure. Besides, without Parliament, I am afraid the masters could not do it. The fork-grinders would blow up the machines, and the men who worked them, and their wives and their children, and their lodgers, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we shall be felt through this whole continent, that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization, through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... should ever come to Cambridge, or near head-quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... multiplied and increased in thousands and thousands of huts in the great cities of Egypt, and in the rural districts along the banks of the Nile. The good, too, which he thus commenced, has perpetuated itself. Alexandria has continued to fulfill its beneficent function for two thousand years. It is the only monument of his greatness which remains. Every thing else which he accomplished perished when he died. How much better would it have been for the happiness of mankind, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... imagined, than the situation of this young, generous and ill-fated prince. From boyhood his heart had been bent on mighty things; he had looked upon the royal grandeur that awaited his maturer years, only as the means of realising those projects for the good of men, which his beneficent soul was ever busied with. His father's dispositions, and the temper of the court, which admitted no development of such ideas, had given the charm of concealment to his feelings; his life had been in prospect; and we are the more attached to him, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... an admiration for their beneficent activities, I have always wanted to meet a novel with a lot about dentists in it, and now Miss DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON, in The Tunnel (DUCKWORTH), has satisfied my desire. Dentists—a houseful of them—spittoons, revolving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... never have taken up arms against the Government had not a miscreant of their own nation [Riel], profiting by their discontent, excited them thereto. He gained their confidence by a false and hypocritical piety, and having drawn them from the beneficent influence of their clergy, he brought them to look upon himself as a prophet, a man inspired by God and specially charged with a mission in their favour, and forced them ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... came over to the House from the Senate under a Senator's name. It was one of those "anti-monopolistic" measures which Democrats put their whole hearts into, sometimes, and believe in and fight for magnificently; an idea conceived in honesty and for a beneficent purpose, in the belief that a legislature by the wave of a hand can conjure the millennium to appear; and born out of an utter misconception of man and railroads. The bill needs no farther description than this: if it passed and became ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... should corrupt their morals. The king cast a wreath of heavy, scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my honored presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be remembered by the gods. He said that since I had set my magnificent foot in his kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent more than the average. I said that the fame of the king had reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... has now arrived to assert before all the world the American origin of these universally beneficent inventions. Such a demonstration should be made, if only for the instruction of the rising generation. Not a school book has fallen into the hands of the writer that correctly sets forth the origin of the subject ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... 18th Brumaire, when fatal laws were promulgated, and when the destructive principles proclaimed anew were already dragging along men and things with a rapidity which it would soon have been impossible to arrest—who appeared suddenly like a beneficent star, who came to abrogate these laws, who filled up the half-open abyss? You have survived, each one of you, through those threatening scenes; you live, and you owe it to him whose image you now behold. You, who were miserable outlaws, have returned, you ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... In the meantime and until the Congress has legislated otherwise it will be my duty to continue the military governments which have existed since our occupation and give to the people security in life and property and encouragement under a just and beneficent rule. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... beneficent act of vandalism, and, finding that no thunderbolts of retribution descended from the skies, greatly relished the change. If one or two aged persons complained that they could not sleep as sweetly during sermon-time in the now clear atmosphere of the church, and that the parson's eye was keener than ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... beneficent employment of capital was illustrated by the profession of banking which, like most of the arts which exhibit the highest refinement of the practical intellect, had been given to the Romans by the Greeks.[154] It had penetrated from Magna Graecia to Latium and ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... them. They at once lost their repute, and ceased to be in any demand. In the few instances in which they were tried the experiment was followed by no good results; and even those individuals who had fancied themselves cured, and had been loudest in spreading the praises of these beneficent compounds, now, as if for the utter demolition of the poor youth's credit, suffered under a recurrence of the worst symptoms, and, in more than one case, perished miserably: insomuch (for the days of witchcraft were still within the memory of living men and women) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... the millionaire palaces of her own land; and, in her enthusiasm, she even fancied it was further sanctified by the grim monastic founders who had once been content with bread and pulse in the crumbling and dismantled refectory. In the plenitude of her feelings she felt a slight recognition of some beneficent being who had rolled this golden apple at her feet, and felt as if she really should like to "do ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... chanting ceased and the last notes of the organ, mingling with the vibrations of the loud "A-men" as it issued from the strong chests of the intoning clergy, sent a murmuring echo through the distant arches, and the hushed assembly were awaiting the beneficent words of the archbishop, a burgher, impatient to get home, or fearing for his purse in the tumult of the crowd when the worshippers dispersed, slipped quietly away, at the risk of being called a bad Catholic. On which, a nobleman, leaning against one of the enormous columns that surround ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... as well as the beneficent, belongs to the "Befana," the Epiphany visitor who to Italian children is the great gift-bringer of the year, the Santa Klaus of the South. "Delightful," say Countess Martinengo, "as are the treasures she puts in ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... but streaks of morning light, however. Long years had to pass, and many painful struggles to be engaged in, before the Sun of Righteousness shone clearly with His beneficent rays on the thick woods and the shady corners of these lovely valleys. Among those who have been the means of promoting the revival of true religion in the Waldensian Church stand out conspicuously the names of Dr. Gilly and General Beckwith. The former paid his first visit to the valleys in 1823. ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... lecture that art would create a new brotherhood among men by furnishing a universal language. I said that under its beneficent influences war might pass away. Thinking this, what place can I ascribe to art in our education? If children grow up among all fair and lovely things, they will grow to love beauty and detest ugliness before they know the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... a spring, half-way down, has the rare Viola palustris around it. The whole tract remained untouched till a pleasant residence called the Grange was taken out of it to the south, at a ground rent, by Rowland Jones Bateman, Esq., whose beneficent kindness and excellent religious influence told on all the neighbourhood, and especially on the hamlet of Allbrook, till ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... which had been asked for many days ago. The new moon seen last night kept the king engaged at home, paying his devotions with his magic horns or fetishes in the manner already described. The spirit of this religion—if such it can be called—is not so much adoration of a Being supreme and beneficent, as a tax to certain malignant furies—a propitiation, in fact, to prevent them bringing evil on the land, and to insure a fruitful harvest. It was rather ominous that hail fell with violence, and lightning burnt down one of the palace huts, while the king was in ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... raged up and down the empty gilded and mirrored drawing-room, finding myself quite unable to reconcile the situation with my faith in a beneficent Deity; and then consoled myself by chronicling my tottering faith in my diary. I wrote a diary until I married. Then, I suppose, I became more interested in life than in recording my own feelings. At any ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... the universe. Wild and visionary as they were, they were not without their uses; if it were only for having purged the superstitions of Europe of the dark and disgusting forms with which the monks had peopled it, and substituted, in their stead, a race of mild, graceful, and beneficent beings. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... rays of his magnificence, and easily made angry by opposition; but he was not naturally prone to inflict evil, and did in some degree recognise it as a duty attached to his splendour that he should be beneficent to the inferiors with whom he was connected. Great as was his wrath against the present Vicar of Bullhampton, and thoroughly as he conceived it to be expedient that so evil-minded a pastor should be driven ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... under renewals and various expedients to avoid the ruination of closing out. This is more than an average well-to-do community, selected from this or any other central county of Kansas. We are realizing to the full that 'Beneficent Effect of Falling Prices' which was so ably set forth (from his standpoint) by Dean Gordon in THE ARENA for March. If all people were out of debt, falling prices might not work so great injustice. But when a vast majority of ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... Drusus; they saw the strange land through one another's eyes; they expressed their own thoughts through one another's lips; they were happy together, as if children at play; and Fabia was their never exacting, ever beneficent, guardian goddess. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... of earth have in the scenes which transpired at the foot of Horeb's holy mount. To the instructions there uttered, the mighty ones of every age,—the founders of empires, statesmen, law-givers, philanthropists, patriots, and wise men, have sought for their noblest conceptions, and their most beneficent regulations, and it would be impossible to estimate the influence of those instructions upon all the after history of the world. But if the Almighty there revealed himself as the God of kingdoms, the all-wise and infinitely good Ruler of men in a national capacity, not less did He make ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... could not be doubted; he liked her adoration of all his performances, and he regarded her with beneficent protection, as a piece of property; he made her magnificent presents, and conceded to her that the wedding tour should not be beyond Clifton, whence they would return to Willow Lawn, and judge ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from the sea Puitika to the sea Vouru-kasha, towards the well-watered tree, whereon grow the seeds of my plants of every kind by hundreds, by thousands, by hundreds of thousands. Those plants, I, Ahura Mazda, rain down upon the earth, to bring food to the faithful, and fodder to the beneficent cow; to bring food to my people that they may live on it, and fodder to the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... whose circumference encircles both heaven and earth, has fixed such just dimensions? That star does no less befriend that part of the earth from which it removes, in order to temper it, than that it approaches to favour it with its beams. Its kind, beneficent aspect fertilises all it shines upon. This change produces that of the seasons, whose variety is so agreeable. The spring silences bleak frosty winds, brings forth blossoms and flowers, and promises fruits. The summer yields rich harvests. The autumn bestows the fruits ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

... India. But the contrary alternative was almost tacitly accepted. The directors were "to remain princes, but no longer merchant princes," and Ellenborough complained that whereas "hitherto the court had appeared in India as beneficent conquerors, henceforth they would be mortgagees in possession". Perhaps the ministry shrunk from provoking the storm of obloquy which must have resulted from placing the vast patronage of the company in the hands of the crown. At all ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... fruitful tree which pours rich stores of fruit into our laps! But in the winter of existence, when I shall be gray and sated with life, I desire for myself the good fortune that my repose be as honorable and beneficent as the repose of nature in the ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... Passes is a succession of scenes, each representing some crisis of human life, into which breaks, with beneficent influence, a song of the girl Felippa, or "Pippa," on her holiday from the silk-mills. She is unconscious of the influence she exerts. William Sharp says these songs "are as pathetically fresh and free as a thrush's ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... passing is obvious enough. That a new order is arising, and that it is on the whole beneficent, is not merely a pious hope. It is more than this: it is a matter of observation to any one with ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... is taught as a mode of understanding social life it has positive ethical import. What the normal child continuously needs is not so much isolated moral lessons upon the importance of truthfulness and honesty, or the beneficent results that follow from a particular act of patriotism, as the formation of habits of social imagination ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey

... this periodical overflow of their river, with as much anxiety as did ever or now do the Egyptians, to the overflowing of the Nile. To both they are the bountiful dispensation of a beneficent Creator, for as the sacred stream rewards the husbandman with a double harvest, so does the Murray replenish the exhausted reservoirs of the poor children of the desert, with numberless fish, and resuscitates myriads of crayfish ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... three things that may be done with energy: First, it may be frittered away, allowed to leak, to escape. Secondly, it may be locked up; this results usually in an explosion, a finding of destructive outlets. Finally, it may be harnessed, controlled, used in beneficent ways. Health and happiness depend upon which one of the three ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... time the effects of that beneficent and excellent institution, the Northwestern Sanitary Commission, had not been felt at all points where need existed; for the field was vast, and even with the wonderful charities of the great Northwest, pouring into its treasury and store-houses, with a powerful ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... became humanely beneficent towards the small ones, and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left school, to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring farms; or, by preference, at milking or butter-making processes, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... apply one of Katharine's lint bandages or dress a wound with a deftness that elicited the commendation not only of the subject of his ministration, but even of the knight of the scalpel himself. Neville, too, evinced no little skill in the surgeon's beneficent art. ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... apt to ruin, the heart, the rich juices of which God never meant should be pressed violently out and distilled into alcoholic liquor by an unnatural process, but should render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent, and insensibly influence other hearts and other lives to the same blessed end. I see in Hollingsworth an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan's book of such, from the very gate of heaven there is a by-way to ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... turrets, as a seagull perches, with an angler's immobility, on the crest of a wave. Without quite knowing why, my grandmother found in the steeple of Saint-Hilaire that absence of vulgarity, pretension, and meanness which made her love—and deem rich in beneficent influences—nature itself, when the hand of man had not, as did my great-aunt's gardener, trimmed it, and the works of genius. And certainly every part one saw of the church served to distinguish the whole from any other building by a kind of general feeling ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... List of the Best Hundred Authors—"Surely the most beneficent and innocent of all looks yet produced is 'The Book of Nonsense,' with its corollary carols, inimitable and refreshing, and perfect in rhythm. I really don't know any author to whom I am half so grateful for my idle self as Edward Lear. I shall put ...
— Nonsense Drolleries - The Owl & The Pussy-Cat—The Duck & The Kangaroo. • Edward Lear

... the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ materially from each other. They are only different manifestations of the same mysterious energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application.[248] Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine personages may neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... all that have been before it; but whether the wise decrees of Providence doom it to flourish or decline, we can still look with confident hope to this noble colony in the New World, believing that on her enlightened and happy shores, under the influence of beneficent institutions and of a scriptural faith, the Anglo-Saxon race may renew the vigour of its youth, and realise in time to come the brightest hopes which have ever been formed of England in the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... live on the block. Mr. Slapman had basely defeated the beneficent decree of the law, by turning his property into ready cash, and sailing for Europe. This deprived Mrs. S. of her alimony the second year after their separation, and compelled her to give up housekeeping, and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... history. Wise men shrink from summing them up in single propositions. That the French Revolution led to an immense augmentation of happiness, both for the French and for mankind, can only be denied by the Pope. That it secured its beneficent results untempered by any mixture of evil, can only be maintained by men as mad as Doctor Pangloss. The Greek poetess Corinna said to the youthful Pindar, when he had interwoven all the gods and goddesses in the Theban mythology into a single hymn, that we should sow with the hand and not ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... can I make my neighbours better likewise? How the world? As for the good things of this life, if they will make me a better man, let them come. If not, why should I care so much about them? What I want is, to be righteous like God, beneficent and good-doing like God. ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... three years the government which might have reconciled them had systematically employed its whole power for the purpose of inflaming their enmity to madness. It was now impossible to establish in Ireland a just and beneficent government, a government which should know no distinction of race or of sect, a government which, while strictly respecting the rights guaranteed by law to the new landowners, should alleviate by a judicious liberality the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... their fellow-creatures and brethren in humanity, and forgot their country while they beheld their distress. A considerable subscription was raised in their behalf; and in a few weeks they were completely clothed by the charity of their British benefactors. This beneficent exertion was certainly one of the noblest triumphs of the human mind, which even the most inveterate enemies of Great Britain cannot but regard with reverence and admiration.—The city of Quebec being reduced, together with great part of the circumjacent country, brigadier Townshend, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... unexpected sources; while good, kind Maud had come home from Paris with a box full of spoils from the Louvre and Bon Marche. Lilias declared that her heart leapt within her when she reflected that she had originated the beneficent scheme; but Nan vowed that it made her tired even to look at the things, and reflect how hard-worked she must have been; and Kitty, as has been seen, went in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... reign of our sovereigns Ptolemy and Cleopatra his sister, the children of Ptolemy and Cleopatra the divine, the gods Illustrious: and the priest of Alexander, and of the Saviour gods, of the Brother gods, of the Beneficent gods, of the Father-loving gods, of the Illustrious gods, of the Paternal god, and of the Mother-loving gods, being (as by law appointed): and the prize-bearer of Berenice the Beneficent, and the basket-bearer of Arsinoe the Brother-loving, and the priestess ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the injustices of civic life? To what degree? Or the natural life beneficent and innocent of Arden Forest in "As You Like It?" To what ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... Bond, a particular friend of mine, conceived the idea of establishing a hospital in Philadelphia (a very beneficent design, which has been ascrib'd to me, but was originally his), for the reception and cure of poor sick persons, whether inhabitants of the province or strangers. He was zealous and active in endeavouring to procure subscriptions for it, but the proposal ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... preserved by the wisdom of ages. The obedient provinces of Trajan and the Antonines were united by laws, and adorned by arts. They might occasionally suffer from the partial abuse of delegated authority; but the general principle of government was wise, simple, and beneficent. They enjoyed the religion of their ancestors, whilst in civil honors and advantages they were exalted, by just degrees, to an equality ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... thank-offerings ought we to make to the kind and beneficent spirit that breathes in all things here below! Indeed, the care which nature takes to strip us piece by piece of our raiment, to unclothe the soul by enfeebling gradually our hearing, sight, and sense of touch, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... life. She grew under the soft rain of his loving care, and opened out, not, indeed, into an oriental flower, rich in profound mystery of scent and colour, but into a blossom of the chalk-down. Altogether concealed and closed she would have remained if it had not been for this beneficent and heavenly gift poured upon her. He had just time enough to see what she really was, and then she died. There are some natures that cannot unfold under pressure or in the presence of unregarding power. Hers was one. They require a clear ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... she done for her Colonies — this careful and beneficent parent? She has permitted them to exist, but bound them down in serf-like dependence; and so she keeps them — feeble, helpless, and hopeless. She grants them the sanction of her flag, and the privilege of boasting of her ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... observer the interest of the Virchow Institute must lie in its general scope rather than in the details of the subjects there brought under investigation, which latter have, indeed, of necessity, a somewhat grewsome character despite the beneficent results that spring from them. It is quite otherwise, however, with the work of the allied institution of which I now come to speak. The Institute of Hygiene deals with topics not very remote from ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... the mountains around, were wrapped this day in haze, but loomed gigantically through. We proceeded, still in sight of this enchanted castle, over the plain, which was perfectly bare and arid, until we arrived at Wady Atoulah, where we found the beneficent ethel and some good pickings for the camels. Not pausing long here, we proceeded another hour, and encamped in Wady Tahala, just in front of the imposing Kasar, and full in view of the mountains ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... one Soliman, the chief of a nomadic tribe of Tartars who had been chased from the Empire of Persia in the year 1214—was not only a soldier and a conqueror, but also a great and beneficent ruler in those regions in which he held sway. Approached by those of his co-religionists who had been driven out of Rhodes by the Knights, Ottoman embarked an army and attacked the place, assuring himself of an easy conquest. In spite, however, of the fortifications ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... modern gardens, glorying in the view over the old and new bridges, and to far off Villeneuve, where the Man in the Iron Mask was first imprisoned. When we had admired the statue of Althen the Persian, with his hand full of the beneficent madder that did so much for Provence, we were rewarded for our patience by seeing Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour rush out from the Papal Palace, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... love of man and woman pledged where, in sacred moments on that day, we had seen the mortal put on immortality. To us there could be no grander, richer, lovelier setting for life's best and holiest hour than here, where, upon things finite, there rests the beneficent uplifting beauty that ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... European army of 50,000 men, would assuredly effect their complete conquest without much difficulty: such an army, directed by a Wellington, would perform wonders, and astound the Africans. After the conquest, an energetic, decisive, but beneficent form of government, would be necessary, to retain the country, and to 462 conquer and annihilate the repugnancy which these people entertain to our religious tenets. A system of rule formed on the principles of the English constitution,—directed by good policy, benevolence, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... laughter floated in, and it seemed to him that people were as important and vivid as they had been six months before. Then he was at Cambridge, idling in the parsley meadows, and weaving perishable garlands out of flowers. Now he was at Sawston, preparing to work a beneficent machine. No man works for nothing, and Rickie trusted that to him also benefits might accrue; that his wound might heal as he laboured, and his eyes recapture ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... would so soon have looked with so hostile an aspect upon each other? To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity, is to calculate on the weaker springs ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... intensely and desperately serious, having a vital bearing upon the entire future lives of people; and there were deeply solemn moments, in spite of all the surface hilarity and gaiety, in many of these little out of way nooks kindly provided by beneficent nature for ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... acorn of Truth, planted by Hahnemann, which has already taken deep root, and is lifting high its vigorous stem, shall tower far above all other giants of the medical forest, and its wide-spreading branches cast their beneficent ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller

... ever actually been, have still brought us joy and inspiration after a miserable barbaric Christian world bad mutilated and neglected them, - but the beautiful figure of Jesus, which as a work of art might have been immortal and beneficent, embellished with Pauline metaphysics and mixed in the Byzantine sorcerer's pot with Egyptian and Chaldean hodgepodge, has become an evil spirit for ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... what launched Rome in her career of conquest, and still more, what rendered that career so different from those of ordinary conquerors? What caused the Empire of Rome to be so durable? What gives it so high an organization? What made it so tolerable, and even in some cases beneficent to her subjects? What enabled it to perform services so important in preparing the way for a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... his strip of beard. "In order for our stock to be what we intend it to be, the Paramount Coast Transportation has got to operate as a complete monopoly, as you understand, Mr. Fogg. A beneficent monopoly—consolidation benefiting all—but nevertheless a monopoly. With one line holding out on us, we've got ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... advanced before I approached the cottage. The amenity of a fine day in its decline surrounded me with a beneficent, a calming influence; I felt it in the silence of the shady lane, in the pure air, in the blue sky. It is difficult to retain the memory of the conflicts, miseries, temptations and crimes of men's self-seeking existence ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... within him until some chance happening stirred them from their slumbers and sent them pulsating through his senses. He accepted the tide of life as he found it, and only on his journey, swimming down its many currents, he endeavored by skilful pilotship to avoid the shoals, and seek the beneficent backwaters so that his muscles and courage might be strengthened for the completion of the task he had ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... barbarians, it was whilst yet our race was hardy from its combat with adverse forces in this then new land. We have not forgotten the strange power which Masusaelili is able to exert over a limited number of persons at one time. We are not unaware of the beneficent results of those laws and customs that compel the most of our people, between the ages of eighteen and fifty, to perform physical labor during twelve hours of each week; but we maintain that the elements of contest and danger are necessary concomitants ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... taming the wild Indians, introduced marriage amongst them, taught them to cultivate the ground, together with some of the most simple arts; assisted their wants, reproved their sins, and transplanted the beneficent doctrines of Christianity amongst them, using no arms but the influence which religion and kindness, united with extreme patience, had over their stubborn natures; and making what Humboldt, in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... that made Pelle's heart throb in his breast, and a gentler note came into the voices of all who spoke to him. Pelle did not clearly understand what there could be attractive about himself; but he steeped himself in this friendship, which fell upon his ravaged soul like a beneficent rain. Morten would come up into the workshop as soon as work was over, or wait for Pelle at the corner. They always ran when they were going to meet. If Pelle had to work overtime, Morten did not go out, but sat in the workshop and amused him. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... appreciation of the fact that a few decades since it would have required weeks of toilsome travel to go over the same ground, during which he would have run the risk of starvation, of being lost in the wilderness, plundered by robbers, or killed by savages. The most beneficent function of the railway is that of a carrier of freight. What would it cost a man to carry a ton of wheat one mile? What would it cost for a horse to do the same? The railway does it at a cost of less than a cent. This brings Dakota ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... no doubt that *expediency and right coincide*. Under the government of Supreme Benevolence, it is impossible that what ought to be done should not conduce to the welfare of him who does it. But its beneficent results may be too remote for him to trace them, nay, may belong to a life beyond death, to which human cognizance does not reach; while what ought not to be done may promise substantial benefit so far as ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... reason that the purpose of disease, plague, pestilence, famine, poverty and warfare was to cut off and destroy the surplus of humanity, and hence all these alleged evils were in reality blessings in disguise, and that it would be wrong to interfere with their really beneficent workings! Volumes could be written, and they could not tell the half of the misery and evil that the promulgation of this doctrine has done for the civilized world, but there is no space here for giving any such details; nor need this be done, though the statement of the doctrine had to be made ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... 395,000, that is 76,000 of an increase—beyond all doubt solely in consequence of what the allotment-commission did for the Roman burgesses. Whether it multiplied the farms among the Italians in the same proportion maybe doubted; at any rate what it did accomplish yielded a great and beneficent result. It is true that this result was not achieved without various violations of respectable interests and existing rights. The allotment-commission, composed of the most decided partisans, and absolute judge in its own cause, proceeded ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... certain abuses, an attempt is already being made to wrench it in contrary directions; in the sphere of religious speculation, where it has been more legitimately summoned to a distinguished, illuminative, and beneficent career; in the sphere of pure science, where, despite old separatist prejudices, the ideas sown are pushing up here and there; and lastly, in the sphere of art, where there are indications that it is likely to ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... beautiful? is it not beautiful?" he kept exclaiming as he held it up, still kneeling on the ground and exhibiting its various beauties. "Walter, I tell you that this is the most beautiful of the eight thousand different kinds of birds which our beneficent Creator has placed on this earth, to adorn it for the sake of us mortals. Not one of them possesses these spiral-tipped tail wires nor these beautiful breast fans. Then look at the colours. What art can in any way approach them! This is the King Bird of Paradise—the Paradisea Regia, we ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... may God grant, that my converts may attain to a perfect knowledge of the truth of the Gospel, be beneficent, and doing good works ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... exploring of stellar space, its exhuming of secular time, its harnessing of invisible forces, this new mortal knowledge, its sudden burst, its brilliancy and amplitude of achievement, thought winnowing the world as with a fan; the vivid spectacle of vast and beneficent changes wrought by this means in human welfare, the sense of the increase of man's power springing from unsuspected and illimitable resources,—all this has made us forgetful of truth that is the oldest heirloom of ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... the river that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who were at large - a rare sight there - rowed a crazy boat, which made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every dip of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... consciousness of something stronger than his counsels seething in your bosom. The words of caution, of instruction, of guidance, fall upon your heated imagination like the night-dews upon the crater of an AEtna. They are beneficent and healthful for the straggling herbage upon the surface of the mountain, but they do not reach or temper the inner fires that are rolling ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... had gone to the front—their wages continued as usual —and the work was carried on by women and old servitors, scarcely one of the latter under seventy. They were pointed out as examples of the beneficent effect of the true cognac—these old boys who had inhaled the slightly pungent fragrance of the cellars and bottling-rooms all their lives. You get this perfume all over Cognac. It comes wandering down old alleyways, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... remain forever our reverend protectors. It is to you that belong the praises of the human race; to you appertains the homage of the earth. Show us, then, oh! Nature! that which man ought to do, in order to obtain the happiness which thou makest him desire.—Virtue! animate him with thy beneficent fire! Reason! conduct his uncertain steps through the paths of life. Truth! let thy torch illumine his intellect, dissipate the darkness of his road.... Banish error from our mind, wickedness from our hearts, confusion ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... be she who she might—his wife's embrace was like balm to a stinging wound. But it was only when, through Hester's behaviour to her and the words that fell from her, he came to know who she was, that the iron, the beneficent spear-head of remorse, entered his soul. Strange that the mere fact of our knowing who a person is, should make such a difference in the way we think of and behave to that person! A person is a person just the same, whether one of the few of our acquaintances ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... housekeeping," is traceable to this source. This is a complicated trouble, and probably other causes have their share in it. But we cannot fail to recognize in these seemingly accidental obstructions a stern, but beneficent adjustment of our circumstances to enforce a simplicity which we should else neglect. One cannot greatly deprecate the terrors of high rents and long bills, and the sufferings from clumsy and careless domestics, if they help to keep down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... the facts speak for themselves. He made Normandy peaceful and flourishing, more peaceful and flourishing perhaps than any other state of the European mainland. He is set before us as in everything a wise and beneficent ruler, the protector of the poor and helpless, the patron of commerce and of all that might profit his dominions. For defensive wars, for wars waged as the faithful man of his overlord, we cannot blame him. But his main ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... rush at me which he had contemplated in the first instance at the commencement of hostilities; but having had some considerable previous experience in the use of those weapons of attack and defence alike, with which a beneficent nature has so thoughtfully provided menfolk, from many a rough and tumble fight on Common Hard with the mudlarks and other idle scamps frequenting that place, who used to be always playing pranks with ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... their death, their sons and grandsons enjoy their beneficent virtues. Up to the very present the masses think of the Jung ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... was a druggist, a fellow of a sharp wit, keen, crafty; and, being one even-tide in company with him, asked him of their King and his polity; to which the other answered, saying, "Well, our King is just and righteous in his governance, equitable to his lieges and beneficent to his commons and abhorreth nothing in the world save sorcerers; but, whenever a sorcerer or sorceress falls into his hands, he casteth them into a pit without the city and there leaveth them in hunger ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... completed the conquest of the earth, when we have discovered God's laws of matter and force and are able to keep them, it means the abolition of all unnecessary pain, unnecessary pain, I say; for all that pain which is not beneficent, which is not inherent in the nature of things, is remedial. And we preach the gospel, the coming of God's kingdom when pain shall be abolished, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... in their inventive life, with Christmas a rite full of surprises and tenderness, and "dressing-up parties" spontaneous and joyously absurd. The beasts in the Milford hearth-mythology were not the obscene Night Animals who jump out of closets and eat little girls, but beneficent and bright-eyed creatures—the tam htab, who is woolly and blue and lives in the bathroom, and runs rapidly to warm small feet; the ferruginous oil stove, who purrs and knows stories; and the skitamarigg, who will play with children ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... Saturday's outing were spending the evening in Leslie Cairns' room squabbling over their plans for the picnic. They could not agree on the refreshments, the amusements, or, in fact, anything pertaining to the affair. The truth of the matter was they were already tired of their beneficent project. They had never made a practice of unselfishly trying to please others, and the process bade fair to be too difficult for their infinitely ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... Association such provision is next in importance to the preached word. Neither can take the place of the other. Either is at a disadvantage without the other. And yet there are fifty-seven of these mission stations this year, now, without such beneficent woman's ministry, waiting only for additional funds, the new money necessary to ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... spread of knowledge, the outbraving of tyranny, the defiance of religious intolerance, the relief of the oppressed, the help of the poor, and the sick, and the weak. This was no cutthroat conspiracy or wild scheme of confiscation and plunder; but a design for the establishment of wide and beneficent law—a law which should protect, not the ambition of kings, not the pride of armies, not the revenues of priests, but the rights and the liberties of those who were "darkening in labor and pain." And this message, that could go forth alike to the Camorristi and the Nihilists; to the Free ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... become more arduous and exacting. These are the occasions when gentle malice loves to bring about a count-out. If it is a private members' night the Whips have no responsibility in the matter of keeping a House, and have even been suspected of occasionally conniving in the beneficent plot of dispersing it. But just now private members' nights stand in the same relation to the Session as the sententious traveller found to be the case with snakes in Iceland. There are none. Every night is a Government night, and weariness of flesh ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... his lordship gravely, "God has entrusted you with a great and beneficent power; you have a rare and wonderful voice such as might stir mankind to loftier thought and nobler ideal and thus make the world a better place. Child, how will you acquit yourself of this responsibility? Will you make the most of your great gift, using it for the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... orders, and remained on at Oxford—being a fellow of his college—working earnestly for the cause he had so at heart. Eventually he became a member of the select band of disciples that dwelt, uncomfortably, supported by visions of reactionary reform at once austere and beneficent, in the range of disused ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... back to him with a flash of laughter lighting up the haggardness of her face. "Regret working for the happiness of two such excellent persons? Can't you fancy what a charming change it is for me to do something so innocent and beneficent?" ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... offerings, pure thoughts, kind words, beneficent works, the Homa (Soma) flesh-offerings, zaothras (3), the holy veresma (4), suitable prayers, Gatha hymns, and mathra (the Vedic mantra) sacred songs—these all we present as sacrifices to Ahura-Mazda, the holy Srosh (5), to the bountiful immortals, to the Fravashis, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... honor and conscience, when it becomes the universal wrong-doer, our affection for it, in the course of time, turns into hatred. Let this system be maintained, and patriotism, exhausted, dries up, and, one by one, all other beneficent springs, until, finally, nothing is visible over the whole country, but stagnant pools or overwhelming torrents, inhabited by passive subjects or depredators. As in the Roman empire in the fourth century, in Italy in the seventeenth century, in the Turkish provinces in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... endured no more organization than his future has; he never understood it; he can make no use of it; so he deifies it, and burns the flying moment like a joss-stick before the wooden image in which he has caricatured all its sweet and beneficent capabilities;—as if it were likely that one moment of his existence could be of any more weight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various



Words linked to "Beneficent" :   benefit, eleemosynary, beneficence, maleficent, benevolent, benefic, kind, philanthropic



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