Sample sentences for BENEFACTION

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Definition

an act intended or showing kindness and good will — especially a financial donation

This magnificent benefaction from the Man of the Waters to the poor Indian from Ceylon was accepted by the latter with trembling hands.
Jules Verne -- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Or a benefactor's veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the consequent blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous.
George Eliot -- Middlemarch
Why should such a God limit his love and benefaction to one land, and, as it were, to one family?
Lew Wallace -- Ben Hur
Whereas (his voice became confidential and eager), if they could discover a technique for shortening the period of maturation what a triumph, what a benefaction to Society!
Aldous Huxley -- Brave New World
To be unfortunate in any respect was sufficient, if there was no demerit to counterpoise it, to turn the scale of that good man's pity, and to engage his friendship and his benefaction.
Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones
On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept my vexation under the surface for policy's sake, and did what I could to let on to be glad.
Mark Twain -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science.
Gustave Flaubert -- Madame Bovary
Oh, ask you why I accepted any of the benefactions of the Roman?
Lew Wallace -- Ben Hur
How soon are benefactions all forgotten!
Homer -- The Odyssey
Our Principal Mr. Eph Evans, states: "We are grateful to Mrs. Prior for remembering us along with her many other benefactions."
Margaret Atwood -- The Blind Assassin
Benjamin Faneuil, who was departing with a family of three, was the nephew of wealthy Peter Faneuil, whose many benefactions to Boston had included Faneuil Hall.
David G. McCullough -- 1776
Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the peoples' welfare and that he could control the fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions.
Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace
My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country couple, every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all sides and everywhere.
Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace
...in the book; she was older than the eldest of them by nine years and had married and left home while they were schoolboys; between her and them stood two other sisters; after the birth of the third daughter there had been pilgrimages and pious benefactions in request for a son, for theirs was a wide property and an ancient name; male heirs had come late and, when they came, in a profusion which at the time seemed to promise continuity to the line which, in the tragic event, ended...
Evelyn Waugh -- Brideshead Revisited
...severity to Partridge, who, knowing himself to be innocent, could not conceive that any other should think him guilty; lastly, from the allowance which he had privately received long after the annuity had been publickly taken from him, and which he looked upon as a kind of smart-money, or rather by way of atonement for injustice; for it is very uncommon, I believe, for men to ascribe the benefactions they receive to pure charity, when they can possibly impute them to any other motive.
Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones
"But though," continued he, "there is, I am afraid, little merit in these benefactions, there would, I must confess, be much pleasure in them to a good mind, if it was not abated by one consideration.
Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones
Upon my honour and word as a gentleman"—Mr. Wenham here put his hand on his waistcoat with a parliamentary air—"I declare I think that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand benefactions—and a most spotless and innocent lady."
William Makepeace Thackeray -- Vanity Fair
...high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction.
James Joyce -- Ulysses
Sex contains all, bodies, souls, Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk, All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth, These are contain'd in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself.
Walt Whitman -- Leaves of Grass

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benefaction