"Ennobling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sure to be there, and we spent a very happy hour or two together. Sometimes she would sing, and sometimes I would read to them out of Milton—I read the whole of Comus to them by degrees in this way; and although there was much I could not at all understand, I am perfectly certain it had an ennobling effect upon every one of us. It is not necessary that the intellect should define and separate before the heart and soul derive nourishment. As well say that a bee can get nothing out of a flower, because she does not understand ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... me) that I have given in these unfavourable times evidence of exertions of this faculty upon its worthiest objects, the external universe, the moral and religious sentiments of Man, his natural affections, and his acquired passions; which have the same ennobling tendency as the productions of men, in this kind, worthy to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... than to listen to their voices as they sang duet after duet together. The songs they sung were full of noble sentiment. Their voices mingled until they almost sounded like one rich and perfect note, as they sang of love which is undying and self-sacrifice which is ennobling. Quentyns felt a glow of elation filling his breast as his eyes rested on his lovely wife, and the tormentings of Hilda's conscience were soothed, and she too partly ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... expense of the States of Guernsey, and the funeral was in consequence a public one. "For though Mr. Brock had enriched his country with numerous and inappreciable benefits—though he bequeathed to it an inestimable heritage in his deeds and in his example—he died in honorable and ennobling poverty, resulting from his disinterestedness, his integrity, and his patriotism.[162] The public, we say, were pleased, were gratified, were proud in seeing that their representatives and rulers so promptly and so handsomely ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... much; he has an ennobling effect upon children,—so much the more ennobling that he does not ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... servants were foreigners, and Samuel was pained to discover that they were for the most part without any ennobling conception of their calling. They were much given to gluttony and drinking; and there was an unthinkable amount of scandal and backbiting and jealousy. But it was only by degrees that he realized this, for he had one great motive in common with them—they were all ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... genuineness in the use of materials, etc., as if the danger were in the execution, and not in the main intention. So they fool us for a while longer, and we praise their fine doings, and even persuade ourselves there is something liberal and ennobling in their influence. But we tire at last of these exotics. A million of them is not worth one of those sober flowers of homely growth where use has by chance, as it were, blossomed into beauty. This is the only success in that kind that can be hoped for in our day. But it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... of the poet is different. His business it is simply to refresh the spirit of man. To its lip he holds the purest ichors of existence; with ennobling draughts of awe, pity, sympathy, and joy, he quickens its blood and strengthens its vital assimilations. The particular circumstances he uses are merely the cup wherein this wine of life is contained. This he may obtain as most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... understand you. Now hear my advice; I have long engaged a painter who has been exerting all his skill to paint the fall of Appius Claudius. Fiesco is an adorer of the arts, and soon warmed by ennobling scenes. We will send this picture to his house, and will be present when he contemplates it. Perhaps the sight may rouse his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of manhood,—even as the August heats pass on, and over, into the genial glow of a September sun. There is a strong growth in the struggles against mortified pride; and then only does the youth get an ennobling consciousness of that manhood which is dawning in him, when he has fairly surmounted those puny vexations ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... opposites; but all of these, instead of debasing, are the very experiences that purify and make gentle; they are the fire without which the refining process could not take place. Culture means to these people the ennobling effect of such actual struggles upon a person's whole outlook on life and upon his way in general of conducting himself; and the cultured man is pictured by them as in action, even with his sleeves rolled up, engaged in the ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... learning acquired by hard application and earnest effort. In a detailed study of his painting, it may be that the student of anatomy and the realist often assert themselves, but as grand figure after grand figure has passed before the mind, the general impression is solemn and ennobling. "To no other contemporary painter," says Morelli, "was it given to endow the human frame with the like degree of passion, vehemence and strength."[41] To this we may add that no other painter has ever conceived Humanity with the same stately grandeur and in the same ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... an acute and exuberant genius, which had exhibited itself in many paths of literature, science, and art; with a singular aptitude for military adventure, organization, and achievement; with a great variety, in short, of splendid and ennobling qualities; had been, for a long succession of years, accursed with almost the very worst political institutions known to history. The depth of their misery and of their degradation was hardly yet known to themselves, and this ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deal of quiet pity, should commend what was so foreign to his own habit. There were, then, some streaks of good-natured worldliness which tallied with Christian duty. The serene, kindly look of Mrs. Elderkin was in itself the tenderest welcome; and it was an ennobling thought to Reuben, that he had at last placed himself (or fancied he had) upon the same moral plane with that good woman. As for Rose, the joyous, frolicsome, charming Rose, whom he had thought at one time to electrify by his elegant city accomplishments,—was not even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and community in a very marked form. 'Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?' he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... have borne in memory what has tamed Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart When Men change Swords for Ledgers, and desert The Student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed I had, my Country! am I to be blamed? But, when I think of Thee, and what Thou art, Verily, in the bottom of my heart, Of those unfilial fears ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... on, as if Alicia had not spoken. "As to the rest of the people—bah, you can't rouse Calcutta. It is sunk in its torpid liver, and imagines itself superior. It's really funny, you know, the way pancreatic influences can be idealised—made to serve ennobling ends. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... be feared, however, that the Spirit of Romance is now moribund—if, indeed, it has not already passed away; and with it we are losing one of the most ennobling qualities in our nature. We pride ourselves nowadays in living in a 'matter-of-fact' age, by which we mean a practical, unromantic age. But is it a matter for so much pride after all? Granted that ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... lonely, so full of pain, but with a great hope shining beyond all the darkness, and a passionate defiance in bearing more than the burdens that were laid upon her. The story of the three sisters is infinitely sad, but it is the ennobling sadness that belongs to large natures cramped and striving for freedom to heroic, almost desperate, work, with little or no result. The author of this intensely interesting, sympathetic, and eloquent biography, is a young ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... he never attempted to win popularity by acceding to the prejudices and frailties of the age—his one object was to make his books useful and helpful and ennobling. Like the great Master, in whose steps he so earnestly strove to follow, he "went about doing good." And one is glad to think that even his memory is being made to serve the same purpose. The "Alice" cots are a worthy sequel to his ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... all the world, shows the almost superhuman power of human genius. If we look at that small house, in a small street of a small town of a small island, and then think of the world-embracing, world-quickening, world-ennobling spirit that burst forth from that small garret, we have learned a lesson and carried off a blessing for which no pilgrimage would have been too long. Though the great festivals which in former days brought together people from ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... know. I introduced him to Nedda. She was vanilla ice cream with meringue and maple syrup on it. He loved it! She gazed at him with pretty sadness and told him how terrible it was of him to kidnap me. He said humbly that he'd never had her ennobling influence nor dreamed that she existed. And she loved that! They go together like strawberries and cream! I had to leave, or stop being a lady. I think I made ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... ideals are unrealizable; it assumes that in the future, as in the past, getting a livelihood, "making a living," must signify for most men and women doing things which are not significant, freely chosen, and ennobling to those who do them; doing things which serve ends unrecognized by those engaged in them, carried on under the direction of others for the sake of pecuniary reward. For preparation of large numbers for a life of this sort, and only for this purpose, are mechanical efficiency in reading, writing, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... may go away by themselves into a convent and give up the world, but in so doing they give up the home; for in a real true home there must be parents and children, and this comes through sex. We may go even farther and say with Mr. Grant Allen that everything high and ennobling in our nature springs directly from the fact of sex. He claims that to it 'we owe our love of color, of graceful forms, of melodious sound, of rhythmical motion, the evolution of music, of poetry, of romance, of painting, of sculpture, of decorative art, of dramatic entertainment. ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... but think of the past, of the cruelty and intense selfishness of those dark days, when, among both the young and old, everyone was for himself, and the unfortunate, and feeble, were neglected and despised. Now, thanks to the blessed ennobling influences of Christianity, even the boys were catching this Christly spirit, and would spontaneously act ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... wind and tide to serve. None of our sex know the dangers of the Ocean, but we who have been bound in the closest of all ties to officers of rank and great service; and none others can ever truly enjoy the real grandeur of the ennobling profession. A charming object is a vessel cutting the waves with her taffrail, and chasing her wake on the trackless waters, like a courser that ever keeps in his path, though dashing madly on at the very top ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... age of translations. Du Bellay himself translated two books of the Aeneid, and other poetry, old and new, and there were some who thought that the translation of the classical literature was the true means of ennobling the French language:—strangers are ever favourites with us—nous favorisons toujours les etrangers. Du Bellay moderates their expectations. "I do not believe that one can learn the right use of them"—he is speaking of figures and ornament in language—"from translations, because it ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... such a draught of it that he perished on the spot; then, through the simple old Grandsir, anxious to live for Pansie's sake; and, perhaps, through Pansie herself, who, coming into the enjoyment of some ennobling love, would wish to defeat death, so that she might always keep the perfection of her mundane happiness,—all these forms of striving to be made the adumbration of a higher one, the shadow-play that should direct ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... soul of all natural, distinct, and perceived operations, that at last He makes it more and more conformed to Himself, and then uniform, raising the passive capacity of the creature, enlarging it and ennobling it, though in a hidden and unperceived manner, which is termed mystical. But in all these operations the soul must concur passively, and in proportion as the working of God becomes stronger, the soul must continually yield to Him, until He absorbs it altogether. ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... spirit of his time, its Censor, as Macaulay is its Panegyrist, and Tennyson its Mirror. He has saturated his nation with a wholesome tonic, and the practice of any one of his precepts for the conduct of life is ennobling. More intense than Wordsworth, more intelligible than Browning, more fervid than Mill, he has indicated the pitfalls in our civilisation. His works have done much to mould the best thinkers in two continents, in both of which he has ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... been much change or influx of population in these districts for centuries. The alertness and intelligence of the natives must be to some extent an inheritance from the generations of strenuous clansmen whose blood flows in their veins. Life in a historical district is bound to have an ennobling effect on a man, especially if he feels knit to the past by lineal descent from the historical actors. A glamour of romance clings to hill and glen. The dalesman you meet on the highway can tell you all the lore of his parish, giving dates and citing illustrative lays. It is pleasant to find ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... belief among women that any strong impression made at a certain time during pregnancy will exert a powerful influence in producing some defect or deformity in the child. The opposite is also held, to the effect that beautiful objects, delightful music, and everything elevating and ennobling will have a favorable effect upon the body or mind ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... language too, as it is most desirable that a poet should possess, or rather that he should not be without. But it is not language that is, in the highest sense of the word, poetical, being neither of the imagination nor of the passions; I mean the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense passions. I do not mean to say that there is nothing of this in Dryden, but as little, I think, as is possible, considering how much he has written. You will easily understand my meaning, when I refer to his versification of Palamon and Arcite, as contrasted with the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... conspicuous by reason of the smaller number of children that they had to provide for. The descendants of Henry III. and Edward I. in no wise kept true to the monarchical tradition, but rather gave distinction to the baronial opposition by ennobling it with royal alliances. But the martial and vigorous policy of Edward III. had at least the effect of reducing to inactivity the tradition of constitutional opposition which had been the common characteristic of successive generations of the royal ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... no relief to the poor. One of his friends, Cornelius Gerard, wrote a prose narrative of it; another, William Herman, composed a poem of Holland weeping for her children and would not be comforted. Dulce bellum inexpertis. War sometimes seems purifying and ennobling to those whose own lives have never been jeoparded, who have never seen men die: but not so to those who have known and suffered. Throughout his life Erasmus never wearied of ensuing peace; and for its sake he reproved even kings. In 1504 he was allowed to deliver a panegyric of congratulation ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... and generous nation they represented, and completely damned the cause they were sent to save. But what better was to have been expected of those, who, from early life, if tradition say true, discovered a total dislike to the ennobling pleasures of literature and devotion, but a boundless passion for the brutalizing sports of the bear-garden and cock-pit? Bull-baiters, cock-fighters, and dog worriers, turned officers, had no idea ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... or even in its intelligence. We may rest assured that character, resulting in industry and economy, will bring sufficient means of subsistence, so that all its members will be fed and housed and clothed. And art and culture, of the most ennobling and inspiring sort, will surely follow. And even if such literature failed as largely composes our present fin-de-siecle garbage-heap, we would not regret its absence. That community will and must survive in which the largest proportion of members make the accumulation of character ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... the limits of thy rocky shores. O native Britain! O my Mother Isle! How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills, Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas, 185 Have drunk in all my intellectual life, All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts, All adoration of the God in nature, All lovely and all honourable things. Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel 190 The joy and greatness of its future being? There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul Unborrowed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not excited, inspired, and thrilled as we are by Jane Eyre or Esmond. We enjoy a beautiful book with a fine moral, set in exquisite prose, with consummate literary resources, full of fine thoughts, true, ennobling thoughts, and with no weak side at all, unless it be the sense of being over-wrought, like a picture which has been ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... from one instrument and then another the varied themes of an overture, so Mrs. Brenton drew from the unlike minds of Catie and her son the selfsame and successive themes of what she, in her mother blindness, deemed the one possible and ennobling overture to Scott Brenton's life. It was quite characteristic of Mrs. Brenton's make-up, however, that she took no thought of Catie's life, save in so far as it could be applied to the ultimate development of Scott, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... gasping pitifully, ever alert for shell fire, and cringing at detonations too far off to be of danger. Try as he would to make his feet go forward, his hands pulled against the stretcher handles, until Hastings turned and repaid him with a longer string of oaths. These, and a memory of the ennobling words of Bonsecours, gave him strength for a new spurt; yet both ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... submitting them to the severest questioning, he found that they were in all respects sober plainspoken men, that their conviction was intense, their story coherent, and the doctrines which they had received simple and ennobling; that these results of many inquisitions were so unvarying that he found conviction stealing gradually upon him against his will; common honesty compelled him to inquire further; the answers pointed invariably in one direction only; until at length he found himself ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... the man from his sensuous dependence upon His localised and material presence. It was good for him, and it is good for us all, to 'feel our feet,' so to speak. Responsibility laid, and felt to be laid, upon us is a steadying and ennobling influence. And it was better that the demoniac should learn to stand calmly, when apparently alone, than that he should childishly be relying on the mere external presence ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... will be expected in regard to some of the principal actors. Looking back on these two eventful years, not a woman who took part in that struggle would wish to have been inactive in that heroic hour. It is an inspiration and an ennobling of all the faculties that they have once been lifted above all personal aims and transient interests; and for all who caught the true meaning of the moment, life can never again touch the low level of indifference. The officers of the State ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... hurry to be rich, and when he fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is commonly given to the man who plays for a high stake and loses. His love for Maud Stangrove, which might have been made a controlling and ennobling influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type; no error has been made in this respect; his failure ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... light. The mother gives to her boy a kind of unspoken counsel. It is a very subtle thing, like electricity in the material world, and equally as powerful as that mysterious fluid. You get its effects by putting yourself eagerly and lovingly under its soothing yet ennobling and tonic influence. It is a matter hard to describe, but more real than any other human ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... could not repress a smile when the doctor and the professor made it clear that if woman is to reproduce the race she must not be expected to do anything else, only to have Mrs. Werther show how woman must be free to take part in the ennobling activities of the world, philanthropy, charity, etc., if she is to "bring to motherhood that crown which is the glory of the race," and much more of the same sort. He heard the ancient argument about bullets and ballots, and in the same breath his attention was called to Semiramis conquering ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... talent of an able theatrical journeyman. The one great follower of Shakespeare—"haud passibus aequis" at all points; "longo sed proximus intervallo"—has recognized, with Shakespearean accuracy and delicacy and elevation of instinct, the necessity of ennobling and transfiguring his characters if their story was to be made acceptable to the sympathies of any but an idle or an ignoble audience. And he has done so after the very manner and in the very spirit of Shakespeare. The noble creatures of his invention ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and hard as the walls of granite which narrow their horizon; and if the author puts into these rude vessels something of his own delicacy of feeling, as he attributes to Stephen the Smith appreciation of the little Roman bronze figures which the trader has brought up from Italy, such ennobling ingredients can sometimes enter only at the expense of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... mind, although largely unconscious, is by no means irresponsible; it may be directed and controlled; it may be turned, by such control, into a Pactolian stream, enriching us while we rest and ennobling us while we play. For the mind may be trained to meditate on great themes instead of giving itself up to idle reverie; when it is released from work it may concern itself with the highest things as readily as with those which ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the effect of this connection with royalty, in ennobling an ancient and loyal race, the marriage produced a lasting influence on the fortunes of the family. That they were proud of the alliance appears from the circumstance that the children of that marriage used to wear the prince's feather, that plume which has, since the days of Edward ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... gratification, and the mind a burden. Of these I hold the life and death in equal estimation[27]; for silence is maintained concerning both. But he only, indeed, seems to me to live, and to enjoy life, who, intent upon some employment, seeks reputation from some ennobling ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... of the flag, to any but the best and wisest of your sons. Such a school for moral training has never been devised as one of the floating colleges that carry guns. The youngest midshipman acquires habits of command, the oldest captain practises the ennobling virtue of obedience; and these, we take it, form the alpha and omega of man's useful existence. Power gives self-respect, responsibility gives caution, and subjection gives humility. With all these united, as they are in every rank in the service, the character has little room left for improvement; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... I'm sure, to notice my humble labours," replied the old lady, expanding at once under the first word of flattery. "My brother tells me you're connected with a great newspaper. How ennobling that must be! It gives you such a ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... controls and molds the individual; that among the anabolic emotions, love is the queen of the emotional empire; that the touch of her magical scepter is so potent and penetrating as to render the individual receptive and responsive to all of the ennobling, purifying, progressive and exalting elements of the universe: but, on the other hand, what is still more marvelous: that the same touch renders the individual negative to the inflowing currents from all of the baser elements. With this awareness comes the conviction ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... they had got what was wanted, but that only left the schoolmaster the freer to elaborate his point. Since most men of any importance or influence in the country had been through the mill, it was naturally a little difficult to persuade them that it was not quite the best and most ennobling mill the wit of man could devise. And, moreover, they did not want their children made strange to them. There was all the machinery and all the men needed to teach the old subjects, and none to teach whatever new the critic might propose. Such science ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... with all my heart. I think it is ennobling to a man to love a girl because of her pure and sterling qualities irrespective of her looks, and I would count it foul disgrace to do anything to win her unless I saw my way quite clearly to ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... a bright and attractive example of the graces of fervent piety. There shines forth in his character, in harmonious display and concentrated lustre, an array of lovely and ennobling features. To faith, he added virtue, and knowledge, patience, temperance, godliness, &c. (2 Pet. i. 5-7.) His Christian wisdom is singularly conspicuous. Renwick was blamed in his own day by time-servers and backsliders as imprudent; and those who maintain the same ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... they now term "demons"; but that does not prevent the monks who compile the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" from tracing back the descent of their princes to Woden: if it is not deifying, it is at least ennobling them.[70] ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... power. The court is already no more than a palace where people beg; by and by it will become an antechamber, when it will be composed only of those who constitute the suite of the King. Great names will begin by ennobling vile offices; but, by a terrible reaction, those offices will end by rendering great names vile. Estranged from their homes, the nobility will be dependent upon the employments which they shall have received; and if the people, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... compounded of ignorance and wickedness, and wholly unfitted to guide the passions which they are able to excite. We want a poetry which shall speak in clear, loud tones to the people; a poetry which shall make us more in love with our native land, by converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thoughts; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... stricken Soldiers! Nobler task, Or more ennobling, can our Sisters ask? Whilst stout hearts suffer, soft ones shall not fail In selfless readiness to soothe and save, Sharing the tribute rendered by the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... policy. That is a doctrine which has been widely preached, and which has recommended itself to many minds as being one of absolute truth. It is not very ennobling in its sentiment, seeing that it advocates a special virtue, not on the ground that that virtue is in itself a thing beautiful, but on account of the immediate reward which will be its consequence. Smith is enjoined not to cheat Jones, because he will, in the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... young housekeepers to whom this talk is addressed will not consider such trifles as I have mentioned, degrading. It is the work laid before them and consequently cannot be mean. Such labor, when sweetened by the thought of what it all means, is ennobling. I know that Keats ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... city plethoric. It is not strange that mercantile and mechanical employments are thronged by young men, running all risks for success, when the alternative is a life in which they find no meaning, and no inspiring and ennobling influence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... morality, different from that which can be furnished to us by religion. It is not the fear of God that acts amelioratingly or ennoblingly upon manners, of which the middle ages furnish us with a striking proof; but the ennobling of the conception of the world in general which goes hand in hand with the advance of civilization. Let us then give up making a show of the profession of hypocritical words of faith, the only purpose of which seems to be that they may be continually shown to be ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... by their adversaries for their frequent fasts, and the severity of their lives; and they certainly were far enough from agreeing with Mr. Newman. Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or ennobling, in his system, is altogether independent of his doctrine concerning the priesthood. It is that doctrine which is the peculiarity of his system and of Romanism; it is that doctrine which constitutes the evil of both, which ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... blood and language. Spain for many centuries has been the country of error; she has mistaken stern and savage tyranny for rational government; base, low, and grovelling superstition for clear, bright, and soul-ennobling religion; sordid cheating she has considered as the path to riches; vexatious persecution as the path to power; and the consequence has been, that she is now poor and powerless, a pagan amongst the pagans, with a dozen kings, and with ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... he had disposed of three-fourths of his inheritance, besides all the income from his books. But the calls of the poor and the plans which he wished to put into operation looking toward education and ennobling the toilers, and giving to their gloomy lives something more of sunshine and joy, were such that he determined to dispose of all the remainder of his wealth except a sum sufficient to yield him fifteen hundred dollars a year ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... thought of using a rich wife as an advancement; but then, on the other hand, he would gain a companion whose divine sweetness would be an ennobling inspiration. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... temperate life. The food should be nourishing but not stimulating. Lascivious thoughts should be banished from the mind, and a taste cultivated for that literature which is elevating in its nature, and the associations should be refining and ennobling. Let these conditions and the rules of hygiene, be observed, and virtue will reward her subjects with a fine physique and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... question which would keep forcing itself on Gracie Dennis was this: "If he really knows of nice books, full of 'the beautiful' and 'the ennobling,' that would enlighten the race, as he has often told me, why doesn't he mention some of them now? There is no minister here 'trammelled by long years of narrowing education.' How does he know but that these people are as 'advanced' ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye Elements!—in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted—can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... so their reverence for their abbots was a voluntary loyalty to one who they fancied had a right to rule them, because he was wiser and better than they; a feeling which some have found not degrading, but ennobling; and the parent, not of servility, but of true freedom. And as for the obsolete virtue of humility, that still remains true which a voice said to Antony, when he saw the snares which were spread over the whole earth, and asked, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... and quarrelsome race, unspeakably immoral, and steeped in every vice against which the Christian missionary has to set his face—a most difficult people to work among. But there I saw scores and scores of baptized Christians living a life clean and ennobling, endeavoring honestly to break away from their degrading customs of centuries, some of them ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... capital interest at stake. To apply a correction to some popular misreadings of history, to show that the criminal (because trivial) occasions of war are not always its trifle causes, or to suggest that war (if resigned to its own natural movement of progress) is cleansing itself and ennobling itself constantly and inevitably, were it only through its connection with science ever more and more exquisite, and through its augmented costliness,—all this may have its use in offering some restraint upon the levity of action or of declamation in Peace Societies. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of the right, the good, and the true, righteousness, goodness, and truth are suggested to him, and thus we have a most beneficent influence on his life and conduct. If our hearts go out in love to all with whom we come in contact, we inspire love, and the same ennobling and warming influences of love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. There is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept—If you would have all the world love you, you must first love all ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... only calculated for that condition; and it would be unfortunate if this did satisfy him. In many cases man shakes off this blind law of necessity, by his free spontaneous action, of which among many others we have an instance, in his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by nature in the passion of love. Thus, when arrived at maturity, he recovers his childhood by an artificial process, he founds a state of nature in his ideas, not given him by any experience, but established ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... translations from the Hebrew poets of mediaeval Spain, in a small column entitled "Songs of a Semite." The tragedy was dedicated, "In profound veneration and respect to the memory of George Eliot, the illustrious writer who did most among the artists of our day towards elevating and ennobling the spirit ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... but simply the cultured, intellectual housewife. The husband may be ever so famous and learned, but if the housewife is only an ordinary character, no pupil-daughters will ever cross the threshold. The institution was intended to afford girls the benefit of a higher example, of an ennobling womanly intercourse, and not the splendour of richer external surroundings; which, it may be remarked, had no application to the prevailing circumstances in Freeland, as, generally speaking, all families here live on the same footing. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the light of the fire, her face half-hid 'neath a tress of shining hair; and I viewing her, chin in fist, saw in her only the last of her hated race and knew in that moment that never might there be aught of true love, that pure passion, high and ennobling, the which may lift man above his baser self—never might this be 'twixt her blood and mine. And knowing this I knew also great doubt and fear of myself. And in my fear I lifted my gaze to ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... boni nobilitati semper favemus," was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart, who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... we on our part readily yielded to the heart-ennobling influence of your history, we were disappointed in some expectations which we derived from it. We saw that you were not forsaken in the hour of need; yet your grievances were by far less heart-stirring than ours, and should you have failed ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... and consuming passion for martial sports, nor did he, like him, make their pursuit the sole business of life. Still, the pure flame of chivalry burnt within his breast, and he fully recognised its high and ennobling principles, and accepted the obligations they imposed. And in this respect, as in most others, he differed ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... the truth for some time, but I've refused to credit it. Now everything is explained. I took you at your word; I believed in you and your husband and looked up to you as literary people—people who were interested in fine and ennobling things. I admired you for the very reason that I thought you didn't care, and that you didn't need to care, about society and fashionable position. I kept saying to you that I envied you your tastes, and let you see that I considered myself your real ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... surroundings or unnatural ones?] "will seek to gratify his higher nature. Socialism will create a condition of things favourable to the development of the higher type of individuality."[1224] "This is the religious aspect of labour. It is dignified, ennobling. That is the divine ideal, the aspect concerning labour which God intended should be realised. Just think of it! The ordinary working man as divinely taught and inspired as the prophets and seers of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... land and on sea. They have their reward in enduring fame and honor. And all honor be from us to the brave armies and navies of our Allies, who have exhibited such splendid courage and noble patriotism. The admiration they have aroused, and their comradeship in arms, will be an ennobling and enduring memory between us, cementing friendships and perpetuating national good will. For all of us who are serving the State at home or in whatever capacity, whether officials, or employers, or wage earners, doing our utmost to carry on the national life in this time of stress, there is the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... restricted field, but it discloses no less the nobility of a right-minded child, and how loyalty wins the way to noble deeds and life. This is another beautiful literary creation of Hector Malot which every one can recommend as an ennobling book, of interest not only to childhood, page by page to the thrilling conclusion, but to every person who ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... furnished us with abler administrators or a more illustrious senate, the Reform Act may have exercised on the country at large a beneficial influence. Has it? Has it elevated the tone of the public mind? Has it cultured the popular sensibilities to noble and ennobling ends? Has it proposed to the people of England a higher test of national respect and confidence than the debasing qualification universally prevalent in this country since the fatal introduction of the system of Dutch finance? Who will pretend it? If a spirit of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... I have borne in memory what has tamed Great nations; how ennobling thoughts depart When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student's bower ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... development,—but what were these physical advantages compared to the classic perfection of Sah-luma's beauty?—beauty combining the delicate with the vigorous, such as is shadowed forth in the artist-conceptions of the god Apollo. His features, faultlessly regular, were redeemed from all effeminacy by the ennobling impress of high thought and inward inspiration,—his eyes were dark, with a brilliant under-reflection of steel-gray in them, that at times flashed out like the soft glitter of summer- lightning in the dense purple of an August ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Indians, as individuals and as a tribe, subjects of American law and beneficiaries of American institutions, by making them first American citizens, and clothing them as rapidly as their advancement and location will permit, with the protecting and ennobling ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Stop and ask yourself why. If you have a great sorrow, time will be your consoler. And there is an ennobling and enriching effect of sorrow ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... succeeded in one thing: it is the grandest parody on all that is lofty, or elevated or holy, it is an unparalleled burlesque on any exalted sentiment or practical good. Every ennobling tendency, every redeeming trait is cunningly caricatured, and so cleverly ridiculed that is impossible to respect them afterwards. It is hard to tell what another era may bring forth of good, but it is ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... evolved a beautiful philosophy," I said. "It fills such a longing in the human breast. It is full, it is satisfying, it is ennobling. What wonderous strides toward perfection the human race might have made if the first man had evolved it and it had persisted until now as ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The ennobling element of the belief in a future life is beyond the attack, or rather is strengthened by the aid, of science. Science, like theology, bids us look beyond our petty personal interests, and cultivate faculties other than the digestive. Theology aims at stimulating the same instincts, but provides ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... trust. We have here the unveiling of his inmost self in response to what he knew would be an eager desire for news of his welfare. This whole section appears to me to be a wonderful revelation of his prison thoughts, an example of what we may call the ennobling power of a passionate enthusiasm for Christ. Remember that he is a prisoner, shut out from his life's work, waiting to be tried before Nero, whose reign had probably, by this time, passed from its delusive morning of dewy promise to its lurid noon. The present and the future were dark ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not do. He is only a child who exercises no self-control, who is governed only by caprice, whim, or whatever passion of the moment. These follies, of which my mother makes account, and rightly, are beneath one of your age. There is in them nothing ennobling, charming; nothing that should gratify a mind that has the faintest conception of the good, the ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... faith in Jesus Christ, God's sacrifice for a world's sin, it brings to us the clear consciousness of pardon, the calm sense of communion, the joyful spirit of adoption, righteousness rooted in our hearts and to be manifested day by day in our lives; it brings all elevation and strengthening and ennobling for the whole nature, and is the one power that makes us really men as God would have us ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ungodly gentleman were rather of pity than aught else. A brave, ready-witted man she knew him for, as much from the story of his escape from Worcester as for the air that clung to him despite his swagger, and she deplored that one possessing these ennobling virtues should have fallen notwithstanding upon such evil ways as those which Crispin trod. Some day, perchance, when she should come to be better acquainted with him, she would seek to induce ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... not attempt to reason with you," said the inquirer, "about the pleasures of Montem;—but to an 104 Etonian it is enough that it brings pure and ennobling recollections—calls up associations of hope and happiness—and makes even the wise feel that there is something better than wisdom, and the great that there is something nobler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... hesitate to let her become his mistress, to let her be the tyrant of his existence. If she would enchain him, he must tear himself away, even if he tear out his own heart. Man possesses that which is more ennobling than ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... in Rickman, or Rickman had improved. Shy he still was, but he had lost much of his old ungovernable nervousness, and gave Jewdwine the impression of an immense reserve. He seemed to have entered into some ennobling possession which raised him above the region of small confusions and excitements. His eye, when Jewdwine caught it, no longer struggled to escape; but it seemed to be held less by him than by its own ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... into her task, and work as no junior French mistress had ever worked before; she determined never to lose patience, never to grow cross, never to indulge in a sarcastic word, always to be a model of tact and forbearance. She determined to wield such an ennobling influence over the girls in her form-room that they should take fire from her example, and go forth into the world perfect, high-souled women who should leaven the race. She determined also to be the life and soul of the staff-room—the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tyrant and transfixed a world! Wilt thou see Afric like old Priam sue, The bones of children as in nature due, And foully craven, ingrate-like forget, Thy life, thy learning's her dishonored debt? Say; wilt not thou, whose time-ennobling sons— Thy Jay's, thy Franklin's and thy Washington's, Caught the bright cestus from fair freedom's God, And bound it as a girdle to thy sod; Ah! wilt not thou with generous mind confess The might of woe, the strength of helplessness? High-Heaven's almoner to a world ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... your hearts rebound when listening to the eulogiums passed upon our country and its gifted sons through the medium of the pulpit, the platform and the press. "He is a New Brunswick boy." Ah, those words are sufficient to inspire us with thoughts ennobling, grand and elevating. There are to be found growlers in every clime, and it is only such that will desert their fatherland and seek refuge under foreign skies. We have liberty, right, education, refinement and culture in our midst; we have a good government, noble reforms, and all advantages to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... he has married a most admirable wife. Lady Chiltern is a woman of the very highest principles, I am glad to say. I am a little too old now, myself, to trouble about setting a good example, but I always admire people who do. And Lady Chiltern has a very ennobling effect on life, though her dinner-parties are rather dull sometimes. But one can't have everything, can one? And now I must go, dear. Shall ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... them in words hard as rocks.' They may aid in illuminating the darkness of the present, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may have some influence in building up and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks,' regardless of the contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them. What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the sensual, the profligate, the unreflecting fools of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... for sleep, a reason which, to those who labor only with their hands, must seem unutterably sad. He says that while muscle work is the commonest and the simplest, so it is also the most poorly paid and the most degrading, and that while brain work is ennobling and the highest type of labor, it is so difficult of attainment and produced only by such grievous toil that most of us shirk it, even while reproaching ourselves at our lack of capacity and purpose. The pathetic burden of unfulfilled possibilities, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... London, having been entered on the boards of the Inner Temple. It was greatly the desire of the Editor that he should engage himself in the study of the law; not merely with professional views, but as a useful discipline for a mind too much occupied with habits of thought, which, ennobling and important as they were, could not but separate him from the every-day business of life, and might, by their excess, in his susceptible temperament, be productive of considerable mischief. He had, during the previous long vacation, read with the Editor the Institutes of Justinian, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... never thought of race pride, think now. Not only think, but act well your part. Without the ennobling power of our women we can never be a great and noble race. If young men aspire to reach the highest pinnacles of fame, they rise but to fall lower, unless the women are pure and will demand respect. Learn to resent insults, young women. Learn to respect and defend the women of our race, young ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... beautiful thing in the world: it can be the silliest thing in the world. It can be the most lowering: it can be the most ennobling. Nothing excites so much laughter and hard speaking in the world as "schoolgirl friendships;" as often as not they are found among older people, but schoolgirls have given a name to this particular kind of folly, so it behooves schoolgirls to keep clear of it, ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Gabrielle was conscious that the daughter of a doctor, the humble inhabitant of Forcalier, was cast at too great a distance from Monseigneur Etienne, Duc de Nivron and heir to the house of Herouville, to allow them to be equal; she had as yet no conception of the ennobling of love. The naive creature thought with no ambition of a place where every other girl would have longed to seat herself; she saw the obstacles only. Loving, without as yet knowing what it was to love, she only felt herself distant from her pleasure, and longed to get nearer ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... in the midst of architecture and tombs of wood, or freestone, or brass, naturally thinks of GOLD as the best enriching and ennobling substance for them; in the midst also of the fever of the Renaissance he writes, as every one else did, in praise of precisely the most vicious master of that school— Giulio Romano*; but the modern poet, living much in Italy, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... that party-spirit which in the artificial times of George IV. was so common even among poets in their treatment of one another,—they assuming to be mere politicians, and striving to be oblivious of their heart-ennobling pursuit. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... to uphold the merest waste of his creatures? No world could ever be built or sustained on such an idea. It is the children who shall inherit the earth; such as will not be children, cannot possess. The hour is coming when all that art, all that science, all that nature, all that animal nature, in ennobling subjugation to the higher even as man is subject to the Father, can afford, shall be the possession, to the endless delight, of the sons and daughters of God: to him to whom he is all in all, God is able to give these things; to another he cannot give them, for he is unable to ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... interrupted the king, "are not unknown to us. I do honour thee by ennobling him; for though our ladies' brightness be all too dazzling to receive a glory from us, yet peradventure for their sakes our courtesy is vouchsafed. Rise, Sir ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... but the girl felt in herself potentialities not yet drawn upon, unlimited capabilities leading towards the accomplishment of good. Money had not merely the magic of exalting, educating, refining, and ennobling the individual (herself); it had radiating, transforming power for others. It could diffuse warmth like a flame, and send forth joy like a bell. "With it I am safe, strong: I can help the poor. Without it I ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the most ennobling motives that can fire the heart of man, expanding and thriving in the atmosphere of free America, added a refining touch to the martial enthusiasm of our forefathers and elevated the character of the American soldier to a standard never attained by fighting ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... character by selections chosen from the wisest writers in English in all the centuries that have passed since our language assumed a comparatively fixed literary form, have a much more valuable function to perform. Character is more valuable than knowledge and a taste for pure and ennobling literature is a safeguard for the young that cannot ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... groves, the memory of which was his solace long after, in many dark and trying hours, for we find in the midst of the toils of the camp, that his spirit yearns for rural peace and solitude. The love of nature is ever ennobling; it perhaps contributed to form the character of the ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... though unlimited, is not really a popular institution: if you are a person of high caste you pay another person of very august caste indeed to make your daughter momentarily one of his sixty or seventy momentary wives for the sake of ennobling your grandchildren; but this fashion of a small and intensely snobbish class is negligible as a general precedent. In any case, men and women in the East do not marry anyone they fancy, as in England and America. Women are secluded and ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... words, he should begin to learn how to make researches, for that is coming to be one of the useful arts, not merely for scholars, but for men and women in many sorts of avocations. It is always useful, as well as ennobling, to be able to trace knowledge to its sources. Work of this sort involves more or less conference and discussion among classmates, and calls for active aid from the teacher; and if the teacher does not at first feel at home in these methods, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... against these ideas. "Austere," he whispered. "The ennobling tests of war." A trooner rode up alongside, and offered ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that the effort has been needed,—yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hanger for certain signs ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... echo from the fears expressed by the East at the close of the eighteenth century come the words of an eminent Eastern man of letters[208:1] at the end of the nineteenth century, in warning against the West: "Materialized in their temper; with few ideals of an ennobling sort; little instructed in the lessons of history; safe from exposure to the direct calamities and physical horrors of war; with undeveloped imaginations and sympathies—they form a community unfortunate ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... I suspect one of you, and I am quite determined to get at the truth. During the whole of this half-year there has been a spirit of unhappiness, of mischief, and of suspicion in our midst. Under these circumstances love cannot thrive; under these circumstances the true and ennobling sense of brotherly kindness, and all those feelings which real religion prompt must languish. I tell you all now plainly that I will not have this thing in Lavender House. It is simply disgraceful for one girl to play such tricks on her fellows. This is not the ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Zeus-sprung, son of Peleus, Sat by the swiftly-sailing ships and fumed, Nor ever did frequent th' ennobling council, Nor ever join the war, but pined in heart, Though in his tent abiding, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... together all our old circle of friends at his house. They convinced me that the work of ennobling men's souls was not in my line at all. Besides, it is such a hopeless task, any way. I shall let ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... to fit himself to put on immortality. The passion of his boyhood has now become the ennobling ideal of his life. Sustaining and stimulating him, saving him from himself, ever leading him upward and onward, his angelicized lady is an abiding presence with him whether he is deep in the contemplation of the study of philosophy and the learning of the ancients, or engaged in the ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... chiefly conscious only of the frightful odour of mortality. It is on thinking the thing over in retrospect and with cold blood that the real sense of horror begins to creep into one's soul. Such is the so-called "ennobling influence of war"! As I went over this grim battlefield, with all its tragic sights, I reflected bitterly on the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones |
