"Sense of duty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in the free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored, contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... for them, if you saw your way to it safely. I know that many of you have done, and are every day doing, whatever you feel to be in your power; and that even all this wrong and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you striving to do his best, without noticing that this best is essentially and centrally the best for himself, not for others. And all this has come of the spreading of that thrice accursed, thrice impious doctrine of the modern economist, that 'To ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... very good friends, talking pleasantly of all sorts of things, though Forrester had resumed his recumbent posture, and I could not help fearing it was only a strong effort of politeness or sense of duty which enabled him always to answer at ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... necessary to a mastery of the intricate old Spanish and French claims which were plastered over Missouri in those early days. He had inherited through his mother, from her grim old Puritan ancestors, the positive opinions and unquenchable sense of duty that constitute the far-famed New England conscience. He was born with a repugnance to slavery, whether of the will or of the body, and grew to manhood in the days when the question of the extension of negro ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... from Southampton for Port Sudan in the "Grantully Castle," each successive draft was of the same mould. The men came from the same neighbourhood, were of the same capacity, and had been bred with the same ideas. Their devotion was founded on a sense of duty. They were personally utterly remote from what is called militarism, and saw little fascination in its pomp. The survivors are now absorbed once more in the undramatic industry of Lancashire. There is nothing to indicate to an observer ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... no longer right, if it ever was," he answered. "I will not take advantage of your sense of duty now, as I was going to take advantage of your necessity before. No, you are free, and it ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... presents his humble duty to your Majesty; he has had the honour of receiving your Majesty's gracious invitation to Windsor Castle. He would have waited upon your Majesty this day had he not been constrained by a sense of duty to write to Lord Aberdeen last night a letter of which he ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... reply to M D Dickson." The title itself of the manuscript indicates the views of the author. But the summary of its style and reasoning, and those of the Case of Conscience, is very evident. Although he was thus led under an imperative sense of duty, to enter the lists of controversy with Mr. David Dickson, who was now Professor of Theology in the University of Edinburgh, but who at the time of the induction of the author, being a member of the presbytery, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... determination coupled with a sense of duty to the hounds kept us on that trail. For the time being enthusiasm had been submerged. But we had ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... him, but if by some chance he was able to injure the other, Grace thought he would do so. Grace, herself, strongly disapproved of Cartwright. All the same, he was her step-father and she had tried to cultivate her sense of duty. She was prejudiced, cold, and censorious, but she meant to be just and did not like ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... then, fear to invite the scrutiny of God, in connection with his own scrutiny of himself. He who deals only with the sense of duty, and the operations of his own mind, will find that these themselves become more dim and indistinct, so long as the process of examination is not conducted in this joint manner; so long as the mind refuses to accept the Divine proposition, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... youth. As yet, however, the project hovered before him at a great distance, and the path to its fulfilment offered him but little entertainment. His studies did not seize his attention firmly; he followed them from a sense of duty, not of pleasure. Virgil and Horace he learned to construe accurately; but is said to have taken no deep interest in their poetry. The tenderness and meek beauty of the first, the humour and sagacity and capricious pathos of the last, the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... should be represented to administration in the odious light of a party and factious measure," and finally they say, that in refusing to comply with the requisition, "they have been actuated by a conscientious and a clear and determined sense of duty to God, their King, their country, and their latest posterity." This determination of the house gave general satisfaction, not only to the people of this province, but of the other colonies also; as well as the friends of liberty in Britain. It was spoken of by all except the disappointed few, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... ticket-seller at the door seemed to him on that eventful night an understrapper of Beelzebub, who looked out at him with the goggle eyes of a demon. That such a man could have a family, or family affections, or friendships, or any sense of duty or honor, was to him a thing incomprehensible; and when he passed the wicket for the first time into the vestibule of the old Park Theatre, the very usher in the corridor had to his eye a look like the Giant Dagon, and he conceived ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... persons, the mighty-armed Bhimasena endued with great strength encouraging the king greatly, spake these words, 'Looking up to thy face (for permission), the wielder of the Gandiva, acting according to his sense of duty hath not yet, O king, shown any rashness! And although fully able to destroy the foe, Nakula and Sahadeva of dreadful prowess have been ever prevented by me! Never shall we swerve from that in which thou wilt engage us! Do thou tell us ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Riverboro. She tried to like her aunt Miranda (the idea of loving her had been given up at the moment of meeting), but failed ignominiously in the attempt. She was a very faulty and passionately human child, with no aspirations towards being an angel of the house, but she had a sense of duty and a desire to be good,—respectably, decently good. Whenever she fell below this self-imposed standard she was miserable. She did not like to be under her aunt's roof, eating bread, wearing clothes, and studying books ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at any moment, I would keep as much as possible near my guardian during her life. She may have been tempted to keep me near her by the same consideration, but she was not a woman to allow her feelings to get the better of her sense of duty, and if I had not persistently done all in my power to remain at Burnley, she would have sent me elsewhere. Some reviewer will say that these are trifling matters, but in writing a biography it is necessary to take note of trifles when ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that further pressure would drive our friends beyond the line where begin schism and rebellion; and it seems to me that the moment is come when I must hold me still, or transgress mine own sense of duty. I must endure the displeasure of many I love ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it with my sense of duty to your interests to leave you any longer in ignorance of reports current in this town and its neighborhood, which, I regret to say, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... would not scruple to lead us younger lads into the deepest waters, and, when we were far beyond our depth and almost exhausted, he would swim behind us and force us under, for the mere cruel pleasure, I believe, of seeing our struggles and hearing our cries below the surface. From some fancied sense of duty we allowed ourselves meekly to serve and obey him. When we went on a cliff-climbing expedition he would choose to remain in safety up above on the banks holding the rope, while it was we who were sent down the dangerous precipice to ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... "This-poor-fellow-has-had-none." Nurses may have been up all night, doctors may be worked off their feet, seven hundred men may have passed through the station, all wounded and all fed, but when our visitors arrive they discover that "This poor fellow has had none," and firmly, and with a high sense of duty and of their own efficiency, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... month) the child could not, without lively protest, behold his nurse acting contrary to the directions that had been given to himself—e. g., putting the knife into her mouth or dipping bread into the milk. Emotions of this kind are less a proof of the existence of a sense of duty than of the understanding that violations of well-known precepts have unpleasant consequences—i. e., that certain actions bring in their train pleasant feelings, while other acts bring unpleasant feelings. How long before the knowledge ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Dr. Hamilton. I have always been a timid man, and my timidity depends upon my frail physical health. But my soul is firm, and I can bring myself up to face a danger which a less-nervous man might shrink from. What I am doing now is done from no compulsion, but entirely from a sense of duty, and yet it is, beyond doubt, a desperate risk. If things should go wrong, I will have some claims to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Carrie meant by her views, unless they consisted in a determination to make herself and every one else uncomfortable by an overstrained sense of duty. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... raised his head and looked unexpectedly into a lovely face made the more attractive by an expression only given by a sense of duty unselfishly done. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Vespasian's name, and this did more than anything else to promote mutiny. They indulged in wild dissipation and met every night in drinking-parties, at which they revived their old grudge against Hordeonius Flaccus. None of the officers ventured to interfere with them—the darkness somehow obscured their sense of duty—and at last they dragged Flaccus out of bed and murdered him. They were preparing to do the same with Vocula, but he narrowly escaped in the darkness, disguised as a slave. When the excitement subsided, their fears returned, and they sent 37 letters round ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... sweepings and the corners of the room still untouched. She hung the coats and hats in the entry and rubbed off the top of the table with her winter Tam o' Shanter, from which the moths flew as she worked. She gazed thoughtfully at the litter on the desk and decided against touching it. Then with a sense of duty well done, she lifted little Patience and carried her ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... succeeded in doing the duties some of his predecessors had disregarded, and for a generosity which outran his income. Accepting that law which the papacy had added to those of Christianity, he treated the married clergy with the severity his sense of duty and obedience urged, for he deprived them of their benefices, and their wives were denied the offices of the Church both before and after death. Any bequests to them by their husbands, he declared, should be confiscated, and the funds derived ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... deserved success. I was very, very loth to leave my kind friends, though we may perchance forgather again should I outlive my parole, and be enabled to carry out certain half-formed plans of hunting in the Far West. It was only the sternest sense of duty that impelled me to sacrifice to Niagara sixty hours that intervened before June the 13th, when the Inman steamer started, in which I had secured a berth ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... then opened it. He turned out to be the local reporter. I need not have been alarmed. He was much the more nervous of the two, and was so full of excuses that had I not come to his rescue I believe he would have gone away forgetting what he'd come for. Nothing save an overwhelming sense of duty to the Public (with a capital P) could have induced him to inflict himself upon me. Could I give him a few details which would enable him to set rumour right? I immediately saw visions of headlines: 'Domestic Tragedy!' 'Eminent Author blown up by his own Daughter!' 'Once Happy ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... given out that they were going to raid French Hispaniola, which was really the only expedition that could have afforded Colonel Bishop any sort of justification for leaving Jamaica at all at such a time. His sense of duty, indeed, should have kept him fast in Port Royal; but his sense of duty was smothered in hatred—that most fruitless and corruptive of all the emotions. In the great cabin of Vice-Admiral Craufurd's flagship, the Imperator, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... from his chair and stretched himself. It was evident that had he followed his own inclination he would have gone to bed. He perhaps had a sense of duty. He had not far to go, and knew the shortest ways through the narrow streets. He could hear a muleteer shouting at his beasts on the bridge as he crossed the Calle Don Jaime I. The streets were quiet enough otherwise, and the watchman of this ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... "The sense of duty in parents and teachers may be strengthened and elevated by contemplating the high standard which is here held up to them. The style has the great merit of being an earnest one, and there are many passages which rise into genuine eloquence ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... hand.] To-day I must adopt a somewhat novel course In dealing with the awful wickedness At present noticeable in this city. I do so with reluctance. Hitherto I have avoided personalities. But now my sense of duty forces me To a departure from my custom of Naming no names. One name I must and shall Name. [All eyes are turned on LOR., who smiles uncomfortably.] No, I do not mean Lorenzo. He Is 'neath contempt. [Loud ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... with increasing madness. The changes that had come into his life counted for nothing—to-day only a great passion remained—torturing, challenging, tempting. Could he never live it down? He looked about his office, reminded himself of his dignity and responsibility, and sought refuge in his sense of duty to ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... might be successfully tried. Indeed, it is often tried on plantations, even in States where the law enforces strict penalties against it. They believe that the slaves, if permitted to learn to read, would be more moral, faithful and obedient; and they cannot reconcile it with their sense of duty to keep from them ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... social effectiveness was largely a by-product. What, now, would have been the result if Christianity had placed an equally strong emphasis on the Kingdom of God, the ideal social order? Other things being equal, a Christian father and mother are better parents than others because they have more sense of duty, more love, and a higher valuation of spiritual things. But if, in addition, they have a religious desire for a higher social order and realize that noble children are a splendid contribution to it, how will that affect their parenthood? ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... Education, wealth, social standing, politics, religion, race, nationality, every motive that is likely to have weight with the audience should be taken into consideration. Remembering that he has to choose between such diverse emotions as ambition, fear, hatred, love, patriotism, sense of duty, honor, justice, self-interest, pleasure, and revenge, the arguer must make his selection with the greatest care, and then drive home the appeal with all the force and eloquence at his command. The higher and nobler the emotion ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... teacher to exert will prevent a vast amount of mere talk entirely foreign to the business of the school. I tried this plan very thoroughly, with high ideas of the dependence which might be placed upon conscience and a sense of duty, if these principles are properly brought out to action in an effort to sustain the system. I was told by distinguished teachers that it would not be found to answer. But predictions of failure in such cases only prompt to greater exertions, ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... before him, ruminated with a full heart on the recent discovery; and, strange to say, though he had voluntarily promised to screen Ferrers a little longer from his justly merited disgrace, he felt as if it had been only a compulsory sense of duty and not benevolence which had led him to do so, and was inclined to murmur at his hard lot. For some time he sat in a kind of sullen apathy, without being able to send up a prayer, even though he felt he needed help to feel rightly. At length the kindly tears burst forth, and covering his ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... in that feeling, but what is—is, and we must make the best of it. You must excuse your parents' faults as much as you can, since your education will not permit you to be blind to them, and you must treat them with respect from a sense of duty." ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... said Tartarin, suddenly enlightened by the mention of Bezuquet. He understood all and guessed the rest, and, tenderly moved by the ingenious lie of the apothecary to recall him to a sense of duty and honour, he choked, and stammered in his short beard: "Ah! my children, how kind you are! What good you have ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the meadow marked the time when Maurice began to live in his own house only from a sense of duty ... and because Edith was there! A fact which Eleanor's aunt recognized almost as soon as Eleanor did; so, with her usual candor, Mrs. Newbolt took occasion to point things out to her niece. She had bidden Eleanor come to dinner, and Eleanor had said she would—"if Maurice ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the very summit of his profession, having died, in his ninety-third year, G.C.B. and Senior Admiral of the Fleet, in 1865. He possessed great firmness of character, with a strong sense of duty, whether due from himself to others, or from others to himself. He was consequently a strict disciplinarian; but, as he was a very religious man, it was remarked of him (for in those days, at least, it was remarkable) that he maintained this ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Applerod added two full inches to his strut. He seldom came out to the scene of actual operations, for there was none there except workmen to see his frock-coat and silk hat; but occasionally, from a sense of duty inextricably mingled with self-assertiveness, he paid a visit of inspection, and upon one of these his eyes were confronted by a huge new board sign, visible for half a mile, that overlooked the Applerod Addition from the hills to the north. It bore but two words: ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... was the way that he would have had his own boy stand, true to a trust, faithful in his honor, even under the beam of the gallows-tree; stand as that lad Joe Newbolt had stood, unschooled though he was in everything but that deep sense of duty devolving on one born free. Such nobility was the peculiar ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... From a sense of duty they prepared a meal on the shore, and made a pretence of eating it, each for the other's benefit. Stonor did his best to keep up Clare's spirits, while at the same time his own mystification was growing. For in circling the shack he could find no ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... a pity they don't look at home," Cuthbert laughed good-temperedly. "I have not yet learnt that either purity or honesty, or a sense of duty are conspicuous at Montmartre or Belleville. There is just as much empty vaporing there as there is down the Boulevards. As to courage, they may have a chance presently of showing whether they have more of it than the better class. Personally, I should doubt it." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... desperately, moved more by the sight of the stately woman's abandon than by the thought of her own shortcomings. "Oh, Aunt Margaret,—don't! It may not be so bad! And can't you see I didn't mean to do wrong? Oh, I truly didn't. You always taught us to do our duty first. We knew it was the sense of duty that kept you here when you wanted to go back to Edinburgh. And I felt it was my duty to bring Eppie and come away. Oh, if you could only have seen the place where poor old Sandy died! And Eppie need not stay here. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... not till they had gone, that he was recalled to a sense of duty with regard to the note, and the hour was then late. However, it was as much as his place was worth for him to leave the delivery of it till the morning; so, making his way across to the Civil Surgeon's bungalow, he aroused Mrs. Dalton's ayah, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... regarded as a curse, and many charms were in use to counteract this calamity. A sentence from a letter of Julia Ward Howe to her young sister about to be married, affords an apt reference to this sense of duty: "Marriage, like death, is a debt we owe to nature, and though it costs us something to pay it, yet we are more content and better established in peace when we have paid it." The feeling associated with the command "to increase and multiply" is so much a part ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... habit of displaying; but he liked the doctor, and, although as well as every one else he knew him to be no friend to the church, or to Christianity, or even to religious belief of any sort, his liking, coupled with a vague sense of duty, had urged him to this most unassuming attempt to cast the friendly arm of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... for argument sake, that the expedient suggested might be successful; and let it at the same time be equally taken for granted that all the scruples which a sense of duty or an apprehension of the danger of the experiment might inspire, were overcome in the breasts of the national rulers, still I imagine it will hardly be pretended that they could ever hope to carry such an ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... criticism of the Saturday Reviler and of the Edinburgh criticaster. The golden is truth and honour incarnate: it possesses outsight and insight: it either teaches and inspires or it comforts and consoles, save when a strict sense of duty compels it to severity: briefly, it is keen and guiding and creative. Let the young beginner learn by rote what one master says of another:—"He was never provoked into coarseness: his thrusts were made with the rapier according to the received rules of fence, he firmly upheld the honour ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 'Really, sir, I felt so little interest in the matter, or I disliked it so very much, that I could not bring myself to perform the work?' Yet this is what you have been doing, my boy. I will say no more on the subject. You will go back to school at the end of the holidays; and if I find that, from a sense of duty, you are attending, to the best of your power, to the studies your master may select for you, I will take your wishes into my very earnest consideration, and see how I can best carry ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... I choose five, partly in order to manifest that, although there is in it an occasional appearance of what we should consider sentimentality, allied in nature to that worship of the Virgin which is more a sort of French gallantry than a feeling of reverence, the sense of duty to the Master keeps pace with the profession of devotedness to him. There is so little continuity of thought in it, that the stanzas ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... of society (which upholdeth the safety, peace, and welfare thereof, in observing laws, dispensing justice, discharging trusts, keeping contracts, and holding good correspondence mutually) is conscience, or a sense of duty toward God, obliging to perform that which is right and equal; quickened by hope of rewards and fear of punishments from Him: secluding which principle, no worldly confederation is strong enough to hold men fast, or can further dispose many to do right, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... fool,' he said frankly. 'I was spoiled when a child. As for you, Esther, you take after your mother; you have a morbid sense of duty, particularly for others; strive against it, my dear - strive against it. And as for the pigments, well, I'll use them, some of these days; and to show that I'm in earnest, I'll get Dick here ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which he undertook to exercise. Of the officer holding the principal station, I think it proper to observe that he accepted it with reluctance, in compliance with the invitation given him, and from a high sense of duty to his country, being willing to contribute to the consummation of an event which would insure complete protection to an important part of our Union, which had suffered much from incursion and invasion, and to the defense of which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... that something of the sort would happen. I ought to have foreseen it. All your father's want of principle—be silent!—all your father's want of principle has come out in you. No religion, no morality, no sense of duty—. How I am punished for having winked at what he did! I did it for your sake, and this is how you ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a swollen-eyed Ellen, dressed in black with black cotton gloves, and a black veil around her hat. Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged sense of duty of her class, and would as soon have gone to the burying ground in her kitchen apron as without black. She stood in the doorway of the ward, hesitating, and Edith saw ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is this. Cimourdain had the young Gauvain to train from his earliest childhood, and the pupil grew up with the same rigid sense of duty as the master, though temperament modified its form. When the Revolution came, Gauvain, though a noble, took sides with the people, but he was not of the same spirit as his teacher. "The Revolution," says Victor Hugo, "by the side of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... not, however, desist, and Sir Philip said, he eat apparently in defiance of control, and that it was better for us to say nothing to him. Johnson observed that he thought so too; and that he spoke more from a sense of duty than a hope of success. Baretti and these two spent the evening with me, and I was enumerating the people who were to meet the Indian ambassadors on the Wednesday. I had been to Negri's and bespoke ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... his shoulders and raised his eyes to those of the girl. "He said that he hated you," he blurted. "He has only aided you at all from a sense of duty because you are ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lifted the covers and crept into martyrdom on the hard edge of the bed. Cameron slept on. Once he seemed to be strangling in a bad dream, and she fought with her sense of duty to awaken him, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... sought me, but was almost always within sound of my voice. What I did or thought, I referred constantly to her, and rejoiced to believe that, while doing her work in absolute independence, she was most at home by my side. Never for me did she neglect the smallest child, and my love only quickened my sense of duty. To love her and to do my duty, seemed, not indeed one, but inseparable. She might suggest something I should do; she might ask me what she ought to do; but she never seemed to suppose that I, any more than she, would like to do, or could care about anything ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... person in the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous; for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... train of powder burning. I instantly sprang to my feet and looked to the front. They were coming on the run, emitting the shrill rebel charging yell, and so close that my first impulse was to throw myself flat on the ground and let them charge over us. But the rear was open and a sense of duty, as well as a thought of the horrors endured in rebel prisons, constrained me to take what I believed to be the very dangerous risk of trying to escape. I shouted to my company, "Fall back! Fall back!" and gave an example ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... there not too much joy in Utopia? Is not the sky too cloudless? Is not the atmosphere too clear? Does the Utopian never act from a sense of duty? Has he never to do anything that is distasteful to him?" This objection raises an interesting question. Is the function of the sense of duty to enable us to do distasteful things? And if so, are we to regard it as the highest of motives to moral action? In the days ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... humor, and its local and geographical details, which are frequently instructive and entertaining. The snatches of common-place sentimentality, which the author appears to indulge in both as a matter of taste and from a sense of duty, might safely be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a platonic friendship it will be to your sorrow in after years. If your letter was a jest, discontinue it. Perhaps this little romance is to end here—is it? It has not been without fruit. My sense of duty is aroused, and you, on your side, will have learned something of Society. Turn your thoughts to real life; throw the enthusiasms you have culled from literature into the virtues ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... troublesome. Phoebe felt herself something like a Joan of Arc as she packed her clothes and made her preparations. She was going among barbarians, a set of people who would not understand her, probably, and whom she would have to "put up with." But what of that? Strong in a sense of duty, and superior to all lesser inducements, she felt herself able to triumph. Mrs. Beecham assisted with very divided feelings at the preparations. It was on her lips to say, "Never mind the evening dresses; you will not want them." But ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... be questioned whether his destiny might not even yet have been modified. It may be questioned, and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope to be parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to the avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty, an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of Adam Weir and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the suspension of arms to try to detach the Huguenot leaders, by entangling them in the pleasures of the court and lowering their sense of duty. The court was studiously brilliant. Catherine surrounded herself with a bevy of ladies, called the Queen-Mother's Squadron, whose amusements were found for the whole day. The ladies sat at their tapestry frames, while Italian poetry and romance was read or love-songs ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids this ... let us be diverted by no sophistical contrivances, such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... to school at a convent, where she remained until she was eighteen. Her father then brought her home, and began assiduously his efforts to marry her off. It was plain that she hampered him a good deal, but he had a sort of sense of duty which he seemed to fulfil to his own satisfaction by rushing her about from one watering-place to another, and facilitating her acquaintance with the young ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... make Pearse's point of view clear. Before this old man, with his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a brief for Zachary, and must ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of a sense of duty to bingism in general than for any other reason, he pointed the revolver at the lawn-mower, ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... will make her a very affectionate husband," mused Sir Robert, after his departure: "how can he do otherwise? But I do not interfere in it; I know she has no other attachment; and my Constantia's sense of duty will oblige her to love her husband. Oh, yes, she will be happy—happy—happy"—he said, as if the repetition of the word could give birth ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... undertaking this work, chief among them, however, being because I have for many months, felt it to be a duty to my God, and to my fellow-man. Nay, I may put it in a yet more concise form; and simply say, because of a sense of duty to my God, for I believe the two to be inseparable. As the green calyx of the rosebud holds within its embrace everything required to make up the perfect rose in all its beauty of form, texture, tint and perfume, so my duty to my God embraces my whole duty to my fellow-man ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... his own pleasure. It is true that his pleasure consisted chiefly in dancing with Darsie, and their steps went so well together that she was ready to give him the numbers for which he asked. As for Dan Vernon, he did not dance, but out of some mistaken sense of duty, felt it his duty to put in an appearance ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... they were compelled to go west on important business. Eleanor was to be sent to visit a family of cousins near Charlottesville, Virginia, and Madge was to stay with a rich old maiden cousin of her father. Cousin Louisa did not like Madge. She felt a sense of duty toward her, and a sense of duty seldom inspires any real affection in return. So Madge looked back on the visits she had made to this cousin with a feeling of horror. Inspired by her Aunt Sue, Madge had always tried to be on her best ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... his attendance before breakfast for she would not have considered herself fit to be seen by him till she herself was neat and tidy. Like all the women of her class and generation, the Tosswills' old family nurse was full of self-respect, and also imbued with a stern sense of duty. Timmy stood far more in awe of her than he did of ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... countrymen in the land of their fathers. And it is no trivial evidence, at once of the strength of their convictions, and of the truth of the evangelical history, that they continued so long and so efficiently to proclaim the gospel in the chief city of Palestine. Had they not acted under an overwhelming sense of duty, they would not have remained in a place where their lives were in perpetual jeopardy; and had they not been faithful witnesses, they could not have induced so many, of all classes of society, to believe statements which, if unfounded, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... disappointment was softened, and herself thanked for her abstinence from persuasion. 'Oh, better to wait seven years, with such a Humfrey as this in reserve, than to let him warp aside one inch of his sense of duty! As high-minded as dear Robert, without his ruggedness and harshness,' she thought as she read the manly, warm-hearted letter to Mervyn, which he had enclosed, and which she could ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... victories, envy and fear had taken possession of the mind of the Byzantine despot. The letter contained a command for Julian to send back the legions at once, as the war was at an end. Julian saw the danger if he stripped the newly recovered land bare of defence, but his sense of duty and conscientiousness bade him obey, and without hesitation he sent the Emperor's edict to the camp. This was on the evening of the first day of ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... in favor of going and begging her highness to appoint some other time or place for the rendezvous. Malezieux and D'Harmental were of the same opinion regarding the danger of the step; but they both declared—the first from devotion, the second from a sense of duty—that the more perilous the order was, the more honorable it would ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... tanned to the color of a sole-leather trunk, the whole cut of his jib told you at once that he was a regular man-of-war's man—one of a class whose faults I can hardly recall while remembering their sense of duty, their utter disregard of danger, and the reliance with which you can lead them on to attack anything, from a hornet's ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... became his religious teacher, he regarded her in that light, that every one will those whom they know to be their superiors. It was soon seen, however, that the young man not only respected and reverenced Georgiana for the incalculable service she had done him, in awakening him to a sense of duty to his soul, but he had learned to bow to the shrine of Cupid. He found, weeks after he had been in her company, that when he met her at table, or alone in the drawing room, or on the piazza, he felt a shortness of breath, a palpitating ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... justice. A petition against the return for Penryn had been presented, and although corrupt practices could not be traced to the sitting members, yet the committee reported that the most gross and shameful bribery had prevailed. Mr. Legh Keck, chairman of the committee, was compelled by a sense of duty to move the following resolutions:—"That it appears to this house that the most notorious bribery and corruption were practised at the last election of members to serve in parliament for the borough of Penryn, and that such practices were not new or casual in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... contemplation, which tax the brain to comprehend, like the thoughts of Pascal, but plain maxims for the daily intercourse of life, showing great purity of character and extraordinary natural piety, blended with pithy moral wisdom and a strong sense of duty. "Men exist for each other: teach them or bear with them," said he. "Benevolence is invincible, if it be not an affected smile." "When thou risest in the morning unwillingly, say, 'I am rising to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... prefer their own fancies, dreams, frames, and feelings, to the Word of God; swearers, adulterers, perjured persons, and oppressors of the poor; they that insult the godly, and rejoice at their sufferings; they that have no love, gratitude, nor sense of duty to God, as the fountain of their unmerited mercies. O reader, give God no rest until, by his Word and Spirit, he imparts to thee this holy fear as the earnest of glory hereafter; without ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... good. I sat down and wrote two more letters home, once more stating that I was not starting east, but going still farther west. This done, I tried to persuade myself to feel no further uneasiness, and to content my mind with the sense of duty done. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... actually as it is uncommunicable, between it and its previous subjective counterfeits, and anticipations. Even so it is with friends.—O it is melancholy to think how the very forms and geniality of my affections, my belief of obligation, consequent gratitude and anxious sense of duty were wasted on the shadows of friendship. With few exceptions, I can almost say, that till I came to H——, I never 'found' what FRIENDS were—and doubtless, in more than one instance, I sacrificed substances who loved me, for semblances who were well ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... man of you will be guided by his own sense of duty, without regard to what others may think of his action. I will not allow any man to suffer from any reproach or indignity on account of what he does in this matter, if by any means I can prevent it," continued Captain Passford, looking ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... this remark to all studious men who, by circumstances or by a sense of duty, may be thrown into the whirlpool of politics. Perhaps I may yield to the temptation of developing it, when I shall have to characterize Bailly's connection with his co-laborers in the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... sick, and gained the approbation of his superiors most thoroughly, although in the stern coldness which they thought an essential part of true discipline, they were scant of their encomiums. Men ought to work, they said, simply from a sense of duty to God, and earthly praise was the "dead fly which makes the apothecary's ointment to stink." So they allowed their younger brethren to toil on without any such mundane reward, only they cheered them by their brotherly love, shown in ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do—for the devil finds employment for the idle—I might try my hand at some such pastime ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... eyes, as though to blot out from his mind the memory of that look. But Jacynth was not silenced. She felt herself dragged on by her sense of duty to savour, and to make her husband savour, the full bitterness that the situation could yield for them both. "Adrian," she said, "a fearful thought came to me. Suppose—suppose it ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... faded from the mountain top and lay upon the next peak, a golden cone against the blue. At last, even Valbrand's sense of duty was satisfied. "We will turn back now," he announced, halting them. "But first I will climb up the cliff, here where it is lowest, and try to see a little way ahead, that we may have as much news as possible to report to ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Nahant. One of my most esteemed friends—Mrs. L.—with the charity of a noble and Christian heart, wrote to me as soon as she learned that I was a prisoner; but she was too loyal to the flag not to express regret and distress at what she believed to be a mistaken sense of duty. The reader may remember the definition once given of "Orthodoxy" by a dignitary of the church of England to an inquiring nobleman. "Orthodoxy, my Lord, is my doxy, heterodoxy is your doxy if you differ from me." The same authority, it has always appeared to me, was assumed ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... really thought that Cora was fascinated by that fellow in London." (This was the irreverent manner in which Mr. Clarence spoke of his grace the Duke of Cumbervale.) "And I thought that she only married Rothsay from a sense of duty, keeping her word, and all that sort of thing! I can't understand her grieving herself to death for ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... from the shores of Lake Leman were no neophytes, nor had they to unlearn the casuistry of the schools or to throw off a monastic indolence which habit had made a second nature. They embraced a vocation to which nothing but a stern sense of duty, or the more powerful attraction of Divine love, could prompt. They entered an arena where poverty, fatigue, and almost inevitable death stared them in the face. But they entered it intelligently and resolutely, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... home to fill an appointment in the Wesleyan chapel in the village of Cooksville, two miles distant. I left with a heavy heart. My child was distressing to look upon, my wife and her sister were worn out with watching and fatigue. It was only from a sense of duty that I left my home that morning. During the sermon God refreshed and encouraged my heart still to trust in him. After the service, many of the congregation tarried to inquire of my daughter's condition, among them ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... the same room with the fellow. He always reeks of drink. And she has, or professes to have, a certain amount of refinement. Not much, I dare say. She was nothing but his bailiff's daughter, you know, and people of that class don't generally suffer from an exaggerated sense of duty. She probably sticks to the man because she wants to keep in with the County. I don't like the woman, never did. Her airs and graces always rub me up wrong way. Why couldn't Sir Giles have married in his own set? He probably wouldn't be so fond of the whiskey bottle ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... thus to a sense of duty, hurried from the room, and the Bishop, who had opened the door for her, closed ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... Waldenburg. I was made the more welcome there, perhaps, because I myself am a descendant of an ancient and honourable French family. I met the Princess Isobel often, and we grew to love each other. Of the struggle which ensued between her sense of duty and my persuasions I say nothing. She was a highly sensitive and very intellectual woman, and she had a profound conviction of the unalienable right of a woman to live out her life to its fullest capacity, to gather into it to the full all that is best and greatest. Her position at ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beautiful, deeply in love with him. He had long been in love with her. Doubtless they would be very happy, as they deserved to be. Margaret flared up again: "I believe he's doing it as he does everything else,—from sheer sense of duty, and that you advised him to." A random shot which went nearer the mark than the archer supposed, for Miss Loomis flushed in an instant, and made no reply. "Well!" said Mrs. Cranston, "she longs only to share the humblest cot, the rudest habitation ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... arguments, and was grieved to the heart for her delusions. On this she briskly challenged him to debate the matter at large, and to fix upon a day for that purpose, when he should dine with her, attended by any clergyman he might choose, whether of the Protestant or Catholic communion. A sense of duty would not allow him to decline this challenge; and yet he had no sooner accepted it, but he was thrown into great perplexity and distress lest, being, as I remember he expressed it when he told me the story, only a Christian of six weeks old, he should prejudice ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... case to-day I shrink From thus evading Sorrow's trammels; A sense of duty bids me think How costly are the larger mammals; To kill them just to soothe my mind Would seem to savour of the wasteful, A thing all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... but really I cannot, consistently with my sense of duty, adopt the course you propose. I think it right to insist, as far as I can with propriety, on these ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... by a strong sense of duty, imbued with deep religious feeling, Miss Milbanke lived to impress F. W. Robertson as "the noblest woman he ever knew" ('Diary of Crabb Robinson' (1852), vol. iii. p. 405). She was also a clever, well-read girl, fond ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... marry the wrong man. If you had followed a romantic impulse—induced by nervous excitement—and married him the day you learned that your word might be put to too severe a test, you would have been miserable, and so would Burleigh. A mistaken sense of duty has been the cause of quite one fourth of the unhappiness of mankind, and few have been so bigoted as not to acknowledge this when too late. And a broken engagement is a small injustice to a man compared to a lifetime with an unloving ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... toward whom I never felt the thrill which should glow through all our being in the presence of one whom we take into so close a relation. Between us there never can exist the conjugal relation, for we are to each other but as brother and sister. Long have I struggled with my sense of duty and moral obligation, and the struggle has done me good. I have found that my life could not come into fulness, or my being unfold its powers while a relation not of my ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... than write, any day. You shall write this essay for me. Be it never so humble, I shall give it my best attention and manage to say something nice about it. I am sorry to see you calming suddenly down. Nothing but a sense of duty to myself, and to guests in general, makes me resume my pen. I believe guests to be as numerous, really, as hosts. It may be that even you, if you examine yourself dispassionately, will find that you are one of them. In which case, you may yet thank me for some comfort. I think there ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... told him of the colonel's recent visit. Then Jimmy reached the truth by a leap. Bridget had gone away to escape from her elderly fiance! At the time Jimmy believed that her announcement yesterday morning was prompted by a sense of duty—a little belated, no doubt. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... how unquiet and uncertain our lives have always been ever since our childhood." Poor, vain, passionate and proud, torn between the selfish impulses of an exactingly sensuous and imaginative nature, and the rigid sense of duty of a heroic and generous mind, Ugo Foscolo was one of the earliest and most genuine victims of that sickness of disappointed hope and betrayed enthusiasm, of that Weltschmerz of which personal misfortunes seemed as but the least dreadful part, that came upon the noblest minds after ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Tim insisted on standing sentry at the entrance of the passage till the return of Camo, who had gone to look after his companions. We had great difficulty in keeping awake, and even Tim found it a hard matter not to drop down on the ground; but a sense of duty triumphed over his natural desire for rest, and he kept pacing up and down with his stout shillelagh in his hand, ready to do battle with any foes, either human or four-footed, which might approach our retreat. We also kept the guns ready, ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... of inflexible determination; he firmly adhered to a purpose once formed, when it seemed to him to spring from conscience and to be prompted by a sense of duty. He insisted on being introduced, saying that although he was not a deputy from Monsieur de Conti, or Monsieur de Beaufort, or Monsieur de Bouillon, or Monsieur d'Elbeuf, or the coadjutor, or Madame de Longueville, or Broussel, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in a manner, naturally, always. But in particular to-night for Mr. Pocock." And then as her friend still stared: "Yes, it IS of a bravery But that's what she has: her high sense of duty." It was more than sufficiently before them. "When Mr. Newsome has his hands so embarrassed with ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... there will be found some intimation, some outline, of the character of the men who composed the directors and stockholders of the California Insurance Company, who acted well their part, who fought the good fight and held the faith, whose stern sense of duty and heroic courage led them to lay upon the altar of their idealism the financial sacrifices ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... may have inclined him to linger near the home of the lady he still loved, his stern sense of duty soon summoned him away. News had come to King Louis that the people of Milan, who owed fealty to the French king, had revolted, and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... more than ready to go, for he had no patience with such credulity, simplicity and sentimentalism. He was Basque, and to be Basque is to lack sentiment and feel none, to play ever for the safe thing, to get without giving, and to mind your own business. It had only been an excessive sense of duty which had made the captain move in this, for he liked Jean Jacques as everyone aboard his Antoine did; and he was convinced that the Spaniards would play the "Seigneur" to the brink of disaster at least, though it would have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... above their own appetites and passions. They had been worshipping only what they could see and handle. The Lord began to teach them to worship Him—a person whom they could not see, though He was always near them, and watching over them. They had been living without independence, fellow-feeling, the sense of duty, or love of order. The Lord began to teach them to care for each other, to help each other, to know that they had a duty to perform towards each other, for which they were accountable to Him. They had owned no master except the Egyptians, whom they feared and obeyed unwillingly. ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... was gone, and Mrs. Simm could only withdraw to her pile of clothes, and console herself by stitching and darning with renewed vigor. She felt rather uneasy about the result of her morning's work, though she had really done it from a conscientious sense of duty. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... A sense of duty demanded that he stay and see the matter through, since his newly-made acquaintance with the tertium quid of Walsh's little party might lead to an introduction to the big man, and for the rest Morris trusted to his own salesmanship. ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... said stiffly. "I started the show, and by James! whilst I'm running it, the New Republic's got to hum; and when I'm gone, I shall be remembered as some one out of the common. I'm a man, Doctor Clay, that's got a high sense of duty. I should think it wrong to stay here sweating ivory out of these people, if I didn't put something into them ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... districts in which they occur, and freely discussed by them with suitable remarks on the "darkness which prevails under the lamp of royalty;" and no less suitable execrations against the intolerable system which deprives the King of all feeling of interest in the well-being of his subjects, all sense of duty towards them, all feeling of responsibility to any higher power for the manner in which he discharges his high trust over the millions committed to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... to do it of your own free will and from sense of duty, not because my commands are laid upon you," Elsie answered. "Is it not the noblest course of action I am urging upon you? Is it any less mean to refuse to meet such an obligation than a moneyed one?—a thing ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... discussion, which was unprofitable to her, as she could not understand a word of it, the guide led us back to the chateau and showed us the room in which Queen Anne died. Whatever may have been her faults and irregularities of temper, Anne seems to have had a strong sense of duty and was the first Queen of France who invited to her court a group of young girls of noble family, whom she educated and treated like her own daughters. She even arranged the marriages of these girls entirely to suit herself, of course, and without the slightest regard to ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... hope, or by what fear to adjure you. If you would not become a mark for the finger of scorn to point at; if you would not die of a broken heart, or live with a hardened one; if you have any horror of the lowest depths of vice, or any lingering sense of duty, weigh the importance of this moment of your life, and throw not away this last hope of salvation. I have written to Mrs. Moore to propose to her that as soon as you are well enough to move, you should go to Hampstead, and remain there till my return. I ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... at all," Nina answered. "We as a nation are people of habit—the war is a habit to us now—heaps of us work from a sense of duty and patriotism, others because they are afraid what would be said of them if they did not—others because they are thankful to have some steady job to get off their superfluous energy on—So it ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... communication to a close, allow me to express to you individually, and as a Board, my most sincere Christian attachment. Whatever course any members may have taken in relation to this matter, I must believe that they have acted from what has seemed to them a sense of duty. Far be it from me to impeach their motives. Time, the great test of truth, may show them their course in a very different light from that in which they now view it. I may, as a Christian, lament that their views of duty are not more in unison with my own. I may, as a man, feel ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and emotionally attached to Buddhism; he opposed Confucianism for emotional reasons and believed that it could give him no serviceable officials of the sort he wanted. He demanded from his officials the same obedience and sense of duty as from his soldiers; and he was above all thrifty, almost miserly, because he realized that the finances of his state could only be brought into order by the greatest exertions. The budget had to be drawn up for the vast territory ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... our sense of duty and obligation toward our readers, however, were we to refrain from calling their attention to the fact that positive and strict identification of the spirits, in cases where identity is claimed, is a duty on the part ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... in her affections; and although, as it will always be, when people of dispositions naturally good become unjust, he had many scruples before he determined to forsake Julia, and become the rival of Valentine; yet he at length overcame his sense of duty, and yielded himself up, almost without remorse, to his new ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... rebuke Gheta and had not calculated the effect of her speech upon Cesare. She was scrupulously careful not to mislead the latter with regard to her feeling for him. She went to a rather needless extreme to demonstrate that she conducted herself from a sense of duty and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... If it were she lying there in the ditch, and he who remained alive? He would not have run away—but then he is a man. She is only a woman, she has a husband, a child—it was her right—her duty—to save herself. She knows that it was not a sense of duty that impelled her to do it. But what she has done was right—she had done right instinctively—as all good people do. If she had stayed she would have been discovered by this time. The doctors would question her. And all the papers ...
— The Dead Are Silent - 1907 • Arthur Schnitzler
... the Imperial Government's decision the whole Empire was involved in the war. (Cheers.) He emphasized that the war was not a war of aggrandisement or for the acquisition of land, but that it was undertaken out of a sense of duty and in discharge of solemn treaty obligations to defend other nations who were being trampled upon, and whose territory was being violated. He wished the House to realize that South Africa's future was being decided on the battlefields ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of men as regards one another in social relations—is better understood among us than it was among the patriarchs four thousand years ago; and hence, that as nations advance in civilization they have a more enlightened sense of duty, and practically a higher morality. Men in patriarchal times may have committed what we regard as crimes, while their ordinary lives were more virtuous than ours. And if so, should we not be lenient to immoralities and crimes committed in darker ages, if the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... not live on what little money he had, and must earn casually, after buying the boat, but "it's easier to live than I thought. There's not nearly as much worry needed as I used to suppose. It is surprising how much one can do without. I was rather scared at first when I got rid of my sense of duty. But, after all, it is not so hard to be free. Perhaps the world already has more soft and easy people than is good for it. I find one benefit of this life is that, being free of the crowd, I feel indifferent about ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... severely to Abdiel as they went; but though the dog could understand much, I doubt if he understood that lecture. For Abdiel was one of the few, even among dogs, with whom the defence of master or friend is an inborn, instinctive duty; and strong temptation even has but a poor chance against the sense of duty in a dog. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... greater words, what is needed is a sense of immediate duty, and a feeling of impalpable constraint. Indeed, seamen and duty are all the time inseparable companions. It has been suggested to me that this sense of duty is not a patriotic sense or a religious sense, or even a social sense in a seaman. I don't know. It seems to me that a seaman's duty may be an unconscious compound of these three, something perhaps smaller than either, but something much more definite for the simple mind and more adapted to the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting; that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers, by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice. To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments—the authorized object ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various |
