"Self-imposed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He too seemed to be bitterly regretting the idleness that had made him give up his self-imposed task, and the dismal hungry looks he kept giving me from time to time ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... Three weeks of this self-imposed strenuous training wore by before Carley was free enough from weariness and pain to experience other sensations. Her general health, evidently, had not been so good as when she had first visited Arizona. She caught cold and suffered other ills attendant ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... he believed, self-imposed. There is no account available, he said, of the enslavement of the Children of Israel by the Egyptians, but a careful consideration of the history of various peoples shows beyond the possibility of a mistake being made, that only those ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... not need much to reveal what is in a person. It would be a great help to me if we could read a book together. This self-imprisonment day after day and self-imposed reticence is very unwholesome. I would give much to have a pupil or a friend ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... inaction in our own lumber-room, to cheerful use in some other circle. This is a delusion of which we must make haste to get rid. It is the weakest sort of sentiment, and yet it is treasured by many natures as if it were something refined and noble. To yield to it, is to fetter our life with self-imposed and fantastic chains. There is no sort of reason why we should not love to live among familiar things; but to break our hearts over the loss of them is a real debasing of ourselves. We must learn to ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as well as on the barren moor. Our young convert saw everything in a new light. She understood now, as she had not before, why her mother, stealing precious hours from sleep, wearied her fingers and weakened her eyes with the self-imposed task of providing for the necessities of children not her own. If a ruling motive is one of the greatest things in the secret of a human life, the grandest of all forces on earth is the love of Christ. This she felt, and it was to her a divine revelation. From the feeble starlight of ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... with the Dodans. Mr. Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and scenes ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Commandments a Mohammedan prohibition of alcohol in any form. Godfrey, I have no doubt, would break any of the commandments which he recognized, if he saw his way to making a small profit on the sin. But I did not think that even a 25 per cent. dividend would tempt Crossan to disregard his self-imposed prohibition ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Simonson had told him freed him from his self-imposed obligation, which, in a moment of weakness, seemed to him burdensome and dreadful; and yet it was not only unpleasant, but painful. The offer of Simonson destroyed the exclusiveness of his act, minimized in his own and other people's eyes the value ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... so in America or in England; in either of those countries the whole street would go mad in earnest and come to blows and bloodshed were the populace to let themselves loose to the extent we see here. All this restraint is self-imposed and quite apart from the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the cause of the land he loved, and in the moment of victory. Again and again, both in prose and in verse, he had said that this seemed to him a good death to die; and two years of unflinching endurance of self-imposed hardship and danger had proved that he ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... multiplicity and variety of his engagements, on behalf of local and special objects of utility, would make a surprising list, and they must have involved a sacrifice of ease and leisure, and endurance of self-imposed restraint, a submission to tedious repetitions of similar acts and scenes, and to continual requests and importunities, which few men of high rank would ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... read much about confidence men, and half expected that his self-imposed acquaintance would try to borrow money, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... to deny the artist, dedicated to this high achievement by his love of the material not less than by his peculiar gift, the range of a liberal idealism. We would not have him bound by any precedent or any self-imposed law of literality. If he should see his work as a mighty historical picture, or series of such pictures, we should not gainsay him his conception or bind him rather to any genre result. We ourselves ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... constitutional powers alone, the Federation was but a weak sort of a government. Yet the weakness was not the forced weakness of a government which was willing to start with limited powers hoping to increase its authority as it learned to stand more firmly on its own feet; it was a self-imposed weakness suggested by the ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... brought to give assistance, and in most cases this was forthcoming. On the other hand some of the lesser-known early travellers were murdered, and the goods they travelled with, stolen. It is really only those travellers who were able to complete their self-imposed tasks, and return to Britain, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the taxes are heavy, will not mend matters. Aristocratic government, and the tyranny of masters, are nothing like so injurious as the tyranny of vicious appetites. Men are easily led away by the parade of their miseries, which are for the most part voluntary and self-imposed,—the results of idleness, thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct. To blame others for what we suffer, is always more agreeable to our self-pride, than to blame ourselves. But it is perfectly clear that ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... than sharing my twin beds with a disagreeable stranger? Besides, remember those angels unaware that the Bible talks about. I guess this is up to me, so put away your frets and come on in. It's time we had worship and ended this day. But I guess those two self-imposed boarders of ours need a little religion ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... many to be another statue of Victory. We may some day evolve scenarios that will require nothing more than a title thrown upon the screen at the beginning, they come to the eye so perfectly. This is not the only possible sort, but the self-imposed limitation in certain films might give them a charm akin to that of the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... this. There had been little need for the doctor or his wife to add a word. Theodora's sorrow and shame were intense; intense, too, was her power of self-abasement. For a week, she spent most of the time in her own room, as if she feared to meet the eyes of her family; and, in this self-imposed isolation, it chanced that she had heard ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... great world that surged around them,—the world of petty aims and transitory pleasures, with which they, filled full of the knowledge of higher and eternal things, had so little in common save sympathy,—sympathy for the wilful wrong-doing of man, and pity for his self-imposed blindness. Presently Heliobas spoke again in his customary light ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... read tracts and sermons, frequented churches and preachings, gave up driving on Sundays, and appeared in considerable danger of falling into the gulf of methodism; but this turn did not last long, and whatever induced him to take it up, he apparently became bored with his self-imposed restrictions, and after a little while he threw off his short-lived sanctity, and resumed his worldly habits and irreverent language, for he was always a loose talker. Active and ambitious in his pursuits, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This co-existence of freedom and self-imposed restraint—of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it—may be found in the aristocracy of England, (since about 1688,) as well as in the democracy of the American United States; and, because we are familiar with it, we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the ardent desire to excel. On the score of mere industry, there are few living English writers who have written so much, and none that have produced so much of high quality. The industry of Bulwer is entitled to all the greater praise that it has been entirely self-imposed. To hunt, and shoot, and live at ease,—to frequent the clubs and enjoy the opera, with the variety of London visiting and sight-seeing during the "season," and then off to the country mansion, with its well-stocked ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... The naturalist, then, ignores the group; he flaunts impartially both the classic and the religious law. He is equally unwilling to submit to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept those restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses. He jeers at the one as hypocrisy and superstition and at the other as mere "middle-class respectability." He himself ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... discharge of her self-imposed duties with such ardour as to leave no doubt upon the minds of the parties most interested but that they would be thoroughly performed, and with an alacrity too that positively appalled quiet Esther's ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... understood some of the shortcomings which lay underneath this attractive exterior, he could not remember them just now. There was the temptation to offer himself heart and soul to this man and forget the self-imposed mission on which he had come. He had been brought in contact with Monmouth some years ago, had begun, perhaps, by pitying, and had ended by giving him a friendship which was truer and stauncher than any other he had ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... of the method, they sought to raise wonder by surpassing the finish of tempera with the very material that had long been considered intractable. Mere finish was, however, the least of the excellences of these reformers. The step was short which sufficed to remove the self-imposed difficulties of the art; but that effort would probably not have been so successful as it was, in overcoming long-established prejudices, had it not been accompanied by some of the best qualities which oil-painting, as a means of imitating nature, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... absence kept up a constant correspondence with the Prince, to preserve the latter's "ideal aspirations." Sometimes, the keen observer feared that the object of his dreams and cares was losing courage for his self-imposed Herculean labours, but the brave will and loyal heart ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... years and years to lie unseen, unheard of, while younger men rose past him into rapid reputation. No unworthy impatience to be famous, no sense of the uncertainty of life, no weariness or terror at the length or breadth of his self-imposed task, could induce him at any moment of weakness to give way to haste or discouragement in the persistent regular collection and digestion of his material or in the harmonious execution of every part of his design.... No man who honors the profession ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... to representation, was practically ended. Eight of the eleven Confederate States, at the close of June 1868, had their senators and representatives in Congress. Three—Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas—were prevented by self-imposed obstacles from enjoying the same privilege until after President Johnson had retired from office. Of the representatives on the floor of the Fortieth Congress from the eight states lately in rebellion, only two were Democrats. The senators were unanimously Republican. Of the aggregate number ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... St Saviour, or Bridgittines (q.v.), of which the principal house, at Vadstena, was richly endowed by King Magnus II. and his queen. About 1350 she went to Rome, partly to obtain from the pope the authorization of the new order, partly in pursuance of her self-imposed mission to elevate the moral tone of the age. It was not till 1370 that Pope Urban V. confirmed the rule of her order; but meanwhile Bridget had made herself universally beloved in Rome by her kindness and good works. Save for occasional pilgrimages, including one to Jerusalem ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... can, it helps the bush-folk, and they, in turn, doing what they can to help it in self-imposed task, are ever ready to "find room somewhere" in pack-bags or swags for mail-matter in need of transport assistance—the general opinion being that "a man that refuses to carry a man's mail to him 'ud be mean enough to steal ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... undertaking, of the dangers he was incurring, or of the animosity he was inviting, for the Jews of Russia still regarded all learning not found in the folios of the Talmud as sacrilegious and unholy. To overcome this antagonism to secular knowledge now became Mendel's self-imposed task. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... personages, of which it is composed, so grouped together, as to present an attractive and striking picture to the mind of every reader. It was that want which I determined to supply, and with some degree of earnestness the self-imposed task was undertaken. My plan was faintly to imitate the simple narrative style, the conciseness, the picturesqueness, the eloquence, the poetry, and the philosophic spirit of a history, the most remarkable of any extant—that of the world. As Moses graphically ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... away by the other birds; that is, a feigned place of printing, adopted by those who would have caught it if orthodoxy could have caught them. Thus, in 1656, the works of Socinus could only be printed at Irenopolis. The author deserves his self-imposed title, as ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... entertained in Cairo at a grand banquet. When he visited England even a heartier and grander welcome was extended to the victor of Omdurman and the destroyer of Mahdism. The public acclaimed him, and honours and dignities were showered upon him ere he returned to resume his self-imposed task of reconstructing ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... to show my hero amidst scenes and circumstances ready to exercise his brave and generous propensities, and to put their personal issues to the test on his mind. Hence Poland's sadly-varying destinies seemed to me the stage best calculated for the development of any self-imposed task. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... removed to London, where he remained many years. He also visited Ireland, where he made, it is said, several beautiful instruments from an old maple billiard-table, with which he was fortunate enough to meet. He was of a restless temperament, which showed itself in continual self-imposed changes. He would not, or could not, permit his reputation to grow steadily, by residing long in one place, but as soon as fame was within his grasp, he sacrificed the work of years by removing to an entirely new field ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... the South. Comprehensive as was the Enrolment Act, which rendered liable to military duty the entire male population between the ages of seventeen and fifty, the South was compelled to overstep its self-imposed limit. The forces which Lee and Johnston surrendered contained so many boys unfitted by youth and so many men unfitted by age for military service, that a Northern General epigrammatically remarked that for its armies the Confederacy had been compelled in the end to rob ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... had felt that a mother's love was more imperious, more craving in its nature, than the love of a father? Had that been severe? And had he not resolved to allow her every comfort which her unfortunate position,—the self-imposed misfortune of her position,—would allow her to enjoy? She had come to him without a shilling; and yet, bad as her treatment of him had been, he was willing to give enough not only to support her, but her sister also, with every ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Judentums with introspective analyses of their Teutonic souls. On the other hand, there are those who, while quite as good Germans as the others, so far as practical patriotism is concerned, do not renounce the intellectual and spiritual heritage which is their own. Their self-imposed task is therefore the cultivation, enrichment, and modernization of Jewish thought and tradition. Hence the great output of highly meritorious literary works on purely Jewish subjects which, if not as scholarly as those of the German Jewish scientists ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... of Europe that Americans are maniacs of money. European conservatism draws a money-line beyond which it will not pass. When any man of Europe has a proposal of business too big for the European mouth—wearing its self-imposed half-muzzle of conservatism—that promoter and his proposal head for America. It was this which gained Washington the advantage of a visit from Storri; his stop in Canada—being a six-months' stay in Ottawa—was only preliminary to his ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... their presence. It had the effect of discouraging and driving from her side many a good-natured damsel, who would have loved to condole with her, and might have been a pleasant companion. The young women regarded her with some dislike in consequence of her self-imposed isolation—and the young men with some apprehension. Her very knowledge of books, which infinitely surpassed that of all her sex within the limits of Charlemont, was also an object of some alarm. It had been her fortune, whether well or ill may be ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the hospital at 10 o'clock, (I had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty closely confined,) I wander'd a long time around Washington. The night was sweet, very clear, sufficiently cool, a voluptuous halfmoon, slightly golden, the space near it of a transparent blue-gray tinge. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the state Spinoza follows Hobbes pretty closely, but rejects absolutism, and declares democracy, in which each is obedient to self-imposed law, to be the form of government most in accordance with reason. (So in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, while in the later Tractatus Politicus he gives the preference to aristocracy.) In accordance with the supreme right of nature each ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... now. The question before his mind was growing clear; whether he was to persist in this self-imposed martyrdom of himself and his family or whether he was to go back upon his outbreak of visionary fanaticism and close with this last opportunity that Lady Sunderbund offered of saving at least the substance of the comfort and social status of his wife and daughters. In which ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... lectures, committees, boards, and councils; opened bazaars and soup kitchens and coffee taverns, etc. The list of her self-imposed tasks was endless. Thus her outer life was filled to overflowing, and, unlike mine, every hour of it was worth record—as I well know, who have witnessed it all. But this is not the place in which to write the outer ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Americans and British, and for many years the catch of oil taken from these teeming waters averaged four thousand tuns annually. That the value of the fishery was maintained at so high a level for over a quarter of a century was doubtless due to the fact that there was a long, self-imposed close season, during which the whales were quite unmolested. Nothing in the migratory habits of this whale, so far as has ever been observed, would have prevented a profitable fishing all the year round; but custom, stronger even than profit, ordained that whale-ships should never stay too long upon ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... out of the matter with hands which are really as clean as they look? My dear Augustus, I believe the doctor to have been at the bottom of more of this mischief than we shall ever find out; and to have profited by the self-imposed silence of Mr. Midwinter and Mr. Armadale, as rogues perpetually profit by the misfortunes and necessities of honest men. It is an ascertained fact that he connived at the false statement about Miss Milroy, which entrapped the two gentlemen into his house; and that one circumstance ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... safely, I turned-to and gave Tonnison a hand with his self-imposed task of excavating; yet, though we put in over an hour's hard work, turning over the whole of the upheaped stones and rubbish, we came upon nothing more than some fragments of broken wood, that might have been parts of a desk or table; and so we gave up searching, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... which caused the remarkable mirage of the afternoon helped to continue the "black hour," as the Arabs term it, far beyond its ordinary limits. Hence it was nearly ten o'clock when Royson quitted the camp on his self-imposed task. To all outward semblance, he differed not a jot from the two Arabs who accompanied him. A burnous and hood covered his khaki riding costume. He bestrode a powerful camel nearly eight feet high. Like ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Farwell seemed to shrink and age. In that hour he recognized the fact that through all the years of self-imposed exile he had held to the hope of release in the future: the going back to that which he had once known. But looking at the hard, set face opposite he knew that this hope was futile: he must live forever where he was, or, by departing, ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... table, gym fittings, books. We've a license. We sell beer to members," his eyes were eager: the man's heart was in his hopeless self-imposed work. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... son," said the Bishop, at once gently acquiescent; for Symon of Worcester invariably yielded a point which had been misunderstood. For over-rating a mind with which he conversed, this was ever his self-imposed penance. "Your great strength would be fully equal to lifting ladies over pitfalls. Which recalls to my mind a scene in this day's events, which I would fain describe to you ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... between federal and State courts are governed in part by Constitutional Law with respect to State court interference with the federal courts and State court refusal to comply with the judgments of federal tribunals, by statutes as regards interference by federal courts with those of the States, and by self-imposed rules of comity applied for the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... wholly engrossed in his self-imposed task of "showing them." He led them to the bottom of the garden, where a small stream (now almost dry) disappeared into a narrow tunnel to flow under the road and reappear in the ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... stand when the heart of the champion fails him; Who strive when the mighty his shield casts away, And yields up his post when a woman assails him? Alone and despairing thy brother remains At the desolate shrine where we stood up together, Half tempted to envy thy self-imposed chains, And stoop his own neck for the noose ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... compromised her, and persecuted her. By his indiscretions he drew upon himself the violent enmity of Gratien Bourignard, father of Madame Desmarets. In this exciting struggle Maulincour, having neglected the warnings that many self-imposed accidents had brought upon him, also a duel with the Marquis de Ronquerolles, was fatally poisoned and soon after followed the old baroness, his grandmother, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... invading plants or bushes thinned out. But far more often there is not even a fence, or if there is, it has heavy woods or a swamp or a wild pasture beyond it. I could go after plants every day for six months and nobody would ever detect where I took them. My only rule—self-imposed—is never to take a single specimen, or even one of a small group, and always to take where thinning is useful, and where the land or the roadside is wild and neglected, and no human being can possibly be injured. Most often, indeed, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... cleared out the cellar, re-arranged the bins, counted up the cider, made a great cauldron full of raspberry jam, potted, papered, and labelled it. Long after the whole household was in bed she pushed on with her self-imposed tasks until the night was far gone and she very spent and weary. Then she stirred up the smouldering kitchen fire and made herself a cup of tea, and, carrying it up to her own room, she sat sipping it and glancing over an old bound volume of the Leisure Hour. Her seat was behind the little ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... jading, however, of all her self-imposed performances at this moment, was the constraint to laugh and be merry, when others laughed and were merry over the frequently empty ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... will made her merciless towards herself. She took pleasure in the hardest of self-imposed penances, as if the racking of her soul by incessant prayers, and wasting of her body by vigils and cruel fastings, were a vicarious punishment, borne for the sake of her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... that hypothetical fortune. On the other hand, Guy didn't disguise from himself the strong probability that the unknown benefactor might now refuse to pay in the six thousand. In that case, Guy said to himself with a groan, he would take to the diamond fields, and never rest day or night in his self-imposed task till he had made enough to repay Cyril in full the missing three thousand, and to make up the other three thousand he still owed the creditors of the Rio Negro Company. After which, he would return and give himself up like a man, to stand his trial ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... one, and the heat from the fire, together with that from the sun, was almost insupportable; but, stripped of all clothing that could conveniently be cast aside, each one continued at his self-imposed task of averting the threatened destruction from ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... was still very sick, when Miss Ainslie awoke after the brief sleep which had been all the rest she had allowed herself from her self-imposed task, her head seemed strangely light. There was a roaring in her ears as if a cataract were playing about them. Her limbs ached, and every movement seemed unusually difficult—almost painful. She walked across ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... niece of Mr Pitt, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1782, undertook the self-imposed and benevolent task of educating the Maronite, Druze, and Mahommedan children. It was her pleasing endeavour to help, according to her means, every distressed person requiring relief, to disseminate feelings of humanity among husbands, who in the East treated ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... flame. During the last months of the winter he had not played the languishing swain as conscientiously as during the autumn. Like the sailor in the song "is 'eart was true to Poll" always, but he had broken away from his self-imposed hermitage in his room at the Snow place several times to attend sociables, entertainments and, even, dances. Now, when she returned he was eagerly awaiting her and would have haunted the parsonage before and after working hours of every day as well as the evening, if she had permitted, and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... self-imposed task with all the ardor for matchmaking, possessed by a perfectly happy married woman. But Dorothy evidently intended that Leonore should not marry Peter, if one can judge from the tenor of her remarks to Leonore in the dressing-room. Peter liked Dorothy, and would probably ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... to the individual has been one long conflict. This is necessarily true because every human organism has instincts, feelings and desires and is naturally impatient at any limitations placed upon it unless self-imposed. On the other hand, organized society functions to preserve itself, and if the activities of the individual are hostile to this preservation the individual must give way. Theorists of various schools are forever propounding social ideas, with the positive assurance ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... self-imposed solitude everything at Brienne arranged itself propitiously. Each of the students was provided with a small patch of ground which he could do with as he pleased, and Napoleon's use of his allotted share was characteristic. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... to keep away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed blindness had sent Mary Standish ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... the end of October, 1601. He may have regretted the peaceful island of Hveen, considering the troubles in which Bohemia was rapidly becoming involved, but there is little doubt that had it not been for his self-imposed exile, his observations would not have come into Kepler's hands, and their great value might have been lost. In any case it was at Uraniborg that the mass of observations was produced upon which ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... the mind develops in neglect. Our changed conditions make this chance of will-culture more doubtful than formerly. A generation or two ago[1] most school-boys had either farm work, chores, errands, jobs self-imposed, or required by less tender parents; they made things, either toys or tools, out of school. Most school-girls did house-work, more or less of which is, like farm-work, perhaps the most varied and most salutary as well as most venerable of all schools for the youthful body and mind. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... immense sum of money at his disposal if he would consent to reside in the city of New York and represent Southern commerce. Millions would have flowed to him. But he declined. He said: 'No; I am grateful, but I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in life.' And he did. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... wrote to Frejus, judging, with a deadly common sense, that no news is better than bad news. Day by day she continued her self-imposed task, on the slippery hill-sides and in the muddy valleys, until at last she passed for a peasant-woman, so bedraggled was her dress, so lined and weather-beaten her face. Her hair grew white in those days, her face greyer. She had not even ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... shoulders by such a word as this that I have been poorly trying to speak about now! 'Thou art careful and troubled about many things,' poor soul! trying to be good; trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil. Try the other plan, and listen to Him saying, 'Give up self-imposed effort in thine own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... see her, to hear her voice. Of his own free will he was putting away all that life could mean or hold for him, and in the flood of natural reaction that set in he called himself a fool and revolted at his self-imposed sentence. The old struggle recommenced, the old temptation gripped him in all its bitterness, and never so bitterly as to-night. In the revulsion of feeling that beset him it was not death he shrank from but the ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... domestic life. It means going hither and thither in the universe of thought as much as in the universe of matter, it means adventure, it means movement and adventure that must needs be hopelessly encumbered by an inseparable associate, it means self-imposed responsibilities that will not fit into the welfare of a family. In all ages, directly society had risen above the level of a barbaric tribal village, this need of a release from the family for certain necessary types of people has been recognized. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Harford filled a large place in Kelley's gloomy world. He was not a romantic person, but he was often lonesome in the midst of his self-imposed penance. He forbade himself the solace of the saloon. He denied himself a day or even an hour off duty, and Harford, secretly amazed and inwardly delighted, went so far one day as to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... these acceptable viands, I am somewhat startled at hearing one of the worst "cuss-words " in the English language repeated several times by one of the two Turks engaged in the self-imposed duty of keeping people out of the place while I am eating - a kindly piece of courtesy that wins for them my warmest esteem. The old fellow proves to be a Crimean veteran, and, besides a much-prized medal he brought back with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... shrunk from following his example, or even from publicly avowing his creed. Moreover, the miserable condition of the masses of the agricultural population, of which we shall give some startling evidence later on, must have prepared a soil favourable to his self-imposed mission, to awaken them to a knowledge both of their rights and of their duties. Especially welcome must have been doctrines in accordance with their simple religious beliefs, as well as with their ancient and well-founded traditions ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... will soon realize that the physical and mental ills from which you suffer are mostly of your own making. Then you can choose whether to let them continue or to end them, but if you choose to remain ill, bear your cross uncomplainingly, for you have no right to afflict others with your self-imposed sufferings. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... the Nipe. One comedian, who was playing the part of a henpecked husband, did remark: "If my wife gets any meaner, I'm going to send Stan Martin after her!" But it didn't get much of a laugh. And the Government organization had nothing to do with that kind of censorship; it was self-imposed. Every one of the really great comics recognized, either consciously or subconsciously, that the Nipe was not a subject for humor. Such jokes would have made them about as popular as the Borscht Circuit comedian who told a funny story ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... couldn't see it, and felt vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of someone who believed it. After all, mankind had been on the verge of mass suicide, and the Gods had mercifully come back from their self-imposed exile and taken care of things. The exile had been designed to prove, in the drastic laboratory of three thousand years, that Man by himself headed like a lemming for self-destruction. And, for Forrester, the point had ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... son John was in charge, and sends instructions from time to time as to poor pensioners and others who were not to be neglected in the weekly ministrations. At the same time, he seems rarely to have omitted the self-imposed task of adding daily to the pile of manuscript on which he was at work—the collection of stories to be subsequently issued as Tales of the Hall. Crabbe had resolved, in the face of whatever distractions, to write if possible a fixed ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... specific allotment of lands as on the feudal estate, or distribution of tasks as in a socialistic commonwealth, the community accomplishes a natural division of labor and diversification of industry, supports its own institutions by self-imposed taxes and voluntary contributions, and supplies its quota to the larger State of which it forms a democratic part. In spite of the constant exercise of individual independence and competition, there is at the foundation of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... his own spiritual accounts, Heinrich Heine in the latter part of his life wrote of his friend Zunz:[89] "In the instability of a transition period he was characterized by incorruptible constancy, remaining true, despite his acumen, his scepticism, and his scholarship, to self-imposed promises, to the exalted hobby of his soul. A man of thought and action, he created and worked when others hesitated, and sank discouraged," or, what Heine prudently omitted to say, deserted the flag, and stealthily slunk out of the life ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... look through," said the young man despondently, looking up from his self-imposed task. "I haven't found anything interesting yet. How did you get on? Do you think those footmarks can possibly ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... wished them both good fortune, satisfaction was largely mingled with my regret when the next day I stood in the little station looking after the train which bore Lee and his daughter back to his self-imposed task in smoky Stoney Clough. Neither of them ever crossed my path again; but still Harry and I discuss the old man's doings, and Aline says that there was a trace of the hero hidden under ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... soon well known amongst the neglected tenants of an estate in Chancery. Her self-imposed duties increased from day to day. The old dying man would take no food but from her hands. The Doctor found her at his house one evening. She had cut herself badly in trying to open a bottle for him, and was deadly pale. "I can't bear the sight of blood," she confessed, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... of this double part, And self-imposed deception caused my heart Sometimes to shrink, I needed but to gaze On Helen's face: that wore a look ethereal, As if she dwelt above the things material And held communion with the angels. So I fed my strength and courage through the days. What time the harvest ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... did not follow them. Brother Hecker was a faithful student in his school and learned much from Father Othmann. The latter especially insisted on the principle of accepting Providence as the chief dispenser of mortifications. He had no objection to self-imposed spiritual exercises, but he did not positively favor them. He taught his young men that the traditional practices of devout souls as embraced in the routine of the novitiate, were good mainly to break the resistance of corrupt nature and render their souls pliant subjects of the Divine ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the future of vivisection, as conducted in America to- day? Is it to continue, without other limitations against cruelty than those which are self-imposed, without legal restriction or restraint, so long as civilization endures, ever widening its scope, ever increasing the hecatombs of its victims, until uncounted milions shall have been sacrificed? Is protest against excess to grow weaker, until the ideal of humaneness in the ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... leisure for amusement, even had he been inclined that way. Night found him very tired; morning brought a hundred self-imposed and complicated tasks to be accomplished before ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... insensible state he never knew himself, but his slumbering visions had been long lost in total forgetfulness, when he was awakened by a light tap on the shoulder. Aroused by this signal, slight as it was, he sprang upon his feet with a confused recollection of the self-imposed duty he had assumed with the commencement of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the table with her, which privilege suggested no lack of substantial and dainty provisions, and my governess was an accomplished and very discreet lady, whom my step-mother secured after much trouble and worry; but here the limit was drawn to her self-imposed duties; having done this much she rested satisfied that she had so far outstepped the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... pauses in the midst of these revelations made in his old age, and with self-imposed and shuddering silence intimates that there are things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Chetwynde, himself intellectual, recognized and respected the brilliant intellect of his companion. He saw that the woman who had saved his life at the risk of her own, who had dropped down senseless at his bedside, overworn with duties self-imposed through love for him—the woman who had overwhelmed him with obligations of gratitude—could also dazzle him with her intellectual brilliancy, and surpass him in familiarity with the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Luther declares, 'When true repentance is awakened in a man, full absolution from punishment and sin comes to him without any letters of indulgence.' At the same time he says that such a man would willingly undergo self-imposed chastisement, nay, he would even ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... intensely as you will—is but the business of the day, and every spare moment relaxation; little you guess the frightful drudgery undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself,—to live at once two lives, each as severe as the whole of yours,—to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement, a body and brain already worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour. I did it. God forbid, though, that I should take credit to myself for it. Hundreds more have done it, with still fewer advantages ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... shared the views of their leader. They could be heard chatting, discussing, arguing, calculating the different chances of an encounter, and observing the vast expanse of the ocean. Voluntary watches from the crosstrees of the topgallant sail were self-imposed by more than one who would have cursed such toil under any other circumstances. As often as the sun swept over its daily arc, the masts were populated with sailors whose feet itched and couldn't hold still on the planking ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... had begun. To the president of the meeting she sent, anonymously, her verses entitled "The Ploughman;" and the production being publicly read, was received with warm approbation, and was speedily put to music. She was thus encouraged to proceed in her self-imposed task; and to this early period of her life may be ascribed some of her best lyrics. "The Laird o' Cockpen," and "The Land o' the Leal," at the close of the century, were sung in every district ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... self-imposed questions, and as her misery and despair grew greater it seemed as if the morning was growing very cold and the bricks of the houses opposite more and more obscure, and then soon after they were quite invisible, for ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... and the costume from history, but allows us to feel that genuine moderns are masquerading in the dress of a bygone century. Even in the last case, it generally results in a kind of dance in fetters and a comparative breakdown under self-imposed obligations. 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth' and 'Quentin Durward,' and the rest are of course audacious anachronisms for the genuine historian. Scott was imposed upon by his own fancy. He was probably not aware that his Balfour of Burley was real flesh and blood, because painted ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... laborious writing of For the Term of his Natural Life. It affords the first, and unhappily the last, evidence of how far he recognised the claims of realism in fiction; and from the account of his suffering under the self-imposed drudgery of keeping to the strict line of history, we see the man as his friends knew him contrasted with the conscientious artist known to the general ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... unworthy elements in her nature alike conspiring to her undoing. In her distraction she sniffed audibly. A tear ran down either side of her pink shiny nose and dropped on the folds of shepherd's-plaid silk veiling her plump bosom. For, with some obscure purpose of living up to her self-imposed indispensability, Miss Bilson was distinctly dressy at this period, wearing her best summer gown on every possible occasion and tucking a bunch of roses or carnations archly in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and said: "It's all right, I saw by the turbans and dresses of the men who came down to you that they were Turks; and I know, from experience, that we run no risk whatever in leaving the goods under their self-imposed guardianship." As he was the party who was most interested in the result, I said nothing more, but proceeded to lighten the ship as speedily as possible, by making several additional trips to the shore with as much of the cargo as enabled us to get at the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... anxiety to remain in the company of his new acquaintance, and as he realised how unpleasant it would be to sacrifice the walk with her, he endeavoured to excuse to himself his derogation from his self-imposed character of cool superiority and indifference. She was very amusing, he said to himself, and he had nothing in the world to do. He never had anything to do, since his education had been completed. Why should he not walk with Madame d'Aragona and talk to her? It would be better ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... who, at that moment, could not have been more than a dozen yards from him. There could be no mistaking a target so conspicuous and so close at hand; but when the aim was sure and Ned's finger was pressing the trigger, he restrained himself by the self-imposed question whether it was right to pick off a foe, savage though he was, in that fashion. He was well aware that no mercy would have been shown him had the position been reversed; still, he could not justify in his own mind an act that looked so ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... indifferent as to acquiring any knowledge whatever of a people whose sway has been extended over so many millions of human beings, and whose influence is felt in the remotest corners of the globe." The manner in which the Khan has performed his self-imposed task, is highly creditable to his industry and discrimination, and strongly contrasts, in the accuracy of the facts and plain sense of the narration, with the wild extravagances in which Asiatic historiographers are apt to indulge; the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... dementia—physical brain degeneration, a result of advanced age. Then the paranoid symptoms appear; he imagines himself surrounded by envious enemies, who are conspiring against him. The patient then withdraws into himself, and in his self-imposed isolation, he conjures up imaginary companionship. I ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... though he said little to her about herself or her health, still kept his eye upon her, and soon became quite satisfied about her. Mr Rainy, who sometimes saw her passing through the street, wondered when she would begin to tire of her self-imposed labour, and of getting her own will and be ready to listen to reason. But he acknowledged to himself, that, if one could judge by her look, she seemed well pleased with her work and her ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... question with a change of position of his knees and arms, that he might be able when the time came to use his limbs. It was little enough scope he had for any movement on that narrow ledge, but he lost no chance, and his self-imposed fidgets helped not only ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... powers. We owe every other sacrifice to ourselves, to our federal brethren, and to the world at large, to pursue with temper and perseverance the great experiment which shall prove that man is capable of living in society, governing itself by laws self-imposed, and securing to its members the enjoyment of life, liberty, property, and peace; and further to show, that even when the government of its choice shall manifest a tendency to degeneracy, we are not at once to despair but that the will and the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... knowledge. Miss Adams and Miss Sadie Adams were aunt and niece, the former a little, energetic, hard-featured Bostonian old-maid, with a huge surplus of unused love behind her stern and swarthy features. She had never been from home before, and she was now busy upon the self-imposed task of bringing the East up to the standard of Massachusetts. She had hardly landed in Egypt before she realised that the country needed putting to rights, and since the conviction struck her she had been very fully occupied. The saddle-galled donkeys, the starved pariah dogs, the flies ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... insensible minds, to soften the heart of Nicholas, and render him more than usually mindful of his drooping friend. By night and day, at all times and seasons: always watchful, attentive, and solicitous, and never varying in the discharge of his self-imposed duty to one so friendless and helpless as he whose sands of life were now fast running out and dwindling rapidly away: he was ever at his side. He never left him. To encourage and animate him, administer to his wants, support and cheer him to the utmost of his ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... conscious of a wish in relation to her own individual happiness. Through the sudden crush of a great affliction, she was in that state of self-abnegation to which the mystics brought themselves by fastings and self-imposed penances,—a state not purely healthy, nor realizing the divine ideal of a perfect human being made to exist in the relations of human life,—but one of those exceptional conditions, which, like the hours that often precede dissolution, seem to impart to the subject of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... that in those circumstances the lady should undoubtedly allow herself to be fed, and should do all in her power by opening her mouth widely, and turning her head slightly in the direction of the gentleman on her right, to assist him in his self-imposed task, and thus to avoid giving him the impression that he had committed an unusual social solecism ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... unconditional, except as enjoining everything to be done from the maxim of a will that in legislating universally can have itself for object. This is the point that has been always missed, that the laws of duty shall be at once self-imposed and yet universal. Subjection to a law not springing from one's own will implies interest or constraint, and constitutes a certain necessity of action, but never makes Duty. Be the interest one's own or another's, the Imperative ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... occasion Mr. Owen Watkins was out with the Field Hospital, and he and the doctor dismounted in order, if possible, to bring in some wounded from under fire. They had just accomplished this self-imposed mission when a shot, coming a little too near, disturbed Mr. Watkins' horse, which bolted. In trying to find it he lost sight of the hospital, which had moved away, and found himself in desperate plight. Neither horse nor hospital to be seen, ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... his head solemnly. "Yes, yes," he said, "I see how it is; s'not only the pigs, and the calves, and hens, but you too I must take to markets and fairs, or we shall never marry you," and he turned away pondering seriously over his self-imposed duties. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the legislature, whatever they may be. Beside which, the people in America obeys the law not only because it emanates from the popular authority, but because that authority may modify it in any points which may prove vexatory; a law is observed because it is a self-imposed evil in the first place, and an evil of ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... the great Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain and Rome, passed many years of his self-imposed exile in Bordentown, in a house made beautiful with furnishings he brought from France, it is possible this old mirror has an interesting story, if only it could talk! Then, too, it was Bordentown that sheltered a Prince Murat, the relative of Joseph Bonaparte. If it was he who conveyed ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... and stop at Cremona about thirty miles below. He saluted the workmen and soldiers as he was carried under the bridge with frightful velocity. At this time his strength was almost gone and he was heart sore that he should fail in his self-imposed task; but felt that he was able to continue on as far as Cremona, about twenty-five miles below. The day grew more dreary and it seemed to him as if it would soon commence to snow. He continued working slowly and stubbornly along, when he was arrested by a cry behind him. Coming upright and wheeling ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... knew nothing of Prince Hamlet's determination until he had sailed from Elsinore; their knowledge then was confined to the fact of his departure. It was only to Horatio, his fellow-student and friend, that Hamlet confided the real cause of his self-imposed exile, though perhaps Ophelia ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the cares of life is no doubt merely metaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness reveals the excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his own perception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this time were purely imaginary; that a ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Cyclona sat in the low rocking chair, rocking the baby, singing to it, crooning a lullaby, a memory of her own baby days when some self-imposed mother, taking the place of her own, ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... after a moment he left, shrugging his shoulders a trifle, and condemning himself as an ass for his failure to remember who this "Mabel" was. The failure rendered him doubly keen, for it was a part of his business training, self-imposed, to remember names and faces. He went to his own hotel and for an hour ran through the pages of his blue book. It was a peculiar creation of his own. It was strictly private. It contained details concerning customers. It ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... mistake, then, to suppose that the Federal judiciary has suffered any loss of influence through its voluntary relinquishment of the veto power in the case of political questions. This self-imposed restriction on its authority merely affords it a convenient means of placing beyond its jurisdiction measures which it may neither wish to approve nor condemn. And since the court must decide what are and ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... and looked at him viciously. Her eyes sparkled with annoyance at being caught so easily in her self-imposed piece of espionage. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... pleasant on board ship, he resolutely refused intercourse with the outside world when not compelled by duty. In this there appears to have been something self-imposed, in deference to Lady Hamilton. There are indications that she felt, or feigned, some jealousy of his relations with others, especially with women, corresponding to the frenzied agitation he manifested at the association ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... has been enlarged. These social laws are in the main the groundwork of the exclusion of women from the right of suffrage. In the establishment of these laws, as in their modification, women themselves have even a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is, therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to women the enjoyment of which they desire, and for the exercise of which they are qualified, it cannot be doubted ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... in her. All the Plummers have kept diaries," Aunt Olivia mused, knitting stolidly on while the child stooped painfully to her self-imposed task. The quaint resemblance to herself at her own diary-writing did not escape her, and she smiled a little in the Aunt Olivia way that scarcely stirred her lips. Aunt Olivia smiled oftener now ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... accomplishment, was, nevertheless, desired and foreseen by the two greatest intellects produced by the Italian race. Dante conceived an Italy united under the Empire, which returning from a shameful because self-imposed exile would assume its natural seat in Rome. To him it was a point of secondary interest that the Imperial Lord happened to be bred beyond the Alps, that he was of Teutonic, not of Latin blood. If the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... he sobered himself with an effort and read the tale again. And this time a hopeless look settled upon his face. It would have been so pleasant, so easy to praise warmly, point out a trifling error or two and so have done with his self-imposed task. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... suffered severely by their self-imposed dumbness, but they suffered like Stoics. Maggie also suffered, and Maggie would not stand it. Maggie it was who had invented the slate. Indeed, they had heard some plain truths from that stout, bustling woman. They had not yielded, but they had accepted the slate in order ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... idols, nor to injure man by injustice and oppression. The Indians of our country are not found bowing down to numberless idols, as the inhabitants of many countries are: they worship what they call 'the Great Spirit,' with a deep reverence, humbling themselves before him, and undergoing self-imposed torments, to gain his good will, which the generality of Christians, in the manifestation of their faith, would find it hard to endure. They believe also in an Evil Spirit, as well as in a future state; and that they shall be happy or unhappy, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... they picked out the stones, and fitted them together according to their shape; and for want of hods they carried the mortar, wherever it was required, on their backs, stooping forward and clasping their hands together behind them, to prevent it from slipping off. They carried out their self-imposed task with great energy, and after six days of vigorous labour the fort was completed, for the natural defences of the site were so strong that in most places there was no need of a wall. As the weather was now favourable, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... off the logs was prosecuted with increasing spirit and resolution. And so eagerly intent had all the hands become, in pressing forward to its completion their self-imposed task, which all could see was now fast drawing to a close, that they took no note of the flight of time, and were consequently taken by surprise when the sound of the horn summoned them ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... deepest gratitude the one man who has stood steadfast at the helm, notwithstanding constant ridicule and belittlement on the part of the press during the early years of the work, unselfishly and unceasingly devoting his life to the self-imposed task year after year, never faltering, never seeking office or honors but always a worker; one who has grown gray in the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... hours on the boat before we reached this land, and will now keep watch lest any treachery be attempted by these Tamils." We knew that under the circumstances Hassan's keen sense of hearing would be more valuable than our own, and after a slight protest agreed to leave him to his self-imposed task of watching while we slept. He moved close to the entrance of the cave, and we followed his example before seeking repose. Hassan made some further remark, to which I do not clearly remember responding, the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... equipment and fortified by extensive reading in Ethnology, that Mr. Williamson was prepared for his self-imposed task. Proof of his powers of observation will be found in the excellent descriptions of objects of material culture with ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... He even severed himself from Mr Perch, on the occasion of his next visit, by dryly informing that gentleman, that he thanked him for his company, but had cut himself adrift from all such acquaintance, as he didn't know what magazine he mightn't blow up, without meaning of it. In this self-imposed retirement, the Captain passed whole days and weeks without interchanging a word with anyone but Rob the Grinder, whom he esteemed as a pattern of disinterested attachment and fidelity. In this retirement, the Captain, gazing at the packet ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to believe them. Even where the knowing part of the mind doesn't grant belief, the imagining part—and through it the feeling part—does; and, as conduct and mood are governed by feeling, the effect of a self-imposed make-believe on one's behavior and disposition—on one's life, in short—may be much the same as that of actuality. All depends on the completeness and constancy with which the ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... fetters wear Which our own hands have made, No self-imposed distresses bear, And court ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... that he felt his only chance of success lay in utilizing, for the tasks before him, every moment that he was free from acute suffering and retained any power of working. Consequently, when the self-imposed task of each day was completed, he found himself in a state of mental collapse. Now to appreciate the beauties of fine music or the work of a great writer certainly demands that the mind should be fresh and unjaded, whereas, at the only times Darwin had for relaxation, he was quite unfitted ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... so late was because she carefully examined every paper and copied most of those she had found. But toward morning she finished her self-imposed task, replaced the papers, slid the secret panel into place and then dragged the rather heavy piece of furniture into the far end of the deep closet that opened off her bedroom. Before the desk she hung several dresses, quite masking it from ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... 'true lo life.' True to the horrible, human sense of life, that looks no higher than the lust of blood, and is satisfied with it, I admit. True to the unreal, temporal sense of existence, that is here to-day, and to-morrow has gone out in the agony of self-imposed suffering and death. True to that awful, false sense of life which we must put off if we would ever rise into the consciousness of real life, I grant you. But the production of these horrors on the stage, even in a framework of marvelous music, serves only to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the changing world has rendered quite obsolete the pronouncements of President Monroe. In the case of Japan there has grown up a great power which is neither European nor American. American policy in the Far East has made it abundantly evident that the United States does not regard the self-imposed limitations upon its activity as extending to Asia. In her case there is lacking the quid pro quo by which the United States has justified its demand that European powers refrain from interfering in America. By no means, however, has the Government admitted the right of ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going." "The spiritually conscientious one," he is called in this discourse. Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task, speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge—his little hand's breadth of ground on Zarathustra's territory, philosophy. "Where mine honesty ceaseth," says the true scientific specialist, "there am I blind and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... vows had irrevocably committed Leo's happiness to his honor, it might then be safe to tell him the truth, and solicit release from the self-imposed terms. Five hours later, she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson |
