"Rectitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... core of her sorrow, namely, that she had never loved her brother enough, nor forgiven him for not being his fellow-twin. Whatever he said tended to reveal to her that there had been more justice, rectitude, sisterly feeling, and wholesome training than she had given herself credit for, and, above all, that Gilbert had loved her all the time. She was induced to dwell on the exalting and touching circumstances of his last redeeming ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can truthfully say that it was she who educated me; during the whole course of my life I had the profoundest respect for her judgment and rectitude. When, in my enthusiasm, I was filled with a longing to play a part as a leader of the people, she held me back by showing how my name would destroy any influence I might have; since they would distrust me, and imagine my aim was to use them as an instrument for recovering my rank. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being "mere morality," and not properly religion. "Dr. Channing," an orthodox minister is reported to have said, "is excluded from the highest form of religious life by the extraordinary rectitude of his character." It is indeed true that the outlook upon life of the twice-born—holding as it does more of the element of evil in solution—is the wider and completer. The "heroic" or "solemn" way in which life ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... marriage of good and truth, that is, of love and wisdom. Any one can comprehend intellectually and see rationally, that so far as he flees from and turns away from theft and cheating, so far he loves sincerity, rectitude and justice; so far as he flees and turns away from revenge and hatred, so far he loves the neighbor; and so far as he flees and turns away from adulteries, so far he loves chastity; and so on. And yet scarcely any one knows what there is of ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... transfix prescriptions and shams; and with snobs (we must change the figure) he played as a cat does with a mouse, torturing and then devouring. In the words of Miss Bronte, "he was the first social regenerator of the day, the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things." But this was his chief and glorious strength: in the truest sense, he was a satirist and a humorist, but not a novelist; he could not create character. His dramatic persons do not speak ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... they would have recovered their own commanding position along with my salvation. For when the spirit of the loyalists had been renewed by your consulship, and they had been roused from their dismay by the extreme firmness and rectitude of your official conduct; when, above all, Pompey's support had been secured; and when Caesar, too, with all the prestige of his brilliant achievements, after being honoured with unique and unprecedented marks of distinction ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... little seamstress that she had tried the way of transgressors, and found it hard. Mingling with her intense sorrow over Liz was another and, if possible, a more painful fear—lest this deviation from the paths of rectitude might be fraught with painful consequences to the gentle girl whom Teen had learned to love with a love which had in it the elements of worship. These melancholy forebodings banished sleep from the eyes of the little seamstress, and early in the morning ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... you," he admitted soothingly, "for I don't always understand myself. But really, my dear, you're not seeing this in the right light. Oh, I'm not going to defend myself. It's sad, very sad, but I'll confess I'm no chromo of sweet and haloed rectitude to be held up for the encouragement and beatification of young John D. Rockefeller's Bible Class. Still, I get my living quite as worthily as many of the guests who grace"—with a light wave of his hand about the great chamber—"this noble habitation. Though," in ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... of any knavery, however infamous. Guile was his element; audacity was his breastplate; delusion was his profession; immorality was his creed; debauchery was his consolation; his own genius—the genius of cunning—was the god of his idolatry. Had Cagliostro been sustained by the principles of rectitude, he must have become the idol as well as the wonder of his contemporaries; his accomplishments must have dazzled them into admiration, for he possessed all the attributes of a Crichton. Beautiful in aspect, symmetrical in proportions, graceful in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity: In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self; In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... Denmark and Norway exercised in Europe an influence the effects of which were long felt throughout the Scandinavian countries with their vast extent and rival races. She united wisdom and policy with courage and determination, had strength of mind to preserve her rectitude without deviation, and her efforts were crowned by divine Providence with success. She is justly considered one of the most illustrious female rulers in history. Her renown even reached the Byzantine emperor Emanuel Palaeologus, who called her Regina sine exemplo ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... healthy, as good food for powder as anybody else, and yet here you are, safely laid away in a bomb-proof, while your friends are fighting. Wake, rouse yourself, my friend! The only way to regain the path of rectitude is to ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... ought to be "informed of the full length and breadth and depth" of the measures, intentions, &c, of the abolitionists. At this there is not an abolitionist who will not rejoice. We ask for nothing but access to the popular mind of the South. We feel full confidence in the eternal rectitude of our principles, and of their reception at the South, when once they are understood. Let the conflict come, let the truth of liberty fairly enter the lists with the error of slavery, and we have not a doubt of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... broken-hearted. He told himself he was a poltroon; that he was losing his manhood; that the one he loved despised him, and did well to despise him; that a man of his age who gave way to such weakness must be entering senility. The habit of rectitude would cover him like armor, and proclaim him still of a chivalry to which he felt recreant. But it came upon him like revelation that many a man had died of what doctors had called disease, when the report to the health-officer should have read: ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... rapid as it first begun; While skill for each fantastic whim provides, And certain science ev'ry current guides! Oh, may thy days, from human sufferings free, Be blest with glory and felicity, With full fruition, to a distant hour, Of all thy magic and creative power! Blest in thyself, with rectitude of mind, And blessing, with thy talents, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... were to be acquired; and as he supposed these to be already secured to him by his birth, there was nothing he was solicitous to obtain as the reward of merit, nor any thing that he considered himself to possess as the bounty of Heaven. If the sublime and disinterested rectitude that produces and rewards itself, dwells indeed with man, it dwelt not with ALMORAN: with respect to God, therefore, he was not impressed with a sense either of duty or dependence; he felt neither reverence ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... nature. There were in reality two Basils: one with a kindly word, a joke, a light jest, an affectionate manner for each and every one he came across; the other was made of sterner stuff—grave, with deep thoughts and high aspirations, and very strong, almost rigid ideas with regard to honor and rectitude—this was the inner Basil, whose existence Ermengarde knew of, whom she adored, loved, ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... pretended social axiom; on the contrary, that material prosperity without an offset, diminishes the capacity for happiness and debases character, is a fact which a thousand examples are at hand to prove. The worth of a civilization is the worth of the man at its center. When this man lacks moral rectitude, progress only makes bad worse, and further embroils ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... refined sensibilities, those ornamental arts, and that keen sense of the beautiful, in which Italy as far surpassed other lands, as it was for centuries inferior to them in physical bravery and in moral rectitude. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... opening of hostilities that he was seated on his throne presenting awards of merit to the bravest of his brave soldiers. The hall was filled with martial enthusiasm, and the memorable scene was one in which splendour, animation and the confidence of rectitude were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... is a boon which I possess in common with flies and worms. In the next place, if I say no more than that I have applied myself to honourable pursuits, and have guided the course of my life along the path of rectitude, then you have received more from your benefit than you gave; for you gave me to myself ignorant and unlearned, and I have returned to you a son such as you would wish ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... history of Egypt it became the earnest wish of every pious man to make the journey from this world to the next in the Boat of the Sun. Armed with words of power and amulets of all kinds, and relying on their lives of moral rectitude, and the effect of the offerings which they had made to the dead, their souls entered the Boat, and set out on their journey. When they reached Abydos their credentials were examined, and those who were found to be speakers of the truth and upright ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Mr. Stevenson in particular—began to bore Miss Knowles, and she began to look forward, with an emotion which would have surprised her betrothed, to foreign mails and letters. She considerately spared Mr. Stevenson this disquieting intelligence, having found him in matters of honor and rectitude as archaic and as fastidious as Jimmie himself. "Has a nasty suspicious mind," she reflected, "and a nasty jealous disposition. I wonder if he will expect me to give up all my friends when ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... worse feeling than either of these actuated the leader. He was an impostor in the most determined sense of the term. A man who had in early life lost, through the indulgence of vicious propensities, all sense of rectitude or self-esteem; and who, when ambition was awakened in him, gave himself up to its influence unbridled by any scruple. His father had been a methodist preacher, an enthusiastic man with simple intentions; but whose pernicious doctrines of election and special grace had contributed to destroy all ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... to talk freely; for he was most desirous to have their entire confidence in order that he might be the better able to correct wrong ideas and impressions, inculcate right views and motives, and lead them to tread the paths of rectitude, living noble, unselfish lives, serving God and doing good ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... widest possible latitude but exactable to the uttermost farthing with confiscation of estate, real and personal, to the crown. Loyal to the highest constituted power in the land, actuated by an innate love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance of public order, the repression of many abuses though not of all simultaneously (every measure of reform or retrenchment being a preliminary solution to be contained by ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... have wounded your characteristically haughty, shrinking, and Sclavic susceptibilities in rendering so public a tribute to your artistic skill, forgive me! The high moral worth and manly rectitude which distinguish you, and which alone render even the most sublime genius truly illustrious in the eyes of woman, almost force these inadequate and imperfect words from ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... latter, may be obscured and nearly obliterated by sin and the consequent disorganization; for in the teaching of the Fathers, as in that of their Master, it is the pure in heart that see God,[48] and it is only the man whose nature is kept in due balance by a life of moral rectitude—the "righteous man" of the Scriptures—who can be expected to exhibit clearly this "natural opinion" or to attain to a full knowledge and appreciation of the Christian doctrine of God. At the very best, the knowledge of the Deity attained apart from revelation seemed to the Fathers to be, in ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... and his grandfather disagreed, and the cogent speech of Linton had been the cause of further dispute between them. The Duke was disgusted because his grandson could be so scrupulous that he could not be progressive. For Harlan the straight path of rectitude was fringed with signs set there by friends, every sign inscribed "Fool." From the first, Linton had seemed to aggravate his ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct we ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... chambers, drew pleadings and indictments, and gathered many useful tricks from the criminal advocate to whom he attached himself like a leech. During this period he also made the acquaintance of a Solicitor who had retired from the noon-day glare of professional rectitude to the congenial atmosphere of shady cases. He also struck up a friendship with two or three struggling journalists, who were occupied in hanging on to the paragraphic fringe of their profession, and who might ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... of heart leads to destruction (perdition?) and all rectitude leads to Brahman (spiritual excellence). If this and this only is the aim and object of all true wisdom, then what can mental distraction do (to one who understands this)? Thy Karma has not yet been annihilated, nor have thy enemies been subjugated, for thou dost not yet know ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... postmark, and the address prevented Monsieur de Maulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there are few passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run. The baron had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall. He determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to enter the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... whereas it has been growing and spreading for half a century, gradually sapping all the vitality of France. But beside that evil, beside the downfall of the families it attacks, M. Zola portrays the triumph of rectitude, the triumph which follows faith in the powers of life, and observance of the law of universal labor. "Fruitfulness" contains charming pictures of homely married life, delightful glimpses of childhood and youth: the first smile, the first step, the first word, followed by ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... friend, and who, at her instance wrote some of his hymns, gives this estimate of her character: "Admirable as was her literary life, her home life was more so; and beautiful as were the examples set forth in her writings, her own example was, if possible, still more beautiful. Her unerring sense of rectitude, her love of truth, her ready sympathy, her active and cheerful beneficence, her winning and gracious manners, the perfection of high breeding, make up a character, the idea of which, as it ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... author upon the title-page of Vanity Fair, the other had not. She was thankful for the opportunity of expressing her high admiration of a writer, whom, as she says, she regarded "as the social regenerator of his day—as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped state of things. . . . His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius, that the mere lambent sheet-lightning, playing under the edge of the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... martyr, though not at the stake. He died in the Bastille, after enduring about a year's imprisonment,— there peacefully terminating a life distinguished for heroic labour, extraordinary endurance, inflexible rectitude, and the exhibition of many rare and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Patriarchs had worshiped, and to whom, being His creatures, all men owe worship. His precepts and His laws of morality are binding upon all nations; they will bring salvation and blessing to all without distinction.[11] The ideal of piety consists in the profession of God and a life of rectitude. The time will come when all nations will be penetrated by true knowledge of God and actuated by the noblest motives; then will follow the universal brotherhood of man. Until this consummation is reached, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... arrogance and confidence of a youthful prince, imbued with the most extravagant idea of his kingly attributes. By his side was the great successor of Mazarin, Jean Baptiste Colbert, whose knowledge of finance, earnest desire to foster the best resources of the kingdom, acknowledged rectitude, as well as admirable tact, gave him not only great influence in France, but enabled him to sway the mind of the autocratic king at most critical junctures. Happily for Colbert and Canada, Louis ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... duties have proved a sufficient refutation. The opinion of this gentleman with respect to the expediency of adopting a liberal system, that may prove an effectual stimulus to reformation and good conduct in those who have unhappily deviated from the path of rectitude, has been expressed unequivocally both in his dispatches, and in the prominent measures of his government, and will deservedly carry with it more weight than the whole collected opposition which I anticipate from those ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... cable which binds one to the land of one's birth. There a hundred subtile influences, the existence of which no one suspects until the moment they are withdrawn, unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude, or at least of external respectability; and Ralph's life had been all in society; the opinion of his fellow-men had been the one force to which he implicitly deferred, and the conscience by which he had been wont to test his actions had been nothing but the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... state of sweet serenity at which the most ardent disciples aim; but that of a layman, of a believing householder, is held in high honour; and a believer who does not as yet feel himself able or willing to cast off the ties of home or of business, may yet "enter the paths," and by a life of rectitude and kindness ensure for himself a rebirth under more favourable conditions for his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... us forget Pyrrhic victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric laughter; quos deus vult and nil de mortuis; Sturm und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of coincidence, and the soul of goodness in things evil; Hobson's choice, Frankenstein's monster, Macaulay's schoolboy, Lord Burleigh's ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Caroline Frances Perceval, the youngest daughter of Charles George Lord Arden. Both he and his wife were deeply religious persons, with a strong sense of the duties of their station. Education and influence had done their best work on a character of great rectitude and uprightness, even tending to severity, such as softened with advancing years. Remarkably handsome, and with a high-bred tone of manners, he was almost an ideal country gentleman, with, however, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... that a man "should have whatever he wants, and should desire nothing in an inordinate fashion."[271] Each one, however, rightly desires to know those things which concern himself. Hence, since no rectitude is lacking to the Saints, they wish to know those things which concern themselves, and consequently they must know them in the Word. But it belongs to their glory that they should be able to help on the salvation of those who need it, for it is thus that they are made ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... forty-five years before the birth of Christ. He was educated under the illustrious Theophrastus, from whom he learned philosophy and composition. While a brilliant genius directed him to comic poetry, his natural delicacy, his refined taste, his moral rectitude, and true philosophy controlled his fancy, imparted to his comedies a charm unknown before, and obtained for them the suffrage of the most enlightened, witty, and judicious men of his age, though for the same reason they were, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... arm, in the dangerous and precipitate counsels of the Chieftain, to be whirled along by him, the partaker of all his desperate and impetuous motions, renouncing almost the power of judging, or deciding upon the rectitude or prudence of his actions, this was no pleasing prospect for the secret pride of Waverley to stoop to. And yet what other conclusion remained, saving the rejection of his addresses by Flora, an alternative ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... imposing fines upon his enemies on pretence of punishing contempts of Courts; of uttering expressions derogatory to the other judges of the Court in which he sat; of having accused the barristers of Three Rivers frequently of high breaches of moral and professional rectitude; of having wickedly imprisoned in the common gaol of Three Rivers, Charles Richard Ogden, Esquire, then and still being His Majesty's Counsel for the said district, for an alleged libel and contempt against the provincial Court, in which Mr. Bedard was the judge; for having ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... responsibility which might possibly subject me to the displeasure of His Imperial Majesty, and would most certainly expose me to be continually harassed by prejudicial reports and false accusations, supported by artful intrigues, against which neither prudence nor rectitude could effectually avail. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... another group there is another elderly lady to be liked without a shadow of misgiving; abrupt, angular, extravagant, but the very soul of magnanimity and rectitude; a character thoroughly made out in all its parts; a gnarled and knotted piece of female timber, sound to the core; a woman Captain Shandy would have loved for her startling oddities, and who is linked to the gentlest of her sex by perfect womanhood. Dickens has done nothing better, for ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... particularly keen regard for the equitable administration of justice. The doctor should truly care for the physical wholesomeness and well-being of the community. The clergyman should be alive to those things that concern the rectitude and purity of life. The journalist should be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the enlightenment of public opinion; and so on. Without either the general or the technical manifestations of public spirit, in short, the so-called professional man is a reproach ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... Specious clever rascals many of them were, far too clever for me, as I sometimes found out to my cost. One young fellow who has served a well-earned and richly merited sentence of five years' penal servitude, quite overpowered me with his good intentions and professions of rectitude. "No more prison for me," he would say; he brought his wife and children to see me, feeling sure that they would form a passport to ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... that all commands which I have laid upon others I can endure to have laid upon me. I must surely expect to live in security and to suffer no harm from any one by either deed or word, such is the confidence (based upon the consciousness of my own rectitude) that I have in your good-will. I may of course meet with some catastrophe, as happens to many; for it is not possible for a man to please everybody, especially when he has been involved in so great ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... Instead of unfolding the possibilities of the future, he recapitulated the virtues and achievements of the past. I am not attempting to depreciate the inestimable service, which his system of philosophy has rendered toward enhancing the standard of rectitude among his disciples. But for him Asia might have sunk into the depths of moral chaos. This much at least must be said in justification of his doctrine, that evidently it was not his intention to reproduce an exact duplicate of the primitive Chinese civilization. "Let each day bring a new order ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... book-keeping. A friend of his was involved in some large financial enterprises, a stock company of some size. He was anxious to be of service to him by keeping an eye upon the employment of his funds and the rectitude of his associates' operations; but he was a lawyer, with a very imperfect knowledge of financial matters and the vernacular of the banking business. Could not M. Joyeuse, in a few months, with three ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... unmaidenly, more than indiscreet, and will say that I have been ready to throw myself into the arms of the first stranger I have met; but what care I for this little world of Shetland? I stand on my own rectitude. I shall be far away, and can afford to despise all such insinuations. But the greatest doubt Bertha, in her over-anxious love, has raised up before me, is that regarding Hernan himself. Still I feel sure that he ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... figures in Tournefort. His whole existence had been consecrated to the good of the public, and to the alleviation of misery; thus he looked forward to his dissolution with a tranquillity of soul that can only result from a life of rectitude; he never acquired a fortune; and left no other inheritance to his children, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... is the plain, unvarnished human being when one sees him in a true light! Schulz's honest, kindly face seemed to me to typify all that I knew of the finer qualities of the Germans; the frugal simplicity, the tenderness, the proud, stiff rectitude. He and I felt for each other, I think, something of the humorous friendliness of the men in the opposing trenches. Chance had cast us on different sides of the matter. But when I felt tempted to see red, to condemn the Germans ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the house of Turner & Co., of Paris and London. The moment my friend's affairs were on a safe footing he placed himself at my service to help with the Vicomtesse de Clericy's more complicated difficulties. I was glad to avail myself of the assistance of one whose name was a by-word for rectitude and stability. Here, at all events, I had a colleague whose word could not be doubted by Isabella, of whose father John Turner had been a friend as well as of ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Biographer of Collins, in his affecting apology for that unfortunate genius, remarks, "That the gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task on the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness, and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind; yet difficult as Nature herself seems to have rendered the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Milly. She was only vexed that her husband should be vexed—only wounded because he was misconceived. But the difficulty about ways and means she felt in quite a different manner. Her rectitude was alarmed lest they should have to make tradesmen wait for their money; her motherly love dreaded the diminution of comforts for the children; and the sense of her own failing health gave ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... significance. But, yet, in relation to the highest interests of morality or the well-being of society, the pupil must be taught to subordinate without hesitation all that relates exclusively to his own personal comfort or welfare for the well-being of his fellow-men, or for moral rectitude. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... power," said Abbe Wry, "M. Turgot conciliatoriness (conciliabilite), and M. de Maurepas soul enough to follow his lights." "M. de Malesherbes," wrote Condorcet, "has, either from inclination or from default of mental rectitude, a bias towards eccentric and paradoxical ideas; he discovers in his mind numberless arguments for and against, but never discovers a single one to decide him. In his private capacity he had employed his eloquence in proving to the king and the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... investigation, all the said governor's goods may be sequestered and he be sent prisoner to your Majesty, so that you may do with him and his as you see fit. If this be done, it is the surest means to keep the governors in the path of rectitude, and make them perform their duties as they should. Nothing else has wrought such ruin in the country as the trading and trafficking of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be Free and ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... much; it was overwhelming. I wept again. Soul so kind and pure! The sense of my loss, the sense of the simple, proud rectitude of her ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... God and man thus in strange antagonism, with regard to earthly dispensations! Man, as he arraigns the rectitude of the Divine procedure, exclaiming—"How unaccountable this dealing! How baffling this mystery! Where is now my God?" This sickness—why prolonged? This thorn in the flesh—why still buffeting? This family blank—why permitted? Why the ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... I saw her, the more I had reason to admire her. Her mind seemed to unfold itself leaf by leaf, and every time to discover new sweetness. Nobody knew her so well as I, for she was generally silent.... Never did I meet with more intuitive rectitude of mind, more delicacy, more exquisite propriety in word, thought, and action than in this young creature. Her brilliant little sister used to say that 'people began by admiring her, but ended by loving Matilda.' For my part I idolized her." Irving then continues by giving a long account of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... clear enough to distinguish things worth while. And these, scorning to acquire either wealth or power, labored diligently in their separate fields of endeavor. One such became a great educator, the greatest of his day and generation, and by his long life of rectitude set an example to the youth of America that has done more good than all the gold that all the millionaires have given for educational purposes. Another brought to success a prodigious physical undertaking. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... circumstance for the calmer, ethical consideration of the subject that the church sided with Hotchkiss, as this provoked an equal adherence to the plaintiff and Starbottle on the part of the larger body of non-church-goers, who were delighted at a possible exposure of the weakness of religious rectitude. "I've allus had my suspicions o' them early candle-light meetings down at that gospel shop," said one critic, "and I reckon Deacon Hotchkiss didn't rope in the gals to attend jest for psalm-singing." "Then for him to get up and leave the board ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... to free the slaves, and nothing more, the record shows clearly. His move on Harper's Ferry was well planned, and had all the parties interested done their part the work would have been done well. As to the rectitude of his intentions he gives the world ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... lies there, with the attitude of a great dog beaten and crouching. You wonder how she would behave if she were towed out on the open bright water of the river, under that clear sky, under the eyes of other ships going about their affairs with the self-conscious rectitude and pride that ships have. For ships are creatures of intense caste and self-conscious righteousness. They rarely forgive a fallen sister—even when she has fallen through no fault of her own. Observe the Nieuw Amsterdam as she lies, very solid and spick, a few piers above. Her funnel is ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historic localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... choir-boy, he at least had the sturdy loins of a Tourangian; if he yielded sometimes to the native idleness of his birthplace, it was counterbalanced by his desire to make his fortune; if he lacked cleverness and education, he possessed an instinctive rectitude and delicate feelings, which he inherited from his mother,—a being who had, in Tourangian phrase, a "heart of gold." Cesar received from the Ragons his food, six francs a month as wages, and a pallet to sleep upon in the garret near the cook. The clerks ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... that the examination was to take place. "All I can do," said the magistrate, "I have already done; but I wished for an opportunity of informing you of it. I have written to my brother justice at full length respecting your high character, and treating the habits and rectitude of your life alone as a sufficient refutation of so ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... business of weighing the right and the wrong against each other; she was bold enough to term it petty business in her thoughts and realized fully, when she did so, that her Vose-Mern occupation had damaged her natural rectitude ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... with me, and you must not be angry, for you then completed your conquest of him. He admired your character, your love, your sentiments, your honesty. He could not help expressing his astonishment at the rectitude of my instinct, or his approval of the passion I felt for you. It was he who consoled me in the morning assuring me that you would certainly come back to me as soon as you knew my real feelings, the loyalty of my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and for this reason alone, that, my suspicions fully aroused, I have been at some pains to verify them. A heart conscious of its moral rectitude does not flinch from the duty before it or from the pain which, unfortunately, the execution of that duty so often inflicts ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... park. So far as we could judge, it was miles from anywhere, and had no connection with anything else; but we were too thankful for the privilege of stopping, to be critical. The house had an air of quiet rectitude which appealed to Phil, and without a word she allowed our luggage to be taken ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... of vetoes, restored l'entente cordiale between himself and the greater portion of the Republican members of Congress. His pure patriotism, his high rectitude of intention, and his personal virtues had never been doubted, and when he was again found acting in accord with the party that elected him, it was believed that he would be carried pleasantly through his embarrassing duties, and that his civil success ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... patron deity. He was a god of Destiny, the lord of the living and the dead, and was exalted as the great Judge, the lawgiver, who upheld justice; he was the enemy of wrong, he loved righteousness and hated sin, he inspired his worshippers with rectitude and punished evildoers. The sun god also illumined the world, and his rays penetrated every quarter: he saw all things, and read the thoughts of men; nothing could be concealed from Shamash. One of his names was Mitra, like the god ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... meals, although the democracy of San Pasqual would not have construed speech at such a time as a breach of convention. For there were no angels in San Pasqual; the town was merely sunk in a moral lethargy, and the line of demarcation in matters of rectitude was drawn between those who stole and had killed their man, and those who had not. All the lesser sins were looked upon tolerantly as indigenous to the soil, and as Borax O'Rourke had never been accused of theft and had never killed his ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... inspector remain among friends or enemies who have much or little property. Neither should he remain with those of whom there is any doubt. They are fortunate if they are such men as are suitable for this task, and if they proceed with rectitude, rigor, and example, and with zeal for the glory of God, the service of your Majesty, the welfare of this country, with a Christian and disinterested heart. Since the above qualities are clearly in accordance with the necessity and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... of the British are designated, possess many of the characteristics of their fathers; they generally prefer the more certain pursuit of husbandry to the chase, and follow close on the heels of the Scotch in the path of industry and moral rectitude. Very few of them resort to the plains, unless for the purpose of trafficking the produce of their farms for the produce of the chase; and it is said that they frequently return home better supplied with ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... we were fully conscious of this side of his character. We felt our little hypocrisies shrivel up before him; we felt a confidence in the infallible rectitude of his moral judgments which inspired a kind of awe. His arbitrament was instant and final, though rarely invoked, and was perhaps the more tremendous in proportion to its rarity. This aspect, as if of an oracle without ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... Peare was executed at Fisherton gallows.... The remaining part of the sentence was completed on Wednesday, by hanging the body in Green Lane, near Chippenham, where it now is; a dreadful memento to youth, how they swerve from the paths of rectitude, and transgress the laws of their country." The body of Peare was not permitted to remain long on the gibbet. We see it is stated in a paragraph in the same newspaper under date of November 10th, 1783, that on the 30th of October ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... contrasted by vices of considerable magnitude; or rather, he wanted strength of mind to preserve his rectitude of ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... leaping at the publisher with eyes that fairly blazed with the radiance of rectitude, "who do you take me for?" If Mr. BEZZLE had been less violent he would probably have said, "Whom do you take me for," and so have spared himself the ignominy of sinking to the ungrammatical level of the Common Herd. But ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... recommendation than that of his own unassuming modest merit, entered the very 16 respectable office of which he is now the distinguished principal, in the situation of a young man who has no other prospect of advancement than such as may accrue from rectitude of conduct, and the consequent approbation and patronage of his employer. By a long exemplary series of diligence and fidelity, he acquired the confidence of, and ultimately became a partner in the firm. His strictly conscientious integrity and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... apostasy, he confesses that principle, when unsupported by an assenting stomach, has to climb down. One must have bread; and 'the bread is Christian now.' Then the poor old wreck, once so proud of his iron rectitude, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an air that plainly said, "Just see what a good horse am I!" She started out three seconds before the others in a manner intended to shame their procrastinating ways. Invariably she was the last to rest, and the first to start on again. She climbed over-vigorously, with the manner of conscious rectitude. "Acts like she was trying to get her ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... Feb. 25.—That America is | |entering upon a new era of civic and | |business rectitude and that this is due | |to the awakening of the moral conscience | |of the whole people was the prophecy made| |here tonight by Governor Joseph W. Folk ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... know my sole reason?" She looked at him somewhat suspicious, somewhat reliant, awaiting her womanly instinct to reveal to her the rectitude of her judgment. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... well-packed satchel which the trembling hand of the disgraced subaltern took from the Commander, and the latter did not intend to let attention dwell too long upon the grimy details of its exterior. Fixing the steel eye of conscious rectitude on his victim, he leant slightly towards him and very unmistakably shouted at him the one dread word, "GAS!".... Unfortunately for the Commander the subaltern not only knew what to do next, but also had just the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... the conscious poet. All the depths of his heart rang with the resonance of these imaginations,—Man, America; meaning divine depth of manhood, divine spontaneity and rectitude of social relationship. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... struggling colony, was the nursery of bold and adventurous seamen. It is now carried on by a family named Davidson, father and sons—in conjunction with the killers. And for more than twenty years this business partnership has existed between the humans and the cetaceans, and the utmost rectitude and solicitude for each other's interests has always been maintained. Orca gladiator seizes the whale for the Davidsons and holds him until the deadly lance is plunged into his 'life,' and the Davidssons let Orca carry the carcass to the bottom, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... divinity among the schoolmaids her companions, to whom she gave so many cakes and sweetmeats that the apothecary had to be called in about once a week to cure many of surfeit. But this fair young flower-bed was saved from blight and choking weeds, first, by the innate rectitude and nobility of her disposition, which (save only when that dangerous look was in her eyes) taught her to keep a rein over her caprices, and subdue a too warm and vigorous imagination; next, by the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... appear to him to arise from envy. We read between the lines of his own eulogies of himself, that there was a widespread skepticism about his greatness and his achievements, which he attributed to jealousy. Perhaps his obtrusive virtues made him enemies, and his rectitude was a standing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... There are unwritten laws governing human conduct. Who invented them? Nobody knows. But woe to those who disregard them! Of course, basically it is all wrong; and sometimes God must laugh at our ideas of rectitude. But to live at ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... permit him to discuss the matter then or to offer any sort of explanation; in his amazement he could not think of any possible explanation. He could not convince himself that Vona needed other protection than her own thoroughness and rectitude gave her; however, he wanted ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... cheered by the conviction—you must not think me boastful—that it is time well employed. When I look around me and perceive the lawless, and even outrageous, conditions which obtain in so many other towns in the Territory, and contrast them with the orderly rectitude of Palomitas, I rejoice that my humble toil in the vineyard has brought so rich a reward. I deeply regret, madam, that your present stay with us must be so short; and with an equal earnestness I hope that it may be my privilege soon ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... constraints, and not from religion; but the interiors of such are full of thefts and robberies, and these burst forth when external constraints are removed from them, as takes place with everyone after death. Their sincerity and rectitude is nothing but a mask, a disguise, and a deceit. ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... parental discipline was simple and direct, and consisted of but one method of procedure: when the rising generation departed from the ways of its mothers it was promptly spanked back into the path of rectitude, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... the misfortunes of our fallen condition that rectitude in any course, however good, cannot long be maintained—at least in reasonable perfection. The army which had enabled Radama to pursue on the whole a beneficent course, ere long began to make its creator know its power. Feeling his dependence ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the most attractive pictures that humanity can offer," said John Effingham to Mrs. Bloomfield, as Eve walked away; "a young, timid, modest, sensitive girl, so strong in her principles, so conscious of rectitude, so pure of thought, and so warm in her affections, that she views her selection of a husband, as others view their acts of duty and religious faith. With her love has no shame, as it ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... most frugal economy. They were desired, in consequence of the king's earnest recommendation, to promote harmony and good agreement amongst his faithful subjects; to make the people acquainted with the rectitude and purity of his intentions and measures, and to exert themselves in maintaining the peace and good order of the country, by enforcing obedience to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... reap that man's harvest. Cheat, lie, be unscrupulous in your assertions, and custom will come to you. But if the price be too high, let him have his harvest, and you take yours —a clear conscience, a pure mind, rectitude within and without. Will you part with ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... rectitude—everything was urging Juliette to close her ears to the words of love, spoken by the man whom she had betrayed. But who shall blame her for listening to the sweetest sound the ears of a woman can ever hear—the sound of the voice of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... "Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins." Now it was unfitting that man should be made righteous unless he willed: for this would be both against the nature of righteousness, which implies rectitude of the will, and contrary to the very nature of man, which requires to be led to good by the free-will, not by force. Christ, therefore, justified man inwardly by the Divine power, but not against man's will. Nor did this pertain to His miracles, but to the end ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... same time, she was violent in her attachments. Though she was inadvertently drawn into that dishonorable mode of life which has stained her character, and given her a place among the criminals noticed in this work, yet she possessed a rectitude of principle and of conduct, far superior to many who have not been exposed to such temptations to swerve from the path of female virtue ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... was a Fleming like himself, and who often skated with him on the frozen lake, or kept him company in fishing through a hole in the ice. [Footnote: He says that Pierson had come among the Indians to learn their language; that he "retained the frankness and rectitude of our country," and "a disposition always on the side of candor and sincerity. In a word, he seemed to me to lie all that a Christian ought to be" (1697), 433.] When the spring opened, Hennepin descended Lake Huron, followed the Detroit to Lake Erie, and proceeded thence ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... it is never too late for a great nation to rectify a wrong done to even the humblest of its subjects, let alone a man of such undoubted courage and rectitude as Gen. Arnold." ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... what my present tormenter, and future husband, may think of a precipitate compliance, on such a disagreeable behaviour as his: but they arise principally from what offers to my own heart; respecting, as I may say, its own rectitude, its own judgment of the fit and the unfit; as I would, without study, answer for myself to myself, in the first place; to him, and to the world, in the second only. Principles that are in my mind; that I found there; implanted, no doubt, by the first gracious Planter: which ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... in addition to the burdens and obstacles proper to pioneers, had to deal with the cares of forming a model state and of laying out for posterity a straight and solid path in which it might walk with due rectitude. All this was in itself an ample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They were enacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity and exaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay Psalm Book, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... risk of being misunderstood by him; and as to what the rest of the world thought, she was so well used to hear weekly and daily reports of her going to be married to fifty different people, that she cared little for what was said on this subject. Indeed, conscious of rectitude, and with an utter contempt for mean and commonplace gossiping, she was, for a woman, and a young woman, rather too disdainful of the opinion of the world. Mrs. Broadhurst, though her daughter had fully explained herself respecting Lord Colambre, before she began ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... circuitous than the route proposed to you, nor more eccentric than your present guide. This book aspires to the precision of neither Patterson nor Bradshaw. Let men "bloody with spurring, fiery hot with speed," consult those oracles of swiftness and rectitude of way: we do not belong to their manor. We desire to beguile, by a sort of serpentine irregularity, the occasional tedium of rapid movement. We move to our journey's end by sundry old-fashioned circuitous routes. Grudge not, while you are whirled along a New Road, to loiter mentally upon certain ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... personal master, may have some difficulty in appreciating the force and the moral austerity of this spirit of devotion to an ideal of dynastic aggrandisement, and in seeing how its paramount exigence will set aside all meticulous scruples of personal rectitude and veracity, as being a ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Hildebrand died at Salerno, May 25, 1085. When near his end he uttered the words which are inscribed on his tomb: "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore do I die in exile." Of the rectitude of his intentions, there is no room for doubt, whatever view is taken of the expediency of his measures. He united with an unbending will the power of accommodating himself to circumstances, as is witnessed in his treatment of Robert Guiscard, and in his forbearance towards ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... character which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are well worth preserving, and what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction." The confession of these last few lines refutes the whole of Mr. Mill's elaborate argument on the worthlessness and immorality of that religion which from his grave he lifts his sad and hollow voice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... his uncle was only too glad to ship him off for England. And when Lady Keith made her temporary home in her old neighbourhood, the companionship began again, permitted by her in good nature, and almost contempt, and allowed by his family in confidence of the rectitude of both parties; and indeed nothing could be more true than that no harm had been intended. But it was perilous ground; ladies, however highly principled, cannot leave off self-pleasing habits all at once, and the old terms returned sufficiently to render ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other breast, save his, my own and that of the unknown minister in an almost unknown town, dwelt any knowledge of the fact which stood between me and the marriage which all these people had come here to see. My confidence in his rectitude determined me. Without conscious emotion, without fear even,—the ending of suspense had ended all that,—I told the boy to seat the gentleman in the library. Then "I am haunted now, I am haunted always, by one vision, horrible but persistent. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the instinctive rectitude of his nature, it was with Borrow a deep-rooted conviction that sin never goes, and never can go, unpunished. His doctrine, indeed, was something like the Buddhist doctrine of Karma—it was based on an instinctive apprehension of the sacredness of “law” in the most universal acceptation of ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... particular mood they may happen to be in at the time it is presented to them. They know nothing of human nature beyond their own immediate preference at the moment for port or sherry, for vice or virtue. To tell me there could not be a man so lost to shame, if to rectitude, as Captain Crowfoot, is simply to talk nonsense. Nay, gentle reader, if you—and let me suppose I address a lady—if you will give yourself up for thirty years to doing just whatever your lowest self and not your best self may like, I ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... truth. The King ordered him to be hung immediately, his carcass and head to be treated as had been done with those of the Giaour. The people returned with quickened appetites to their dinner, and admired more than ever the wisdom and rectitude of their Prince. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various |
