"Abnegation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the episode of the boy chez Madame Laure. A casual recollection brings up the schooldays of his childhood with the Jesuits, and with that the beliefs of childhood, the fantasies of the Church, the Catholic abnegation of the Imitatio joining so strangely with the final philosophy of Schopenhauer. At times his brain is haunted by social theories—his dull hatred of the ordinary in life taking form in the region of ideas. But in the main ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... think I shall be long," murmured Ermine, a vivid colour flashing forth upon her cheek, and leading the question from herself. "Just suppose you did carry out this fierce act of self-abnegation, what do you think ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of self-abnegation gave birth to renewed hope; and when his captor had handcuffed him and was walking him toward a closed carriage drawn up before the nearest saloon in the river-fronting street, he ventured to ask what he ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... painful to look upon than the self-renunciation, the self-abnegation of mothers,—painful both for its testimony and its prophecy. Its testimony is of over-care, over-work, over-weariness, the abuse of capacities that were bestowed for most sacred uses, an utter waste of most ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... archway, past the dark shadows which the ponderous castle-towers flung across the rippling water. She left the town, and went out upon the lonely country road, through patches of moonlight and shadow, fearless in her self-abnegation, with only one thought in her mind: "Would ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... quietness and contentment! In suffering and loss, murmurings, fault-finding and words of forced resignation are more frequently heard than joyful songs of praise. Unrest instead of rest, discontent instead of contentment, anxiety instead of simple trust, self exaltation instead of self abnegation, ambitiousness instead of lowliness of mind are found on all sides among those who name the name of Christ and who carry His Life in their hearts. And why? Your heart, dear reader, is so often out of touch with ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... our imitation a grand solitary exception in the midst of a world of selfishness. His entire life was one abnegation of self; a beautiful living embodiment of that charity which "seeketh not her own." He who for others turned water into wine, and provided a miraculous supply for the fainting thousands in the wilderness, exerted no such miraculous power for His own necessities. ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... his conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him loudly proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any of your 'old masters'! I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... affair to a friend, he said, "I thought my wife would be a widow before sundown, and I did not wish to leave the world making another." All California rang with the story of this heroic act. It has its parallel only in the self-abnegation of the dying hero on the battle-field, who put away from his parched lips the cup of water tendered to him, and directed that it be given to a wounded soldier suffering in agony by his side, saying, "His need is greater ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... you feel the need! ... Not the old religion of abnegation, the impossible myths that come to us out of the pessimistic East, created for a relief, a soporific, a means of evasion,—I do not mean that as religion. But another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for it. We rise with it in the morning. It is a faith in life apart from our own ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Virtue, temperance, truth, purity, love, faith, hope, liberty, grace, beauty, charity, the inspirers of art and science, of music and literature, of justice and of religion, all are feminine. When man says: "Our Father which art in heaven," he prays as his mother taught him. Through the self-abnegation that was unconscious of its sacrifice, woman was to be the instrument for bringing human life up, on, to the God who, being spirit, could act upon a clay-bound mind only through the highest human thing that love could know. Men, as well as women, have misunderstood and misinterpreted ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... and infinitely more assertive. Black-haired, black-eyed, swarthy, large-mouthed, snub-nosed; the very type and essence of unrestrained, impulsive, emotional, sensual nature. A seeing eye would have noted inevitable danger for the early years of her womanhood. She seemed amazed by the self-abnegation implied by her companion's statement; after ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... respect for certain social conventions, and the permanent repression of selfish impulses, it is quite evident that crowds are too impulsive and too mobile to be moral. If, however, we include in the term morality the transitory display of certain qualities such as abnegation, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotion, and the need of equity, we may say, on the contrary, that crowds may exhibit at times ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... well for Dr. Warren Slavens that the lesson of his hard years was deep within his heart; that the continence and abnegation of his past had ripened his restraint until, no matter how his lips might yearn to the sweets which were not his own, they would not taste. He took hold of himself with a rough hand, for the moonlight was upon her trembling lips; ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... been in England, as John Stuart Mill says, a class of women who glory in the utter self-abnegation of the wife to the husband, as the special crown of womanhood. Their patron saint is the Griselda of Chaucer, who, when her husband humiliates her, and treats her as a brute, still accepts all with meek, unquestioning, uncomplaining devotion. He tears her from her children; he treats her ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... face in a transport, had fallen to his knees, was crawling forward to the statue abjectly, mouthing phrases of worship and self-abnegation. Close on his heels came Polter and Noldi, eyes rapt, movements mechanical. I stopped, some last remnant of sense remaining in my head, and by a strong effort of will ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... say pretty girl," said Miss Cringle, with calm self-abnegation, "don't mind me, say it. The captain knows what he's about. He told me you were a milksop; he said you were a good ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... woman—an accomplished, clever, experienced woman,—she was very much more eager to monopolize it to herself. And in fairness she admitted that things could not continue as they were. The menace of Bert Morrison was static, so to speak. With fine self-abnegation Bert was standing aside. But how long would she continue to stand aside? Irene was old enough to know that the ramparts of friendship are a poor defence when the artillery of passion is brought to bear; indeed, it is usually through those very ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... any remarkable talents except "an unusual power of noticing things which easily escape attention, and of observing them carefully." In addition, however, to this peculiar insight, he had a singular reverence for truth and fact, enormous industry, and great self-abnegation: and his kindliness, modesty, and magnanimity attracted the affection of all who ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... of the order are undoubtedly to be attributed to the enthusiastic piety of St Bernard, abbot of the first of the monastic colonies, subsequently sent forth in such quick succession by the first Cistercian houses, the far-famed abbey of Clairvaux (de Clara Valle), A.D. 1116. The rigid self-abnegation, which was the ruling principle of this reformed congregation of the Benedictine order, extended itself to the churches and other buildings erected by them. The characteristic of the Cistercian abbeys was the extremest simplicity and a studied plainness. Only one tower—a central one ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... welcome him. He came to see our new abode, and add his satisfaction to our happiness. He was a gentle stoic, whose courage had ever served as a bulwark to the weak, and whose inflexibility was but another name for entire self-abnegation; he was indulgent to all, because he never forgave himself, and ever veiled severity in gentleness. His wisdom partook neither of arrogance nor passion; it descended to the level of your comprehension, and while pointing upwards, led you by the hand, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... 'moi' dominates these tragedies; and their heroes, bursting with this extraordinary egoism, assume even more towering proportions in their self-abnegation than in their pride. Then the thrilling clarion-notes of their defiances give way to the deep grand music of stern sublimity and stoic resignation. The gigantic spirit recoils upon itself, crushes itself, and reaches its ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... as bad as that. Surely sometimes some of you win back to womanhood? You yourself do not look so far gone but what some deed of abnegation, some strong love if you could but conceive it would set you right again. Surely you of the primrose robes ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... her noble self-sacrifice that enabled him to become the greatest Rabbi of his time and perhaps of all time. Unknown to him, she stole out into the market-place and sold all that beautiful hair of hers, so that he might continue his studies. Indeed no sacrifice, no self-abnegation, was too great for her. She sent Akiba away and for twelve long years dwelt alone in sorrow and in want, a "living widow," and at the end of that period she crowned it with a renewal of the same great sacrifice. As Akiba was crossing the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... of married life, Hortense was to her husband what a dog is to its master; she watched his every movement with a look that seemed a constant inquiry, her eyes were always on him, like those of a miser on his treasure; her admiring abnegation was quite pathetic. In her might be seen her mother's spirit and teaching. Her beauty, as great as ever, was poetically touched by the gentle ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... scenery, so to speak; but the scenery is symbolic, and the call is really one to prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness of human sin, by raising up the cast-down by reason of transgressions or sorrows, to subdue lofty thoughts and self-sufficiency by humble self-abnegation, to make the 'crooked things' or 'rugged things' straight or smooth, and the rough ground where heights were tumbled on heights a deep valley, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... that neither of these things went to the making of his fame. Classical and Oriental reading he had; but beyond these he cared for nothing which the men and meadows of Concord could not give, and for this voluntary abnegation, half whimsical, half sublime, the world repaid him with life-long obscurity, and will yet repay him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... probability of this or that with a semblance of interest that disarmed Cedric and made him wonder if this woman loved to such an extent, she could fling aside her own interests and submerge all jealousy, all self-love into the purest of all sacrifices, abnegation? ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the practiced eye of the doctor fail to perceive what was going on in him. He only said to himself—"Better him than me! He is young and will get over it better than I should." He read nobility and self-abnegation in every shadow that crossed the youth's countenance, telling of the hail mingled with fire that swept through his universe; and said to himself that all was on his side, that he had not miscalculated a hair's-breadth. He saw at the same time Cosmo's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... hope, and his first step (Jan. 31) was to call on Lord Palmerston, with an earnest request for his support, and with a hope that he would persuade Mr. Gladstone and Sidney Herbert to rejoin their old political connection; with the intimation moreover that Mr. Disraeli, with a self-abnegation that did him the highest credit, was willing to waive in Lord Palmerston's favour his own claim to the leadership of the House of Commons. Palmerston was to be president of the council, and Ellenborough minister of war. In this conversation Lord Palmerston made no objection ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... round his knees, and she was exquisitely beautiful, exquisite in her whole-hearted love, her whole-hearted abnegation—she, a proud Roman lady kneeling at his feet, her full red ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... partnership, in which each partner would be honest to the other, in which each would wish and strive for the other's welfare, so that thus their joint welfare might be insured. Then, in those early girlish days, it had meant a total abnegation of self. The one was of earth, and therefore possible. The other had been a ray from heaven,—and impossible, except in ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... foolish souls and false! who loudly cried 'True chivalry no longer breathes in time.' Look round us now; how wondrous, how sublime The heroic lives we witness; far and wide Stern vows by sterner deeds are justified; Self-abnegation, calmness, courage, power, Sway, with a rule august, our stormy hour, Wherein the loftiest hearts have wrought and died— Wrought grandly, and died smiling. Thus, O God, From tears, and blood, and anguish, thou hast brought The ennobling act, the faith-sustaining thought— Till, in the ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... next; in ours, the conservative of one generation is the radical of the next. The American conservative of 1790 is the so-called fanatic of 1820; the conservative of 1820 is the fanatic of 1856. The American conservative, indeed, descended the stairs of compromise until his descent into utter abnegation of all that civilized humanity holds dear was arrested by the Rebellion. And the reason of this strange inversion of conservative principles was, that the movement of Slavery is towards barbarism, while the movement of all countries in which labor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... that Sara Lee, who was by way of thinking for herself those days, and of thinking clearly, recognized the strange new self-abnegation of the English—their attitude not so much of suppressing their private griefs as of refusing to obtrude them. A strongly individualistic people, they were already commencing to think nationally. Grief was a private matter, to be borne privately. To the world they must present ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... exclaim, 'of the sight of these handsome, perfectly healthy men with grave faces and normal bones and muscles! We are sick of being told that Virtue is a mean between two extremes and tends to make men happy! We shall not be interested unless some one tells us that Virtue is the utter abnegation of self, or, it may be, the extreme and ruthless assertion of self; or again, that Virtue is all an infamous mistake! And for statues, give us a haggard man with starved body and cavernous eyes, cursing God—or give us something rolling in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... is by nature more impulsive than man; she reflects less than he; she has more abnegation, is naiver, and hence is governed by stronger passions, as revealed by the truly heroic self-sacrifice with which she protects her child, or cares for relatives, and nurses them in sickness. In the fury, however, this ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... her wrongdoing and received absolution so far as it is in the power of God's mediators to absolve one, but to promise to live, uprightly forevermore did not satisfy her soul. She felt the need of further self-abnegation; she must crucify body and ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... "Fransquillon," as Godin first styles them; but, save the feeble productions of Van der Borcht, the Jesuit Poirtiers, and the Dominican Vloers, we find but translations and imitations. Moons versifies some hundreds of fables. A half-sentimental, sickly style, consisting only of praises, of self-abnegation, of pious ejaculations, prevails. It is the worst of reactions;—the country, after its first outburst, had sunk into quietude, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... touched by the noble abnegation which leads you to refuse your admirable Requiem for the ceremony of the Invalides. Be convinced of my ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... the second group of sacrifices mentioned by Tylor,[163] that of homage, "a doctrine that the gist of sacrifice is rather in the worshiper giving something precious to himself than in the deity receiving benefit. This may be called the abnegation theory, and its origin may be fairly explained by considering it as derived from the original ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... be bound to hold by things that are his rights, but certainly not because they are rights. One of the grandest things in having rights is that, being your rights, you may give them up—except, of course, they involve duties with the performance of which the abnegation would interfere." ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... way in which we miss the main points of human history. We are looking at humanity too close, and see only the details and not the vast and dominant features. We look at the rise of Christianity, and conceive it as a rise of self-abnegation and almost of pessimism. It does not occur to us that the mere assertion that this raging and confounding universe is governed by justice and mercy is a piece of staggering optimism fit to set all men capering. The detail over which these monks went mad with joy was the universe itself; ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... cell, this aged monk, as weary of scientific and religious seclusion as Charles of pomp and power, had abdicated his scholastic pre-eminence, and exchanged his rosary for the keys and sword. A pontifical Faustus, he had become disgusted with the results of a life of study and abnegation, and immediately upon his election appeared to be glowing with mundane passions, and inspired by the fiercest ambition of a warrior. He had rushed from the cloister as eagerly as Charles had sought it. He panted for the tempests of the great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sensuality is laudable and although the ideal of perfection of this Mazdean sect inclined towards the asceticism to which the Manichean conception of virtue led, yet good does not consist exclusively in abnegation and self-control, but also in action. It is not sufficient for a religion to classify moral values, but in order to be effective it must furnish motives for putting them into practice. Dualism was peculiarly favorable for the development of individual ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... on a deeper emotion when she often broke down and cried. The quartermaster was greatly moved by her trust in him. The tears would come to his own eyes, and he would try in his clumsy way to comfort her, promising that, so far as it lay with him, Howard should return safe and sound. In his self-abnegation it never occurred to him that his own life was as valuable as Howard Quintan's. He acquiesced in the understanding that it was his business to get Howard through the war unscratched, at whatever risk ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... she had not a responsibility to society for the truth; whether she did right to allow these persons to gain influence over the popular mind by a silent consent to an utter falsehood. As her whole life had been passed in the most heroic self- abnegation and self sacrifice, the question was now proposed to her whether one more act of self-denial was not required of her, namely, to declare the truth, no matter at what expense ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... not very prone to favour the interests of an outlawed rebel. In spite of this disparity of fortune, it is curious to see how the two men, almost from the first, assume the mutual position already indicated. Liszt, from the beginning, realizes, with a self- abnegation and a freedom from vanity almost unique in history, that he is dealing with a man infinitely greater than himself, and to serve the artistic and personal purposes of that man he ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... but never later than one; while a Scotchman, who is fit for anything when half-starved, is very properly kept without solid food till two o'clock. As for the smaller gentry, who scorn to dine at workmen's hours, and yet do not pretend to the abnegation of the great, they may follow their own fancy without doing any harm to others; but the case is different as regards the hours assigned to dinner-parties, for these affect the health and comfort of the whole body ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... unbridled mob, without hat or cane, calmed the wrath of the crowd, using only his persuasive word with the majesty and authority that are never lacking to a minister of a Religion of Peace. With unparalleled self-abnegation this virtuous priest tore himself from sweet repose, such as every good conscience like his enjoys, and rushed to protect his flock from the least harm. The people of San Diego will hardly forget this sublime deed ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... better now what was good for his people; he had clearer views of the snares and dangers that beset them, and the sorrows that lie lurking on every man's path. He saw more distinctly what Christ came to do; and how he did it by complete self-abnegation, and by descending to the level of the lowest. But he had no delight in standing up in his pulpit in full face of his dwindling congregation. Language seemed poor to him; and it had grown difficult to him to put his burning ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... incentive to endure, to build, to go on. And one of them, stupid, selfish, merciless, a man whom she had really loved, who could have made her better, to whom she had gone with only hope for him and unselfish abnegation for herself—he had put a vile interpretation upon her appeal, he had struck her before a callous crowd, he had called her the name for which there was no pardon from her class, a name that evoked all the furies and the powers ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... rests upon the brow of him who has given his best work to help this world onward, even though it be but a hair's-breadth; but the mother who has given herself to her children through long years of an unwritten self-abnegation, who has thrilled every fiber of their beings with faith in God and hope in man, a faith and a hope which no canker-worm of worldly experience can ever eat away, she shall be crowned with a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... been hard to bear. But there was an underlying nobility in that woman's heart which had urged her on stronger than all. It is a spark in the breast of even the most debased, thought the judge, which abnegation and sacrifice often kindle into ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... going to a theatre, but said you cared for a good music-hall as much as anything...." Her voice was thin, as liars' voices are. Surely he must notice it and feel distaste. Oh, fatal Marion! Even in her complete and final abnegation of her forcefulness she had used such an excess of force that the world about her was shattered. For Ellen perceived that never again would the relationship of Richard and herself be the perfect crystal sphere that it had been before ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Jesus adopted almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior spirit.[3] Exceeding the duties laid down by the Law and the elders, he demanded perfection. All the virtues of humility—forgiveness, charity, abnegation, and self-denial—virtues which with good reason have been called Christian, if we mean by that that they have been truly preached by Christ, were in this first teaching, though undeveloped. As to justice, he was content with ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... lasted from the twelfth century to our own; and although we may well believe that the day is past for serving Christ by going barefoot and living on alms, the spirit of Saint Francis's doctrine, charity, purity, self-abnegation, might do as much for modern men as for those of six hundred years ago. Believing all this, we were not sorry that our uncompromising friend had stayed behind, and it was in a reverent mood that we left the little stone chamber—which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... saved Gyp from a breakdown. No; even at his highest pitch of abnegation, he could not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a woman of high breeding, with a certain Pallas-like purity and energy of face, clasping to her side her only child, a son whom she secretly believed to be destined to greatness. She was dressed not with the studied plainness and abnegation of the model in the studio, but out of regard for her true station and her motherly responsibilities. Her utmost wish was that in years to come, when he should look back upon his childhood, he would always remember with pride his evenings with ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... Ptolemy beyond rivalry [sic: no doubt some words omitted]. Believe me to be, Sir, with the profoundest respect, etc. The work is the result of thirty-five years' travel and observation, labor, expense, and self-abnegation." ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... "sanctification." No mortal language can ever express how much of an addition it is; but there must necessarily precede this marvelous grace, a definite and absolute subtraction, a loss of all things for the excellency of Christ, a complete self-abnegation, which has been mentioned in a previous chapter upon consecration. Until this absolute loss of all things has been truly experienced, there cannot be obtained the gain of this additional experience. We cannot lay hold of the promised inheritance until we completely ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... higher criticism" and attempts at historical construction, says: "The man who, with livelier intellectual needs [than those of the men who performed these labours], should now accomplish such an act of abnegation, would be a hero...."[112] Although Renan directed the publication of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, and Leibnitz was the editor of the Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium, neither Leibnitz, nor Renan, nor their peers ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... elements whose harmony was essential to success, was an herculean task, requiring the utmost forbearance, unselfishness, and wisdom. And of all the great questions, dividing the framers of that Constitution, perhaps none of them required a higher degree of self abnegation and patriotism than those touching ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... greedy, who, while engrossed by this material feast, leave him and the free objects of his fancy in peace. The scales coming down from above represent fatality, which is not to be moved, and which will not accept a partial sacrifice; but from which, by a total abnegation of self, by casting it a prey, we can escape, as it then has no further hold upon us. The falcon, for its part is content when virtue, by the sacrifices which she makes, secures for it greater advantages than it could obtain by the force ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... president carrying self-abnegation and prudence to their extreme limits, went to the general's quarters, and having warmly thanked him, laid before him the dangers to which he would expose himself by running counter to the opinions of those who had had their ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... contrast in many a household to the liberal, genial, brilliant, cultured husband in the zenith of his power, who has never given one thought to the higher life, liberty, and happiness of the woman by his side; believing her self-abnegation to be Nature's law. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the oath of self-abnegation were the desperate expedients of a woman who knew herself to have mighty enemies among her subjects, and who felt power slipping from her grasp. With one side of her character her new partner could sympathise; for Theodahad, though sprung ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... most unusual impulse, he seated himself at the piano and began to play, from memory, some strains from the last act of "die Goetterdaemmerung." At the point where Brunhild, carried beyond herself and her abhorred mortality back to the heights of immortal perception and abnegation, sings, with divine calm, the words: "Ruhe, Ruhe, du Gott!"—Ivan paused. The phrase caught him up. The majesty of the chords in which the great German has framed it, suddenly fired him with longing: "Rest thee, Rest thee, thou ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and stared down into the garden. Problematical ghosts and demons paled to insignificance before this real trouble. She fought with herself gallantly, crushing down her sorrow and disappointment and striving to regain the control she had let slip. Her feminine code Was simple—complete abnegation and self-restraint. And she had broken down under the first trial! He would despise her, the daughter of a race trained from childhood to conceal suffering and to suppress all signs of emotion. He would never understand that it was the alien blood that ran in ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... placed Johnson, for the time being, alongside Luther and Cromwell. Profanity or irreverence was lost sight of in a fervid utterance of a highly wrought and great-souled determination, united with a rare exhibition of pathos and self-abnegation."(29) ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... gives a profound sense of our own nothingness and worthlessness, and lays us on our face in the dust in self-abnegation. ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... letter, full of his constant brave cheerfulness in self- abnegation, had not overcome him like the few words that brought back the lovely young mamma he now remembered at Vale Leston, but whom he had too soon known only as the patient, over-tasked, drudging mother, and latterly in the faded helpless ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... amiable, almost comical, countenance, one expression seemed to overbear and obliterate all others, namely that of gushing good-will to man and beast! Those who did not know Reni-Mamba thought her an amiable imbecile. Those who knew her well loved her with peculiar tenderness. Her modesty and self-abnegation were not, so far as any one knew, the result of principle. She was too unassertive to lay claim to principle! We are not sure that she understood the ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... with her. In its stern acceptance of suffering and disappointment for Saxham, in its rugged confrontation of the inevitable; in its resolute long-suffering and grim patience; in its silent abnegation of any claim upon her gratitude or any right to demand her tenderness, the face was more than eloquent to-night. In the pride that would never stoop to beg for pity—would rather die hungered than accept one ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... confidence, mocked his projects, derided his authority, and yet complained of ill treatment—a rival who was neither compeer nor subaltern, and who affected to be his censor—a functionary of a purely anomalous character, sheltering himself under his abnegation of an authority which he had not dared to assume, and criticising measures which he was not competent to grasp;—such was the Duke of Medina Coeli ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... day return, are still impossible. Consequently, the only societies which actually exist are those of religious bodies, against whom a heavy war is being made at this moment; for the natural tendency of sick persons is to quarrel with remedies and often with physicians. France ignores self-abnegation. Therefore, no association can live except through religious sentiment; the only sentiment that quells the rebellions of mind, the calculations of ambition, and greeds of all kinds. The seekers of better worlds ignore the fact that ASSOCIATION has ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... between the two schools was mainly a matter of temperament. Persons of the sterner type of mind, caring comparatively little for the physical comforts and gracious amenities of life, and possessed of a strong sense of duty and decorum—inclined, perhaps, not only to piety and self-abnegation, but also to be somewhat dour and uncompromising—were naturally attracted to Stoicism. Those of the complementary character preferred the doctrines of Epicurus. The Stoics were the Pharisees, the Epicureans the Sadducees, of pagan ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... is to relearn the will of God. For we are so separated from Him that we now look upon His Will as on a cross, as an incomprehensible sacrifice, as but self-abnegation, pain, and gloom. ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... became most familiar to her, and all her soul became imbued with these bright and radiant fancies. And through it all she learned the one great lesson which these romances teach—that the grandest and most heroic of all virtues is self-abnegation at the call of honor ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... While self-abnegation is a valued experience in the spiritual discipline which goes to the formation of a perfect character, the reaction where the ego posits itself upon the law of justice to self, is in reality the beginning of salvation to the individual. But preachment from any ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... "savior" in the sense of bloody sacrifice for the sins of the people. On the contrary, he was an example to mankind—a man who through moral purification and a life of self-abnegation had prepared himself for this holy office. Mythologically, or astrologically, he was the new sun born at the close of the cycle. He was the great Light which revealed the way to eternal repose—Nirvana. The mythical Buddha was the prototype of the mythical Christ. His mother was Mai ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... have ventured to call the gray tones of her life, and a certain weariness of routine breaks out even in the mechanical precision of her existence. Power, in the parochial as in the domestic circle, is bought by her at the cost of a perpetual self-abnegation, and it is a little hard to be always hiding the hand that pulls the strings. We may excuse a little forgetfulness in a wife when her daily sacrifice is wholly forgotten in the silver teapot and the emblazoned memorial ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... natural tendency towards asceticism, self-extinction, self-abnegation. All through life she had made painful efforts to understand and follow out her duty. Ratcliffe knew her weak point when he attacked her from this side. Like all great orators and advocates, he was an actor; the more effective because of a certain ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... But purposeless giving up is a still darker poverty which he never could have meant. The lamp must give up its oil to the light and thus set free the purpose it has in its hoarding. This is emancipation. The path Buddha pointed out was not merely the practice of self- abnegation, but the widening of love. And therein lies the true meaning of ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... most tried ability and acknowledged eminence of character in the representative, the private opinions of the electors are not to be placed entirely in abeyance. Deference to mental superiority is not to go the length of self-annihilation—abnegation of any personal opinion. But when the difference does not relate to the fundamentals of politics, however decided the elector may be in his own sentiments, he ought to consider that when an able man differs from him there is at least a considerable ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... him of my love. But great satisfaction was afforded to my mind by the fact that our love was so pure, and that each would be ready, if needful, to make a sacrifice for the sake of the other. But that self-abnegation did not, after all, extend to Volodya, for when he heard that a certain diplomat was to marry the girl, he was disposed to slap his face and to challenge him to a duel. It happened that I had only spoken once to the young lady, and my love passed away in a week, as I made no effort ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... compliments in order to avoid unjust discrimination and to meet the demands of limited space. To posterity the work is of more importance than the workers, and those who have engaged in the efforts to improve the condition of women necessarily have had to possess a spirit of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice which neither expected nor ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... of self-abnegation has rarely been heard of in history. It has made Regulus famous for all time. His advice was taken, the treaty was refused; he, refusing to break his parole, or even to see his family, returned to Carthage with the ambassadors, knowing that he was going to his death. The rulers of that ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... all the lessons of the Boer war we are still inclined to believe that the soldier has to be something severely parallel, carrying a rifle he fires under orders, obedient to the pitch of absolute abnegation of his private intelligence. We still think that our officers have, like some very elaborate and noble sort of performing animal, to be "trained." They learn to fight with certain specified "arms" and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... meaning and value of sacrifice is thus seen to lie in self-surrender. The human being, born into a world where choices must be made, must make continual abnegation. And when the temporary good is surrendered in the maintenance of an ideal, sacrifice becomes ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... thorough examination of him by ear, touch, conversation. If enough constitution responds to the call, he advises an immediate entrance upon the hard road of abnegation. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... were by the revolutions and disasters arising from their own character, were without any good and noble traits which might redeem the lawlessness from which they suffered. Many deeds of Mexican arms, of self-abnegation in times of peril, and of heroic acts in the face of deadly odds, have left glorious episodes in their history. It is to be recollected that the struggles in which they were engaged arose often from an excess of zeal for liberty, and a strong ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the contrast made her patient, resolute abnegation more beautiful, her sacrifice more complete, her poignant suffering more divine. Unconsciously she rose towards the elevated plane of the Christ. She wore the crown of thorns in her heart; on her face shone the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the secret of his family, and was determined never to divulge it. The knowledge of this fact raised Esmond in his old tutor's eyes, so Holt was pleased to say, and he admired Harry very much for his abnegation. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Europe seems to have been striving, out of a strong, primitive, animal nature, towards the self-abnegation and the abstraction of Christ. This brought about by itself a great sense of completeness. The two halves were joined by the effort towards the one as yet unrealized. There was a triumphant joy ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to fear her. In the mind of such ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... read and approved by the finance minister was forthwith forwarded from Fontainebleau, where Marie de Medicis was then residing, to the King at Paris; but it was not without a struggle that the Queen had compelled herself to such an act of self-abnegation, and her courier was no sooner despatched than she complained in bitter terms to M. de Sully of the humiliations to which she was subjected by the infatuation of the monarch for Madame de Verneuil; declaring ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... tie on a wide pinafore and roll up her sleeves above a steaming dishpan. She did it all, however, with an air of patient martyrdom which was not lost upon her husband; while, upon the rare occasions when they entertained a clerical guest, she added an extra note of unaccustomed abnegation which was intended to impress upon the guest that she was the hapless victim of a fall from better days. The parish, in so far as she was able, she disdained completely. At the infrequent times that she was driven into close quarters with it, she made up for her unpopularity among the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... up at the little stars and he heard the bells, and they struck into his heart like a dirge. He made a singular gesture of abnegation, and then dropped upon the bench with his head bowed between ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... character and his singleness of purpose made a beautiful showing. In the night, which his bride spent on her knees outside his prison, he wrote a long poem of farewell to his patria adorado, fine in its abnegation and exquisite in the wanderings of its fancy. He received the ministrations of a Jesuit priest. He was perfectly calm. "What is death to me?" he said; "I have sown, others are left to reap." At ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... insisted that I should sit in one of the two absurdly comfortable armchair arrangements in front. The chauffeur was presently to curl like a tendril round a little crimson toadstool at our feet, and Jack took the tonneau in lonely state. This was, no doubt, an act of fine self-abnegation on his part, nevertheless I could have envied him his safe retirement, from my place of honour, with no noble horses in front to save Molly ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... answered. "And yet, I expect you'll do it. Principles are splendid—in the abnegation. If we are to be illogical, let me be the breaker of my ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... robbed of this glory, would cease. To work for the eyes of God alone is not a sufficient reward for very many who have climbed well up the gospel ladder. To know when we are dead in the highest light. Self-abnegation can not be discerned so long as we want to live. If we never reach the point where we literally "hate our own life," we shall never know how much there is in us not divine. The flesh is ever the veil that separates between the holy place and the holy of holies. Until we have reached that ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... of the victim, they have not succeeded in persuading us of his error. After so many judicial debates, chronicles, and appeals to legal murder, Ravachol remains the propagandist of the grand idea of the ancient religions which extolled the quest of individual death for the good of the world, the abnegation of self, of one's life, and of one's fame for the exaltation of the poor and the humble. He is definitely the Renewer of the Essential Sacrifice."[5] Museux, in l'Art social, said: "Ravachol has remained what ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... He is not born, he will not be born. The self-abnegation that could do that—even in utter folly, and hopeless of conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example—could be mistaken for greatness; why, it would be greatness in this cold age of sordid ideals! A moment—wait—let me finish; I have one question ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... session of the 36th Congress commenced on the 3rd day of December. The message of the President I have already commented upon. It was regarded as a feeble wail of despair, an absolute abnegation of the powers of the general government. No expectation or hope was indulged in that the President would do any act or say any word to arrest or delay the flagrant treason, then being committed in South Carolina. "After me the deluge" was written on every page of his message. Our only hope was ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... with their boys early, these husbandless women could hardly be supposed a very happy, certainly not a very joyous people. They figure rather as a sorry measure of the luck of the female sex in taking a hard natural law into their own hands, and by abnegation of all tender companionship making shift with bare independence, as a kind of second-best—the best practicable by them in the imperfect actual condition of things. But the heart-strings would ache still where the breast had been cut away. The sisters ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... address was an abnegation of the whole policy of Mr. O'Connell's career. It proved, by a mass of authentic evidence ranging over a long term of years, that Irish outrage was the consequence of physical misery, and that the social evils ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... service, Raskolnikov went up to Sonia. She took both his hands and let her head sink on his shoulder. This slight friendly gesture bewildered Raskolnikov. It seemed strange to him that there was no trace of repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her hand. It was the furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... who has the moral courage, the self-abnegation to throw back honied encomiums which come with apparent reality, although from a flatterer? "To tell a man that he cannot be flattered is to ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... day she came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged a good man—good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's eyes: she was less than she had thought—he was more. Bernal had proved these things to her all unconsciously. Now her heart was flooded with gratitude for his simple, ready, heartfelt praise of ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... and individual self-abnegation during this glorious though ineffectual fight were too numerous to be quoted. The Medical Staff, for instance, exposed themselves with a persistence that was truly marvellous, succouring the injured and carrying them off to shelter, till in some instances ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... eloquent when she reminded Verena how the exquisite weakness of women had never been their defence, but had only exposed them to sufferings more acute than masculine grossness can conceive. Their odious partner had trampled upon them from the beginning of time, and their tenderness, their abnegation, had been his opportunity. All the bullied wives, the stricken mothers, the dishonoured, deserted maidens who have lived on the earth and longed to leave it, passed and repassed before her eyes, and ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... interest; and he was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and earnest enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposition; and, though differing in many of the views and shocked by others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... had its socialism, its communism, its dream of bread and work for all. But the dream has varied always in the likeness of the thought of the time. In earlier days the dream was not one of social wealth. It was rather a vision of the abnegation of riches, of humble possessions shared in common after the manner of the unrealized ideal of the Christian faith. It remained for the age of machinery and power to bring forth another and a vastly more potent socialism. This was no longer a plan whereby all might be poor ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... for self-abnegation to go farther than it did in her case. She was unable to see that she had done anything out of the common. "I have lived my life very quietly and in a very natural and humble way," she would say, and all the credit of her work was given to God. "It isn't Mary Slessor ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... dreams of renunciation, of abnegation, had thought some day to return to her and ask her to be his. He believed her capable of equal sacrifice with himself, and he hoped to win her not for himself alone, but for the religion which he put before himself. He would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Inferno, wherein those stern grey arches should loftily rise, in blind and endless sequence, limbing an abode of horror, a place of punishment for those, empty-hearted, who had lived without colour and sunshine, in voluntary abnegation, caring only for gain ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... even her strong spirit quailed before the prospect of that interview. Besides, if he were as deeply in love with Madeleine as she believed him to be, it would do no good. She had little faith in the self-abnegation of men ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... far to explain the singular sagacity, finesse, and energy displayed in their devotion to what otherwise appears alike mischievous and chimerical by those three high-born and splendidly-gifted women who figured so conspicuously in the civil war of the Fronde; and, though so much self-abnegation, courage, constancy, and heroism, well or ill displayed, may obtain some share of pardon for errors it would be wrong to palliate or condone, their example, it is to be hoped, will prove deterrent rather than contagious. La Rochefoucauld—a moralist, though by no means ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... simply as an exercise of the will. 'I need more will-power,' I said to myself, 'with which to conquer the details that come up every moment rather than to perform some great sacrifice or be capable of an instant of abnegation. Sublime moments, heroic acts, are rather the deeds of an exalted intelligence than of the will; I have always felt it in me to perform some great deed such as taking a trench or defending a barricade or going to the North Pole; ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... had taught himself to understand that members of Parliament in the direct service of the Government were absolved from the necessity of free-thinking. Individual free-thinking was incompatible with the position of a member of the Government, and unless such abnegation were practised, no government would be possible. It was of course a man's duty to bind himself together with no other men but those with whom, on matters of general policy, he could agree heartily;—but having found that he could so agree, he knew that it would be his duty ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... country's heroes. "Our's not to ask the reason why; our's to do or die." To read the reports of commanders and other officers, and the narratives of bystanders, all attesting to a bravery invincible, causes the blood to tingle and the patriot heart to leap. We are making history replete with self-abnegation as we continue to bring to our country's altar an unstinted devotion and brilliant achievement. These take their places fittingly, and we should keep them in the forefront of our claim for ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... however, let me say that, since 1859, the Republican party has done precisely what my English friends required it to do. The Italian Republicans have actually assisted and upheld the government with an abnegation worthy of all praise,—sacrificing even their right of Apostolate to the great idea of Italian unity. Perceiving that the nation was determined to give monarchy the benefit of a trial, they have—in that reverence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... However, this creditor's abnegation did not extend so far; still he did entreat Madame la Comtesse not to leave him on account of a blunder—for it was a blunder—he swore it on his children's heads. His coachman was only a fool and a drunkard, who had misunderstood ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... interest in life in these last days seemed to be of a sacrificial nature. She was sweet and gentle with every one,—with me in particular, I may say,—and there was something positively humble in her attitude of self-abnegation. Where she had once been wilful and ironic, she was now gentle and considerate. Nor was I the only one to note these subtle changes in her. I doubt, however, if the others were less puzzled than I. In fact, Mrs. Titus was palpably perplexed, and there were times when I caught her eyeing me with ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the extreme limit of military abdication. He not only gave General Grant absolute, independent command, placing at his disposal all the military resources of the country, but he even denied to himself any knowledge whatever of the general's plans. In this patriotic act of extreme self-abnegation President Lincoln undoubtedly acted in exact accord with what he believed to be the expressed popular opinion, and probably in accord with his own judgment and inclination; for no one could have been more painfully aware than he had by that time become of the absolute necessity ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... in the wrong to have come here," replied she, "that is all.—I have bid farewell to all the advantages which the world confers on women who know how to reconcile happiness and the proprieties. My abnegation is so complete that I only wish I could clear a vast space about me to make a desert of my love, full of God, of him, and of myself.—We have made too many sacrifices on both sides not to be united—united by disgrace if you will, but ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Senate to present an Impeachment against the President for unlawfully attempting to remove Mr. Stanton. The course of the Senate had been fully anticipated by the President and his advisers, and they had, in their own judgment at least, obtained an advantage before the public by so complete an abnegation of all partisan purposes as was implied in the offer to confide the direction of the War Department to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... at the picture, and immediately he told a lover's lie; for the emotion excited by the thought of her glory coloured deliciously that image of her abnegation of all to him. He said: "I would rather ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... laugh. It was long before I myself could understand how it was possible for those whom I believed to have loved a person recently dead to announce to me that death with a laugh. Yet the laugh was politeness carried to the utmost point of self-abnegation. It signified: 'This you might honourably think to be an unhappy event; pray do not suffer Your Superiority to feel concern about so inferior a matter, and pardon the necessity which causes us to outrage politeness by speaking ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... humanity, where centuries have trailed their dust, traditions gleam like monuments to attest the victory of this immemorial potency, female fidelity; and when we of the nineteenth century seek the noblest, grandest type of merely human self-abnegation, that laid down a pure and happy life, to prolong that of a beloved object, we look back to the lovely image of that fair Greek woman, who, when the parents of the man she loved refused to give their lives to save their ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... avert, abnegation, abstract *Ad to adduce, adjacent, affect, accede *Ante before antediluvian, anteroom *Bi two biped, bicycle *Circum around circumambient, circumference *Cum, com, with, together combine, consort, coadjutor ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... form of government, I understand," Fenn intervened, "will be modelled upon our own, which, after the abolition of the House of Lords, and the abnegation of the King's prerogative, will be as near the ideal democracy as is possible. That change will be in itself our most potent guarantee against all future wars. No democracy ever encouraged bloodshed. It is, to my mind, a clearly ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of Pekin. The members of the Manchu clan, who received a regular allowance during the emperor's residence at Pekin, were reduced to the greatest straits, and even to the verge of starvation, while the Chinese naturally resented the attempt to remove the capital to any other place. This abnegation of authority by Hienfung, for his absence meant nothing short of that, could not have been prolonged indefinitely, for a Chinese emperor has many religious and secular duties to perform which no one else can discharge, and which, if not discharged, would reduce the office of emperor ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of the wine were mounting steadily to addle his indifferent brains. Every moment he was seeing things in proportions more and more false. His resentment against priests who, sworn to self-abnegation, hoarded good wine, whilst soldiers sent to keep harm from priests' fat carcasses were left to suffer cold and even hunger, was increasing with every moment. He would sample that wine at Tavora; and ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Geneva. She wrote of herself in a letter she left, which neither compromised anyone nor indicated who she was, as one whose birth was unfortunate, but whose existence would soon be forgotten. Poor Fanny! Is she not rather likely to be remembered as a type of self-abnegation? Certainly hers was not the nature to cause her sister a moment's jealous pang, even though her death called forth one of Shelley's ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... angry, only disappointed. The very habit of a life of reserve must have brought some sense of disappointment in the result. She did not mind being told that she must lie in the dust; the abnegation was not abhorrent; she knew that love in itself sometimes demanded humiliation. But she felt sad and discouraged. She had seemed to have conquered a kingdom. Without exactly being proud of them, she had felt her religious experiences to be very ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... that Dr. Ryerson had strenuously opposed any reference of the questions to the British Parliament as a pusillanimous, and yet an interested, party abnegation of Canadian rights. He, therefore, prepared and circulated extensively a petition to the House of Assembly on this and kindred subjects. This proceeding called forth a counter petition, urging the Legislature to recognize the principle of an established ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... without meaning it he had often made her miserable. In her journal for the 21st of June, 1856, he read, "The chief interest of to-day expressed in blue marks on my wrists!"* He realised that he had almost driven her to suicide, he the great preacher of duty and self-abnegation. "For the next few years," says Froude, "I never walked with him without his recurring to a subject which was never absent from his mind." Doubtless his remorse was exaggerated. His letters, and his wife's, show that he was a most affectionate husband when ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... negation, abnegation; denial; disavowal, disclaimer; abjuration; contradiction, contravention; recusation [Law], protest; recusancy &c (dissent) 489; flat contradiction, emphatic contradiction, emphatic denial, dementi [Lat.]. qualification &c 469; repudiation &c 610; retraction &c 607; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... during a terrific thunderstorm. It was crumpled and torn by the winds and the flames of heaven. I watched the fire from the cupola of my house in silent abnegation. The history of the Brooklyn Tabernacle had been strange and peculiar all the way through. Things that seemed to be against us always turned out finally for us. Our brightest and best days always follow disaster. Our enlargements ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the countless roots of which sink into it in all directions. Defects or qualities penetrate and feed on this sentiment. Thus, we find in paternal love all the weaknesses and all the greatnesses of humanity. Vanity, abnegation, pride, and disinterestedness are united together, and man in his ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... while the Professor grew more and more half-hearted in his protestations that he really didn't care where he went, Mrs. Marshall grew more and more positive that he must not be allowed to miss the music, finally silencing his last weak proffer of self-abnegation by saying peremptorily: "No, no, Elliott; go on in to your debauch of emotion. I'll take the children. Don't miss your chance. You know it means ten times as much to you as to me. You haven't heard a good ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... with the squabblings of Alberich and Mime. The powers that make for evil and destruction have won; one knows that Parsifal is eternally damned; he has listened and succumbed, even as Wagner himself did, to the eastern sirens' song of the ease and delight of a life of slothful renunciation, self-abnegation, and devotion to "duty." The music of the last scene sings that song in tones of infinite sweetness; but it cannot satisfy you; you turn from the enchanted hall, with its holy cup and spear and dove, its mystic voices in the heights, its heavy, depressing, incense-laden atmosphere; and you ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... gladly accept the gift of prayer, but few aim at, and labour for the spirit of humility and self-abnegation, without which there can be no true spirit of prayer or recollection. Devotion unsustained by mortification is ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... standards, morbid and unhealthy: yet there was no morbidness in them; unless we are to call morbid all the great and glorious army of men and women who have laid down their own lives for the sake of others. That same fine and rare quality of self-abnegation which has inspired missionaries' lives and martyrs' deaths, inspired Hetty now. The morbidness, if there were any, was in the first entering into her mind of the belief that her husband's happiness could be secured in any way so well as by her. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... many ardent souls have been willing to do for the glory of God she was willing to do for the uplifting of man. The spirit of renunciation with her took the old theologic form of expression to a considerable extent, associated itself in her thought with the lofty spiritual consecration and self-abnegation of other ages. So ardently did she entertain this doctrine, so fully did she clothe it with the old forms of expression, that many have been deceived into believing her a devoted Christian. A little book was published in 1879 for the express purpose of showing that "the doctrine of the cross" is ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... rugged face shining in the ardour of self-abnegation. "The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor, foolish young man. Do you suppose his incensed words could give me any pain, or even his blows? 'Being reviled we bless; being persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and as the offscouring ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... you think me everything that is disagreeable and domineering. It is just as I said—men see only one thing, and it colours their whole view. If I lived a lifetime of meekness and self-abnegation, you would never forget that affair of the lease. And it was your own fault, too! You were the unreasonable one, not I; but all the same, you have never forgiven. Delphine told me how much ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... girl's interpretation. "No, dear," she insisted; "I am not willing to admit that ours is a position of self-abnegation. We women are denied the privilege of doing, but we mustn't be unmindful of the blessing which is given in exchange. To me it is infinitely more satisfying to know that we are the inspiration which urges men on to do what they could not do ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... said: "It is a simple abnegation of all attempts for the time to protect the people in the Southern States by the ordinary exercise of civil authority. It hands over all authority in those States to officers of the army of the United States, and clothes them as officers ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... existed for whom Roland felt a worship almost divine. Accustomed to live in the atmosphere of glory which surrounded that man, to see others obey his orders, and to obey them himself with a promptness and abnegation that were almost Oriental, it seemed amazing to him to encounter, at the opposite ends of France, two organized powers, enemies of the power of that man, and prepared to struggle against it. Suppose a Jew of Judas Maccabeus, a worshipper ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas |
