"Obligation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... light we are bound to shine. That is an obvious principle. The capacity to shine is the obligation to shine, for we are all knit together by such mystical cords in this strange brotherhood of humanity that every one of us holds his possession as trust property for the use and behoof of others, and in the present case that which we have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... living, to belong rather to some sunless world than the realms of humanity. He uttered one commonplace concerning his father's death, and never alluded to it again; behaved in a dignified, recognizant manner to the laird, as to an inferior to whom he was under more obligation than he saw how to wipe out; and, after the snub with which he met the boy's friendly approach, took no farther notice of Cosmo. Seated three minutes, he began to require the laird's assistance towards the removal of the body; could not be prevailed upon to accept refreshment; had a messenger ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... added, "that the clothing-club finances are in a perfectly scandalous condition; in fact, it is L25 in debt, an amount that as the squire of the parish I consider it incumbent on you to make good, not as a charity but as an obligation." ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Montague from the couch, and secured his wrists tightly with a piece of clothes line supplied by the pert servant, who ought to have been ashamed of herself for going back on her promise to help the lovers, but probably felt a deeper obligation to the policeman, who was, no doubt, her sweetheart, which accounted for his very convenient ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... actual perseverance (actu perseverare). The power of perseverance is assured by those merely sufficient graces which are constantly at the command of the righteous. Actual perseverance, on the other hand, implies a series of efficacious graces. God is under no obligation to bestow more than sufficient grace on any man; consequently, final perseverance is a special grace, or, more correctly, a continuous series of efficacious graces. The Council of Trent is therefore justified in speaking of it ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... Christian is separated from the world and Christ becomes his all in all. To make prominent the good qualities of their secret systems men tell us of their obligations to help their brother and his family. How these orders provide help for a man in time of need, and how true each member is to his obligation, etc. Such might do if there were no God nor Christianity. Secrecy provides only for its own members. Salvation provides for all. A member of a secret order is under no obligation from his order to visit a poor sick man by the way who is not a member of his order, but is under ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... which I lay, and noting the various bearings of the country, so as to be able again to find me, the young lad hastened on to the front. 'Thou seest how much I love thee, George,' he said, 'that I stay behind in a moment like this.' I forget whether I told thee Harry, that Florac was under some obligation to me. I had won money of him at cards, at Quebec—only playing at his repeated entreaty—and there was a difficulty about paying, and I remitted his debt to me, and lighted my pipe with his note-of-hand. You see, sir, that you are not the only ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the history of a nation (however complete may be the unity of the period with which he deals) is that of the amount of introductory information which he feels bound to supply to his readers. In this case, I have felt neither obligation nor inclination to supply a sketch of the development of Rome or her constitution up to the period of the Gracchi. The amount of information on the general and political history of Rome which the average student must have acquired from any of the excellent text-books now in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... is under great obligation to Prof. Atkinson, of Cornell University, for his very great assistance and encouragement in the study of mycology. His patience in examining and determining plants sent him is more fully appreciated ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... for life, and lacked any provision for compensation. Service on the court was, therefore, considered an honorable obligation of those whose position and means permitted them to perform it. That this was considered a serious and active responsibility was indicated by the fact that justices could be fined for non-attendance at court.[45] Through the colonial ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... engaging against the Spanish cause, still I do not feel myself called upon to join with Spain in hostilities of such peculiar character as those which she may possibly retaliate upon France. Not being bound to do so by any obligation, expressed or implied, I cannot consent to be a party to a war in which, if Spain should chance to be successful, the result to France, and, through France, to all Europe, might, in the case supposed, be such as ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... procure in the country. When we expressed our gratitude and unwillingness to be so great a burden on him, he smiled. "What is the use of property, unless to do good with it?" he remarked. "Do not say a word about the matter. When you reach home, should the obligation weigh too heavily on your conscience, you can send me back the value; but I then shall be the loser, as it will show me that you will not believe in the friendship which induces me to bestow these trifles as a gift." After ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... stream; anyhow, there it was on the Killer when I had lighted the pipe, and I gave it freedom, without including it in the bag of the day. After the brief interval I addressed myself to the false riser who had, without knowing it, accommodated me in the matter of the pipe. With the sense of obligation strong upon me, I gave him his opportunity with delicacy and deliberation; he came up like an Itchen patriarch at a Mayfly, and I had a full ten minutes' race down the bank, with heartfelt tussles at ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... friend to me—you will wrong me deeply—if you are reckless of your health and strength. Remember that, like myself, you have entered the service, and that you are pledged to do your duty, and not to work with feverish zeal until your strength fails. You are just as much under obligation to take essential rest as to care for the most sorely wounded in your ward. I shall take the advice I give. Believing that I am somewhat essential to your welfare and the happiness of those whom we have left at home, I shall incur no risks beyond those which properly fall to my lot. I ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... of their faith imposes upon us the obligation to bring them redemption. We must unbar for them not only Jerusalem, but the whole world, that they may recognize, as we do, the eternal truth preached by prophet and extolled by psalmist, that on the glad day when the unity of God is acknowledged, all the nations ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... with his grandparents she stayed in the East, making six or eight brief visits "home" each year. When he went she resolved to divide her year between her pleasure as a mother and her obligation to her son's father, to her parents' son-in-law—her devotions at the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... into the hands of my lawful protector. I thanked him with true English reserve, and a coldness that seemed rather to grate on his warm feelings; and having owned that his seeing my Newfoundland dog well fed and lodged would be a great obligation, I withdrew to fret alone over my exile to this foreign land. You may call this an exaggeration, but it is no such thing. I delight in dwelling upon my reluctant approach to the land that I was to ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Darco very badly,' said Paul. 'I can't rest under that sort of obligation to him. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... individual energy in business. The processes of capital must be as open as the processes of politics. Those who make use of the great modern accumulations of wealth, gathered together by the dragnet process of the sale of stocks and bonds, and piling up of reserves, must be treated as under a public obligation; they must be made responsible for their business methods to the great communities which are in fact their working partners, so that the hand which makes correction shall easily reach them and a new principle of responsibility be felt throughout ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... operations to that object alone. But there was one in the council who could not rest satisfied with such a partial vengeance on the white strangers; and his fiery eloquence, and false assertions and insinuations, prevailed over the rest of the Chiefs to disregard every treaty, and every obligation that ought to have bound them to the settlers of New Plymouth, and to include them also in their savage scheme ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... justify any work that has been done for you. There is no obligation that need weigh ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... mean to keep your word, why don't you do it without blustering? Suppose I have been unfortunate enough to come out behind in the race, and to need this money of yours? Is that any reason why you should grind into me like a file the sense of my obligation to you?" ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... one, and on that one if you could show clearly that I really WAS in Jamaica this summer, and had come there by being removed from a ship, it would be of great service to me. It would certainly add to the load of my obligation to you—a load that I fear I can never fully repay. Although if gratitude..." And so forth. At the end he repeated his request for me to ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... of the subject is that a lady in permitting a gentleman to expend money for her pleasures assumes an obligation to him which time and chance ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... this information could be used in the publicity campaign of Spaceways, Inc. Strictly speaking, there was some slight obligation to throw extra fame Dabney's way regardless, because the corporation had been formed as a public-relations device. Any other features, such as changing the history of the human race, were technically incidental. But Cochrane put his watch away. To talk ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... which I owe an obligation I may mention the two treatises Mechanical, physical and chemical theories of the Ancient Hindus and the Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus by Dr B.N. Seal and my two works on Yoga Study of Patanjali published by the Calcutta University, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Now, we have obligation sufficient thus to do, for that our Lord loved us, and gave himself for us, to deliver us from death, that we might live through him. The world, when they hear the doctrine that I have asserted and handled in this little book; to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... top of the bank, there was a natural gush of grateful feeling towards their deliverer. The severest resentment, the coolest moral disapprobation, are necessarily somewhat softened, when the object of them has just laid one under a personal obligation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... because she had a romantic belief that the enjoyment of inherited and transmitted consideration, consideration attached to the fact of birth, would be the direct guarantee of an ideal delicacy of feeling. She supposed it would be found that the state of being noble does actually enforce the famous obligation. Romances are rarely worked out in such transcendent good faith, and Euphemia's excuse was the prime purity of her moral vision. She was essentially incorruptible, and she took this pernicious conceit to her bosom very much as if it ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... resumption of the eternal necessary Obligation of all Rational Free Agents to do and feel those Sentiments which are Right. The identification of this law with His will constitutes the Holiness of the Infinite God. Voluntary and disinterested obedience to this law constitutes the Virtue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... show all the time, to bring people together that wouldn't meet anywhere else if they saw each other first. Then when they've bought a chance on a pieced bed-quilt, or paid for chicken-pie at a church supper, they go home feelin' real religious, believin' that if there's any obligation between them and heaven, it isn't on their side, anyway. Do you think you're goin' to ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... century, and in each country, these vital conditions are expressed by more or less hereditary passwords which set forth or interdict this or that class of actions. When the individual feels the inward challenge he is conscious of obligation; the moral conflict consists in the struggle within himself between the universal password and personal desire. In our European society the vital condition, and thus the general countersign, is self-respect coupled ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of all this money question, "there is the strongest obligation on the government of a country like our own, with a crowded population and unoccupied continents under its command, to build as it were and keep open a bridge from the mother country to those continents." Let us reflect that "the economical ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... the Lord's Prayer, and most of us have repeated it regularly during our lives. There are not many of us who have not learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. All Rome and all Romans knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few, like Cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. He found it out, certainly. "Suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus." "Virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... command of himself, he answered Adam Woodcock with as much frankness as his nature permitted him to wear, in doing what was so contrary to his inclinations, that he accepted thankfully of his kind offer, while, to soothe his own reviving pride, he could not help adding, "he hoped soon to requite the obligation." ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... intensely. "Cruel because I have refused to bend beneath the injustice of my fellows and the persecutions of Fate. Cruel because I meet the world in the spirit in which it has received me. Why should I have sympathy? The world has robbed me of the only happiness I ever desired. What obligation, then, is mine? You are right. I have no sympathy ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... fiction of kinship is maintained. All the citizens of Athens are regarded as members of the same great tribe or family. But even in the time of Plato, whom we are accustomed to look upon as one of the great teachers of the world, there was no thought of any moral obligation to anybody who lived in Sparta, lived in any other city of Greece, and less was there any thought of moral obligation as touching or taking in the outside barbarian. So when the city grew into a nation, and we came to a point where the world substantially stands to-day, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... to the Dexters by any obligation that I can see to help them carry out their entertainment. If they are not equal to it, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... railroad, not to get entangled in the courts. For your sake and the sake of my project I will give your brother an opportunity to make atonement on the conditions you name. I owe my life to you, and I will discharge part of my obligation ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... and in England by such writers as Sir Gilbert Murray, Miss Harrison, Mr A.B. Cook, Mr F.M. Cornford, and others. In their studies of "collective representations" these writers give us an account of the development of the social obligation back of religion, law, and social institutions. They posit the sacred as forbidden and carry origins back to a pre-logical stage, giving as the origin of the collective emotion that started the representations to working the re-enforcement of power or emotion ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... congregations, being relieved from all expences except those of a religious or congregational character, would be enabled to support with more honour and better remuneration the clergy—who, feeling themselves (as their education should command) independent of obligation to their auditory, would preach the noblest and highest precepts of their creed, and ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... may relieve distress, But whom the vulgar succour they oppress; This though a favour is an honour too, Though Mercy's duty, yet 'tis Merit's due; When our relief from such resources rise, All painful sense of obligation dies; And grateful feelings in the bosom wake, For 'tis their offerings, not their alms we take. "Long may these founts of Charity remain, And never shrink, but to be fill'd again; True! to the Author they are now confined, To him who gave the treasure of his mind, His time, his health,—and ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... of the new book have just reached me. My best thanks for them; and if you can only send me a little time for reading within the next three months you will heighten the obligation twenty-fold. I wish I had either two heads or a body ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... from a position so embarrassing as yours has become. I only trust, however, that the ill effects you allude to as likely to occur to yourself after our departure may be exaggerated by your sensitive nature. It would be an obligation added to the many that we owe you, which Mr. Brimmer would naturally find he could not return—and that, I can safely say, he would not hear ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... stopped or forwarded at the dangerous cornice near North Clifton; and he found in this responsibility both terror and delight. The thought of the seventy-five pounds that would soon await him at the lawyer's, and of his own obligation to be present every quarter-day in Sydney, filled him for a little with divided councils. Then he made up his mind, walked in a slack moment to the inn at Clifton, ordered a sheet of paper and a bottle of beer, and wrote, explaining that he held a good appointment which he would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... South Carolina. She—the first time such an organization ever did it—assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war on the National Government, although the three branches of it, Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, recognized every constitutional obligation, and had not attempted an invasion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... in itself, had the unfortunate effect of preventing Lescarbault or the Abbe Moigno from replying. The latter simply remarked that the accusation was of such a nature as to dispense him from any obligation to refute it. This was an error of judgment, I cannot but think, if an effective reply was ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Dott and Mr Maxwell went on board, imagining that they had had a miraculous escape, and the two old planters and I were left the only inmates of the house to welcome the resurrection of Mammy Crissobella, who was again as busy as before. She said to me, "Massy Keene, I really under great obligation to you; suppose you want two, three hundred, five hundred pounds, very much at your service; never mind ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... haire stood upright, and my hart was turned wholly to fire.... The veyne in his left hand that is derived from his heart with no faint blow he pierst, and with the bloud that flowd from it, writ a ful obligation of his soule to the divell: yea more earnestly he praied unto God never to forgive his soule than manie Christians doo to save theyr soules. These fearfull ceremonies brought to an end, I bad him ope his mouth and gape wide. He ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... cannot do evil to those who have done good to him. He must repay benefits with benefits. He cannot permit the burden of obligation to remain upon him. Go to the door, Victor, and see if any one is ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... species."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 235. "The weight of the swimming body is equal to that of the weight, of the quantity of fluid displaced by it."—Percival's Tales, ii, 213. "The Subjunctive mood, in all its tenses, is similar to that of the Optative."—Gwilt's Saxon Gram., p. 27. "No other feeling of obligation remains, except that of fidelity."—Wayland's Moral Science, 1st Ed., p. 82. "Who asked him, 'What could be the reason, that whole audiences should be moved to tears, at the representation of some story on the stage.'"—Sheridan's Elocution, p. 175. "Art not thou ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a remarkable one," said Simon Orts. "As I understand it, you appeal to me to meddle in your affairs on the ground that you once made a fool of me. I think the obligation is largely optional. I remember quite clearly the incidents to which you refer; and it shames even an old sot like me to think that I was ever so utterly at the mercy of a good-for-nothing jilt. I remember every vow you ever made to me, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... neighbors, it was incumbent on them to persevere in those of their ancestors. The voice of oracles, the precepts of philosophers, and the authority of the laws, unanimously enforced this national obligation. By their lofty claim of superior sanctity the Jews might provoke the Polytheists to consider them as an odious and impure race. By disdaining the intercourse of other nations, they might deserve their contempt. The laws of Moses might be for the most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... considered as the natural and unalienable right of the parent over his children; an authority that is not supposed to cease at any given period of life or years, but to extend, and to be maintained with undiminished and uncontrouled sway, until the death of one of the parties dissolves the obligation. The Emperor being considered as the common father of his people is accordingly invested with the exercise of the same authority over them, as the father of a family exerts on those of his particular ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... which order I sent to Ward, who turned it at once into money. Thanks, dear friend, for your care and activity, which have brought me this pleasing and most unlooked for result. And I beg you, if you know any family representative of Mr. Fraser, to express my sense of obligation to that departed man. I feel a kindness not without some wonder for those good-natured five hundred Englishmen who could buy and read my miscellany. I shall not fail to send them a new collection, which I hope they will ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... tell lies!" Quarrier emphasized the words savagely. "Social law is stupid and unjust, imposing its obligation without regard to person or circumstance. It presumes that no one can be trusted. I decline to be levelled with the unthinking multitude. You and I can be a law to ourselves. What I shall do is this: On returning to town next week, I shall take Lilian over to Paris. We ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... and reluctantly to the conclusion to follow this advice. They, however, all earnestly joined in attempting to persuade Regulus that he was under no obligation to return to Carthage. His promise, they said, was extorted by the circumstances of the case, and was not binding. Regulus, however, insisted on keeping his faith with his enemies. He sternly refused to see his family, and, bidding the senate farewell, ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... biographers, conjectures was Mist, the proprietor of Mist's Journal, with whom Defoe had been associated in business. Other biographers seem to think that Defoe was merely hiding from the pursuit of his creditors, and dodging in his old dexterous manner the obligation of making over property to his daughter Hannah, who was married to Baker. For two years he was homeless and fugitive; it is not asserted, however, that he was in actual distress at the time of his death. He died in a lodging in a then respectable ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... duties and great principles; whose patriotism was not a clamorous catch-word, but a breathing inspiration, a silent heart-fire. In private life they have felt the great privilege of their citizenship; the magnitude of the obligation which bound them to virtue and to consistency; while, in public life, they have kept their trust firm as steel, bright as gold; have felt, with due balance on either side, the beatings of the popular heart and the dictates of the everlasting Right; and in themselves have represented the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Faith!" said her nephew, with a tone of pleased animation. "Cross Corners will be under obligation to you. Mr. Armstrong is a man whom ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and religions obligation—Divina et humana omnia. "They offended against the laws, when they took bribes from an enemy; against the honor of Rome when they did what was unworthy of it, and greatly to its injury; and against gods and men, against all divine and human obligations, when they granted ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... share in our party contests or in the turmoil and bustle of public life. And we feel sincere pleasure in acknowledging here, that in collecting materials for this task we have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung himself, who has imposed on us a debt of obligation which we fear we can never repay. The life of this gentleman has been one of a very chequered description: he has undergone transitions—not from grave to gay, for he never was grave—not from lively to severe, for severity forms no part of his disposition; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father: But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his;[37] and the survivor bound, In filial obligation, for some term To do obsequious sorrow:[38] But to persever[39] In obstinate condolement,[40] is a course Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief: It shows a will most incorrect to Heaven.[41] We pray you, throw to earth ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... along an unearned and fragile reputation, built upon subterfuges and likely to crumble at the slightest touch. She had maintained it very creditably up to the Christmas vacation, and had argued upon the ultimate ground of moral obligation and the origin of conscience quite as intelligently as though she had previously read what the text-book had to say on the subject. But when they had commenced the study of specific theologies, based upon definite historical ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... charge two or three hundred per cent over the normal prices for their work and commodities in order to keep even. And this practice, completing the vicious circle, increased the debt. An attempt was made to fund the city debt by handing in the scrip in exchange for a ten per cent obligation. This method gave promise of success; but a number of holders of scrip refused to surrender it, and brought suit to enforce payment. One of these, a physician named Peter Smith, was owed a considerable sum for the care ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... to us, because we see in her more of the conflict between passion and moral obligation, which is the essence of drama. Her scornful rejection of the advances of Monsieur (II, ii), though her husband palliates his conduct as that of "a bachelor and a courtier, I, and a prince," proves that she is no light o' love, and that her surrender to Bussy is the result of a sudden ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Miss Bayard, the obligation I feel under for your wise and prompt action in this matter. But for you much misery ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... useful to the king his master. See to what mean shifts and disguises poor loyalty is forced to submit sometimes; yet it counts nothing base or unworthy so as it can but do service where it owes an obligation! In the disguise of a serving-man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who, not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness, in his answers, which the earl put on (so different ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to let the captain have him, but I was very loath to sell the poor boy's liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to be just, and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian. Upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Indians, who not only have given up to us this good and fruitful country, and for a trifle yielded us the ownership, but also enrich us with their good and reciprocal trade, so that there is no one in New Netherland or who trades to New Netherland without obligation to them. Great is our disgrace now, and happy should we have been, had we acknowledged these benefits as we ought, and had we striven to impart the Eternal Good to the Indians, as much as was in our power, in return for what they divided with us. It ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... to see the law of his Prince so disloyally infringed, so contemptuously trampled on; to find his best Friend and Benefactor so outrageously abused. To give him the lie were a compliment, to spit in his face were an obligation, in comparison to ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... from a belief in a protective tariff to the advocacy of one for revenue only, I recognize an obligation to Godkin, but his was only one of many influences. I owe The Nation much for its accurate knowledge of foreign affairs, especially of English politics, in which its readers were enlightened by one of the most capable of living men, Albert V. Dicey. I am indebted to it ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... for the sentiments to which you have just given utterance release me from further obligation to enter upon a career for which I have ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... approach. This feeling I could not assuage by sharing it with Agnes. No motive could be strong enough for persuading me to communicate so gloomy a thought with one who, considering her extreme healthiness, was but too remarkably prone to pensive, if not to sorrowful contemplations. And thus the obligation which I felt to silence and reserve, strengthened the morbid impression I had received; whilst the remarkable incident I have adverted to served powerfully to rivet the superstitious chain which was continually gathering round me. The incident was this—and before I repeat it, let me ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... back into place. Jimmie Dale continued to blink at it, and mumble to himself. The Rat's pleasant little plan of robbing somebody's safe of fifteen thousand dollars had nothing to do with her—but it involved a moral obligation on his part that he had neither the right nor the intention to ignore. And the fulfilment, or the attempt at fulfilment, of that obligation had suddenly assumed unexpected difficulties. Even while he had listened, and before the Rat was halfway through his story, he, Jimmie ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... theme of his conversation was on my future prospects, and a wish that I would embark in some pursuit or profession more likely to raise me in the world; but on this head I was positive, and also another point, which was, that I would in future put myself under an obligation to no one. I could not erase from my memory the injuries I had received, and my vindictive spirit continually brooded over them. I was resolved to be independent and free. I felt that in the company I was in I was with my equals, or, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not appeared, so that I suppose he has gone. Dear Letty! you see how Fortune takes pleasure in persecuting your poor friend. If you should see him at Gloucester — or if you have seen him, and know his real name and family, pray keep me no longer in suspence — And yet, if he is under no obligation to keep himself longer concealed, and has a real affection for me, I should hope he will, in a little time, declare himself to my relations. Sure, if there is nothing unsuitable in the match, they won't be so cruel as to thwart ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... with a light heart, as they might have entered upon a football match. All honor to those who went into the war so—they played a great part and a noble part! But there were more who went to war as my boy did—taking it upon themselves as a duty and a solemn obligation. They had no illusions. They did not love war. No! John hated war, and the black ugly horrors of it. But there were things he hated more than he hated war. And one was a peace won through ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... do in all things that which to you shall seem good, and you will look upon yourself as under an obligation to take care of one who trusts her soul to your keeping. I will pray for the soul of your reverence to our Lord, so long as I live. You will, therefore, be diligent in His service, in order that you may be able to help me; for your ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... my very good friend. He once did me a great service, when I needed money badly, by helping me make an investment in copper that turned out extremely well. I feel myself under obligations to him; and, since he is no more, I must transfer that obligation ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... provincial congress, Gage now hastened to forestall the consequences of his own action. He declared the convening of the Assembly inexpedient, and removed the obligation to attend. Nevertheless ninety of the delegates came together, waited a day for the governor, then formed themselves into a provincial congress, and adjourned. On the 11th of October they met again at Concord, this time with nearly two hundred more members, and in the old ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... all, it is in the hands of the Press of this country that I place this cause. I look with confidence to your support in the discharge of this high obligation.—I have the honour to remain, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... 1871.—Abed gave me a frasilah of Matunda beads, and I returned fourteen fathoms of fine American sheeting, but it was an obligation to get beads from one whose wealth depended ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... cases in which the dog feels that he should follow his master; others, in which he should precede him. Then the animal takes the direction of sense. His imperturbable scent is a confused power of vision in what is twilight to us. He feels a vague obligation to become a guide. Does he know that there is a dangerous pass, and that he can help his master to surmount it? Probably not. Perhaps he does. In any case, some one knows it for him. As we have already said, it often happens in life that some mighty help which we have held to have ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... which all of you must lay to heart on this subject are: 1st. That you are in duty bound to acquire sound knowledge and great skill in your profession; since the consequences involved are of the greatest moment, your obligation is of a most serious nature. 2d. That in your future practice you will be obliged on all occasions to use all reasonable care for the benefit of your patients. 3d. That you cannot in conscience undertake the management of cases of unusual difficulty unless you possess the special knowledge required, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... be under a slight debt of obligation to that woman," my husband retorted, clearly more upset than I ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... This one argument was his last resource. He had chosen it carefully with an eye to the woman whom it was to persuade. It was not couched as an inducement; it did not claim the discharge of an obligation; it was not a reply to any definite objection. Such arguments would only have confirmed her in her stubbornness. He made ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... times when Russia was merely a conglomeration of independent principalities, the Princes were under the moral and political obligation of protecting their subjects, and this obligation coincided admirably with their natural desire to extend their dominions. When the Grand Princes of Muscovy, in the fifteenth century, united the numerous principalities and proclaimed themselves Tsars, they accepted this obligation for the whole country, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... but this boy—this fore-front fighter in the devil's battle—did much to ruin many an immortal soul. He systematically, from the very first, called evil good, and good evil, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. He openly threw aside the admission of any one moral obligation. Never did some of the Roslyn boys, to their dying day, forget the deep, intolerable, unfathomable flood of moral turpitude and iniquity which he bore with him; a flood, which seemed so irresistible, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... the general conviction that such a policy was demanded by the magnitude of the issues at stake. Britons have always been ready, even eager, to give their lives for their country; but, even now, most of them prefer that the obligation to do so should be a moral, rather than a legal one. The doctrine of individual liberty implies the minimum of State interference. Hence there is no country in the world where so much has been left to individual ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... on the practical side, that the much-boasted support given to America by the French in America's Revolutionary War, in a degree helped to bankrupt the French government; but Americans have forgotten or wink at this plain financial obligation. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... fulfilled his weekly obligation to society by manipulating meteorological instruments for forty-five minutes, high in the warm, upper stratosphere and worked off his pugnacity by knocking down a professional gym slugger. He would have a full, glorious week now to work ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... the last Tuesday in March ensuing; and, in order hereunto, William Morse acknowledgeth himself indebted to the Treasurer of the County of Essex the full sum of twenty pounds. The condition of this obligation is, that the said William Morse shall prosecute his complaint against Caleb Powell at ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... shot me, cousin," Frank said: "I knew you were the best and the bravest, and the kindest of all men" (so the enthusiastic young fellow went on); "but I never thought I owed you what I do, and can scarce bear the weight of the obligation." ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anxiety to him all the evening. He was constantly invited to drink with various members, and the German responsible for him explained that he must not only respond to the invitation at the moment, but return it at the right time: not too soon, because that would look like shaking off an obligation, and not too late, because that would look like ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... other object than to obtain a dissolution of the bonds of matrimony. The effect of this looseness in the laws is to encourage hasty, inconsiderate marriages, and to make escape from an uncongenial partner so easy that the obligation to cultivate forbearance and to acquire mutual adaptation which may not at first exist, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... saving others; it was only good if she asked herself—Will this redound to the glory of God? The man who endures tortures rather than betray a trust, the man who spends years in toil in order to discharge an obligation from which the law declares him free, must be animated not by the spirit of fidelity to his fellow-man, but by a desire to make "the name of God more known." The sweet charities of domestic life—the ready hand and the soothing word in sickness, the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... say nothing about it, and let the boy mature his independence. He had him often to his house. Ericson frequently accompanied him; and as there was a good deal of original similarity between the doctor and Ericson, the latter soon felt his obligation no longer a burden. Shargar likewise, though more occasionally, made one of the party, and soon began, in his new circumstances, to develop the manners of a gentleman. I say develop advisedly, for Shargar ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... document might have led to locating the gold. The Elector would not even count it. He said: "If I do not come back, it is yours—you helped me get it. If I return, you are an honest man—and that is all there is about it." The Jew was touched to tears. The obligation was one fraught with great risk for the money, and for himself. But there was only one thing to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... but of all civilized Europe. He knew and felt that the Revolution which had destroyed the social elements of Europe, or thrown them in disorder, had not reconstructed and arranged them; and that the re-organization of society on the basis of humanity and mutual obligation, was still an unfinished problem. Lamartine felt this; but did the French Chambers, as they were then organized, offer him a fair scope for the development of his ideas, or the exercise of his genius? ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... on rue Perrin-Gasselin, where she fell prey to the usurer Bidault—Gigonnet. Angelique Madou at first dealt harshly with Cesar Birotteau, when he was unable to pay his debts; but she congratulated him, later on, when, as a result of his revived fortunes, the perfumer settled every obligation. Angelique Madon had a little godchild, in whom she occasionally showed ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... mind that is worldly, living mainly to seek its own pleasures instead of living to please God, no principles can be so fixed as not to leave a ready escape from all obligation. Such minds, either by indolence (and consequent ignorance) or by sophistry, will convince themselves that a life of engrossing self-indulgence, with perhaps the gift of a few dollars and a few hours of time, may suffice to fulfill the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... joining of the right hands was esteemed among the Peoians [and Parthians] in particular a most inviolable obligation to fidelity, as Dr. Hudson here observes, and refers to the commentary on Justin, B. XI. ch. 15., for its confirmation. We often meet with the like use of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... specifies the character of the debt to be secured. In case of failure to pay the debt as agreed on, the trustee may, if so warranted, sell the property, and pay the obligation from ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... scientific truth, a man must have deeply studied scientific method; to understand the obligation of political principle requires a similar mental discipline. A man who is suddenly introduced from without into a society where this certainty and obligation are currently acknowledged is naturally bewildered. He cannot distinguish between the dubious impressions of his second-hand knowledge and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... performers to look at their conductor necessarily implies an equal obligation on his part to let himself be well seen by them. He should,—whatever may be the disposal of the orchestra, whether on rows of steps, or on a horizontal plane,—place himself so as to form the ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... Government of Newfoundland, in fact, assumed to bind its successors by a partial abdication of sovereign power. Yet the same capacity which enabled the then Government to bind itself would equally and evidently inhere in its successors to revoke the obligation. Those who are struck by the conscientious obligation which the then Government could no doubt bequeath, may ask themselves how long a democratically governed country would tolerate corruption or ineptitude in the public service on the ground that the monopolist ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Indeed, I felt great pleasure in doing so, as I found Bourdon to be a most intelligent mechanic, and thoroughly able to appreciate the practical value of the information I communicated to him. He expressed his obligation to me in the warmest terms, and the alterations which he shortly afterwards effected in the steam hammer, in accordance with my plans, enabled it to accomplish ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... not afraid to steal, nor ashamed to beg; and yet are too proud to be seen with a badge, as many of them have confessed to me, and not a few in very injurious terms, particularly the females. They all look upon such an obligation as a high indignity done to their office. I appeal to all indifferent people, whether such wretches deserve to be relieved. As to myself, I must confess, this absurd insolence hath so affected me, that for several years past, I have not disposed of one single farthing to a street beggar, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... innumerable ties, and that almost every act of our lives deeply affects our friends' happiness.' The belief again (in the sense always of belief of a probability) in the fundamental doctrines of God and a future state imposes an 'obligation to be virtuous, that is, to live so as to promote the happiness of the whole body of which I am a member. Is there,' he asks, 'anything illogical or inconsistent ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to my wife," said the rector. "If people come into my parish with secrets, which come to my knowledge without my desire, and without official obligation, and the faithful and admirable partner of my life threatens to be ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of passion which, blowing against the tides of his own nature, created unrest and storm. A strain of chivalry belonged to him and at first this conquered. He felt the magnitude of Sabina's sacrifice and his obligation to a love so absolute. In this spirit he remained for a time, during which their relations were of the closest. They spoke of marriage; they even appointed the day on which the announcement of their betrothal should be made. And though he had gone thus far at her ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... condition to work. We cannot then reasonably demand of these patients that they shall be cured, in the interest of others, unless we provide them with the means. In talking about public effort against syphilis, this matter will be taken up again. We have recognized the obligation in tuberculosis. Let us now provide for ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... for him. He well knew the condition of our friend E. Peck, and that the names of some of our colored friends were also attached to the note; all of whom were relying implicitly on his or our honor to pay the obligation. That we had no funds in the treasury he was well aware; also, that all were deeply concerned about that debt. All this he knew; and in answer to our earnest and repeated injunction, he promised most faithfully and solemnly that he would call at Rochester, and take up ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Ministry. Thus it was that, when the unanimous defiance of the Americans reached England, the Ministers responsible for the colonial reforms were out of office, and the Rockingham Whigs had assumed control, feeling no obligation to continue anything begun by their predecessors. George III's interposition ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... of doing it. Making school pleasant. Discipline should generally be private. In all cases that are brought before the school, public opinion in the teacher's favor should be secured. Story of the rescue. Feelings of displeasure against what is wrong. The teacher under moral obligation, and governed, himself, by law. Description of the Moral Exercise. Prejudice. The scholars' written remarks, and the teacher's comments. The spider. List of subjects. Anonymous writing. Specimens. Marks of a bad scholar. Consequences of being behindhand. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... The obligation to produce results for the instruction of others, seems to me to be a more effectual check on these tendencies than even the love of usefulness ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... still clings to any collection of young men, jars painfully on their morbid sensibilities; and they beat a hasty retreat to resume their perfunctory march along Princes Street. Flirtation is to them a great social duty, a painful obligation, which they perform on every occasion in the same chill official manner, and with the same commonplace advances, the same dogged observance of traditional behaviour. The shape of their raiment is a burden ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... happenings, and already we have a store of common interests. The present is her whole existence; the past but a confused dream. The odd part of the matter is that she regards her position with me as a perfectly natural one. No stray kitten adopted by a kind family could have less sense of obligation, or a greater faith in the serene ordering of the cosmos for its own private and peculiar comfort. When I asked her a while ago what she would have done had I left her on the bench in the Embankment Gardens, she shrugged her shoulders ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... unfortunate consort of a most unhappy monarch is without a flaw. Enmity, hatred, and every evil passion, have done their worst to palliate murder and to blacken innocence, but the ineradicable spot cannot be fixed to the fair fame of this true woman. Faultless she was not. We are under no obligation to vindicate her imprudent, wilful, and fatal interference with public questions in which she had no concern; we say nothing of her ignorance of the high matters of state into which her uninformed zeal conducted her, to the bitter cost ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to Abercorris. The farmer, from a small beginning, rapidly became, like Job, a man of substance, possessed of thriving herds of cattle—a very patriarch among the mountains. But, alas! wanting Job's restraining grace, his wealth made him proud, his pride made him forget his obligation to the elfin cow, and fearing she might soon become too old to be profitable, he fattened her for the butcher, and then even she did not fail to distinguish herself, for a more monstrously fat beast was never seen. At last the day of slaughter came—an ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... was in a measure philosophical. Cowfold, though it knew nothing, or next to nothing of abstractions, took immense interest in the creatures in which they were embodied. It would have turned a deaf ear to any debate on the nature of ethical obligation; but it was very keen indeed in apportioning blame to its neighbours who had sinned, and in deciding how far they had gone wrong. Cowfold in other words believed that flesh and blood, and not ideas, are the school and the religion ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... honourable man, under penalty of death, whether he would hold it possible to conquer his love of life. He might not venture to say what he would choose, but he would certainly admit that it is possible to make choice. Thus, he judges that he can choose to do a thing because he is conscious of moral obligation, and he thus recognises for himself a freedom of will of which, but for the moral law, he would never have ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... other time she would have been much averse to exert this influence; for, however inexperienced in the world, her native delicacy taught her the advantage which a beautiful young woman gives to a young man when she permits him to lay her under an obligation. And she would have been the farther disinclined to request any favour of Lord Evandale, because the voice of the gossips in Clydesdale had, for reasons hereafter to be made known, assigned him to her as a suitor, and because she could not disguise from ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... involuntariness; instinct, blind impulse; inborn proclivity, innate proclivity; native tendency, natural tendency; natural impulse, predetermination. necessity, necessitation; obligation; compulsion &c. 744; subjection &c. 749; stern necessity, hard necessity, dire necessity, imperious necessity, inexorable necessity, iron necessity, adverse necessity; fate; what must be. destiny, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Certain it is, that I never have had a woman who in behaviour resembled Mary, in manner, conversation, and general behaviour,—I always felt as if she were a superior person to me, as if she were obliging me and not herself, and was putting me under an obligation, by letting ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... fourth chapter of the thirteenth volume of the Book of Egoism it is written: Possession without obligation to the object possessed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and despair passed over her head—a rope made of frail enough strands, God knows: bright eyes alert, small clinging feet, a pair of folded wings. Yet do the frailest threads of love and trust, make a safer rope to which to cling when shipwreck threatens the heart, than the iron chains of obligation ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... on her landau was found by your Herald's College, in return for a part of the proceeds of that bill, which was drawn to pay for the food of the soldiers who drove the convicts, who produced the food. Our old friend Sir George Nayler would no doubt start at being told of his obligation to the pickpockets of London. And the rogues are little aware of their influence in political economy; but I have stated a plain fact, which, if you have any doubts about it, pray submit both to Sir George himself, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... entire energy of life in action; it can chase mood with mood, link act to act. It alone can speak the word, which is the most powerful instrument of man. Hence the types it shows by presenting moods, words, and acts with the least obstruction of matter and the slightest obligation to the active senses, are the most complete. They have broken the bonds of the flesh, of moment and place. They exhibit themselves in actions; they speak, and in dialogue and soliloquy set forth their ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... changed. Instinctive misgivings which had assailed her in the coach with him now resolved themselves into assured fears. Something she could not explain had aroused her suspicions before they reached the manor, but his words had glossed these inward qualms, and a feeling of obligation suggested trust, not shrinking; but, with his last words, a full light illumined her faculties; an association of ideas ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... is the basis of all religious belief. If there is no God, there is no moral obligation. If there is no Almighty Being to whom men owe existence, and to whom they must give account, worship is a vain show and systems of religion are meaningless. Theologians, therefore, from the days of the first Christian apologists to our own ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation ...
— The Magna Carta
... enterprises he was first; inured to fatigue, his iron body could support it without inconvenience. Nothing escaped his vigilance, all was turned to account, and what valour could not accomplish, cunning supplied. His pride suffered him not to incur an obligation, and thus he was unthankful; his actions all centred in self, and as he was remarkably fortunate in whatever he undertook, he ascribed even that, which accident ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... struggle-for-lifer. She, the mother, would swallow by her single self all the mental discomforts that might have been the general portion, and, nobody being any the wiser, shoulder hardily for their sakes the consciousness of an obligation which might to the others have poisoned a gift, if not made it impossible to accept. No member of her family, it seemed to Mrs. Foss, knew quite as well as she how simple, native, and without self-conceit was ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a tone of easy familiarity with Byron, which only resulted in galling his host; and he ought not to have written his very damaging reminiscences of the period, though it is quite clear that he felt under no obligation whatever to Byron. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... together of the capital sin of an earth-centered life; and now the iron merchant, elder of the church though he was, awoke from his long dream of money getting and of earthly comfort to the reality of God, and of his obligation as a redeemed soul to Him. There crept an unfamiliar note of yearning sincerity into the prayers wherewith he took his heretofore formal part in the church prayer meeting, and it almost perceptibly thinned the frozen crust of the "icily regular" service. The men in his business ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... are limits. No man should ever thrust himself upon another and it is almost an iron clad rule that he should never "pick up" women acquaintances when traveling. It is permissible to talk with them, but not to annoy them with personal attentions nor to place them under obligation by paying their bills. If a man and a woman who are traveling on the same train fall into conversation and go into the dining car together, each one should pay his or her own check, or if he insists upon paying at ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... a liberal master, whom, just now, you saw me weep for? and that to one to whom I have no obligation? ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... but an arbitrary trifling with a few of life's majestic chords; painting is but a shadow of its pageantry of light and colour; literature does but drily indicate that wealth of incident, of moral obligation, of virtue, vice, action, rapture and agony, with which it teems. To 'compete with life,' whose sun we cannot look upon, whose passions and diseases waste and slay us—to compete with the flavour ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rampant individualism of their Viking forefathers. Ibsen is the modern apostle par excellence of philosophic anarchism; and Bjoernson, too, has his full share of the national aggressiveness and pugnacity. For all that there is a radical difference between the two. The sense of social obligation which Ibsen lacks, Bjoernson possesses in a high degree. He fights, not as a daring guerilla, but as the spokesman and leader of thousands. He is the chieftain who looms a head above all the people. He wields ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... men. Subsequently, however, one of them, either feeling scruples with regard to the possession of the booty or else in the due order of confession, unburdened himself to his priest, who at once impressed upon him the sinfulness of retaining the stolen treasure and the obligation of endeavouring to find the rightful owners and restoring it to them. The penitent, therefore, went to explain these views to his fellow-thief, who appearing fully convinced by such reasoning, at once ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... my child. It was only that kind nature was in sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more peaceful in storm than in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of life instantly began in her when the obligation of gladness had departed with the light. Her own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could smile now when nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I could not help saying to myself, "She must marry a poor man some day; she is a creature of the north, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... and when Edwin opened the envelope, he found that it contained just five dollars, the exact amount that he needed to complete his purpose-money. One week out of the four had not yet passed, and yet he had the full amount of his obligation. And when, on Sunday morning, he carried the money to the church and told of the wonderful manner in which it had been supplied (for indeed ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... She frequently said to me, "If the emigrants succeed, they will rule the roast for a long time; it will be impossible to refuse them anything; to owe the crown to them would be contracting too great an obligation." It always appeared to me that she wished her own family to counterbalance the claims of the emigrants by disinterested services. She was fearful of M. de Calonne, and with good reason. She had proof that this minister was her bitterest enemy, and that he made use of the most criminal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mothers, has befriended them since Marston's troubles began. She always-her large, loving eyes glowing with the kindness of her soul-heard Marston say they were just as free as people could be, and they should be free, too! Some people did'nt look at the moral obligation of the thing. Here, the good lady, blushing, draws the veil over her face. There is something more she would like to disclose if modesty did ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... so muttering his thanks rather ungraciously. He hated to be under any obligation ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... and, in the long-run, pay for itself. For it cost him money, and in itself, as a thing of beauty, it hardly covers the bad debt contracted with him by a poor fellow-countryman to whom he kindly lent fifty marks last year. He accepted the doll without a murmur, however, in full discharge of the obligation, and with an odd philosophy peculiar to himself, he does his best to get what amusement he can out of the little red-coated figure without complaining and ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... inaugurating an era of law and order. The colored people of this country who have been loyal to the flag believe the same, and strong in that belief have begun this crusade. To those who still feel they have no obligation in the matter, we commend the following lines ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... to the diligence of the late John Forster, to whom every lover of Swift must confess the very greatest obligation, I have been able to do much more. I have been able to enrich this edition with some pieces not hitherto brought to light—notably, the original version of "Baucis and Philemon," in addition to the version hitherto printed; the original version of the poem on "Vanbrugh's House"; the verses ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... in the sweat of his brow is the original punishment of mankind; the indolence of the savage shrinks from the obligation, and looks out for methods of escaping it. Corn, wine, and oil have no charms for him at such a price; he turns to the brute animals which are his aboriginal companions, the horse, the cow, and the sheep; he chooses to be a grazier rather than to till the ground. He ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... interviews: but all these things I rearrange and classify and put to the exact test of truth. My collaborator in this work is Arsene Lupin himself, whose kindness to me is inexhaustible. I am also under an occasional obligation to the unspeakable Wilson, the friend and ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... coming here to-night to join us in doing honour to Mr. Forrest, and that he would have introduced you to a gentleman connected with the Government of Victoria, now in this colony—Mr. Wardell, the Inspector-General of Public Works, for whose services we are under deep obligation. I believe him to be an excellent engineer, and in examining our harbour at Fremantle he will be the right man in the right place. Had he, however, been in his right place to-night, he would have been here amongst us, introduced by the Surveyor-General, and we should thus have an opportunity ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... seemed always oblivious of that fact; so that Imogen, though feeling that she had secured a guest who conferred luster, couldn't resist, now and then, trying to bring her to a slightly clearer sense of obligation. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... arms of his chair with a languid grace. He looked like a convalescent Apollo. Never, on any previous occasion, had he practiced more successfully the social art which he habitually cultivated—the art of casting himself on society in the character of a well-bred Incubus, and conferring an obligation on his fellow-creatures by allowing them to sit under him. It was undeniably a dull evening. All the talking fell to the share of Mr. Vanstone and Miss Garth. Mrs. Vanstone was habitually silent; Norah kept herself ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... defer going thither till the ensuing morning; but why should I allow myself a moment's delay? I might at least gain an external view of the house, and circumstances might arise which would absolve me from the obligation of remaining an hour longer in the city. All for which I came might be performed; the destiny of Wallace be ascertained; and I be once more safe within the precincts of Malverton before the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... themselves. We Americans and you people of the British Isles alike need ever to keep in mind that, among the many qualities indispensable to the success of a great democracy, and second only to a high and stern sense of duty, of moral obligation, are self-knowledge and self-mastery. You, my hosts, and I may not agree in all our views; some of you would think me a very radical democrat—as, for the matter of that, I am—and my theory of imperialism ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... Manila, with several ships and the military stores, were surrendered, while for their private property the Spanish agreed to pay as a ransom $2,000,000 in coin, and the same in bills on the treasury at Madrid. This last obligation was ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... together for the reason that we fear the established policy of the Government will be changed by the party now coming into power. We ask for assurances that the old policy should be continued; and we wish to have the obligation to continue it, written down ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... remedy, each in its own way. And when we have threaded the maze of this rash legislation, we shall the better understand that clause in our federal constitution which forbids the making of laws impairing the obligation of contracts. The events of 1786 impressed upon men's minds more forcibly than ever the wretched and disorderly condition of the country, and went far toward calling into existence the needful popular sentiment in favour ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... these cases, when obliged to call in the services of hired assistance, she must trust the dearest obligation of her life to one who, from her social sphere, has probably notions of rearing children diametrically opposed to the preconceived ideas of the mother, and at enmity with all her sentiments of right and prejudices ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... impartially all rites and worship among its subjects is at a disadvantage by comparison with a Government that acts as the representative of a great church or an exclusive faith. It bears the sole undivided responsibility for measures of repression; it cannot allege divine command or even the obligation of punishing ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... "power." "To them gave He power." All the power I need for a full, holy, healthy life I can find in Him. Every obligation has its corresponding inspiration, and I am competent ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... the determination which this country has ever exhibited to regard the defence of the colonies as a matter of Imperial concern, the colonies must recognize a right, and even acknowledge an obligation, incumbent on the home government to urge with earnestness and just authority the measures which they consider to be most expedient on the part of the colonies with a view to their ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... possibilities, shed some idle tears, waste life before the necessity, and go back to everyday work weakened and scarred and aching. And once or twice in a lifetime that black, hopeless never drops down, not the less grievous and inexorable because simply a moral obligation. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
