"Ennoble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... than he who quenches his thirst from a crystal cup; and the artist who gave the glass its shape, impressed as in a mould of bronze by the simple means of a second's breath and yet more cheaply than the fashioning of the wooden bowl, has done more to ennoble and improve his neighbour than any inventor of a system: in his work he gives him the use and the enjoyment of things for which orators can only ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... revolution, but that the standard of sentiment has not been lowered in those productions which have been designed expressly for the French stage during that period, and that the dignity of ancient virtue, and the elevation of natural feeling, still ennoble the tone of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... a conscience clear, Though toiling for bread in a humble sphere; Doubly blest is content and health Untried by the lusts and the cares of wealth. Lowly living and lofty thought Adorn and ennoble the poor man's cot; For mind and morals in nature's plan Are the genuine ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... activity cannot be paralleled in the whole range of the world's history. They were not priests, but popular educators and popular teachers. They were animated by the desire to instil into every soul a deeply religious consciousness, to ennoble every heart by moral aspirations, to indoctrinate every individual with an unequivocal theory of life, to inspire every member of the nation with lofty ideals. Their work did not fail to leave its traces. Slowly but deeply idealism entered into the very pith and marrow ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... teaching is a very responsible work, yet does one seldom reach fame in it. The truth is, fame does not stand for so much work done, but for so much worldly opinion gained. Do not enter this work of teaching to misunderstand or slight it, but to be proud of it, and to ennoble it. ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... attention than her loveliness and ladylike conduct will command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will admire a good woman, and deceptions cannot long be concealed. Her show of dry goods or glitter of jewels ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... science both contemplate Nature, and seek to turn her gifts to account to better and ennoble human life. Art accepts the beautiful objects of Nature as they are, without questioning. The artist says: "Let me lead you by the hand; I have seen something new and beautiful; here it is; try to see it too, with my help, that we may both enjoy it together." But he uses no compulsion; ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... the Georgics is to ennoble the annual round of labour in which the rural life was passed and to help the policy of Augustus by inducing the people to go back to ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... fable and of dream I sought an eligible theme; But none I found, or found them shared Already by some happier bard, Till settling on the current year I found the far-sought treasure near. A theme for poetry, you see— A theme t' ennoble even me, ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... and a mighty doubt and dread restrained her. One said: "Here is your lover, your husband, your cherished partner, left by fate below your station, yet whom you may lift to your side! Shall man, alone, crown the humble maiden,—stoop to love, and, loving, ennoble? Be you the queen, and love him by the royal right of womanhood!" But the other sternly whispered: "How shall your fine and delicate fibres be knit into this coarse texture? Ignorance, which years cannot wash away,—low instincts, what do YOU know?—all the servile side of life, which is turned ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... forgive you—and I shall leave you. (He puts on the brown cloak and hat, picks up his stick and travelling bag.) For if I were to stay, I'd soon grow worse than I am now. The innocent child, whose mission was to ennoble our warped relationship, has been defiled by you in his mother's womb and made an apple of discord and a source of punishment a revenge. Why should I stay here to be ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... neither shame the Republic by shirking the task its own victory entails, nor despoil the Republic by abandoning its rightful possessions, nor degrade the Republic by admissions of unfit elements to its Union; but that you will honor it, enrich it, ennoble it, by doing your utmost to make the administration of these possessions worthy of the Nation that Washington founded and Lincoln preserved. My last word is an appeal to stand firm and stand all together for the Continental Union and for a pure civil service ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... passed his novitiate, and becomes one of that happy body of men who not only see what is perceived by the mass of their fellows, but are enabled to look through those chains of action which, when comprehended, serve to rationalize and ennoble all that the senses of man, aided by the instruments which he has devised, tell ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... so. It means the whole work to be done over again. If Art and Science were based on the degradation of men I would say 'away with them.' But they are not. They elevate and ennoble men by bringing to them the fruition of elevated and noble minds. They are expressions of high thought and deep feeling; thought and feeling which can only do good, if it is good to become more human. The artist is simply one who has a little ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the choice of a wife. One example will suffice: "I believe that in Florence there are many noble and poor families with whom it would be a charity to form connections. If there were no dower, there would also be no arrogance. Pay no heed should people say you want to ennoble yourself, since it is notorious that we are ancient citizens of Florence, and as noble as any ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... engaged our sympathy, or procured the distinction of our presence in arms. We were the heaven-born disseminators of freedom throughout Europe; the sworn enemies of kingly domination; and the missionaries of a political creed, which was not alone to ennoble mankind, but to render its ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... sure that your impulse is not personal nor sinister, but a desire to serve and ennoble your race, rather than to dazzle and be served by it; that you are ready joyfully to "scorn delights, and live laborious days," so that thereby the well-being of mankind may be promoted—then I pray you not to believe that the world ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as ours is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... genius, regardless of temporary gains, whether of money or praise, fixing his attention solely upon what is intrinsically interesting and permanent, and finding his happiness in an entire devotion of himself to such pursuits as shall most ennoble human nature. We have not yet seen enough of this in modern times; and never was there a period in society when such examples were likely to do more good than at present. The industry and love of truth which distinguish Sir Joshua's mind are most admirable; but he appears to me ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Bible that made him what he was. The effort to grasp the great truths of revelation imparts freshness and vigor to all the faculties. It expands the mind, sharpens the perceptions, and ripens the judgment. The study of the Bible will ennoble every thought, feeling, and aspiration as no other study can. It gives stability of purpose, patience, courage, and fortitude; it refines the character, and sanctifies the soul. An earnest, reverent study of the Scriptures, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... coronet to ennoble it! His name needs no title to illustrate it. The "princely Hereward!" "If all the men of his race resembled him, they well deserved this popular soubriquet. And whether this gentleman calls himself Mr. Scott or Lord Arondelle, I shall think ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Paris with footmen, and the hackmen of Niagara would spare the tourist. It is only a human mind that can instruct a human mind. There is a man in Cincinnati, of small stature, and living in a small house of a street not easy to find, who is doing more to raise, inform, and ennoble Cincinnati than all her lovely hills and dales. It is the truly Reverend A. D. MAYO, minister of the Unitarian Church of the Redeemer. His walls are not wainscoted, and there is about his house no umbrageous park ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... to the level of the barn-yard," this is merely a catch-phrase intended to arouse prejudice and to obscure the facts. The reader may judge for himself whether the eugenic program will degrade mankind to the level of the brutes, or whether it will ennoble it, beautify it, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... pastures lit by sunny streams; Or, rushing from some mountain height of Thought, Swells to strange music, that our minds have sought Vainly to gather from the doubtful gleams Of our more gross perceptions. Oh, their strains Nerve and ennoble Manhood!—no shrill cry, Set to a treble, tells of querulous woe; Yet numbers deep-voiced as the mighty Main's Merge in the ringdove's plaining, or the sigh Of lovers whispering where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... was the entire overthrow of all titles of distinction. Every man, high or low, was to be addressed simply as Citizen . Napoleon wished to introduce a system of rewards which should stimulate to heroic deeds, and which should ennoble those who had deserved well of humanity. Innumerable foreigners of distinction had thronged France since the peace. He had observed with what eagerness the populace had followed these foreigners, gazing with delight upon their ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... was very little in Tom's life which tended to ennoble him. It is true there was a service for soldiers every Sunday morning in one of the big buildings in the town, and while Tom, lover of music as he had always been, was somewhat influenced by the singing ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... not the smallness of daily endeavour, Let the great meaning ennoble it ever, Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain, Work, as believing, that labour is gain." Queen ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... readers be induced, by their perusal of these pages, to emulate the Herschels—brother, sister, nephew—in all the bright and lovely qualities that ennoble life; in their fixity of purpose, their elevation of thought, their purity of character, their self-denial, their industry, ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... paganism. The Gospel had as yet never been proclaimed there. The name of Jesus had never been heard in that wild north-land, and so as none of the blessedness of religion had entered into the hearts of the people, so none of its sweet, losing, elevating influences had begun to ennoble and bless their lives and improve their habits. So he pondered over what he witnessed and heard, and was thankful when the day's hunting was over, and Memotas would talk to him as they sat there ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... practice gives a dignity and a grace to the carriage, and a freedom and a swing to the gait, which nothing else will do. Depend upon it, that so much of our burdens of work and weariness as is left to us, after we have cast them upon Him, is intended to strengthen and ennoble us. But do not let there be the gnawings of anxiety. Do not let there be the self-torment of aimless prognostications of evil. Do not let there be the chewing of the bitter morsel of irrevocable sorrows; but fling all upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... self-equality of every sound nature, which result from the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as the world, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him an object of interest, and his every phrase and syllable significant, are in Hafiz, and abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Chinese mind. The political unit in China is not the individual but the family, and the father of the family is supposed to be responsible for the qualities and views of all his kin. He is rewarded for their virtues, punished for their faults; the deserts of a son ennoble the father and all his ancestors, and conversely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... only pleasure that had brightened her gloomy, monotonous existence. The only pleasure. Her love did not deserve any other name. In that ardent, despotic, restless spirit there had never been a question of tenderness. She was completely ignorant of the delicious, poetic thoughts that ennoble a passion and make it pardonable. Her life had been passed in insane excitement, tormented by the idea of being happy at all costs. She had lived for the last seven years under the sway of her licentious, insatiable passion. Never did a melancholy thought ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... remarkable, tended to circulate among the primitive Christians those feelings of respect and affection for women, which, by elevating them to their proper rank in society, must necessarily purify the public morals, meliorate individual character, and ennoble the intercourse of life. Admitted to an equal participation of the privileges of God's house, where every minor distinction is annihilated by the predominance of a diffusive charity, and feeling that their present joys and future destinies were blended with those of the "holy brethren, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... no duty, and is good for no use; not a repose which Thought cannot ennoble, and Affection cannot sanctify. To serve the cause of the poor and the ignorant, in the little sphere which now surrounds me; to smooth the way for pleasure and plenty, where pain and want have made it rugged too long; to live more and more worthy, with every ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... elastic step—her eyes full of sweetness and light—her bloom, at once soft and luxuriant—all spoke of the vital powers fit to sustain a mind of such exquisite mould, and the emotions of a heart that, once aroused, could ennoble the passions of the South with the purity and devotion ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... contrary, always uses his drapery to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental emotion; but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or soul; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble armor in the same way; but base sculptors carve drapery and armor for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern, that all delight in mere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden to sculpture;—for instance, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... entireness of our sanctification: "the very God of peace sanctify you wholly." Brethren, we dwell upon that expression "wholly." There is this difference between Christianity and every other system: Christianity proposes to ennoble the whole man; every other system subordinates parts to parts. Christianity does not despise the intellect, but it does not exalt the intellect in a one-sided way: it only dwells with emphasis on the third and highest part of man—his ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... peril that Brackenbury was overcome with respectful admiration; nor was he less sensible to the charm of his conversation or the surprising amenity of his address. Every gesture, every intonation, was not only noble in itself, but seemed to ennoble the fortunate mortal for whom it was intended; and Brackenbury confessed to himself with enthusiasm that this was a sovereign for whom a brave man might ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Men think and work on the highest level when they move without conscious and deliberate strain after virtue: when, in other words, their habitual motives, aims, methods, their character, in short, naturally draw them into the region of what is virtuous. 'It is by our ideas that we ennoble our passions or we debase them; they rise high or sink low according to the man's soul.'[36] All this has ceased to be new to our generation, but a hundred and thirty years ago, and indeed much nearer to us ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all the nations—if the duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land—if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... king's commission must be at once so highly injured and affronted: that as to himself, they had in vain endeavored to vilify and degrade him by all their studied indignities: the justice of his cause, he knew, would ennoble any fortune; nor had he other affliction than to see the authority of his prince, with which he was invested, treated with so much ignominy: and that he now joyfully followed, by a like unjust sentence, his late sovereign; and should be happy, if in his future ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... artistic historian of Rome is C. SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS (86-34 B.C.). This great writer was born at Amiternum in the year in which Marius died, and, as we know from himself, he came to Rome burning with ambition to ennoble his name, and studied with that purpose the various arts of popularity. He rose steadily through the quaestorship to the tribuneship of the plebs (52 B.C.), and so became a member of the senate. From ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... national welfare are essential to his own well-being, had not yet come. The bonds which had held the world together through so many ages loosened and broke only to leave man face to face with his own selfishness. The motives that sway and ennoble the common conduct of men were powerless over the ruling classes. Pope and king, bishop and noble, vied with each other in greed, in self-seeking, in lust, in faithlessness, in a pitiless cruelty. It is this moral degradation that flings so ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... liberty, liberty for France, liberty for the United States, liberty for the world, arose, then the French people were set aflame with a desire to bring, as it were, their gifts of frankincense and myrrh to lay on this altar of liberty, that its censer might never die out, but forever perfume and ennoble the air ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... that could stand rereading. At the top of all I should place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm," published in a volume of the same title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry." I'd want Stanley Vestal's "Fandango," in a volume of the same title. Margaret Bell Houston's ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... things,—that should rise above the barrier of race-prejudice as above all other conventional and foolish divisions. Will the labor leaders see and seize their opportunity at once to strengthen and to ennoble their cause? ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... enter with me into Valencia;...this is the inheritance which I have won for you. While they were thus rejoicing the Bishop Don Hieronymo came with the procession. Dona Ximena brought good relicks and other sacred things, which she gave to ennoble the new Church of Valencia. In this guise they entered the city. Who can tell the rejoicings that were made that day, throwing at the board, and killing bulls! My Cid led them to the Alcazar, and took them up upon the highest ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... your convictions—I really won't!" she went on soothingly, for now he was rather more ruffled than she. "But I did want and long to ennoble some man to high aims; and when I saw you, and knew you wanted to be my comrade, I—shall I confess it?—thought that man might be you. But you take so much tradition on trust that I don't know ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... brave. If life were but to draw this dusty breath That doth our wits enslave, And with the crowd to hurry to and fro, Seeking we know not what, and finding death, These did unwisely; but if living be, As some are born to know, The power to ennoble, and inspire In other souls our brave desire For fruit, not leaves, of Time's immortal tree, These truly live, our thought's essential fire, And to ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... find my work-field and my prize, not in dead forms and colours, or ink-and-paper theories, but in a living, immortal, human spirit! I will study no more, except the human heart, and only that to purify and ennoble it.' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... person is not really a person, but is the consequence of his brain and nerves; and having thus, by logical analysis, got rid of the spirit of man, their reason and their conscience quite honestly and consistently see no need for, or possibility of, a Spirit of God, to ennoble and enable the human spirit. Why need there be, if the difference between an animal and a man be one of degree alone, and not ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... love and pity doth the impression fill, Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow.] into which he was seduced by the example of his comrades. It is extremely probable, that the poetical fame which in the progress of his career he afterwards acquired, greatly contributed to ennoble the stage, and to bring the player's profession into better repute. Even at a very early age he endeavoured to distinguish himself as a poet in other walks than those of the stage, as is proved by his juvenile poems of Adonis ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... We have made our public schools the strongest walls against a whisper of the honour of England. And we have had our punishment in this strange and perverted fact that, while a unifying vision of patriotism can ennoble bands of brutal savages or dingy burghers, and be the best thing in their lives, we, who are—the world being judge—humane, honest, and serious individually, have a patriotism that is the worst thing in ours. What have we done, and where have we ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... of their work in a thousand practical forms, and this may be thought sufficient to justify, if not ennoble, their efforts. But they did not work for such issues; their reward was of a totally different kind. In what way different? We love clothes, we love luxuries, we love fine equipages, we love money, and any man who can point to these as the result of his efforts ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... out silently whenever she and her lady-in-waiting came in. The librarian's name was Fritzing; plain Herr Fritzing originally, but gradually by various stages at last arrived at the dignity and sonorousness of Herr Geheimarchivrath Fritzing. The Grand Duke indeed had proposed to ennoble him after he had successfully taught Priscilla English grammar, but Fritzing, whose spirit dwelt among the Greeks, could not be brought to see any desirability in such a step. Priscilla called him Fritzi when her lady-in-waiting dozed; dearest Fritzi sometimes even, in the heat of ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... democracy in the bosom of which all persons should be persons with full self-consciousness, with an individual destiny independent of the destiny of others, with the moral and material means to accomplish this destiny, with freedom, with dignity, and with all the attributes which characterize and ennoble the person and ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... a man in your world who stole something from the Maker of the universe, in order to ennoble ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... this our present Charter do give, grant and confirm, the name, style, title, dignity and honour of the same Principality and Earldom, and him, our said most dear Son, the Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as has been accustomed, we do ennoble and invest with the said Principality and Earldom, by girting him with a sword, by putting a coronet on his head, and a gold ring on his finger, and, also, by delivering a gold rod into his hand, that ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... lover of perfection, who looks to inward ripeness for the true springs of conduct, will surely think that as Shakspeare has done more for the inward ripeness of our statesmen than Dr. Watts, and has, therefore, done more to moralise and ennoble them, so an Establishment which has produced Hooker, Barrow, Butler, has done more to moralise and ennoble English statesmen and their conduct than communities which have produced the Nonconformist divines. The fruitful men of English Puritanism and ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... accidents, beyond body and ties of blood. Whatever, my dearest creature, is my shining-time, the time of a friend's adversity is yours. And it would be almost a fault in me to regret those afflictions, which give you an opportunity so gloriously to exert those qualities, which not only ennoble our ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... often conceded that because the new testament contains, in many passages, a lofty and terse expression of love as the highest duty of man, Christianity must have a tendency to ennoble his nature. But Christianity is like sweetened whisky and water—it perverts and destroys that which ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... fancy, and to all the sentiments which ennoble our nature. I arrived at Laurvig, and found myself in the midst of a group of lawyers of different descriptions. My head turned round, my heart grew sick, as I regarded visages deformed by vice, and listened to ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... who will sacrifice her pride, rather than sacrifice an honest man who loves her—is the most priceless of all treasures. When such a woman marries, if her husband only wins her esteem and regard, he wins enough to ennoble his whole life. You have spoken, dearest, of your place in my estimation. Judge what that place is—when I implore you on my knees, to let the cure of your poor wounded heart be my care. Rachel! will you honour me, will you bless me, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... is honorable, because the products of labor feed and clothe the world, and thus conduce to the welfare and happiness of mankind. Coerced labor is better than no labor. Coercion itself does not necessarily degrade man; rather may it ennoble and elevate, when it is exercised to summon the barbarian to the lessons of civilization. Coercion degrades not the man whom it compels to do right; it only exposes that degradation which is the result of doing wrong. The man only is degraded who, voluntarily or by ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... weeks the fall rush would be over and we'd have more time for getting what we deserved out of life. But I turned on him with sudden fierceness and declared I wasn't going to be merely an animal. I intended to keep my soul alive, that it was every one's duty, no matter where they were, to ennoble their spirit by keeping in touch with the best that has ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... people a life of luxurious idleness, coupled with a prerogative to rule; and which dooms another class to an hereditary servitude, changeless as fate, and relentless as the grave. It will vindicate the rights, and ennoble the destiny of the masses of the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... fragments of tradition, the cromlech on the mountain and the fossil in the bog supplied him substance and spirit wherewith to mould and animate nationality. Native art, valour, virtue and glory seemed to grow under his pen. All that had a tendency to elevate and ennoble, he rescued from the past to infuse into the future. His songs, so soft and tender, and yet so redolent of manliness and hope, inspired the ambition to compose a minstrelsy as wild and vigorous as themselves. They were read and learned and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... it, but the silly spirit of mockery within me had so far infected my wits that I cried out in pretended astonishment, "O marvellous fancy that can so ennoble a neighbor's brat!" The which was very false and foolish of me, for I know well enough now, and knew very well then, that love, while it lasts, can ennoble any child, maid, or matron. Lord, the numbers of girls I have likened ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is old-fashioned. She would have preferred to live in one place the year around, to beautify and to ennoble that place; to be buried from it as she had been married into it, and to leave upon it the stamp of her character, incessant industry and good taste; to fill it gradually with the things she loved best or admired most, and to be always ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... a gain where it costs our enemy more in relation to his strength than it costs ourselves. But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty, this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying honor those who vindicated the insulted majesty of the Republic, and struck at her assailants so long as a drum-beat summoned them to ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the English clergy denounced the proposition, and some even declared its author a madman; but Mr. Gladstone pursued his chosen way with energy and directness. In one of those elevated speeches with which he was accustomed to ennoble debate, he laid the details of his plan open to the Commons. The Irish Church was to be disestablished and disendowed, its bishops were to lose their seats in Parliament, and it was to become a free and independent ecclesiastical ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... a misfortune, and as tending to subtract from the permanency of his reputation; he wisely considered posthumous fame as a vain and undesirable bubble, unless founded on utility, but when it is considered that no man was better qualified than himself to confound vice and ennoble virtue; to unravel the mazes of error, or vindicate the pretensions of truth, it must generally excite a poignant regret, that abilities like his should have been dissipated on one generation, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... me a despotic disposition. I have had, and have still, many times the greatest difficulty to control it; but with God's help I shall succeed! My Elise, we will improve ever. On the children's account, in order to make them happy, we will endeavour to ennoble our own nature." ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... curtailed in every shire by that of the royal shire-reeves, officers charged with levying the royal revenues and destined ultimately to absorb judicial authority. Among the later nobility of the thegns personal service with such a lord was held not to degrade but to ennoble. "Horse-thegn," and "cup-thegn," and "border," the constable, butler, and treasurer, found themselves officers of state; and the developement of politics, the wider extension of home and foreign affairs ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... becomes blind to all else. Moral death falls on it; and any sin looks sweet that takes it nearer to its goal. It is a passion that generates at once all the loftiest and all the vilest things, which between them ennoble and corrupt the world—even as heat generates at once the harvest and the maggot, the purpling vine and the lice that devour it. It is a passion without which the world would decay in darkness, as it would do without heat, yet to which, as to heat, all its filthiest ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... life's end a lovable child, in whom the powers of a rich poetic soul surpassed those of the thoughtful, well-trained mind. He would have been ill-adapted for any practical position, but no one could be better suited to enter into the soul-life of young human beings, cherish and ennoble them. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 't death to fall for freedom's right? He's dead alone that lacks her light! And murder sullies in Heaven's sight The sword he draws:— What can alone ennoble fight? A noble cause! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had a good deal of reason. General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most practical and ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... some days of meditation, or it may be of sorrow, among their solitudes. Splendid scenery, like music, has the power to make 'of grief itself a fiery chariot for mounting above the sources of grief,' to ennoble and refine our passions, and to teach us that our lives are merely moments in the years of the eternal Being. There are many, perhaps, who, within sight of some great scene among the Alps, upon the height of the Stelvio or the slopes of Muerren, or at night in the valley ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... that they are not sincere. I put aside an educated enthusiast such as Westlake. The proletarian Socialists do not believe what they say, and therefore they are so violent in saying it. They are not themselves of pure and exalted character; they cannot ennoble others. If the movement continue we shall see miserable examples of weakness led astray by popularity, of ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... looked ever at Shafton when he looked elsewhere, and were dropped at once when they encountered his, that she was irresistible! In fine, the affectionate delicacy of her whole demeanour, joined to the promptitude and boldness she had so lately evinced, tended to ennoble the services she ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... frothiness and sediment, but its ingredients are sound and wholesome; it has already given proofs of powerful and generous qualities; and the whole promises to settle down into something substantially excellent. But the causes which are operating to strengthen and ennoble it, and its daily indications of admirable properties, are all lost upon these purblind observers; who are only affected by the little asperities incident to its present situation. They are capable of judging only of the surface of things; of those matters which come in contact ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... to dwell unsated on hers. A new vista of life seemed to open—thoughts which had long slept came thronging on his mind—he was once more the love-sick boy. The more, too, he brooded over his late unworthiness, the more did his imagination ennoble the one he loved. He now looked to the moment of meeting her, as that whence he would date his moral regeneration. "Thank God!" thought he, "a sure haven is yet mine. There will I—my feelings steadied, my affections concentrated—enjoy a purified and unruffled peace. What a consolation to ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... of the young chatelaine in giving her orders. If an air of distinction seems hereditary in some families it is surely because the exercise of the duties conferred by the possession of wealth has a natural tendency to ennoble the whole ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... as if we were both of us incapable of decency or self- control? Why must love be always assumed to make us weak and contemptible, as if it were some subtle poison? Why shouldn't it strengthen and ennoble us?" ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... replies, 'This is a laborious, troublesome, hopeless occupation, in which there is not reward enough to make it worth my while,' I tell him but 'Attack it: rejoice to see something so near to challenge your mettle, and if you meet the battle boldly so, and ennoble yourself, you will immediately understand how to think of the ennoblement of your people and your country as glorious.' 'Altius tendimus! We move towards a higher!'—The country reads our motto, and is watching what we practise. Give it an answer ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... and individuality that ennoble your face are a sealed book to all but me. Mine is the power which transforms you into the most lovable of men, and that is why I would keep your mental gifts also for myself. To others they should be as meaningless as your eyes, the charm of your mouth and features. Let it be mine alone ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... the demonstration of the naturalness of the supernatural, scepticism even may come to be regarded as unscientific. And those who have wrestled long for a few bare truths to ennoble life and rest their souls in thinking of the future will not be left in doubt. Natural ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... generally, of which he had at first believed her capable, but who, by prayer and effort, daily achieved victories over herself. In addition, she had manifested the most beautiful and God-like trait that can ennoble human character—the desire to save and sweeten others' lives. To have been lectured and talked to on the subject of religion in any conventional way by one outside of his sympathies would have been as repulsive as useless, but Annie had the tact to make ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... democracy he would have been its philosopher and its poet. His genius, devoted to the people, yet forbade him to descend to the language of the people, even to flatter them. All his passions were noble as his words, and he adored the Revolution as a sublime philosophy destined to ennoble the nation without immolating on its altars other victims than prejudices and tyranny. He had doctrines, and no hatreds; the thirst of glory, and not of ambition,—nay, power itself, was in his eyes, too real, too vulgar a thing for ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... seemed to increase in Harcourt's mind the exasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by 'Lige's exposures. With a daughter so incomparably gifted,—a matchless creation that was enough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and genius had lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this 'Lige had left it,—that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamy that Providence could not allow! ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... of all those who are too enlightened for their times! It is the lot of all great men who would elevate and ennoble the masses!" cried Lacy. "It is the fate of greatness to be the martyr of stupidity, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... surrounded them, and who cheered at their approach, but either made no attempt to perform their duty, or so feeble and farcical a one, as to bring disgrace upon a service they so generally honor and ennoble. ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... make in his profession or business, and is desirous not to involve the object of his affection in the distressing inconvenience, if not the misery, of straitened means. He reflects that for a lady it is an actual degradation, however love may ennoble the motive of her submission, to descend from her former footing in society. He feels, therefore, that this risk ought not to be incurred. For, although the noble and loving spirit of a wife might enable her to bear up cheerfully against misfortune, and by her endearments ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... work of undermining and destroying vain credulity and the whole brood of superstitions which are legion in India; they are also a positive and constructive force in the impartation of those principles of morality and teachings of religion which will ennoble life here and hereafter. And in this connection it should not be forgotten that all mission schools—higher and lower—enjoy unlimited opportunity to teach, daily, to all their students God's Word and to apply its principles and its saving message ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... ten, the woman has, half consciously, done much to excite. In this case, she shall not be held guiltless, either as to the unhappiness or injury of the lover. Pure love, inspired by a worthy object, must ennoble and bless, whether mutual or not; but that which is excited by coquettish attraction of any grade of refinement, must cause bitterness and doubt, as to the reality of human goodness, so soon as the flush of passion is over. And, that ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... them under foot. I became sour and cynic from shame, and affected to despise the politeness which I knew not how to practice. This austerity, conformable to my new principles, I must confess, seemed to ennoble itself in my mind; it assumed in my eyes the form of the intrepidity of virtue, and I dare assert it to be upon this noble basis, that it supported itself longer and better than could have been expected from anything so contrary to my nature. Yet, not withstanding, I had the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... good," said Janet; "it would ennoble your character. Not that it needs it," she added hastily. "And I could write another story about that quaint old man who paid the musicians to go away, and who made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and unlimited in its extent; the time has been, when the whole known world was in a manner united in one community: but the sphere of education has always been limited. It is for nations to produce the events, that enchant the imagination, and ennoble the page of history: infancy must always pass away in the unimportance of mirth, and the privacy of retreat. That government however is a theme so much superior to education, is not perhaps so evident, as we ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... thoroughly respect. That gives the measure of the man, and determines the quality of his influence. He was the average clubman plus genius and a style. And, if there is any truth in the theory that it is the function of art not to degrade but to ennoble—not to dishearten but to encourage—not to deal with things ugly and paltry and mean but with great things and beautiful and lofty—then, it is argued, his example is one to depreciate ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... de Cinq-Cygne struggled valiantly against a cunning and redoubtable police-agency, the soul of which was Corentin. The King of France approved the charter of the Count of Champagne, by virtue of which, in the family of Cinq-Cygne, a woman might "ennoble and succeed"; therefore the husband of Laurence took the name and the arms of his wife. Although an ardent Royalist she went to seek the Emperor as far as the battlefield of Jena, in 1806, to ask pardon for the two Simeuses and the two Hauteserres involved in a political trial and condemned ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Eteocles, it is resolved To lay him on his earth-bed, in this soil, Not without care and kindly sepulture. For why? he hated those who hated us, And, with all duties blamelessly performed Unto the sacred ritual of his sires, He met such end as gains our city's grace,— With auspices that do ennoble death. Such words I have in charge to speak of him: But of his brother Polynices, this— Be he cast out unburied, for the dogs To rend and tear: for he presumed to waste The land of the Cadmeans, had not Heaven— Some god of those who aid our fatherland— ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the Apostle, 'the Lord Christ.' It promises him rewards sufficient to stimulate the most indolent to exertion: 'Whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.' And it holds forth to him an example so glorious, that it would ennoble even angels to imitate it: 'Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... brotherhood of man, whether pleading in behalf of the oppressed African, or the oppressed Greek, or the oppressed Hungarian; who gave all his sympathy and all his influence in aid of every pursuit, enterprise, and institution which could ennoble the human race; who made all other human law pay homage to the Constitution of his country, and all human law to the Divine Revelation; who gave to Dartmouth a more enduring fame throughout America, and to America a more enduring fame over the whole earth: of Levi Woodbury, who as Governor of ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the same as ever of you, Eustacia. Nothing of that sort can degrade you: you ennoble ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... "Tannhaeuser" he brought out in 1853, in spite of the Elector's opposition. In 1857 he was pensioned, and two years later died. He was born a musician and died one, and in his long and honorable life he was always true to his art and did much to ennoble and dignify it, notwithstanding the curious combinations in his musical texture. He never could understand or appreciate Beethoven. He proclaimed himself a disciple of Mozart, though he had little in common with ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... become a memory that would enrich and ennoble all the years on ahead or they might, through wrong interpretation, ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... come now to a second need in the modern state if it is to get the best result from the citizens born into it, and that is the need of honours and privileges to reward and enhance services and exceptional personal qualities and so to stir and ennoble that emulation which is, under proper direction, the most useful to the constructive statesman of all human motives. In the United States titles are prohibited by the constitution, in Great Britain they go by prescription. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... changed, no more than a leopard's skin, it is but developed or dwarfed. The influences of the war will have as many little forms as there are soldiers, and to attempt precision of summary is clearly vain. It is something of a truism to suggest that the war will ennoble and make more serious those who before the war took a noble and serious view of life; and that on those who took life callously it will have a callousing effect. The problem is rather to discover what effect, if any, will be made on that medium material which was neither ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... worshippers are many, she kisses but few, and cannot see if they be fair and beautiful or crooked and ugly. Hence most of those who receive her favors conceal them in selfishness, and hoard them to be despised; while hundreds, slighted of her gifts, cultivate the virtues, which adorn and ennoble, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... become mere "slaves of possessions." Doubtless these striving men are full of weakness and sensitiveness even when they rend each other, and are but caught in the coils of circumstance; nevertheless, a serious attempt to ennoble and enrich the content of city life that it may really fill the ample space their ruthless wills have provided, means that we must call upon energies other than theirs. When we count over the resources which are at work "to make order out of casualty, beauty out of confusion, justice, ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... strong symptoms of moral repugnance] I hope so. A man need be very young and pretty foolish too to be excused for such conduct. You take a very lenient view, Mr Ramsden. Too lenient to my mind. Surely marriage should ennoble a man. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... and destiny. For it is not to be supposed that play with all its virtue, its nourish and exercise of nascent powers, and its happy emancipation into broader and richer living can adequately motivate and permanently ennoble the energies of youth. Until some vocational interest dawns, education is received rather than sought and will-power is latent or but intermittently exercised. Play has a great orbit, but every true parent and educator seeks to know the axis of a ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... often in these mean days—to join the scorners and the fools whom Solomon denounced; tempted to sneering unbelief in what is great and good, what is laborious and self- sacrificing, and to the fancy that you were sent into this world merely to get through it agreeably;—then fortify and ennoble your hearts by Solomon's vision. Remember who you are, and where you are- -that you stand before the Temple of Wisdom, of the science of things as God has made them; wherein alone is health and wealth for body and for soul; that from within the Heavenly Lady ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... settlers; just as England with equal right has in Asia reduced to subjection a civilization of rival standing but politically impotent, and in America and Australia has marked and ennobled, and still continues to mark and ennoble, extensive barbarian countries with the impress of its nationality. The Roman aristocracy had accomplished the preliminary condition required for this task— the union of Italy; the task itself it never solved, but always regarded the extra-Italian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... professional singer. They were willing that she should sing in church and at funerals, but not in opera. For a long time Bear-Tone labored to convince them that a voice like Helen's has a divine mission in the world, to please, to touch and to ennoble the hearts of ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... clear the possibility of a positive morality on the basis of nakedness, beauty, and sexual influence, regarded as dynamic forces which, when suppressed, make for corruption and when wisely used serve to inspire and ennoble life. He worked out his thoughts on this matter in MSS., written from about 1870 to his death two years later, which, never having been prepared for publication, remain in a fragmentary state and have not been published. I ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Noel with a peculiar emphasis which was habitual to him: "it is incredible, if you will; but yet it is true. That is to say, for thirty-three years, ever since my birth, this woman has played a most marvellous and unworthy comedy, to ennoble and enrich her son,—for she ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... seek all measures which by social adaptation can ennoble our human egoism, reduce it to its indispensable and just measure, and maintain it in proper equilibrium, by the aid of an active altruism; that is to say, by social habits of self-sacrifice for the benefit of the community. We shall then obtain a paradise on earth, no doubt very ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... tend to ennoble a writer, and therefore are great books characterized by lofty thought, by fine feeling and, as a rule, by a beautiful simplicity of expression. They have another quality, hard to define but easy to understand, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... would say things have steadily gone from bad to worse with me, and certainly I shall not pretend to feel any love for suffering in itself. On the contrary, it hurts. It does not ennoble. It rather brutalises, unless it becomes so great that it embraces all things. I was once Engineer in charge at the First Cataract—now I am a blacksmith in a country parish. And that hurts. I am cut off from reading because of my eyes, and from intercourse with people whose ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... put her from him, ashamed that strangers should see her kiss him. Harold had forgotten that incident, which at the time had made no impression upon him, and was now thinking only of the beautiful girl whose presence seemed to brighten and ennoble everything with which she came in contact, and to whom he at last said good-bye, just as Peterkin's tower clock struck ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... never have found had she been the pampered darling of some wealthy house. Often, when she forgot what she was doing, Louie made surmises concerning Frarnie Maurice, wondering if she were the noble thing that Andrew needed to ennoble him—if she were really so strong and beautiful that the mere sight of her had killed all thought or memory of an older love; trying to believe her all that his guardian angel might wish his wife to be, and ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... surface, and you see what the boy is meant to be always. Look at the jerkiness of the conceited man. Look at the quiet fluency of motion in the modest man. Look how anger itself which forgets self, which is unhating and righteous, will elevate the carriage and ennoble the movements. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... her as innocent as I can." Select only such writings of this class as some judicious friend has recommended. Read poetry. If it be true poetry, it is the twin-sister of religion. It will exalt and ennoble your soul. Study history. From that you will draw unfailing draughts of knowledge and wisdom. Be familiar with good biography. Above all, make the Word of God your constant study. So will you be educated for every stage of your existence, and ripe clusters of ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... World was transplanted thither, but a regular system of colonization remained long unknown on the New Continent. If the Spaniards visited its shores, it was only to procure, either by violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, grains of gold, and dye-woods; and endeavours were made to ennoble the motives of this insatiable avarice by the pretence of enthusiastic zeal in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... strife, no longer to keep up one's courage. They are proud and happy in their distress. They have a vague feeling that this distress will regenerate them after the manner of a baptism of faith and glory and ennoble them for all time in the remembrance of men. An unexpected breath, coming from the secret reserves of the human race and from the summits of the human heart, has suddenly passed over their lives and given ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... look into their own bosoms, and consider the generous seeds which are there planted, that might, if rightly cultivated, ennoble their lives, and make their virtue venerable to futurity; how can they, without tears, reflect on the universal degeneracy from that public spirit, which ought to be the first and principal motive of all their actions? In the Grecian ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... soul curdled back into itself—whose life had been separated from that of the herd—whom doubts and awe drew back, while circumstances impelled onward—whom a supernatural doom invested with a peculiar philosophy, not of human effect and cause—and who, with every gift that could ennoble and adorn, was suddenly palsied into that mortal imbecility, which is almost ever the result of mortal visitings into the haunted regions of the Ghostly and Unknown. The gloomier colourings of his mind had been deepened, too, by secret remorse. For the preservation of his own life, constantly ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had only one life to lose, and it would be interesting to see how brave he was; besides, the King would have good reason to ennoble him if he overcame them. The King at last allowed himself, though rather unwillingly, to be won over by Red's persistency, and one day asked Ring to go and kill the oxen that were in the wood for him, and bring their horns and hides to him in the evening. Not knowing how dangerous ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... desired to be, what must then be our reader's confusion! We will, therefore, draw a curtain over this scene, from that philogyny which is in us, and proceed to matters which, instead of dishonouring the human species, will greatly raise and ennoble it. ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... He [Lord John Russell] brought into public life, and he carried through it unimpaired, the qualities which ennoble manhood—truth, justice, fortitude, self-denial, a fund of genuine indignation against wrong, and an inexhaustible sympathy with human suffering.... With a slender store of physical power, his life was a daily assertion of the superiority of the spirit to ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... darker and more desperate phases. By an almost infallible instinct we discover true love amid fictitious, unworthy and evil elements; and when seen there is something so sublimely beautiful that we prostrate ourselves before it and believe against evidence, even, that sooner or later it will ennoble and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... better world; an education that will develop their superior being, that will inspire them with the love of wisdom and hatred for sin, that will make them honest, moral and God-fearing men. Such an education will elevate and ennoble them and place them on a religious footing with the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... wait till movement is slow and color is dull. We are not tempted to make a vacancy and call it piety; but when man's life is so full that it tempts him daily to self-consciousness and pride, then let him open it wide to the consciousness of God and ennoble it with the full dignity of that humility whose first condition is the presence of God in the soul that He built ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... who has a lofty soul, fine taste, gentle wit, a generously warm heart, and who lives a simple life, has not a chance of being the fashion. Ergo: A woman of fashion and a man in power are analogous; but there is this difference: the qualities by which a man raises himself above others ennoble him and are a glory to him; whereas the qualities by which a woman gains power for a day are hideous vices; she belies her nature to hide her character, and to live the militant life of the world she must have iron strength under ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... just the reverse has been a favourite theme of modern theory, because a greater importance was supposed to be thus given to Strategy, and, as the higher functions of the mind were seen in Strategy, it was thought by that means to ennoble War, and, as it was said—through a new substitution of ideas—to make it more scientific. We hold it to be one of the principal uses of a complete theory openly to expose such vagaries, and as the geometrical element is the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... lying like fire; they do not disparage themselves to arouse compassion; they have no shallow vanity; if they have a talent they respect it; they develop the aesthetic feeling in themselves ... they seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct. The letter from which these chief points are taken is tremulous with sympathy and wit. Tchehov was twenty-six when he wrote it. He concludes with the words: 'What is needed is constant work day and night, constant reading, study, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... giving you an insight into the character of these boys as a key to their after-life. I know that the child is not always 'father to the man,' and that the insertion of a new and transforming principle into the soul will elevate and ennoble the meanest man. But as a general rule the mainsprings of character develop early, and the man is very much as the child has made him. The sowing then, brings forth a harvest afterwards. They tell us, that two natives of Scotland settled in the far West, and that each took with him a memorial of ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... me, an honour from the gods, a grace divine, is shed about the path of him the hero-ruler. (12) Not only does command itself ennoble manhood, but we gaze on him with other eyes and find the fair within him yet more fair who is to-day a prince and was but yesterday a private citizen. (13) Again, it is a prouder satisfaction doubtless to hold debate with those who are preferred to us in honour than with people on an ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... the Georgian era was detestable. But it is one thing to reform, and another to revolutionise. Let us by all means go to nature for instruction; but nature under the exercise of cultivated feeling—selecting what tends to ennoble and refine, not that which degrades and sends us back to forms and ideas totally out of place in the nineteenth century, and which, for that very reason, can have nothing but a temporary reign, to be followed in the succeeding ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... he continued, enthusiastically; "and, if I mistake not, the Agamemnon will be an epoch in your life. You will find that all these studies will serve to ennoble your art, and you will be able to put mind into your work, and not merely form and colour. Do you know, I feel so well that I believe I shall not only live to finish Andrea del Sarto, but also to ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... smallest scruple. So far, she is like any other pretty woman who is just clever enough to make the most of her sexual attractions for trivially selfish ends; but Candida's serene brow, courageous eyes, and well set mouth and chin signify largeness of mind and dignity of character to ennoble her cunning in the affections. A wisehearted observer, looking at her, would at once guess that whoever had placed the Virgin of the Assumption over her hearth did so because he fancied some spiritual resemblance ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... that capacity began to vindicate itself in strange forms of disease, seemingly to her supernatural, often agonising, often degrading, and at the same time (strange contradiction) mixed itself up with her noblest thoughts, to ennoble them still more, and inspire her not only with a desire of physical self-torture, which would seem holy both in her own eyes and her priest's, but with a love for all that is fair and lofty, for self-devotion and self-sacrifice—shall we blame her—shall we ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... from golden calves and such folly," he said. "We are likely enough to have our waters of Marah. But it seems to me the best way to ennoble labor, give it its true dignity, and show the possibilities for the workmen, is concerted action. As matters stand now, few poor men can ever acquire sufficient capital to start any business; and perhaps this is not best when we consider the cost of machinery, and the ever-appearing ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... religious truth was exorbitantly stretched to include the last details of church organization and worship, and the minute direction of political and other secular affairs. In many a case the Scriptures thus applied did highly ennoble the polity and legislation of the Puritans.[113:1] In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart. The Bible was used ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a lover, who, from nature or devotion, was addicted to long vigils and abstemious diet. When his first transports had subsided, she still maintained the same ascendant over his mind, by the more solid merit of temper and understanding. Justinian delighted to ennoble and enrich the object of his affection; the treasures of the East were poured at her feet, and the nephew of Justin was determined, perhaps by religious scruples, to bestow on his concubine the sacred and legal character of a wife. But the laws of Rome expressly prohibited the marriage ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... genuine humour of these larrikin love poems is all the more effective because beneath the surface fun there is a suggestion of deeper feelings that ennoble men and unite them in the ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... the world directed his attention to political life, and Christianity and politics are in no wise antagonistic. On the contrary, it is the aim of Christianity to elevate and ennoble even earthly relations; it is the true religion of the people. No saying is so misunderstood, so entirely twisted from its real meaning, as that uttered by Christ: "My kingdom is not of this world." ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... our control, but in regard to the far more important and real things—viz. elevation and purity of heart and mind. You are in the period of life to which fair dreams of the future are natural. It is, as the prophet tells us, for 'the young man' to 'see visions,' and to ennoble his life thereafter by turning them into realities. Generous and noble ideas ought to belong to youth. But you are also in the period when there is a keen joy in mere living, and when some desires, which get weaker as years go on, are very strong, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... past belongs to the dead; only fools count upon the future; but wise men hold fast by the ever young present; by work they foster all the various gifts which Zeus, Apollo, Pallas, Cypris lend; by work they raise, and perfect and ennoble them, until their feelings, actions, words and thoughts become harmonious like a well-tuned lute. You cannot serve the man to whom you have given your whole heart,—to whom in your great love you look up as so much higher ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... untempted, into every description of misconduct and dishonour. In each, we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "being a good influence" in life, especially men's lives. She got it also in what books she read,—especially in Tennyson and in every novel, as well as in the few plays she saw. There it was embodied as Woman of Romance,—sublime, divine, mysterious, with a heavenly mission to reform, ennoble, uplift—men, of course,—in a word to make over the world. The idea of it had come down from the darkness of the middle ages,—that smelly and benighted period,—had inflamed all romance, and was now spreading its last ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... See the quotation from one of Chopin's letters farther on.] With all Schumann's admiration for Chopin and praise of this sonata, it appears to me that he does not give Chopin his due. There is something gigantic in the work which, although it does not elevate and ennoble, being for the most part a purposeless fuming, impresses one powerfully. The first movement begins with four bars grave, a groan full of pain; then the composer, in restless, breathless haste, is driven by his feelings onward, ever onward, till he comes to the lovely, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... attended a well-known name; that given to Legard by the innkeeper, mutilated by Italian pronunciation, the young man had never heard before, and soon forgot. He paid his debts, and he scrupulously kept his word. The adventure of that night went far, indeed, to reform and ennoble the mind and habits of George Legard. Time passed, and he never met his benefactor, till in the halls of Burleigh he recognized the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... undiscovered beauty, and to a peculiar grandeur not to be attained by the egoist. Leconte's temperament leads him to subjects which are already instinct with tragedy and thus in his hands assume this grandeur without effort. The power of sheer style to ennoble is better seen in Sully Prudhomme's tours de force of philosophic poetry—when he unfolds his ideas upon 'Justice' or 'Happiness', for instance, under the form of a debate where masterly resources of phrase and image are compelled to the service ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... time to accomplish changes in a conservative community, and the new education will be successful only as the new teacher becomes a comparative fixture. To build oneself into the life of a rural community as does the physician, and to ennoble it with new ideas and higher ideals, is a missionary service that can hardly be surpassed at the present time ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... movement towards a higher life in the heathen community as well as in the Christian, and should introduce every method and plan, industrial, social, or political, literary, or artistic, which tends to ennoble the life of men. It may be so. It may be true that the introduction of everything which tends to uplift and enlighten is a proper object for missionary activity, but we venture to argue not all at once, in the same place, nor even any one of them at the whim of any missionary at any time, anywhere. ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation: of all the conflicts and all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... do that," said the old lady, turning her pleasant face toward him; "but even if the human heart is desperately wicked, shouldn't that make us much more eager to try to educate, to ennoble, and restrain? However, as far as my experience goes, and I have lived in this wicked world for seventy-five years, I find that the human heart, though wicked and cruel, as you say, has yet some soft and tender spots, and ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... the most essential human worth and purest charm of character, the truest manhood, the most affectionate fidelity. To those who hear of him now, and perhaps never again, these words may suggest that the personal influences which most ennoble and sweeten life may escape fame, but live immortal in the best ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke |
