Literary notes about beneficent (AI summary)
In literature, the term "beneficent" is frequently employed to denote a nurturing, life-affirming quality that can be ascribed both to human actions and to natural or divine forces. Its usage spans from describing individuals whose kindness sustains and uplifts others ([1], [2]) to characterizing gods, nature, and even abstract forces that bestow prosperity or healing, as seen in discussions of vegetation’s spirit or the renewing power of the sun ([3], [4]). Philosophers and social critics also invoke "beneficent" to debate moral dispositions and ethical actions, contrasting it with its negative counterpart in order to highlight virtues like generosity and care ([5], [6]). This layered use enriches narrative textures by linking personal virtue to broader cosmic or moral orders, whether in myth, history, or everyday life ([7], [8]).
- She now became extremely beneficent to the poor cottagers.
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë - Her influence was so beneficent and essential that if she were to leave him he might perhaps go to ruin.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - Both are representatives of the beneficent spirit of vegetation, whose visit to the house is recompensed by a present of money or food.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - These more beneficent rays soon caused the earth to renew its green mantle, and to bring forth flowers and fruit in abundance.
— from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. Guerber - [189] to deny that it raises the mere beneficent disposition of the will to a higher degree of excellence, and renders its effects better.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick - Does it not elicit our approval, as unfailingly as any beneficent action towards men?
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer - Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or Thor,—God also of beneficent Summer-heat.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle - It is at once sublime and beneficent, like a god stilling a tempest.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
