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Self-sacrifice   /sɛlf-sˈækrəfˌaɪs/   Listen
Self-sacrifice

noun
1.
Acting with less concern for yourself than for the success of the joint activity.  Synonym: selflessness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Self-sacrifice" Quotes from Famous Books



... the spirit of self-sacrifice were carrying him away. He watched his enemy with glowing eyes as one who looks on the arbiter of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... the amount of resolution and self-sacrifice involved in this attempt to save the life of her husband and son. It was too startling a proposal to listen to. I could advise no client to plead guilty to wilful murder. It was so extraordinary a proposition, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... of doing good to the individual. And, after all, is it not enough to have been an influence for good over one or two human souls? There are quite fine characters hereabout—especially in the women—natures capable not only of self-sacrifice, but of delicacy of sentiment. To have learnt to know of such, to have been of service to one or two of such—is not this ample return? I could not get to St. James's Hall to hear your friend's symphony at the Henschel concert. I have been reading Mme. Blavatsky's latest book, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... had given each a spirit of self-sacrifice, which was to help them through many hard times, while it had put an idea into Morton's head that he was not slow ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... until his death in 1879, and she remained, in his old home several years after his death. During this period, she accomplished much for the education of the Indians around her and she kept up an extensive and helpful correspondence with native Christian workers. All the time she kept up the work of self-sacrifice for the good of others. In 1881 she met a poor Indian woman, suffering extremely from intense cold. She slipped off her own warm skirt and gave it to the woman. The result was a severe illness, which caused her partial paralysis and total blindness from which she ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell

... "Christianity," he said, "is Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and rescue from the thrall of vile affections, not by obedience to the letter of a law, but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing example. To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity offered its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who refuse themselves nothing it showed one who refused himself everything." Following this example, Arnold preached "Grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self," and what he preached ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... and the author aimed to show how even in the desperate characters gathered together there—the fortune-hunters, gamblers, thieves, murderers, drunkards, and prostitutes—the latent nobility of human nature asserted itself in acts of heroism, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and touching fidelity. The same men who cheated at cards and shot each another down with tipsy curses were capable on occasion of the most romantic generosity and the most delicate chivalry. Critics were not wanting who held that, in the matter ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... over her face as this thought entered her brain. She walked still more quickly, and clenched her strong hand, while resolution and the noble determination of self-sacrifice gave her a false strength. Bet was not ignorant of certain verses of the Bible. She had never read the Bible, for her mother's form of religion had rendered the idea of looking into its pages distasteful ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... love of a Father who dares to appeal to the children to make heroic response; and who shows his own love for them in the lengths to which he will go for them. Moral love will go the full length of heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot help believing that it is the quality of God's love, rather than the mere fact of that love, which is the explanation of the power of the ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... Power! I call thee: I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; Oh! let my weakness have an end! 60 Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... sin, the purity, the gentleness and patience, the warm sympathy, the constant self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice, the eagerness to win men, the tireless going wherever men could be helped—these may be in us as they were in Him, and will be, as we let Him live in us. And men will recognize the Jesus-story being lived in ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... told in The Chestertons that Frances sacrificed both Gilbert and herself on the altar of her family. Truly there was much self-sacrifice in the lives of both to family, friends and causes. They did not feel it as self-sacrifice to enrich the lives of others ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... of barges, pulled along by struggling little tugboats, passed between her and the bank. These would see Tarrytown—the promised land of Screech Owl's prophecy, the paradise she had been forced to leave! The light of self-sacrifice shone in her uplifted eyes, and many times her sight was blurred by tears; but no thought of escape from Lem and Lon came to her mind. To reenter her promised land would place her beloved ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... the farewell shots which were fired over the old man's grave were never to die out of Hetty's ears. Child, girl, woman, she was to hear them always: signal guns of her life, they meant courage, cheerfulness, self-sacrifice. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... rights, and the very supremacy which the slaveholders enjoyed was fatal to this feeling. Virginia and Kentucky were rich in independent character, but public spirit is better than this, for it cares for the independence of all through the self-sacrifice of each. That was the secret which Ohio early learned from New England, and which kept her safe from slavery when it pressed so hard upon her in the friendship as well as the enmity ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... Though Endymion was only sixteen, he was tall and manly beyond his age, and during the latter years of his life, his naturally sweet temper and genial disposition had been schooled in self-discipline and self-sacrifice. He was not to be wholly left to strangers; Mr. Ferrars had spoken to Rodney about receiving him, at least for the present, and steps would be taken that those who presided over his office would be influenced in his favour. The appointment was certainly not equal ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... all Christian hearts; who had been recruited from the noblest families in every country in Europe, and had had princes of royal blood in their ranks; who claimed to act upon the purest and most exalted Christian principles; and who proved the sincerity of their professions by their lives of self-sacrifice, and their deaths, for the cause they had taken up; who had been honored and favored and dowered with gifts and privileges, in gratitude for their exploits—should suddenly have fallen into the blackest crimes. So it is no less difficult to understand how public opinion should turn against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... be bound by external rules, but none the less should every high-minded Christian soul in this matter have a law unto itself. It may safely be laid down as a general rule, that no income, however large or however small, should be unblessed by the divine touch of self-sacrifice. Something for the poor, the sorrowing, the hungry, the tempted, and the weak should be taken from what is our own at the expense of some personal sacrifice, or we suffer more morally than the brother from whom we withdraw ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the presence, or for the honour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honour, or acts of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also, he was always anxious to know something definite about them; and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... that!—after all my stern self-control and self-sacrifice to keep out all those things I wanted to write," bridled Billy. "Besides, they'd have been ever so much more interesting reading than these will be," she pouted, as she took the ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter

... was very good-natured and nice, told me the names and properties of various plants and flowers, and suddenly, a propos of nothing at all, cried, hitting himself on his forehead, 'And I, poor fool, thought her a flirt! it's clear self-sacrifice is sweet for ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... the women doctors, and, as things become easier for the students, it becomes more and more difficult to convince the new recruits of the strenuousness of the fight in earlier years and of the need for constant vigilance and self-sacrifice at the present time. ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... first time in his life fallen utterly in love; and now that she had come down close to his father's house, he looked on her as a lamb fallen unawares into the jaws of the greedy wolf, which he felt himself to be. For Eustace's love had little or nothing of chivalry, self-sacrifice, or purity in it; those were virtues which were not taught at Rheims. Careful as the Jesuits were over the practical morality of their pupils, this severe restraint had little effect in producing real habits of self-control. What little Eustace had learnt of women from them, was as base and vulgar ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... one should abandon not parents and brethren merely, but also wife and children as well in order to enter the priesthood; in Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9 this is adduced only as an extreme instance of the spirit of self-sacrifice. In any case it is not to be inferred that celibacy was demanded, but only that the priestly office was often barely sufficient to support the man, not to speak ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... not yet quite seventeen. Not yet seventeen! the reader will say. She was still such a child, and yet arguing to herself about spendthrift debtors and self-sacrifice! All this bombast at sixteen and a half. No, my ungentle reader, not all this bombast at sixteen and a half. The bombast is mine. It is my fault if I cannot put into fitting language the thoughts which God put into her young heart. In her mind's soliloquy, Charley's vices were probably all summed ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... death fulfilled all ideals of family and feudal duty held by the men of his time. Beowulf, in fact, became an ideal king, as he was an ideal warrior and hero, and he closed his life by an ideal act of self-sacrifice for the good of ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... spiritual emotion. I was penetrated by Browning's great idea expressed over and over again—the expansion of Paul's dictum that faith is not certainty, but a belief without sufficient proof, a belief which leads to right action and to self-sacrifice. Of the 70 years of life which one might hope to live and work in, I had no mean idea. I asked in the newspaper, "Is life so short?" and answered. "No." I expanded and spiritualized the idea in a sermon, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... in her long life of self-sacrifice that Julia Cloud had been able to rise above her anxiety about her sister's tantrums and go calmly on her way. It is scarcely likely that she would have managed it now if it hadn't been that she felt that Allison and Leslie ought ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... wish from my heart, that some selfish persons whom I could name would go to the dogs. They would learn there, I am sure, what they have never learned before—most valuable lessons in gratitude, and affection, and self-sacrifice—to say nothing about common sense, a little more of which would not ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... sense (self-sanctification, self-denial, contemplation) and the demand of the love of our neighbour (the active relating of all to God, the active interrelating of all in God, and the most penetrating, mutual self-sacrifice for God). This Ethic, a mystical interpretation of the Evangelical Preaching, forms indeed a strong contrast to the This-World Ethic of the Natural Law, Aristotle, the Decalogue and Natural Prosperity; but then this cannot fail to be the case, given ...
— Progress and History • Various

... Excellency!" he said. "Well, then, I need not scruple to tell you the truth. Yes, I have labored night and day, and I hope to obtain the reward of all this self-sacrifice; and now I draw near the goal my blood is excited—I am fevered by my hopes. Look here, sir," and forgeting all his fears and etiquettes, he took the Count by the arm and led him to a curtain which ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... he's throwing away the happiness that comes of living as suits his nature, and so creating a harmony that enriches everybody who touches him. And what's he doing it for? To satisfy a morbid need for self-sacrifice. He's going to do harm, in all probability, mix up a situation already complicated beyond solution, and why is he? So that he can indulge himself in the perverse pleasure of the rasp of a hair-shirt. He doesn't really use his intelligence to think, to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... forlorn souls in my parish beside the happier creatures who weep over imaginary woes as they are painted by his eloquent lips, that brilliant scene would be better than any sermon. Day and night I look down on lives as full of sin, self-sacrifice and suffering as any in those famous books. Day and night I try to comfort the poor by my cheery voice, and to make their wants known by proclaiming them with all my might. But people seem to be so intent on business, pleasure or ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... had long ago lost sight of the uncomplaining self-sacrifice it had previously lauded and explained Celestina Morton's unwedded state by declaring that she was too "easy goin'" to make anybody a good wife. This criticism came, perhaps, more loudly from the female faction of the town than from the male. However ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a maximum term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of rejection ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... the use of private automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in their making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and self-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the most fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift waits ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... without fear, and is applied to objects less removed from ourselves than those we revere, being said especially of aged persons, of places or objects having sacred associations, and of abstractions; we venerate an aged pastor, the dust of heroes or martyrs, lofty virtue or self-sacrifice, or some great cause, as that of civil or religious liberty; we do not venerate God, but revere or reverence him. We adore with a humble yet free outflowing of soul. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... life increases, the crises increase in which the group must ask the unfailing service and devotion of its members. Thus religion in its upward evolution becomes increasingly social, until it finally comes to throw supreme emphasis upon the life of service and of self-sacrifice for the sake of the group; and as the group expands from the clan and the tribe to humanity, religion necessarily becomes less tribal and more humanitarian until the supreme object of the devotion which it inculcates must ultimately be ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... Africa, and amidst savages. Among his companions were his ward, who chanced also to be the lady whom he loved and desired to make his wife, but who, as he thought, cared nothing for him; and a priest who was enamoured platonically of the same lady, and yet wished, with rare self-sacrifice, to bring about her union with another man. Here were materials enough for a romance, leaving the journey and the fabled treasure out of it; only then the scene ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... of man's good deeds, it lies written in the laughter of the children, in the light of lovers' eyes, in the dreams of the young men; it shall not be forgotten. The fires of persecution served as torches to show Heaven the heroism that was in man. From the soil of tyranny sprang self-sacrifice, and daring for the Right. Cruelty! what is it but the vile manure, making the ground ready for the flowers of tenderness and pity? Hate and Anger shriek to one another across the ages, but the voices of Love and ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... family affairs of all the others. The fact that the economic condition of all alike is on a most precarious level makes the ready outflow of sympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world. There are numberless instances of self-sacrifice quite unknown in the circles where greater economic advantages make that kind of intimate knowledge of one's neighbors impossible. An Irish family in which the man has lost his place, and the woman is struggling to eke out the scanty savings by day's work, will take in the widow ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... and cents, must henceforth be banished forever. Thrice already in its short history has it put that hoary old slander to shame, and now once again has it given the lie to it. The history of nations has perhaps no parallel to the high humanity, the splendid self-sacrifice, the complete disinterestedness that brought America into this war, with nothing to gain and everything to lose. It has broken forever with the triple monarchies of murder. To live at peace with crime was to be the accomplice of the criminal. Therefore, in the name of ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... call excellent characterizes them. Excellences are for each man those qualities from which others get the most advantage. Charity, self-sacrifice, mercy, honesty, integrity, courage, prudence, assiduity, and however else anything that is good and brave may be called, are always of use to the other fellow but barely and only indirectly the possessor of the virtues. Hence we praise the latter ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... their fall: Persuasion flies Wing'd, from their grave: The hearts of men are turn'd To worship what they burn'd: Owning the sway of Love's long-suffering eyes, Love's sweet self-sacrifice; The might of gentleness; the subduing force Of wisdom on her mid-way measured course Gliding;—not torrent-like with fury spilt, Impetuous, o'er Himalah's rifted side, To ravage blind and wide, And leave a lifeless wreck of parching silt;— Gliding by ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... for a long time about her walk and her smile, and then about her "Iphigenia," which he declared to be one of the most beautiful performances ever seen, her personality lending itself to the incarnation of this Greek idea of fate and self-sacrifice. But Gluck's music was, in Owen's opinion, old-fashioned even at the time it was written—containing beautiful things, of course, but somewhat stiff in the joints, lacking the clear insight and direct expression of Beethoven's. "One man used to write ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... the most stirring exploits of the war—equaled only by the devotion and self-sacrifice of the Royal Engineers in the fight for the bridge—is that of the Irish Fusiliers in saving another regiment from annihilation. The regiment was in a distant and exposed position, and a message had to be sent ordering its retirement. This could only be accomplished ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... 23-24), and though naturally this self-assertion seemed blasphemous to those who did not accept him, yet as he had transformed the traditional notion of the kingdom, so did he the current thought of the Messiah. The pre-eminence was not to be of rank and glory but of service and self-sacrifice. In his kingdom there can be no strife for precedence, since its King comes not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life in the service of others (Mark ix. 33 f., x. 42-45). The formal acknowledgment of the Messiah's worth and position matters little, for to call him Lord does ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... Service publishes a report of work accomplished through the year. It is a dry recital of facts and figures, but if the reader has a little imagination he can see the record of great deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice written between the lines. ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... mankind, which places the example of self-sacrifice among the noblest lessons by which our nature can be corrected, has justly immortalized the memory of Leonidas. It is impossible to question the virtue of the man, but we may fairly dispute the wisdom of the system he adorned. We may doubt whether, in fact, his death served his country ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sure yet whether I loathed the man or liked him. He was the most extraordinary mixture of charity and drunkenness, lechery and self-sacrifice that I had ever come across. But he brought into the house with him a whiff of cheeriness and hope for which I could not but be grateful. He had a large brown paper parcel under his arm, which he unwrapped upon my table, displaying a great brown jar. This he carried ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... broach the subject before her, being a somewhat outspoken young lady from her foreign bringing up, which puts her beyond the pale of boarding-school punctiliousness, she would probably urge that she estimated poor Ivan's sagacious instinct combined with his courage and noble self-sacrifice, at a far higher level than the paltry apology for a soul that passes current for the genuine article with matter-of-fact religionists of ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... find her strength? Is her nature so spotless that self-sacrifice is her highest joy? Wilfrid, I could have asked pardon at her feet; my ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... by surprise when men who had lifted their hats to the popular nurse last week, passed him on the street to-day with a cold nod or curious stare. When women who had reverenced the self-sacrifice and gentleness of his life as only women do or can reverence the quality of tenderness in a man, shrank from him as if he were something infectious, like the plague,—he knew it was just, though he ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... question. Lantenac, the representative of the old order, had performed an exploit of signal devotion. Was it not well that one who had faith in the new order should show himself equally willing to cast away his life to save one whom self-sacrifice had transformed from the infernal Satan into ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... flattering, but a bore. Miss Wilkinson told him stories of the exquisite delicacy of Frenchmen when they stood in the same relation to fair ladies as he to Miss Wilkinson. She praised their courtesy, their passion for self-sacrifice, their perfect tact. Miss Wilkinson seemed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... marry Clare—all the more reason it seemed to me why I should be behind you. I was behind you so much more than you ever knew. I wonder if you've the least idea what most women's lives are like. They come into the world with the finest ideals, the most tremendous energies, with a desire for self-sacrifice that a man can't even begin to understand. Then they discover slowly that none of those things, those ideals, those energies, those sacrifices, are wanted. The world just doesn't need them—they might as well never have been born. Do you suppose I enjoyed slaving for my mother, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... remain a model of devotion and self-sacrifice for all time, and we feel that the highest tribute we can pay her is to endeavour, however humbly, to follow in the footsteps ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren

... as they sat down to luncheon, the preliminary attack was initiated. It was at first a vague discussion about self-sacrifice. They quoted instances from ancient History, such as Judith and Holophern, then, without any reason Lucretia with Sextus, Cleopatra who admitted to her intimacy all the enemy generals and reduced them to slavish servility. Then a fancy History was propounded, ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... Leopold; he is manifested in General Booth and in Alexander Borgia; Jesus Christ is a phase of his being, and so is Judas Iscariot. A sentimental Pantheism may say that God is that in a hero which nerves him to heroism, and that in a mother which prompts her self-sacrifice for her children, for there is none else. But that is only one-half of the truth; arguing from the same premises, we must also say that God is that in the sinner which succumbs to sin, and in the wrong-doer that which takes pleasure in wrong, for there is none else. Once we rub ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... stand before you the rightful representative of woman, claiming a share in the halo of glory that has gathered round her in the ages, and by the wisdom of her past words and works, her peerless heroism and self-sacrifice, I challenge your admiration; and, moreover, claiming, as I do, a share in all her outrages and sufferings, in the cruel injustice, contempt, and ridicule now heaped upon her, in her deep degradation, hopeless wretchedness, by all that is helpless in her present condition, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... artificially raised obstructions, or slid along the firm-packed snow, or grated on the muddy cross-streets, Princess Split told her plan—with reservations. She was not prepared to admit to so humble a worshiper the secret of her birth, but the magnanimous self-sacrifice of a beautiful nature, the heroine concealed beneath a frivolous exterior—these she was willing Jack ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... Giovanni Battista della Palla, who was still intent on supplying the King of France with Italian works of art. For him he painted a Sacrifice of Abraham, which Vasari thinks one of his most excellent works. The face of the patriarch is full of faith, and yet self-sacrifice; the nude figure of Isaac, bronzed in the parts which have been exposed to the sun, most tenderly expresses a trembling dread, mingled with trust in his father; the landscape is also very airy and beautiful, and a characteristic group ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... period is of special importance. At no other time of life will altruism, self-sacrifice, high ideals of honor and of love, make so strong an appeal as now. Adolescent reading must make the most of this fact. Some of the great love stories of literature and biography should be read, especially one or two which involve the putting ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... crime or violence, however abominable in its circumstances and however cruel in its execution, which cannot be justified by success, and no triviality, no absurdity of Fashion which deserves a censure: more—there is no act of disinterested love and tenderness, no deed of self-sacrifice and mercy, no aspiration after beauty and excellence, for which a single reason can ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... personality is the belief in human life in its fullest and truest form, it includes the belief in love and self-sacrifice. It may, indeed, be said that while Mr. Browning's judgments are leavened by the one idea, they are steadily coloured by the other; this again being so evident to his serious renders that I need only indicate it here. But the love ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... The hope which is lifted from trailing along the earth and twining round creatures and which rises to grasp these promises ought to be, and in the measure of its reality is the ally of all patient endurance and noble self-sacrifice. Its vision of coming good is all directed to the coming Christ, and 'every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself even ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Opal was a Catholic; indeed had been but little concerned what she professed. She had never appeared to him to be specially religious, but, if she was, that absurd idea of self-sacrifice for a dead mother she had never known might appeal to the love of penance which is inherent in all of Catholic faith, and she might not surrender to ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... with spontaneous determination, perseveringly, until physical fatigue forbids—a child wholly absorbed in his play—a child that has fallen asleep while so absorbed." That child, he said, would be "a thorough determined man, capable of self-sacrifice for the promotion of the welfare of himself and others." It is because "play is not trivial, but highly serious and of deep significance," that he appeals to mothers to cultivate and foster it, and to fathers ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... eccentricities, that the only wonder is that she should have been allowed to remain single. But the same wonder is often expressed, in actual life, in regard to old maids superior to Miss Roxy in education, accomplishments, and beauty, and her equals in vital self-sacrifice and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... contribution bag recently among others, after an address concerning our work. It was from a faithful colored woman who had spent her life in domestic service, and represented as true and earnest self-denial as money could. Not all the heroism and self-sacrifice are in the field work, among the missionaries of our great Association, as true and earnest as they are. There is the same spirit of devotion to the Master in the collecting field. We thank God for it, and take courage to ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various

... eclat in trips to Macedonia, but the God of recompense does not forget the steady, tireless help and sympathy extended to the needy, who dwell within sight of our own doors. Organized society work is good, but individual self-sacrifice and labor are much better; and if every unit did full duty, co-operative systems would not be so necessary; still, Leighton's scheme commends itself to every woman's heart, and when I answered his letter, I expressed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... their Manchu conquerors as a badge of subjection, had gradually become the most characteristic and most cherished feature of the national dress. But the bureaucracy of China, which had battened for centuries on corruption and ignorance, had no taste for self-sacrifice. Other vested interests felt themselves equally threatened, and behind them stood the whole latent force of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... be put into practice like every virtue enjoined by the law of God. A virtue cannot be practiced in all circumstances without self-sacrifice, privation, suffering, and in extreme cases loss of life itself. But he who esteems life more than fulfilling the will of God is already dead to the only true life. Trying to save his life he loses it. Besides, generally speaking, where non-resistance costs the sacrifice of a ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... a bee: and I wish I were as worthy in my place as that bee is in hers. I wish I could act up as well as she does to the true wisdom, which is self-sacrifice. For whom is that bee working? For herself? If that was all, she only needs to suck the honey as she goes. But she is storing up the wax under her stomach, and bee-bread in her thighs—for whom? Not for herself only, or even for her own ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley

... affectionate appreciation, showed how wholly she divined his spirit of self-sacrifice. "We wouldn't care in the least for it," she declared. "We enjoy being a little party by ourselves every whit as much as you do—and we both hate the people you get at table d'hotes—and besides, for that matter, if there ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... inability to obtain mere pleasure has not produced the misery which has been begotten of mistaken or baffled self-sacrifice. But do you mean to say that you would like to ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... necessarily or even naturally the happiest. Paganism has produced no more perfect type than the profoundly pathetic figure of Marcus Aurelius, while Christianity finds its ideal in one who was known as the 'Man of Sorrows.' The conscience of Mankind has ever recognised self-sacrifice as the supreme element of virtue, and self-sacrifice is never real when it is only the exchange of a less happiness for a greater one. No moral chemistry can transmute the worship of Sorrow, which Goethe described as the essence of Christianity, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... they were commented upon, and not very favorably, and generally were called the "stupid couple." Little did these same passengers know the true character of that gentleman and lady. An incident that occurred on board soon proved the bravery and heroism of the one, and the gentleness and self-sacrifice of the other. The captain had with him his only son, a boy of some eight summers, a great favorite of all on board from fore to aft. The little fellow, climbing on the side of the ship, somehow fell overboard. The lady happening to be on the other side of the deck, saw ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... repeat that "true refinement and gentleness of manners can never be found in a home where selfishness reigns." And how many temptations to selfishness there are in the home life! Every day brings the choice between selfishness and self-sacrifice. Shall I take for myself the choicest apple? or shall I share in that which is not so agreeable? These may appear to be very insignificant questions. But, boys and girls, do you know that the habitual decisions ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... had to be alternately suppressed and carried on without her. The deep heart-love, the many-sided intellectual sympathy, preserved their union in rare beauty to the end. But to say that it thus maintained itself as if by magic, without effort of self-sacrifice on his part or of resignation on hers, would be as unjust to the noble qualities of both, as it would be false to assert that its compensating happiness ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... declined. Having misjudged her guardian in the matter of the Moriarty family, she was in a repentant mood, and had marked that day on her calendar as one of self-sacrifice. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the rights themselves as from the feeling that they represent a phase of common social experience of fundamental importance for society as a whole. Previous training in democratic traditions made men capable of the noblest self-sacrifice in their loyalty to these ideas of freedom and equality, but the fact of their being associated with the enslaved Negro was accidental. No sooner had they assisted the runaway slave to freedom than they forgot him. He was left to make good in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... Kennedy's expedition, and in conclusion, to use the words of the Sydney Morning Herald, "it would appear that as far as earnestness of purpose, unshrinking endurance of pain and fatigue, and most disinterested self-sacrifice, go, the gallant leader of the party exhibited a model for his subordinates. But the great natural difficulties they had to encounter at the outset of the expedition so severely affected the resources of the adventurers, that they sunk under an accumulation ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... system of exchange of fictitious courtesies among the women; and it may be true that society at large—men are so apt, when left alone, to relapse—would fall into barbarism if our pasteboard conventions were neglected. All honor to the self-sacrifice of woman! ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... proposition goes out in a blaze of patriotic pyrotechnics, to the intense satisfaction of the unthinking and the grief of the judicious. The senoritos go back to the serious business of their lives—coffee and cigarettes—with a genuine glow of pride in a country which is capable of the noble self-sacrifice of cutting off its nose to spite somebody ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... Carry's story. Hale and hearty, overflowing with health and happiness, the young doctor had gone to his work at the hospital. He came home blood-poisoned, to die in his wife's arms. It was a case of self-sacrifice in the cause of science, of heroic devotion to a fellow-creature. And the young widow was left alone again, with none to weep over (tears of anguish this time) but the little glory, who, poor thing, could only wonder, ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles

... empty home, from which all the familiar faces and beloved voices had vanished; this lot surely was harder than the humble, laborious life of old Marlowe on the hills. Yet if any one living had a claim upon him for such self-sacrifice, it was this feeble, tottering old man, who was gazing up into his face with urgent ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... generation preceding. Yet round those doctrines, in defence or in opposition, some of the best and most honourable principles of human nature used to be gathered—a high-minded love of liberty on the one hand, a no less lofty spirit of self-sacrifice and ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Virginia, it was decided to mislead the enemy by sending out a courier with false dispatches to be captured. There was a call for a volunteer for this service. Charley was the first to offer, with that spirit of generous self-sacrifice that was one of his pleasantest traits when a boy. He knew what he had to expect. Capture meant imprisonment at Andersonville; our men had now a pretty clear understanding of what this was. Charley took the dispatches ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... "what would my love be worth if it shrank from self-sacrifice? I really think I should feel more pleasure than pain if I gave up friends, kindred, hope, everything that is supposed to make life ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... was weak; that he had altogether forgotten that the fire from off the altar could only be kept alight by continual self-restraint and self-sacrifice, by continual gentleness and humility, shown in the petty matters of everyday home-life; and that he who cannot rule his own household can never rule the Church of God. And so it befell, that amid the little cross-blasts of home squabbles the sacred spark was fast ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... this point of view the European moralist is apt to criticize the Buddhist truths of suffering and the release from suffering as selfish. But Buddhism is as full as or fuller than Christianity of love, self-sacrifice and thought for others. It says that it is a fine thing to be a man and have the power of helping others: that the best life is that which is entirely unselfish and a continual sacrifice. But looking at existence as a whole, and accepting the theory that the happiest and best life ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... the Jewish revolutionaries were heart and soul devoted to the cause. The children of the ghetto displayed considerable heroism and self-sacrifice in the revolutionary upheaval of the seventies. Jews figured in all important political trials and public manifestations; they languished in the gaols, and suffered as exiles in Siberia. But this idealistic fight for general freedom lacked a Jewish ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... self-sacrifice on Bodger's part, clearly! Bless dear Bodger! [Barbara almost breaks down as Adolpbus, too, ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... was not inclined to listen to this pleading of your daughter. I thought she did not understand the sacrifice she was making. But she has conquered me—she has shown me that she is in earnest—and I have caught the inspiration of her spirit and her generous self-sacrifice, and I have not the heart to resist her—I dare not refuse her. She shall come, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... me, often-times unwisely. He saw the full- blown phalanstery coming like a comet and expected every moment. We shortly would be in a blaze of glory! He loved to talk of the good things to be—of social problems worked out by science and by harmonic modes; to flatter himself that without great self-sacrifice, devotion and untiring industry, the world was to be regenerated. It seemed to his mind, that it could be done all at once by organization and enthusiasm, and it was only necessary to create enough of them to carry everything before them as in ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... and to them it is purgatory. Those who are in love can be happy in but one way while their love lasts. What IS happiness, anyway?" "It is the state in which desires are satisfied, my fair Violet," answered Ayrault. "Say, rather, the state in which desire coincides with duty," replied the song. "Self-sacrifice for others gives the truest joy; being with the object of one's love, the next. You never believed that I loved you. I dissembled well; but you will see for yourself some day, as clearly as I see your love for another now." "Yes," replied Ayrault, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... Day, are SAINTS. They are the holy ones, the heroes and heroines of mankind, the elect, the aristocracy of grace. These are they who have kept themselves unspotted from the world. They are the pure who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, which is the spirit of self-sacrifice. They are those who carry the palm- branch of triumph, who have come out of great tribulation, who have dared, and fought, and suffered for God, and truth, and right. Nay, there are those among them, and many, thank God—weak women, too, among ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... it, sir, right for us Buddhists to demolish the image of a Buddha?" "Well," replied Ei-sai promptly, "Buddha would give even his own life for the sake of suffering people. How could he be reluctant to give his halo?" This anecdote clearly shows us self-sacrifice is of first ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... German propaganda who imagine that there is much self-sacrifice among the wealthy class in Germany in this war should disabuse their minds of that theory at once. While the poor are being deprived of what they have, the purchases of pearls, diamonds, and other gems by the profiteers are on a scale never before ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin



Words linked to "Self-sacrifice" :   self-abnegation, cooperation, abnegation, self-denial, self-renunciation, denial



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