"Initiative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all you survey—captain of your soul and so on. I want you to devote the imponderable force of the intellect to that concept until you understand it thoroughly. Until you have developed a top-bracket lot of top-bracket stuff—originality, initiative, force, drive, and thrust. As soon as you really understand it, you'll do something about it yourself, without being ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... trench army could open the gate for a field army at any point in the line required. But a trench army in so doing would lose one third of its effectives, and putting a regiment in the trenches for a long tour of trench work destroys its initiative as far as field manoeuvring is concerned. All these things were planned and marches calculated. It was figured out where the Germans might make a stand, generally where some famous battle had been fought ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... embodiment of the initiative and resourcefulness we are trying to inculcate in all our soldiers. I observed the entire operation and he has demonstrated a great potential for leadership." Fyfe hesitated and for a moment a shadow of repugnance darkened his ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... time, as he let the door remain wide open. (Old New Yorkers may recall P. T. Barnum, the showman's, similar habit.) Every now and then some petitioners would make a desperate rush in and, on seeing they were not repelled by order or by the ushers' own initiative, others would be emboldened to do the same. The New Yorker no sooner took this cue than ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... and is more evident in Europe than here. If the Association takes an active stand in the matter and develops a center of registry of nut names for this continent, it may very well display a quality of initiative and service that will make it pre-eminent on the international level and will cause others to look to it ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... their leader, they themselves would have been the first to admit, although he would have modestly disclaimed it. He never asserted leadership, but it sought him out of its own accord. He had the instinct, the initiative, the quick decision, the magnetic personality that marks the born captain. It was not merely that he was endowed with strength of muscle and fleetness of foot and power of endurance that placed him in a class by himself. He might have had all these, and still been only ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... you have invariably eluded my efforts to converse on the subject. I indulged you, for I know my prudent, cautious son, and waited for him to give me his confidence voluntarily. Hitherto, however, I have but waited in vain, so that I am compelled to take the initiative, and sue for your confidence. Give it to me, Adolphus, tell me whether you love ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... the utmost. With my present experience I should have known him to be a victim of self-abuse. Then, I did not suspect him; and it was not until he was leaving at eighteen for the University that we talked the matter over, on his initiative. Then I found that he had been bullied into impurity at eleven, and was now a helpless victim. After two years at the University he wrote me that, though the temptation now came less frequently, he seemed absolutely powerless when it ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... calculated less than he ought to have done on the activity of Blucher and of the Russians. The former, instead of waiting to be attacked, took the initiative in Silesia, and drove the French, with great loss, behind ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... morning. The valley is reached every day, just as the people in a pure democracy were reached by the ancient stentor. The people are reserving to themselves more and more of the function of their one- time representatives, in such measures as the referendum and initiative intimate, and are trying to secure more accurate representation in such systems as the direct primary and proportional representation suggest; but these all are possible only through the aid of the wheel ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... opened up negotiations with the United States looking towards reciprocal trade. He could scarcely obtain a hearing. The way was blocked by the complete indifference of the United States Senate towards the whole project. Not until five years later did relief come; and it came through the initiative and personal diplomacy of Lord Elgin. To him belongs the credit for the famous Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. This signifies that for the twelve years during which the treaty was in force the artificial barriers to the currents of trade between {111} adjacent ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... to remark here on the fertility of resource and the initiative power which this young commander possessed. It mattered not what difficulties arose, his fertile brain sooner or later devised a method by which he could overcome them. It is said that the best doctor is not necessarily the cleverest man, but the one ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... at a moment when the main purpose of the revolutionary leaders was to preserve the alliance with America. Robespierre at that time ( 1793) had special charge of diplomatic affairs, and it is shown by the French historian, Frederic Masson, that he was very anxious to recover for the republic the initiative of the American alliance credited to the king; and "although their Minister, Gouverneur Morris, was justly suspected, and the American republic was at that time aiming only to utilize the condition of its ally, the French republic cleared it ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... exercised by the teacher to place the responsibility of preparing a salable product upon the pupil. Too much assistance on the part of the teacher in directing the pupils' work and in deciding when a food is sufficiently cooked or baked, may interfere in developing initiative in pupils,—one of the aims to be accomplished in education. The plan of having each pupil prepare a food for the first time in individual quantity and then later in family quantity for the lunch room has proved satisfactory in ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... proceeded slowly, and I must be allowed to assert that the initiative which pushed it forward was mine. It made a jump when he spent a week-end in the Thames Estuary on my yacht. If any reader has a curiosity to know what my yacht is not like, he should read the striking yacht chapter in Nocturne. I am convinced that Swinnerton evolved the yacht in Nocturne ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... statesman is credited with that shrewd remark that the manifold excellencies and diversities of Hellenic art are due to the fact that the Greeks had no "old masters" to copy from—no "schools" which supplied their imagination with ready-made models that limit and smother individual initiative. And one marvels to think into what exotic beauties these southern saints would have blossomed, had they been at liberty, like those Greeks, freely to indulge their versatile genius—had they not been ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... preventing the inconstant goddess of fashion from continuing to wander off into ugliness, deformity, and absurdity. In their devotion to art, beauty, and luxury, they determined never to forget fitness and comfort, and since their initiative has regulated the vagaries of fashion we must admit that our women have never been the victims of such inconvenient, ugly, and absurd inventions as crinoline, leg-o'-mutton sleeves, the coiffure a la fregate, and the various other monstrosities of the Republic, the Directory, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... than by the fact that the entire complexion of the affair had changed. The ruffian, who had entered so confidently, was no longer the aggressor; a mere look, a word, a gesture from this aged, unknown person had put him upon the defensive. More extraordinary still was the fact that his power of initiative was for the moment completely paralyzed, and that he was tortured by a deplorable indecision. He was furious, that was plain, nevertheless his anger had been halted in mid-flight, as it were; desperation battled with an inexplicable dread. He raised his hands ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... from concealment only very rarely and only on its own initiative. Such instances of atavism have been described in previous lectures, and their existence has been ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... of the game-protective laws now in force in the United States and Canada were brought into existence through the initiative and efforts of the real sportsmen of those two nations. But for their activity, exerted on the right side, the settled portion of North America would to-day be an utterly gameless land! Even though the sportsmen have taken ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... to-day on the earth is in man's hands. Some day the initiative of governing action on the earth will be in the hands of the crowned Christ, even while the personal initiative of each man's life will still be in ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... this idea into your head?" John Wingfield, Sr. snapped. Often of late he had thought that it was time he got a younger man in Peter's place. But he did not like the initiative to come from Peter; not ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... happier days," there are few persons in our time who can testify more feelingly to the truth of the poet's words than Ferdinand de Lesseps. For many years he was a bright-shining, sympathetic figure among those who lead in the van of our material progress; and the accomplishment, by his initiative and energy, of the long dream of the Suez Canal, made him the hero, not of his own nation alone, but of all the civilized world; honors were heaped upon him, and acclamations greeted him on every side. His name became ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... larger libraries of New York—the Astor, the Mercantile, and the Columbia College—I found the principal descriptive and historical works on Switzerland. But from all these sources only a slender stock of information with regard to the influence of the Initiative and Referendum on the later political and economic development of Switzerland was to be obtained. So, when, three years ago, with inquiry on this point in mind, I spent some months in Switzerland, about all I had at first on which to base ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... allow himself to remember Denasia. She was to be as if she never had been. He would blot out of his memory all the years she had brightened and darkened. And if any excuse can be found for him, it must be in his supposition that Denasia felt just as he did. She would be grateful to him for taking the initiative—glad to get back to her home and her people, glad to escape a life for which she must have discovered she had ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... carefully, and not allowing its light to become extinguished. And thanks to these staunch hearts, and fearless minds, we have the truth still with us. But it is not found in books, to any great extent. It has been passed along from Master to Student; from Initiative to Heirophant; from lip to ear. When it was written down at all, its meaning was veiled in terms of alchemy and astrology, so that only those possessing the key could read it aright. This was made necessary in order to avoid the persecutions of the theologians of ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... the ordinary ditties, the ordinary difficulties, the ordinary pleasures of common life; but guarded from injustice, neglect, and cruelty by effective and kindly supervision. This movement, originated in South Australia, and with all its far-reaching developments and expansions, is due to the initiative of one woman of whom the State is ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... guardians, involves the examination of a delicate situation, which must be conducted with much discernment. Without comparing the two systems, American and French, which correspond each to the particular genius of the two nations, it will be seen that the American system leaves much more to private initiative, and that it would become ineffectual when the victim of the offence, being a child, has neither the energy nor the knowledge necessary to demonstrate that its complaint is well founded, without the aid of some one in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... it to society to spend part of his time in expressing his own soul. The world needs him. Society cannot afford to let him merely give to it his feet and his hands. It wants the joy in him, the creative desire in him, the slow, stupid, hopeful initiative, in him to help run the world. Society wants to use the man's soul too—the man's will. It is going to demand the soul in a man, the essence or good-will in him, if only to protect itself, and to keep the man from being dangerous. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... after shaking himself out of his great-coat, sat silently down in his armchair by the fire. The Widder Poll held both hands to her face, and groaned again. At length, curiosity overcame her, and, quite against her judgment, she spoke. She was always resolving that she would never again take the initiative; but every time her resolution went down before the certainty that if she did not talk, there would be no conversation at all,—for Heman had a staying power ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... she would never leave her father, and that she lacked the border woman's daring initiative so necessary in any attempt to free him. As I was casting about for some plan to save her Black Hoof glided to my side and took me by the arm and led me toward the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Acting on Elmer's initiative, Lil Artha now also picked up his gun, and started to keep a sharp watch. As Toby had truly said, they could not really continue on their way without passing under the wide-stretching branches of the tree where he claimed to have seen "something ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... and of which the "mighty struggles to upheave its own weight, and that of the superincumbent mass of prejudice, envy, ignorance, folly, or uncongenial force, must ever ensure the deepest sympathy of all those who can appreciate the spirit of its qualities;" let the initiative skyward struggles towards the zenith-abysses of the inane impalpable ——, &c. &c. &c. &c. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... spontaneous movement of the masses of the Negro population and not one composed of its leading elements. This fact has been marveled at, because in this migration the rank and file of Negroes, accustomed to being led, showed some initiative by acting of their own accord, and thereby abandoned the old policy of seeking and awaiting the advice of their leaders.[175] While this is true, and is, indeed, a very commendable performance, yet a careful view of the situation will show that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... their wives' bravery, shrewdness, and general ability. Such belief went beyond mere words; it was not infrequently expressed in the freedom granted the women in business affairs during the absence of the husband. More will be said later about the capacity of the colonial woman to take the initiative; but a few instances may be cited at this point to show how genuinely important affairs were often intrusted to the women for long periods of time. We have seen Sewall's comment concerning the financial ability ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... that the initiative lay with him; but we drove on till we were at the gates of Gorice, and I burst out laughing when I heard the count order the coachman to drive to the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... have been if fashion had allowed the lady to take the initiative, instead of compelling her to sit idly at home! She has no office-work, nor Times, nor any business but that of bringing last night's flirtation to a practical issue. Assuming her to be satisfied as to the eligibility of her ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... aback. They had expected, at least, to have been allowed the initiative in any conflict that might occur; but they now saw that, instead of being the assailing party, they were likely to ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... of 1810, the matrimonial alliance with Austria was not settled. The initiative steps had not been taken by the monarch, the ministers of Foreign Affairs, or by the ambassadors. It is a curious and characteristic detail, that it was the divorced Empress, Josephine, who gave the signal. She summoned the Countess Metternich to Malmaison, January ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... had commended Bibot for his zeal and Bibot was proud of the fact that he on his own initiative had sent at least fifty aristos to ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... one man whose wife mothered him until he completely lost his initiative. He was sweet to her, but he really felt that life was made by her and he had to make no effort. Suddenly he met a woman who was weaker and more clinging than he was, and she awakened in him all his ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... attention to be given to the form of the boiler operated in connection with the engines above described. About 1800, Richard Trevithick, in England, and Oliver Evans, in America, introduced non-condensing, and for that time, high pressure steam engines. To the initiative of Evans may be attributed the general use of high pressure steam in the United States, a feature which for many years distinguished American from European practice. The demand for light weight and economy of space following the beginning of steam navigation and the invention of the locomotive ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... composed the majority of the Council only a few years since, they had been cast out of office, partly through a strong reaction which had taken place against them, partly in consequence of a quarrel among themselves. And so the existing Town Council took the initiative in memorializing the Directors in favour of the recent resolution not to run Sunday trains. Of all the voters of the burgh, only five stood aloof; all the others made common cause with the Town Council in attaching their names ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... knew what he was about; but so did the fox: the latter, moreover, taking the initiative, inventing the trick, leading the run, and so in the end not only escaping the hound, but also vastly widening the distance between ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... man has initiative, ability, any sort of constructive power in his brain he shows it by the time he is twenty-two—if he has been in that forcing house for four or five years. That is the whole history of this country. And employers are always on the look-out for those qualities ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... any amount of merely technical knowledge. It is true that some of our officers have blundered, but then, in most cases, it was their first experience of real war, especially of war amid conditions entirely novel. It was more personal initiative, not more text-book; more caution, not more courage that was most commonly required. To inspire his men with tranquil confidence, one officer after another exposed himself to needless perils, and was, ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... He still gazed at me; I still experienced a certain discomfort and alarm and still thought of the Frenchman. Twice I tried to say to myself, 'What nonsense! what a farce!' I tried to smile, to shrug my shoulders.... It was no use! All initiative had all at once 'frozen up' within me—I can find no other word for it. I was overcome by a sort of numbness. Suddenly I noticed that he had left the door, and was standing a step or two nearer to me; then he gave a slight bound, both feet together, and stood ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... not a deliberate synthesis of these two conceptions, but a primitive practical tendency to universalize the conception, of life. Such "animism" instinctively associates with an object's bulk and hardness a capacity for locomotion and general initiative. And the material principles defined by the philosophers retain this vague and comprehensive attribute as a matter of course, until it is distinguished and separated through attempts ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... are men, lovers, who would die at the loss of their loved one," Leo surprised the table by his initiative. "They would die if she died, they would die—oh so more quickly—if ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... immigrant, Swede by birth and carpenter by occupation, had in him that Teutonic unrest that drives the race ever westward on its great adventure. He was a large-muscled, stolid sort of a man, in whom little imagination was coupled with immense initiative, and who possessed, withal, loyalty and affection as sturdy as ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... ideas of others, not indeed as to fundamentals, but purely as to incidental details. This rendered concerted action as impossible as it would have been had the differences related not to means, but to ends; and nobody united in himself sufficient technical knowledge with sufficient moral initiative to harmonize these conflicting elements, and thus to render concerted action practicable. The enterprise, in consequence, soon came to an end, certain of the directors bearing most of the loss. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... that year, it was completely eclipsed by the amazing progress made during the latter part of the century. An abundance of unoccupied land, of rich and varied natural resources, favorable climatic conditions, a complete absence of checks on individual initiative and enterprise and of restrictions on internal communication and trade, and the encouragement afforded to industry by the liberal policies of the federal government all combined to create economic opportunities of boundless scope. Labor, capital ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... should have dropped into her life and taken her into their hearts in this way as if she really belonged, as if they loved her! She was too excited to talk. She hardly knew what to do first. But they did not wait for her initiative. Allison was off with his car and his man, munching cookies as he went, and promising to return in fifteen minutes hungry ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... sciences which come into immediate contact with reality. In order to reject one of these laws new direct observations are necessary. Such revolutions are possible, but they must be brought about from within. History has no power to take the initiative in them. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... The slight, the very slight, confusion apparent in these expressions is manifest, and is ludicrously easy of correction. 'Aye, aye,' quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, 'Aye, aye! This lantern was carried by my forefather'—not fourth son, which is preposterous—'on the fifth of November. And HE was Guy Fawkes.' Here we have a remark at once consistent, clear, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... means of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result is the same,—society ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... extending my hand, "what next?" I had speedily made up my mind that Bart should take the initiative in our camping-out arrangement, and I therefore did not suggest that the first thing to be done was to set our ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... new territory, badly stung. These are illustrations, one of them on the largest scale, and the other belonging wholly to our own time and country, of the worth even of a very small minority, in such an initiative as is demanded now. What was done in Kansas can be done again in Florida, in Texas, if Texas do not take care for herself, in either Carolina, in any Southern State where the "righteous men" do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... rebelled against so bitterly was that he had no sort of ambition. He was a moulder, but of very commonplace skill. He was thirty-two years old, and hadn't saved twenty pounds. She would have to provide the money for the home. He didn't care. He just didn't care. He had no initiative at all. He had no vices—no obvious ones. But he was just indifferent, spending as he went, and not caring. Yet he did not look happy. She remembered his face in the fire-glow: something haunted, abstracted ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... the object of devolving the initiative of Civil War on his opponents. He had, while himself keeping on legal ground, compelled Pompeius to declare war, and to declare it not as the representative of the legitimate authority, but as general of a revolutionary minority of the Senate, which overawed the majority. —Adapted ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the Bryants were there to take the initiative, for Mr. and Mrs. Maynard seemed incapable of action. Usually alert and energetic, they were so stunned at the thought of real disaster to Marjorie that ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... with soldiers. The German Army is what it is not through the application of any academic theory of military perfection, but through the application of organization to German character. Naturally phlegmatic, naturally disinclined to initiative, the Germans before the era of modern Germany had far less of the martial instinct than the French. German army makers, including the master one of all, von Moltke, set out to use German docility ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... speaking very earnestly, "that that is exactly what they are hoping for? This ambuscade didn't just happen—it is manufactured—it is politics. Men like these haven't the initiative, or whatever you call it, to get up a thing of this sort. Some one has done it for them. Don't you know why? They want to get rid of Mr. Maginnis. But they can't hurt him alone—without having it brought right home to them—to the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... We occupied a less formidable position, but one which would enable the whole of our force to act at once, should we be attacked. Our men were in high spirits, and as ready to attack the enemy's position as to defend their own, should the Pastucians, taking the initiative, assault us. Instead of doing so, however, a flag of truce was sent into our camp from the bishop, expressing his wish to prevent bloodshed by an amicable arrangement of matters. Our general replied that the surest way of bringing this about was for his followers to return ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... a woman never becomes desirable to some men until they find she's desired elsewhere," she went on reflectively. "What a lack of initiative. What timidity. What an absence of originality. If I had nothing else against you, Grant, I'd never forgive you for having been so long blind to my charms— you and these other men of our set ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... working girl must be ameliorated by the speedy opening of a trade school for those who have reached the age to obtain working papers; (4) if public instruction could not immediately undertake the organization of such a school, then private initiative must do it, even though it must depend for its support upon voluntary contributions. The result was that an extreme effort was put forth and the following November the first trade school in America, for girls of fourteen years of ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... presence. "It was inevitable, I suppose, that scientific research should become corporate," said the Chinese. "So much equipment was needed, and so many specialties had to be coordinated, that the solitary genius with only a few assistants hadn't a chance. Nevertheless, it's a pity. It's destroyed initiative in many promising young men. The top man is no longer a scientist at all—he's an administrator with some technical background. The lower ranks do have to exercise ingenuity, yes, but only along the lines they are ordered to follow. ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... come to warn you to be more than ever careful." It was, I confess, a pang to me, who thought only of love, to hear that anything else should have been the initiative power of her coming, even though it had been her concern for my own safety. I could not but notice the bitter note of chagrin in my voice as ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Private initiative was also liberally encouraged. An Imperial rescript promised that any farmer harvesting three thousand koku (fifteen thousand bushels) of cereals from land reclaimed by himself should receive the sixth class ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... so often from the mouths of middle-class apologists for the modern industrial system expressions of fear as to the loss of what they call "initiative" under any conceivable socialistic state. One is inclined to ask "initiative towards what"? Towards growing unscrupulously rich, it must be supposed; certainly not towards intellectual experiments and enterprises; for no possible ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... on a fortnight's leave to England; and no Tommy in the trenches could have been more excited over the prospect. Her own hospital, which occupies the rest of the lot, is one of those marvels which individual initiative and a strong social sense such as hers has produced in this war. Special enterprise was required to save such desperate cases as are made a specialty of here, and all that medical and surgical science can do has been concentrated, with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... degenerating into an immobility—an inertia—a molluskular condition of receptive passivity which is rendering us, year by year, more unfitted to either think or act for ourselves? Even in the matter of marriage we are not permitted by custom to assume the initiative. We may only shake our heads until the man we are inclined toward asks us, when he is entirely ready to ask. Then, like a row of Chinese dolls, we nod our heads. I tell you," she said, tremulously, "we are becoming like that horrid, degenerate, wingless moth which is born, mates, ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... the siege of Stirling, and, as he confidently boasted, to drive the rebels before him. Prince Charles, leaving a few hundred men to continue the siege, matched out to Bannockburn. The English did not move out from Falkirk, and the prince, after waiting for a day, determined to take the initiative. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... heroism of the soldiers and sailors under them, success could not have been achieved, the historian still finds that Lincoln's judgment and will were by no means governed by those around him; that the most important steps were owing to his initiative; that his was the deciding and directing mind; and that it was pre-eminently he whose sagacity and whose character enlisted for the administration in its struggles the countenance, the sympathy, and the support of the people. It is found, even, that his judgment ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the Germans were in need of no alliance, for the Italians have relatively so little capital to dispose of that they were unable to keep the Germans from attaining that very dominant position in Italy. As the Italians have, as a general rule, a lack of initiative and enterprise with respect to modern industry, it was to German efforts that the great industrial and commercial awakening of Italy and of Triest were largely due. In that town the Italians were principally agents; and it is to be feared that ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the forced engagement of the beautiful heroine to the wicked Russian Prince, when the door opened and the supper tray entered, followed by Mrs. Henshaw. Left to honour and her own initiative she had produced a huge lobster, followed by cheese, and three little dull looking jam tarts on a willow ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... is never well to argue too confidently as to what they will do. The more he waited and listened, the more he felt sure that the bear was also waiting and listening, in an uncertainty not much unlike his own. He decided that it was for him to take the initiative. Clapping his hands smartly, he threw back his head, and burst into a peal ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the school is to develop a sense of justice, the power of initiative, independence of character, correct social and civic habits, and the ability to cooperate toward the common good."—Dr. ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... paying visits,—designed to induce those of whom he had spoken to appear at the banker's in their gayest equipages,—dazzling them by promises of shares in schemes which have since turned every brain, and in which Danglars was just taking the initiative. In fact, at half-past eight in the evening the grand salon, the gallery adjoining, and the three other drawing-rooms on the same floor, were filled with a perfumed crowd, who sympathized but little in the event, but who all participated in that ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so good to be away for a time from the "wearing world," from all clatter, chatter, and "strife of tongues," in the unsophisticated society of apes and elephants. Dullness is out of the question. The apes are always doing something new, and are far more initiative than imitative. Eblis has just now taken a letter of yours from an elastic band, and is holding it wide open as if he were reading it; an untamed siamang, which lives on the roof, but has mustered up courage to-day ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... immediate interest lies in this. The foolishness of England in Ireland finds an exact parallel, although on a smaller scale and for a shorter period, in the early foolishness of England in her own colonies. In both cases there is an attempt to suppress individuality and initiative, to exploit, to bully, to Downing Street-ify. It was a policy of Unionism, the sort of Unionism that linked the destiny of the lady to that of the tiger. The fruits of it were a little bitter in the eating. The colonies in which ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... towns which later put themselves on record as opposed to Government schools, the Jews yielded gladly to the innovations of such Maskilim as S. Perl, G. Klaczke, I. Bompi, and the distinguished philanthropist David Luria, who took the initiative in transforming the educational system of these cities. Under the superintendence of Luria, the Minsk Talmud Torah became a model institution; the training conferred there on the poor and orphaned surpassed ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... out correctly. It was a raw and bitter day; during the morning there were occasional snow flurries, and at midday a heavy downfall. Bennigsen seized the initiative, and opened the battle by a cannonade. Napoleon, divining his plan, sent a messenger for Ney to come and strengthen Soult. At nine the Russian right advanced and drove in the French left, which was weak, to the town. At that moment the order was given for Augereau and Saint-Hilaire ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... was the first man holding a position of trust who did his duty to the nation. Public sentiment unmistakably demands, that, in the case of Anarchy vs. America, the cause of the defendant shall not be suffered to go by default. The proceedings in South Carolina, parodying the sublime initiative of our own Revolution with a Declaration of Independence that hangs the franchise of human nature on the kink of a hair, and substitutes for the visionary right of all men to the pursuit of happiness the more ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... day of Sir Humphrey Gilbert had acted as individuals. Soon was to come in the idea of cooperative action—the idea of the joint-stock company, acting under the open permission of the Crown, attended by the interest and favor of numbers of the people, and giving to private initiative and personal ambition, a public tone. Some men of foresight would have had Crown and Country themselves the adventurers, superseding any smaller bodies. But for the moment the fortunes of Virginia were furthered ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the wisest course,—as it seems to me,—is not to introduce too many appliances as aids to mental activity, but rather to see what the animal subject thinks and does by its own initiative. In the testing of memory and the perceptive faculties, training for performances is the best method ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... ablest man of the community, and tempt him to make her his tenth wife by all the arts peculiar to women in English-speaking countries. No eastern woman can do anything of the sort. The man alone has any initiative; but he has no access to the woman; besides, as we have seen, the difficulty created by male license is not polygyny but polyandry, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... our educators, overwhelmed by the size and vigor of American industry, were too timid to seize upon the industrial situation, and to extract its enormous educational value. He lamented that this lack of courage and initiative failed not only to fit the child for an intelligent and conscious participation in industrial life, but that it was reflected in the industrial development itself; that industry had fallen back into old habits, and repeated traditional mistakes until American cities exhibited stupendous extensions ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... phrase mens sana in corpore sano is no longer allowed. To-day the sound body generally includes the sound mind, and vice versa. If mental dullness be due to imperfect ears, the remedy lies in medical treatment of those organs,—not in education of the brain. If lack of initiative or energy proceeds from defective aeration of the blood due to adenoids blocking the air tides in the windpipe, then the remedy lies not in better teaching but ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... discussing Housing Reform with Judge Abbott of Lexington, as warmly as Mrs. Blythe could have done. Finally the whole dinner party took it up, and Mrs. Abbott said that her club had been interested in the subject for some time, and all they need is for some one to take the initiative. The Abbotts were staying several days with Lloyd and Rob, so next night I had them over here. After dinner I took them up into my 'Place of the Tryst.' Of course, I don't call it that to anybody but Phil, and he has dubbed it the Chamber ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of the two, he who, as we have already remarked, had taken the initiative several times, and whose voice, even in its most familiar intonations, denoted the habit of command, was about thirty years of age. His black hair was parted in the middle, falling straight from his temples to his shoulders. He had the swarthy skin ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... art by this Exposition. They believed that in a peculiar sense it testified to the value of color in design. It represented a new movement in art, with far-reaching possibilities for the future. That some of them suffered as a result of the limiting of initiative and individuality, of subordination to the general scheme, was unquestionable. Some of the canvases that looked strong and fine when they were assembled for the last touches in Machinery Hall became anaemic and insignificant on the walls. Those most successfully met the test where the colors were ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... trenches; and then it is those who are still in a position to profit by culture and progress who must now carry on French thought. They have an overwhelmingly difficult task, calling for far more initiative than ours. We are free of all burden. I think our existence is like that of the early monks: hard, regular discipline and freedom from all ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... the taking of Cape Verde, although simple and direct, is probably incomplete. His whole career shows him to have been a man who was likely to take the initiative, so that it is not surprising to learn from the depositions of various Dutchmen that, previous to the battle of Cape Verde, Holmes had seized two Dutch vessels, and that after receiving an unfavorable reply to his demand to surrender, Holmes attacked ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... was not a sudden idea of Hooker's, but the result of a carefully studied plan. In his order of April 3, to Sedgwick, he says that he proposes to assume the initiative, advance along the plank road, and uncover Banks's Ford, and at once throw bridges across. Gen. Butterfield, in a communication to Sedgwick of April 30, says, "He (Hooker) expected when he left here, if he met with no serious ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... we had to face on the return journey in 1906, he and his party would never have reached the land. While faithful to me, and when with me more effective in covering distance with a sledge than any of the others, he had not, as a racial inheritance, the daring and initiative of Bartlett, or Marvin, MacMillan, or Borup. I owed it to him not to subject him to dangers and responsibilities which he was temperamentally unfit ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... of life, whether spiritual or temporal, from the initiative of confession, or cleansing the habitation of Christ, to that of dressing the right side first, stepping first with the right foot as you ascend a flight of stairs, folding the hands with the right-hand thumb and fingers above ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... have been influenced by Rodney's bearing toward inferiors whose initiative displeased him. The relations of the two seem to have ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... merely because it has been brought down from them. If their Lordships were to send us the most judicious of all money bills, should we not kick it to the door? Yet to send us a money bill would hardly be a grosser affront than to send us such a bill as this. They have taken an initiative which, by every rule of parliamentary courtesy, ought to have been left to us. They have sate in judgment on us, convicted us, condemned us to dissolution, and fixed the first of January for the execution. Are we to submit patiently ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... second source of dissatisfaction. He had not called up to ask after Amy; but Mrs. Phillips, with a great show of solicitude, had called up early on Monday morning to ask after him. He had then, in turn, made a counter-inquiry, of course; but he could take no credit for initiative. Neither had he yet called at the house; nor did he feel greatly prompted to do so. That must doubtless be done; but he might wait until the first fresh impact of the event should somewhat ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... dealt with; or rather, that thinkers postulating that infinity {7} as a basal axiom should have been comparatively blind to its logical implications. For if God is infinite, then He is all; and if He is all, what becomes of human individuality, or how are human initiative and responsibility so much as thinkable? Benjamin Jowett, in his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in passing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if somewhat tentative, are well worth ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... if not all of the subjects did not have objective images in many of the noun and verb couplets if they were left to their own initiative to obtain them is evident from the image records in the A set, in which the presence of the objective images was optional but the record obligatory. The same subject might have in one noun or verb series no visual images and in another he might have one for every couplet of the series. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the council would have been powerless if it had not rested on a formidable mass of conservative discontent, while the conservative discontent might have died away if the court had not supplied it with the means of action. If the decision lay with the majority, every initiative had to come from the court. Hence the reaction went on as long as these were agreed against the Nicene party; it was suspended as soon as Julian's policy turned another way, became unreal when conservative ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... entertain for General Stockwell under whom it has been my good fortune to have the honour to serve in 1917, in 1918, and in 1919. The longer I have served under him the more have I admired his perfectly obvious talent, his brilliant initiative, and his striking personality. His record in the Great War is unique. As a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, he commanded a company in the retreat from Mons in 1914. He rose rapidly. He became a major; and he became a colonel; and, during the Battle of the Somme, in 1916, he became a Brigadier-General, ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... suggest that an international conference be called to recommend the passage of identical laws providing for the safety of all at sea, and we urge the United States Government to take the initiative as soon as possible." ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... for himself the offices of bookkeeper and cashier, signing papers and soliciting orders, while his associate was to attend to the technical end of the enterprise. In order to feed his presses with work, Balzac counted upon his energy, his will power, his spirit of initiative and his tact; he mentally recapitulated the number of publishers with whom he had had relations, and who beyond a doubt would entrust their work to him. The printing house was located on the ground floor ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the something she was always expecting to snap in her nature would do so that evening and save her the supreme effort of taking the final step on her own initiative, and consequently having to bear the full responsibility. Whilst these thoughts were passing rapidly through her mind, Alaric hurried in through the windows from ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... inhabitants within a radius of fifty miles. Had Rankin chosen he could have attained honor, position, power in his native Eastern home. No barrier built of convention or of conservatism could have withstood him. Society reserves her prizes largely for the man of initiative; and, uncomely block as he was, Rankin was of the true type. But for some reason, a reason known to none of his associates, he had chosen to come to the West. Some consideration or other had caused him to stop at his present abode, and had made him apparently a ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... time Peter felt there was an clench in the Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... and Persia were not confined to this single benevolent initiative of the Bombay Committee. [62] We should also notice the establishing of schools in the towns of Yezd and Kirman (1857) due to the munificence of the Parsee notabilities, and the pecuniary gifts given for the purpose of settling in life young girls ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... Nazareth. It was the natural thing for the disciples of Jesus to do; and while many men of the other faiths yielded to this gracious influence, and were thus brought under the power of the bond that unites our common humanity, it is not likely that any of them would have taken the initiative in ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... sinister designs upon the barque, there remained, on the other hand, a bare possibility—until they absolutely declared themselves to be otherwise—that they might be perfectly honest traders bound upon their own lawful business, and we should hardly be justified in taking the initiative and opening fire upon them as they approached, merely because their movements happened to present to us a suspicious appearance, and because their respective courses happened to be in our direction. ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... successful conduct of the projected food administration, by such means, will be the finest possible demonstration of the willingness, the ability and the efficiency of democracy and of its justified reliance upon the freedom of individual initiative. ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... demanding adjustment—the recovering of the lost coin, which need acts as a stimulus to the consciousness and gives direction and value to the resulting mental activity. Acting under the demands of this problem, or need, the mind displays an intelligent initiative in the selecting of ideas—stick, adhesion, tar, etc., felt to be of value for securing the required new adjustment. The mind finally combines these selected ideas into an organized system, or a new experience, which is accepted mentally as an adequate solution ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education |
