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Beneficence   /bənˈɛfəsəns/   Listen
Beneficence

noun
1.
Doing good; feeling beneficent.
2.
The quality of being kind or helpful or generous.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Beneficence" Quotes from Famous Books



... simply a gift of money. But whatever it was, it was something considerable. In his appeal to the Duke, at the close of the last chapter, Fielding referred to previous obligations, and in his dedication of Tom Jones to Lyttelton, he returns again to his Grace's beneficence. Another person, of whose kindness grateful but indirect mention is made in the same dedication, is Ralph Allen, who, according to Derrick, the Bath M.C., sent the novelist a present of L200, before ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... radiates life and joy; before his beneficence gloom and depression flee away, and youth and health grow strong to achieve the impossible; even age and sickness, bathed in his splendour, may forget awhile their burdens and dream of other days. Truly sunshine is a thrice blessed thing. And yet, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... sympathies awakened by her affection, made this perfectly clear to her, strange and difficult to grasp as the situation was at first. When she understood, how her soul laughed with exulting merriment! Consecration to a great idea, endowment with the means of wide beneficence—this not only left her cold, but weighed upon her, afflicted her beyond her strength. What was it, in truth, that restored her to herself and made her heart beat joyously? Knit your brows against her; shake your head and raze her name from that ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... your command from all points of the kingdom, we bring to you, Sire, from every quarter, the homage of a faithful people, still further inspired by having found you the most beneficent of all, in the midst of universal beneficence, and which reveres in your person the accomplished model of the most exemplary virtues. Sire, this people cherishes and respects your authority; fifteen years of peace and liberty which it owes to your august brother ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... years has transformed a straggling village into one of the world's great centres of commerce? May it not exercise a powerful influence on the destiny not only of the country but of the world? If so, shall the power thus to be exercised prove an agent of beneficence, diffusing light and life among nations, or ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... sleep. He meant to roll the shades to the top and with the cold wind upon his face and the stars winking in silver beneficence overhead, to lie awake and think until the dawn came. He slept soundly, dreaming of thistledown and a little old woman in a green cloak who came out of a hill and played a tune upon a sort of lantern-flute. The notes had winged off in bars of music written in fire against ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... produces, He destroys; if He gives life, He also causes death; if He grants abundance, riches, prosperity, and peace, He permits or sends famines, poverty, calamities, and wars. How can you accept as a model of permanent beneficence the God of theism or of natural religion, whose favorable intentions are at every moment contradicted by everything that transpires in the world? Morality needs a firmer basis than the example of a God whose conduct varies, and ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... In these days the smallest banker, like the greatest, exercises his acumen in the smallest transactions; he bargains over art, beneficence, and love; he would bargain with the Pope for a dispensation. Thus, as he listened to Louchard, Nucingen had hastily concluded that Contenson, Louchard's right-hand man, must certainly know the address of that master spy. Contenson would tell him for five hundred francs what Louchard wanted ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... profession of loyalty, were afterward her foul and ferocious enemies. And yet between 1781 and 1789 there had been no change in the character or conduct of the king and queen, or rather, it may be said, the intervening years had been a period during which a countless series of acts of beneficence had displayed their unceasing affection for ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... disown them, or forsake The meagre wandering herd that lows for help— And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. Because our race has no great memories, I will so live, it shall remember me For deeds of such divine beneficence As rivers have, that teach, men what is good By blessing them. I have been schooled—have caught Lore from Hebrew, deftness from the Moor— Know the rich heritage, the milder life, Of nations fathered by a ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... organized and utilized into beneficence, the name of the institution is the Sanitary Commission. It is a standing answer to Samson's riddle, "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." Out of the very depths of the agony of this cruel and bloody war springs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; I have sacrificed to the gods, and offered funeral feasts to dead." Here we see Egyptian morality: observance of ceremonies, respect for everything pertaining to the gods, sincerity, honesty, and beneficence. ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... for the emotions, no solace to the deeply tried and afflicted. A Church which preaches the imperishability of every good deed, the final and decisive victory of the good; which reveals to us not only mind, but beneficence, as the character of the supreme Power in the universe; which bids us remember that as that Power is, so are we, moral beings to our heart's core, and, in consequence, to take the place which belongs to us at the side of the infinite ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... variety of misfortune and recommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous disbursements had left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out of which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation provided he would give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked keenly in my face, and discerned that I had none of that abominable spirit, characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... happy. We were placed in the midst of abundance. We were active, industrious, and content; blessed with health, and united by affection, our minds seemed to enlarge and improve every day. We saw around us on every side traces of the Divine wisdom and beneficence; and our hearts overflowed with love and veneration for that Almighty hand which had so miraculously saved, and continued to protect us. I humbly trusted in Him, either to restore us to the world, or send some beings to join us in this ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... whose loveliness is a mirror of the countless and untiring benefactions with which the people who work here are surrounded. Both the powers and the people of Germany may well be proud of the Krupps, for if sane beneficence were to be raised to the rank of statehood this great colony would well deserve the honor. The gross profits for the last year were $9,000,000, half of which was written off and the rest devoted to the reserve, to ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... poor, the latter have at last acquired a peculiar dialect—a particular tone which experience has taught them to use when they are anxious to make themselves understood—that is to say, understood in such a way as to incline the wealthy to beneficence. Nearer to each ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... it. Near by a young girl gave suck to a deformed infant, lucky to have survived its birth; her neck was as big as her breasts—merely a case of goitre. Coolies passed, panting and puffing, all casting a curious glance at him to whose beneficence all were willing ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... made such mortification of the scientific flesh desirable, I think the effect of the stream of cold water which has steadily flowed over geological speculation within these walls has been of doubtful beneficence. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... general amnesty, coupled with advice as to the folly "of rebelling under erroneous impressions of circumstances with regard to His Imperial Majesty, which could not come within the sphere of their personal knowledge, and hoping that, for the future, they would duly appreciate the beneficence of a sovereign who desired that his authority —limited by the Constitution—should be felt by his people only through the exercise ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... proud State, beneficence insure, Selling thy soil or giving to the poor? For sad it is that dust of Illinois, With coal and compost its conjoint alloy, A morceau washed from Mississippi's mouth, Should build up ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... refused to refund the purchase money, as considering the Society at an end. It would probably have been entirely lost, but for the excellent Robert Boyle, so notable at once for his science, piety, and beneficence. He placed the matter in its true light before Lord Clarendon, and obtained by his means a fresh charter from Charles II. The judgment in the Court of Chancery was given in favour of the Society, and Boyle himself likewise endowed it with a third part of a grant of the forfeited ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Mr. Deblois being indisposed, his cousin Captain William Deblois, taken by Monro last year, came on board to see him, with a present from Mr. Deblois of some Tea, Sugar, Wine, Rum, etc, and the offer of any other Civilities that lay in the power of either:—This was beneficence and true Urbanity,—that he was not destitute of Cash, that best friend in Adversity, except some other best friends,—that as long as he had health, he should, he had like to have said, be happy. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... flights, from horizon to horizon, it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions, absolute limitations. Touch, see, listen, eat freely of all the trees of the garden of Paradise with the voice of the Lord God literally everywhere: ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater

... instead of waiting for him, not giving the real reason—that he shrank from going again through a narrative in which he seemed to be making himself important and giving himself a character of general beneficence—but saying that he wished to remain with Mordecai while Mrs. Meyrick would bring Mirah on what was to be understood as a visit, so that there might be a little interval before that change of abode which he expected that ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... admitted the beneficence of Providence, but rather as an act of courtesy. "For," said she, "we were never in any real danger, owing to the piece of timber Mr. Bartlett had thrown across to catch the floor-joists." She was of course repeating Mr. Bartlett's own words, without close analysis of their actual meaning. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... sage of the early world, with some wistful and earnest savage for a listener: of the stars and their courses—of beasts, and birds, and fishes, and plants, and flowers—the wide family of Nature—of the beneficence and power of God;—of the mystic and spiritual history ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of beneficence, this constant attention to the moral and physical improvement of persons who have been neglected, is quite recent as a leading feature of religion, though indeed it seems to have formed some part of the Saviour's original design. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... things to know and enjoy, they must fail in their service. But they will not fail. Man is now a larger creature in every way than ever before. He has better religion; a greater God in the heavens, ruling with beneficence and wisdom; a larger number of means for improvement everywhere; and the desire and determination to master these things and turn them to his own benefit. The pursuit of truth reveals man to himself and God to him. The promotion of justice and righteousness makes his social ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... elements of national greatness the race itself, the favorable position, and the material to work with. I need not enlarge upon the might and the possessions of England, nor the general beneficence of her occupation wherever she has established fort, factory, or colony. With her flag go much injustice, domineering, and cruelty; but, on the whole, the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... filling the near-brought scene with death, there shall be a harmonious people, of different nations, but one fellowship, vying together only in works of industry and art, inspired and exalted by a divine beneficence? ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner

... on the wings of hope advancing, and proclaiming, "God is here." Then life and joy sprang reassured from every crouching hollow; every flower, and bud, and bird, had a fluttering sense of them; and all the flashing of God's gaze merged into soft beneficence. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... and actions of Louis. All the chroniclers of the age, all the historians of his reign, have celebrated his charity as much as his piety; and the philosophers of the eighteenth century almost forgave him his taste for relics, in consideration of his beneficence. And it was not merely legislative and administrative beneficence; St. Louis did not confine himself to founding and endowing hospitals, hospices, asylums, the Hotel-Dieu at Pontoise, that at Vernon, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Arden; they come like the waves whose ceaseless flow sings of the boundless sea whence they come. They bring no consciousness of ebbing years and joys and strength; they bring rather a sense of eternal resource and beneficence. In Arden one never feels in haste; there is always time enough and to spare; in fact, the word "time" is never used in the vernacular of the Forest except when reference is made to the enslaved world without. ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... opening serves for the head; and two lateral holes are cut for the arms to pass through. The natives wear these shirts of marima in the rainy season: they have the form of the ponchos and ruanas of cotton, which are so common in New Grenada, at Quito, and in Peru. In these climates the riches and beneficence of nature being regarded as the primary causes of the indolence of the inhabitants, the missionaries say in showing the shirts of marima, in the forests of the Orinoco garments are found ready-made on the trees. We may also mention the pointed ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... has been committed, beneficence," Kai Lung ventured to protest; "nor in his attitude before your virtuous self has this one been guilty of any ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... ever widening circle, blessing whomever it touched. He could not be unconscious that every act of Robert Sumner's busy life was directed by the desire to give of himself to help others; that a high ideal of beneficence, not gain, was always before him, and was that by which he measured himself. The wealth, the position of both, served only to make their ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... Judgment, indeed, is His strange work. Amid a multitude of other prodigies already performed by Him, this "cursing" of the fig-tree formed the alone exception to His miracles of mercy.[35] All the others were proofs and illustrations of beneficence, compassion, love. But He seems to interpose this ONE, in case we should forget, in the affluence of benignity and kindness, that the same God, whose name and memorial is "merciful and gracious," has solemnly added that "He can by no means clear the guilty." He would have us to ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... professor's beneficence had been his rescue of his friend Schaaf on a bench in Madison Square one day, a recent arrival from Germany, muttering despondently to himself. The professor learned that he had been unable to secure employment, and that ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... then your injustice! You punish us who are but the slaves of Clotho's bidding, and reward these, who do but minister to another's beneficence. For it will never be said that it was in our power to gainsay the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... first gave a very proper answer. Satan insinuated that the terms which God had prescribed, were severe, if not capricious: but she replied in a manner indicative of her perfect acquiescence in the commandment, her untainted purity of mind, and such a sense of the beneficence of God, as prevented even a momentary doubt of his wisdom or goodness, in the denial of "one tree in the midst ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... on earth if everyone loved his neighbor as she loved him and he loved her; and life could not be a great hardship if in every trouble there was some one who was always ready to hear our cry and help us, out of pure beneficence. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... yet another lesson of beneficence, she desired me on New Year's eve to get from Paris, as in other years, all the fashionable playthings, and have them spread out in her closet. Then taking her children by the hand, she showed them all the dolls and mechanical ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... any aggression on the least creature, cause of intense indignation. My recollection of his condescension to my demands on his time and physical comfort remain in my memory as the highest expression of his social beneficence. Longfellow was not expansive, nor do I remember his ever becoming enthusiastic over anything or anybody. One who knew nothing of his domestic life might have fancied that he was cold, and certainly he did not possess that social magnetism which made Lowell ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... In the first the ghastliness of the reversal of the course of life backward, as the guests drink the elixir of youth, while it suggests the paltriness of our pleasures, is a powerful lesson in the beneficence of that daily death whereby we resign the past; this rejuvenation violates nature, and so shocks us, and by the very shock we are reconciled with nature, from which we had parted in thought. "The ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... first lessons we learned at Hull-House was that private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited. We also quickly came to realize that there are certain types of wretchedness from which every private philanthropy shrinks and which are cared for only in those wards of ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... drily, "if it were also the source inexhausted of more that is quick in our sympathy, and practical in our beneficence. It is scarcely in the columns of the daily news-sheet that Sensibility usually seeks its much-sought stimulus. And yet but lately, in the corner of my paper, I encountered a piteous story that 'dear Sensibility' (had it been more romantically environed) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various

... solely through the limitations of her sex. Yet, were it not for the self-imposed handicap of adhering strictly to the somewhat old-fashioned precept that jewels should be acquired only through affectionate beneficence, Mrs. Fernmore might have succeeded in surpassing the princely prodigalities of her ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... hotter every minute; but it was good. The vistas stretched far—all satisfying. Bhanah said the monsoon was close. "Beneficence"; the Indian idea of a deluge. He liked ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... wrong," said Lady Ellinor, who had followed us into the room, unheard by us. "I can tell you what your father does more than like,—what he loves and serves every hour of his noble life,—justice, beneficence, honor, and his country. A man who loves these may be excused for indifference to the last geranium or the newest plough, or even (though that offends you more, Fanny) the freshest masterpiece by Lanseer, or the latest fashion ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... experience, which every instant gives the lie to that beneficence which men suppose in God, they continue to call him good. When we bewail the miserable victims of those disorders and calamities that so often overwhelm our species, we are confidently told that these ills are but apparent, and that if our short-sighted mind could fathom the depths ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner

... loves a tree he loves the life That springs in flower and clover; He loves the love that gilds the cloud, And greens the April sod; He loves the wide beneficence, His soul takes ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... aloof and laugh at myself and you. Oh, believe me, I see it very clearly myself in the heyday and cocksureness of youth, flinging at you, with much energy and little skill, my immature generalisations from science; and you with an elderly beneficence and tolerance, smiling shrewdly and affectionately upon me, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later I am sure to get through with it all and join you in your broad and placid philosophy. It is the penalty age exacts from ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... excite his wonder by their mysterious instincts. Science, too, has built an altar under the trees, and delivers thence new oracles of wisdom, teaching man how they are mysteriously wedded to the clouds, and are thus made the blessed instruments of their beneficence to the earth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... to the aerial divinities music was added, whilst dances were performed round the altar, and sacred hymns sung. These hymns were generally composed in honour of the gods, and contained an account of their famous actions, their clemency and beneficence, and the gifts conferred by them on mankind. In conclusion, the gods were invoked for a continuance of their favour, and when the service was ended a feast ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... the happy and sacred tutress of every faculty of the body and soul; and the works and thoughts of art, the joys and toils of men, rose and flowed on in the bright air of it, with the aspiration of a flame, and the beneficence ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... and the godfather of my landlady)—and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre. By this, if by nothing else, I recognise the beneficence of the high gods—they have ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... must not let him be ruined. If Mrs. Harmon insists upon his going at once—as I've no doubt she will—you must bring him here, and we must keep him till he can find some other home." She waited, and added, for a final stroke of merciless beneficence, "He can have Alfred's room, and Alf ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... himself known to her. The amiable civilian with his two or three hundred words of English seemed as guileless as a child when he announced Master Zaniloff's message and dwelt upon his honorable master's beneficence. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... had been poisoned with misanthropy from too close a contemplation of mortal crimes, this character alone might serve as an antidote to the word of mental distempers, and awaken the most callous and sarcastic mind to confess the dignity of our Nature, and the beneficence of our God. In stating to you the merits of HOWARD, I might expatiate with delight on the various qualities of this incomparable man; I might trace his progress through the different periods of a ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... of another species, when, ex hypothesi, such an endless amount of thought has been displayed in the creation of structures and instincts having primary reference to the species which present them. For how magnificent a display of divine beneficence would organic nature have afforded, if all—or even some—species had been so inter-related as to have ministered to each others wants. Organic species might then have been likened to a countless multitude of voices, all singing in one ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... part the better of the two; for between him and his sovereign there were no strained relations; he was also on closer terms of reference to the Powers above; and so, while giving earthly circumstances their due, he rendered grateful thanks to a Beneficence which had guided and directed all. The ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... had captivated him, as she did all the lads of the parish. He had been walking about with her, being introduced to all the needs of the parish, and his enthusiastic nature throwing itself into the cause of religion and beneficence, which was in truth his congenial element; he was ready to undertake for himself and his mother whatever was wanted, without a word of solicitation, nay rather, the vicar, who thought it all far too good to be true, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... intellect on mundane questions might be met by appeal to the mysteries of a universe which may conceivably be other in reality than to us it appears. But it is to be supposed that divine beneficence would give its creatures all powers of intelligence necessary to their moral welfare, above all those entailing reward or punishment in ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... proceed to other matters. Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of His wisdom and His beneficence, become enlarged as we contemplate the extent and structure of the universe. The solitary idea of a solitary world rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of space gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so happily contrived as to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... whom were seriously frightened, and suffered loss of property. Old Mr. Fordyce had for many years past been an active magistrate— that a clergyman should be on the bench having been quite correct according to the notions of his younger days; and in spite of his beneficence he incurred a good deal of unpopularity for withstanding the lax good-nature which made his brother magistrates give orders for parish relief refused to able-bodied paupers by their own Vestries. This ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Independent of that greatness which a King possesses merely by being a representative of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual interest seem to be these: wealth accumulated; wealth spent in magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention; and above all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose the inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a Prince or a subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... not completed her sixteenth year. By such questions as my interest about her prompted I had gradually drawn forth her simple history. Hers was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had reason to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better adapted its arrangements to meet it, the power of the law might oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge. But the stream of London charity flows in a channel which, though deep and mighty, is yet ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... "the sun to rule the day, the moon and stars to govern the night;" an Order which, like these wondrous orbs, is grand in its mysterious symbolism, calm in its unvarying circles, universal in its beneficence. ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... wall pierced by the ugliest windows, the staring shop-fronts, paper-hangings, carpets, brass and gilt mouldings, and advertising placards, have an effect akin to that of malaria; it is easy to understand that with such surroundings there is more belief in cruelty than in beneficence, and that the best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle relation ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... beneficence of Dekkar's heart is specially embodied in the character of the opulent lord, Jacomo Gentili, in his play of "The Wonder of a Kingdom." When Gentili's steward brings him the book in which the amount of his charities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... which I dealt with the stress of my own illness of the previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which had necessitated a significant change in my life—a visit to Cromer. The chapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts of convalescence, wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as to the beneficence of the Deity, was already done, and one of the ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... the team and that we are bound to win. And if this is his first game, or if some man has pressed him dangerously for the position he had last year, he will smile and say, "We'll do our best." Then the rubber comes in and you slip away, wondering why the beneficence of the Creator to man on earth should have made one fellow like your idol up there on the bed and another like you, crawling unnoticed into the street, throwing out your thin, incapable legs in a quick walk to join ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... those whom we consider as the best men. And what cruel wretches, both executioners and judges, have been strictly just! how little have they cared what gentleness, what generosity, what genius, their sentence have removed from the earth! Temperance and beneficence contain all other virtues. Take them home, Plato; split them, expound them; do what thou wilt with them, if ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... Their beneficence was merely occasional; he that ceased to need the favour of the people, ceased likewise to court it; and, therefore, no man thought it either necessary or wise to make any standing provision for the needy, to look forwards to the wants of posterity, or to secure successions ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... pleasure of his guests and the success of his own strategy. These few insignificant Spaniards dislodged, a half-dozen forts in this harbor, and the combined navies of the world might be defied; while a great chain of hungry settlements fattened and prospered exceedingly on the beneficence of the most fertile land in ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... land; and Indian corn, oats, pumpkins, peas, potatoes, flax, and several other sorts of seed, were already in the ground. The spring proved dry, and the sun of the forty-third degree of latitude was doing its work, with great power and beneficence. What was of nearly equal importance, the age of the pond had prevented any recent accumulation of vegetable matter, and consequently spared those who laboured around the spot, the impurities of atmosphere usually consequent on its decay. Grass-seed, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... of that "familiar grasp of things divine," which obtains in so many of our rustic households. Dante or Chaucer, two of the greatest poets of the world, would, had they happened to be "uneducated" men, have seized on just such an image to express their idea of the Divine beneficence. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... these monasteries became so powerful, if they were merely refuges for the weak? Even if they were (and they were) the homes of an equal justice and order, mercy and beneficence, which had few or no standing-places outside their walls, still, how, if governed by weak men, could they survive in the great battle of life? The sheep would have but a poor life of it, if they set up hurdles against the wolves, and agreed ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... give your advice to a man so eminent, and who, in his Life of Garth, has paid your profession a just and elegant compliment: "I believe every man has found in physicians great liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt effusions[816] of beneficence, and willingness to exert a lucrative art, where there is no hope ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... this noble resident extended to the family only, but even to all the country round, who in their degree feel the effects of the general beneficence, and where the neighbourhood (however poor) receive all the good they can expect, and are sure to have no injury ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe

... Scholar—the best of Husbands, and the best of Parents. The Poor and needy ever experienced the humanity of his tender and sympathetic soul. He was a man to hear "Afflicktion's cry." The loss of so much charity, friendship and beneficence but claims the tributary tear; But, temper your grief, ye pensive Relatives, and ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... actually suffered for want of victims. Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... compounds are the words of the language of Creation. The combinations of sounds and of signs which express the ideas and sensations of man may be limited to millions; but numberless are the hieroglyphs by which the Divine wisdom and beneficence is inscribed on the pages of the ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... of grace, caused by the motion of beauty, music, poetry, beneficence, compassion, &c. may be ranked as the highest intellectual pleasure the mind is capable of perceiving, and brings with it a sort of undetermined consciousness of the delicacy of our own perceptions in making the discovery, a degree of that glorying that Longinus observes always accompanies ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds

... ceaseless protecting care over an apathetic creature who does not understand it in the first instance, and who in a little while forgets it all. Wonderful power of religion! that has brought a blind beneficence to the aid of an equally blind misery. Wherever cretins exist, there is a popular belief that the presence of one of these creatures brings luck to a family—a superstition that serves to sweeten lives which, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... that such a political state is about the vilest to which a man can descend. It amounts to a tacit abandonment of the struggle which men are making for political truth and political beneficence, in order that bread and meat may be eaten in peace during the score of years or so that are at the moment passing over us. The politicians of this class have decided for themselves that the summum bonum ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... me that I could hardly wait for the hat or plate to come my way. I had four hundred dollars in my pocket, and I was anxious to drop it in the plate and wanted to borrow more. But the plate was so long in coming my way that the fever-heat of beneficence was going down lower and lower—going down at the rate of a hundred dollars a minute. The plate was passed too late. When it finally came to me, my enthusiasm had gone down so much that I kept my four hundred dollars—and stole a dime from the plate. So, you see, time ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Dr. Jenner. And Darwin has even asserted that the process of anatomical evolution has especially equipped the young cuckoo for such an accomplishment—a practice in which some accommodating philosophic minds detect the act of "divine beneficence," in that "the young cuckoo is thus insured sufficient food, and that its foster-brothers thus perish before they have acquired ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... about six years of age and as delighted as only one can be at six years of age. I had already indulged in many quiet fancies about the shadows which I had seen evenings through the lighted windows, and had heard many good things at home of the beneficence of the Prince and Princess; how gracious they were; how much help and consolation they brought to the poor and sick; and that they had been chosen by the grace of God to protect the good and punish the bad. I had long pictured to myself ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... stranger in this your city and the completion of kindness is better than its commencement; wherefore I pray thee of thy favour that thou make perfect to me thy good offices and generosity and bring me to the city-gate. So will thy beneficence be accomplished unto me and may God Almighty requite thee for me with good!" Ahmad replied, "No harm shall betide thee: go; I will bear thee company till thou come to thy place of safety." And he left him not till he brought ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... and more nearly to, equalize educational opportunities can only result in improvement. Equilibrium of intelligence tends to unify and harmonize American interests and to strengthen patriotism. And should liberal scientific education thus extend its beneficence to all conditions of men, especially to those hitherto unprovided with facilities for preparation for their vocations, we can at least endure the innovation, for it does not aim at the impairment of educational opportunities so long maintained for students able or desirous ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... written by Bellini expressly for Pasta, she was proclaimed la cantante per eccelenza. A medal, executed by the distinguished sculptor Valerio Nesti, was struck in her honor. Her generosity of nature was signally instanced during these golden Italian days in many acts of beneficence, of which the following are instances: During her stay at Sinigaglia in the summer of 1834, she heard an exquisite voice singing beneath the windows of her hotel. On looking out she saw a wan beggar-girl ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... revelation of God's will. Even if we grant the superior authority of the Hebrew- Christian Bible, can we rely on its teachings implicitly? How do we know that it is a revelation of God except by our experience of the beneficence of its teachings? As a matter of fact, there is wide disagreement, among those who accept the Bible as authoritative, over its real teachings. A text is available for every variety of belief. Christians usually emphasize those texts that make for what they ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... fifth summer in the world he found himself rich enough to go back to the Perdu and claim Celia. He resolved that he would buy property near the Perdu and settle there. He had no wish to live in the world; but to the world he would return often, for the sake of the beneficence of its friction,—as a needle, he thought, is the keener for being thrust often amid the grinding particles of the emery-bag. He resigned his situation and went aboard an up-river boat,—a small boat that ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Douglas, "that we should sometimes be deceived by others than that we should learn to deceive ourselves; and the charity and goodwill that is suffered to lie dormant, or feed itself on speculative acts of beneficence, for want of proper objects to call it into use, will soon become the corroding rust that will destroy the best ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... be a Gospel thankfulness. Let the incense of a grateful spirit rise not only to the Great Giver of all good, but to our Covenant God in Christ. Let it be the spirit of the child exulting in the bounty and beneficence of his Father's house and home! "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... move the antipodes; who within the last fifty years have either actually erected or laid the stable foundation of six great empires, offsets of that strong nation who, together with her progeny, is overspreading the earth, not by the sword but by the gentle arts of peace and beneficence. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... atom of power in the white life affirming and realizing physical health at its best. You do not know your own limits; therefore lay hold upon the law, the universal, age-long law, for all you can derive from its beneficence. You are not required to turn your back upon any other advantage, but only to swing the law ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock

... cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full-length, and half-length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was certainly disposed to reckon his own beneficence as among the hereditary glories of his race; and had he lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have kept up an old Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve bedesmen to pray for ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne



Words linked to "Beneficence" :   maleficence, beneficent, goodness, free grace, grace of God, benevolence, grace, good



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