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More "Aspire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of having triumphed over a hated husband, and possessing a handsome competency. Now she mingles in the best society. She associates with lords and ladies. She enjoys life in England, while I am an exile. No doubt she passes for a fine young widow. No doubt, too, she has lots of admirers. They aspire to her hand. They write poetry to her. They make ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... gained such a power over her, that she had agreed to conceal their attachment from her father; as Ramsay wished first, he asserted, to be possessed of a certain property which he daily expected would fall to him, and, until that, he did not think that he had any right to aspire ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gave the Vendome, to-day our support. The princes, my sons, give promise of virtues as excellent, and will be worthy to aspire to destinies as noble. It is my desire and my duty to give no thought to my private griefs begotten of an ill-assorted marriage. May the King ever be adored by his people; may my children ever be beloved ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... fury leading to? What does this heroism aspire to? This force of will, bitter and strained, grows faint when it has reached its goal, or even before that. It does not know what to do with its victory. It disdains it, does not believe in it, or ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... ask why ours should not be like them? Yes; all souls that aspire, must question that; but the answer comes! I will give you, some day, if you like, the thought that comforted me at a time when that question ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... about fifteen feet high; but the fruit is too acid to please most palates; the extreme thirst produced by a day's shooting in a burning sun makes it refreshing when plucked from the tree; but it does not aspire to the honor of a place at a table, where it can only appear in the form of red currant jelly, for which it is an ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... stories, people had acquired the habit of remaining in the condition in which they were placed; they were not irritated by being obliged to stay in it; the soldier who enlisted did not aspire to become an officer; the young officer of the lower noblesse and of small means did not aspire to the post of colonel or lieutenant-general; a limited perspective kept hopes and the imagination from fruitlessly launching forth into a boundless future: ambition, humbled to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... fresh, and the view of the future unsullied by the blemishes which have been gathered from the experience of the past, our feelings are most holy: we love to identify with the persons of our natural friends all those qualities to which we ourselves aspire, and all those virtues we have been taught to revere. The confidence with which we esteem seems a part of our nature; and there is a purity thrown around the affections which tie us to our kindred that after life can seldom hope to see uninjured. The ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... imprudent warmth, "it is not the character of the aristocracy of this country to keep people down. They make way amongst themselves for any man, whatever his birth, who has the talent and energy to aspire to their level. That's the especial boast of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... respects. The passions of mankind are similar every where; the same instincts are active in the slave and the prince; consequently the history of their effects must ever be the same in every country." It is both mortifying and consolatory to think, that the utmost height to which ambition may aspire, will not exempt one from the polluting agency of "mire and dirt." Death, we see, is not the only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... dragged the depths of her culinary resources for several seconds, and finally brought to the surface what she called "a nice fried sole." Horace would not hear of it, and urged her to aspire to salmon; she substituted smelts, which he opposed by a happy inspiration of turbot and lobster sauce. The sauce, however, presented insuperable difficulties to her mind, and she offered a compromise in the form of cod—which he finally accepted ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Christian prince, Eva, you must remember I aspire to a dominion where I have to govern the Maronites who are Christians, the Metoualis who are Mahometans, the Ansareys who are Pagans, and the Druses who are nothing. As for-myself, my house, as you well know, is more ancient even ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... name. And I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry about it, either. Take time to look about you and make your name express something that you like to do better than anything else, or something that you earnestly aspire to do or be. Then choose your symbol in keeping ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... the word 'despise,' or I shall suppose you think me a monster. Beauty seduces me. I aspire to its possession, and it is only when it is given me from other motives than love that I despise it. How should I despise one who loved me? I should first be compelled to despise myself. You are beautiful and I worship you, but you are mistaken if you think that I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with the favour of God, by shorter routes. I offer much, well do I see it, but I trust in almighty God with whose favour, I believe I can do what I say in your royal service. The talent which God has given me leads me to aspire to the accomplishment of these achievements, and does not demand of me a strict account, and I believe that I shall comply with what will be required, for never did I so wish to achieve anything. Your Majesty sees and does not lose what other kings desire and hold by ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... not have done as he did. But now to my remark, those who strive to do best have the most tender consciences, and the more one strives after right the more scrupulous and tender does the conscience become, and the more does it aspire after noble feelings and honourable thoughts and actions. This is a work of the Divine Spirit and of no mortal power, and it is a training for glory, purifying our hearts for a divine home, obtained for ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... went back to London with a strong conviction that time would give him Elizabeth's heart as well as her hand; and that she would learn to forget the unprincipled scoundrel—so Percival termed him—who had dared to aspire to her love. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to play the lute beneath a lady's window. But if you will believe me, I am not without business knowledge. Gentleman as I am, I have long cherished an ambition to become a merchant prince (it is well to aspire high),—a genuine merchant-prince, however, and not the counterfeit article who accumulates millions for his children to squander. I have views upon the subject. I am an idealist, as I have told ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... taken up a homestead. Now the free lands were gone. In earlier days a man who began with pick and shovel might have come to own a mine. That outlet too was now closed, as regards the immense majority, and few, if any, of the one hundred and fifty thousand mine workers could ever aspire to enter the small circle of men who held in their grasp the great anthracite industry. The majority of the men who earned wages in the coal industry, if they wished to progress at all, were compelled to progress not by ceasing to be ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of his making would scarcely do the ark much harm. They have not the explosive power of Ibsen's. There are in every age men who, unable to achieve the fame of Dinocrates, who built the temple of the Ephesian Diana, aspire to that of Herostratos, who destroyed it. To admire these men is as compromising as to ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... off:—perhaps 'twould hurt your frame Your health I value, and I would advise, To be at ease, take breath, and prudence prize; Apprentice in a shop you now are bound Next 'prentice go to some gallant around; You'll not so soon his pleasing art require, Nor to your tutorage can I now aspire. Friend Nicaise take some neighb'ring servant maid, You're quite a master in the shopping trade; Stuffs you can sell, and ask the highest price; And to advantage turn things in a trice. But opportunity you can't discern; To know its ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... one to possess much wealth without setting one's heart on it. But it is also true that this greed may possess one who has little or nothing. It may be found in unrestrained excess under the rags of the pauper and beggar. They who aspire to, or desire, riches with avidity are covetous whether they have much, little, or nothing. Christ promised His kingdom to the poor in spirit, not to the poor in fact. Spiritual poverty can associate with abundant wealth, just as the most depraved ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Whose blaze, as yet from mortal eye concealed, Would soon, proud triumph! be to her revealed, To her alone;—and then the hope, most dear, Most wild of all, that her transgression here Was but a passage thro' earth's grosser fire, From which the spirit would at last aspire, Even purer than before,—as perfumes rise Thro' flame and smoke, most welcome to the skies— And that when AZIM's fond, divine embrace Should circle her in heaven, no darkening trace Would on that bosom he once loved remain. But all be bright, be pure, be his again!— These were ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... diving back, a living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... now struggling in the same cause against the despotism of Spain; provided that, in thus contending against the common enemy, he conform to established ordinances, the laws of nations, and the acknowledged usages among countries that aspire to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... stead was the safest wherein to store the gold and I was loath to trust my wife lest haply she take some coin therefrom and expend it upon her household. O my lords, I am certified of your goodness and graciousness, but poverty and penury are writ in my Book of Fate; how then can I aspire to possessions and prosperity? Withal, never while I breathe the breath of life, shall I be forgetful of this your generous favour." Quoth Sa'di, "Meseemeth I have disbursed four hundred Ashrafis to no purpose in giving them to thee; yet the intent wherewith ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... which reachest but to dust, And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things! Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light That doth both shine ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... justness of this character of Mr. Hampden, to whose brave stand against the illegal demand of ship-money we owe our present liberties; but I mention it to you as the character, which with the alteration of one single word, GOOD, instead of MISCHIEF, I would have you aspire to, and use your utmost endeavors to deserve. The head to contrive, God must to a certain degree have given you; but it is in your own power greatly to improve it, by study, observation, and reflection. As for the TONGUE TO PERSUADE, it wholly depends upon yourself; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... on the box seat of the carriage, drove with them to the house and opened the wrought-iron gate that guarded the entrance, and the massive front door. Honora had a sense of unreality as they entered, and told herself it was obviously ridiculous that she should aspire to such a dwelling. Yesterday, under the spell of that somewhat adventurous excursion with Mr. Cuthbert, she had pictured herself as installed. He had contrived somehow to give her a sense of intimacy with the people who lived ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... darkness. I began to feel that, whatever our dreams of perfectibility, our restless aspirations towards a better, and higher, and calmer, sphere of being, we, the mortals of the upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for long the very happiness of which we dream or to which we aspire. ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... services of the ethical Church, we see numbers of young men who doubtless aspire one day to share in the benediction which a true marriage alone can bring them. Their presence is welcome as a testimony to the virility and inspiration of the ethic creed which is strong enough to prevail over other inducements which would take ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... which I will no more resist than I would the thunderbolts of Jove, or the revenge of angry Juno: for, madam, my immense passion knows no medium between life | and death, and as I never had the presumption to aspire to the glory of the first, I am not so abject as to fear I am wholly deprived of the glory of the last: I have too long lain convicted, extend your mercy, and put me now out of pain: you have often wrecked me to confess my promethean sin; spare the cruel vulture ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... never have the finished product, divinity of character; but the latter can only be achieved through arduous and persevering endeavour. Without a genuinely divine element—without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator—we could not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out of His ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands). It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness, much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away. English novels are nothing if ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... merely thinking aloud; a foolish habit I have contracted since I began to aspire to literary laurels. Go to sleep again, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... The term "slave" was not recognized as having relation to her institutions; and the historian of the Indies makes the proud boast, - it should have been qualified by the limitations I have noticed, - that every Indian vassal might aspire to the rank of a freeman. *29 [Footnote 29: "El Presidente, i el Audiencia dieron tales oraenes, que este negocio se asento, de manera, que para adelante no se platico mas este nombre de Esclavos, sino que la libertad fue general por todo el Reino." Herrera, Hist. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... due to the war period, which accustomed everyone to going with very little meat and to marked reduction in all food, or it may be, of course, merely vanity that is causing even grandparents to aspire to svelte figures, but whatever the cause, people are putting much less food on their tables than formerly. The very rich, living in the biggest houses with the most imposing array of servants, sit ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... signifying to "command," to Chinese official functionaries, of which there are some nine orders, distinguished by the buttons on their caps, and they are appointed chiefly for their possession of the requisite qualifications for the office they aspire to. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... verse, there alike is an avoidance of what is practical and true, and an absence of all that is inventive and poetic. They contain nothing that appeals to the heart or the affections, and their efforts of imagination aspire not to please or to elevate, but to astonish and bewilder by exaggeration and fable. Their poverty of resources leads to endless repetitious of the same epithets and incidents; books are multiplied at the present day chiefly ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... we aspire, we resolve, we trust, When the morning calls us to life and light; But our hearts grow weary, and ere he night Our lives are ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... earnest resolution to school himself and help others, kept firmly through the long chain of existences, there is nothing illogical or presumptuous in making our goal not the quest of personal salvation, but the attainment of Bodhisattvaship, that is the state of those who may aspire to become Buddhas. In fact the Arhat, engrossed in his own salvation, is excused only by his humility and is open to the charge of selfish desire, since the passion for Nirvana is an ambition like any other and the quest for salvation can be best followed by devoting oneself entirely to others. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... from Paris. It was so sudden that the town heard the thud and felt the jar. The unpopular man realized that it is wiser to remain in one's natural element even if it is necessary to sacrifice many of the first prizes. Perhaps it is better to go after the prizes for which we are qualified, than to aspire to elevations which we are unable ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Ostensibly the measure was to be the last blow of the ax at the root of feudalism. The new dignities carried no privilege with them; they were, it was explained, a sort of civic crown to which any one might aspire, and their creation was therefore in no way derogatory to the principle of equality. The holders might become too independent and self-reliant, they might even display a class spirit; but the Emperor felt himself to be striving upward, these creatures of his would ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... New-Englanders desired a strong, honest, and intelligent government; they thought, with John Adams, that "true equality is to do as you would be done by," and agreed with Hamilton, that "a government in which every man may aspire to any office was free enough for all purposes"; and judging from what they saw at home, they looked upon Anti-Federalism not only as erroneous in theory, but as disreputable in practice. "The name of Democrat," writes a fierce old gentleman to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the Deputy Commissioner was down the river, and I did not see him. He is regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.—there seems, indeed, to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service. I could not but envy the position of this young fellow, and marvel at the success which attends our method of administering ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... For almost all such are in the possession of the religious; and the seculars who are now studying in the colleges, from whose number some very good candidates graduate, have nothing to which to aspire. It is a shame that there is nothing in which to occupy them. They do not cause any expense to your Majesty in a journey hither, nor in their studies, and are more easily reduced to reason; while the friar is one with his community, and no one denies that the religious outside his convent would ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... AEtna thunders nigh, And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire, From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire; At other times huge balls of fire are toss'd, That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost: Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn, Emits huge rocks, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... religion, deliberately and in direct contradiction to the dogma of his time, placed man above the "highest angels," whom he considered subject to limitations; "man," he argues, "thanks to his freedom, is able to reach a goal to which no angel could aspire. For he is always new, infinitely exalted above the limitations of the angels and all finite reason." Of the relationship between the soul and God he says; "The soul of the righteous man shall be with God, his equal and compeer, no more ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... more friendly with others than with me—I have often said to myself that it is unworthy of a man to allow himself to be subjected by love, unworthy to make a woman the mistress of his thoughts, of his desires; that a man should strive for higher aims, aspire to nobler things." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... profession was already over-stocked; and not a regiment of the Paris garrison but could turn out a score of prevots to button me six times for my once. I could ride, which qualified me for a postilion, and had sufficient knowledge of billiards to aspire to the honourable post of a marker; but even to such offices—could I have stooped to compete for them—I should have been held ineligible without certificates of character. And to whom was I to apply for these? To my gay acquaintances ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... "I guess it will keep until we have reached our quarters. By the way how did you get the chevrons of a sergeant-major? That's the highest rank a non com. can aspire to." ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... noticed the change, and innocently encouraged him to aspire. We must not blame her if she did. This is what woman's education makes of her. The most cultured women must be grateful and flattering toward the rudest men, if circumstances throw them together. Born to depend on somebody, they must depend on their ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... know if the Bedouins pay any tent-taxes, but I suppose that if they didn't aspire to owning date-palms, they could live in the arid desert without paying anybody anything. It's the old, old, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... sabbatical restrictions. Not that she wished her family to be of the questionable sort that went to El Campo or Shell Mound Park for Sunday picnics and returned in quarrelsome state at a late hour smelling of bad whisky and worse gin. Nor did she aspire to have sprung from the Teutonic stock that perpetrated more respectable but equally noisy outings in the vicinity of Woodward's Gardens. But she had a furtive and sly desire to float oil-like upon the surface of this turbid sea, touching it at certain points, yet scarcely mixing with it. Indeed, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... "you talk of lofty views; but this is a pinnacle of loftiness to which I, for one, could never aspire. Positively, to rejoice in the extinction of the individual with his faculties undeveloped, his opportunities unrealized, his ambitions unfulfilled—why it's sublime! its Kiplingese—there's no other word for it! Shake hands, Wilson! ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... to memory is a valuable contribution to our stock of material for emotional resuscitation in after years. It also aids in adorning our style, even although we may not aspire to compose in poetry. But the burden of holding the connection of a long poem should be eschewed. Children can readily learn a short psalm or hymn, and can retain it in permanence; but to repeat the 119th psalm from the beginning is the mere tour-de-force ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... craven; Its worth be graven On funeral stone, But not upon A name which beareth The stain thine weareth. One exploit brave Sank 'neath the wave; The next one failed thee, Nor aught availed thee; Thy bow rust broke, Not thou. The stroke, When I aspire, Is set much higher, As thou mayst see ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... deeds, scorched by temptation's fire, Yet to Thy mercy dares my soul aspire; But wherefore speech prolong, since unto Thee, O Lord, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... people. They cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains every ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... most unpardonable of Mr. PODBURY! To have such odious calumnies circulated about one behind one's back is simply too—I do not aspire ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... they desire to excel, but they must sit at the feet of the best-esteemed teachers, doing all things and enduring all things for the sake of following the judgment of those teachers in everything, as though they themselves could not otherwise become famous; whereas, among those who aspire to become eminent politically as orators and statesmen, (13) there are some who cannot see why they should not be able to do all that politics demand, at a moment's notice, by inspiration as it were, without any preliminary pains or preparations whatever? And yet it would appear ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... impossible for any of the leading churches to give recognition to the full meaning of the Protestant idea of the worth of the individual soul, and its right to communicate directly with God. It remained for the persecuted Baptists and Independents, too feeble and despised to aspire to state influence, to work out the Protestant principle to its full expression in the spirit of toleration, to declare for liberty of conscience, the voluntary maintenance of worship, and the separation ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... the feeling and fancy of the reader, more than to his judgment. My writings, therefore, may appear light and trifling in our country of philosophers and politicians; but if they possess merit in the class of literature to which they belong, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... began to bestir themselves. What were the privileges of the higher classes which would sit most gracefully on their inferiors? Naturally we bethought us of their vices. It was not always so easy to adopt my lord's urbanity, his unassuming dignity, his well-bred ease; but one might reasonably aspire to be as wicked. Sabbath-breaking had long since ceased to be the privilege of the better classes, and so men's minds reverted to the question of divorce. "Let us get rid of our wives!" cried they; "who knows but the day may come when we shall ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... heir to the Spanish throne, imprisoned by order of the Crown for fear he would aspire to the throne, was kept in solitary confinement in the old prison at the Palace of Skulls, Madrid. After thirty-three years in this living tomb, death came to his release, and the following remarkable researches, taken ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... fireplace, after casting a glance at Modeste, which slipped like a ray of light between his heavy half-closed eyelids. He perceived, in this unexpected incident, a chance of interrogating the heart of his sovereign. Dumay thought for a moment that the clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he exchanged a rapid glance with the others, who understood him, and began to eye the little man with a species of terror mingled ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... long regarded as my brother, his chiefs, those who have betrayed me, his whole army in short, whom I desire to follow me to the tomb—a sacrifice which will be worthy of my renown, and of the brilliant end to which I aspire." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... such," he adds, at the conclusion of the document, motu proprio, "as to be compatible with our dignity, and, if faithfully carried out, we are convinced that they will produce results which must command the approval of all wise minds. The good sense of all among you who aspire to what is best, with a fervor proportionate to the ills which you have endured, shall be our judge in this matter. Above all, let us place our trust in God, who, even in fulfilling the decrees of His justice, is never unmindful of His mercy." It could not ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized the existence of a SUPREME BEING, Deity has been considered as the beginning and end of all things, to which all aspire to ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the hole as soon as they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on the point of touching your sceptre, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... lift me higher, Josephine! From the Eternal Hills hast thou not seen How I do strive for heights? but lacking wings, I cannot grasp at once those better things To which I in my inmost soul aspire. Lean ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bewildering "puzzle"! And so to the close. Between the uncultivated whom Dickens moved, and the cultivated he failed to move; between the power that so worked in delft as to stir the universal heart, and the commonness that could not meddle with porcelain or aspire to any noble clay; the pitiful see-saw is continued up to the final sentence, where, in the impartial critic's eagerness to discredit even the value of the emotion awakened in such men as Jeffrey by such creations as Little Nell, he reverses all he has been saying ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... for the wings of a dove, that they may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away will not help us. "The Kingdom of God is WITHIN YOU." We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the bottom. Water rests only when it gets to the lowest place. So do men. Hence, be lowly. Pax ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... it, Sally, that we can't be frank and honest? You can't think how it would have comforted Rodney's mother in her black hand-run Spanish lace and the Harrison pearls to have me say, "Be of good cheer, dear lady! I neither design nor aspire ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... should aspire up into the presence of God, to accuse any of the poor saints, and to plead their backslidings against them, as he will do if he can, then there is Jesus, our Lord Jesus, ready in the Court of Heaven, at the right hand of God, to plead ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... double cauls involved with art, The choicest morsels lay from every part. The priest himself before his altar stands, And burns the offering with his holy hands. Pours the black wine, and sees the flames aspire; The youth with instruments surround the fire: The thighs thus sacrificed, and entrails dress'd, The assistants part, transfix, and roast the rest: Then spread the tables, the repast prepare; Each takes his seat, and each receives ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... system of pedagogy is attracting so much attention and awakening so much interest at the present time as that of Herbart. Professor Rein says, "He who nowadays will aspire to the highest pedagogical knowledge, cannot neglect to make a thorough study of Herbart's pedagogy." Johann Friedrich Herbart was born at Oldenburg, May 4, 1776. His grandfather was rector of the Gymnasium at Oldenburg ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... vices, it may only serve, by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined resolution, towards that side which already draws too much, by the bias and propensity of the natural temper. It is certain that, while we aspire to the magnanimous firmness of the philosophic sage, and endeavour to confine our pleasures altogether within our own minds, we may, at last, render our philosophy like that of Epictetus, and other Stoics, only a more ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... bodily fever she stood up and moved before the glass, to behold the image of the woman who could be the victim of these childish emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck her eyes; she appeared to herself as poor and small as they. How could she aspire to a man like Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by wooing her she would not have adored him as she did now. He likes my hair, she said, smoothing it out, and then pressing her temples, like one insane. Two minutes afterward she was telling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... obnoxious even to his nearest friends; another is made to gamble until he either wins or loses a fortune, generally the latter; but all must 'jump,' and if they break their necks, well and good! It was proposed to 'jump' you in courtship; you refused to aspire to Diodora. In a duel you are not afraid of a fight, and so this course was decided on. You had been 'jumped' already—at the election—but the triumph and your downfall were not complete. Your vanity—don't start—was not yet wounded to death, and you will have to 'jump' once more—once ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... live a clean, loyal life. When she comes to him she must find his heart fit to receive her. There is never a time in all his life when the dream of her does not gleam before him as of a star to which he may aspire with all reverence ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... between Hastati, Principes, and Triarii ceased; the Velites disappeared, their work being done by the foreign mercenaries; the cavalry ceased to be part of the legion, and became a distinct body; and the military was completely severed from the rest of the State. Formerly no one could aspire to office who had not completed ten years of military service, but in the time of Cicero a man could pass through all the great dignities of the State with a very limited experience of military life. Cicero himself did military service in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Michael Angelo, which were also being copied, as were many other of the best pictures. Miss Fanny Howorth, whom I met in the gallery, told me that to copy the "Madonna della Seggiola," application must be made five years beforehand, so many are the artists who aspire to copy it. Michael Angelo's Fates are three very grim and pitiless old women, who respectively spin, hold, and cut the thread of human destiny, all in a mood of sombre gloom, but with no more sympathy than if they had nothing to do with us. I remember seeing an etching ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before, he saw in Mr. Lincoln's election "the utter disintegration of our whole political and social system amid bloodshed and anarchy." Mr. Belmont had evidently not proved a true prophet and did not aspire even to be ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Perry been so objectionable to Nelson as he was during those few minutes. The egotism of him to aspire to Frankie's love! And yet there came to Evan the stinging realization that he, himself, had failed to cherish that love. It was not the Bonehead's fault that he was engaged to her—who could blame him? That was a matter for Frankie to decide, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... his skin was of so swarthy a hue. To be permitted to address Mr. Coston face to face by his nickname was a sign of the closest friendship, to which only Spider Reilly, Jack Repetto, and one or two more of the gang could aspire. Others spoke of him as Nigger, or, more briefly, Nig—strictly behind his back. For Mr. Coston had a wide reputation as a fighter, and his particular mode of battling was to descend on his antagonist and bite him. Into this action he flung himself with the passionate ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... marriage and the marriages of many other members of the English aristocracy whose domestic lives have latterly seen the light of day—whether less of moral spirit and more of physical courage is not the great need among women who aspire to the peerage. Strong nerves and a martial spirit, if they could not secure peace, would at least place the combatants upon a more equal footing, and the world would be spared the spectacle of the mild-mannered and meek bullied by the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: 15 I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; 20 And when he falls, he falls like ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... a single bone taken from any part of the skeleton may enable a skilful osteologist to distinguish, in many cases, the genus, and sometimes the species, of quadrupeds to which it belonged. Although few geologists can aspire to such knowledge, which must be the result of long practice and study, they will nevertheless derive great advantage from learning, what is comparatively an easy task, to distinguish the principal divisions of the mammalia by the forms ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... the notion. It would create a situation ironical beyond any, grotesque beyond belief; and its development should be stupendously interesting. It attracted him irresistibly. That he should leave it to his own father to say whether a man born as he was born might aspire to marry his father's ward, had in it something that savored of tragi-comedy. It was a pretty problem, that once set could not be left unsolved by a man of Mr. Caryll's temperament. And, indeed, no sooner was the idea conceived than it quickened into ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... of England and Scotland, in the African jungle, in the moon, anywhere, and enter so far into the spirit of the trips as to feel that they are real and not imagination, why may I not in fancy be all these things that I so aspire to be? Why may not the plays of Shakespeare become the plays of Thomas Bragdon? Why may not the poems of Milton become the poems of my dearest, closest friend Phil Marsden? What is to prevent my achieving ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... decoration and color alone he would hardly have survived his own death twenty years; and even his design would have had only an academic interest; but as a painter of prophets and sibyls he is greatest among the very greatest in his craft, because we aspire to a world of prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never heard of radioactivity nor of electrons dancing in vortices of inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone explain the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise than as a musical picture of ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... When the tide of fashion set southwards, spreading terraces and villas from Leeson Street to Killiney, it left behind some of the finest houses in Dublin. Nowadays for a comparatively low rent it is possible to live in a splendid house if you do not aspire to the glory of a smart address. Miss O'Dwyer's house, for instance, boasted a spacious hall and lofty sitting-rooms, with impressive ceilings and handsome fireplaces; yet she paid for it little more than half the rent which a cramped villa in Clyde ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... nature! I do not aspire To be the highest in thy quire,— To be a meteor in the sky, Or comet that may range on high; Only a zephyr that may blow Among the reeds by the river low; Give me thy most privy place Where to run my ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... for the last two hours, and I aspire to get rid of it; but there is a sort of history attached to it, and I ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... new ideas in the parent state. What learning there was could only be found among the priests, to whom we owe 'Les Relations des Jesuites,' among other less notable productions. The Roman Catholic Church, being everywhere a democracy, the humblest habitant might enter its ranks and aspire to its highest dignities. Consequently we find the pioneers of that Church, at the very outset, affording the Canadian an opportunity, irrespective of birth or wealth, of entering within its pale. But apart from this class, there was no inducement offered to ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... who thought they could write well enough to aspire to this high dignity wrote one after another what they thought fit. After they had done, I advanced, and took the roll, but all the people cried out that I would tear it or throw it into the sea, till they saw how properly I held the roll, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... 'Nay, to no such offerings do I aspire. Tyrian maidens are wont ever to wear the quiver, to tie the purple buskin high above their ankle. Punic is the realm thou seest, Tyrian the people, and the city of Agenor's kin; but their borders are Libyan, a race unassailable in war. Dido sways the sceptre, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... more lofty career," said the old gentleman. "You aspire to the senate: and to literary honors. You wield the poet's pen, sir, and move in the circles of fashion. We keep an eye upon you at Clavering. We read your name in the lists of the select parties of the nobility. Why, it was ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... common knowledge. That Mr. Pope proposed to marry the heroine of his misadventure afforded a fair mark for raillery, no doubt, but Gay, in common with the run of educated England in 1718, did not aspire to be facetious at Pope's expense. The luxury was too costly. Offend the dwarf in any fashion, and were you the proudest duke at Court or the most inconsiderable rhymester in Petticoat Lane, it made no difference; ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... "I spent five minutes over it this morning, and twisted it up three times in order to give it that horrid little handle of a jug look which you all aspire to. Well, well, I don't suppose we need add to our rules that the girls who belong to the society are to ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... conscience beyond the exigencies of bread and butter. Lack of ambition is not an American fault, but it is too often an ambition that regards irrelevant and factitious honors rather than those to which it may legitimately and laudably aspire. A mechanic should find in the excellence of his mechanism a greater reward and satisfaction than in the wearing of a badge of office which any fifth-rate lawyer or broken-down man-of-business with influential "friends" may obtain, and whose petty duties they may discharge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... is not so easily won. I can assure you that I never aspire to so mighty a personage as a Covent Garden star. Don't you know that she gets a salary of five hundred pounds a week, and wears ropes of pearls which would represent ten times my entire income? Heaven alone knows what her ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... intercourse. It engenders cheerful goodwill and loving sincerity. By its help we make others happy, and ourselves blest. We elevate our being and ennoble our lot. We rise above the grovelling creatures of earth, and aspire to the Infinite. And thus we link time to eternity; where the true Art of Living has its ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... so, in truth, And was," replied the master to the youth, "Ere yet its secrets were applied to use— Ere yet it served beleaguered Syracuse. Ask'st thou from Art but what the Art is worth? The fruit? For fruit go cultivate the Earth. He who the goddess would aspire unto Must not the goddess as the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... so certain 'tis, that nothing is so high and lofty to which Bucolicks may not successfully aspire. But if this be so, what will become of Macrobius, Georgius Valla, Julius Scaliger, Vossius, and the whole company of Grammarians? who all affirm that simplicity and meanness is so essential to Pastorals, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... sheer, weak kindness of heart! But she's far too thickly gilded an heiress for me to aspire to. A few thousands a year is my most ambitious figure for a wife. Look at the men collecting around her and the wonderful lady you call Cleopatra. Why ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Center in Eternity. Then gaze aloft, whence all things had their Birth, And mount my prying Soul 'twixt Heaven and Earth, Thus the sweet Harmonv o' th' whole admire, } And by due Search new Learning still aquire, } So nearer ev'ry day to Truths Divine aspire. } ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... Chanzy? Well, he's still in Bel-Abbes, and he's been named commander of the Legion of Honour, and he's no end of a swell. He'll be coming back now that we've got to chase these sausage-eaters across the Rhine. Look at me! You used to say that I'd stopped growing and could never aspire to a mustache! Now look! Eh? Five feet eleven and—what do you think of my mustache? Oh, that African sun sets ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... infinity, that, step by step, We may advance, and find, in what seems good To Him, our gladness and our being's crown? If this were not, then what a toy the world! And what a mockery these suns and systems! And how like pumping at an empty cistern Were it to live and study and aspire! Come, then, O Art! and warm me with thy smile! Flash on my inward sight thy radiant shapes! August interpreter of thoughts divine, Whether in sound, or word, or form revealed! Pledge and credential of immortal life! Grand arbiter of truth! Consoler! come! Come, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... paying the singular ransom which this country exacts, I should consent to give satisfaction to Antinea according to my ability. I know the tolerance of the Church, and especially that of the order to which I aspire: such a procedure would be ratified immediately and, who knows, perhaps even approved? Saint Mary the Egyptian, gave her body to boatmen under similar circumstances. She received only glorification for it. In so doing she had the certainty of attaining her goal, ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... haue a breast which containeth contentment inough for my selfe, and I hope much benefit for the whole Kingdome; how euer or whatsoeuer it is, it is all your Lordships, vnder the couert of whose fauourable protection if it may finde grace it is the vttermost aime whereunto my wishes aspire, nor shall I feare the malignitie of the curious, for it is not to them but the honest plaine English Husbandman, I intend my labours, vvhose defender you haue euer beene, and for whose Honorable prosperitie both they and ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... eyes narrowed to thin slits. "Her aunt wrote me that she suspected you had the effrontery to—aspire to my daughter's hand. ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... collection may be, it would teach nothing if narrowed down to purely local limits, and that, therefore, it must be broadened for the sake of comparison; and he very properly says: "Whilst we should patriotically aspire to render the local collection as perfect as possible, I would not by any means have the usefulness of museums stop here. Comparing any local collection with a general collection, it will, of course, be found ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... glorie of the world, your high thoughts scorne, Vouchsafe this moniment of his last praise With some few silver dropping teares t'adorne; And as ye be of heavenlie off-spring borne, So unto heaven let your high minde aspire, 685 And loath this drosse of sinfull ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... no reward," said Girofle. "And the hand of a Princess is an honour to which I do not aspire, since ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... that she is a small state; that her population does not exceed half a million of souls; and that more than one half are not of the European race. The facts are so. I know she never can be a great state, and that the only distinction to which she can aspire must be based on the moral and intellectual acquirements of her sons. To the development of these much of her attention has been directed; but this restrictive system, which has so unjustly exacted the proceeds of her labor, to be bestowed on other sections, has ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Spearmint, about an Inch Long, and put it into a good Vial full of Spring water, so as the upper part of the Mint was above the neck of the Glass, and the lower part Immers'd in the Water; within a few Dayes this Mint began to shoot forth Roots into the Water, and to display its Leaves, and aspire upwards; and in a short time it had numerous Roots and Leaves, and these very strong and fragrant of the Odour of the Mint: but the Heat of my Chamber, as I suppose, kill'd the Plant when it was grown to ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... mother maiden, Ten thousand hearts aspire; In this life, sorrow-laden, Thee only they desire; In thee they hope for healing; In thee expect true rest, When thou, their safety sealing, Shalt ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... Hortensius of Cicero which won him from this perilous society. "It altered my affection, and made me address my prayers to Thee, O Lord, and gave me other desires and purposes than I had before. All vain hopes did instantly grow base in myne eyes, and I did, with an incredible heat of hart, aspire towards the Immortality of Wisdom." Thus it was really "Saint Tully," and not the mystic call of Tolle! Lege! that "converted" Augustine, diverting the current of his life into the channel of Righteousness. "How ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... there be, that with due steps aspire To lay their hands upon that golden key That ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... Southern program it is sought to exclude colored men from every grade of the public service; not only from the higher administrative functions, to which few of them would in any event, for a long time aspire, but from the lowest as well. A Negro may not be a constable or a policeman. He is subjected by law to many degrading discriminations. He is required to be separated from white people on railroads and ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to aspire, Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurpt, from God not given; He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord, such title to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... science depends. The modifications of these rules, according to their various capabilities, will give a complete knowledge of all that can be known of numbers, relations, and proportions, an acme to which all may aspire, tho none have yet attained it. The principles of language are equally simple, and, if correctly explained, may be as well understood. But the difficulty under which we labor in this department of science, is the paucity of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... public, knowing it, will relieve him from the suspicion of acting and speaking with reference to the effect his acts and sayings may have had upon his claims for political preferment. If he should ever change his mind, however, no one has a better right than he has to aspire to anything within the gift of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... thou dread Spirit! shed thy holy fire, Thy holy flame, into my frozen heart; Teach thou my creeping measures to aspire And swell in bigger notes, and higher art: Teach my low Muse thy fierce alarms to ring, And raise my soft strain to high thundering, Tune thou my lofty song; thy battles must ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... almost an hour she sat looking fixedly at the unlit logs, hardly conscious of the wasted time. Much might have gone into that hour. There was tea for her at one of the college houses—the hostess had a "day," and went so far as to aspire to the exclusive serving of a certain kind of tinned fancy biscuit every Friday—if she wanted to drop in. This hostess invited favored students to meet the faculty and townspeople on these occasions, and the two latter classes were expected to effect a social fusion with the former—which ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... and what college, with the exception of Oberlin, will receive her? I have myself lately made such a demand and been refused simply on the ground of sex. Yet what is there in the highest range of intellectual pursuits, to which woman may not rightfully aspire? What is there, for instance, in theology, which she should not strive to learn? Give me only that in religion which woman may and should become acquainted with, and the rest may go like chaff before ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a higher good to which he aspires not; and that the truly and rightly spiritual is he who aims at an indefinitely high moral excellence, of which GOD is the embodiment to his heart and soul. If the absolute excellence of morality be denied, there is nothing for spirituality to aspire after, and nothing in God to worship. Years before I saw this as clearly as here stated; the general train of thought was very wholesome, in giving me increased kindliness of judgment towards the common ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... insensibly encroach upon the pretensions of the crown. But if in the time of a minority, the power of the government should be divided among different competitors for the regency, the parliaments and people will find it still more easy to acquire and ascertain the liberty at which they aspire, because they will have the balance of power in their hands, and be able to make either scale preponderate. I could say a great deal more upon this subject; and I have some remarks to make relating to the methods which might be taken in the case of a ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... tainted with rivalry! Always the husband and wife are held down by this mutual envy, forever dragging at their heels, constantly holding them back from the lofty heights of spiritual power to which they aspire!" ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... equally honorable province of letters. We may well believe, then, that amongst such a people as the Chinese, whose very breath almost is at the emperor's pleasure, such a distinction is the chiefest ambition of every man; for all may aspire to it. ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... there went from her life that wholesome companionship of boy and girl which contains all the happiness necessary for their immaturity, and also stimulates their growth in every way by holding out the alluring prospect of the fulfilment of those hopes of their being towards which their youth should aspire from the first, insensibly, but without pause. Having once known this companionship, Beth did not thrive without it. She had no other interest in its place to take her out of herself, and the time hung heavy on her hands. With her temperament, however, more than a momentary ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... excuse: for not one of us hoped ever again to behold the rocks and placid water of our harbour, to continue the day's work to the timely close of the day, to sit in quiet places, to dream a fruitful future, to aspire untroubled in security and ease: and surely a man, whatever his disposition and strength of mind, being all at once thus confronted, may without blame do that which, as a reward for noble endeavour, he had hoped in all honour to ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... times!—to a gaping and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart beats with accentuation in her presence; and when I come to her some day and clasp her in my arms, as I aspire to do, I trust that her lips may not turn away from mine and that she may be more glad because I am so near and that her stainless heart may sound an echoing chime. For, with a great and troubled adoration, I love her as I have ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... ten strong are these suitors, but many more by much: from Dulichium came there fifty and two, they and their servants; twice twelve crossed the seas hither from Samos; from Zacynthus twice ten; of our native Ithacans, men of chief note, are twelve who aspire to the bed and crown of Penelope; and all these under one strong roof—a fearful odds against two! My father, there is need of caution, lest the cup which your great mind so thirsts to taste of vengeance prove bitter to yourself in the ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vouchsafe me an Audience of Quarter of an Hour; I shall look upon it as the greatest Condescension in you, and as the greatest Honour done me. I told him he mistook my Title, and gave me one I never did aspire to; but that I was very ready to hear and serve him, for I had seen him often at Court offering Petitions, which were always rejected, and I ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... camouflaged. They knew that to educate him would be to make him dissatisfied with his lot at the bottom of the ladder. They knew that to educate him would introduce the leaven of divine discontent into his being. They knew that to educate him would cause him to aspire to something higher than hard labor or menial service. They knew that to educate him would cause him to know that robbing him of the ballot was reducing him to a pariah in American life and society and making him a political outcast. They knew that to educate the Negro would cause him to know ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it is to be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what it is to dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them perish—to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire by the wild-beast powers of my life. I know what is the price that a working-man pays for knowledge—I have paid for it with food and sleep, with agony of body and mind, with health, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... never been assailed, would but add to the general belief in your own guilt, and the certainty of your fate; such charges would be regarded as a paltry subterfuge, and no one would credit them. Go, fellow—the bat cannot consort with the eagle, nor can such as you aspire to even the most distant familiarity with persons of my rank. Depart, instantly; and to-morrow you shall receive a pecuniary reward that will amply compensate you for the disappointment ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... of a superior species; and that the conduct of nations requires and deserves the celestial powers of the gods or of the genii. From this principle he justly concluded, that the man who presumes to reign, should aspire to the perfection of the divine nature; that he should purify his soul from her mortal and terrestrial part; that he should extinguish his appetites, enlighten his understanding, regulate his passions, and subdue the wild ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... ordinary planes is the forming of strong mental images important and useful, but when we come to consider the phenomena of the astral plane we begin to see what an important part is played there by strong mental images or visualized ideas. The better you know what you desire, wish or aspire to, the stronger will be your thought vibrations of that thing, of course. Well, then, the stronger that you are able to picture the thing in your mind—to visualize it to yourself—the stronger will be your actual knowledge and thought-form of that thing. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... called Cunaxa, being about five hundred furlongs distant from Babylon. And here Clearchus beseeching Cyrus before the fight to retire behind the combatants, and not expose himself to hazard, they say he replied, "What is this, Clearchus? Would you have me, who aspire to empire, show myself unworthy of it?" But if Cyrus committed a great fault in entering headlong into the midst of danger, and not paying any regard to his own safety, Clearchus was as much to blame, if not more, in refusing to lead the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... adequately fed, and both able and willing to perform thrice the work per day he now does or can; seeing the more efficient often step above them to posts better paid and more respected, the dullest workers will aspire to greater knowledge and skill in order that they too may attain more eligible positions. "It is the first step that costs"—the others follow almost of course. If the Aristocracy of Ireland would unitedly resolve that ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing place of residence. Many such aspire angrily after that Somewhere else of the imagination, where all troubles are supposed to end. They lean over the great bridge which joins the New Town with the Old—that windiest spot, or high altar, in this northern temple of the winds—and watch the trains smoking out from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to believe that I aspire to see the propertied classes reduced to servitude under the working classes, that I would invert history and make the landed gentry and the manufacturers the servants of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... rooted conviction, even in many of those in whom its existence is least apparent, that honourable and affectionate remembrance after death with a full and certain hope that it will be ours is the highest prize to which the highest calling can aspire. Few pass through this world without feeling the vanity of all human ambitions; their faith may fail them here, but it will not fail them—not for a moment, never—if they possess it as regards posthumous respect and affection. The ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... If it is this principle, that has always prompted the princes and nobles of the earth, by every species of fraud and violence, to shake off all the limitations of their power; it is the same that has always stimulated the common people to aspire at independency, and to endeavour at confining the power of the great, within the limits of equity ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... institution, composed of pupils of moderate means, with high ideals and gentle manners, are found at Fisk. The choicest of the recently emancipated race are here seeking a training. As always and everywhere, none reach the highest ideal. Some are found who fail to aspire to it; a few are intractable, but to one who recalls the life of the race and the treatment it has received before and since it was freed, life at Fisk ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... as much disliked as they think and hope they are. Even on the Continent, even in that strange tourist world where hostilities grow apace, where the courtesies of life are relaxed, and where every nationality presents its least lovable aspect, the English can never aspire to the prize of unpopularity. They are too silent, too clean, too handsome, too fond of fresh air, too schooled in the laws of justice which compel them to acknowledge—however reluctantly—the rights of other men. They are certainly uncivil, but that is a matter of no great moment. We do not ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... but little doth aspire To prophecy; but yet it reads On high, that soon his glorious deeds Full many Homers will require— Of which this age produces few. But, bidding mysteries adieu, I try my powers upon ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... which rested on the back of the seat almost touched her shoulder. "Lady Margot is pleased to be friendly and gracious, but she does not belong to my world. She is a star far above the head of a poor struggling barrister, even if he were fool enough to aspire to her, which he certainly would not do so long as there are inhabitants of his own sphere a hundred times more ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Bettina brought me a band for my neck, and gave me the following letter: "Spurn me, but respect my honour and the shadow of peace to which I aspire. No one from this house must confess to Father Mancia; you alone can prevent the execution of that project, and I need not suggest the way to succeed. It will prove whether you have some ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... conceives, which is presented to you. Herein he is distinguished from his preceptor VELASQUEZ. That great master, by his courtly habits of intercourse, contracted a more proud and swelling character, to which the simple and chaste pencil of MURILLO never sought to aspire. A plain and pensive cast, sweetly attempered by humility and benevolence, marks his canvass; and on other occasions, where he is necessarily impassioned or inflamed, it is the zeal of devotion, the influx of pious inspiration, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Triarii ceased; the Velites disappeared, their work being done by the foreign mercenaries; the cavalry ceased to be part of the legion, and became a distinct body; and the military was completely severed from the rest of the State. Formerly no one could aspire to office who had not completed ten years of military service, but in the time of Cicero a man could pass through all the great dignities of the State with a very limited experience of military life. Cicero himself did military ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... could not be princess by wealth or standing. So she was mad to have learning whereon to pride herself. For she was different from other folk, and must not be scooped up among the common fry. Learning was the only distinction to which she thought to aspire. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... who enjoys a royal estate and yet seeks rescue, cannot dwell thus, this is no place for him; escape is born from quietness and rest; to be a king is to add distress and poison; to seek for rest and yet aspire to royal condition are but contradictions; royalty and rescue, motion and rest, like fire and water, having two principles, cannot be united. So one resolved to seek escape cannot abide possessed of kingly dignity! And if you say a man may be a king, and at the same time prepare deliverance for ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the bystander sees more of the game than those who share too closely in its passions. And assuredly, if it were asked, what it is that we who write upon Indian news aspire to effect, I may reply frankly, that, if but by a single suggestion any one of us should add something to the illumination of the great sepoy conspiracy—whether as to its ultimate purpose, or as to its machinery, or as to its wailing hopes, or if but by the merest trifle ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... love which I bear you has deprived me of repose: do not treat me with cruel disdain. A liking for me would do you no dishonour, for, thank God! I may be proud of my descent. But if, despised by you, I cannot aspire to the highest marks of your affection, let me have a single kiss, and the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... time you'll be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid Aunt Anne, coming to visit you on vacations. You'll always keep a corner for me, won't you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course—old maids can't aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as 'umble as Uriah Heep, and quite content with a little over-the-porch or ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... about to cast aside all these things, to deceive and lie to these excellent people, and to plunge into an adventure, the end of which she could foresee? What was it, then, that had come over her these last few days, by what dreams was she pursued, how was it that her whole existence seemed only to aspire towards the one moment when she would again feel the arms of a man about her? She had but to think of it and she was seized with an indescribable sensation of horror, during which she seemed devoid of will, as if ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... been the best result for the state. But the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican government, and for the most part the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had arranged it because she wished to introduce to Rasputin a certain Madame Yatchevski—the wife of an officer who was very rich—who saw that, by Rasputin's influence, she could aspire ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... seeks the way to win renown, Or flies with wings of high desert, Who seeks to wear the laurel crown, Or hath the mind that would aspire— Let him his native soil eschew, Let him go range and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... from its gulf, And diving back, a living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith Seem'd it unto me ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed. She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, Not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... home safe by thy quiet fire, And hear'st of others' harms, but fearest none: And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire, Who fall, who rise, who triumph, who do moan. Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost inquire Of my restraint, why here I live alone, And pitiest this my miserable fall; For pity ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... us burns To see dark Ignorance aspire To move toward light a mind that yearns For knowledge that may lift it higher Upon the royal road of truth, While every word and act and thought Betrays an atmosphere so fraught With lack of common sense and lore, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the descendants of the same race and of one soul, the same sun shines upon us and we breathe the same air, so that our sentiments are also one, and we aspire to the independence and liberty of our country in order to secure its progress and place it on a level with other civilized nations; and with this assurance I have taken the liberty to address you this letter, begging of you to accept the commission which in the name of our government ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... distant deeps or skies Burnt the ardour of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire— What the hand ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... Humphrey: we both aspire high, for two young foresters, do we not? However, they say 'Every dog has his day,' and Cromwell and his Parliament may have theirs. King Charles may be on his throne again now, long before you ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. (6. Mr. H. Sidgwick remarks, in an able discussion on this subject (the 'Academy,' June 15, 1872, p. 231), "a superior bee, we may feel sure, would aspire to a milder solution of the population question." Judging, however, from the habits of many or most savages, man solves the problem by female infanticide, polyandry and promiscuous intercourse; therefore it may well be doubted whether it would ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... time appeared, or to take the place of exhaustive histories, such as that of Professor Leonello Venturi on the Italian primitives. It should but serve to pave the way to deeper and more detailed reading. It does not aspire to give a complete and comprehensive list of the painters; some of the minor ones may not even be mentioned. The mere inclusion of names, dates, and facts would add unduly to the size of the book, and, when without real bearing on the course of Venetian art, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... great means of enterprise; Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth, A carpenter thy father known, thyself Bred up in poverty and straits at home, Lost in a desert here and hunger-bit. Which way, or from what hope, dost thou aspire To greatness? whence authority deriv'st? What followers, what retinue canst thou gain, Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude, 420 Longer than thou canst feed them on thy cost? Money brings honour, friends, conquest, and realms. What raised ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... in lofty reflections about philosophy, history, or economics; we are not on the plane of theories, and we can remain on the level of observable facts. We have to question men who take a very active part in the real revolutionary movement amidst the proletariat, men who do not aspire to climb into the middle class and whose mind is not dominated by corporative prejudices. These men may be deceived about an infinite number of political, economical, or moral questions; but their testimony is decisive, sovereign, and irrefutable when it is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... well to impress, upon the more thinking students at least, the idea that all they saw had not "happened so,'' without the earnest agency of human beings; but that it had been the result of the earnest life-work of men and women, and that no life-work to which a student might aspire could be more worthy. In carrying out this idea upon the "campus'' Goldwin Smith took the lead by erecting the stone seat which has now stood there for over thirty years. Other memorials followed, among them a drinking-fountain, the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... punishments is hung perpetually over his head. In return for all this his University takes a keen interest in him. She pats him on the back if he succeeds. Prizes and scholarships, and fine fat fellowships are thrown plentifully in his way if he will gird up his loins and aspire ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... century, from Flanders, was one of the most distinguished of the town. It had even counted among its illustrious members a Seville Veinticuatro, and no one who was unable to present proof of noble lineage could aspire to ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... difficulty. If he had not liked Claudius so much, he would have been angry at him for daring to propose to this beautiful young friend of his. But then Claudius was Claudius, and even the Duke saw something in him besides his wealth which gave him a right to aspire to the highest. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... thunders nigh, And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire, From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire; At other times huge balls of fire are toss'd, That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost: Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn, Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne With loud ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain." ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... footboy, who waited on the malevolent man who hadn't got into the Post-Office. Even this youth, if his jacket could have been unbuttoned and his heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a distant adherent of the Barnacle family, already to aspire to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... other. The Mikado and his ministers, naval and military officers and men, the whole of the civil officials and the police, wear European clothes, as well as a number of dissipated-looking young men who aspire to represent "young Japan." Carriages and houses in English style, with carpets, chairs, and tables, are becoming increasingly numerous, and the bad taste which regulates the purchase of foreign furnishings is as marked as the good taste which everywhere presides over the adornment ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... periury to make him know Hee is your Sonne, and sonnes a dutie owe. This sequestration will in time aspire Unto a flame shall set your Realme on fire; For[207] when a Subject hath the meanes of will, 'Tis not enough, to say he has no will; For will is alter'd by the place and time And hee that's once up knowes the way to clime. I speake perchance ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... field, life be still left within my body's sanctuary, I will return to seize you as my own, though hosts in armour try to stop my way. I will not live without you. I will not endure to see another man aspire to the hand which has been refused to me. Adieu, Agatha, adieu! I trust we shall meet no more; in thinking of me, at any rate, your memory shall not call me despicable," and he rushed out of the door and down stairs, without waiting to hear whether ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... was decorated with all the Royal Orders; was a duke and peer of the realm, and Governor of Bordeaux; and, in fine, every attainable dignity had been lavished upon him; while he yielded precedence only to royalty, and to the Duc de Montmorency, to whose office it was vain to aspire during his lifetime.[177] ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... wisdom from the changes that shift below. Looking upon the tribes of earth, I have seen how the multitude are swayed, and tracked the steps that lead weakness into power; and fain would I be the ruler of one who, if abased, shall aspire to rule." ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... regardless, and unprofitable sin of curiosity should be able to withhold me; whereby a man cuts himself off from all action, and becomes the most helpless, pusillanimous, and unweaponed creature in the world, the most unfit and unable to do that which all mortals most aspire to—either to be useful to his friends or to offend his enemies? Or, if it be to be thought a natural proneness, there is against that a much more potent inclination inbred, which about this time of a man's life solicits most—the desire of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Vendome, to-day our support. The princes, my sons, give promise of virtues as excellent, and will be worthy to aspire to destinies as noble. It is my desire and my duty to give no thought to my private griefs begotten of an ill-assorted marriage. May the King ever be adored by his people; may my children ever be beloved and cherished by the King; I am happy, and I ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... minute, and I will read you a little. We have got them running. St. Augustine in his 22d book says: "A woman ought to serve her husband as unto God, affirming that woman ought to be braced and bridled betimes, if she aspire to any dominion, alleging that dangerous and perilous it is to suffer her to precede, although it be in temporal and corporeal things. How can woman be in the image of God, seeing she is subject to man, and hath no authority to teach, neither ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... number, the better seems the chance; until, if we be acting in concert with a whole civilised nation, there are surely a majority of chances that we must be acting right. And again, how true it is that we can never behave as we wish in this tormented sphere, and can only aspire to different and more favourable circumstances, in order to stand out and be ourselves wholly and rightly! And yet once more, if in the hurry and pressure of affairs and passions you tend to nod and become ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... protested Yukiko, "do not, I entreat you, say such strange things to me! You well know that I am of poor and mean condition:—how could I ever dare to aspire to become the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... these superficial students aspire to become opera singers, after a couple of seasons' study. Of course they all cast eyes at the Metropolitan, as the end ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... heir to a great English nobleman might aspire to, the son of a poor country clergyman could never hope to attain. By a strange vicissitude of fortune he now found himself in the same position as that in which Flamin had been when they met on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... the nature of the spiritual part of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand, a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with their strange fight against all the laws of gravity, striving ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... who sincerely know wherein they lack, can learn, can be taught. As she had given these matters of civilization intelligent thought she knew where to begin—at the humble, material foundation, despised and neglected by those who talk most loudly about civilization, art, culture, and so on. They aspire to the clouds and the stars at once—and arrive nowhere except in talk and pretense and flaunting of ill-fitting borrowed plumage. They flap their gaudy artificial wings; there is motion, but no ascent. Susan ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... prevalent among the French. There is a great difference between gathering flowers at the foot of Parnassus and ascending the arduous heights of the mountain. The palms and laurels grow there, and if any of your countrymen aspire to gain them, they must no longer enervate all the vigour of their minds by this habit of trifling. I would have them be perpetual competitors with the English in manly wit and substantial learning. But let the competition be friendly. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... one of those honest visionaries sometimes met in Ireland, said:—"For my own part, I confess that I aspire to complete independence. Then, and not till then, would the two countries be friendly. We in Ulster are ten times more patriotic than Irishmen elsewhere, for it is in Ulster that we have been most deeply wronged. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... built to run on a heavy dew. Allowing for the joke, this is not more nice than wise. To be dexterous, fine-fingered, facile! How perfect is the response in all the petty personalities of politics! In this America, where all men aspire, and more men get office than one would think there were offices to get, what miracles of adroitness! It is one perpetual, Turn, turn again, Lord Mayor! If but half the genius were diverted from office-getting to house-building, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... every citizen of the land is before the law the equal of every other. It provides for all of them trial by jury, free speech, free press, entire protection for life and liberty and property. It goes further. It secures to every citizen the right of suffrage, the right to hold office, the right to aspire to every office or agency by which the government is carried on. Every man called upon to do military duty, every man required to take up arms in its defense, is by its provisions entitled to vote, and a competent aspirant for every ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... And crowd with sudden wealth the rising dome; The price of boroughs and of souls restore; And raise his treasures higher than before. Now bless'd with all the baubles of the great, The polish'd marble and the shining plate, [gg]Orgilio sees the golden pile aspire, And hopes from angry heav'n another fire. [hh]Could'st thou resign the park and play, content, For the fair banks of Severn or of Trent; There might'st thou find some elegant retreat, Some hireling senator's deserted seat; And stretch thy prospects o'er the smiling land, For less than rent the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... (cry'd Friendly.) How! how! presumptious Youth! How are thy Eyes and Thoughts exalted? ha! To Bliss your Majesty must never hope for, (reply'd Goodland.) How now! thou Creature of the basest Mold! Not hope for what thou dost aspire to! Mock-King; thou canst not, dar'st not, shalt not hope it: (return'd Valentine in a heat.) Hold, Val, (cry'd Sir Philip) you grow warm, forget your Duty to their Majesties, and abuse your Friends, by making us suspected. Good-night, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... were bidding the stars good-bye; but she was renewing a promise. Though their challenge is universal and eternal, the stars get no answer but that,—the brief light flashed back to them from the eyes of the young who unaccountably aspire. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... all the appointments which he had held in the preceding reign, and on several occasions visited him at Nonsuch, his residence at Cheam in Surrey. These marks of kindness led him, it is said, to aspire to a union with his royal mistress; but being disappointed in gaining her hand, and 'being miscontented with sundry things,' in 1564 he resigned his post of Lord Steward 'with sundry Speeches of Offence,'[13] which so displeased Elizabeth that she ordered him to confine himself to his house. He afterwards ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... to the allure of Valencia Van Tyle, admitting a finish of beauty to which mere youth could not aspire, all that was idealistic in him went out to the younger cousin whose admiration and shy swift friendship he was losing. His vanity refused to accept this at first. She was a little piqued at him because of the growing intimacy with Valencia. That was all. Why, it had been only a month or two ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... behind. The upper boughs have reached at once the light and their natural term of years. They are content to live, and little more. The central trunk no longer sends up each year a fresh perpendicular shoot to aspire above the rest, but, as weary of struggling ambition as they are, is content to become more and more their equal as the years pass by. And this is a law of social forest trees, which you must bear in mind whenever I speak of the influence ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... conventual church Their vigils kept: where tapers day and night On the dim altar burned continually. In token that the House was ever more Watching to God. Religious men were they; Nor would their reason, tutored to aspire Above this transitory world, allow That there should pass a moment of the year When in their ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... on like this it'll be a real book after all. Calgary is the big cow-town of the West, just beginning to aspire to higher—or lower (there's a real question there)—civilization, and mixing schaps and silks on its streets in a strange struggle between the past and the future. But my stay there was short, as I was able to catch my branch train with little delay, and ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... General, I am thriving in a modest way. I don't aspire to any such profits as you seem to win so easily, so I have no fault ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... shall live no more? Where is the giant shot that kills Wordsworth walking the old green hills? Trample the red rose on the ground,— Keats is Beauty while earth spins round! Bind her, grind her, burn her with fire, Cast her ashes into the sea,— She shall escape, she shall aspire, She shall arise to make men free: She shall arise in a sacred scorn, Lighting the lives that are yet unborn; Spirit supernal, Splendour ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... resemble the rats which wear their teeth away in gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on the point of touching your ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... like Mr. Sheridan, aim only to be men of wit, lie a bed; while they who, like Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Burke, and a very few others, aspire to be men of wisdom, rise with the lark. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... and let his thick and curly hair grow long. After he had acquitted himself gallantly in this battle of Salamis, he obtained great repute among the Athenians, and was regarded with affection, as well as admiration. He had many who followed after him, and bade him aspire to actions not less famous than his father's battle of Marathon. And when he came forward in political life, the people welcomed him gladly, being now weary of Themistocles; in opposition to whom, and because of the frankness and easiness of his temper, which ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Hume, Kant was not concerned to challenge his opponent's definition of man's reasoning power. His sole object was to show that, if one accepted this definition, one must not go as far as Hume in the application of this power. All that Kant could aspire to do was to protect the ethical from attack by the intellectual part of man, and to do this by proving that the former belongs to a world into which the latter has no access. For with his will man belongs to a world of purposeful doing, whereas ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... and for himself, were not altogether indispensable qualifications, even under a Venetian constitution, in an individual who aspired to a post so eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and mitres and official seals, which were periodically apportioned to them, the Marney family did not aspire to the somewhat graceless office of being their distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in their order; and promotion to the highest class. They observed that more than one of the other great "civil and religious liberty" families,—the families who in one century plundered the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... describe life as something outside of herself, nor does she regard human sorrows and sufferings and labors merely as materials for the artist's use; but she lives in and with all that men do and suffer and aspire to. Hers is not the manner of Homer and Scott, who hide their personality behind the wonderful distinctness of their personalities, making the reader forget the author in the strength and power of the characters described. It is not that of Shakspere, of whom ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... improvement on any of the soggy-headed things spawned by the House of Hanover. I do not apologize for nor condone the sexual frailties of distinguished females; the noblest career to which any woman can aspire is that of honest wifehood, and if she attains to that she is, though of mediocre mind, infinitely superior to the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of Countess Thirza Eulenfurst. Hitherto he had resolutely put that from him. It was not for him, a soldier of fortune, without a penny beyond his pay, to aspire to the hand of a rich heiress. It was true that many Scottish adventurers in foreign services had so married, but this had seemed a thing altogether beyond him. He had rendered a service to her father, and they had, in consequence, been most kind to ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... had been realized. She was to go to the land of the red-headed stranger where she would be admired and courted, and where, in time, she might aspire to the ultimate honor of having her picture in ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... the powerful influence of religion, and to obtain from the Peninsula fresh supplies of missionaries. As in their nature the latter are essentially different from the other public functionaries, it is well known they neither seek nor aspire to any remuneration for their labors, their only hope being to obtain, in the opinion of the community at large, that degree of respect to which they justly consider themselves entitled. Let, therefore, their pre-eminences be retained to them: let ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... which you should find extremely sharp or flat; you could detect and improve a unison that might be badly out, and you might produce an entire scale in which none of the chords would be unbearably rasping. But this is not enough. You should aspire to perfection, and not stop short ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... attracted as much custom to good Mr. Pfaff's beer-saloon as did his fresh, cool lager; and that young men, and, for the matter of that, men not so young, stole in there to listen to their contests of wit, and to wish and yearn and aspire to be of their goodly company. For the old gentleman little dreamed, as he went on his course up Broadway, that he had seen the first Bohemians of New York, and that these young men would be written about and talked about and versified about for generations to come. Unconscious ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... Conkling and all his ways. Conkling once said to him: 'If you will join us and act with us, there is nothing in the gift of the State of New York to which you may not reasonably aspire.' To which Wheeler replied: 'Mr. Conkling, there is nothing in the gift of the State which will compensate me for the forfeiture of my own self-respect.'"—Hoar, Autobiography, Vol. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... exhorted me to set about writing a History of Ireland, and archly remarked, there had been some good Irish writers, and that one Irishman might at least aspire to be equal to another. He had great compassion for the miseries and distresses of the Irish nation, particularly the Papists; and severely reprobated the barbarous debilitating policy of the British government, which, he said, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... promising exterior, if not absolutely silly, I was a lad of very little sense, and without ideas of learning; in fine, very ignorant in all respects, and if I could arrive at being curate of some village, it was the utmost honor I ought ever to aspire to. Such was the account he gave of me to Madam de Warrens. This was not the first time such an opinion had been formed of me, neither was it the last; the judgment of M. Masseron having ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... with those who reject all creeds, equally with those whose creeds are the longest and the oldest. In our day, it must have been generally noticed, that the wonders of what imagines itself to be Spiritualism are rather more accredited by persons who aspire to the character of rationalists than by those who hold on tenaciously to the old ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... keys and our cabins are adjoining. I seized an opportune moment, slipped in, and took a wax impression of what I wanted. Then with an old key and a file—Monsieur is a great detective, perhaps, but I, too," with Gaston boastfulness, "can aspire to a ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all aspire, hope, and die; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the same relation to the divine love which lies in Jesus Christ. There are no step-children in God's great family, and none of them receives a more grudging or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the suff'ring soul aspire A higher bliss to prove; To wake the pure, refin'd desire, ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... wide, the kindling bosom swells, As love inspires, and truth its wonders tells, The soul enraptured tunes the sacred lyre, And bids a worm of earth to heaven aspire, 'Mid solar systems numberless, to soar, The death of love ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... moans the lady, catching at her dress entreatingly. "As you are hopeful, and I am hopeless; as a fair way in life is before you, which can never, never, be before me; as you can aspire to become a respected wife, and as you can aspire to become a proud mother, as you are a living loving woman, and must die; for GOD'S sake hear ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... about it, I'll see about it," exclaimed the colonel, now more than ever annoyed. "It is impossible that a man of such low extraction should aspire to the hand of my daughter. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... forward with joy to the time when they should be numbered among those brave soldiers, whose arms had maintained for a long series of years the supremacy of the crescent. There was no rank, no dignity in the Turkish army to which a Janissary could not aspire—a strong incentive to the display of bravery. Such was the constitution of the army when it was the most powerful in Europe: then it gained its victories, not by force of numbers, but by superior ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... nature loves not only the beautiful things he sees, but he loves what they suggest, what they remind him of, what they bid him aspire to. Like Wordsworth, he "looks on the hills with tenderness, and makes deep friendship with the streams and groves." He notes what he divines by observation. And what an observer he is! He discovers that the bobolink goes south in the night. He scraped an acquaintance ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... namely, by the report of his distinguished services in the war, which, in the assembly of the people, was communicated by one person to another. [339] Ad id locorum, 'until then,' 'until that time,' as in chap. 72: post id locorum. See Zumpt, S 434. Marius did not venture to aspire to the consulship; for appetere is not the same as petere, the latter denoting the actual suit or canvass. His ambition had not yet been directed to that highest of all offices, until religious superstition suggested it to him, ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... affected unconcern; "is not that the name of your former protege, the love-stricken swain who ventured to aspire to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the great aspire high. (He walks about and speaks to some one not visible.) Ancient Shakalya, how is Marichi's holy son occupied? (He listens.) What do you say? That he is explaining to Aditi, in answer to her question, the duties of a faithful wife? My matter must await ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... won't spoil the meat by cutting myself the fat—no! I am a digger, but not only a digger, I aspire to the honor of being a captain of diggers; my claim lies ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... not a regiment of the Paris garrison but could turn out a score of prevots to button me six times for my once. I could ride, which qualified me for a postilion, and had sufficient knowledge of billiards to aspire to the honourable post of a marker; but even to such offices—could I have stooped to compete for them—I should have been held ineligible without certificates of character. And to whom was I to apply for these? To my gay acquaintances of the Cafe de Paris? To ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... said Capitana Maria gravely, "if I were rich like you I would let my sons travel; they are young and will some day be men. I have only a little while to live, we should see one another in the other life, so sons should aspire to be more than their fathers, but at our sides we only teach them ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... And I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry about it, either. Take time to look about you and make your name express something that you like to do better than anything else, or something that you earnestly aspire to do or be. Then choose your symbol in keeping ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... writing of philosophical treatises. It had become an undisguised conflict with obscurantism, ignorance, a time-worn routine, and all that barred the way to culture. Since the government permitted the Jews to enter the social life of the country, and seeing that they might in the future aspire to a better lot, the Haskalah should and would work to prepare them for it and make them worthy ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... O Love, which reachest but to dust, And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things! Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light That doth both ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... addition to the eighty prescribed by the constitution of 1799. Thus, by direct or indirect means, the Senate soon became a strict Napoleonic preserve, to which only the most devoted adherents could aspire. And yet, such is the vanity of human efforts, it was this very body which twelve years later ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... with his talk; for which reason he was beloved not only by all those who knew him, but also by many Italian princes and other lords. While working as a goldsmith, then, he gave attention to design, in which he took so much pleasure, that his mind began to aspire to higher things, and he made very great progress therein, as may be seen from many works in silver that he executed in his native city of Bologna, and particularly from certain most excellent works in niello. In this manner of work ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... such few friends as my life has hitherto won to itself, to consider well the direct purport of this letter. If you, born in a grade so much higher than mine, feel that it is unwarrantable insolence in me to aspire to the hand of my patron's grandchild, say so plainly; and I remain not less grateful for your friendship than I was to your goodness when dining for the first time at your father's palace. Shy and sensitive ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... presently be earning a princely salary as he acted amid these beautiful objects, perhaps attending a reception in a Fifth Avenue mansion where the father of a beautiful New York society girl would tell him that he must first make good before he could aspire to her hand. And he would make good—out there in the great open spaces, where the girl would come to him after many adventures and where they would settle to an untroubled future in ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... allowed three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in the palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He clamoured for an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even impudent enough to aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and thought it hard that, while so many mitres were distributed, he could not get a deanery, a prebend, or even a living. He missed no opportunity of urging his pretensions. He haunted the public offices ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... aching heart to death aspire, When all must die? Nay, death beyond belief Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief, Since in my sum of woes ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... and compiling this book, to emphasize not only actual deeds and historical facts, but to aspire to an even higher goal—to conjure to life for a few brief moments the "Souls" of my subjects, stark in all their deathless beauty. What task could be nobler than to delve in these vivid famous lives and bring to light, perhaps, some hitherto undiscovered motive—some ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... circumstance resided all her insuperable dissociation from these people of light-hearted lives; that this was why she was and forever must remain, however long and intimate her life among them, an outsider; because what she needed and demanded, the blind and inarticulate impulse which had made her aspire to their society, was not the need of a wide social life, but the need of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Englishman, had, like me, indulged in dreams of going back to England to fill some great railway post, but he had reached his sixties and his dreams were over. Often, when we talked familiarly together, he would say: "Joseph, if you aspire to be a general manager in England you ought never to have come to Ireland. They don't think much on the other side of Irish railways or Irish railway men." This, I daresay, was true, though he, well known, liked and admired as he was, ought to have been considered an exception, and why no British ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... suppressed many details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... hollow voice which had become natural to him since his illness began; "my love for you proved too strong to be restrained just now: but believe me, I had fully made up my mind never to open my lips to you on the subject; for what right have I, a helpless, and, I fear, hopeless, invalid, to dare to aspire—" ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... I shall advise you in a few words: aspire only to those virtues that are PECULIAR TO YOUR SEX; follow your natural modesty, and think it your greatest commendation not to be talked of one way ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... which they were conferred. It is from Stephen's action that we may date the entry of this title into English history as a mark of rank in the baronage, more and more freely bestowed, a title of honour to which a family of great possessions or influence might confidently aspire. But it must be remembered that the earldoms thus created are quite different from those of the Anglo-Saxon state or from the countships of France. They carried with them increase of social consideration and rank, usually some increase of wealth in grants ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... probability, if you love dancing and aspire to make it a career, you possess an innate sense of rhythm. You feel the swing of music and love to move your body to the strains of a lilting melody. The first great possessions of the successful stage dancer are a love of ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... who aspire to high positions, and are anxious to rise above their fellows, be sure of this, that those who have the apportioning of important and lucrative places of trust, judge in the main by Christ's rule, "He that is faithful in that which is least ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Behaviour, which rendred it agreeable to every Body. The grandeur of her Mien was not stiff, but unstudied and unforced, mixed with a simplicity; free, yet not loose nor affected. If the former seem'd to condescend, the latter seem'd to aspire; and both to unite in the centre of Perfection. Every turn she gave in dancing snatcht Aurelian into a Rapture, and he had like to have been out two or three times with following his Eyes, which she led about as Slaves ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... higher, Josephine! From the Eternal Hills hast thou not seen How I do strive for heights? but lacking wings, I cannot grasp at once those better things To which I in my inmost soul aspire. Lean ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with which woman has been accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all oppression and injustice practised upon her has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... doth aspire to be god of Desire, Swears he "gives lawes; That where his arrows hit, somejoy, some sorrow it: ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... vain imaginings, If, urged by greed profane, He grasps at ill-got gain, And lays an impious hand on holiest things. Who when such deeds are done Can hope heaven's bolts to shun? If sin like this to honor can aspire, Why dance I still and ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... machine invariably starts the cry - "He is a candidate for the United States Senate." The open candidacy - and liberal advertising - of a machine man for the Federal Senatorship causes no adverse comment. For an anti-machine man to so aspire - or the suspicion in machine breasts that he so aspires - is heralded as evidence of his ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... a salutary effect; but the truth is, of all the passions incident to human nature, vanity is that which most effectually perverts the faculties of the understanding; nay, it sometimes becomes so incredibly depraved, as to aspire at infamy, and find pleasure in bearing the stigmas ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... published the "Bride of Abydos," Moore remarked that there existed some connection in that poem with an incident he had to introduce in his own poem of "Lalla Rookh." He wrote thereupon to Byron to say that he would stop his own work, because to aspire after him to describe the energy of passion would be ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... "But all beings aspire to rise in the scale of existence higher than they are. It was therefore the wish of my father, who is a powerful water-prince in the Mediterranean Sea, that his only daughter should become possessed of a soul, although she should have to endure many of the ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... with sudden wealth the rising dome; The price of boroughs and of souls restore, And raise his treasures higher than before: Now bless'd with all the baubles of the great, The polish'd marble, and the shining plate, Orgilio sees the golden pile aspire, And hopes ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... this trap for me,' Derrick cried bitterly. 'You have set evil reports afloat against me, lest I stand in your light with the Mayor's daughter. What are you that you should dare to raise your eyes to her! A mere vagrant and masterless man, coming none know whence. Why should you aspire to pluck the flower which has grown up amongst us? What had you to do with her or with ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said he quickly, "I do not aspire to that; I believe in Faust's verse: 'Ich ziehe... meine Schuler an der Nase herum—Und sehe dass wir nichts wissen konnen;' and I also bilde mir nicht ein, Ich konnte was lehren.' I wonder at and envy ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... seizure of occasion. The First Consul is a madman! He has sold to us an Empire! Empire! Emperor—Emperor of the West! The sound is stately. You laugh. We are citizens of a republic. Well! I am content. I aspire no higher. I am not Buonaparte. Your lilies are budding beneath the windows; the sweet williams are all in bloom. I have little news for you of town or country—Mrs. Randolph, doubtless, sends you all. Work goes on upon the church. For me, I worship ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... voices through all Nature. It extends to every kind of social intercourse. It engenders cheerful goodwill and loving sincerity. By its help we make others happy, and ourselves blest. We elevate our being and ennoble our lot. We rise above the grovelling creatures of earth, and aspire to the Infinite. And thus we link time to eternity; where the true Art of Living has ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... December. You know what high esteem I profess for Joachim's talent, and when you have heard him I am certain you will find that my praises of him latterly are by no means exaggerated. He is an artist out of the common, and one who may legitimately aspire ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... intertwisting reflections that in an access of bodily fever she stood up and moved before the glass, to behold the image of the woman who could be the victim of these childish emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck her eyes; she appeared to herself as poor and small as they. How could she aspire to a man like Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by wooing her she would not have adored him as she did now. He likes my hair, she said, smoothing it out, and then pressing her temples, like one insane. Two minutes afterward she was telling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pursuit of science is regarded as a profession, and where those who are successful in its cultivation are not shut out from almost every object of honourable ambition to which their fellow countrymen may aspire. Having, however, already expressed some opinion upon these subjects in another publication,(1*) I shall here content myself with referring ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... which slipped like a ray of light between his heavy half-closed eyelids. He perceived, in this unexpected incident, a chance of interrogating the heart of his sovereign. Dumay thought for a moment that the clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he exchanged a rapid glance with the others, who understood him, and began to eye the little man with a species of terror mingled ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... it is this principle, that has always prompted the princes and nobles of the earth, by every species of fraud and violence, to shake off all the limitations of their power; it is the same that has always stimulated the common people to aspire at independency, and to endeavour at confining the power of the great, within the limits ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... triumph, my felicity, would be enhanced." These thoughts were mere phantoms of the brain, and never, by system, put into action; but, repeatedly indulged, they were practised by casual occurrences; and the dear-bought experiment of being loved in spite of her faults, (a glory proud women ever aspire to) was, at present, the ambition of ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... crisis, to see their folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that Union, which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of obtaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the thicket my heart's bird! Slight and small the lovely cry Came trickling down, but no one heard. Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie Jarred horrid notes and the jangling jay Ripped the fine threads of song away, For why should peeping chick aspire To challenge ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... civilizer, the softener, the purifier, the perpetual witness to fierce and coarse men, that there were nobler aims in life than pleasure, and power, and the gratification of revenge; that not self-assertion, but self-sacrifice was the Divine ideal, toward which all must aspire. These old legends are immortal; for they speak of facts and laws which will endure as long as there are women upon earth. Through the woman, the civilizer and the Christianizer must reach the man. Through the wife, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the old proverb, the bystander sees more of the game than those who share too closely in its passions. And assuredly, if it were asked, what it is that we who write upon Indian news aspire to effect, I may reply frankly, that, if but by a single suggestion any one of us should add something to the illumination of the great sepoy conspiracy—whether as to its ultimate purpose, or as to its machinery, or as to its wailing hopes, or if but by the merest trifle any one ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... honorable extraction, but poor, finds himself reduced to the position of steward or director in the house of Araminte, a rich young widow, to whose hand he is induced to aspire by Dubois, his former servant, now in her employ, who, by his profound knowledge of the feminine heart, aided by his master's comeliness, succeeds in overcoming the prejudice of social standing in the mind of Araminte, and triumphantly marries her to ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... out of sheer, weak kindness of heart! But she's far too thickly gilded an heiress for me to aspire to. A few thousands a year is my most ambitious figure for a wife. Look at the men collecting around her and the wonderful lady you call Cleopatra. Why Cleopatra? Did ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... what I have told; and because they were the Princes faults, they also have suffered the punishment. I will fuller shew the infelicity of these armes. The mercenary Captains are either very able men, or not: if they be, thou canst not repose any trust in them: for they will alwaies aspire unto their own proper advancements, either by suppressing of thee that art their Lord, or by suppressing of some one else quite out of thy purpose: but if the Captain be not valorous, he ordinarily ruines thee: and in case it be answered, that whoever shall have his armes in his hands, whether ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar and near, Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here; Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that the dawn ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... heard that a man had dared to aspire to be as the Gods. Time after time he had fought the Titans, who were his peers, and kept them out of his kingdom; yet he feared a man whose power was that ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... only the institutors or restorers of them, but thought it glorious to share in the exercise of them, and meritorious to succeed therein. These subduers of monsters, and of the common enemies of mankind, thought it no disgrace to them, to aspire to the victories in these combats; nor that the new wreaths with which their brows were encircled in the solemnization of these games, detracted from the lustre of those they had before acquired. Hence the most famous poets made these combats ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the conquering foe, And in calm torpor watch'd each new o'erthrow! Yon troop of peasants, ignorantly gay, Who waste in careless sports the passing day, Soon shall behold the waving sheets of fire, Sent from their peaceful domes, to heaven aspire. Each year, each month, new towns with ruin smoke, And province after province feels the yoke. Already on our conquer'd castle's height The Danish watchfires redden all the night, Soon, soon, their inroads will our fate decide— Haste, let us spread th' eventful tidings wide, Arm every ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... who, like Mr. Sheridan, aim only to be men of wit, lie a bed; while they who, like Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Burke, and a very few others, aspire to be men of wisdom, rise with the lark. Horatio ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... not ambitious? Caesar was not more ambitious than Cicero. It was but in another way. All greatness is born of ambition. Let the ambition be a noble one, and who shall blame it? I confess I did once aspire to be Queen not only of Palmyra, but of the East. That I am. I now aspire to remain so. Is it not an honorable ambition? Does it not become a descendant of the Ptolemys and of Cleopatra? I am applauded by you all for what I have already done. You would not it should ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... greatest variety of characters. One thing only she demanded of all her friends,—that they should have some "extraordinary generous seeking,"[C] that they should not be satisfied with the common routine of life,—that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier, than they had now attained. Where this element of aspiration existed, she demanded no originality of intellect, no greatness of soul. If these were found, well; but she could love, tenderly and truly, where they were not. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened to by beasts, indeed, stony and beastly people, so among the Romans were Livius Andronicus, and Ennius; so in the Italian language, the first that made it to aspire to be a treasure-house of science, were the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower and Chaucer; after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother tongue, as well in ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... girl nearly so much, for she knew no matter how sweet and lovely and good a cat might be, it could only aspire to that honor in catland. She did so hate to hear Mr. Clay called old and poor when he was neither. To her he was brave Harry of the West, the ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... who would traverse it. To be a desultory reader, in the sense defined by Lord Iddesleigh, a man must first have been a student; and not to every student is given the temperament, capacity, and opportunity, to become a desultory reader—still less can every student aspire to that refined literary taste, which Mr. Harrison possesses in so large a measure, and which, in its characteristics, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... a sad one ever, Yet often with a smile I've heard it told! Oh, there are records of the heart which never Are to the scrutinizing gaze unrolled! My eyes to thine may scarce again aspire— Still in thy memory, dearest let me dwell, And hush, with this hope, the magnetic wire, Wild with ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... that he had been very unwise—that he had no right to aspire to the hand of the beautiful heiress, for he could offer her nothing but his true heart, and this, he well knew, would be scorned by ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... employing symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade and from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind, striving morally to ennoble themselves and others, and thereby to bring about a universal league of mankind, which they aspire to exhibit even now on a small ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... heard, if after Saumur's field, life be still left within my body's sanctuary, I will return to seize you as my own, though hosts in armour try to stop my way. I will not live without you. I will not endure to see another man aspire to the hand which has been refused to me. Adieu, Agatha, adieu! I trust we shall meet no more; in thinking of me, at any rate, your memory shall not call me despicable," and he rushed out of the door and down stairs, without waiting to hear whether Agatha intended making any answer to this poetical ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... mixture of admiration, fear, and confidence, with which his genius inspired many influential persons, Rodin now learned from members of the pontifical government, that, in case of a possible and probable occurrence, he might, within a given time, aspire, with a good chance of success, to a position which has too often excited the fear, the hate, or the envy of many sovereigns, and which has in turn, been occupied by great, good men, by abominable scoundrels, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... civilization is the correct thing for mortals to aspire to. As a boy, while I hated it with a bitter hatred, I accepted it as inevitable because my elders approved it and because it seemed indissolubly linked to the school, the church and the things of good repute. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... Fisher, wisely as I think, has left the religious question on one side, and has proposed a series of reforms which will fit equally well the one-sided system which still oppresses Nonconformists and the simply equitable plan to which I, as a lover of religious freedom, aspire. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... no power in the gloom of hell To quench those spirits' fire; There is no power in the bliss of heaven To bid them not aspire; But somewhere in the eternal plan That strength, that life survive, And like the files on Lookout's crest, Above death's clouds ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... culture the colored women and girls reach, the more sensitive they become, and the more keenly the effects of ostracism are felt. In wages it does not matter how capable she may be, she must not aspire. I have asked several persons, "What is the greatest need of the colored woman and girl?" and many have replied, "To be good servants." Assuming that this is her highest need, can good servants be ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... grown tired of rapture and love's desire; Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... thus when Freedom's ills I state, I mean to flatter kings, or court the great; Ye powers of truth, that bid my soul aspire, Far from my bosom drive the low desire; And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel 365 The rabble's rage, and tyrant's angry steel; Thou transitory flower, alike undone By proud contempt, or favour's fostering sun, Still may thy blooms the changeful ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... important subjects I acquire no fixed opinion. I think, and think, and go on thinking, and yet my thoughts are running ever in different directions. I hardly know whether or no we do lean more confidently than our fathers did on those high hopes to which we profess to aspire." ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... yield its secret and its fire. Each of you, O my Brothers, can make it light his own hut, warm his own heart, guide his own soul. Never before in the history of man did it seem as necessary as it does now that each individual should think for himself, will for himself, and aspire incessantly for the realisation of his ideals and dreams. Yes, we are to-day at a terrible and glorious turning point, and it depends upon us whether that one star in the vague and dusky sky of modern life, shall be the harbinger of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Portuguese, signifying to "command," to Chinese official functionaries, of which there are some nine orders, distinguished by the buttons on their caps, and they are appointed chiefly for their possession of the requisite qualifications for the office they aspire to. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... flanks the Cleveland Hills have a most imposing and mountainous aspect, although their greatest altitudes do not aspire to more than about 1,500 feet. But they rise so suddenly to their full height out of the flat sea of green country that they often appear as a coast defended by a bold range of mountains. Roseberry Topping stands out in ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... thinke y^t the hand of God was justly against him, both y^e first and 2. time of his returne; in regard he, whom you and we so confidently trusted, but only to use his name for y^e company, should aspire to be lord over us all, and so make you & us tenants at his will and pleasure, our assurance or patente being quite voyd & disanuled by his means. I desire to judg charitably of him. But his unwillingnes to part with his royall Lordship, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth—when its passions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are opening fresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade, young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspire to be saddened with the first failure—is the season when the seeds of disquiet and unhappiness are sown in the soul. And in the most gifted and sensitive souls these seeds are oftenest sown. Those ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... other prophecies of our national decadence. The "Oxford English Dictionary" has not yet unfolded the last of its coils, which yet are ample enough to enfold us in seven words for every three an active man can grapple with. Yet the warning has point, and a particular point, for those who aspire to write poetry: as Francis Thompson has noted ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... authorities. Other rebels rose, won victories, and sank again; but Li held his own and steadily grew stronger, until, in 1640, he was at the head of an army of nearly half a million of men and in a position to aspire to the throne of Peking itself. Town after town fell into his hands, frightful outrages being perpetrated in each, for Li was a brigand in grain and merciless at heart. The efforts of the emperor to overthrow him proved ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... your excellency," replied Gregory, "there are many men who, owing to the kindness shown them by others, forget their position and aspire to a more exalted one; having already been placed so ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... will doubtless help on the growth of its principles. Pilgrims from everywhere will go there in search of truth, and some may be satisfied and some will not. Christian Science cannot absorb the world's thought. It may get the share of attention it deserves, but it can only aspire to take its place alongside other great demonstrations of religious belief which have done something good for ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... dearest, gentlest, most honored of such few friends as my life has hitherto won to itself, to consider well the direct purport of this letter. If you, born in a grade so much higher than mine, feel that it is unwarrantable insolence in me to aspire to the hand of my patron's grandchild, say so plainly; and I remain not less grateful for your friendship than I was to your goodness when dining for the first time at your father's palace. Shy and sensitive and young, I felt that his grand guests wondered why I was invited to the same ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... king; "but you know the comte has the weakness to aspire to become a member of the Academy, so that, with this object in view, he has learnt all sorts of things of which very happily you are ignorant; and it might possibly happen that the language of the Nymph of the Waters might be among the number of ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... economic—practically they're all in the same boat—let alone the inevitable breakdown or petering out of each, necessarily produces a fresh crop of such waste and refuse material. And in that a man like myself, who does not aspire to cure or to construct, but merely to alleviate and to pick up ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... insult. Her conduct was open, her mind superior to deceit; and to be ignorant of this would be to shew myself unworthy of her. The lover should disdain to excite his mistress to any action which he would disapprove in a wife; and this was a rule not to be infringed, by him who should aspire to the noble-minded Olivia. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... between them a rivalry such as is inevitable between a State that has long held something like the first place in the world and a State that feels entitled in virtue of the number of its people, their character and training, their work and their corporate organisation, to aspire to the first place. The German nation by the mere fact of its growth challenges England for the primacy. It could not be otherwise. But the challenge is no wrong done to England, and the idea that it ought to be resented is ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... mine. A love that is shared with even such men as your excellent father, and your worthy cousin, will not make me happy. But, why should I, unowned, bearing a name to which I have no legal title, and virtually without relatives, aspire to one like you!" ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... combined conscientious workmanship, a pure style of finest quality, and archaeology, for all I know to the contrary, worthy of Becker or Boni. Sir Walter himself could never in reason have dared to aspire to such a fortunate conjuncture of talent, grace, and historic accuracy. He possessed only that profound knowledge of human nature, that moulding humour and quick sense of dialogue, that live, human, and local interest in ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... called the Zombe, who ruled with absolute authority during the term of his life. The right of candidacy was restricted to a group recognized as composing the bravest men of the community. Any man in the state might aspire to this dignity, provided he had Negro blood in his veins. There were other officials, both of a military and of a civil character. In the interests of good order, the Zombes made laws imposing ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... there are forty-seven juges de paix, twenty of whom, as I learn from an enquiry, were mayors at the time of their appointment. It is not to be wondered at that the number of provincial magnates who aspire to the post is on the increase, for it seems to be generally recognised in this department that elective office irrespective of all professional aptitude is the normal means of access to a paid appointment, more especially to that of juge de paix. Once they are appointed, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... roommate, John Lothrop Motley. He studied law with Charles Sumner, in the office of Judge Story, a legal star of the first magnitude. He was counted one of the handsomest youths in Boston. There was nothing too bright or too hard for Wendell Phillips to aspire to, or hope for. At the critical moment, when he had to decide upon his future career, ambition sang to him, as to every noble youth. George William Curtis represents Phillips as sometimes forecasting the future, as he saw himself "succeeding Ames, and Otis and Webster, rising from the bar to the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... George upon a thousand points; was always for the advice that seemed palatable to the Prince, no matter if it was good or bad; and seems upon the whole (like the gambler he was all through life) to have had less regard to the chances of the campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire to, if, by any luck, it should succeed. For the rest, he did very well in the field; no one questioned that: for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is the cure for being "at ease in Zion." Aspirations are good or bad according to the motive that prompts them. Some are essentially selfish, and such are necessarily evil. If we desire to be or do for selfish advantage, for glory and praise; if we aspire to be leaders, as so many religious people do, only that they may have authority or honor—our aspirations are evil. But each one of us owes it to himself and to God to desire strongly to be and to do ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... Scotland is that situated on the dangerous reef called the Inch Cape or Bell Rock. This lighthouse may fairly aspire to the title of the Eddystone of Scotland, whether we regard its high importance to navigation, the danger and difficulty of its erection, the beauty of its ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... superstition." It was not true. Few women had tried more earnestly to pierce the accretions in which body and soul are enwrapped. The death of Mrs. Wilcox had helped her in her work. She saw a little more clearly than hitherto what a human being is, and to what he may aspire. Truer relationships gleamed. Perhaps the last word would be hope—hope even on this side ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... your mutual dissimulation. The love I once felt for her she has herself deliberately killed. I had a lover—she took him. I had faith in life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed all. A thief—she has dared to aspire to him! And you condoned her fault. You, with your craven restoration of her booty, thought the matter cleared and her a fit mate for ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... ever ready to help. That is foundation firm enough to build solid fabrics of hope upon, whose bases go down to the centre of all things, the purpose of God, and whose summits, like the upward shooting spire of some cathedral, aspire to, and seem ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... despair and madness please; Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the bliss above. This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. When the full organ joins the tuneful quire, Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear; Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire, While solemn airs improve the sacred fire; And angels lean from Heav'n to hear. Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell, To bright Cecilia greater pow'r is given; His numbers rais'd a shade from Hell, Hers lift the ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... put it from me. From a cursory investigation I gleaned that no distinctions of social caste were drawn among the Boy Scouts; that almost any boy of a given age, regardless of the social status of his parents, might aspire to membership, or even to office, providing he but complied with certain tests—in short, that the Boy Scouts as at present constituted were, ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... has long conveyed a very miscellaneous idea, and they that take a dictionary into their hands, have been accustomed to expect from it a solution of almost every difficulty. If foreign words, therefore, were rejected, it could be little regarded, except by criticks, or those who aspire to criticism; and however it might enlighten those that write, would be all darkness to them that only read. The unlearned much oftener consult their dictionaries for the meaning of words, than for their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... neglect; a generous expansion, a proud elevation and conscious greatness of character, which is the best preparation for a decided course in every situation into which you can be thrown; and it is to this high and noble tone of character that I would have you to aspire. I would not have you to resemble those weak and meagre streamlets, which lose their direction at every petty impediment that presents itself, and stop and turn back, and creep around, and search out every channel through which they may wind their feeble and sickly course. Nor ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... wishes of men always aspire still farther the farther they advance, Bonaparte was no longer content with the possession of a small house in Paris. He now wanted an establishment in the ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... who "take charge concerning us lest at any time we dash our foot against a stone," and with devils who are perpetually on the watch to perplex us and do us injury. And, having familiarised our minds with the conceptions of these beings, we immediately aspire to hold communion with them. We represent to ourselves God, as "walking in the garden with us in the cool of the day," and teach ourselves "not to forget to entertain strangers, lest by so doing we ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... offence. Johannes, in Victoria, is of humble birth, which counts in extenuation of his unmannerly frankness in early years. Later he becomes a poet, and as such is exempt in some degree from the conventional restraint imposed on those who aspire to polite society. All these well-chosen characters are made to serve the author's purpose as channels for poetic utterance that might otherwise seem irrelevant. The extent to which this is done may be seen from the way in which Hamsun lets a character ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... short stories and short stories. On a perusal of those that Mr. RICHARD DEHAN has collected in volume form under the title of The Cost of Wings (HEINEMANN), I am bound to record my conviction that most of them are profoundly unworthy of the author of The Dop Doctor. Few of them even aspire to anything beyond "first serial" quality; and though there is often present a certain easy flippancy of phrase it impressed me only as the crackling of thorns in a pot-boiler. Perhaps the best is the first or title tale, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... most beautiful women in Europe, to whom these children are playthings. For her there is only Louis Delgado. It is her firing of his dreams which makes him aspire to a throne. It is she who has the determination. He can see visions of power only in the colors of his absinthe glass. She uses men to her ends. Lapas is the latest—unless—" Blanco paused—"unless he is playing ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... told her all the conflict of my soul; my devouring passion, my bitter self-upbraiding. "Yes!" said I, "I am unworthy of you. I am an offcast from my family—a wanderer—a nameless, homeless wanderer, with nothing but poverty for my portion, and yet I have dared to love you—have dared to aspire to your love!" ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... vain, O Kings, doth time aspire To make your names oblivion's sport, While yonder hill wears like a tier The ruined grandeur of your fort. Though centuries falter and decline, Your proven strongholds shall remain Embodied memories of your line, Incarnate ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... the general enthusiasm, nodded all sparkling to Compton, and that made his heart beat and his soul aspire. So next over he claimed his rights, and took the ball. Luck still befriended him: he bowled four wickets in twelve overs; the wicket-keeper stumped a fifth: the rest were "the tail," and disposed of for a few runs, and the total was no more ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... but the green canvas bags, which he conceived would fit his needs, and an ambition. This last was nothing less than to strike it rich and set himself up among the eminently bourgeois of London. It seemed that the situation of the wealthy English middle class, with just enough gentility above to aspire to, and sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, appealed to his imagination, though of course he did not put it ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... also, one great glory of the nation is felt to be the works of its scientific and learned men of the past and present. Membership of one of the five academies of the Institute of France is counted among the highest honors to which a Frenchman can aspire. Most remarkable, too, is the extent to which other considerations than that of merit are set aside in selecting candidates for this honor. Quite recently a man was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences who was without either university or official position, and earned a modest ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Israel to Jerusalem, they caused him to be apprehended—tried him their great council—condemned him to death, and importuned the Roman governor to sentence him to the cross, as a rebel against Caesar. The charge was not supported—Christ did not aspire to temporal dominion—"his kingdom was not of this world." The governor declared him not guilty. Had Christ, like the Arabian deceiver, which afterwards arose, assumed the sword, marked his way with blood ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... in the mud?" "It would rather be alive and wagging its tail in the mud," said the officials. "Begone" said Chung. "The tortoise is a symbol of longevity and great wisdom. It would not befit me to aspire to greater wisdom than the tortoise. I, ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... and difficultly attainable in Chili, their talents have no opportunity of being developed, and are mostly employed in trifling pursuits; and as the expence of printing is enormous, they are discouraged from literary exertion, so that few among them aspire to the reputation of becoming authors. The knowledge of the civil and canon law is held in high estimation, so that many of the youth of Chili, after completing their academical education in their own ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... to increase the reserve of military manhood formed a motive for colonisation. In the first place, the surplus manhood of a nation was lost to it if it was allowed to pass under an alien flag by emigration. Those continental states from which emigration took place on a large scale began to aspire after the possession of colonies of their own, where their emigrants could still be kept under control, and remain subject to the obligations of service. Germany, the state which beyond all others measures its strength by its fighting man-power, was most affected by this motive, ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... issuing from its gulf, And diving back, a living topaz each, With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... beneath the rank that a person of his name and honor might aspire to, the daughter of Thos. Topham, of the city of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, taking the Parliamentary side in the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the property which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who devised ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... down the river, and I did not see him. He is regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.—there seems, indeed, to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service. I could not but envy the position ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... these suspicions, scoffed at them in a letter to his friend, Edmund Burke, and declared that he had not the "temerity and vanity" to aspire to the aims imputed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... their soul, desiring Thee; and night- winds homeless roam with dole, reproaching Thee; the clouds aspire, and find no goal, and gush for ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... than in our country—an advantage that results naturally from the form of their government. There are about eight hundred persons in England who have a right to speak in public, and to support the interest of the kingdom; and near five or six thousand may in their turns aspire to the same honour. The whole nation set themselves up as judges over these, and every man has the liberty of publishing his thoughts with regard to public affairs, which shows that all the people in general are indispensably obliged to cultivate their understandings. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... early experience had made him acquainted with the manner in which the voice ought to be modulated to make the utterance effective; and although he seldom ventured to recite, he was always a fair critic and a deeply interested auditor. The young ambition of a few had led them to aspire to authorship, and they established a monthly magazine. Although the several articles were not of the highest order, they were, nevertheless, quite equal to the average periodical writings of the day. In this magazine it is believed that Hume published his first song. It had been sent in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to quit this city," Goliba said. "Hasten not thy decision, but what I will show thee secretly ere long will perhaps convince thee of the terrors of the Naya's reign. I have often counselled the queen to aspire to the virtues of truth, wisdom, justice and moderation, the great ornaments of the Emerald Throne, but my endeavours have been frustrated and the fruit ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... is that "age of admiration" as sings the poet of "Human Life," when the spell breathed into our ear by our genius, fortunate or unfortunate, is—"Aspire!" Then we adore art and the artists. It was RICHARDSON'S enthusiasm which gave REYNOLDS the raptures he caught in meditating on the description of a great painter; and REYNOLDS thought RAPHAEL the most ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... small place," said Mr. Montgomery, modestly, "but my tastes are plain and unobtrusive, and I do not aspire to a more conspicuous post. However, that is not to the purpose. A lady parishioner, desiring to donate a portion of her wealth to the poor, has placed in my hand a diamond ring, the proceeds to be devoted to charitable objects. I desire to sell it, and, knowing the high reputation of your ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... existence, among a foreign people from whom all that is false in my position may be concealed—not for my sake, but for the sake of my child. To more than this, to the happiness which some women enjoy, I must not, I dare not, aspire. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... with her good opinion. That good opinion, I have the best of evidence to believe, is being undermined by one to whom you have ever been kind, but who, I am sure, you would not wish to become your son-in-law, though he has the audacity—if I may be allowed so strong an expression—to aspire after your daughter's hand! Having nothing of his own to recommend him, and knowing that I am in his way, he does not cease to traduce me to your daughter on every occasion, and I fear the insidious poison of his oily tongue has already had a serious effect on her mind, which, if ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... the British Press, Which men must credit, more or less, To tell how things are done. So by all bards with hearts of fire Cheerfully be it sung, That still our people may not tire In doing well, but yet aspire; Let these renew TYRTAEUS' lyre, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... of Don John, and any man will perceive that all my views of happiness, both for my country and myself, imply a peaceable enjoyment of the union, joined with the legitimate restoration of our liberties, to which all good patriots aspire, and towards which all my designs have ever tended. As all the grandeur of Don John, on the contrary, consists in war, as there is nothing which he so much abhors as repose, as he has given ample proof of these inclinations in all his designs and enterprises, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. And thus this lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other countries would, from their intelligence and station, most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the farthest ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... in life which it is in the power of all to follow and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement and every contest a victory—and this the pursuit of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain her, and zealously to labour after her wages is to receive them. Those that seek her early will find her before it is late; her reward also is with her, and she will come quickly. For the breast ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... districts, which we are about to enter, suffer from the Gaum, or razzia, of the neighbouring Anezah and the Juhaynah;—the two tribes, however, not mixing. The bandits, numbering, they say, from fifty to sixty, mounted on horses and dromedaries, only aspire to plunder some poor devil-shepherd of a few camels, goats, and muttons. They never attack in rear; they always sleep at night, save when every moment is precious for "loot"-driving; and their weapons, which may be deadly in the narrows, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... or $20,000,000. When impecunious counts, lords, dukes and princes, having wasted the inheritance originally obtained by robbery, and perpetuated by robbery, are on the anxious lookout for marriages with great fortunes, and the American money magnates, satiated with vulgar wealth, aspire to titled connections, the arrangement becomes easy. [Footnote: More than 500 American women have married titled foreigners. The sum of about $220,000,000, it is estimated (1909), has followed them to Europe.] Romance can be dispensed with, and the lawyers ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... only was this rest for a short time disturbed. During the troublous period the neighboring country of Egypt, which had recovered its freedom, and witnessed a revival of its ancient prosperity, under the Psamatik family, began once more to aspire to the possession of those provinces which, being divided off from the rest of the Asiatic continent by the impassable Syrian desert, seems politically to belong to Africa almost more than to Asia. Psamatik I., the Psammetichus of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... this, the longed-for thing Which wanderers on the restless foam, Unsheltered beggars, birds on wing, Aspire to, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... good works, may be led, by the divine blessing, to acknowledge the reality and power and beauty of religion, and be induced in like manner to glorify his heavenly Father. In short, in comparison with his thoughtless comrades, he must not only aspire to become a better man, but, from the constraining motives of the gospel, struggle to be also in every ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... have lived your life, and there is no man before me here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it is to be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what it is to dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them perish—to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire by the wild-beast powers of my life. I know what is the price that a working-man pays for knowledge—I ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... compliments till just before we separated, when the future editor inquired of me whether I had ever read Quintilian; and, on my replying in the negative, expressed his surprise that any gentleman should aspire to become a critic who had never read Quintilian, with the comfortable information, however, that he could supply me with a Quintilian at half-price, that is, a translation made by himself some years previously, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... not pretend, therefore, to improve upon the able productions of such eminent writers as Juan de le Concepcion, Martinez Zuniga, Tomas de Comyn and others, nor do I aspire, through this brief composition, to detract from the merit of Jagor's work, which, in its day, commended itself as a valuable book of reference. But since then, and within the last twenty years, this Colony has made great strides on the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... means a house with an entrance-'hall,' Puddingpote Bower did not aspire to be one. A visitor dived, in medias res, into the passage at once. In it stood an oak-cased family clock, and a large glass-case, with an alarming-looking, stuffed tiger-like cat, on an imitation marble slab. Underneath the slab, indeed all about the passage, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... that her guest thought the tea detestable and the cake stale. It was as necessary for people of Mrs. Meadowsweet's class to go in for strong tea and high living as it was for people of Mrs. Bertram's class to aspire to faded felt in the matter of carpets, and water bewitched in the shape of tea. Each after her kind, Mrs. Bertram murmured. But as she had an object in view it was necessary for her to earn the good-will of ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... bosom all the energies of the past, yet is itself an exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, for the first time seem I to know any thing rightly. The simplest words,—we do not know what they mean except when we love and aspire. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hair until it fell down. She was not a person to be judged—she was one of the unexplained incidents of existence. The hour has passed when the clearly moral can sum up the responsibilities of a creature born apparently without brain, or soul or courage. Those who aspire to such morals as are expressed by fairness—mere fairness—are much given to hesitation. Courage had never been demanded of Feather so far. She had none whatever and now she only felt panic and resentment. She had no time ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... love takes deeper sense, And doth her love more recompense: Their first night's meeting, where sweet kisses Are th' only crowns of both their blisses He swims t' Abydos, and returns: Cold Neptune with his beauty burns; Whose suit he shuns, and doth aspire Hero's fair tower ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... you talk of losing Fiesco? Good God! How could you ever conceive the ambitious idea of possessing him? Why, my child, aspire to such a height? A height where you cannot but be seen, and must come into comparison with others. Indeed, my dear, he was a knave or a fool who joined you with FIESCO. (Taking her hand with a look of compassion.) ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... thought of leaving my sweet Jeanette alone in that gloomy house. But, on the other hand, how could I aspire to help if ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... "I aspire, Madam, to render myself favorable to the deity to which reason advises me to make homage. Accept then the offering and render happy he who makes ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which woman has been accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all oppression and injustice practised upon her has been sure in the end ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dare to aspire again, and in his fancy it was Margaret's spirit that floated on and on for ever, her fragrance immanent in the songs he ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Dutch maintained their independence in the sixteenth century against the most formidable regular army in Europe, and also did their fair share of fighting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they have long ceased to aspire to the rank of a military Power. The separation from Belgium in 1830-31 put an end to the Orange policy of creating a powerful Netherland State from Lorraine to the North Sea which could hold its own with either France or Prussia, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... power, and convinced that the heart of this great, courteous, patient, longsuffering Slavic people is groping for expression of self-government, and that America is their ideal—a hazy ideal and one that they aspire toward only in general outlines. Their ultimate self-government may not take the shape of American constitutionalism, but Russian self-government must in time come out of the very wrack of foreign and internecine war. And every American soldier who fought the Bolshevik Russian in ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... her charms, could not aspire to become one of the Forest set, though she had hopes she might be reckoned a descendant from the famous Roses so well known in the reigns of some of our Henrys, Edwards, and Richard III., though she assuredly was of a very different extraction; indeed, it was said ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... pleasure derived from a real witticism. That any high order of wit is exceedingly complex, and demands a ripe and strong mental development, has one evidence in the fact that we do not find it in boys at all in proportion to their manifestation of other powers. Clever boys generally aspire to the heroic and poetic rather than the comic, and the crudest of all their efforts are their jokes. Many a witty man will remember how in his school days a practical joke, more or less Rabelaisian, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... spoken rashly," said he; "only this request I would fain deny. I beg you to withdraw it. It is not a safe boon, nor one, my Phaeton, suited to your youth and strength. Your lot is mortal, and you ask what is beyond a mortal's power. In your ignorance you aspire to do that which not even the gods themselves may do. None but myself may drive the flaming car of day; not even Jupiter, whose terrible right arm hurls the thunder bolts. The first part of the way is steep, and such as the horses when fresh in the morning can hardly climb; the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... whence all things had their Birth, And mount my prying Soul 'twixt Heaven and Earth, Thus the sweet Harmonv o' th' whole admire, } And by due Search new Learning still aquire, } So nearer ev'ry day to Truths Divine aspire. } ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... where she was received with great marks of attention and honor. She was now eighteen or nineteen years of age, in the bloom of her beauty, and the monarch of a powerful kingdom, to which she was about to return, and many of the young princes of Europe began to aspire to the honor of her hand. Through these and other influences, she was the object of much attention; while, on the other hand, Queen Catharine, and the party in power at the French court, were envious and jealous of her popularity, ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers. Would I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am only—myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart to do and dare. I have no title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm and ...
— Options • O. Henry
... none, Miss Temple, said Edwards quickly; there is none who has a right to aspire to you, and I know that you will wait to be sought by your equal; or die, as you live, loved, respected, and admired ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... most gracefully on their inferiors? Naturally we bethought us of their vices. It was not always so easy to adopt my lord's urbanity, his unassuming dignity, his well-bred ease; but one might reasonably aspire to be as wicked. Sabbath-breaking had long since ceased to be the privilege of the better classes, and so men's minds reverted to the question of divorce. "Let us get rid of our wives!" cried they; "who knows but the day may come when ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... have already done us more honor than simple gentlemen could ever aspire to, therefore gratitude is on our side. But we must not lose time. We have already wasted ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... awful ruins AEtna thunders nigh, And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire, From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire; At other times huge balls of fire are toss'd, That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost: Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn, Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne With loud explosions to the starry skies, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... courage, pride, scorn, all the intensities of his nature, all that he supposed he possessed, all that lay hidden and unsuspected, arose in their might to overcome him now. He did not think, he did not aspire, or hope, or fear, or dream, or remember: he only felt, and bled, and moaned low, hopeless, helpless moans. If it is given to some natures to enjoy intensely, so such correspondingly suffer; and Bart, alone with his pale, cold, dead brother, through this deep, silent night, abandoned himself ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Chow-tsze (A.D. 1034) to that of Choo-tsze (A.D. 1200). The last of these is the real fashioner of Chinese philosophy, and one of the truly great men of the human race. His works are chiefly Commentaries on the Kings and the Four Books. They are committed to memory by millions of Chinese who aspire to pass the public-service examinations. The Chinese philosophy, thus established by Choo-tsze, is ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... me, and on the assurance of my faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... concern as he tears a pullet. Thus you see to what scorn of danger these mercenaries arrive, out of a mere love of sordid gain: but methinks it should take off the strong prepossession men have in favour of bold actions, when they see upon what low motives men aspire to them. Do but observe the common practice in the government of those heroic bodies, our militia and lieutenancies, the most ancient corps of soldiers, perhaps, in the universe. I question whether there is one instance of an animosity ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... powerful people! (I speak here to both of you) what is your object—to what do you aspire? What will be the end of your dissensions? It is not the blood of the Carthaginians or the Numantians that you are about to spill, but it is Italian blood; the blood of a people who would be the first to start up and offer to expend their blood, if any barbarous ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of eminent degree To some vast beam compared might be; Each godling was a peg, or rather A cramp, to keep the beams together: 40 And man as safely might pretend From Jove the thunderbolt to rend, As with an impious pride aspire To rob Apollo of his lyre. With settled faith and pious awe, Establish'd by the voice of Law, Then poets to the Muses came, And from their altars caught the flame. Genius, with Phoebus for his guide, The Muse ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... social intercourse. It engenders cheerful goodwill and loving sincerity. By its help we make others happy, and ourselves blest. We elevate our being and ennoble our lot. We rise above the grovelling creatures of earth, and aspire to the Infinite. And thus we link time to eternity; where the true Art of Living has ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... contributed the smallest or largest articles with a zeal honourable to literature and most useful to the public. They made this dictionary their commonplace book for all their curious acquisitions; every one competent to write a short article, preserving an important fact, did not aspire to compile the dictionary, or even an entire article in it; but it was a treasury in which such mites collected together formed its wealth; and all the literati may be said to have engaged in perfecting these volumes during a century. In this manner, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ideals of the race. He preached the mystic doctrine, and insisted that they be applied to the problems of every-day life and conduct. He brought down the teachings of the Kaballah from the cloudy heights, and set them before the people in plain, practical form. He bade them aspire to great spiritual heights, forsaking the base ideals to which they had clung. He ran counter to every custom and prejudice of the people before Him, and showed a lack of reverence for all of their petty forms and traditions. He bade them leave the illusions of material life and follow the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... eligible to apply my industry to the arrangement of the history of my native country, hitherto almost wholly overlooked by strangers; but interesting to my relations and countrymen; and from these small beginnings to aspire by degrees to works of a nobler cast. From these inconsiderable attempts, some idea may be formed with what success, should Fortune afford an opportunity, I am likely to treat matters of greater importance. For although some things ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... ourselves like even to think of, but they should adopt some other profession unless they are prepared for this; they may even get inoculated with poison from a dead body and lose their lives, but they must stand their chance. So if we aspire to be priests in deed as well as name, we must familiarise ourselves with the minutest and most repulsive details of all kinds of sin, so that we may recognise it in all its stages. Some of us must doubtlessly perish spiritually ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... moistened eyes. If this was really so the man had doubtless already received answers and chosen. There must be so many others looking like herself for a haven of safety, for deliverance from lives that were unendurable. Who was she that she should aspire to this thing? To such a man she could bring but health impaired, but the remnants of her former strength. In a bit of looking-glass she saw her dark-rimmed eyes and deemed that she had lost all such looks as she had ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... requires that all believers shall celebrate that sacrament, as well as the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, at least once a-year. Confessors amplify this obligation, and require their penitents to observe both these sacraments frequently. Devout persons who aspire to greater spiritual perfection practise these observances once a week. Still, however, the church is satisfied with an annual celebration of them by each of its members, and fixes the period for that performance at Easter. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... a bewildering "puzzle"! And so to the close. Between the uncultivated whom Dickens moved, and the cultivated he failed to move; between the power that so worked in delft as to stir the universal heart, and the commonness that could not meddle with porcelain or aspire to any noble clay; the pitiful see-saw is continued up to the final sentence, where, in the impartial critic's eagerness to discredit even the value of the emotion awakened in such men as Jeffrey by such creations as Little Nell, he reverses all he has been saying about the cultivated and uncultivated, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... it the more. I have suppressed many details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced me ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... desire— Sank in the maelstrom of abysmal fire, To be of man beheld on earth no more? Her loyal children, cheery to the core. Quailed not, nor blenched, while she, above the ire Of elemental ragings, dared aspire On victory's wings resplendently to soar. What matters all the losses of the years, Since she can count the subjects as her own That share her fortunes under every fate; Who weave their brightest tissues from her tears, And who, although ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... seating us, such liberal portion gave To each, as hospitality requires. 945 Our thirst, at length, and hunger both sufficed, I, foremost speaking, ask'd you to the wars, And ye were eager both, but from your sires Much admonition, ere ye went, received. Old Peleus charged Achilles to aspire 950 To highest praise, and always to excel. But thee, thy sire Menoetius thus advised. "My son! Achilles boasts the nobler birth, But thou art elder; he in strength excels Thee far; thou, therefore, with discretion rule 955 His inexperience; thy advice impart With gentleness; instruction wise ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... reputation flowed wholly from the princely favor, not from his studies and illustrious works. Alfonso accordingly affected to despise the poems which Tasso presented, and showed his will that: 'I should aspire to no eminence of intellect, to no glory of literature, but should lead a soft delicate and idle life immersed in sloth and pleasure, escaping like a runaway from the honor of Parnassus, the Lyceum and the Academy, into the lodgings of Epicurus, and should harbor in those lodgings in a quarter ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... hunger after, thirst after, crave after, lust after, itch after, hanker after, run mad after; raven for, die for; burn to. desiderate^; sigh for, cry for, gape for, gasp for, pine for, pant for, languish for, yearn for, long, be on thorns for, hope for; aspire after; catch at, grasp at, jump at. woo, court, solicit; fish for, spell for, whistle for, put up for; ogle. cause desire, create desire, raise desire, excite desire, provoke desire; whet the appetite; appetize^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... funeral stone, But not upon A name which beareth The stain thine weareth. One exploit brave Sank 'neath the wave; The next one failed thee, Nor aught availed thee; Thy bow rust broke, Not thou. The stroke, When I aspire, Is set much higher, As thou mayst see ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... much wealth without setting one's heart on it. But it is also true that this greed may possess one who has little or nothing. It may be found in unrestrained excess under the rags of the pauper and beggar. They who aspire to, or desire, riches with avidity are covetous whether they have much, little, or nothing. Christ promised His kingdom to the poor in spirit, not to the poor in fact. Spiritual poverty can associate with abundant wealth, just as the most ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... hopeless and helpless wreck, unable to exercise the faith that seemed so natural to others; but who, after a time, under the teaching of Jesus, has been enabled to assume a position to which none of his associates could aspire! ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey, English - nay, MEHERCLE, Scottish - heaven; and I think it pretty bleak; and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do not catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat. So that hitherto Saranac, if not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere point of view of the wicked body, it has proved a success. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... difficultly attainable in Chili, their talents have no opportunity of being developed, and are mostly employed in trifling pursuits; and as the expence of printing is enormous, they are discouraged from literary exertion, so that few among them aspire to the reputation of becoming authors. The knowledge of the civil and canon law is held in high estimation, so that many of the youth of Chili, after completing their academical education in their own country, proceed to Lima to study law. The ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... like me, indulged in dreams of going back to England to fill some great railway post, but he had reached his sixties and his dreams were over. Often, when we talked familiarly together, he would say: "Joseph, if you aspire to be a general manager in England you ought never to have come to Ireland. They don't think much on the other side of Irish railways or Irish railway men." This, I daresay, was true, though he, well known, liked and admired as he was, ought to have been ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... cared she would not have remained. But there was a detestable argument to fit that likewise, and in the light of this argument it was most natural that she should return to Les Iles. And who was I, David Ritchie, a lawyer of the little town of Louisville, to aspire to the love of such a creature? Was it likely that Helene, Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour, would think twice of me? The powers of the world were making ready to crush the presumptuous France of the Jacobins, and the France ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the marble breathe To honour me, and with the graceful wreath13 Or of Parnassus or the Paphian isle Shall bind my brows—but I shall rest the while. Then also, if the fruits of Faith endure, And Virtue's promis'd recompense be sure, Borne to those seats, to which the blest aspire By purity of soul, and virtuous fire, These rites, as Fate permits, I shall survey With eyes illumin'd by celestial day, 110 And, ev'ry cloud from my pure spirit driv'n, Joy in the ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... civil society: but they did indeed affirm that these gradations were, both ways, both as they ascended and as they descended, limited. There was an existence of power, to which no good king would aspire; and there was an extreme condition of subjection, to which man could not be degraded without injustice; and this they would maintain was the condition of the African, who was torn away ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... said to myself that it is unworthy of a man to allow himself to be subjected by love, unworthy to make a woman the mistress of his thoughts, of his desires; that a man should strive for higher aims, aspire to nobler things." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... if you love dancing and aspire to make it a career, you possess an innate sense of rhythm. You feel the swing of music and love to move your body to the strains of a lilting melody. The first great possessions of the successful stage dancer are a love of harmonious sounds and a sense of rhythmic motion. If you haven't ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... of Britz's reputation, for he was aware that the lieutenant did not aspire to the head of the bureau, would not have accepted the promotion had it been offered. As a subordinate Britz was relieved of all the routine which occupied so much of the chief's time, so that he could devote all his energies to the single case to ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... that state which has no relation to matter, or space, or time, to which the departing flame of the extinguished taper has gone. It is the supreme end, Nonentity. The attaining of this is the object to which we ought to aspire, and for that purpose we should seek to destroy within ourselves all cleaving to existence, weaning ourselves from every earthly object, from every earthly pursuit. We should resort to monastic life, to penance, to self-denial, self-mortification, and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... sacred sisters of faire Helli[c]on, On whom my favours evermore have shone, In this you must have patience with my vow: I cannot graunt what you aspire unto, Nor wast my fault she was transformed so, But her own fond desire, as ye well know. We told her, too, before her vow was past That cold repentance would ensue at last; And, sith herselfe did wish the shape of man, She causde the abuse, digest ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... and still idler reading which, are so great an obstacle to recollection. Studying her love of retirement, they will pray for grace to resist worldly influences, and following her to the miserable homes of the destitute, they will aspire to become, like her, angels of comfort to the desolate and sorrowing. Thus will their childhood and youth be saintly, as, were those of the model now ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... celebrated lighthouse in Scotland is that situated on the dangerous reef called the Inch Cape or Bell Rock. This lighthouse may fairly aspire to the title of the Eddystone of Scotland, whether we regard its high importance to navigation, the danger and difficulty of its erection, the beauty of its form, or its ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... those who have denounced me as ambitious and presumptuous, in view of my persistence in this enterprise. I was but nine years from slavery. In point of mental experience, I was but nine years old. That one, in such circumstances, should aspire to establish a printing press, among an educated people, might well be considered, if not ambitious, quite silly. My American friends looked at me with astonishment! "A wood-sawyer" offering himself to the public as an editor! ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Christ. I supposed we all ought to be terrified at thoughts of this kind, and that none but the apostles might boast of such honor. But the fact is, we must all say to Christ: "Thou art my Lord and I am thy servant; for I believe on thee and aspire to be with thee and all the faithful and to possess thy Word and Sacrament." Otherwise Christ ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... Baltasar, with affected unconcern; "is not that the name of your former protege, the love-stricken swain who ventured to aspire to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... he weigh, who does aspire To empire, whether truly great, His head, his heart, his hand, conspire To make ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... he should thank you too, but at the present moment he is quite absorbed in finding a cool place in this room to lie down in, having sacrificed his usual favorite place at my feet, his head upon them, oppressed by the torrid necessity of a thermometer above 70. To Flopsy's acquaintance he would aspire gladly, only hoping that Flopsy does not 'delight to bark and bite,' like dogs in general, because if he does Flush would as soon be acquainted with a cat, he says, for he does not pretend to be a hero. Poor Flush! 'the bright summer days on which I am ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... noisily to snuff then and began to clear a passage, kicking out to right and left and laughing when his victims protested. Before he had traversed fifty yards he had made himself more enemies than most men dare aspire to in a lifetime, and he seemed well pleased with ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... plebeians, and the nobles are all poor; there is and can be in a group so incongruous no cordiality, no gayety, no splendor; in a word, no such society as the last descendant of the Charrebourgs may reasonably aspire to." ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... her son with matrimonial designs. Katie knew that the old lady was at heart a match-maker, but, with the exception of herself, who, however, was engaged, she had found no one good or beautiful enough to aspire to an alliance with the ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... fire And motion of the soul which will not dwell In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire; And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire Of aught ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... reared—scenes which will have their peculiar and insidious perils. I foresee that you will rise to distinction in your studies. But do not seek high things for yourself. Be not anxious to become what is called a great preacher, nor aspire to a 'brilliant settlement.' Sacrifice not conscience for place and power and the applause of sect. Keep humble. Keep Christ ever before you; and may he watch between me and thee while we are separated from each other;" and she kissed him a fond farewell. Tom stepped ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... cold wind is fended off. The fleshy lances of the spring beauty have stabbed upward through the mulch, and a tiny cup, delicately veined with pink, hangs its head bashfully. Anemones on brown wire stems aspire without a leaf, and in moist patches are May pinks, the trailing arbutus of the grown-ups. As we carry home a bunch, the heads all lopping every way like the heads of strangled babies, we can almost hear behind us in the echoing forests a long, heart-broken moan, as of Rachel mourning for her children, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... she would ask for the bread of sympathy and they would give her a stone. He wished he might carry her away, shielding her and comforting her against the storm. He knew he would willingly give his life to make her happier. Of course she did not care for him. How could she? Who was he—Jim Dodge—to aspire ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... remunerating. What matters it if Damascus guard jealously the secret of her fragrant clouded steel, when Sheffield can turn out efficient sword-blades at the rate of a thousand per hour? Suum cuique tribuito. Let others aspire to be popular: be it ours to remain irreproachably ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... whose rivers are shallow and uncertain, the steamers are built to run on a heavy dew. Allowing for the joke, this is not more nice than wise. To be dexterous, fine-fingered, facile! How perfect is the response in all the petty personalities of politics! In this America, where all men aspire, and more men get office than one would think there were offices to get, what miracles of adroitness! It is one perpetual, Turn, turn again, Lord Mayor! If but half the genius were diverted from office-getting to house-building, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... my ambition made me always aspire to much higher things and so did the treatment which I always received from you heretofore; but now, that you talk of abandoning me to 'lie upon a hard bed,' and intimate that, unless I give up the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... deeps or skies Burnt the ardour of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire— What the ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... inns are, however, excellent; and though certainly not moderate in their charges, they are at least more so than those of Bermuda. In a word, it is exactly such a town as one would expect to find holding the principal commercial rank in a colony where men's minds seldom aspire beyond the occupations ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... withhold me; whereby a man cuts himself off from all action, and becomes the most helpless, pusillanimous, and unweaponed creature in the world, the most unfit and unable to do that which all mortals most aspire to—either to be useful to his friends or to offend his enemies? Or, if it be to be thought a natural proneness, there is against that a much more potent inclination inbred, which about this time of a man's life solicits most—the desire of house and family of his own; to which nothing is esteemed ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Then, when this body falls in funeral fire, My name shall live, and my best part aspire. It shall go so. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... the novelty of the life led by the Leonards. This indeed merits a closer study than can be given here, for it is the life led by vast numbers of prosperous New Yorkers who love both the excitement of the city and the repose of the country, and who aspire to unite the enjoyment of both in their daily existence. The suburbs of the metropolis stretch landward fifty miles in every direction; and everywhere are handsome villas like Leonard's, inhabited by men like himself, whom strict study ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the log shanty is not likely to become a necessity, we will nevertheless describe its mode of construction, in order to satisfy our more earnest and adventurous readers, who aspire to a full taste ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... involved the transference of the administration of over two-thirds of the counties to the bishop's dependants. On the downfall of Hubert, Segrave became justiciar. He was not the equal of his predecessors either in personal weight or in social position, and did not aspire to act as chief minister. The appointment of a mere lawyer to the great Norman office of state marks the first stage in the decline, which before long degraded the justiciarship into a simple position ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... youth reject the artless praise, Which due to worth like thine the Muse bestows, Who with prophetic extasy surveys These early wreaths of fame adorn thy brows. Aspire like Nassau in the glorious strife, Keep thy great fires' examples full in eye; But oh! for Britain's sake, consult a life The noblest triumphs are too mean to buy; And while you purchase glory—bear in mind, A prince's truest ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... are sundry little sinecures, equally remunerative, to which well-to-do Dutch farmers, who are the more generally preferred, aspire; and each fills his role with acceptable dignity and a serious sense of responsibility. Consequently, there is more gnashing of teeth on the farm over the loss of one of these appointments than over the failure of a ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... do not doubt, the visit of the distinguished member of the Government of the United States shall make the peoples of the north and the south know one another better; if the era of Pan American fraternity takes the flight to which we should aspire; if these demonstrations of courtesy are to tend, therefore, toward the progress of the nations of the continent and the mutual respect and consideration of their respective governments, the satisfaction ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... from an excellent disposition. I thank you. Be well assured, I aspire to more than gratitude! I am convinced that, when arrived at the summit, you will judge me still more worthy to be your friend: and then, monseigneur, we two will do such great deeds that ages hereafter shall long ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... what is good, to judge severely what is only strong, to live on very little, to give away nearly all, in order to re-establish primitive equality and bring back to life again the Divine institution: that is the religion I shall proclaim in a little corner of my own, and that I aspire to preach to my twelve apostles under ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... unity in which all multiplicity is resolved, whether it be thought of as one final law of necessity, which all things obey, and of which all the various other "laws of nature" are so many special and limited applications; or as one final love for which all things are created, and to which all things aspire; as one matter of which all bodies are but varying forms; or as one spirit, which is the life of all things, and of which all things are so many manifestations. Every scientist and philosopher is a merchant seeking for goodly pearls, willing to sell every pearl that he has, if he may secure ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... those who have produced this crisis to see the folly, before they feel the misery, of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen, as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire. ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... myself to the feelings and fancy of the reader more than to his judgment. My writings may appear, therefore, light and trifling in our country of philosophers and politicians. But if they possess merit in the class of literature to which they belong, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the fiddle and Frenchhorn." This diffidence was not assumed. All through his career, a breath of criticism ever so slight acted temporarily like a boar-frost upon his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his well-spent life,—pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often shall I be with you, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of creation consists always in the growth of individual minds, which live and aspire, as flowers bloom and birds sing, in the midst of morasses; and in the continual development of that thought, the thought of human destiny, which is given to eternity adequately to express, and which ages of failure only seemingly impede. Only seemingly; ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... don't know how to make a particular application. Presuming that you will accept it kindly, not for any merit of the Author, but upon the account of our Friendship and Acquaintance; and I heartily desire that you mayn't stop here, but aspire to a loftier degree: for this is so far from being able to bring you to those heights, that is not sufficient to save you. Now I would lead you by the same paths which I have walk'd in before you, and make you steer by the same Compass, till you arrive at the same Point, and see ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... Cohen, did he not consider women qualified to fill public offices? it did not require much "physical force" to vote! Mr. Cohen replied with an argumentum ad foeminam:—He would, with all humility and respect, ask the young lady, what sort of office she would aspire to fill? If she would fill one, she would fill all? He was not going to treat the question with ridicule; but he would ask her to suppose herself in the House of Commons, as Member for a Parliamentary Borough, and that a young gentleman, a lover, in that House, were to try to influence ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Methodism, and the civil interests of the country. I have never received one acre of land, nor one farthing from Government, nor of any public money. I have never written one line at the request of any person connected with the Government. I count it to be the highest honour to which I can aspire to be a Methodist preacher; and in this relation to the Church and to the world I shall count it my highest joy to finish my ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... add my own complimentary remarks to those of the King, I certainly perceived that about this illustrious person there was an air of modesty and simplicity such as one does not commonly find in Apollo's favourites who aspire to fame. Moreover, he was ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... dwarfs who live in the gloom of Niebelheim he chooses deep shades of red, the lowest vibrating colour of the solar spectrum. For it is in the nature of the spiritual part of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand, a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with their strange fight against all the laws of gravity, striving ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... endured had given additional mildness to my character. In the theatre upon which I was now placed I had no rival. My mechanical occupation had hitherto been a non-resident; and the schoolmaster, who did not aspire to the sublime heights of science I professed to communicate, was willing to admit me as a partner in the task of civilising the unpolished manners of the inhabitants. For the parson, civilisation was no part of his trade; his business was with the things of a better life, not with the carnal ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... prospers above probability in all Worldly matters. Dost not thou know that Fortune governes them without order, and therefore reason the mother of order is none of her counsaile? why should a man desiring to aspire an unreasonable creature, which is a woman, seeke her fruition by reasonable meanes? because thy selfe binds upon reason, wilt thou looke for congruity in a woman? why? there is not one woman amongst one thousand, but will speake false Latine, and breake ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... became President of the Court of Appeal—a high and, as it would seem, lucrative post, which made him unwilling to aspire to any other appointment. His leisure, though more limited than before, was devoted, as formerly, to his favorite studies; and in 1807 he accepted the presidency of the Asiatic Society—a post never before or after filled so worthily. He not only contributed himself several articles to the "Asiatic ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... have achieved some renown, either as a soldier or in the equally honorable province of letters. We may well believe, then, that amongst such a people as the Chinese, whose very breath almost is at the emperor's pleasure, such a distinction is the chiefest ambition of every man; for all may aspire to it. ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... the cheek. "When I was a boy, Mary, a lawyer and a gentleman were identified. Like the army—and, thank God! that is still intact, none but a man of decent pretensions claimed a gown, no more than a linen-draper's apprentice now would aspire to an epaulet. Is there a low fellow who has saved a few hundreds by retailing whisky by the noggin, who will not have his son 'Mister Counsellor O'Whack,' or 'Mister Barrister O'Finnigan'? No, no, if you must have Frank bred to a local profession, make him an apothecary; a twenty ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... certainty of remaining in his Majesty's service during good behaviour. This meant for life, for I had now learned how to govern my conduct, having schooled myself, for the sake of my mother's peace of mind, to keep out of trouble, often against my natural impulses. Thus both Phil and I might aspire to Margaret; and, moreover, 'twas like that her father would provide well for her if she found a husband to his approval. It did not then occur to me that my employment in the English service might be against ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... are beyond good and evil. They are for the wholly savage or the wholly civilized. We complain considerably just now of the swamping of class distinctions in our lands, but a man of culture has a prerogative to which the biliously moral middle classes can never aspire: to be an Arab, when it ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... a moment. "Listen to me, Porphyrius Petrovitch! To use your own statement, you have against me nothing but psychological sentiments, and yet you aspire to mathematical evidence. Who has told you ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... young giants. You will see those who, in the Law, the Church, the State, or the still cloisters of Learning, are destined to become the eminent leaders of your age. To rank amongst them you are not forbidden to aspire; he who in youth "can scorn delights, and love laborious days," should pitch ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have these things to do with the "Ballad Poetry of Ireland"? Much every way. It is the result of the elements we have named—it is compounded of all; and never was there a book fitter to advance that perfect nationality to which Ireland begins to aspire. That a country is without national poetry proves its hopeless dulness or its utter provincialism. National poetry is the very flowering of the soul—the greatest evidence of its health, the greatest excellence of its beauty. Its melody is balsam ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... There was hardly an escape from the recognition of the fact that Mr. Janes, in his serious, romantic way, was in love with Gertrude, but it was evident that he had been held well in hand, and that with him the platonic path had strict barriers, beyond which he did not even aspire to pass. He made Paul his confidant when the two came to intimacy, as they very easily did; and from his simple talk the elder learned again a great deal of what he had learned already from Gertrude—how, for instance, there was a certain isolation of the soul from which it ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... that alliance they have moved in society into which they could not gain entrance before. Now, if you marry Stanley Ginsling, as he is first cousin to Lord Fitzjinkins, we will have the entree to society to which they dare not aspire; and then the airs of superiority can be on our side, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... thin ankle, staring wide-eyed over the heads of guests, occasionally, when he was vehement, throwing his head up, shooting his words at the ceiling as if they had been Greek fire. Now, as he got up to leave her, his eyes dwelt earnestly on her. "It will be a pleasure, to which I shall aspire—that of meeting you ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... honours and the fame of his exploits, in order to do away with the imputation of envy, that it would appear I am in danger of being rivalled by every obscure person, but not by himself, because, as he enjoys an eminence above every body else, an eminence to which I do not dissemble that I also aspire, he is unwilling that I should be placed upon a level with him. He has represented himself as an old man, and as one who has gone through every gradation of honour, and me as below the age even of his son; as if he supposed that the desire of glory did not exceed the limits of human life, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... confess, that, where I am ignorant, I am diffident. I am, indeed, not very solicitous to clear myself of this imputed incapacity; because men even less conversant than I am in this kind of subtleties, and placed in stations to which I ought not to aspire, have, by the mere force of civil discretion, often conducted the affairs of great nations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cairn their answer tost: "Minstrel! the fame of whose romantic lyre, Capricious-swelling now, may soon be lost, Like the light flickering of a cottage fire; If to such task presumptuous thou aspire, Seek not from us the meed to warrior due: Age after age has gathered son to sire Since our grey cliffs the din of conflict knew, Or, pealing through our ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... rivalry such as is inevitable between a State that has long held something like the first place in the world and a State that feels entitled in virtue of the number of its people, their character and training, their work and their corporate organisation, to aspire to the first place. The German nation by the mere fact of its growth challenges England for the primacy. It could not be otherwise. But the challenge is no wrong done to England, and the idea that it ought to be resented is unworthy of British traditions. It must be cheerfully ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... than elsewhere, especially in high school and college, gymnasium work has been brought into healthful connection with field sports and record competitions for both teams and individuals who aspire to championship. This has given the former a healthful stimulus although it is felt only by a picked few. Scores of records have been established for running, walking, hurdling, throwing, putting, swimming, rowing, skating, etc., each for various shorter ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... low pleasures, and vain amusements. Whether that was really so or not, the doubt remained whether authorship was not now a creed outworn. Did tender maids and virtuous matrons still cherish the hope of some day meeting their literary idols in the flesh? Did generous youth aspire to see them merely at a distance, and did doting sires teach their children that it was an epoch-making event when a great poet or novelist visited the country; or when they passed afar, did they whip some favored boy, as the father of Benvenuto Cellini whipped him at sight ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... necessities of the saints[12:13]; given to hospitality. (14)Bless those who persecute you; bless, and curse not. (15)Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. (16)Be of the same mind one toward another. Aspire not to things that are high, but condescend to the lowly. Be not wise in your own conceits. (17)Recompense to no one evil for evil. Provide things honorable in the sight of all men. (18)If it be possible, as far as depends on you, be at peace with all men. ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... exasperate his debtors; as they could have so easily retaliated by accusing him of Christianity. The wealthy disciple could not accept the office of a magistrate, for he would have thus only betrayed his creed; neither could he venture to aspire to any of the honours of the state, as his promotion would most certainly have aggravated the perils of his position. Our Saviour had said—"I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... what a ghastly failure! See how feeble after all, are these pretentious women of the new order, who begin by denying the sufficiency of the life assigned them, by common consent, and end by failing in that and in the other which they aspire to. What has become of all the talent and all the theories and resolves?' And so the next girl who dares to have ambitions, and dares to scorn the role of adventuress that society allots to her, will have the harder ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... side-saddle she gallops by, And in the breeze her fair tresses fly! Or when with her mother in church she bows low And on devout faces a red flush doth flow! Then for the joys of lawful wedlock I aspire, And follow her and her ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... own the trembling sire Invokes, thee Virgins ever sue Who laps of zone to loose aspire, And thee the bashful bridegrooms woo With ears ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... not," was the reply. "A person in your position should not aspire to association with young gentlemen ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... to fierce and coarse men, that there were nobler aims in life than pleasure, and power, and the gratification of revenge; that not self-assertion, but self-sacrifice was the Divine ideal, toward which all must aspire. These old legends are immortal; for they speak of facts and laws which will endure as long as there are women upon earth. Through the woman, the civilizer and the Christianizer must reach the man. Through the wife, he must reach the husband. Through the mother, he must reach the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... bear testimony that they had been surprised into confessing it to one another. He sighed, and said: 'True. I had thought that the barrier between the robe and the sword was so fixed in a French mind that I should as soon have expected Nicolas to aspire to Mademoiselle de Ribaumont's hand ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... discord continued. The States of Holland renewed the Edict of Exclusion, with the addition of a clause, that, whenever a person should be invested, with the office of Captain, or Admiral General, he should swear never to aspire to the office of Stadtholder, and to refuse it, if it should ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... said she "loved superstition." It was not true. Few women had tried more earnestly to pierce the accretions in which body and soul are enwrapped. The death of Mrs. Wilcox had helped her in her work. She saw a little more clearly than hitherto what a human being is, and to what he may aspire. Truer relationships gleamed. Perhaps the last word would be hope—hope even on this ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Roscoe Conkling and all his ways. Conkling once said to him: 'If you will join us and act with us, there is nothing in the gift of the State of New York to which you may not reasonably aspire.' To which Wheeler replied: 'Mr. Conkling, there is nothing in the gift of the State which will compensate me for the forfeiture of my own self-respect.'"—Hoar, Autobiography, Vol. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... purity and peace, go to Nature. She will give you more than ye ask. Ye who long for strength and perseverance, go to Nature. She will train and strengthen you. Ye who aspire after an ideal, go to Nature. She will help you in its realization. Ye who yearn after Enlightenment, go to Nature. She will never fail ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Continent for a peasant's or even a tradesman's son or daughter to aspire to a higher level than that of the family. Exceptions to the rule are looked upon with distrust by superiors as well as the lowly equals: too much ambition is a temptation to the gods ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... twenty feet he stopped. The paper was long since off press and distributed. He had no desire to know what Naylor was saying. He could not even guess. There are heights to which the imagination cannot aspire. ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... that by mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules. For ignorance of causes, and of rules, does not set men so farre out of their way, as relying on false rules, and taking for causes of what they aspire to, those that are not so, but ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... I have now written to you all that it becomes you to receive from me. My horse waits below to bear me from this city, and forever from your vicinity. For ever!—-ay, you are the only blessing forever forbidden me. Wealth I may gain, a fair name, even glory I may perhaps aspire to,—to heaven itself I may find a path; but of you my very dreams cannot give me the shadow of a hope. I do not say, if you could pierce my soul while I write, that you would pity me. You may think it strange, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... artist's rank is in harmony with Browning's general feeling that men are to be judged less by their actual achievements than by the possibilities that lie unfolded within them, and the ends to which they aspire, even though such ends be unattained: "In the hierarchy of creative minds, it is the presence of the highest faculty that gives first rank, in virtue of its kind, not degree; no pretension of a lower nature, whatever the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of those honest visionaries sometimes met in Ireland, said:—"For my own part, I confess that I aspire to complete independence. Then, and not till then, would the two countries be friendly. We in Ulster are ten times more patriotic than Irishmen elsewhere, for it is in Ulster that we have been most deeply wronged. The Hamiltons of Abercorn planted the country round here with Scotch settlers, and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Does not one catch the man one wants to catch, without their having any choice? And they really think that they choose ... the fools ... but it is we who choose ... always.... Just think, when one is not ugly, nor stupid, as is the case with us, all men aspire to us, all ... without exception. We look them over from morning till night, and when we have selected one, we fish for him...." "But that does not tell me how you do it?" "How I do it?... Why, I do nothing; I allow myself to be looked at, that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... trudge and tire their soul, desiring Thee; and night- winds homeless roam with dole, reproaching Thee; the clouds aspire, and find no goal, and gush ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
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