"Abase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself by means of self, and not abase self, Self is his own friend, is also his own enemy. To him is his self his own friend, who through self conquers self, Yet if it battle with the external world, then ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... scientific method than this passage. There is neither excuse nor hypocrisy. It is merely a matter of business calculation. Mankind is the raw material, the State is the finished work. Further you are to conciliate your neighbours who are weak and abase the strong, and you must not let the stranger within your gates. Above all look before as well as after and think not to leave it to time, godere li benefici del tempo, but, as did the Romans, strike and strike ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of a brother, Lightly the son forgat his parents' piteous ashes. 400 Lightly the son's young grave his father pray'd for, an unwed Maiden, a step-dame fair in freer luxury clasping. Then did mother unholy to son that knew not abase her, Shamefully, fear'd not unholy the blessed dead to dishonour. Human, inhuman alike, in wayward infamy blending, 405 Turned far from us away that righteous counsel of heaven. Therefore proudly the Gods such sinful company ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... deeds Done by main strength? yet in my body is throned As great a heart, and in my spirit, O men, I have not less of godlike. Evil it were That one a coward should mix with you, one hand Fearful, one eye abase itself; and these Well might ye hate and well revile, not me. For not the difference of the several flesh Being vile or noble or beautiful or base Makes praiseworthy, but purer spirit and heart Higher than these meaner mouths and limbs, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ch. xxi. 26. Speaking of Zedekiah and his dethronement, the prophet represented the Deity, as saying, "thus saith the Lord God, remove the diadem, take off the crown; this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, (i. e. the crown or sceptre of Judah,) and it shall be no more until he comes whose right it is, and I will ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... the duchess, "ere Warwick's daughter wears the baudekin of royalty, and sits in as high a state as the queen's mother! Prince, I would fain confer with thee; we have a project to abase and banish this hateful lord. If you but join us, success is ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mistakes, their infirmities, or their differences in smaller matters, agreed in the great Christian essential of acceptance in the Beloved. Deeply did she deplore the conceit, the bigotry, and the bitterness of sect. O that her spirit were more prevalent in the churches; that we could labor to abase our crown of pride; to offer up with one consent upon the altar of evangelical charity, those petty jealousies, animosities, and strifes which are our common reproach; and walk together as children of the same Father, brethren ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... that are yet in their filthiness, and that think themselves rich for the next world, and yet are poor, and miserable, and wretched, and blind, and naked. Thus the poor, blind, naked, hypocritical Pharisee thought of himself, when God threatened to abase him: yea, he thought himself thus, and joyed therein, when indeed he was going down to ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion[obs3], genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude[obs3], pitch, precipitate. overthrow, overturn, overset[obs3]; upset, subvert, prostate, level, fell; cast down, take down, throw down, fling down, dash down, pull down, cut down, knock down, hew down; raze, raze ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... will you not brave?" He answered, and the dew was in his eyes,— "You bring her here, even to abase herself To rescue me! Too costly sacrifice! Here do not dwell the Graces and the Loves, But Drudgery is master of the house. Dear lady, elsewhere seek the answering bloom." A hope flashed up. "Do you suppose," said I, "That any impulse ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... latest appeals was addressed by Smith at Nauvoo in December, 1843, to his native state, Vermont, calling on the Green Mountain boys, not only to assist him in attaining justice in Missouri, "but also to humble and chastise or abase her for the disgraces she has brought upon constitutional liberty, until she ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... of the feeble hand! Strength of the strong! to whom the nations kneel! Stay and destroyer, at whose just command Earth's kingdoms tremble and her empires reel! Who dost the low uplift, the small make great, And dost abase the ignorantly proud, Of our scant people mould a mighty state, To the strong, stern,—to Thee in meekness bowed! Father of unity, make this people one! Weld, interfuse them in the patriot's flame,— Whose forging on thine anvil was begun In blood late shed to purge the common shame; That ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you stop the sun from running his course, and hinder the moon from giving her light? Can you count the number of the stars, or stay the bottles of heaven? Can you call for the waters of the sea, and cause them to cover the face of the ground? Can you behold every one that is proud, and abase him, and bind their faces in secret? Yet these are some of the works of our King, in whose name this day we come up unto you, that you may be brought under his authority. In his name, therefore, I summon you again to yield up ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... admit the compensation. "Ricky," he would say in the voice of a man bowed and broken on the wheel of life, "you needn't envy me my thousands. They are the measure of my abasement." Yet he continued to abase himself. Nothing was more amazing than his versatility. The public could hardly keep up with the flight of Rankin's incarnations. Drawing-room comedy, pathetic pastoral, fantastic adventure, slum idyll ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Berenice Morison's perfections weighed as heavily in the scale as any shortcomings of theology. He reproached himself stoutly, in thoroughly monkish fashion, and ended by resolving that obedience was a duty; that the errand on which he was sent was one which would abase his sinful pride and must be executed for the benefiting of his ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the whole gloom and sadness of which the Roman had not yet experienced. However august be the object we propose to ourselves, every less worthy path we take to insure it distorts the mental sight of our ambition; and the means, by degrees, abase the end to their own standard. This is the true misfortune of a man nobler than his age—that the instruments he must use soil himself: half he reforms his times; but half, too, the times will corrupt ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the words he spoke rang hollow, awkward, even impertinent. He could say nothing which did not seem hideously supercilious; and yet he wanted to abase himself! He knew that Mary's humiliation ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... against Sofia. He had satisfied the claims of honour; he had punished Servia for her peevish and unsisterly jealousy. Under his lead the Bulgarians had covered themselves with glory, and had leaped at a bound from political youth to manhood. Why should he risk their new-found unity merely in order to abase Servia? The Prince never acted more prudently than when he decided not to bring into the field the Power which, as he believed, had pushed on Servia ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the enemy's ramparts. In war is no safety. Fool! be thy boding on the Dardanian's head and thine own fortunes. Go on; cease not to throw all into confusion with thy terrors, to exalt the strength of a twice vanquished race, and abase the arms of Latinus before it. Now the princes of the Myrmidons tremble before Phrygian arms, now Tydeus' son and Achilles of Larissa, and Aufidus river recoils from the Adriatic wave. Or when the scheming ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... gate, the giant shouts out to the noble lord that he will kill his sons unless he delivers to him his daughter, whom he will surrender to his vile fellows to become their sport. For he no longer loves her nor esteems her, that he should deign to abase himself to her. She shall be constantly beset by a thousand lousy and ragged knaves, vacant wretches, and scullery boys, who all shall lay hands on her. The worthy man is well-nigh beside himself when he hears how his daughter will be made a bawd, or else, before his very eyes, his four ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... shall eat up all. Your chiming towers proud and tall He shall most utterly abase, And set a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... weaker, some remained quite as strong as before. Most Englishmen and women knew now that Spain had clay feet; and that Rome, though she might threaten, could not always perform what she threatened. To abase the pride of Spain, to make harbors of refuge for the angel of the Reformation—these wishes, though they had not vanished, though no man could know how long the peace with Spain would last, were ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... committing other wrongs; and such a wrong had been done to the people of Scotland in the preceding generation. It was because the Parliament of the Restoration had legislated in insolent defiance of the sense of the nation that the Parliament of the Revolution had to abase itself before the mob. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of nations! Help of the feeble hand! Strength of the strong! to whom the nations kneel! Stay and destroyer, at whose just command Earth's kingdoms tremble and her empires reel! Who dost the low uplift, the small make great, 5 And dost abase the ignorantly proud, Of our scant people mould a mighty state, To the strong, stern,—to Thee in meekness bowed! Father of unity, make this people one! Weld, interfuse them in the patriot's flame,— 10 Whose forging on Thine anvil was begun In blood late shed to purge the common ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... was the cause of thy strangerhood and thy separation from me." Then he complained to her of his case, saying, "O my mother, go to her and speak with her; haply she will vouchsafe me her sight to see and dispel from me this despondency." Replied his mother, "Idle desires abase men's necks; so put away from thee this thought that can only vex; for I will not wend to her nor go in to her with such message.' Now when he heard his mother's words he told her what said the horse-thief ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... is the greatest, Thy duty earliest and latest. Thy future rests in its embrace With cure for ills that now abase. ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... earnestly, 'that you share an opinion that has injured me deeply; and it was to controvert it that I wanted to speak to you freely. Henceforth you will justify me, I hope; for I can clear myself of the charge of ingratitude and treason, which would abase me in my own eyes if I ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... that in derdoing, armes And honours suit my vowd daies do spend, Unto thy bounteous baytes and pleasing charmes, With which weake men thou witchest, to attend; Regard of worldly mucke{19} doth fowly blend, And low abase the high heroicke spright,{20} That joyes for crownes and kingdomes to contend: Faire shields, gay steedes, bright armes be my delight; Those be the riches fit for ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... one, and suffer me to breathe into him the desire that spurns the valleys of life, and ascends its steeps. If the humble are given to me, let there be amongst them one whom I may lead on the mission that shall abase the proud; for, behold, O Appointer of the Stars, as I have sat for uncounted years upon my solitary throne, brooding over the things beneath, my spirit hath gathered wisdom from the changes that shift below. Looking upon the tribes ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "I do hope you have no foolish ideas of braving out the censure of the Bishop. Such action would not only be sin, but it would be the worst policy imaginable. Holy Church is always merciful to those who abase themselves before her,—who own their folly, and humbly bow to her rebuke. But she has no mercy on rebels who persist in their rebellion,—stubborn self-opinionated men, who in their incredible folly and presumption imagine themselves capable ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... give. The works had taught him the elements of mechanical engineering, and common sense told him that skilled labor rarely went begging if the laborer were worthy his hire. None the less, the prospect of touting for such employment affrighted him beyond words. He felt that he could not again abase himself for a few paltry shillings a week. The ambition to make of this misfortune a stepping-stone to better things rested on no greater security than his pride and yet it would not be wholly conquered. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... chief or- namentes of the minde: and beyng as a God aboue all crea- tures, dooeth leese the excellent giftes. A beaste will not take excesse in feedyng, but man often tymes is without reason, and hauyng a pure mynde and soule giuen of God, and a face to beholde the heauens, yet he doeth abase hymself to yearth- [Sidenote: Greshopper.] lie thynges, as concernyng the Greshopper: as the Philoso- phers doe saie, is made altogether of dewe, and sone perisheth[.] [Fol. xj.r] The Greshopper maie well resemble, ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... Venice. And the armies that have most swiftly and suddenly broken their enemies in pieces have been the religious armies—the Moslem Armies, for instance, or the Puritan Armies. And a religious army may, by its nature, be defined as an army in which every man is taught not to exalt but to abase himself. Many modern Englishmen talk of themselves as the sturdy descendants of their sturdy Puritan fathers. As a fact, they would run away from a cow. If you asked one of their Puritan fathers, if you asked Bunyan, for instance, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... ordinary times set apart for divine service on the week-days, nay, moreover, let it be observed whether or not they keep the festival days more carefully, and urge the keeping of them more earnestly than the Lord's own day. Those prelates that will not abase themselves to preach upon ordinary Sabbaths, think the high holidays worthy of their sermons. They have been also often seen to travel upon the Lord's day, whereas they hold it irreligion to travel upon an holiday. And whereas ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... least piquant of them would be the criticisms of a Breton captain, Kersaint, on the bellicose speech which he launched at the Convention on 1st January 1793. Admitting that Pitt really wanted peace, while Fox only desired to abase his rival, he averred that the Prime Minister would try to arrest France in her rapid career of land conquest either by a naval war or by an armed mediation. War, said Kersaint, must result, were it only from the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of that time his eyes were lifted to heaven and his reason returned, and his kingdom was restored to him, for he had learned that God alone is great, and "Those that walk in pride He is able to abase." ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... To abase myself before her; to grovel at her feet and crave her pardon for my behaviour of last night. What else should I want to do, ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... and love and power, of gold also, more than I can count. When I go forth, my armies, who still look on me as half a god, shout their welcome and kiss the air after their heathen fashion. My beauteous queen bows down to me and the women of my household abase themselves into the dust. The people of the Ancient City of Gold turn their faces to the wall and the children cover their eyes with their hands that they may not look upon my splendour as I pass, while maidens throw flowers for my feet to tread. Upon my ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard |
