"Renunciation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... based on violence, the aim of which was the security of personal, family, and social welfare, has come to the point of renouncing the very objects for which it was founded—it has reduced men to absolute renunciation and loss of the welfare it ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... assure you that it is a monstrous oppression of spirits which I feel, and which I would not feel for an hour if I had nobody's happiness to think of but my own, which would be much more secured by a total renunciation of Parliament, Ministers, and Boroughs than by pursuing the emoluments attached to those connections. However, as it is the last time that I shall ever have anything to do of this kind, I will endeavour to keep up my spirits as ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... instant I received your Lordship's instructions of the 16th ultimo, relating to the execution of a Greek near Brussa for relapsing from Islamism, and directing me to require of the Porte an unequivocal renunciation of the principle involved in that barbarous act. I received at the same time, from Her Majesty's Ambassador at Paris a despatch informing me that he had communicated those instructions to M. Guizot, and was ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... to her own ideas. He attacks her with her own weapons, and opposes rhapsody to sentiment—He professes so sovereign a contempt for the paltry concerns of money, that she thinks it her duty to reward him for so generous a renunciation. Every plea he artfully advances of his own unworthiness, is considered by her as a fresh demand which her gratitude must answer. And she makes it a point of honour to sacrifice to him that fortune which he is too noble to regard. These professions of humility are the common artifice of the vain, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... other woman an effort of renunciation, but she was steadfast to her secret purpose. "Forget that. It doesn't matter. I had no right to ask, and really do not care to know. But if you're quite able to pay attention, I'd like to consult with you—about what got me out of bed and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... him to reform, since he would sooner transfer the succession to one worthy of it than to his own son if unworthy. Alexis replied by renouncing all claim to the succession. Renunciation, Peter answered, was useless. Alexis must either reform, or give the renunciation reality by becoming a monk. Alexis promised; but when Peter left Russia, he betook himself to his brother-in-law's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... heat of controversy and in his powerful essays and criticisms. Writing in 1828, he declared that the Serampore missionaries "have laboured with the most earnest assiduity for a quarter of a century (Dr. Carey much longer) in all manner of undertakings for promoting Christianity, with such a renunciation of self-interest as will never be surpassed; that they have conveyed the oracles of divine truth into so many languages; that they have watched over diversified missionary operations with unremitting ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... far more potent than competition was mutual help and co-operation in the scheme of life. And in this country through milleniums, there always have been some who, beyond the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, sought for the realisation of the highest ideal of life—not through passive renunciation, but through active struggle. The weakling who has refused the conflict, having acquired nothing has nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won, can enrich the world by giving away the fruits of ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... troops of the thoroughly trustworthy Metellus might be employed for the protection of the capital. But the Samnites made demands which recalled the yoke of Caudium—restitution of the spoil taken from the Samnites and of their prisoners and deserters, renunciation of the booty wrested by the Samnites from the Romans, the bestowal of the franchise on the Samnites themselves as well as on the Romans who had passed over to them. The senate rejected even in this emergency terms of peace so ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... which we know shall be one day righted, to acquiesce in the limited and imperfect conditions of earth, which we know shall be merged at last in heaven's perfect round, and to accept with patience the renunciation demanded of us ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and customs were like at the time of the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. The character of Mr. Rufus Lyon, the independent minister, is an admirable study of the non-conformist of that period. Esther's renunciation of a brilliant fortune for a humbler lot with the man she loved and admired, was quite in accord with the teaching George Eliot inculcated all her life. The scene of the story is laid in the Midlands, and the action, covering about ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... which some nameless one makes for the citizens, perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their laws. These, too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal taunt. They are, indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at all—this it is that makes the succes fou (and here Paris is of one mind with London) of the street; but short ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Of course it has been his great renunciation. His superiors thought it necessary to cut him off from it entirely. And no doubt during the novitiate he suffered a great deal. It has been like ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have begun to scratch for its living in a day or so. Mickie flicked away the fragments of shell from the steaming dainty and laid it snugly on a leaf. "That's for Paddy"—an Irish terrier, always of the party. It was an affecting act of renunciation. Presently "Paddy" came along; but "Paddy," who, too, had lunched, bestowed merely a sniff and a "No, thank you" wag of the tail. "What, you no want 'em? All right." No second offer was risked, and in a moment, in one mouthful, the chick was being ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... immediately that they are willing to open peace negotiations as soon as the enemy powers declare their consent to the renunciation of all forcible annexations. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... a formal renunciation of all rights or claims from the fictitious marriage by which she had been deceived, and an absolute pledge never to renew any contract with Sir Amyas Belamour, Knight Baronet, who had grossly ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the very opposite to Emmeline's feeble character, the heroine of the present story is intended to set forth the manner in which a Christian may contend with and conquer this world, living in it but not of it, and rendering it a means of self-renunciation. It is therefore purposely that the end presents no great event, and leaves Marian unrecompensed save by the effects her consistent well doing has produced on her companions. Any other compensation ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... returned to his van, where he stood looking thoughtfully into the stove. A new vista was opened up to him. But, however promising Mrs. Yeobright's views of him might be as a candidate for her niece's hand, one condition was indispensable to the favour of Thomasin herself, and that was a renunciation of his present wild mode of life. In this he saw ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... one of the laws of Glennard's intercourse with Miss Trent that he always went to see her the day after he had resolved to give her up. There was a special charm about the moments thus snatched from the jaws of renunciation; and his sense of their significance was on this occasion so keen that he hardly noticed the added ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... tears were shed during the composition of this letter would be to overstrain fortitude beyond natural bounds. With difficulty Alicia checked the effusions of her pen. She wished to have said much more, and to have soothed the agony of renunciation by painting with warmth her tenderness and her regret; but reason urged that, in exciting his feelings and displaying her own, she would defeat the chief purpose of her letter. She hastily closed and directed it, with a ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... his demeanor to suggest that he had been a victor. His face was white, and after his eyes had held hers for a long time he gave her a wistful little smile which expressed regret, sorrow, renunciation, rather than pride. She no longer wondered at the interest she felt in this man; she knew that she loved him. She was able to own that truth to herself, and to view it calmly because she had made her ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... giving up her son, who is properly hers, or (as she expresses it) lending him to Jehovah for ever (1Samuel i. 28: MW)LMW)L), is regarded as a renunciation of family rights. The circumstance that it is by the parents and not by Samuel himself that the consecration is made makes no material difference; the one thing is on the same plane with the other, and doubtless occurred as well as the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... admiration, as it took shape in the author's hands. There were indications even in the first fervor of the embarkation, that even here some among them thought "every man upon his own," while greater need of unselfishness and self-renunciation had never been before a people. "Only by mutual love and help," and "a grand, patient, self-denial," was there the slightest hope of meeting the demands bound up with the new conditions, and Winthrop wrote—"We ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... did not combine, as in the case of the partition of Poland, to break the peace and prey upon a defenseless neighbor, but to keep the peace; and if to keep the peace meant the suppression wherever possible of liberal political ideas, it meant also the renunciation of aggressive foreign policies. In this way Europe obtained the rest which was necessary after the havoc of the Revolutionary wars, while at the same time the principle on which the Holy Alliance was based was being put to the test of experience. Such a test it could not ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Col. Higginson, "I have always thought it the ablest." Whittier says, "It is no exaggeration to say that no man or woman at that period rendered more substantial service to the cause of freedom, or made such a 'great renunciation' in ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... of the German Government, this sudden and deeply deplorable renunciation of its assurances, given this Government at one of the most critical moments of tension in the relations of the two Governments, I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... whose sorceries had kindled in his heart one of those fatal passions which burn out the whole of a man's nature, and leave it, like a sacked city, only a smouldering heap of ashes. Deepest, therefore, among his vows of renunciation had been those which divided him from all womankind. The gulf that parted him and them was in his mind deep as hell, and he thought of the sex only in the light of temptation and danger. For the first time in his life, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... your condescension. Madam, I am doomed to be for ever wretched; and to sigh without ceasing for the possession of that jewel, which, though now in my offer, I dare not enjoy. I shall not pretend to express the anguish that tears my heart, whilst I communicate this fatal renunciation, but appeal to the delicacy of your own sentiments, which can judge of my sufferings, and will, doubtless, do justice to the self-denial ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Charter, the renunciation of any right to the exactions by which the people were aggrieved, the pledge that the king would no more take "such aids, tasks, and prizes but by common assent of the realm," the promise not to impose on wool any heavy customs or "maltote" ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... flag of truce soliciting a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours, that they might negotiate respecting peace. The peremptory reply returned was, that there should not be truce for a single moment, unless Frederic would renounce all pretension to the crown of Bohemia. With such a renunciation truce would be granted for eight hours. Frederic acceded to the demand, and the noise ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... is no renunciation in forsaking the things prized by most men. His virtue may be vice concealed; he gathers bliss where others find boredom. Give me a tree, a perfect tree, and you may keep your palaces. Give me the green fields with a hundred thousand flowers, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... they were condemned thereto by the definitive sentence of a competent judge, rendered in a case decided. We renounce whatever laws and rights plead in our favor, and in this case, and the law and rule of law that says that a general renunciation of laws is invalid. This is given in the said city of Manila, on the twenty-eighth day of the month of April of the year one thousand six hundred and eleven. The grantors, whom, I, the notary, testify to be known ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... Also to the party not in fault for desertion for one year, adultery, condemnation for felony, concealment of any loathsome disease at time of marriage or contracting it afterwards, force, duress, or fraud in obtaining marriage, uniting with any creed or religious society requiring a renunciation of the marriage covenant or forbidding husband and wife to cohabit. To the wife, when not in like fault, for confirmed drunkenness of husband leading to neglect to provide, habitual behaviour by ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... depressing circumstances. This is the case with his three novels, and with this purpose in view, it is really an important state of existence which he describes,—an inner world, which no one understands better than he, who has himself, drained out of the bitter cup of suffering and renunciation, painful and deep feelings which are closely related to those of his own experience, and from which Memory, who, according to the old significant myth, is the mother of the Muses, met him hand in hand with them. That which he, in these his works, relates to the world, deserves ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... ground, moved slightly his hand in a hopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned his eyes away from him, and scanned deliberately the paper he had been holding ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... its sittings Lord Randolph in private conversation was not less insistent as to the permanency of his act of renunciation. He was tired of politics, he said, and saw no future for himself in an assembly where at one time he was a commanding figure. Some of his friends, whilst puzzled and occasionally staggered by his insistence on this point, have always refused to accept his view of the possibilities ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the leaders of the Lords found their party impracticable, and they were compelled (or thought themselves so) to give way to the prejudices of the majority. But Peel did not understand this knocking under to violence and folly, and his pride was mortified, because it was a sort of renunciation of his authority as leader and chief of the whole party. Accordingly it was with reference to these proceedings that Peel spoke with great bitterness to Sandon, and said that 'he never would be the tool of the Lords,' He left town in high dudgeon, and was probably not sorry to display ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... and not forbidden under the New, are right, then our moral code will undergo a sad deterioration. Polygamy was allowed to the Israelites, was the practice of the holiest men, and was common and licensed in the age of the apostles. But the apostles no where condemn it, nor was the renunciation of it made an essential condition of admission into the Christian Church." To this we answer, that so far as polygamy and divorce were permitted under the old dispensation, they were lawful, and became so by that permission; and they ceased to be lawful when the permission was withdrawn, and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... be dissolved in case of its violation by either party. This extended as much to the sovereign as to inferior lords. * * If a, vassal was aggrieved, and if justice was denied him, he sent a defiance, that is, a renunciation of fealty to the king, and was entitled to enforce redress at the point of his sword. It then became a contest of strength as between two independent potentates, and was terminated by treaty, advantageous or otherwise, according to the fortune of war. * * There ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... away from him at last, after he had kissed her eyelids and her forehead, which was by way of renunciation. And then he folded his arms, which were treacherous and might betray him. After that, not daring to look at her, but with his eyes fixed on the irregular sky-line of the city roofs, he told her many things, of his promise ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the leadership of the Protectionist party by Lord George Bentinck, it was soon evident to the House and the country that that renunciation was merely formal. In these days of labour, the leader of a party must be the man who does the work, and that work cannot now be accomplished without the devotion of a life. Whenever a great question arose, the people out of doors went to Lord George Bentinck, ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... the coming renunciation in his voice and in his half-unconscious change of tense, and she dropped her eyes again, for fear they should betray the gladness that she felt, and so should ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the faithful; but their people are so remiss that they content themselves with furthering only their trading and commerce, caring only for their own individual aims and interests, and peradventure, to no little renunciation of the name of Christian, and causing it to be despised (as in Goa, Malaca, Macan, Maluco, and other parts)—who, satisfied with their own individual interests and business, do not, as here, regard the propagation of the holy gospel ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... backed by the whole nation. She frankly acknowledged that there was reason for complaint; she cancelled the patents which had excited the public clamours; and her people, delighted by this concession, and by the gracious manner in which it had been made, did not require from her an express renunciation of the disputed prerogative. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of monks that was founded by Buddha is the oldest existing religious order in the world. For nearly two thousand five hundred years these monks have practised renunciation and high thinking and have worn the yellow robes of the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... upon his personal assets. To surrender these possessions proved no act of self-sacrifice, considering his wife's fortune, upon which the law had no claim. His wife, however, joined him in the act of renunciation, and they stood together penniless. Beyond this point there could be no legal, and, to many minds, no moral responsibility for the debts of his firm. One can speculate upon the force of the temptation ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... to spend and be spent, is apparent throughout the whole story of Bradford's life. It displayed itself in the boyish spirit of renunciation that led him to join the Scrooby society, and held him loyal to his association even through imprisonment and persecution, through exile, flight, and emigration. Again and again through his long service as governor of the Plymouth colony, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... December. He had no more idea of succumbing to them than he had of purchasing the fish-knives and fur boas that ladies are impelled to sacrifice through the medium of advertisement columns during twelve months of the year. Still, there was something impressive in this unasked-for renunciation of possibly ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... pinnacles and turrets were prohibited. The triforium was omitted. The windows were to be plain and undivided, and it was forbidden to decorate them with stained glass. All needless ornament was proscribed. The crosses must be of wood; the candlesticks of iron. The renunciation of the world was to be evidenced in all that met the eye. The same spirit manifested itself in the choice of the sites of their monasteries. The more dismal, the more savage, the more hopeless a spot appeared, the more did it please ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... all that makes life attractive; to take no pleasure either through the eye, or through the ear, or in any other way. He gives rules for getting up, for going to bed, for eating and for dressing. His doctrine may be summed up in a word: he teaches self-renunciation. But he does it in so kindly and affectionate a tone that the life he wishes his penitents to submit to does not seem too bitter; his voice is so sweet that the existence he describes seems almost sweet. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... I could not bear to dream any fate for you but the greatest. I saw you always leading events, rather than waiting on them. But true greatness lies in the man, not in his actions. Compromise, delay, renunciation—these may be as heroic as conflict. A woman's vision is so narrow that I did not see this at first. You have always told me that I looked only at one side of the question; but I see the other side now—I see that ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... family; dissensions arose within the ruling family, leading to members of the family assassinating one another. In 264 a member of the Ssu-ma family declared himself king; when he died and was succeeded by his son Ssu-ma Yen, the latter, in 265, staged a formal act of renunciation of the throne of the Wei dynasty and made himself the first ruler of the new Chin dynasty. There is nothing to gain by detailing all the intrigues that led up to this event: they all took place in the immediate ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... would look up at the castle stonily, in a mood of desperate renunciation, and vaguely meditate packing his belongings, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... believing the truth of dogmas, of absurd fables, which Christianity (according to the catechisms) orders its disciples to believe—dogmas, as absurd and impossible as a square circle, or a round triangle—from which we see, that this virtue exacts an entire renunciation of common sense; an assent to incredible facts, and a blind credulity in absurd dogmas, which, yet, every Christian is required to believe, ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... promise not to speak of this?" she said impatiently. Then their eyes met for a moment, and he knew that he was false to himself and that his talk of renunciation was a mockery. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... those who die in the Lord have attentively listened to His kind remonstrances, concerning reconciliation and entire renunciation of every false hope of heaven only through faith in the name of Jesus. They realize that God's methods of mercy are peculiarly calculated to impart peace in the hour of sickness and death. They see the city which hath foundations ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... in mind a great renunciation: but unfortunately he could not for the moment discover any way to broach it. He played to gain time, therefore, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Louis, born 1784; Rudolph, born 1788, who became a Cardinal. Consequently, at the time of Marie Louise's marriage, there were eleven Archdukes, three sons and eight brothers of the Emperor. The wedding ceremony was preceded, March 10, 1810, by a rite called the renunciation. At one in the afternoon, Marshal Berthier, Prince of Neufchtel, Ambassador Extraordinary of France, drove to the Palace with his suite, in a state carriage drawn by six horses, and was conducted to the hall of the Privy Council, to witness this ceremony. As soon as Francis II. and Marie ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... close the skimpy shawl about her. The smooth bands of her hair put a shadow into the slight hollows of her temples. No nun, in the chilly meekness of the habit, had ever given me such a strong impression of poverty and renunciation. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... impulse and the call. The gleam on the snow, the upward path, the urgent stress within, that is our certainty, the rest is doubt. But doubt is a horizon, and on it hangs the star of hope. By that we live; and the science blinds, the renunciation maims, that would shut us off from those silver rays. Our eyes must open, as we march, to every signal from the height. And since the soul has indeed 'immortal longings in her' we may believe them prophetic of their fruition. For her claims are august as ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... wealthy Abolitionists. The poor gave freely of their mite, and the rich as freely of their thousands. Something of the state of simplicity and community of goods which marked the early disciples of Christianity seemed to have revived in the hearts of this band of American reformers. A spirit of renunciation, of self-sacrifice, of brotherly kindness, of passionate love of righteousness, of passionate hatred of wrong, of self-consecration to truth and of martyrdom lifted the reform to as high a moral level as had risen ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the messengers' demeanour to the rejecters of their message. Shaking the dust off the sandals is an emblem of solemn renunciation of participation, and perhaps of disclaimer of responsibility. It meant certainly, 'We have no more to do with you,' and possibly, 'Your blood be on your own heads.' This journey of the Twelve was meant to be of short duration, and to cover much ground, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... she does not know him as such, though she feels herself greatly attracted by him. In order to save the girl from persecution, the Countess takes her with her into her room. Meanwhile the Count offers the sum of 5000 thalers to Baculus for the renunciation of his bride. The silly schoolmaster accepts the offer, thinking that the Count wishes to win the real Gretchen. By waking the latter's vanity, he succeeds in turning her affection to the Count, but great is his perplexity, when ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... neither fear nor weakness. Such are the rules; I must conform to them. If some physical sufferings result from it, with joy do I offer them to God! You will approve it, I hope; you, who have always practiced renunciation and duty with so much courage. Farewell, my dear father. I will not say I am going to pray for you, when I pray to God, I always pray for you, for it is impossible to prevent mingling you with the divinity I implore; you have been to me ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... morality, announced by the Deity, really divine, or superior to those which every reasonable man might imagine? They are divine solely because it is impossible for the human mind to discover their utility. They make virtue consist in a total renunciation of nature, in a voluntary forgetfulness of reason, a holy hatred of ourselves. Finally, these sublime precepts often exhibit perfection in a conduct, cruel to ourselves, ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... the constitution granted by Alexander. He organized their army for the Poles, and felt himself more a Pole than a Russian, especially after his marriage, on the 27th of May 1820, with a Polish lady, Johanna Grudzinska. Connected with this was his renunciation of any claim to the Russian succession, which was formally completed in 1822. It is well known how, in spite of this, when Alexander I. died on the 1st of December 1825 the grand-duke Nicholas had him proclaimed emperor in St Petersburg, in connexion with which occurred ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... its sunary heights. Mozart transposed life into music, Wagner and his pupils transposed problems of life. Wagner questions and receives no answer. Mozart affirms life. His "Don Juan" liberates, "Tannhaeuser" leads into the labyrinth of bothersome renunciation. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... rights." Maisie knew Mrs. Farange had gone abroad, for she had had weeks and weeks before a letter from her beginning "My precious pet" and taking leave of her for an indeterminate time; but she had not seen in it a renunciation of hatred or of the writer's policy of asserting herself, for the sharpest of all her impressions had been that there was nothing her mother would ever care so much about as to torment Mr. Farange. What at last, however, was in this ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... small sum is stipulated on our part to go to the extinction of all claims by French citizens on our Government, and a reduction of duties on our cotton and their wines has been agreed on as a consideration for the renunciation of an important claim for commercial privileges under the construction they gave to the treaty for the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... was his broken spirit that expressed itself, and I rebelled against his renunciation. But ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... me worship her! For first she asked me of my faith and listened eagerly as I expounded it, hoping that the light would come into her heart; then, after I had finished she said—"'So your Path is Renunciation and your Nirvana a most excellent Nothingness which some would think it scarce worth while to strive so hard to reach. Now I will show you a more joyous way and a goddess more ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... remembered the night which they had spent in the threshing yard. She could still hear her lamentation under the stars—the cruelty of nature, the inefficacy of science, the wickedness of humanity, and the need she felt of losing herself in God, in the Unknown. Happiness consisted in self-renunciation. Then she heard him repeat his creed—the progress of reason through science, truths acquired slowly and forever the only possible good, the belief that the sum of these truths, always augmenting, would finally confer upon man incalculable ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... is superb, splendid, a piece of unpurchasable humour! Giovanni Saracinesca has found a woman who is too gay for him! Heaven be praised! We know his taste at last. We will give him a nun, a miracle of all the virtues, a little girl out of a convent, vowed to a life of sacrifice and self-renunciation. That will please him—he will be ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... quiet the uncertainty which is agitating the minds of the people of the eleven States which have been declared to be in insurrection." The objection to this course was, that in a certain degree it involved the renunciation on the part of both Senate and House of their right to be the exclusive judge of the qualification of members of their respective bodies. Mr. Stevens was the author of the resolution and it really included, as its essential basis, the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... supreme ideal of the ascetic life, and that men who come especially under His influence must pass out of home, out of family, out of the normal ties of evolution, and give themselves to a life of asceticism, to a life of renunciation, to share, however feebly, in that mighty yoga by which the universe ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... in this matter, she might now have been perfectly at rest, since she was spared the renunciation she had projected, and since, without either mental exertion or personal trouble, the affair seemed totally dropt, and Delvile, far from manifesting any design of conquest, shunned all occasions of gallantry, and ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... life was easy. Their discourse was elevated, and was occupied by subjects of the sublime learning which belonged to their sect. They believed on one Eternal God, whose existence was light and purity. They sought to approach him by purity of heart and action, by renunciation of the pleasures of the world, and by humility of heart and mind to understand the works of the allwise Creator. They believed in quiet abodes on the other side of the desert pilgrimage, where clear waters ran and soft winds blew, where spring ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... way to further American expansion, but something it must offer. This compensating offset Adams found in the separation of the New World from the Old and in abstention from interference in Europe. Such a renunciation involved, however, the sacrifice of generous American sympathies with the republicans across the seas. Monroe, Gallatin, and many other statesmen wished as active a policy in support of the Greeks as of the Spanish ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... local landmarks. But nevertheless I believed I had come aright. I gathered from its name that Friar's Park was in part at least a former monastic building, and certainly the cracked bell spoke with the voice of ancient monasteries, and had in it the hush of cloisters and the sigh of renunciation. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... window, her head bowed. It had been her privilege as a woman to be wiser than he. She should have known! Now—the thought wrenched like a physical pain—there was nothing left to her but renunciation. She must help him to be free. She must force him free. She owed that to him and to herself. It was only so that she might ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... a just self-respect required of the government of the United States to demand of Lord Ashburton a distinct renunciation of the British claim to search our vessels previous to entering into any negotiation. The government has thought otherwise; and this appears to be your main objection to the treaty, if, indeed, it be not the only one which is clearly and distinctly stated. The government of the United ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... whoever they might be, simply because they were men, and especially the meek, the humble and the poor; in other words, the voluntary repression of the appetites by which the individual makes of himself a center and subordinates other lives to himself, the renunciation of "the lusts of the flesh, of the eyes and of vanity, the insolence of wealth and luxury, of force and of power."[5320]—Opposed to and in contrast with this human order of things, the idea of a divine order of things ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... that moving cry from a man's soul was not dulled by familiarity, or hackneyed by common usage, and just now it found an intolerably faithful echo in her sad, rebellious heart, intensifying the anguish born of a secret and very bitter renunciation. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... find a higher and more entire happiness in the pursuit of ideal truth than in the enjoyment of an excess of money contrary to the whispers of a sensitive conscience. And if at the same time this renunciation of that which less enlightened souls esteemed as a chief good should be abetted by the sympathy of a companion soul, what bliss might not be in store for two lives so wedded to ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... that it should be done; no grief from loss of fortune, if he were to estimate at its true value that which fortune can bring him, and that which fortune can never bring him; no wounded self-love, if he had learned well the eternal lesson of life,—self-renunciation. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... occasion to enter seriously on this argument with the present laird or his grandfather, nor could I have any temptation to such a renunciation from either of them. I acknowledge, the benefit of being chief of a clan is in our days of very little significancy, and to trace out the progress of this honour to the founder of a family, of any standing, would perhaps be a matter ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... his instincts of honour and loyalty, might indeed respond to the demand made on them by the mission with which his friend entrusted him. But the demand was heavy, the call grievous. Where he had pictured joy, there remained now only renunciation; he had dreamed of conquest; there could be none, save the hardest and least grateful, the conquest of himself. Firm the Captain might be, but sad he must be. He could still serve the Countess (was not Paul de Roustache still dangerous?), but he ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... the gentle, but efficacious, powers of seduction. Wealth, dignity, and the royal favor, were the liberal rewards of apostasy; the Catholics, who had violated the laws, might purchase their pardon by the renunciation of their faith; and whenever Thrasimund meditated any rigorous measure, he patiently waited till the indiscretion of his adversaries furnished him with a specious opportunity. Bigotry was his last sentiment in the hour of death; and he exacted from his successor ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... from the Gulf to the forty-second parallel; it was not far distant from the watershed south and west of the tributaries of the Mississippi. Then came the triumph of the whole negotiation: Adams obtained from Spain a renunciation of all claims north of the forty-second parallel, as far west as the Pacific. Our hold upon ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... ministry. As things were, in a few weeks, Richard Meynell would be an exile and a wanderer, chief among a regiment of banished men, driven out by force from the National Church; without any of the dignity—that dignity which had been her husband's—of voluntary renunciation. And Mary would become his wife only to share in his rebellion, his defiance, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... merely mine, every desire that belongs to me as this particular Self, and to become the pure medium of a thought that is universal—in one word, to live no more my own life, but let my consciousness be possessed and suffused by the Infinite and Eternal life of spirit. And yet it is just in this renunciation of self that I truly gain myself, or realize the highest possibilities of my own nature. For whilst in one sense we give up self to live the universal and absolute life of reason, yet that to which we thus surrender ourselves is in reality our truer self. The life of absolute ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... weeks obtained the release of his sister from the Hoxton Asylum by formally undertaking her future guardianship,—a charge which was borne, until Death released the compact, with a steadfastness, a cheerful renunciation of what men regard as the crowning blessings of manhood, [8] that has shed a halo more radiant even than that of his genius about the figure—it was "small and mean," said sprightly Mrs. Mathews—of the India ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... any purpose in the pursuit of either religion or philosophy other than this attainment; nor does the unceasing practice of rites and ceremonies; of contemplation; renunciation; prayers; fasting; penance; devotion; service; adoration; absteminousness; or isolation, insure the attainment of this state of bliss. There is no bartering; no assurance of reward for good conduct. It is not as though one would ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... incorrect; and no matter how holy their lives, how self-sacrificing their actions, they would have to suffer for their inexactitude through aeons of undefined torment. He would speak with a solemn complacency of the aged nun, who, after a long life of renunciation and devotion, died at last, 'only to discover ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... for aspirants for chelaship. Theodidaktos (lit. "God taught "), a school of philosophers in Egypt. Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion taught in all ages by the sages of the world. Tikkun, Adam Kadmon, the ray from the Great Centre. Titiksha, renunciation. Toda, a mysterious tribe in India that practise black magic. Tridandi, (tri, "three," danda, "chastisement"), name of BrahmanicaI thread. Trimurti, the Indian Trinity—Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. Turiya Avastha, the state ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Brahma is creator of the world, or, the very world, a semblance or a development of the former, the absolute idea. Man's highest aspiration and aim is, to know Brahma absolutely: to have attained this knowledge implies a total renunciation of worldly concerns, to coalesce with, to be ultimately absorbed in, reunited with, Brahma. Brahmanas are held to possess, to represent, this knowledge. Again, Brahma is the creator, the preserver, also, the objects created and preserved. ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... by an act which secured him the position of clerk of the laundry in the State prison, and for her the sobriquet of "Split-faced Moll." At about this time she wrote to Mr. Doman a touching letter of renunciation, inclosing her photograph to prove that she had no longer had a right to indulge the dream of becoming Mrs. Doman, and recounting so graphically her fall from a horse that the staid "plug" upon which Mr. Doman had ridden into ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... was not enough to plead direct descent from Abraham, or outward conformity with the Levitical and Temple rites. God could raise up children to Abraham from the stones of the river bank. There must be the renunciation of sin, the definite turning to God, the bringing forth of fruit meet for an amended life. In no other way could the people be prepared for the coming of ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... Christ strikes at the root of this selfish principle. The very first act of the new-born soul is a renunciation or giving up of self—the surrender of the whole soul to God. The entire dedication which the Christian makes of himself—soul, body and property—to the Lord, implies that he will no longer live to ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... according to your promise.—Then nothing but your honour binds you to Olivia. And even now, at this guilty instant, in your secret soul, you wish, you expect from my offended pride, from my disgusted delicacy, a renunciation of this promise, a release from all the ties that bind you to me. You are right: this is what I ought to do; what I would do, if love had not so weakened my soul, so prostrated my spirit, rendered me so abject a creature, that I cannot ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the fatal result of the renunciation of the Church system of belief. The subject of the tale simply experiences moral annihilation; but the object of his affection, whose mind he had been the means of unsettling in her faith, burst through ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... king's renunciation," rejoined I, "before you acknowledge the Emperor, you will wait a long time. Has not the king pretended, that he has not ceased to reign over France these five-and-twenty years? And if he thought himself sovereign of France at a time, when the imperial government was rendered legitimate ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... whirling into new expression. It now had transcendent meaning. At last he understood. The heights could not be seen except from the depths. Joy could not be felt till after sorrow—till after total renunciation of self. What need had he now of money? None, that he could see. The world was full of glorious things, and the old man weeping in his arms was the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... and wife can in no case enter into any agreement or make any renunciation the object of which would be to alter the legal order of descents, either with respect to themselves, in what concerns the inheritance of their children, posterity, or with respect to their children between themselves, without prejudice to the donations inter vivas or mortis causa, which may ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... his own eyes to have made the sacrifice of his worldly future for the sake of his knightly ideal; but in truth, to a man without ambition, the renunciation had been easy and had been made in acquiescence with his real desires, rather ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... very jealous of the new Order, so unlike themselves, in its renunciation of ease and luxury, and in very spite they called them knaves and impostors, and kicked them ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... thankfulness and humility, there have been those whose lives are all the sweeter and brighter through my life and instructions. Sweet lady, you know what I mean when I say, having obtained freedom through renunciation I realized illumination, and through the light which I have received I am in the possession of knowledge which the many know little about, and through the light and knowledge which I have received I came ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... themselves, and he undertook by crafty means to annoy them. Men said these Christian priests were good; that their lives were spent in prayer, in meditation, and in works of charity among the poor; tales came to the Moor of their spiritual existence, of their fleshly renunciation; but at these he scoffed. He refused to ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... many years alone, having, besides love, treasures of kindliness to bestow, offered these to me with childlike effusiveness and such compassion as would inevitably have filled with bitterness any profligate who should have fallen in love with her; for, alas, it was all charity, all sheer pity. Her renunciation of love, her dread of what is called happiness for women, she proclaimed with equal vehemence and candor. These happy days proved to me that a woman's friendship is ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... decay of joy in the world. Many impulses, we settled, had contributed to this decay, some of which were good in themselves, others that were quite completely bad. Among the good things, I put what we may call certain Christian virtues, renunciation, resignation, sympathy with suffering, and the desire to relieve sufferers. But out of those things spring very bad ones, useless renunciations, asceticism for its own sake, mortification of the flesh with nothing to follow, no corresponding gain that is, and that awful and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... himself. Even before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The renunciation of all its privileges which the nobility voted in a moment of enthusiasm during the celebrated night of August 4, 1789, would certainly never have been consented to by any of its members ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... while a silver ring was being blessed in the same manner as the veil. This was placed on the ring-finger of the left hand as a "symbol of the intimate union and espousal with Christ" signified by her renunciation of the world. The scapular of white serge, similarly blessed, was then laid upon her shoulders as a type of the "yoke of obedience and sacrifice;" and lastly, the black cloak, signifying charity, covering and enveloping the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the case with Florent Chapron, whether his character, at once somewhat wild and yet submissive, rendered him more qualified for that renunciation of his personality than friendship demands, whether, far from his father and his sister and not having any mother, his loving heart had need of attaching itself to some one who could fill the place of his relatives, or whether Maitland exercised over him a special prestige by his opposite qualities. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... expended such faithful and conscientious work upon a plot less hopelessly dreary than one must be which hinges upon the problem of hereditary insanity. Every other human infirmity may be rounded off, merged into a lofty ideal of acceptance, renunciation, and expiation. But under no imaginable conditions can madness be regarded as something from which the heart and soul of man does not shudderingly recoil. Accordingly, a heroine who is haunted, beset, and finally driven crazy by the dread of the fatal inheritance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of Imtiazan, one of the most famous dancing-girls Bombay has ever known—a history that lacks not pathos. After her final renunciation of the profession of singing and dancing she might have remarried and in fact received more than one offer from men who were attracted by her kindliness of heart and by her beauty. But she declined them all with the words "Marriage is not my kismet," ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... this last mendacious opportunity, although he was perfectly sincere in his renunciation, touched in his sympathy, and there was even a film of ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... This renunciation by the War Department of the proper show of authority and power, demanded by plain necessity and repeatedly urged by its trusted agents, must have touched the pride of Anderson and his brother officers. But a still deeper humiliation was in store for them, The same letter brought him the following ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... other stress that I know. Money is perfectly powerless as a shield against many troubles—and on the other hand it can save a man from innumerable little wretchednesses and horrors which destroy the beauty and dignity of life. I don't believe mechanically in humiliation and renunciation and ignominy and contempt, as purifying influences. It all depends upon whether they are gallantly and adventurously and humorously borne. They often make some people only sore and diffident, and I don't ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... declaration of war in words to the same effect. 'France, under the government of the emperor Napoleon the First, has violated towards Spain the most sacred compacts—has arrested her monarchs—obliged them to a forced and manifestly void abdication and renunciation; has behaved with the same violence towards the Spanish Nobles whom he keeps in his power—has declared that he will elect a king of Spain, the most horrible attempt that is recorded in history—has sent his troops into Spain, seized her fortresses and her Capital, and scattered his troops ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... fine specimen is given in the conduct of one of the war chiefs, who, on an important occasion, made a vow to the sun of entire renunciation in case he should be crowned with success. When he was so, he first went through a fast, and sacrificial dance, involving great personal torment, and lasting several days; then, distributing all his property, even his lodges, and mats, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... answered those prayers, my boy! Whatever was your need, whatever price you paid, you did what I prayed you would do. When the months passed and you did not come back, I knew that not even the woman you loved could have called you back. I knew that you had learned the priceless lesson of renunciation, of sacrifice, through which alone the great deeds of the world ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... miserable circumstances that have, from time to time, alarmed and afflicted in turn, and seemed to render a renunciation indispensable. The difficulties, however, have been conquered; and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... his wife in his arms, and became calm in calming her. Thus they sat, until the silence grew heavenly between the two, and it seemed as if, in this new confidence, and in the joy of mutual self-renunciation, were beginning that true marriage, which makes of husband and wife not only "one flesh," but ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... vineyard or of doctrinal purity as he saw it. He had to choose between them, this Bishop of Senez, and when he left the town to answer the summons of the Council at Embrun, his heart must have been sore within him, he must have said farewell to many things. Few decisions can be more serious than the renunciation of family and home for the service of God, few more solemn than the struggles between the flesh and the spirit; but no more pathetic picture can exist than that sad figure of Jean Soannen; for he had renounced family and the world, and for the sake of "accepted truth" which ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... that now. It has been an object of curiosity to me that people raise so many just roses. Here is a world by itself. There is a rose for every station in society. There are roses for beast and saint; roses for passion and renunciation; roses for temple and sanctuary, and roses to wear for one going down into Egypt. There are roses that grow as readily as morning-glories, and roses that are delicate as children of the Holy Spirit, requiring the love of the human heart to thrive upon, before sunlight and water. There is a rose ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... looked out of every feature. Existence, from a demon-haunted vapor, had begun to change to a morning of spring; life, the life of conscious well-being, of law and order and peace, had begun to dawn in obedience and self-renunciation; his resurrection was at hand. But you then, and now you and Mr. Bascombe, would stop this resurrection; you would seat yourselves upon his gravestone to keep him down!—And why?—Lest he, lest you, lest your ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... catechumens blessed only by the priest, in the West with the priest's saliva applied to the lips and ears. The latter was accompanied by the following formula: "Effeta, that is, be thou opened unto odour of sweetness. But do thou flee, O Devil, for the judgment of God is at hand." (f) Renunciation of Satan. The catechumens turned to the west in pronouncing this; then turning to the east they recited the creed. (g) They stepped into the font, but were not usually immersed, and the priest recited the baptismal formula over them as he poured water, generally thrice, over their heads. (h) They ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... seldom wholly free from, made her very desirous of retaining her always in the convent:—she was therefore continually preaching up to her the uncertainty of those felicities which are to be found in the world, and magnifying that happy serenity which a total renunciation from it afforded;—nay, sometimes went so far, as to insinuate there was scarce a possibility for any one encumbered with the cares, and surrounded with the temptations of a public life, to have those dispositions which are requisite ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Slope receiving a full renunciation from Mr Quiverful of any claim he might have to the appointment in question. It was only given verbally and without witnesses; but then the original promise was made ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... emotions of his heart. He recollected all the fond ideas which had been excited in the course of his correspondence with the charming Aurelia. He remembered, with horror, the cruel letter he had received from that young lady, containing a formal renunciation of his attachment, so unsuitable to the whole tenor of her character and conduct. He revolved the late adventure of the coach, and the declaration of Mr. Clarke, with equal eagerness and astonishment; and was seized with the most ardent desire of unravelling a mystery ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... arrived, and that on her action now everything depended. She knew that she could never break the chains by which the world and her profession held her. She knew that the other woman had come, that she must go with her, and go for good. But the renunciation of love was terrible. The day had been soft and beautiful. It was falling asleep and yawning now, with a drowsy breeze that shook the yellow leaves as they hung withered and closed on the thinning boughs like the fingers of an old maid's hand. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... sister's wants, a certain attention still more tender than before, an anxiety to make her look pretty. And it was delicious to watch the girl of twenty as she busied herself about the adornment of others, without envy, without regret, with something of the gentle renunciation of a mother welcoming the young love of her daughter in memory of a happiness gone by. Paul saw this; he was the only one who did see it; but while admiring Aline, he asked himself sadly if in that maternal heart there would ever be place ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... between two thieves, is seen, as we part from Him at last, in a situation of stupendous magnificence, with infinite power in His hands. Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counselling of renunciation, give it unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek shall inherit—what? The whole earth! And the poor in spirit? They shall sit upon the right ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... from other sorts of ills. I have rather plumed myself these last few months upon having learned the depth of meaning and force of truth there is in that expression from Sartor Resartus I used to think so wicked: 'Say to happiness, I can do without you—in self-renunciation life begins,' I can try it now. I need not be a spaniel or fawn upon my lord, and yet I can obey and honor, if he will let me, this man to whom I shall vow myself for life. For life! Can I endure it all the years I may have to live an unloved ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... have heard you call me 'wife,' and seen that in your face which gives me hope. Basil, the grief you saw was not for the loss of any love but yours; the conflict you beheld was the daily struggle to subdue my longing spirit to your will; and the sacrifice you honor but the renunciation of all hope. I stood between you and the woman whom you loved, and asked of death to free me from that cruel lot. You gave me back my life, but you withheld the gift that made it worth possessing. You desired to be freed from the affection which only wearied you, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... announced that they would accept no 'restitution' at the expense of the taxpayers of France of their property sold and alienated under the spoliation of 1852; and the text of the law as finally passed in 1872 expressly ordains that 'conformably to the renunciation offered before the presentation of the bill by the heirs of King Louis Philippe, and since renewed,' their unsold property, 'real and personal, seized by the State and not alienated before this date, be immediately restored to its ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... 1795. He went, of course—being then ten years old—with his father to Berlin in 1805, studied at Berlin in the Gymnasium and University, but interrupted his studies at the age of eighteen to fight as a volunteer in the war for a renunciation of Napoleon and all his works. After Waterloo he went back to his studies, took his doctor's degree in 1817 with a treatise on the "Antiquities of Hydrocephalus," and became privat-docent in the Medical Faculty of the Berlin University. His inclination was strong ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... suffer acutely under this renunciation. A desolate air of utter and complete loneliness fell upon him, like a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... unto the present, otherwise blessed day. But, dear old friend, is not this sublime sneering? and is there not an honest ray or two of truth mingled here and there in the colder coruscations of this wit? Of the sincerity of this repudiation and renunciation so fashionable in the Pope circle I have nothing to say; but in certain moods of the mind it is vastly entertaining, and cures one's melancholy as cautery cures certain physical afflictions. It may be amusing for you also to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... and the reader stands by, with folded arms, resolved at all events to secure peace within his own bosom. But no sluggard's peace; his arms are folded, not for idleness, only to repress certain vain tremors and vainer sighs. He feels the calm of self-renunciation, but united with no monkish indolence. Here is a fragment of it. How it rebukes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various |
