"Free agent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be to rouse his resistance, the only way is to catch him in the best mood we can, say what we have to say, give our own preference, and at the same time feel and express a willingness to be refused. Every man is a free agent, and we have no right not to respect his freedom, even if he uses that freedom to stand in his own light or in ours. If he is standing in our light and refuses to move, we can move out of his shadow, even though we may have to give up our most cherished ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... among the cruelest of the victim's wrongs," said Professor Fortescue. "He is reduced to employ artifices that he would despise, were he a free agent. Take a crude instance: a man is overpowered by a band of brigands. Surely he is justified in deceiving those gentlemen of the road, and in telling and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... understanding. Mr. Asgill has given a very ingenious common-law scheme. 'Valeat quantum valere potest'! It would make a figure before the Benchers of the Middle Temple. For myself, I prefer the belief that man was made to know that a finite free agent could not stand but by the coincidence, and independent harmony, of a separate will with the will of God. For only by the will of God can he obey God's will. Man fell as a soul to rise a spirit. The first Adam was a living soul; the last ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... his hands hooked loosely in each other, stared vacantly before him while his daughter spoke, as if he really were uncertain (I believe he was) whether Tackleton had done anything to deserve her thanks or not. If he could have been a perfectly free agent at that moment, required, on pain of death, to kick the toy merchant, or fall at his feet, according to his merits, I believe it would have been an even chance which course he would have taken. Yet Caleb knew that with his own hands he had brought the little ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... perhaps just a little disgusted. Again and again he told himself that this union with Geraldine Challoner was the very best thing that could happen to him; it would bring him to anchor, at any rate, and he had been such mere driftwood until now. But he wanted to feel himself quite a free agent, and this pressing-on of the marriage by Lady Laura was in some manner discordant with his sense of the fitness of things. It looked a little like manoeuvring; yet after all she was quite sincere, perhaps, and did really apprehend her father's death intervening ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon |
