"Rectitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who, when he is eating, craves not to eat to the full; who has a home, but craves not for comforts in it; who is active and earnest in his work and careful in his words; who makes towards men of high principle, and so maintains his own rectitude—that man may be ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... stare. It was her brother! and her gentle heart With love o'erflowed to act a sister's part. Most earnest efforts quick the man restored, And ELLEN felt most grateful to the Lord. She, fully conscious of strict rectitude, Confessed her kindred, and for pardon sued. The astonished brother clasped her in his arms; Their early love afresh their spirit warms, And all his hatred very soon disarms. This Minstrel, with his lovely ELLEN, were Our ancestors, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... is cheated out of its rectitude, following this grave delight, and seems to dilate and grow dreamy in the cool shade of imaginative cloisters and groves, the wanton joyousness of Life, with its long waving lily-stems and the luscious pending of vines, comes with dim recollections into the mind, but modified by a certain habitual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... preeminently a Man of sorrows; He exhausted all forms of suffering; touching life at every point, at every point He bled; and in Him we learn how to sustain our burden and to triumph throughout all the tragedy. In His absolute rectitude, in His confidence in His Father, in His hours of prayer, in His self-sacrificing regard for His fellow-sufferers, in His charity, and patience, we see how the heaviest cross may be borne in the spirit of victory. We learn from Him how divine grace ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... affectionate manner for each and every one he came across; the other was made of sterner stuff—grave, with deep thoughts and high aspirations, and very strong, almost rigid ideas with regard to honor and rectitude—this was the inner Basil, whose existence Ermengarde knew of, whom she ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the Towers to her own home, had been prompted by the sudden departure of her young ladyship for London. The fact that the whole thing had come about at the bidding of "Gwen o' the Towers" was absolute, final, decisive as to its entire rectitude and expediency. But she could see that this strange son who had not seen his mother for so long had identified her in the first plausible octogenarian whom he chanced upon as soon as he was sure he was getting close to the object of his search, and that he was not known to her ladyship ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... interesting one to the theatrical student. In the ruin of the family, all hopes concentre in him. Every one claims him, and in the bosoms of each of his shattered parents a secret hope is born, Mrs. Borkman believing that by a brilliant career of commercial rectitude her son will wipe out the memory of his father's crime; Borkman, who has never given up the ambition of returning to business, reposing his own hopes on the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... which, possesses an extraordinary amount of influence to elevate the mind and educate the heart, by showing that rectitude and virtue conduce no less to material prosperity, and worldly comfort and happiness, than to the satisfaction of the conscience, the approval of the good, and the hope and certainty of bliss ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... Biographer of Collins, in his affecting apology for that unfortunate genius, remarks, "That the gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task on the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness, and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind; yet difficult as Nature herself seems to have rendered the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... opposed Mr. Gladstone's budget. He devised a scheme to borrow and thus increase the debt. He opposed the imposition of new taxes. Mr. Gladstone said: "Every good motive and every bad motive, combated only by the desire of the approval of honorable men and by conscientious rectitude—every motive of ease, comfort, and of certainty spring forward to induce a Chancellor of the Exchequer to become the first man to recommend a ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... pausing on the threshold. A faint sense of some purely conventional responsibility in their position affected them both. They would have shaken hands if either had offered the initiative. A sullen consciousness of gratuitous rectitude in the selfish mind of the father; an equally sullen conviction of twenty years of wrong in the son, withheld them both. Unpleasantly observant of each other's awkwardness, they parted with ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... never too late for a great nation to rectify a wrong done to even the humblest of its subjects, let alone a man of such undoubted courage and rectitude as Gen. Arnold." ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... suspicions of her protegee by too sudden a change. "In truth, I repeat to you, I cannot comprehend that, having so much to praise in your benefactor, you should be a prisoner here; how, after having sincerely returned to the paths of rectitude, could you cause yourself to be arrested in a place to you interdicted? All this seems to me extraordinary. You speak of an oath which so far has imposed silence upon you; but this oath even is ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... woman at last and at least was happy, perched now on a pinnacle of fame, and in the Patriotic Daughters of America as represented by their Vice-President and Accredited Representative in the Philippines, virtue and rectitude reigned triumphant. Zenobia Perkins was in her glory. Of all the citizens or soldiers of the United States in and about Manila, male or female, staff or supply, signal or hospital corps, Red Cross or crossed cannon, rifles, or sabres, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... free the slaves, and nothing more, the record shows clearly. His move on Harper's Ferry was well planned, and had all the parties interested done their part the work would have been done well. As to the rectitude of his intentions he gives the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... pray stay!" said Lucy. "When you are by me, Rectitude and Sense seem present in person, and I ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Dickens it was not so. The alchemy of a fine nature had transmuted his disadvantages into gold. To him the lessons of such a childhood and boyhood as he had had, were energy, self-reliance, a determination to overcome all obstacles, to fight the battles of life, in all honour and rectitude, so as to win. From the muddle of his father's affairs he had taken away a lesson of method, order, and punctuality in business and other arrangements. "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well," was not only one of his favourite ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... while at the same time, she was violent in her attachments. Though she was inadvertently drawn into that dishonorable mode of life which has stained her character, and given her a place among the criminals noticed in this work, yet she possessed a rectitude of principle and of conduct, far superior to many who have not been exposed to such temptations to swerve from the path of female ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... sides of life, and that little help comes to us from that silly pretence of ours that we are perfect in all things, leading perfect lives, that only the villain of the story ever deviates from the path of rectitude. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... counterfeiting, post-office robberies, and violations of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been suspected of many such deviations from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... 25.—That America is | |entering upon a new era of civic and | |business rectitude and that this is due | |to the awakening of the moral conscience | |of the whole people was the prophecy made| |here tonight by Governor Joseph W. Folk ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... hardened offenders, debtors, and among characters of the most abandoned and vicious stamp;—men of all nations and all colours. Among this mass of vile and depraved men, I had to take up my abode. There was no example of moral rectitude here exhibited but that of my own! No restraint was put by our keepers, on their profane and vile language and conduct. Every one indulged to an excess in every species of the most disgusting practices, profaning and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... a martyr I trod heavily up the stairs, and entered my quarters, meditating within myself, awful schemes for vengeance, on the now open tyranny of my Colonel; upon whom, I too, in my honest rectitude of heart, vowed to have "a court-martial." I threw myself upon a chair, and endeavoured to recollect what circumstance of the past evening could have possibly suggested all the mirth in which both officers and men seemed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... history of her race, and tenacious of the dignity and of the magnitude of her House, she yet was too courageous and too haughty a woman not to be capable of braving calumny, if conscious of her own pure rectitude beneath it; not to be capable of incurring false censure, if encountered in the path of justice and of magnanimity. It was possible, even on herself it dawned as possible, that so great might become her compassion and her tenderness for ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... hope, and all that he should wish, to carry with him to a life hereafter. Falsehood, sin, is the efficient agent of death. As Bishop Hall says: "There is a kind of not-being in sin; for sin is not an existence of somewhat that is, but a deficiency of that rectitude which should be; it is a privation, as blindness ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... her line of rectitude With love's unconscious ease; Her kindly instincts understood ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... accordance with the particular mood they may happen to be in at the time it is presented to them. They know nothing of human nature beyond their own immediate preference at the moment for port or sherry, for vice or virtue. To tell me there could not be a man so lost to shame, if to rectitude, as Captain Crowfoot, is simply to talk nonsense. Nay, gentle reader, if you—and let me suppose I address a lady—if you will give yourself up for thirty years to doing just whatever your lowest self and not your best self may like, I will warrant you capable, by the end of that time, of child ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... practical error. Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be godlike. The full accord of all the soul with His character, in whom, as their ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Proserpine. Lord Cochrane, however, preferred to accept Admiral Heyden's more generous invitation. "It is gratifying," he said in a letter to Dr. Grosse on the 18th of December,[13] "that even the authority to which wicked men refer in proof of the rectitude of evil deeds fails to sanction infamous conduct. Alas! if Capodistrias suffers—and he seems not inclined to oppose—I say, if he suffers the base intrigues of the Phanar to be introduced as the means of ruling a nation, Greece must fall back, if not into a darker ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... follow. A certain percentage of the mothers die in childbirth—evidence that they are God's handiwork is found in the fact they so willingly enter the valley of the shadow of death to attain to motherhood. Many a boy has been won back to rectitude by the sorrows of a parent; we are not infrequently healed by the stripes that fall on others. In fact, great wrongs are seldom righted without the shedding of innocent blood—one dies and a multitude are saved. These do not always illustrate the voluntary laying down of life but there are enough ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... which some persons have proposed and objected, we may answer it in this manner; it is this, whether a legislator, who would establish the most perfect system of laws, should calculate them for the use of the better part of the citizens, or the many, in the circumstances we have already mentioned? The rectitude of anything consists in its equality; that therefore which is equally right will be advantageous to the whole state, and to every member of ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... but such places are the ruin of men,”—on which remark I based a mental note that Bates wished to impress me with his own rectitude. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... of life and expression. But nothing in the book has interested us more than the view which M. Dumont has presented to us, unostentatiously, and, we may say, unconsciously, of his own character. The sturdy rectitude, the large charity, the good-nature, the modesty, the independent spirit, the ardent philanthropy, the unaffected indifference to money and to fame, make up a character which, while it has nothing unnatural, seems to us to approach nearer to perfection than any of the Grandisons and Allworthys ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it with deference. She walked down the path without a word; Fyne had preceded her and was waiting by the open gate. They passed out and walked up the road surrounded by a low cloud of dust raised by the dog gyrating madly about their two figures progressing side by side with rectitude and propriety, and (I don't know why) looking to me as if they had annexed the whole country-side. Perhaps it was that they had impressed me somehow with the sense of their superiority. What superiority? Perhaps ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of that Revolution, as of our own Revolution, was Lafayette. His convictions regarding the rights of man were essentially the same as those held by Robespierre and St. Just; but they were convictions that grew out of the inherent geniality, benevolence, and rectitude of his nature, and were accordingly guided and limited in their application by the sanity and sweetness of the sentiments whence they drew their vitality. Whilst they made him capable of any self-sacrifice for freedom and humanity, they made him incapable of crime; and misfortune ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... fortunes? Or, on the other hand, to engage himself, with no other aid than his single arm, in the dangerous and precipitate counsels of the Chieftain, to be whirled along by him, the partaker of all his desperate and impetuous motions, renouncing almost the power of judging, or deciding upon the rectitude or prudence of his actions, this was no pleasing prospect for the secret pride of Waverley to stoop to. And yet what other conclusion remained, saving the rejection of his addresses by Flora, an alternative not to be thought ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... South, where he speaks of Man's Rectitude and Freedom from Sin before the Fall, are ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... nursery of bold and adventurous seamen. It is now carried on by a family named Davidson, father and sons—in conjunction with the killers. And for more than twenty years this business partnership has existed between the humans and the cetaceans, and the utmost rectitude and solicitude for each other's interests has always been maintained. Orca gladiator seizes the whale for the Davidsons and holds him until the deadly lance is plunged into his 'life,' and the Davidssons let Orca ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... end of their labours, Mr. Morin stood, an immaculate man. Not one weakness that might be served up as a criminal tendency, not one deviation from the path of rectitude, not even a hint of a predilection for the opposite sex, was found to be placed in his debit. His life had been as regular and austere as a monk's; his habits, simple and unconcealed. Generous, charitable, and a model in propriety, was the verdict ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... said to his sister, who was in her New York home on the day when he was starting for Crompton, and had expressed her doubts of Howard's perfect rectitude in everything. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... church, by her piety, her charity, and her Christian purity, she not only aids society by a proper training of her own children, but the children of others, whom she encourages to come to the sacred altar, are taught to walk in the paths of rectitude, honor, and religion. In the Sunday-school room the good woman is a princess, and she exerts an influence which purifies and ennobles society, training the young in the truths of religion, making the Sunday-school the nursery of the church, and elevating ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner.... Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning and Skinner in rectitude of understanding.... Skinner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge, but his variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced by his absurdities.' Ib. v. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... universal human significance. But, yet, in relation to the highest interests of morality or the well-being of society, the pupil must be taught to subordinate without hesitation all that relates exclusively to his own personal comfort or welfare for the well-being of his fellow-men, or for moral rectitude. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... truthfully say that it was she who educated me; during the whole course of my life I had the profoundest respect for her judgment and rectitude. When, in my enthusiasm, I was filled with a longing to play a part as a leader of the people, she held me back by showing how my name would destroy any influence I might have; since they would distrust me, and imagine my aim was to use them as an instrument ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the steel-strong Rectitude of soul And Poverty sublime 'mid circling virtues! The giant Victories my counsels form'd Shall stalk around me with sun-glittering plumes, 120 Bidding the darts of calumny ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... superstitious forms, while little of life-giving faith remains. Like them they have lively passions, are extremely susceptible, and in the general conduct of life more governed by the impetuosity of impulse than rectitude of principle. The ladies have less gravity than the Spanish, and less frivolity than the French, and in their style of dress incline towards the freedom of the latter. Some of the richest and most ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... so that, if such charge be proved on investigation, all the said governor's goods may be sequestered and he be sent prisoner to your Majesty, so that you may do with him and his as you see fit. If this be done, it is the surest means to keep the governors in the path of rectitude, and make them perform their duties as they should. Nothing else has wrought such ruin in the country as the trading and trafficking ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... weaknesses and folly I had, as I have said, some of the sense of honour and proud rectitude of my father, who strictly abided by his creed and his conscience. I returned no more that day to the counting-house, but, saying to my mother I had business, I went off, with a hunk of bread, to my boat, and down the creek to the Delaware. I pulled out, past our old playground on ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... unjust to the United States as a neutral nation, the wisdom of the National Legislature will be again summoned to the important decision on the alternatives before them. That these will be met in a spirit worthy the councils of a nation conscious both of its rectitude and of its rights, and careful as well of its honor as of its peace, I have an entire confidence; and that the result will be stamped by a unanimity becoming the occasion, and be supported by every portion of our citizens with a patriotism ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... against himself. Sumunter now saw his position clearly, and must have felt equally with myself it was a great pity the letter of reproof from the Brigadier of Aden[23] did not arrive sooner, and keep him on a course of rectitude, for he was obliged to return to Aden and take his chance, as there he had not only a wife and family, but it was the headquarters of all his mercantile transactions. During this time, whilst I was in the old fort, an odd accident occurred to an Akil's wife. She was playing with my interpreter, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Greek liberal education. He had been educated by his famous father, Aemilius Paulus, in a thoroughly healthy way; he was no mere book-student, but a practical courageous Roman, with a solid mental foundation of moral rectitude (pietas) fixed firmly in the traditions and instincts of his own family. On this foundation, as has been well said,[771] a superstructure of intellectual culture might be built securely without destroying it, and this was exactly what did take place, both ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... in advance of our morals as privately exercised. When our neighbor steals or murders, we give him the jail or the chair; but when you and I are charged with such deeds and see the prison or the chair in our near foreground, we discover ourselves to be less convinced than we had imagined of the rectitude of our penal system. Of course, then, the faster we make laws to punish crime, and the more we punish criminals, the more criminals are there to punish. Our hypocrisy gradually is revenged upon us, one after another; one by one ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... prevail unless their supporters can be driven away. This is an ingenious policy, for guns certainly cannot be served if the gunners are dispersed. Men shrink from ridicule and ludicrous publicity. However conscious of rectitude a man may be, it is exceedingly disagreeable for him to see the dead-walls and pavements covered with posters proclaiming that he is a liar and a fool. If he recoils, the enemy laughs in triumph; if he is indifferent, there is a ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... the thanks of an idolized brother, and "a conscience void of offence," she could but be calmly happy, even though surrounded by circumstances which often jarred upon her pure and delicate nature, and which would have crushed one less conscious of future peace and present rectitude. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of his own unassuming modest merit, entered the very 16 respectable office of which he is now the distinguished principal, in the situation of a young man who has no other prospect of advancement than such as may accrue from rectitude of conduct, and the consequent approbation and patronage of his employer. By a long exemplary series of diligence and fidelity, he acquired the confidence of, and ultimately became a partner in the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... meet in hostile array, the veteran troops of a proud and powerful nation. We behold too, these colonies, amidst want, poverty and misfortunes, animated with the spirit of liberty and fortified by the rectitude of their cause, sustaining for nearly eight years, the weight of a cruel conflict upon their own soil. At length we behold them victorious; their enemies sullenly retiring from their shores, and these feeble colonies enrolled on the page of history ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... of the pianoforte to seven little English children in a squalid Paris pension, now lapsing back into the old and fiercely abjured avenue of irresponsibility? Why had she weakened and surrendered, when he himself, the oldtime weakling of the two, had clung so desperately to the narrow path of rectitude? And what was the meaning and the direction of it all? And what would it lead to? But why, above all, had she kept silent, ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... not a man of absolute rectitude. He was not so much high-minded as large-hearted. He had, besides, certain foibles. In the first place, he was vain, and vanity in a very plain man is all the more acute since it centres in his capabilities, rather ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... prejudice or undue leaning toward a pet theory, or anything but absolute uprightness of mind—his whole work will be stultified and he will fail ignominiously. To get anywhere in science he must follow truth with absolute rectitude." ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... and Delaware Friends asked leave to present a petition. Leave was granted the following day,[37] but no further minute appears. According to the report of the Friends, the petition was against the slave-trade; and "though the Christian rectitude of the concern was by the Delegates generally acknowledged, yet not being vested with the powers of legislation, they declined promoting any public remedy against the gross national iniquity of trafficking in the persons ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... or one of those bitter mistakes, which are the great lessons of life, that such a character learns that self-reliance, exercised with deliberation and humility, is the only safeguard for individual rectitude. Emily, therefore, did not write, but lived on in the silent, wasting agony of constant expectation and perpetual disappointment. Her mother, in the hope of affording her some relief, inquired in a letter she was writing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... they will reply, because none of them ever admit the least doubt of the rectitude of their own individual creed, that there can be no proportion between these idols and mortals, who are the work of their hands; that it is not permitted to the clay to demand of the potter who has formed it, "why ye have fashioned me thus;"—but if there can be no common measure ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... studied and observed. With him there was no blending of collateral subjects, no permitted intrusion of things irrelevant or trivial, so that the channels of his thoughts were always single, deep, and traceable. It was a mental straightforwardness and conscientiousness, as rare, perhaps, as moral rectitude itself. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... reason, and for this reason alone, that, my suspicions fully aroused, I have been at some pains to verify them. A heart conscious of its moral rectitude does not flinch from the duty before it or from the pain which, unfortunately, the execution of that duty so often inflicts ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... together in peace, we said, and the past shall be utterly forgotten; shall not a whole lifetime of unwavering rectitude atone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... show something to satisfy the innate craving (for it is innate, thank Heaven! and low and high alike in moments of elevated impression, acknowledge it and bow to it) else there can scarce be true denouement and the sense of any moral rectitude or law remain as felt or acknowledged in human nature or ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... submit to your Lordships, that my affidavit was made at the impulse of the moment, as soon as I heard that placards had been posted, stating that the pretended colonel Du Bourg had gone to my house; and in the conscious rectitude of my own conduct, I not only introduced the name of the only officer I saw at my house on the day stated, but narrated every occurrence that took place, and all the conversation that look place at the interview, to the ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... and Johnny Trumbull and Lee Westminster and another boy, Jim Patterson, planning a most delightful affair, which even in the cases of the boys was fraught with danger, secrecy, and doubtful rectitude. Not one of the four boys had had a vacation from the village that summer, and their young minds had become charged, as it were, with the seeds of revolution and rebellion. Jim Patterson, the son of the rector, and of them all the most ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... remarkable passages, the scope and object of the vouchsafed message, they have at various times striven to pledge it to a science as false as even that of Buddhist, Teuton, or Hindu. And so, not only has the argument been weakened and obscured which might be founded on the rectitude of the line drawn of old between what ought and what ought not to be the subject of revelation, but even a positive argument has been furnished to the infidel,—ever ready to identify the glosses of the theologian ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... correspondent's "claim to release," but doubt whether he can establish it; inasmuch as St. Ivo or Evona, canonized on account of his great rectitude and profound knowledge both of civil and canon law, was both lawyer and churchman, like the CLERICUS so recently discussed in our columns; and clearly sought for and obtained his patron saint in his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... while that of the school of Locke, or the School of Sensation, is that there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses. The Transcendentalist claimed an intuitive knowledge of God, belief in immortality, and in man's ability to apprehend absolute ideas of truth, justice, and rectitude. The one regarded expediency, prudence, caution, and practical wisdom as the highest of the virtues, and distrusted alike the seer, the prophet, and the reformer. The other was by nature a reformer and dissatisfied with men as they are, but with passionate ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... vibrate, this quality, I supposed, would always bring you back to the equipoise. You were a creature of imagination, and yet as truly a New England girl as any with whom you grew up in your native village. If there were one person in the world whose native rectitude of thought, and something deeper, more reliable, than thought, I would have trusted against all the arts of a priesthood,—whose taste alone, so exquisite and sincere that it rose to be a moral virtue, I would have rested upon as a sufficient ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was a priest and he no longer believed. This had suddenly dawned before him like a bottomless abyss. It was the end of his life, the collapse of everything. What should he do? Did not simple rectitude require that he should throw off the cassock and return to the world? But he had seen some renegade priests and had despised them. A married priest with whom he was acquainted filled him with disgust. All this, no doubt, was but a survival ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... still another line of argument, proceeding from the assumed "rectitude of human nature," that the Unitarians came, tardily and hesitatingly, to the Universalist position. The long persistence of definite boundary lines between two bodies so nearly alike in their tenets is a subject worthy ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... England, consists in receiving general instructions from his master, the farmer, which he sees executed by the people under his charge. He exercises a direct control over the ploughmen and field-workers.... It is his duty to enforce the commands of his master, and to check every deviation from rectitude he may observe in the servants against his interests. It is not generally understood that he has control over the shepherd, the hedger, or the cattleman, who are stewards, in one sense, over their respective departments of labour.... He should always deliver the daily allowance of corn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... "Semiramis of the North," Denmark and Norway exercised in Europe an influence the effects of which were long felt throughout the Scandinavian countries with their vast extent and rival races. She united wisdom and policy with courage and determination, had strength of mind to preserve her rectitude without deviation, and her efforts were crowned by divine Providence with success. She is justly considered one of the most illustrious female rulers in history. Her renown even reached the Byzantine emperor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sin and the consequent disorganization; for in the teaching of the Fathers, as in that of their Master, it is the pure in heart that see God,[48] and it is only the man whose nature is kept in due balance by a life of moral rectitude—the "righteous man" of the Scriptures—who can be expected to exhibit clearly this "natural opinion" or to attain to a full knowledge and appreciation of the Christian doctrine of God. At the very best, the knowledge of the Deity attained apart from revelation seemed to the Fathers to be, in ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... order, and beauty, and harmony, and proportion, if there should ever be, as it is impossible there ever should be, any inconsistence between them, though these last, too, as expressing the fitness of actions, are real as truth itself. Let it be allowed, though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good, as such, yet, that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... told of a grand speculation where he can make a score of thousands. He is constantly flattered by his friends, who tell him that he is born lucky, that everything he touches turns into gold. Now if he forgets that his economical habits, his rectitude of conduct and a personal attention to a business which he understood, caused his success in life, he will listen to the siren voices. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... released Gregory, who had been besieged in the Castle of St. Angelo. Hildebrand died at Salerno, May 25, 1085. When near his end he uttered the words which are inscribed on his tomb: "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore do I die in exile." Of the rectitude of his intentions, there is no room for doubt, whatever view is taken of the expediency of his measures. He united with an unbending will the power of accommodating himself to circumstances, as is witnessed in his treatment of Robert Guiscard, and in his forbearance towards ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Constanze's devotion and her understanding of him, for, while there never was a breath of slander against herself, she found heart to forgive Mozart's ficklenesses. He actually made her the confessional of his excursions from the path of rectitude, and found forgiveness there! "He loved her dearly, and confided everything to her, even his little sins, and she requited him ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... singular features of Fenton's present attitude that even he, with all his clear-sightedness, failed to see the error of supposing that his departure from the paths of rectitude was nothing but a temporary episode. He fully expected to take up again his former attitude toward life when he would have scorned such a contemptible action as the betrayal of Hubbard, or the more trifling, but perhaps even more humiliating act of smuggling Snaffle ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... self-respecting among the lot was old 'Eliza Countess' as they designated her. It struck Bridget that Eliza Countess and Colin McKeith had points of character in common—it was true they both came from Glasgow. She thought of the parsimonious rectitude—which had of course included linen sheets and fine porcelain and shining silver—of old Lady Gaverick's establishment, of its stuffy conventionality—though that had been soothing sometimes after a dose of Upper Bohemia; and Bridget wept, feeling rather like a wilful child ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... don't always understand myself. But really, my dear, you're not seeing this in the right light. Oh, I'm not going to defend myself. It's sad, very sad, but I'll confess I'm no chromo of sweet and haloed rectitude to be held up for the encouragement and beatification of young John D. Rockefeller's Bible Class. Still, I get my living quite as worthily as many of the guests who grace"—with a light wave of his hand about the great chamber—"this noble habitation. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... "... conscious of the rectitude of my intentions.... that I may be restored to the favor of my most Gracious Sovereign—... cheerfully cast myself at his feet imploring his Royal Grace and Protection.... the unalterable attachment to the Person, Family, and Interests of my Sovereign, ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... the price of this necessary was so increased by the tax upon it as to make it an expensive, sometimes an unattainable, luxury to the working man, Government did more to demoralise the popular sense of rectitude and uprightness than heaps of sermons could undo. And the same, though in smaller measure, was the consequence of many other taxes. It may seem curious to trace up the popular standard of truth to taxation; but I do not think the idea ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was so equable, so gentle! There was never a trace of harshness in his treatment of us. Indeed, it was only in his unfailing rectitude that he surpassed us, for, our senior although he was, he could barely keep up in our classes. Harry was the quickest of the three, but with a mortal hatred of hard study: he had an easy capacity for mastering knowledge without tedious assiduity; and, as he was resolved to be a painter, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... continues the same in every mind which is neither obscured by idiocy nor distorted by insanity; but the moral feelings become vitiated by a process of the mind itself, by which it has gradually gone astray from rectitude. Hence the difference we find in the decisions of different men, respecting moral truth, arising from peculiarities in their own mental condition;—and hence that remarkable obscuration of mind, at which some men at length arrive, by which the judgment is entirely perverted ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... the homely virtues. We are prone To search through all the world for something new; And yet sometimes old-fashioned things are best— Old-fashioned work, old-fashioned rectitude, Old-fashioned honor and old-fashioned prayer, Old-fashioned patience that can bide its time, Old-fashioned firesides sacred from the world, Old-fashioned satisfaction, with enough Old-fashioned candour and simplicity, Old-fashioned folks ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... may be said that the demands of nature are, in the married state, not only legal, but should be physically right. So they are, when our physical life is right; but it must not be forgotten that few live in a truly physical rectitude."[15] ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... asked the Squire. "Certainly not, Squire," replied the constable. "Then take him at once to the kitchen, take off these chains and handcuffs, and let him have all that he can eat," replied the J.P., sternly. The corporal's sense of rectitude was offended. The idea of feeding criminals and releasing them from irons! The next thing would be to present them with a medal and a clasp for each new offence against society. But, orders were orders, and, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the latter informed them that Alfonso had been compelled to leave Bologna, and had returned to Ferrara, having committed the search for Cornelia to his care. The friends having told him what had brought them, Lorenzo assured them that the duke was perfectly convinced of their rectitude in the matter, adding, that they both attributed the flight of Cornelia to her great fear, but hoped, and did not doubt, that Heaven would permit her re-appearance before long, since it was certain that the earth had not swallowed the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he said, "they're as straight as most. It's not a business that's conducive to unswerving rectitude. Hutton has come up here to see you ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... inhospitable than the residence of those cities in which an Arian bishop could satiate, without restraint, the exquisite rancor of theological hatred. Their consolation was derived from the consciousness of rectitude and independence, from the applause, the visits, the letters, and the liberal alms of their adherents, and from the satisfaction which they soon enjoyed of observing the intestine divisions of the adversaries of the Nicene faith. Such was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... profligacy? What dependence after this is to be placed in the man, who has thus given the lie to all his professions, and impudently flown in the face of that honest and unsuspecting virtue, which had hitherto given him credit for the rectitude of ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... contemporary, William Wells Brown, as a terse and vigorous writer and an able and eloquent speaker well informed upon all subjects of the day. "Blameless in his family relations, guided by the highest moral rectitude, a true friend to everything that tends to better the moral, social, religious and political condition of man. Dr. Ray," says Brown, "may be looked upon as one of the foremost of the leading men of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... should be puzzled for reasons to vindicate such a conduct, while they seem to crowd in upon me in support of a contrary one. The United States trust to the justice of their cause, and the rectitude of their intentions, to open the way for them into the affections of the sovereigns of Europe. They have no sinister, no dishonorable propositions to make to any of them, but such only as they are persuaded will essentially promote the great interests and well being ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Gladstone as an honest man. Now I think otherwise. As for the ruck that follow him—well, if they were intelligent when honest, or honest when intelligent, nobody could understand their deviation from the path of reason and rectitude. But the rogues will of course do anything they think will suit them best, no matter what befalls their country; and as for the rest, why of course no reasonable man would blame people for not thinking, when Providence has not provided ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... A stranger, coming into the room at that moment, would have said that here was a girl trying to coax her blunt, straightforward, military father into some course of action of which his honest nature disapproved. He might have been posing for a statue of Rectitude. As Jill spoke, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... accountants, are watched by good accountants, kept to their duties by fear, and made aware that embezzlements, lucrative under the Directory,[3217] are punished under the Consulate.[3218] They are soon led to consider necessity a virtue, to pride themselves inwardly on compulsory rectitude, to imagine that they have a conscience and hence to acquiring one, in short, to voluntarily imposing on themselves probity and exactitude through amour-propre and honorable scruples.—For the first time in ten years lists of taxes are ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... refined sensibilities, those ornamental arts, and that keen sense of the beautiful, in which Italy as far surpassed other lands, as it was for centuries inferior to them in physical bravery and in moral rectitude. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... when the vices and ignorance, which the old tyranny had generated, threatened the new freedom with destruction, that England missed that sobriety, that self-command, that perfect soundness of judgment, that perfect rectitude of intention, to which the history of revolutions furnishes no parallel, or furnishes ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... not. The child was wise and right. Her wisdom and rectitude were delicious to Mr. Waddington, still more so was the thought that she had felt him ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... so fully represent this people's love of home and of freedom, its self-consciousness, rectitude, and fresh energy. Indeed, just now he also exemplifies on a large scale the people's tendency to self-criticism; not that scourging criticism which chastises with scorpions, and whose representative in Norway is Ibsen, in Russia Turgenieff, but the sharp bold ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... such an extent did the sport prove successful that almost in no time each participator in the hunt was seen to be in possession of several thousand roubles of capital. Upon that a large number of the former band of tchinovniks also became converted to paths of rectitude, and were allowed to re-enter the Service; but not by hook or by crook could Chichikov worm his way back, even though, incited thereto by sundry items of paper currency, the General's first secretary and principal bear leader did all he could on our hero's ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... friends. It was not easy for men to love John Quincy Adams. The world may respect the man who regulates his course by a daily dead-reckoning, but it finds it easier to make friends with him who stumbles towards rectitude by the momentum of his own nature. Popularity, in any deep sense, was denied him. This deprivation he repaid by harsh, vindictive, and censorious judgments upon his contemporaries, and by indifference to popular prejudices. With the less lovely qualities of the Puritan aggravated by his own ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... being, a living soul, aware of Right, and therefore of Wrong, and certain acts then became for him sin that were not sin before. Thus the advent of Christ, and, in a less degree, the coming into the world of every good man, so raised, and is raising, the level of moral rectitude that things become sin that were not sin before; St. Paul himself specially recognises this when he says that without law there is no sin. The Goodness, then, brought into the world by Christ, did not create sin but made it manifest, and ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... supplication, you have my commands; commands you have never yet disputed, and misery, ten-fold misery, will follow their disobedience. Hear me, Mortimer, for I speak prophetically; I know your heart, I know it to be formed for rectitude and duty, or destined by their neglect to repentance ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Sweeny, a tall elderly man, with a long, composed, shaven face, and an all-observant grey eye: Irish in type, Irish in expression, intensely Irish in the self-possession in which he stood, playing to perfection the part of calm rectitude and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the trail. He speedily divined, however, that Jean Valjean would want to put the river between his pursuers and himself. He bent his head and reflected like a blood-hound who puts his nose to the ground to make sure that he is on the right scent. Javert, with his powerful rectitude of instinct, went straight to the bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with the information which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little girl?" "I made him pay two sous," replied ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... would be best?" said his father. "Think always after earnest prayer for divine guidance, what seems right to do, what the Bible says, and how it will be to the glory of your Saviour; then, when you have made up your mind as to the rectitude of any plan of action, let your movements be prompt and decided, and do not leave the silly heart any room to suggest its excuses and modifications. Your judgment may sometimes err, but it is better ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... beautiful speech of the gentleman who has just sat down," he began. "It is always so sweet to hear conscious innocence asserting itself. After the gentleman's noble efforts for the good of his house (laughter)—and the splendid example he has set of rectitude—(laughter)—and high moral principle—(laughter)—it is truly touching to find him put on one side for an interloper who is villainous enough to tell the juniors they need not walk in his saintly footsteps! (Laughter.) ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... a man whose whole private life was stainlessly dedicated to a noble rectitude of conduct, and whose every act was sternly subjected to the judgment of an unbending conscience, some circumstances of the private life of Nelson must have been distasteful and open to censure; but no such reservations dimmed the splendour of Southey's tribute to ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... accumulation of wealth so beneficently used. It is possible also that the resolve to be thus generous unconsciously influences the man himself in his methods of accumulation. He keeps to a certain individual rectitude, meaning to make an individual restitution by the old paths of generosity and kindness, whereas if he had in view social restitution on the newer lines of justice and opportunity, he would throughout his course doubtless be watchful ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... well afford to submit these facts to a candid world. That paragraph on slavery, Mr. Jefferson, meets with my approval heartily, but I fear some of the Southern delegates will oppose it strongly. We can certainly appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions. I believe with you that divine Providence will support us in making this Declaration good. Therefore, I am willing to stand with you in pledging our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to this end. I do not see how I could make any ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... has exhibited, and does still exhibit, a steady and well-defined purpose, and has pursued it with a singularly calm, sober, unimpassioned, yet resolute temper. Its posture is firm, steady, self-poised, conscious of rectitude, and anticipative of veritable and valuable results. Its spirit, though eager, is quiet; though enthusiastic, is cautious; though ardent, is sceptical; though flushed with success, is trained to the discipline of disappointment. Its object ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... each book is entirely distinct from that of the other. As the interest of the first centers in Tony Weston, so that of the second does in Charles Hardy. I have tried to make the boys believe that the path of truth and rectitude is not only the safest, but the pleasantest path; and the experience of Charles with the "Rovers" illustrates ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... abrogation, and demand that the frivolous male be visited with even more idiotic penalties than those which now visit the aberrant female; some even advocate gravely his mutilation by surgery, that he may be forced into rectitude by a physical ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... call me unmaidenly, more than indiscreet, and will say that I have been ready to throw myself into the arms of the first stranger I have met; but what care I for this little world of Shetland? I stand on my own rectitude. I shall be far away, and can afford to despise all such insinuations. But the greatest doubt Bertha, in her over-anxious love, has raised up before me, is that regarding Hernan himself. Still I feel sure that he is all that is honourable and noble. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... precise, sharp and rigorous thinking is essential. Those who deliberately refuse to think "rigorously"—that is mathematically—in connections where such thinking is possible, commit the sin of preferring the worse to the better; they deliberately violate the supreme law of intellectual rectitude. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... the reach of admonition and recall," thought Mr. Gleason. "Oh! Louis, had your mother lived, how would her heart have been wrung by the knowledge of your aberration from rectitude! And how will the kind and noble being who fills that mother's place in our affections and home, mourn over her weak ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... yielded to his longing for happiness. A deathlike sweat broke out upon him when he saw her in imagination far away; himself alone, without her, without that caressing and subtle essence that pervaded the atmosphere when she was near; her breath, her brightness, her courageous rectitude, and the dear presence, physical and mental, which had now become as necessary to his life as the light of day itself. She must leave him, and he must find the strength to die of it. He despised himself for his want of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Scotland to make a sketch of it?" A letter of introduction is enclosed, and, as a precaution, I am enjoined that I "must not mind her squint." But I do mind, and I am sure the blemish would sadly mar my proper judgment of the lovely feature for gazing on which those eyes have lost their rectitude. For the ears a journey to Brighton to see Miss Robinson, the Vicar's daughter, is recommended. No, she may listen, think I, to the "sad sea-waves," or to her father's sermons, but never to any flattery from me. The mouth I shall find in Cardiff—not ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... with a hideous smirk. He had directed the Emperor's attention to the mosaic pavement in the steward's room, and had shamelessly accused Keraunus of having offered to sell him a work that belonged to the palace, contrasting his conduct with his own rectitude. Now the calumniated man was dead, and the truth could never come to light; this was necessarily a satisfaction to the miserable man, but he derived even greater pleasure from the reflection that Arsinoe ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mean to assert that all men in the condition of slaves are devoid of principle: I have experienced the contrary, and found in them affection and strict honesty: but that there does not result from their situation as slaves any principle of moral rectitude; whereas every other condition of society has annexed to it ideas of duty and mutual obligation arising from a sense of general utility. That sublime species of morality derived from the injunctions of religion ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic, half-anxious ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... love manifested in man's redemption, in a way surpassing all understanding. Where on earth can there be found a more lovely character than that in which are blended true religion and natural amiability, rectitude of conduct, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... Thus ignorance a kind heart narrows. I wish I had been there; I would Have told the child, rooks live by food In the same way that sparrows do. I also would have told him too, Birds act by instinct, and ne'er can Attain the rectitude of man. Nay that even, when distress Does on poor human nature press, We need not be too strict in seeing The failings of a ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his sun-baked form with weary rectitude. Then he looked with pleased dismay into the face of ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... You will tell her just the truth,—of the King's loyalty and yours. Hearts cannot be commanded. Alas, mademoiselle, it is a hard world at the end of it. It is mortised with the blood of broken hearts. But duty, mademoiselle, duty, a consciousness of rectitude,—these are very noble qualities. It will be a high consolation, mademoiselle, one of these days, when the King sits upon his throne in England, to think that your self-sacrifice had set him there." And Mr. Wogan hopped like a bear on hot bricks, twittering irreproachable ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... No considerations of rectitude or of policy could longer restrain the impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and as a first step towards emancipation, he determined to permit the ruin of its original adviser, that unpopular minister, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... with all my heart. Nothing was more natural—only I must beg that you will not repeat the observation to any one else. The consequences you know might be unpleasant, as it might create disagreeable suspicions in men's minds as to the rectitude of my character; but pray ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... while, after the studies of the night were over, talking to his room-mate? Who knelt down across the room at his prayers when the lights were put out? And his professors—what bulwarks of knowledge and rectitude and kindness they were!—all with him at first, all against him at last, as ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... glance of knavery, intelligence and stupidity, soulfulness and vanity, the glad smile of friendship, the shrinking eye of fallen fortune, the dubious recognition of disgrace, the effrontery of the adventurer, and the calm, pleasant bearing of rectitude,—all that is beautiful and base in humanity, gleams, glances, and disappears as the crowd ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... is merely that his subject-matter does not as a rule interest me. I simply state my personal view, and I expressly assert my admiration for the craftsman in him and for the magnificent and consistent rectitude of his long artistic career. Further I will not go, though I know that bombs will now be laid at my front door by the furious faithful. As for "The Finer Grain," it leaves me as I was—cold. It is an uneven collection, and the stories probably belong to different periods. The ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... thoughts, the captain encouraging them to talk freely; for he was most desirous to have their entire confidence in order that he might be the better able to correct wrong ideas and impressions, inculcate right views and motives, and lead them to tread the paths of rectitude, living noble, unselfish lives, serving God and doing ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... charitable ladies, would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken besotted men, and wretched broken-down miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens |
