"Birth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Directions to Servants. In Swift's Remarks on the Clerical Residence Bill, he describes the family of an English vicar thus: "His wife is little better than a Goody, in her birth, education, or dress..... His daughters shall go to service, or be sent apprentice to the sempstress of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of '76 when they plighted to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our present government, if the spirit of American institutions had not been both the birthright and the birth-blessing of the Colonies? The Indians, the French, the Spaniards, and even England herself, warred in vain against a people, born and bred in the household, at the domestic altar of Liberty herself They had never been slaves, for they were born free. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... fingers touch these sods, See, they're streaked with sticky earth; Yet you spring from clayey clods, Pure, and fresh, and fair from birth. ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... word, or two, while yet I may. A baron's daughter (though you might have known Catherine some time without knowing that), she had nevertheless married for mere love as a very young girl, and had been left a widow before the birth of her boy. I never knew her husband, though we were distant kin, nor yet herself during the long years through which she mourned him. Catherine Evers was beginning to recover her interest in the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... only absolute morality is absolute stagnation, but this is unpractical, so a peck of change is permitted to every one, but it must be a peck only, whereas genius would have ever so many sacks full. There is a myth among some Eastern nation that at the birth of Genius an unkind fairy marred all the good gifts of the other fairies by depriving it of the power of knowing ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... from the American Board Mission school to go to see the President to ask him to release the boy students who are in prison for making speeches on the street. To say that life in China is exciting is to put it fairly. We are witnessing the birth of a nation, and birth always comes hard. I may as well begin at the right end and tell you what has happened while things have been moving so fast I could not get time to write. Yesterday we went to see the temples ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... were scoured for wild beasts, the chase was invigorated by the promised 'encouragement of fifty pounds per scalp!'" The "fruitless cruelties" of the Indian allies of the French in Canada, says the historian, gave birth to these humane and nicely-graduated enactments! Nor is our admiration of their Christian spirit in the least diminished, when we reflect that nothing is recorded in history of "bounties on scalps" or "encouragement" to murder, offered by Frontenac, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... she again becomes a mother. Eagerly she examines the flower-soft hand of the infant. And lo! the self-same ideograph is there—a rosy birth-mark on the tender palm; and the Soul returned looks out upon her through the eyes of the newly-born with ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... fast, at last swore he would either leave his charge, or go quite away with 't. "'Sdeath," said he, "d'ye think I'm a pack-horse, or a dray, that you load me thus? I was hir'd for a man, not a horse; nor am I less a gentleman by birth than any of you all; tho' my father left me in a mean condition." Nor content with reproaches, but getting before us, he lift up one leg, and, venturing his choler at the wrong end, filled our nostrils with ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... smiling, confident challenge to all the world. Hunt was trying to make his picture a true portrait—and also make it a symbol of many things which still were only taking shape in his own mind: of beauty rising from the gutter to overcome beauty of more favored birth, and to reign above it; also of a lower stratum surging up and breaking through the upper stratum, becoming a part of it, or assimilating it, or conquering it. Leading families replaced by other families, classes replaced by other ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... remain with your judgment to decide, how far an exercise of the occasional power delegated by the fifth article of the constitution is rendered expedient, at the present juncture, by the nature of objections which have been urged against the system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good: ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that was destined to set the whole world ablaze. Mrs. McGuire's eldest son John—of whom she boasted in season and out and whom she loved with an all-absorbing passion—had caught the war-fever, gone to Canada, and enlisted. Mrs. McGuire herself was a Canadian by birth, and all her family still lived there. She was boasting now more than ever about John; but, proud as she was of her soldier boy, his going had plunged her into an abyss ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... his birth from true mother, such fame unique as rests with Telemachus from best of ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... been because some greater festival had fallen on S. Somebody's day owing to the mutability of Easter or for some other reason. I had been wishing I could have been at Castellinaria for the first anniversary of Ricuzzu's birth, I ought to have wished to be there for the festa of S. Enrico, but I did not know when it fell, nor did Peppino; but if festas might be transferred in this easy way, perhaps we might keep it now and find out afterwards to what ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... responded the other—'I am neither a shopman nor a mechanic, and if I were, I should be far superior to such a scoundrel as you. I am a gentleman; your equal in birth and fortune—your superior in manhood and in honor. If you desire satisfaction for my conduct to-night, you will find me at the Tremont House, at any time. My name is Francis Sydney. I shall see this lady in ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Epicurean here spying upon our rites, let him depart in haste; and let all such as have faith in the God be initiated and all blessing attend them.' He led the litany with, 'Christians, avaunt!' and the crowd responded, 'Epicureans, avaunt!' Then was presented the child-bed of Leto and birth of Apollo, the bridal of Coronis, Asclepius born. The second day, the epiphany and nativity ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Esquire," he waits in peaceful expectation of a college living, with the consciousness of having done his duty by his relations, and delivered himself from a drag upon his new career. I do not mean to set too high a value on gentle birth, or to limit nobility of character by that of blood; I believe my tailor to be one of nature's gentlemen, (he never duns,) and I know my next neighbour, Sir John, thirteenth baronet as he is, to possess the soul of a huckster, because he sells his fruit and game: still these are the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... especial, "Sir Oracle on the Care and Training of Children." Sir Oracle implored parents by all they held sacred never to talk "baby talk" to their children. Infants should invariably be addressed in classical language from the moment of their birth. So should they learn to speak English undefiled from their earliest utterance. "How," demanded Sir Oracle, "can a mother reasonably expect her child to learn correct speech, when she continually accustoms its impressionable gray matter to such absurd expressions and distortions ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that income he could do something to assist them, and something he still did. He had his foibles, and fancies, but such as they were they did not tread on the corns of any of his poorer neighbours. He was proud of his birth, proud of his family, proud of having owned, either in his own hands or those of his forefathers, the same few acres,—and many more also, for his forefathers before him had terribly diminished the property. There was a story that his great ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... fellow. So are his friends splendid fellows. You'll like them too. Thorough gentlemen. Most of them of good birth." ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... powerful chief, the most valiant fighter, and the most lucky warrior in the Andes. His captains and soldiers were brave, well disciplined, and well armed. All his affairs prospered greatly. "Afterward he ordered works to be executed at the place of his birth, consisting of a masonry wall with three windows, which were emblems of the house of his fathers whence he descended. The first window was called Tampu-tocco." I quote ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... disinterested in the matter of dinner, Miss Leaf; for I have no doubt of finding good English roast beef and plum pudding on your sister's birth day.—Happy returns of the day, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the Holy Father are divided by birth and fortune into three very distinct classes,—nobility, citizens, and people, or plebeians. The Gospel has omitted to consecrate the inequality of men, but the law of the State—that is to say, the will of the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... retired at once to their berths, and Elsie wept herself to sleep, thinking of the dear ones left behind; especially the mother who had so tenderly cherished her from her birth and the sick little ones who, she feared, might not be there to welcome her return. Thinking too of him to whom she was going, his probable suffering, and the dread possibility that at her journey's end she should find ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... the garrisons without pay, with what they drew from contributions. Such a valuable quality made Mazarin think of replacing Joubert, his intendant, who had recently died, by M. Colbert, who had such skill in nibbling down allowances. Colbert by degrees crept into court, notwithstanding his lowly birth, for he was the son of a man who sold wine as his father had done, but who afterwards sold cloth, and then silk stuffs. Colbert, destined for trade, had been clerk in Lyons to a merchant, whom he had quitted to come to Paris in the ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... force on Gordon's old steamer, the Ismailia, to bring Mahomed Ahmed to reason. This was in August 1881. By its numbers and the superior armament of the troops this expedition should have proved a complete success, and a competent commander would have strangled the Mahdist phenomenon at its birth. Unfortunately the Egyptian officers were grossly incompetent, and divided among themselves. They attempted a night attack, and as they were quite ignorant of the locality, it is not surprising that they fell into the very trap they thought to ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... will not, I think, be unfavourable to our stirring abroad, for the moon will be of the same age as at my birth—an accident that thou wilt note, my child, to be ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to a movement of so fair promise was due partly to the agitated temper of the times; partly, perhaps, to a want of judgment in Wycliffe; but chiefly and essentially because it was an untimely birth. Wycliffe saw the evil; he did not see the remedy; and neither in his mind nor in the mind of the world about him had the problem ripened itself for solution. England would have gained little by the premature overthrow of the church, when the house out of which ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... there; a school of girls of the lower classes, to the number of a hundred and fifty, who disported themselves on the green, under the direction of the schoolmistresses and of an old gentleman. It struck me, as it always has, to observe how the lower orders of this country indicate their birth and station by their aspect and features. In America there would be a good deal of grace and beauty among a hundred and fifty children and budding girls, belonging to whatever rank of life. But here they had universally a most plebeian look,—stubbed, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... increased also the necessary work of the needle, and while the looms of France and Switzerland were busy weaving broidered stuffs, the needles of sewing women were kept at work fashioning the necessary garments of the millions of playing and working human beings. It was the era which gave birth to the "Song of the Shirt," a day of personal ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... thy rank must be in some way mended," said the Constable, surveying the unmilitary dress of the figure before him; "it is at present too mean to befit the protector and guardian of a young lady of high birth ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... engaged to give a large reward if my slanderers would produce them, they found it was another Joseph that had applied for the place, and not Joseph Barker. But the death of one slander seemed to be the birth of two or three fresh ones. And sometimes opposite slanders sprang up together. "If he had been a good man," said one, "he would have stopped in the Connexion quietly, and waited for reform!" "If he had been an honest man," said another, "he would have left the Connexion long ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil's Cause, had no method of making himself agreeable! "Better that women weep," said Morton, "than ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... fear lest you should also rob him of his belief in the love of God. I do not say that these things should be so; I say that we must face the fact that thus they are. And remember—between a man and woman of noble birth, each with a stainless escutcheon, each believing the other to be the soul of honour, a broken troth is no ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... passing on, of Kimberley. This town, hitherto known as the City of Diamonds, has now the distinction of being the casket where Mr. Rhodes, with the price of L5000 on his head, was incarcerated. Its real birth dates from 1869-70, when all the world rushed out to win fortune from its soil. Happily at that time Mr. Cecil Rhodes happened to be in the neighbourhood. With his usual gift of foresight, he recognised that some process of amalgamating the various conflicting claims and interests, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... approach those women who were beautiful or refined enough to seem to realize his ideal; and so he went to his grave believing in his dream. But I was more favored by nature and circumstance. I was of noble birth and rich; and when my person did not please, my conversation flattered, though I generally found myself ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... place, he had been allowed to sit and act, by his unfortunate conviction in this great subject. He had been told, he said, that it was a misfortune in itself for one so young as he to have convictions. But his Irish birth and Irish connection had brought this misfortune of his country so closely home to him that he had found the task of extricating himself from it to be impossible. Of what further he said, speaking on that terribly unintelligible subject, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... business more than three weeks or a month," he said, "and I am sure you will have earned the right to that much of a vacation by that time. However, I shall see you again before then, since I do not intend to entirely desert the land of my birth, even though my home must be in England, and every year I shall make a short trip to America. I am not going to lose sight of my friend either; remember, Richardson, we are pledged to each other ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the contemptible residence of the soul of the late Master Churl. Poor miserable youth! he was a wrangler from his infancy; and his litigious temper gave him as just a title to the name of Churl as his birth. Even when he was a child in arms, he was such a peevish and noisy little brat, that his mamma could not find a woman who would undertake the trouble of nursing him; and as soon as he was able to speak ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... that seemed a part of the music. But, among all who came, young Gabriel only was welcome; Gabriel Lajeunesse. the son of Basil the blacksmith, Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men; For, since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations, Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people. Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician, Priest and pedagogue ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... I even refuse to help in the procreation of the marmot [brat]; and, far from making myself, before my time, in any way its champion or propagandist, I hesitate over the difficulties which are opposed to its birth. I have explained these many a time to my Budapest friends, and the difficulties have increased rather than diminished during ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... opportunities of displaying my knowledge; for the templar entertained the company for part of the day with historical narratives and political observations; and the colonel afterwards detailed the adventures of a birth-night, told the claims and expectations of the courtiers, and gave an account of assemblies, gardens, and diversions. I, indeed, essayed to fill up a pause in a parliamentary debate with a faint mention of trade and Spaniards; and once attempted, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... recesses of the woods of Caucaland. He no longer hesitated to pass the Danube; and a very considerable part of the subjects of Fritigern, who already felt the inconveniences of anarchy, were easily persuaded to acknowledge for their king a Gothic Judge, whose birth they respected, and whose abilities they had frequently experienced. But age had chilled the daring spirit of Athanaric; and, instead of leading his people to the field of battle and victory, he wisely listened to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... to the inhabitants, they are so numerous, that the great roads may be compared to a perpetual fair, such numbers are continually passing, which made a Portuguese, who went thither, ask, "If the women had not nine or ten children at a birth?" Every inhabitant is obliged to hang a writing over his door, signifying the number and quality of the dwellers. The inside of their houses is very magnificent. The men are civil, well-bred, very ingenious, polite, and industrious, but extremely covetous, insomuch that they will not scruple ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... have at last accepted your dismissal from your post as manager of the Durend works. You are going—hated and despised—back to the land which gave you birth. And at last, in this moment, you must know yourself defeated by those at whom you scoffed as boys. The works you swore to destroy still stand intact, and will, in a short time, be throwing all their weight and power into the cause of ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... to cause permanent deformity of the tender skull; and good mothers stroked and pinched the little noses of their nurslings to make them grow long and sharp instead of round and snub, and put little gold earrings through the lobes of their ears very soon after birth "to improve their eyesight." Such practises may be already forgotten in some countries; but in others they obtain to this day. Who does not remember the various devices for helping a baby to walk? Even in the first months after ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... as the first spark is extinguished which the steel gives birth to. He could not confide himself to Wilhelm; the understanding which this very confidence would give birth to between them, must separate them from each other. It was humiliating, it was annihilating. But for Sophie? No, how could he, after that, declare ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... which, like some little secret lamp, glows in every heart, hardly to be seen of our eyes when the world is at peace—love of the old, close things, the sights, sounds, scents we have known from birth; loyalty to our fathers' deeds and our fathers' hopes; the clutch of Motherland—this love sent our soldiers and sailors forth to the long endurance, to the doing of such deeds, and the bearing of so great and evil pain as can never be told. The countries for which they have ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... platter and pot; and then all the little ones, who could only open their mouths to be fed like young birds,—Albrecht and Hilda, and Waldo and Christof, and last of all little three-year-old Ermengilda, with eyes like forget-me-nots, whose birth had cost them the life ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... genius, who associated with them in his youth, rendered them this homage: many among them are men possessing "the most amiable characters and minds of the highest order."[3331] Indeed, for most of them, military service was not a career of ambition, but an obligation of birth. It was the rule in each noble family for the eldest son to enter the army, and advancement was of but little consequence. He discharged the debt of his rank; this sufficed for him, and, after twenty or thirty years of service, the order of Saint-Louis, and sometimes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... died almost at its birth. Something moving down the hill among the trees caught her troubled eyes. Then, too, the sound of a whistle reached her. Some one was approaching from the direction of Charlie's house, whistling a ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... well, my daughter, and I will to-day send a messenger bidding Don Rodrigo meet me at Palencia, and I will give him lands and riches, so that in wealth as in birth he may be ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... if he were not afraid of being thought mad he would fall down and worship. Then the stiffened wing begins to relax and grow again; desire which has been imprisoned pours over the soul of the lover; the germ of the wing unfolds, and stings, and pangs of birth, like the cutting of teeth, are everywhere felt. (Compare Symp.) Father and mother, and goods and laws and proprieties are nothing to him; his beloved is his physician, who can alone cure his pain. An apocryphal sacred writer says that the power which thus works in him is ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... and with a clear, cold, untroubled apprehension of the line of conduct which he intended to pursue. It was one of the strangest features of this epoch that a Minister who in a long career had never yet exercised the slightest influence upon foreign affairs, and who was not himself English by birth, should have impressed in such an extreme degree the stamp of his own individuality upon the conduct of our foreign policy; that he should have forced England to the very front in the crisis through which Europe was passing; and that, for good or for evil, he should have reversed the tendency ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... not bad-looking," said Athelwold, with studied lack of enthusiasm; "but I fear that high station and a pretty face have combined to bewitch the people. Certainly, if she had been of low birth, her charms would never have been heard of outside her ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the disastrous year 1525, the year of the battle of Pavia, and the captivity of Francis the First. His parents died early, and to him, as the younger son, his mother's little estate, ce petit Lire, the beloved place of his birth, descended. He was brought up by a brother only a little older than himself; and left to themselves, the two boys passed their lives in day-dreams of military glory. Their education was neglected; "The time ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... from the dominant faction of Hugginson, and the small vulgar-minded sets who always tried to brow-beat those who were poor, particularly if their birth and breeding were gentle, she found nothing but insulting coldness, or still more insulting patronage. When first she heard the marriage-bells clang out from the old church tower of her home, and had walked by the side of her young husband, a glad and lovely bride, she ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a cross-roads post-office called Hale's Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not know the month or the day. The earliest ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... of Hazen, Simonds and White when hostilities arose between the old colonies and the mother country was very embarrassing. By birth and early association they were New Englanders and most of their old time friends and neighbors were hostile to the crown. Massachusetts was practically the cradle of the Revolution, and the vast majority of its inhabitants were bitterly opposed to the King ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... may be dated the birth of the modern flying machine into the world of business. The automobile was taken up by the general public from the very start because it was a proposition comparatively easy of demonstration. There was nothing mysterious or uncanny in the fact that a wheeled vehicle could be propelled on solid, ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... his name to an introductory Advertisement, and that such and such were the incidents of the story." Even his friends, with the exception of Burke, did not seem to consider that any remarkable new birth in literature had occurred; and it is probable that this was a still greater disappointment to Goldsmith, who was so anxious to be thought well of at the Club. However, the public took to the story. ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... sorry to trouble you, but I felt certain, as I told my daughter, that a minister of the Gospel would not tarry in time of need. Not that I put my trust in ordinances, sir; I have been blest with the enlightenment of the new birth, but my daughter, sir, she follows the Church. Yes, sir, the poor little lamb is a sad sufferer in this vale of tears. So wasted away, you see; you would not think he was nine weeks old. We would have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... born in Waxhaw, North Carolina, 1767, but always considered himself a native of South Carolina, for the place of his birth was on the border of the two states. During the Revolution a party of British came to the settlement where Jackson lived. An officer ordered the boy to clean his boots, and when Jackson refused, struck him ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... faces of women by the million, by the myriad, all dead, all disappointed and shedding tears of despair, as they looked back upon the lost moments of their ignorant youth. In the distance I saw a playful Meditation rise to birth, I heard the satanic laughter which ran through it, and now you doubtless are about to kill it.—But come, tell me in confidence what means you have discovered by which to assist a woman to squander the swift moments during which her beauty is at its full flower and her ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa George Gordon Byron Stanzas for Music George Gordon Byron "When As a Lad" Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "Around the Child" Walter Savage Landor Aladdin James Russell Lowell The Quest Ellen Mackey Hutchinson Cortissoz My Birth-Day Thomas Moore Sonnet on His having Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three John Milton On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year George Gordon Byron Growing Gray Austin Dobson The One White Hair Walter Savage Landor Ballade of Middle Age Andrew ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... godfather, Dr. Samuel Swinfen, according to the author of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson, 1785, p. 10, was at the time of his birth lodging with Michael Johnson. Johnson had uncles on the mother's side, named Samuel and Nathanael (see Notes and Queries, 5th S. v. 13), after whom he and his brother may have been named. It seems more likely that it was his godfather ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... stand on the footstool and display the same curve, but nevertheless she made him a fairly good wife, and he and she lived together on the usual marital terms, without any particular raptures, and without any particular discord, for five years, when unfortunately she died, after giving birth to her second child, which was named Miriam, after its mother. Giacomo was left with an elder boy, Andrew, and ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... speak a word or two, to ease my conscience. My pride forbids it ever should be said, My heels eclips'd the honours of my head; That I found humour in a piebald vest, 5 Or ever thought that jumping was a jest. ('Takes off his mask.') Whence, and what art thou, visionary birth? Nature disowns, and reason scorns thy mirth, In thy black aspect every passion sleeps, The joy that dimples, and the woe that weeps. 10 How has thou fill'd the scene with all thy brood, Of fools pursuing, and of fools pursu'd! Whose ins and outs no ray of sense discloses, Whose only plot it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... men are equal!" she said to herself: "The King is a mere helpless babe at birth, dependant on others,—as he is a mere helpless corpse at death. It is only men's own foolish ideas and conventions of usage in ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... its presence confessed. 'Twill be found in the Sphere when 'tis riven asunder, Be seen in the Lightning and heard in the Thunder. 'Twas allotted to man with his earliest Breath, Attends at his Birth and awaits him in Death; It presides o'er his Happiness, Honor, and Health, Is the prop of his House and the end of his Wealth. Without it the soldier and seaman may roam, But woe to the Wretch who expels it from Home. ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... go by than the singing voice itself. He pronounced it sincere, robust, true, sweet, victorious. And very quickly also he made up his mind that conditions must have been rare and fortunate with the lad at his birth: blood will tell, and blood told now even in this dirt ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... rosy, wholesome-looking creatures pass into haggard, middle-aged women with vacant faces, owing to the blackening of the teeth and removal of the eyebrows, which, if they do not follow betrothal, are resorted to on the birth of the first child. In other houses women are at their toilet, blackening their teeth before circular metal mirrors placed in folding stands on the mats, or performing ablutions, unclothed to the waist. Early the village is very silent, while the children are at school; their ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... is, that from its very conception, as well as birth, they hated and opposed the Union, because they disliked a Republican and preferred a Monarchical form of Government. Their very inability to prevent the consummation of that Union, imbittered them. Hence their determination ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... because salvation was barred against them. She said that for that very reason people ought to pity them, and do every humane and loving thing they could to make them forget the hard fate that had been put upon them by accident of birth and no fault of their own. "Poor little creatures!" she said. "What can a person's heart be made of that can pity a Christian's child and yet can't pity a devil's child, that a thousand times more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which Jack Frost had robed them. I expected to have an easy and uninterrupted passage down the river in advance of floating ice; and, so congratulating myself, I drew near to the confluence of the Monongahela and Alleghany, from the union of which the great Ohio has its birth, and rolls steadily across the country a thousand miles to ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Christians, speaks of Jesus as extolled by the Christians as a god; mentions Peter and Paul by name; and refers both to the Gospels and to the Epistles. The Emperor Julian, in the fourth century, called "Apostate," writes of the birth of Jesus in the reign of Augustus; bears witness to the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles; and allows that Jesus Christ wrought miracles. He aimed to overthrow the Christian ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... trustees ("verwalter") are Jacob Henrici and Jonathan Lenz. The first, who is also the religious head, being in this respect the successor of R. L. Baeker, who was the successor of Father Rapp, is a German by birth, and a man of culture and of deep piety. He was educated to be a teacher; and entered the Harmony Society in 1826, a year after its removal to Economy. Rapp appears to have appreciated from the first his ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Could they forget the deadly feud between their races? Could they forget that each was a claimant of the lands of Aescendune—the one by birth, the other ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the third son of Dean Castlewood, a younger brother of my grandfather, and was born in the year 1806. He was older, therefore, than my father, but still (even before my father's birth, which provided a direct heir) there were many lives betwixt him and the family estates. And his father, having as yet no promotion in the Church, found it hard to bring up his children. The eldest son got a commission in the army, and the second entered the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Browning. On that memorable date I was traveling to Ohio at the request of my dear friend Miss Jones to deliver an address at the Columbus School for Girls. Curiously enough the name of my Pullman car ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... Wallin, (pronounced Valleen), the author of the "ANGEL OF DEATH," was a native of Sweden, and was born in the parish of Stora Tuna, in the province of Dalarne (Dalecarlia), October 15, 1779. His father was a military man, and some time after Johan's birth became captain of the Dalecarlia regiment. The future poet and preacher was one of a large family, much larger than accorded well with the somewhat restricted means of ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... celebrate an anniversary, ever to be held in dear remembrance by the sons of freedom. Nothing less than the birth of a nation, nothing less than the emancipation of three millions of people, from the degrading chains of foreign dominion, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... make an honourable figure for your first appearance before the company and also because, according to what was told us (we were not there after) the Countess is minded, for that you are a man of gentle birth, to make you a Knight of the Bath at her own proper costs and charges; and there you must wait till there cometh for you he whom we shall send. And so you may be apprised of everything, there will come for you a black horned beast, not overbig, which will go capering about the piazza ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... highly intelligent and playful. The inhabitants of Terra nicknamed them "Angels," yet they were awesome—the youngest were 4,000,000 years old and the oldest had been around since the birth of the universe. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... for one brief moment Let me forget my anguish and their crimes. If aught on earth demand an unmix'd feeling, 'Tis surely this—after long years of exile, 5 To step forth on firm land, and gazing round us, To hail at once our country, and our birth-place. Hail, Spain! Granada, hail! once more I press Thy sands with filial awe, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the one, he does not give satisfaction to the other. And there is no one who can serve both God and the world, for they have no harmony with each other. The world seeks honour, rank, wealth, sons in high place, good birth, sensuous pleasure and indulgence, all rooted in perverted pride; but God seeks and wants exactly the opposite. He wants voluntary poverty, a humbled heart, disparagement of self and of every worldly ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Vincent Cricklander because he belonged to one of the old families in New York and played polo well, and, being a great heiress though of no pretensions to birth, she wished to have an undisputed entry into the inner circle of her own country. He fulfilled her requirements for quite three years, and then she felt she was "through" with America, and wanted fresh fields for her efforts. Paris was too easy, Berlin doubtful, Vienna and Petersburg ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... like a native—better, indeed, than the majority of those with whom I now found myself associated—I escaped the mockery and annoyances which an English accent would inevitably have perpetuated. My country was known, however; it was moreover discovered that in birth and education I was superior to those about me, and these circumstances were sufficient to draw upon me envy and insult. Of the former I took no heed, the latter I promptly and fiercely resented, feeling that ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... the founders of New Salem, and at that time the keeper of the village tavern. He was a high-minded man, of a warm and generous nature, and had the universal respect of the community. He was a South Carolinian by birth, but had lived many years in Kentucky before coming to Illinois. Rutledge came of a distinguished family: one of his ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence; another was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by appointment of Washington, and another was a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... solstices and equinoxes, but assuredly it is of more ancient date than this. The same explanation has been offered for its recurrence among the Nahuas of Mexico, whose whole lives were subjected to its operation. At birth the mother was held unclean for four days, a fire was kindled and kept burning for a like length of time, at the baptism of the child an arrow was shot to each of the cardinal points. Their prayers were offered four times a day, the greatest ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... long period the Colonial Governor, was at this time closely identified with the history of Newbern. He was 'by birth an Irishman, and by nature an aristocrat.' He died at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... their pulpits seal'd with dust, They preach—in greatness is no trust. Here's an acre sown indeed With the richest, royal'st seed, That the earth did e'er suck in Since the first man died for sin: Here the bones of birth have cried, Though gods they were, as men they died: Here are wands, ignoble things, Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state Buried in dust, once dead ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... we have to decide is which of us shall have the honour of striking the first blow, who shall ward off from, our tops the greatest danger that has threatened us since the birth of Man.... ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... son of wrath, Condemned to exile, every man is born. Whence is man's pride, whose conception fault, Birth pain, life labour, and ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... clapping, some knapping; some drinking, some winking; some kissing, some pissing; some reeling, some stealing) urged my curiosity to enquire for what it was possible those noble sports might be ordained, and was soon satisfied it was the Anniversary Feast of their Great Lady Proserpine's birth-day. But these things that I took to be diverting, so elevated the spleen of my Puritan companion, that he began loudly to exclaim against those prophane exercises: he said, they were impure, and lifted up the mind to lewdness; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... bad and mean enough, but the conception of a single poem in my brain, till it found birth on paper, was, I swore, bigger and finer than all this world-mess at its best. Also there was in me somewhat the thwarted, sinister hatred ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... for the sixteen army cantonments, decreed to birth throughout the United States, presented many difficulties. What could be more natural, however, than the fertile farm lands of Anne Arundel county, almost within shadow of the National Capital, to be selected as the site ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... Lawrence to the United States Senate. Lawrence had little claim, perhaps, to be entered in the class with Rufus King, since he was neither leader nor statesman; but he had been the faithful adjutant-general of Washington, and a steady, fearless supporter of Hamilton. Lawrence, an Englishman by birth, had settled in New York at an early period in life, and by his marriage to the daughter of Alexander McDougall, quickly came into conspicuous sympathy with the radical wing of the patriotic party. He will always ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... on her shabbiest hat and oldest jacket; her gloves had some holes in them; her umbrella was rolled up in such a thick, ungainly fashion that it looked like a gamp. Nora, however, exquisitely neat and trim, stood by her companion's side, betraying as she did so traces of her good birth and breeding. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... now a hundred years since the great French biologist Jean Lamarck published his "Philosophie Zoologique". By a remarkable coincidence the year in which that work was issued, 1809, was the year of the birth of his most distinguished successor, Charles Darwin. Lamarck had already recognised that the descent of man from a series of other Vertebrates—that is, from a series of Ape-like Primates—was essentially involved in the general theory of transformation which he had erected on ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... giveth everyone his due, and the bestower of boons, attain happiness, and come by every object of enjoyment; while a man free from envy reapeth perfect ease. He that honoureth those to whom honour is due, attaineth birth in an illustrious line; and he that hath subdued his senses, never cometh by misfortune. A man whose mind followeth good, after having paid his debt to nature, is on this account, born again endued ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... years ago wrote a pleasant story, called "The Marriage Lease," in which doctrinaire legislation of a somewhat similar kind was described, and its inevitable failure most amusingly depicted. The war disposes of another of the President's maxims (S., p. 10), that the decline in the birth-rate of a country is nothing to be grieved about, and that "the slightest acquaintance with biology" shows that the "inference may be wholly wrong," which asserts that "a nation in which population is not rapidly increasing ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... after the birth of the dauphin; all Paris was full of joy. The king advised him to announce a gratuitous performance in honor of the event, and give a ball after. Doubtless plenty would come, and if the theater ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... nothing less than spiritual miscegenation—that's it!—why didn't I think of that phrase before—spiritual miscegenation. A rattle-brained boy, with the connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance with a person inferior to him in every point of view—birth, breeding, station, culture, wealth—a person, moreover, who will doubtless be glad to relinquish her so-called rights for a sum of money. Can that, I ask you, be called a marriage? Can we suppose an all-wise ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... suffering the inquisition tortures of the editorial censorship, all maimed, and squinting, and one-sided, with the colour rubbed off its poor cheeks, and generally a villanous hang-dog look of ferocity, so different from its birth-smile that I often did not know my own child again!—and then, when I dared to remonstrate, however feebly, to be told, by way of comfort, that the public taste must be consulted! It gave me a hopeful notion of the said taste, certainly; and often and often I groaned in spirit ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Consent, to have been the Country whence this Recreation took its Birth and Original; and indeed 'tis no wonder that she who is called the Queen or Empress of the World, the Mistress of the Nations, nay the Paradise of the World, should yield such Art and Ingenuity, and gentile Cunning, as her proper Product: A Country ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett |
