"Self-devotion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made from ignorance and lack of authoritative precedent, before ecclesiology had become a study; but whatever could be done by toil, intelligence, and self-devotion was done by Mr. Yonge in those two years; and the sixty years that have since elapsed have seen many rectifications of the various errors. Even as the church stood when completed, it was regarded as an effort ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... have displayed more courage, self-devotion, and firmness, than has this high-souled and heroic woman. It is not generally known in this country, that in an action in La Vendee, where the partizans of the Duchess were opposed to the regular troops, she headed her forces, and led the charges repeatedly. She had a horse shot dead ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... any motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you expect security and equality of livelihood to leave men without incentives to effort? Your contemporaries did not really think so. When it was a question of the grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they depended on quite other motives. Not higher wages, but honour and the hope of men's gratitude, patriotism, and the inspiration of duty were the motives they set before their soldiers. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... sorrows! Well and good. Many a time have I seen that trial can elevate the soul. It can teach a brave heart to feel the woes of others more deeply; it can rouse a desire to assuage the griefs of others with beautiful self-devotion. Those who have known pain and affliction enjoy ease and pleasure with double satisfaction; sufferers learn to be grateful for even the smaller joys of life. But you?—I have long striven for courage to tell you so—you derive no benefit from suffering because you lock it up in your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... songs here translated there will be found examples which illustrate nearly every aspect of Kabr's thought, and all the fluctuations of the mystic's emotion: the ecstasy, the despair, the still beatitude, the eager self-devotion, the flashes of wide illumination, the moments of intimate love. His wide and deep vision of the universe, the "Eternal Sport" of creation (LXXXII), the worlds being "told like beads" within the Being of God (XIV, XVI, XVII, LXXVI), is here ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... Margaret and Sister Mary, so high-bred people drop their personal distinctions and become brothers and sisters of conversational charity. Nor are fashionable people without their heroism. I believe there are men who have shown as much self-devotion in carrying a lone wall-flower down to the supper-table as ever saint or martyr in the act that has canonized his name. There are Florence Nightingales of the ballroom, whom nothing can hold back from their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sued for it; namely, the grace of a three-fold wound: the wound of true sorrow for sin; the wound of "kind compassion" with Christ's sufferings; and the wound of "wilful belonging to God," that is, of self-devotion. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... his writings, was felt even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was unguessed even by many of his friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits? It was not merely that he saw, through the ensanguined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the unstained excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready to take her to his own home with reverential ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... because it was not governed by a single master, whose edicts all its subjects must obey? But for 'a thing that is wholly a sham' men do not lay down their lives, in thousands and in hundreds of thousands, not under the pressure of compulsion, but by a willing self-devotion; for the defence of 'a thing that is wholly a sham' men will not stream in from all the ends of the earth, abandoning their families and their careers, and offering without murmur or hesitation ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... example of the generous self-devotion of an Omawhaw, to procure the escape of a brother, and with ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... interrupting herself, "happy did I say? Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness that should have fallen to all the women in the world has been my share. Knowing one's own great love and self-devotion, to find in his heart an infinite love in which a woman's soul is lost, and lost for ever—tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, I am alone; here, I command. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the loyalty of our grandfathers and fathers, and such their self-devotion and courage in the darkest hour of our country's dangers and sufferings, and though few in number in comparison of their invaders, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... too much as a treasure, which nothing could rob me of, and to which I have clung with all the tenacity of a crushed but ardent spirit. All my life I have had to meet indifference, and to struggle with disappointment in various forms. Self-devotion was the dream of my youth; I conceived no other happiness, and wished to live for no other purpose. My father was one of those men who can so little understand this sort of feeling in others, that, with perfect kindness and perfect candour, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... deliberate will, but to the merest caprice of the sovereign, was, by habit and education, so engrained into the nature of the people that a contrary spirit scarcely ever manifested itself. In war the safety of the sovereign was the first thought, and the principal care of all. The tales told of the self-devotion of individuals to secure the preservation of the monarch may not be true, but they indicate faithfully the actual tone of men's sentiments about the value of the royal person. If the king suffered, all was lost; if ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... study of a creature who, in the view of his unpractised eye and untutored imagination, was formed with all that perfection, with which the youthful poet is apt to endow the glowing images of his brain. Nothing so fair, so ideal, so every way worthy to reward the courage and self-devotion of a warrior, had ever before been encountered on the prairies, and the young brave appeared to be deeply and intuitively sensible to the influence of so rare a model of the loveliness of the sex. Perceiving, however, that his gaze gave uneasiness to the subject of his admiration, he withdrew ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... into the far distance. It was Madame Sand's error, and no ignoble one, to entertain the belief that a nation could safely be trusted to the guidance of a force so variable and uncontrollable as enthusiasm, and that the principle of self-devotion could be relied upon as a motive power. The divisions, intrigues, and fatal complications that quickly arose at head-quarters confirmed her first estimation of the practical dangers ahead. She clung to her belief in the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... this lady's presence,—of whom I beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful teacher, whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence. Will you look at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... stood like one petrified. Gradually, however, the generous rivalry and self-devotion of the two beautiful beings before him produced its effect on his savage nature. The expression ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... happy to say," replied his uncle, "was so won over by the kindness and noble self-devotion of his brave little master, that he made up his mind to mend his ways from that very moment; and in a short time, from having been the worst, became the best behaved negroling to be found on either side of the Rappahannock, for more than a hundred ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... atmosphere in which men lived and breathed was a chaos of murderous passions. Still it is true that the war was a great romance. For it was filled with change, and with elastic rebound from what seemed final extinction; with the spirit of adventure carried to the utmost limits of heroism; with self-devotion on the sublimest scale, and the very frenzy of patriotic martyrdom; with resurrection of everlasting hope upon ground seven times blasted by the blighting presence of the enemy; and with flowers radiant in promise springing ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the colonel's woman-of-all-work, an excellent cook and a most respectable person. Pierrette ought to learn how to cook, and rub floors, and sweep, said the lawyer; every girl should be taught to keep house properly and go to market and know the price of things. The poor little soul, whose self-devotion was equal to her generosity, offered herself willingly, pleased to think that she could earn the bitter bread which she ate in that house. Adele was sent away, and Pierrette thus lost the only person who ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the nucleus around which in every time of need the strength of your military power, the sure bulwark of your defense—a national militia—may be readily formed into a well-disciplined and efficient organization. And the skill and self-devotion of the Navy assure you that you may take the performance of the past as a pledge for the future, and may confidently expect that the flag which has waved its untarnished folds over every sea will still float in undiminished honor. But these, like many other subjects, will be appropriately ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... could afford to compromise with evil. She became the friend of children; the champion of the unfortunate; she sided with the weak; she was their friend and comforter. Her life became a cry in favor of the oppressed, a defense of the downtrodden, an exaltation of self-devotion, a prayer for universal sympathy, liberty and light. She pleaded for the vicious, recognizing that all are sinners and that those who do unlawful acts are no more sinners in the eyes of God than ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... of the press! Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he hated sat again upon ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... herself the best of mothers—as she was the best of wives, during her short time of wedlock—in the self-renunciation and self-devotion with which, through all difficulties, and in spite of every opposition and misconception, she pursued the even tenor of her way. Not for two or ten, but for well-nigh twenty years, she gave herself up unreservedly, turning her back on her country with all its strong early ties, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... cardinal and archbishop of Milan. Immortalized by his self-devotion in ministering at Mil'an ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... us, a perfect world springs up at the word, of tenderness, of fellowship, trust, and self-devotion. With them it is a mere animal and convenient connection for procreating their species and getting their dinner cooked. They have no idea of tenderness, nor of the chivalrous devotion that prompted the old Galilean ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... brought her coffee to the room, and she sent it without any word to Imogene. The girl came instantly back with it. She was fully dressed, as if she had been up a long time, and she wore a very plain, dull dress, in which one of her own sex might have read the expression of a potential self-devotion. ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... him, and when he had learned to think of all religions as indifferent, serious amid many fopperies and through many languid days, and made him anticipate all his life long as a thing towards which he must carefully train himself, some great occasion of self-devotion, such as really came, that should consecrate his life, and, it might be, its memory with others, as the early Christian looked forward to martyrdom at the end of his course, as a seal ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... bright, pleasant, and the picture of neatness, marvelous contrasts indeed to the disorder and wretchedness prevailing among many, who might, by making an effort, be as bright and as comfortable as they are. There are, as you will find, many brilliant examples of female heroism and self-devotion exhibited here; but in some instances women seem to try how helpless, how foolish a silly woman can be. Ah," he broke off, as a terrific crash followed by a loud scream was heard, "I fear ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... be easily tided over. Rarely has appeal been made to the good instincts of the masses—only as a last resort, to save the sinking ship in times of revolution—but never has such an appeal been made in vain; the heroism, the self-devotion of the toiler has never failed to respond to it. And thus it will ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... to and fro, without an object beyond the finding food for it, mental or bodily, for the present moment.' This letter the reader will find in full elsewhere.[53] The missionary impulse, the yearning for some apostolic destination, the glow of self-devotion to a supreme external will, is a well-known element in the youth of ardent natures of either sex. In a thousand forms, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, such a mood has played its part in history. In this case, as ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... see him, venturing so far and risking so much? Who else in the world would do this for him? Would Katie? The idea was too absurd. Katie was a mere butterfly; but Dolores, with her intense nature, her passionate self-devotion, was formed out of that stuff from which the heroine is made. Katie could lose all she loved best, and still go on smiling and smiling; but Dolores could lay down her life for her friend. (Such were the sentiments of Ashby on this occasion, and need not be considered ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... difficulties of the duties, of the utter impossibility that they should be properly discharged by any family that had not been in their exercise just one hundred and seventy-two years and a half, the precise period of the hard servitude of the Hofmeisters, and the rare merit of their self-devotion to the common good, it would seem that they were so many modern Curtii, anxious to leap into the chasm of uncertain and endless toil, to save the Republic from the ignorance and peculations of certain interested and selfish knaves, who wished to enjoy ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... cost of my own. His delicacy forbade him the indulgence which my own protested against in vain. He showed his taste again in buying a cheap copy of the book, which he meant to give her, and of course he had to be all the more attentive to her because of my deprecating his self-devotion. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... who are so truly feminine? this situation brought with it hours of delightful languor, moments of divine sweetness and content which followed by secret immolation. Her conscience was, if I may call it so, contagious; her self-devotion without earthly recompense awed me by its persistence; the living, inward piety which was the bond of her other virtues filled the air about her with spiritual incense. Besides, I was young,—young enough to concentrate my whole being on the kiss she allowed ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... and difficult of accomplishment? We are not insensible to the claims of military or naval heroism, but I confess I see much more to admire in Father Damien voluntarily surrendering himself to the slow and loathsome martyrdom of Molokai, more in the self-devotion of our "white slaves," as they must, alas! be called, who toil all the day and a deal of the night in a heavy, noisome, almost disease-laden atmosphere in the disgracefully crowded slums of our great cities, and all to ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... of publication were, however, found less expensive than advertisements in the Jupiter; and the war went on merrily. Mr Slope declared that the main part of the consecration of a clergyman was the self-devotion of the inner man to the duties of the ministry. Mr Arabin contended that a man was not consecrated at all, had, indeed, no single attribute of a clergyman, unless he became so through the imposition of some bishop's hands, who had become a bishop through the imposition ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... difficulty in getting a companion at all. He was a liberal fellow enough, and not pushed for a guinea when his darling science was concerned: so he used to offer to "sport the train" himself; but even when he condescended to the additional self-devotion of standing a dinner and champagne, he found that the closest calculators among his sporting acquaintance had as much regard for their necks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... soil of his native State—a death of all others he would have chosen. I have dwelt somewhat on his character, because it was one of the strangest I have met. No enterprise was too rash to awaken his ardor, if it necessitated daring courage and self-devotion. Truly, he might have come forth from the pages of old Froissart. It is with unaffected feeling that I recall his memory and hang before it my humble wreath ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... her burdened soul by pouring out to her mother the whole tale of her meeting with Walter Brydges. Though she hated her, she must tell her. Herminia listened with deep shame. It brought the color back into her own pale cheek to think any man should deem he was performing an act of chivalrous self-devotion in marrying Herminia Barton's unlawful daughter. Alan Merrick's child! The child of so many hopes! The baby that was ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... self-satisfied thinkers and artists. Spiritual activity, and its expression, which are actually necessary to others, are the most burdensome of all man's avocations; a cross, as the Gospels phrase it. And the sole indubitable sign of the presence of a vocation is self-devotion, the sacrifice of self for the manifestation of the power that is imposed upon man ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... justice, which would give to each his due, and therefore not more than his due to oneself, seems to hold the balance between selfishness and love, being as it were, equidistant from the greed and self-indulgence of the former and the lavishness and self-devotion of the latter. If this is so, and if the sense of duty is, as I have suggested, an offshoot from the sense of justice, one can understand why, on the one hand, the sense of duty should be needed to hold the self-seeking ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... young imagination, how much of its glitter was but reflected from a girl's eyes. As he looks about and not seeing her, says, "She does not care, she will not come," the sword loses all its sheen, and the nodding plume its charm, and his dreams of self-devotion all ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is in vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... conduct in Greece was one long act of abnegation, of disinterested and sublime self-devotion. Let people read Parry, Gamba, even Stanhope.[136] He sacrificed for Greece all his revenue, his time, pleasures, comforts, even life itself, if necessary, and at the age of thirty-five; and then, after success, he refused every honor, satisfied ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... all the higher qualities of our being, and enlarges all our capacities for happiness. God and nature, so to speak, had gifted her mind with extraordinary feeling and intellect, and her person with unusual grace and beauty; yet, here, by this act of self-devotion to her father, she renounced all that the human heart with such strong claims upon the legitimate enjoyments of life could expect, and voluntarily entered into a destiny of suffering and misery. She reflected upon and felt the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... glorified by the literary art of greatest poets, has something pitiably unreal, incurably morbid, in its mysticism. But, putting this aside, we are still bound to notice the absence of that far more human self-devotion of man to woman which forms a conspicuous element in the Arthurian romances. The love of Tristram for Iseult, of Lancelot for Guinevere, of Beaumains for his lady, is alien to the Goliardic conception ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... set forth in the Gospel history is an absolute embodiment of love, both in the way of action and affection, crowned by the highest possible exhibition of it in an act of the most transcendent self-devotion to the interest of the human race. This being the case, it is difficult to see how the Christian morality can ever be brought into antagonism with the moral progress of mankind; or how the Christian type of ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... was playing in the garden and running after butterflies; and she kept longing to open the door and let her out. This little girl was subsequently educated in one of the Convents of the Sacred Heart, and learnt in that school lessons of self-devotion and ardent zeal for souls which were hereafter to bear fruit. She has retained to this day an enthusiastic affection for the religious teachers of her childhood; and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the principal ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the Union occupied in American hearts {p.080} and minds in 1861. Alike in breadth of view and in force of sentiment, nothing exceeds the power of such an ideal to lift men above narrow self-interest to the strenuous self-devotion demanded by great emergencies. Should this be so in the present case, and increase, Imperial Federation and the expansion of the United States are facts, which, whether taken singly or in correlation, are secondary in importance to ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... Self-devotion is always sublimely beautiful, but the law has no right to require either a woman to be sacrificed to any man, or a man to be sacrificed to any woman, or either to the good of society; but if either chooses to devote himself to the good of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... when the exact opposite happens? When it is an act of nobility, of splendid heroism, of magnificent self-devotion, that brings to pass a man's moral downfall? It is horrible to admit such a thing as possible, is it not? And yet, the same man who may be capable of one sudden immense act of heroism, may be quite incapable of keeping up the prolonged, daily, yearly struggle with adversity which ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... sea-shore, had not been either lightly taken or lightly given. If chivalry was not equal to sacrifice, it was equal to nothing. There was keen wisdom, too, in the act. The king could count all the more on the enthusiasm, self-devotion and valor of the knights and men-at-arms, in whose keeping he had placed so precious a charge. That whole first battalion would be nerved to tenfold effort because the prince was among them, for every one would be as deeply concerned as the father ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... monks from their snug self-devotion were driven, Wistful and fat and slow: looking backward, I fancied them going Out through the sculptured doorway, and down the Ponte de'Frati, Cowled and sandalled and beaded, a plump and pensive procession; And in my day their cells were barracks for Austrian soldiers, Who in their turn have ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... committed to a subordinate hand; true, he might have reserved himself for a more deliberate and stronger effort; but he felt that hesitation might be ruin—that all depended upon his example of dauntless courage—of fearless self-devotion. Had it pleased Divine Providence to spare his invaluable life, who will say that his effort would have failed? It is true his gallant course was arrested by a fatal wound—such is the fortune of war; but the people of Canada did not feel that his precious life was therefore thrown away, deeply ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... erected at Red Cross Hall, Southwark, to commemorate her heroism; but the best memorial is her own expression: "I tried to do my best"—for this will live in the hearts of all who read of her self-devotion. She had tried to do her best always. Her loving tenderness to the children committed to her care and her pure gentle life were remarked by those around her before there was any thought of her dying a heroic death. So, when the great trial ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... treacherous waves. And there, this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion, drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, by crying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering those words of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while the Empress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... plain enough; yet it was delicately fair all the same, and perhaps more than ever, with the heightened spirituality of the expression. The writing on her features, of love and purity, habitual self-devotion and self-forgetfulness, patience and sweetness, was so plain and so unconscious, that it made her a very rare subject of contemplation, and, as her companion thought, extremely lovely. Her attitude spoke the same unconsciousness; her dress was of the simplest description; her brown hair ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... this day on will I seek God or God's will in any form of words, in any sacrament, or in any book or any place, as if He were first and foremost to be found there; no, life is first and foremost—life as we win it from the depths of despair, in the victory of the light, in the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with living human kind. God's supreme word to us is life, our highest worship of Him is love for the living. This lesson, self-evident as it is, was needed by me more than by most others. This it is that in various ways and upon ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... with, it is necessary to suggest, in the most delicate manner in the world, that there is a small infusion of humbug among the very best of the regular practitioners. These gentlemen, for whose learning, kind-heartedness, self-devotion, and skill I entertain a profound respect, make use of what I may call the gaseous element of their practice, not for the lucre of gain, but in order to enlist the imaginations of their patients in aid of nature ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... her leave my lady said abruptly to the young lady of the house, "An important sphere is open to you: I hope you will be able to fill it with honor to yourself and benefit to others. You have an admirable example of self-devotion, if you can imitate it, in Mrs. Chiverton of Castlemount. She told me that you were school-fellows and friends already. I was glad to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... gave him a flashing look full of such deep gratitude that poor Chabert would have been glad to sink again into his grave at Eylau. Some men have a soul strong enough for such self-devotion, of which the whole reward consists in the assurance that they have made the ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... of incurable disease? But the undying worm which gnawed at the king's vitals was in Ernest's case simply distrust of himself,—the timidity of a man to whom no woman had ever said, "Ah, how I love thee!" and, above all, the spirit of self-devotion without an object. After hearing the knell of the monarchy in the fall of his patron's ministry, the poor fellow had next fallen upon a rock covered with exquisite mosses, named Canalis; he was, therefore, still seeking a power to love, and this spaniel-like search for a master gave him ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... fact to a Christianized Jewish family, but how long since her ancestors became Christianized remains in doubt. Yet it is easy to recognize the Hebrew element in Sumner's nature; the inflexibility of purpose, the absolute self-devotion, and even the prophetic forecast. Sumner was an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an American statesman. True to his mother's name, he was at once a Puritan and an Israelite in whom there was no guile; ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... as religion, is on the one hand the adoration of God, that is, of the highest and noblest, and this highest and noblest as conceived not under forms of power or knowledge but in the form of ethical self-devotion as embodied in Jesus Christ, and on the other hand it meets the requirements of all religion in its dependence, not indeed upon some absolute idea or omnipotent power, but in the belief that that which appeals to the soul as worthy of supreme worship is also that in which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... but they meant little to a mind so full of internal conflict as was hers. What was she to believe of herself? Had she not marked out a course of self-devotion and sacrifice which was to gain respite and safety for her country, revenge upon its enemies? Had not others, notably Decius Magius, been forced unwillingly to admit the possible efficiency of her plan? Yet now, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... returned from travelling in Germany and England, with the burning zeal to gain his country to the Lutheran reformation. From this period the future direction of Knox's life was decided, and thenceforward, with an intensity and self-devotion never surpassed, he is the apostle of the cause with which his name is forever identified—the establishment in Scotland of what he deemed the only true conception of the primitive church as based on the teaching of Christ and the apostles. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... two ideas of unification and self-devotion, extremes upon a scale one from another; one of these ideas is that devotion to the Purpose in things I have called Salvation; the other that devotion to some other most fitting and satisfying individual which is passionate love, the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the self-devotion which the human heart can contain—of those saintly souls that are in love with sorrow, and that yearn to shelter all weakness and all grief—it inspires an unspeakable confidence that there must also be an instinct of parentage beyond this human race, a heart of hearts, cor cordium. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... his followers. At Borrodaile occurred his first interview with the chivalrous Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who was perfectly persuaded of the desperate character of his enterprise, but nevertheless aided it with generous self-devotion. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the unalterable character of his resolution; and the latter shuddering as the prospect of the cruel fate which awaited him crowded on her mind, felt a glow about her own youthful heart that almost tempted her to believe his self-devotion commendable. But the governess saw new reasons for apprehension in the determination of Wilder. If she had hitherto felt reluctance to trust herself and her ward with a band such as that which now possessed the sole authority, it was more than doubly ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... held in check from Germany, if it betrayed any design of infringing the truce. Falkenberg, a Swedish ambassador, who visited the courts of Holland and Germany, obtained the most flattering promises from several Protestant princes, though none of them yet possessed courage or self-devotion enough to enter into a formal alliance with him. Lubeck and Hamburg engaged to advance him money, and to accept Swedish copper in return. Emissaries were also despatched to the Prince of Transylvania, to excite that implacable enemy ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... poem on THE HEROISM OF VIRTUE, Lycidas had travelled far and wide. He had visited Rome, then a powerful republic, and listened with keen interest to her annals, so rich in stories of patriotism and self-devotion. The Athenian had then turned his course eastward, had visited Alexandria, ascended the Nile, gazed on the Pyramids, even then—more than two thousand years ago—venerable from their antiquity. After seeing ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... older and brought in the fraternal society was not primarily or consciously a Godward aspiration at all. It was essentially a humane movement. It was a melting and flowing forth of men's hearts toward one another; a rush of contrite, repentant tenderness; an impassioned impulse of mutual love and self-devotion to the common weal. But 'if we love one another, God dwelleth in us,' and so man found it. It appears that there came a moment, the most transcendent moment in the history of the race of man, when with the fraternal glow of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, rich as it was in romance and adventure, is not to be compared, in any valuable characteristic, to the noiseless self-devotion of the men who first explored the Western country. The courage of the knight was a part of his savage nature; his confidence was in the strength of his own right arm; and if his ruggedness was ever softened down by gentler thoughts, it was only when ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... him the leader of a forlorn hope for the liberties of Florence. This is the most favourable construction we can put upon Lorenzo's conduct. Yet some facts of the case warn us to suspend our judgment. He seems to have formed no plan for the liberation of his fellow-citizens. He gave no pledge of self-devotion by avowing his deed and abiding by its issues. He showed none of the qualities of a leader, whether in the cause of freedom or of his own dynastic interests, after the murder. He escaped as soon as he was able, as secretly as he could manage, leaving the city in confusion, and exposing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of his manhood, with his powers of perception and of thought vigorous and matured, but incapable of acting, of willing, or of loving. He inspires love, but cannot return it; he feels, he admires, but he shrinks from any step demanding resolution or self-devotion. Hence, instead of conferring happiness, he makes victims,—victims not of an active, but of a merely passive and negative egotism. A conjunction of circumstances brings him to a sudden and vivid realization of his condition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... disguise as to the impoverished condition to which the Nassau family had been reduced by the self-devotion of its chief. They were obliged to ask alms of England, until the "sapling should become a tree."—"Since it is the will of God," wrote the Princess to Davison, "I am not ashamed to declare the necessity of our house, for it is in His cause that it has fallen. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that latest triumph of the engraver's cunning skill—the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair medal, commemorating for our children and children's children the magnificent benefactions of the people and the self-devotion of the Commissions—Christian and Sanitary—the angels of mercy and charity, scattering blessings ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... repeated all that he had just heard, or had had the imprudence to say. Unfortunately, at the same time that the Queen sent away M. de Goguelat, she still believed that, in a dangerous predicament, requiring great self-devotion, the man might be employed advantageously. In 1791 he was commissioned to act in concert with the Marquis de Bouille in furtherance of ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... for Edgar, his words brought vague yearning and distress, while Felix's very tone gave support. How could Edgar say patient, silent, self-devotion was not to be found except ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was lost. On the following morning the snow had melted, and every trace of the enemy was obliterated. This affair must be regarded as highly honorable to the skill, address, and activity of the Indians; and the self-devotion of the rear guard, is a lively instance of that magnanimity of which they are at times capable, and which is more remarkable in them, from the extreme caution, and tender regard for their own lives, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... with the Pathfinder: his hardy self-devotion had brought him into a situation of unusual exposure, the hazards of which were much increased by the fact that, just as he drifted nearest to the enemy the party on the shore rushed down the bank and joined their friends who still stood in the water. The Oswego was ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... fall. That it has rested on religion so far as the great majority are concerned will hardly be doubted." ... "The presence of this theistic sanction has been especially apparent in all acts and lives of all heroic self-sacrifice and self-devotion." ... "All moral philosophers whose philosophy has been practically effective, from Socrates down, have been religious. Many have tried to find an independent basis but have not been successful—at least have not arrived at any agreement." ... "Thucydides ascribed ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... wealth which has increased faster than the power of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions, and is threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all noble aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, and Christian self-devotion, in its muddy flood. Surely never was Gideon's test more wanted for the army of the Lord of hosts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to save from death a being of such rare endowments, my heart overflowed with joy, not unmingled with regrets and trepidation. How many have been cut off by this disease, in their career of virtue and their blossom-time of genius! How many deeds of heroism and self-devotion are ravished from existence, and consigned ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... regiments, were under the immediate command of Sir Colin Campbell. Early in the morning the Russians, in great force, attacked the Turkish batteries, which they succeeded in capturing,—the English gunner in each, with noble self-devotion, spiking the guns before he attempted to escape. One large body of the enemy now attacked the 93rd, under Lieutenant-Colonel Ainslie, but were bravely repelled. Another, and the most powerful, turned towards the cavalry. As they did so, Lord Lucan ordered ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... With the self-devotion of a woman she grew patient and sweet the moment her daughter Clare was spoken of, and the business of her life in view. Mrs. Doria's maternal heart had betrothed the two cousins, Richard and Clare; had already ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dazzled or imposed upon by sophistry. She was unacquainted with the refinements of sentiment, but she distinctly knew right from wrong, and had sufficient resolution to abide by the right. Perhaps many romantic heroines might have thought it a generous self-devotion to have become in similar circumstances the mistress of Tracassier; and those who are skilled "to make the worst appear the better cause" might have made such an act of heroism the foundation of an interesting, or at least ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... to stamp an angel with humanity, had of necessity implanted there. He was swallowed up in holiness—his thoughts were of heaven—his daily conduct tinged and illumined with a heavenly hue. Nothing could surpass the intense devotedness of the child of God, except perhaps the self-devotion, the self-renunciation, and the profound humility which distinguished him in the world, and in his conversation amongst men. "The companion of the wise shall be wise." I observed my benefactor, and listened to his eloquence; I pondered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... recently knighted for his poetical gifts and for his political loyalty. Members of the Brotherhood have thought this leaving of their body a mistake of judgment, and too great a concession to a rival religion, while they still admire the self-devotion which leads their former brother to carry his advocacy of Christianity into what he regards as the most promising school of Hinduism. With this explanation I proceed to the treatment of ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... medal with conscious pride. We have selected the following examples out of thousands, not because they are more deserving of admiration than the rest, but because they are fair specimens of the acts of self-devotion which have won the medals of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... patriot, who was no match for the machinations of the European statecraft which has borne its lamentable fruits in the recent cataclysm we have all witnessed. He was thrown on the resources with which he was more familiar: those of an ennobling idea and of the exactions of self-devotion in its cause. Immediately after his eyes had been opened at Szczekociny to the new peril that had burst upon his country he sent out another order, bidding his commanders to "go over the Prussian and Russian boundaries" into the provinces that were lawfully Poland's ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... commanding and resolute character, which had enabled him to triumph over every obstacle devised by his more crafty adversary, the grand master of St. James. The prelate, however, with all his generous self-devotion, was far from being a comfortable ally. He would willingly have raised Isabella to the throne, but he would have her indebted for her elevation exclusively to himself. He looked with a jealous eye on her most intimate friends, and complained that neither she nor her husband ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... through by the special self-denial and sacrifices of women. I cannot answer for the ratio, but I can testify to having been an instance of this, myself; and to having known a never-ending series of such cases of self-devotion. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... affected him. For a long time after their marriage, she seemed to have no other desire than to lose her outwearied will in his. There was something a little pathetic in this; there was a kind of bewilderment in her gentleness, as though the relaxed tension of her long self-devotion to her mother left her without a full motive; she apparently found it impossible to give herself with a satisfactory degree of abandon to a man who could do so many things for himself. When her children came they filled this vacancy, and afforded her scope for the greatest excesses ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... human oppression. And even in Euripides, regarded as an impious scoffer by some scholars,[4] there are not wanting, especially in the example of Alcestis, evidence of belief in that divine justice and moral order of which the virtues of self-devotion and sacrifice in the soul of man are ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... gifts to our benefactors. "I honor," says Vaughan, "that temper which can lay by the garland when he might keep it on; which can pass by a rosebud and bid it grow when he is invited to crop it." This is the spirit of self-devotion in every worthy action, and especially of the pains and penalties by which poets have enriched our daily life. We are indebted to the poets, too, for something more than the alleviation of sorrow. Perhaps it is, upon the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... Waymark said, after a short silence, "there are limits to self-devotion. So long as it seems to you that there is any chance of doing some good, well, persevere. But you mustn't be sacrificed to such a situation. The time you give her is so much absolute ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... have been a perfect, an adorable creator, doing anything less than he has done for his children! that any other kind of being than Jesus Christ could have been worthy of all-glorifying worship! that his nature demanded less of him than he has done! that his nature is not absolute love, absolute self-devotion—could have been without ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... impression on all who came within the sphere of his moral magnetism. Emerson called him 'the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.' His absolute superiority to all selfish aims and narrowing pride of opinion touched an answering chord in the self-devotion of Mr. Stearns. A little anecdote illustrates the modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together certain friends to meet Captain Brown at his home in Medford, he found that Sunday was the only day that would serve their several ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... battle of the River Raisin, on the 22d of January, with the British and Indians, another act of self-devotion was performed by Butler. After the rout and massacre of the right wing, belonging to Wells' command, the whole force of the British and Indians was concentrated against the small body of troops under Major Madison, that maintained ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... are not silent yet. To us and to those who will come after us, they will speak of comfort and home relinquished, of toil nobly borne, of danger manfully encountered, of life generously surrendered and this not for pelf or ambition, but in the spirit of the noblest self-devotion and the most exalted patriotism. Proud as we who are here to-day have a right to be that we are the sons of this university, and not deemed unworthy of her when these are remembered, we may well say, "Sparta had many ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... consideration of the intuitive delicacy and good feeling she now displayed. Truly, thought I, it is humbling to us, the bearded and baser moiety of humankind, to contrast our vile egotism with the beautiful self-devotion of woman, as exhibited even in this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... already observed, with the beginnings of infancy in the animal world there came the genesis in the parents of feelings and actions not purely self-regarding. Rudimentary sympathies, with rudimentary capacity for self-devotion, are witnessed now and then among higher mammals, such as the dog, and not uncommonly among apes. But as the human family, with its definite relationships, came into being, there must necessarily have grown up between its various members reciprocal necessities of behaviour. The conduct of ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... loftier sentiment than that, even an exalted patriotism. It burned in every speech they made, and in every conversation in which they took part. If they had not the spirit of martyrdom, they had the spirit of self-devotion to a noble cause. They saw clearly enough the sacrifices they would be required to make, and the calamities which would overwhelm the land. But these were nothing to the triumph of their cause. Of this ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... lives, made beautiful and sweet By self-devotion and by self-restraint, Whose pleasure is to run without complaint On unknown errands of the Paraclete, Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet, Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint Around the shining forehead of the saint, And are in their completeness incomplete! In the old ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sometimes led her to fantastic extremes, these were not its principal characteristics. Her piety was applied to the conduct of her daily life and to the education of her daughters in honesty, reasonableness, and self-devotion. Their faith and hers were to be tested by the hardest trials, and to be victorious both in prison and on the scaffold. We are fortunate in possessing their biographies. In how many cases at the same time and in the same country did similar ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... beauty and glory of a great picture are confined within itself, she won out that glory by patient faith and self-devotion, and multiplied it for mankind. From the dark, chill corner of a gallery,—from some curtained chapel in a church, where the light came seldom and aslant,—from the prince's carefully guarded cabinet, where not one eye in thousands was permitted to behold it, she ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... age of fifteen, I resolved upon consummating so dreadful a sacrifice as to affect dumbness. The circumstances were, indeed, solemnly grave and strangely important, which demanded so awful a martyrdom. But well did I weigh all the misery and all the peril that such a self-devotion was sure to entail upon me. I knew that I must exercise the most stern—the most remorseless—the most inflexible despotism over my emotions—that I must crush as it were the very feelings of my soul—that I must also observe a caution so unwearied and so constantly wakeful, that it would ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... told the world that "Miss Nightingale, accompanied by thirty-four nurses, will leave this evening. Miss Nightingale, who has, I believe, greater practical experience of hospital administration and treatment than any other lady in this country, has, with a self-devotion for which I have no words to express my gratitude, undertaken this noble but ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... disposed to call it) profession and character supposed by some very good people of a certain way of thinking to be the only indication of what they considered real religion, I have remembered the serene, courageous self-devotion of my dear friend, when, during a dangerous (as it was at one time apprehended, fatal) illness of her youngest daughter, she would leave her child's bedside to go to the theater, and discharge duties never very attractive to her, and rendered distasteful then by cruel anxiety, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... am sure, to resort to the radical measure of clapping Fray Antonio into a strait-jacket; and had the opportunity arisen for bringing their difference of opinion to a practical issue I am confident that we should have witnessed an exceedingly curious conflict, in which heroic self-devotion would have struggled with a rough but very honest love. And that Fray Antonio anticipated such a conflict was shown by his taking effective measures to render it impossible. During the remainder of that day ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... without it. But he had ill-fortune, and was besides so greedy after every shadow of the true divinity, and so much the slave of a strong temperament, that perhaps his nerve was relaxed and his heart had lost the power of self-devotion before an opportunity occurred. The circumstances of his youth doubtless counted for something in the result. For the lads of Ayrshire, as soon as the day's work was over and the beasts were stabled, would take the road, it might be in a winter tempest, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supinely in the enervated hearts of the higher classes in France, corrupted by long habits of indulgence in selfish gratifications. The lesson at once awoke even the most callous; while those, and there were many such, who required it not, furnished the noblest examples of high courage and self-devotion to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... of all unreasoning love and self-devotion? If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend. Any good man soon learns to discriminate between the remonstrance that comes from a woman's love to his soul, her concern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... he put the schooner in a state to be moved, then place her in the hands of the authorities, his own peace would be made, and his character cleared. Rose no sooner understood his plans and motives, than she entered into them with all the ardour and self-devotion of her sex; for the single hour of confidential and frank communication which had just passed, doubled the interest she felt in Mulford and in all that belonged to him. Jack Tier was useful on board a vessel, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... noble heart has suffered! When I think of his mournful story, I almost lose all faith in humanity, and would lose it altogether were it not for the spectacle which is afforded by himself—a spectacle of purest and loftiest virtue, and stainless honor, and endless self-devotion. But I must say no more, for fear that I may say too much, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... greatest social forces, and that which made the Europe of the middle-ages, rests on principles which, since 1792, no longer exist in France, where the Individual has now triumphed over the State. Association requires, in the first place, a self-devotion that is not understood in our day; also a guileless faith which is contrary to the spirit of the nation, and lastly, a discipline against which men in these days revolt and which the Catholic religion alone can enforce. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... them; then seeing him go to bed and fall asleep, he felt no more fear. In the morning the coast was strewed with wrecks. There were no life-boats in those days; now the lives of hundreds are annually saved by the noble self-devotion of British sailors. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... inclined to extend our admiration to the feelings of self-devotion which governed the conduct of Captain M—- it cannot be a matter of surprise that the officers of the frigate did not coincide with his total indifference to self, in the discharge of his duty. Murmur they did not; but they looked at each other, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... greate a height of power), (4) whose zeal in the service of his comrades won for him the unhesitating attachment of his friends, who infused into the hearts of his soldiers a spirit, not of discipline only, but of self-devotion to their chief. And yet surely that is the strongest of all battle-lines (5) in which obedience creates tactical efficiency, and alacrity in the field springs out of loyal affection for ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... considerable size captured by the Spaniards during the whole war, and it did them little good; for, besides that the vessel had been shattered to pieces, and sunk a few days after with two hundred Spanish sailors on board, the example of heroic self-devotion set by sir Richard Grenville long continued in the hour of battle to strike awe and terror ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... made him master of millions? Surely the Directors of a Great Nation may consider the interests of their shareholders—i.e., the people they govern—as sufficiently serious not to be endangered by the deliberate sacrifice of the preponderant position of readiness which generations of self-devotion, patriotism and wise forethought have won ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... great qualities seem so natural and inevitable, we forgot that all did not share them. We forgot the scholar's proverbial reproach of timidity and selfishness, in watching him. While he lived, it seemed a matter of course that the greatest acquirements and the heartiest self-devotion should go together. Can we keep our strength, without the tonic of his example? How petty it now seems to ask for any fine-drawn subtilties of poet or seer in him who gave his life to the cause of the humblest! Life speaks the loudest. We do not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... self-devotion was in consequence of a vow made by these brave old men, which Fa'bius, the Pontifex Maximus, pronounced in their names. The Romans believed that, by thus devoting themselves to the internal gods, disorder and confusion were brought among ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... apartment. He himself had not had time to put on his cuirass, but he seized his sword and buckler and defended himself valiantly, killing four of his adversaries and wounding several others. One of his assailants, in a spirit of self-devotion, attracted to himself the blows of Pizarro. Meanwhile the other conspirators made their way in and attacked him with such fury that he could not parry all the blows, being so exhausted that he could scarcely wield his sword. "Thus," says Zarate, "they made an end, and succeeded in killing him ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... well-deserved admiration to the brightness and vivacity of American ladies. Those who know the work they have done and are doing in many a noble cause will admire still more their energy, their courage, their self-devotion. No country seems to owe more to its women than America does, nor to owe to them so much of what is best in social institutions and in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... When this act of self-devotion was performed, Hetty did not retire. The foliage of the overhanging trees and bushes would have almost concealed her person, had there been light, but in that obscurity it was utterly impossible to discover any object thus shaded, at the distance of a few feet. Flight, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Battalion, G. Ross-Bain and W.H. Barratt among the officers, S. Clough and T. Hulme among the N.C.O.'s—all valiant men—won a modest measure of fame. On one occasion Hulme picked up a live bomb thrown by the enemy and saved his comrades' lives by throwing it over the parapet with splendid self-devotion. Our British sappers became more proficient in mining, special corps being formed from among the Wigan colliers of the Manchesters and the Lowland Scots. The guns were always active, and their co-operation with the infantry was perfected. Those who remember passing by night along ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... Only it is hardly acknowledged, but rather lies below the level of mental apprehension and expression. It is the function of Christianity to raise this unacknowledging trustfulness and self-giving out of dumb subconsciousness, and to give to it speech, and to crown it with the glory of fully human self-devotion. It is its part to declare that it is God Whom they find in the offering of themselves, His love in which they can lose themselves, His purpose to which they can cleave, His will to be done—and that to give Him joy is the supreme end ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... which this task excited were speedily lost in the necessity which he now saw of bidding farewell to Flora Mac-Ivor, perhaps for ever. The pang attending this reflection were inexpressible; for her high-minded elevation of character, her self-devotion to the cause which she had embraced, united to her scrupulous rectitude as to the means of serving it, had vindicated to his judgement the choice adopted by his passions. But time pressed, calumny was busy with his fame, and every hour's delay ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... laborious study pursued with a method superior to that which guided the studies of others, had set him at the head of the learned men of his time; and he was great enough to know and to claim his place. He had the self-devotion of enthusiasm, and its ready, but dignified boldness, based upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she routed the Jesuit; and she refused Charles VI; and she married the little Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom she tended with love, and with every manner of sacrifice, with artful kindness, with tender flattery, with entire self-devotion, thenceforward until ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... take great pleasure in speaking of Captain Glazier in the highest terms, not only on account of the self-devotion he has manifested in a noble cause, but of his indomitable perseverance and energy. We trust he will, wherever he goes, receive the unanimous support of the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... man kneeling on the slimy deck, was as nearly a religious fanatic as his soft, sweet nature would allow. With greater bodily strength and attendant greater passions, he would have been a simple monomaniac. In him the passion for self-devotion was singularly strong, and contact with men had cooled it down into an unusually deep sense ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... that direction. Christians were persecuted and defenceless, and they betook themselves to the only virtues which they had the opportunity of practising—gentleness, patience, resignation, self-sacrifice, and self-devotion—all that is loveliest in the ideal female character. And God forbid that that side of the Christian life should ever be undervalued. It has its own beauty, its own strength too made perfect in ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... as well as time and opportunity permitted; but she did not throw herself with any enthusiasm into her duties. To keep seven children in good condition and discipline in a small house, on a small income, is more, it must be allowed, than most girls of twenty are equal to; only enthusiasm and self-devotion could make such a task possible, and these qualifications poor little Ursula did not possess. Oh! how glad she was to get away from it all, from having to think of Janey and Johnny, and Amy and little Robin. She was not anxious about how things might be going on in her absence, as kind Miss Dorset ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... reposed in me had induced him to call upon me to concur in restoring to France the liberty, the power, and the glory of which the country had been unjustly deprived. I enjoyed, by anticipation, the public eulogiums, which, after his success, he would bestow upon my courage, my self-devotion, my patriotism. In short, I abandoned myself with rapture and with pride to all the thoughts, and all the generous resolutions which can be inspired by the love of fame and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... story. Roy Eversley is a very touching picture of high principle and unshrinking self-devotion in a ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... heroism in like manner, whether applied to a soldier or to any human being, not mere courage; not the mere doing of duty: but the doing of something beyond duty; something which is not in the bond; some spontaneous and unexpected act of self-devotion. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... things that I have so plainly said to you. She frankly consented to my whole view of the matter, for if she wishes to make an effect or gain a point she has a magnanimity that stops at nothing short of self-devotion. "I know it," she said. "You are perfectly right; but here we are, and what are we to do? What do you do in Altruria, I should like ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... for a harvest of concupiscent glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved miracles of true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses love and courtesans—women who, having rolled in mire and impurity, thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and who practice exclusiveness—the only word for an idea so little known in ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Margaritis was undoubtedly in real danger from a man who, among other fancies, persisted in carrying about with him two long-bladed knives with which he sometimes threatened her. Who has not seen the wonderful self-devotion shown by provincials who consecrate their lives to the care of sufferers, possibly because of the disgrace heaped upon a bourgeoise if she allows her husband or children to be taken to a public hospital? Moreover, who does not know the repugnance which these ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... reflectively. "FITZGERALD never expected to go to Garden Party; down here to help me; sudden emergency, and spirit of self-devotion, suggested to him to run over, and see what could be done; happy chance to find him, by exception, in the right rig. It would never have done for him to rush over to Marlborough House to meet the QUEEN in his 'reefer.' Curious, when I come to think of it. Hope ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... his lost friend in his arms, thought bitterly and reproachfully of the dog's strange conduct yesterday—his evident depression and forebodings of evil—the result, no doubt, of illness, but making that last act of self-devotion all the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... essential bent of Hebraism to set doing above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following not our own individual will, but the will of God, obedience, is the fundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we have attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, as the old law and ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... was so, not from any merit of mine, but because she, in her own person, had undertaken for the service of our nation a task of almost incredible difficulty. My Lords, were she child of another father, I should extol to the skies her bravery, her self-devotion, her loyalty to the land she loves. Why, then, should I hesitate to speak of her deeds in fitting terms, since it is my duty, my glory, to hold them in higher honour than can any in this land? I shall not shame her—or even myself—by ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... speaker, in tracing the later course of Athenian policy, lays no claim to those high motives of patriotism which had inspired his people with sublime self-devotion two generations back. He boldly asserts the principle that it is lawful for the stronger to rule the weaker, and claims merit for Athens in abstaining from excessive abuse of her power. The Athenians, we may believe, had been tainted by the baseness of their confederates. In the early ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... she had embraced the lesson of humility, the once despised Emma Brandon had been rising in her estimation. The lowliness of her manners, and the heart-whole consistency of her self-devotion, had far outweighed her little follies, and, together with remorse for having depreciated and neglected her, had established her claim ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I was directed to put in the head as before. I was very unwilling to comply; for I had no reason to complain of my master, and knew that he was punished for the fault of which I had been guilty. But it was a case of life or death,—and the days of self-devotion have long passed away in our country. Besides which, I had the deed in my pocket by which I was a partner in the business, and my master had no heirs,—so that I stood a chance to come into the whole of ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat |
