"Self-imposed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... individual, binds also two or three when gathered together, binds conventions and congregations of men, binds villages, towns, and cities, binds states, nations, and races, clasps the whole human family in its embrace, and binds in self-imposed bonds, a just and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... their disinclination for religious controversy, and express particular anxiety to keep their journals free of everything 'strictly theological.' Their notion is, that newspaper writers should endeavour to keep clear of so 'awful' a topic. And yet seldom does a day pass in which this self-imposed editorial rule is not violated—a fact significant as fact can be, of that connection between religion and politics the author thinks has been ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... irrevocably committed Leo's happiness to his honor, it might then be safe to tell him the truth, and solicit release from the self-imposed terms. Five hours later, she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... neighboring houses. No one seemed to know where he slept, or seemed to regard the matter as of any consequence. There was about the jet black hero, however, an air of absolute happiness, added to an obvious sense of pride at the performance of his self-imposed ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... lying helpless in her house. She saw him in her mind as she had seen him yesterday, bounding into the arena to save another's life: strong and determined—measuring and accepting every risk, looking neither to right nor left whilst he carried his self-imposed burden to safety, and then falling without a groan, felled to the ground by the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... often than it appears to be. The man who looks on a woman with adulterous desire has already committed adultery in his heart if he be restrained only by force or fear of detection; but if the restraint, although he may not be conscious of it, is self-imposed, he is not guilty. Nay, even the dread of consequences is a motive of sufficient respectability to make a large difference between the sinfulness of mere lust and that of its fulfilment. No friendly hand, we say, interrupted her purpose, but she went on her way. Hardly had she reached the open ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... and terrible work, Realities of War (HEINEMANN), Sir PHILIP GIBBS has fairly flung aside the restraint, enforced or self-imposed, that marked his despatches from the fighting fronts, to present war, the horrible, senseless nightmare, as it really appeared to him. His work as a correspondent emphasised for him the accumulated miseries of thousands rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... transparent affectation of cheerfulness, that he only goes up "to look at the compass and see how she's heading." I am surprised to find that looking at the compass is attended with such painful and melancholy emotions as those expressed in Mahood's face when he comes back; but he performs the self-imposed duty with unshrinking faithfulness, and relieves us of a great deal of anxiety about the safety of the ship. The captain seems a little negligent, and sometimes does not observe the compass once a day; but Mahood watches it with ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... for one of the volunteer "legions" which were forming at every corner: Italian, Roumanian, South American, North American, each headed by its national flag and hailed with cheering as it passed. But even the cheers were sober: Paris was not to be shaken out of her self-imposed serenity. One felt something nobly conscious and voluntary in the mood of this quiet multitude. Yet it was a mixed throng, made up of every class, from the scum of the Exterior Boulevards to the cream of the fashionable restaurants. These people, only two days ago, had been leading a thousand ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... at the same time thinking themselves controlled and praiseworthy. The naturalist, then, ignores the group; he flaunts impartially both the classic and the religious law. He is equally unwilling to submit to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept those restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses. He jeers at the one as hypocrisy and superstition and at the other as mere "middle-class respectability." He himself is the perpetual Ajax standing defiant upon the headland of his own inflamed ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... were anything she shouldn't do or say or think or countenance, those things she—within limitations—did and said and thought and accepted or passed over as matters of fact and no consequence. And though she observed scrupulously certain self-imposed limitations she never made this obvious, she simply avoided what she chose to consider bad taste with a deftness and tact that would have seemed admirable in a woman of the great world twice her age. And with it all she preserved a sort of champagne effervescence of youthful ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... romantic comedy, that tale which took final shape four years later as Prince Otto. Towards the end of December 1879 Stevenson moved to San Francisco, where he lived for three months in a workman's lodging, leading a life of frugality amounting, it will be seen, to self-imposed penury, and working always with the same intensity of application, until his health utterly broke down. One of the causes which contributed to his illness was the fatigue he underwent in helping to watch beside the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night when Nancy, having lulled Mr. Sikes to sleep, hurried on her self-imposed mission to Rose Maylie, there advanced towards London, by the Great North Road, two persons, upon whom it is expedient that this ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... had begun. To the president of the meeting she sent, anonymously, her verses entitled "The Ploughman;" and the production being publicly read, was received with warm approbation, and was speedily put to music. She was thus encouraged to proceed in her self-imposed task; and to this early period of her life may be ascribed some of her best lyrics. "The Laird o' Cockpen," and "The Land o' the Leal," at the close of the century, were sung in every district of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was not a particularly lively affair; the strain of trying to impersonate a self-imposed character or to glean hints of identity from other people's conduct acted as a check on the natural festivity of such a gathering. There was a general feeling of gratitude and acquiescence when good-natured Rachel Klammerstein suggested that there should ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... pronouncements of President Monroe. In the case of Japan there has grown up a great power which is neither European nor American. American policy in the Far East has made it abundantly evident that the United States does not regard the self-imposed limitations upon its activity as extending to Asia. In her case there is lacking the quid pro quo by which the United States has justified its demand that European powers refrain from interfering in America. By no means, however, has the Government admitted ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... name is Venus. She is thought by many to be another statue of Victory. We may some day evolve scenarios that will require nothing more than a title thrown upon the screen at the beginning, they come to the eye so perfectly. This is not the only possible sort, but the self-imposed limitation in certain films might give them a charm akin to that of the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... herself was without due consciousness of their presence. It had the effect of discouraging and driving from her side many a good-natured damsel, who would have loved to condole with her, and might have been a pleasant companion. The young women regarded her with some dislike in consequence of her self-imposed isolation—and the young men with some apprehension. Her very knowledge of books, which infinitely surpassed that of all her sex within the limits of Charlemont, was also an object of some alarm. It had been her fortune, whether well or ill may be a question, to inherit from her father ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... to be engaged with familiar objects and duties after passing through all sorts of horrors, and Dorothy entered cheerfully on her self-imposed tasks. She quickly lit a fire, and then went out with a large pitcher to the inevitable well found on all Canadian homesteads. She had to draw the water up in the bucket some forty or fifty feet, but she was no weakling, and soon accomplished that. To ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Desmond awaited the dismounting of his troopers, revolver in hand. The instant they were ready he bounded over the broken ground, his trumpeter dogging him like a shadow, and a self-imposed bodyguard of six sowars following close upon his heel. Behind these again the mountain-side was alive with clambering men; and the small party left below ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... becomingly attended to. I was allowed to sit at the table with her, which privilege suggested no lack of substantial and dainty provisions, and my governess was an accomplished and very discreet lady, whom my step-mother secured after much trouble and worry; but here the limit was drawn to her self-imposed duties; having done this much she rested satisfied that she had so far outstepped the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... she had greatly needed. They spoke of George Kent, also; Sears saw to that. He brought the young man's name into their conversation at frequent intervals and took pains to praise him highly and to declare repeatedly his liking for him. All part of his own self-imposed penance, of course. And Elizabeth seemed to enjoy these conversations and agreed with him that George was "a nice boy" and ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts." While in the midst of his laborious though self-imposed duties, Hampden, on one occasion, wrote to his mother: "My lyfe is nothing but toyle, and hath been for many yeares, nowe to the Commonwealth, nowe to the Kinge.... Not so much tyme left as to doe my dutye to my deare parents, nor to sende to them." Indeed, all the statesmen of the Commonwealth ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... had told him freed him from his self-imposed obligation, which, in a moment of weakness, seemed to him burdensome and dreadful; and yet it was not only unpleasant, but painful. The offer of Simonson destroyed the exclusiveness of his act, minimized in his own and other people's eyes the value ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... 1714—nineteen years of self-immolation, when her couch was a pallet of straw, and her prayers and fastings unceasing. She denied herself everything that to us would make life desirable or even endurable—sacrificed the dearest ties of kindred, and pursued with intense fervour the self-imposed rigours of her vocation. Yet, it was not that in her nature she had no love for beauty nor craving for pleasure, for in the sacristy of the Cathedral, carefully preserved in a receptacle in which are kept the vestments of the clergy, are robes ornamented by ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... freedom. Many who adopted this unnatural view of human existence retired to the solitude of the desert, and there spent their time in practises of stern self-denial and in acts of frenzied self-torture. Others shut themselves up as voluntary prisoners, seeking glory in privation and self-imposed penance. It was this unnatural view of life that gave rise to the several orders ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... with Trowbridge, where his son John was in charge, and sends instructions from time to time as to poor pensioners and others who were not to be neglected in the weekly ministrations. At the same time, he seems rarely to have omitted the self-imposed task of adding daily to the pile of manuscript on which he was at work—the collection of stories to be subsequently issued as Tales of the Hall. Crabbe had resolved, in the face of whatever distractions, to write if possible ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... self-imposed strenuous training wore by before Carley was free enough from weariness and pain to experience other sensations. Her general health, evidently, had not been so good as when she had first visited Arizona. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... a scuffling on the side-path, and Jake's voice was heard in shrill altercation. Up to that point, Benjamin's body-guard had attended rigidly to its self-imposed duty, but now, following close on the heels of the apprentice, its members burst into ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... could not answer the self-imposed question. He could only stand and stare after her and the trotting, rolling Indian, as they moved down the road and disappeared in the shadow of the aspens at the next curve. She had seen him; there could be no doubt of that. She had recognized him; more, Houston felt sure ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... self-imposed obligation of sleeping on guard, ready to expose his skin in defense of his old-time patron broke the calm in which he had maintained himself until then, the peasant raised his ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... pleasant on board ship, he resolutely refused intercourse with the outside world when not compelled by duty. In this there appears to have been something self-imposed, in deference to Lady Hamilton. There are indications that she felt, or feigned, some jealousy of his relations with others, especially with women, corresponding to the frenzied agitation he manifested at the association of her name with that of any other man, and especially with ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... first novels, were never finished; while a comedy, "Les Deux Philosophes," was also abandoned in despair. Next he set to work at "Cromwell," a tragedy in five acts, which was to be his passport to fame. At this play he laboured for months, shutting himself up completely, and loving his self-imposed slavery—though his want of faculty for versification, and the intense difficulty he experienced in finding words for the ideas which crowded into his imaginative brain were decided drawbacks. While engaged ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and scenes of his ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... morning I was awakened by Jessica, who stood at my bedside light-heartedly reminding me of my self-imposed duty of going early to the station to attend to the luggage, which we had omitted to do the night before. My replies to this suggestion, while they held Jessica's awe-struck attention for five minutes, would be of ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... was over, and a peculiar feeling of inertia had come over Frank. He was wearied by what he had gone through, and the self-imposed task of playing his dumb part troubled him. All he cared for now was to get back to his quarters in the Emir's palace, to rest and think. He had come out in the faint hope of passing through some ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the tyranny of his accidental situation. What they call the allotment of Providence is, often enough, the allotment of their own laziness or defective energy. At any rate, I feel much more inclined to respect the aspiring Englishman or Scotchman that kicks against these self-imposed restraints; that rebels in heart against whatever there may be of degradation in his own particular employment; and, therefore, though submitting to this degradation as the sine qua non for earning his daily bread, and submitting also to the external badges and dress of his trade as frequently ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Nipe. One comedian, who was playing the part of a henpecked husband, did remark: "If my wife gets any meaner, I'm going to send Stan Martin after her!" But it didn't get much of a laugh. And the Government organization had nothing to do with that kind of censorship; it was self-imposed. Every one of the really great comics recognized, either consciously or subconsciously, that the Nipe was not a subject for humor. Such jokes would have made them about as popular as the Borscht Circuit comedian who told a funny story ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... reverence for fine lawn sleeves? By Jove, you seem to have done it well. If any one were to ridicule any belief of the bishop's, would he not blandly shrug his shoulders and be inexpressibly shocked? I am very, very sorry to hear that you are not well; but am not surprised after all your self-imposed labour. I hope you will soon have an outing, and that will do ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... formal principle of these maxims is: "So act as if thy maxim were to serve likewise as the universal law (of all rational beings)." A kingdom of ends is thus only possible on the analogy of a kingdom of nature, the former however only by maxims, that is self-imposed rules, the latter only by the laws of efficient causes acting under necessitation from without. Nevertheless, although the system of nature is looked upon as a machine, yet so far as it has reference to rational beings as its ends, it is given on ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... fortified herself against all sign of outward emotion, she has so hardened herself in an inner life of secret remorse, this is easy—at least to outward appearance. The calm, frigid look natural to her face returns. Her eyes have again their dark sparkle. Not a trace remains to tell what her self-imposed penance has ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... of the lie. How he wished that Emily were not at home! To lie before Emily, that was the hardest part of his self-imposed task. He could not respect his wife, but before Emily, since her earliest companionship with him, he had watched his words scrupulously; as a little girl she had so impressed him with the purity of her heart ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... was like the clasp of the arm, and Max glowed anew. By a swift, emotional effort, he conjured up the longings that had preyed upon him in his self-imposed solitude—conjured them for the sheer joy of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... lose heart, my dear,—remember you are my chief comfort as well as David's." Then again she tried to smile. The next minute they came in sight of the White Cottage, and Mr. Carlyon left her to fulfil his self-imposed duties. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... schoolmates, for there was not one of them, who at some time or other, had not felt the effects of my prowess in a striking manner. Still, the drubbings I gave were not always to my credit, for I was a very big and strong lad for my age, and my self-imposed tasks of long rowing trips and other athletic exercises, naturally made me powerful in the arms and chest. Of my brain power I shall say little, as my mind was ever bent on sporting topics when it should have been diving into English history or vulgar fractions. Some new device in fishing ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... unseating the usurper, and fearing his unscrupulous jealousy, the Chowfa Mongkut took refuge in a monastery, and entered the priesthood, leaving his wife and two sons to mourn him as one dead to them. In this self-imposed celibacy he lived throughout the long reign of his half-brother, which ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... unfortunate passengers to turn out their trunks before him, and appropriating the whole of their cash, jewellery, weapons, and ammunition, together with as much of their clothing as happened to take his fancy. As he executed his self-imposed task with considerable deliberation, those passengers whose turn was still to come had plenty of time to meditate upon their coming despoilment, and one of them—the individual who had so kindly relieved me of my letter—took it into his head to do me a good turn. Withdrawing quietly ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... not need much to reveal what is in a person. It would be a great help to me if we could read a book together. This self-imprisonment day after day and self-imposed reticence is very unwholesome. I would give much to have a pupil or a friend ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... the silent North, they had yet to learn the virtue of filling the long days with small, self-imposed tasks. They had no resources, excepting a couple of dog-eared magazines—of which they knew every word by heart, even to the advertisements—and a pack of cards. There was no zest in the cards, because all their cash had been put into a common fund at the ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... reverse of them. I have seen nothing equal to the formality of this people, who deride colder nations for inflexible manners; and I have certainly never seen society in any small town in America so ill at ease as I have seen society in Venice, writhing under self-imposed restraints. At a musical soiree, attended by the class of people who at home would have been chatty and sociable, given to making acquaintance and to keeping up acquaintance,—the young men harmlessly talking and walking with the young ladies, and the old people ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... kindred, and my home, and entered the service of the mighty Biorn, as a strange wild man, in order that Weigand the Slender should always remain a murderer, and that I might feed on his anguish. So have I fed upon it for all these long years; I have fed frightfully upon his self-imposed banishment, upon his cheerless return home, upon his madness. But to-day—" and hot tears gushed from his eyes—"but to-day God has broken the hardness of my heart; and, dear Sir Weigand, look upon ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... and the modern Paul Revere, with dogs for horses and ice and snow for a highway, was flying on his self-imposed journey, carrying his slogan from house to house and village to village along the sparsely inhabited coast-line. As Uncle Rube opened his door and peered into the little room, to his infinite joy he saw the golden curls in their proper place on the old settle by the stove, while ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Richard, scarcely repressing a smile. "Give her my compliments and ask her if she's willing NOW to share my self-imposed labor. Mind, don't you forget a word, and go now. I'll expect you again to-morrow ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... workman. But he had not ceased to be a worker, though he employed his industry in a different way. It might, indeed, be inferred that he had now the command of greater leisure; but his spare hours were as much as ever given to work, either necessary or self-imposed. So far as regarded his social position, he had already reached the summit of his ambition; and when he had got his hundred a year, and his dun galloway to ride on, he said he never wanted to be any higher. When Robert Whetherly offered to give him an old gig, his ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... high standard of living, not the cost of the necessaries of life. This high standard is, of course, an evil to those whose social ambition drives them to a rivalry for which they are not prepared. But no special pity is due to hardships self-imposed by pride and folly. The probability is, that, proportioned to their income from labor, the cost of living in the city, for the bulk of its population, is lighter, their degree of comfort considered, than in the country. And for the wealthy class of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... my self-imposed cloud when events took place that greatly assisted in restoring me to a more natural frame of mind. I awoke from an imaginary trouble ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... task he had set himself at the beginning of his serious authorship—the cumulative expression of personality in the larger sense which is manifest in the successive and expanding editions of his Leaves of Grass. That book becomes therefore, a life history. Incompletely as he may have performed this self-imposed task, his own explanation of his purpose may well be accepted as made in good faith. That explanation appears in the preface to the 1876 edition, and amid the multitude of paper scraps that came into the possession of his ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... noisy reminder of the great world that surged around them,—the world of petty aims and transitory pleasures, with which they, filled full of the knowledge of higher and eternal things, had so little in common save sympathy,—sympathy for the wilful wrong-doing of man, and pity for his self-imposed blindness. Presently Heliobas spoke again in his customary ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... or in England; in either of those countries the whole street would go mad in earnest and come to blows and bloodshed were the populace to let themselves loose to the extent we see here. All this restraint is self-imposed and quite apart from the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... smiles and pleasant words. The sick soldiers were objects of interest to all. All hearts yearned over them, all hands were ready to serve them. As night came on, the ladies who had served during the day were replaced by others. No one ever failed to meet her self-imposed duties. No patient was for ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... usefulness has been enlarged. These social laws are in the main the groundwork of the exclusion of women from the right of suffrage. In the establishment of these laws, as in their modification, women themselves have even a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is, therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to women the enjoyment of which they desire, and for the exercise of which they are qualified, it cannot ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... day!' and with a clouded countenance she silently resumed her self-imposed task. Edoardo, on the contrary, seemed ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... with him, though in the background of consciousness, through those of his keenest sorrow. It was his refuge in that aftertime, in which a subsiding grief often leaves a deeper sense of isolation. He knew the joy with which his wife would have witnessed the diligent performance of this his self-imposed task. The beautiful dedication contained in the first and last books was only a matter of course. But Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence on this occasion was more than a presiding memory of the heart. I am convinced that it entered ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and by others which I feel, but cannot analyse, I now begin my self-imposed occupation. Hidden amid the far hills of the far West of England, surrounded only by the few simple inhabitants of a fishing hamlet on the Cornish coast, there is little fear that my attention will be ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... presence of my strange protegee promised to become something of an incubus. Later, I was to realize that she was an ever-present means of renewing those funds which the costly character of my new studies absorbed at rather an alarming rate. Perhaps I neglected my self-imposed task of studying the mental and physical development of Nahemah; for, I must admit that lost in my new work I presently awakened to the fact that she had outgrown the control which I had ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... of our Lord eighteen hundred and three: All I mean to say is, that the Muse is now free From the self-imposed trammels put on by her betters, And no longer like Filch, midst the felons and debtors, At Drury Lane, dances her hornpipe in fetters. Resuming her track, At once she goes back To our hero, the Bagman—Alas! and Alack! Poor Anthony Blogg Is as sick ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... soon told upon Watt's delicate constitution, yet he persevered with the self-imposed extra work, which brought in a little honest money and reduced the remittances from home. He caught a severe cold during the winter and was afflicted by a racking cough and severe rheumatic pains. With his father's sanction, he decided ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... hence, there is an unwillingness to visit it at the proper time. Some appear to be too indolent to attend to this duty. Others are too energetic, and think they cannot take the time, until they have finished some self-imposed task or ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and looked at him viciously. Her eyes sparkled with annoyance at being caught so easily in her self-imposed piece ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... or letters, or news from the village; and it was positively benefited by such mild exercise as a man may take, in company with a little round-eyed woman, feather-light and active, yet in relation to Diana, like a tethered dove, that can only take short flights. Only here it was a tether self-imposed and of the heart. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was soon well known amongst the neglected tenants of an estate in Chancery. Her self-imposed duties increased from day to day. The old dying man would take no food but from her hands. The Doctor found her at his house one evening. She had cut herself badly in trying to open a bottle for him, and was deadly pale. "I can't bear the sight of blood," she confessed, and fainted ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... made her merciless towards herself. She took pleasure in the hardest of self-imposed penances, as if the racking of her soul by incessant prayers, and wasting of her body by vigils and cruel fastings, were a vicarious punishment, borne for the sake ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... genius without industry, as of industry without genius. In Haydn the two were happily wedded. He was always an early riser, and long after his student days were over he worked steadily from sixteen to eighteen hours a day. He lived strictly by a self-imposed routine, and was so little addicted to what Scott called "bed-gown and slipper tricks," that he never sat down to work or received a visitor until he was fully dressed. He had none of Wagner's luxurious ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... that you have any right to reproach yourself. Such hope as I have that my father's murderer may ever be brought to justice rests in your efforts; else I should feel bound to relieve you of a task, which, though self-imposed, is, none the less, onerous and ill-paid. Do not consider me altogether selfish if I ask that you still continue the search, and that I—that I still be held to my covenant. I am aware that I can never fully repay the kindness I am ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... sent her drifting, helpless, out to the unknown world. A pitiable soul, who preferred misery for her portion, rather than betray the man she loved, or become partaker of his crime, had crept back, after years of self-imposed absence, with death in her heart, to see the old place and the new wife,—and how had I received her? With horror and shuddering, as though she were some guilty thing, to be held at arm's-length. Not as one woman, generous, forgiving, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... adds, "found the corrective to this view of life in the conception of a stern but just God, acting according to self-imposed standards of right and wrong, whose rule extends beyond the grave." The final words of the Preacher are, "Fear God and keep ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... pullers of carts will turn out of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid chicken."[83] Etiquette is refined, elaborate, and vigorous. Politeness has been diffused through all ranks from ancient times.[84] "The discipline of the race was self-imposed. The people have gradually created their own social conditions."[85] "Demeanor was [in ancient times] most elaborately and mercilessly regulated, not merely as to obeisances, of which there were countless grades, varying according ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... he believed, self-imposed. There is no account available, he said, of the enslavement of the Children of Israel by the Egyptians, but a careful consideration of the history of various peoples shows beyond the possibility of a mistake being made, that only those become enslaved who are best fitted ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... of Muscovite influence now seemed to be complete, until the trio just named usurped the functions of the Bulgarian Ministers and informed the Prince that they took their orders from the Czar, not from him. Chafing at these self-imposed Russian bonds, the Prince now leant more on the moderate Liberals, headed by Karaveloff; and on the Muscovites intriguing in the same quarter, and with the troops, with a view to his deposition, they met with a complete repulse. An able and vigorous young Bulgarian, Stambuloff, was now fast rising ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... between freedom and slavery. Hence, though some of you previously through ignorance of which was better may have been deceived by the alluring announcements of the Romans, yet now that you have tried both you have learned how great a mistake you made by preferring a self-imposed despotism to your ancestral mode of life. You have come to recognize how far superior is the poverty of independence to wealth in servitude. What treatment have we met with that is not most outrageous, that is not most grievous, ever since these men ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... legislation bore with fearful severity upon the people of the South. Comprehensive as was the Enrolment Act, which rendered liable to military duty the entire male population between the ages of seventeen and fifty, the South was compelled to overstep its self-imposed limit. The forces which Lee and Johnston surrendered contained so many boys unfitted by youth and so many men unfitted by age for military service, that a Northern General epigrammatically remarked that for its armies the Confederacy had been compelled in the end ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... daily, are undermining my strength; I fast often,—I have guaranteed the payment of three thousand pounds for the West Kirk, and three-fourths of my stipend have gone this year to the liquidation of self-imposed liabilities. True, I will be eventually repaid,—that is, if my people don't leave me; but I have no other security beyond my confidence in the goodness of the cause, and the continued liberality of my countrymen.' And in this style would the reverend gentleman ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... matters were to her so indifferent that she scarce was conscious of a wish in relation to her own individual happiness. Through the sudden crush of a great affliction, she was in that state of self-abnegation to which the mystics brought themselves by fastings and self-imposed penances,—a state not purely healthy, nor realizing the divine ideal of a perfect human being made to exist in the relations of human life,—but one of those exceptional conditions, which, like the hours that often precede dissolution, seem to impart to the subject ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... he resigned his office of Stamp-Distributor, and Sir Robert Peel had the honor of putting him upon the civil list for a pension of L300. In 1843 he was appointed Laureate, with the express understanding that it was a tribute of respect, involving no duties except such as might be self-imposed. His only official production was an Ode for the installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. His life was prolonged yet seven years, almost, it should seem, that he might receive that honor which he had truly conquered for ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... feudal estate, or distribution of tasks as in a socialistic commonwealth, the community accomplishes a natural division of labor and diversification of industry, supports its own institutions by self-imposed taxes and voluntary contributions, and supplies its quota to the larger State of which it forms a democratic part. In spite of the constant exercise of individual independence and competition, there is at the foundation of every rural community the principle of co-operation ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... immediately engaged with the enemy, we could not do at the time. It was delightful during this and the preceding days to witness the calm, but decided manner of the admiral. He had evidently calculated the awful responsibility under which he was placed; and this, at the same time, was self-imposed; for it was by no means incumbent on him as a duty, with only five sail of the line, viz. the Caesar, Superb, Spencer, Venerable, and Audacious, to attack an enemy with six fresh ships, of which number two mounted one hundred and twelve guns each, one of ninety, and three of seventy-four, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... mother, wagged his tail, barked a little, and said as plainly as if he had spoken: "I have seen young master; don't worry; he is all right." Having thus reported to the proper person the result of his self-imposed mission, he would drink up half a bowlful of water, eat his food, lie down on the carpet by my mother's chair,—for he entertained peculiar affection for her,—and sleep for an hour or two after his long run. Now, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... the eastern coast of Guinea, will inevitably come to grief. When "fetish is taken off," as by the seller of palm wine who tastes it in presence of the buyer, the precaution is evidently against poison. Many of these "Kizila" are self-imposed, for instance a water melon may never enter Banza Nokki, and, though slaves may eat bananas upon a journey, the master may not. Others refuse the flesh of a fowl until it has been tasted by a woman. These rules are delivered to the young, either by the fetishman or the parents, and, when ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... head solemnly. "Yes, yes," he said, "I see how it is; s'not only the pigs, and the calves, and hens, but you too I must take to markets and fairs, or we shall never marry you," and he turned away pondering seriously over his self-imposed duties. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... her sin by self-imposed penances; she fasted, she mortified herself by remaining on her knees, her arms outstretched for hours, and repeating prayers all the time. She had compelled Mariette to similar sets of repentance; ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... arranged vase of flowers in the centre of the breakfast-table, and one magnificent rose and bud by my plate, were silent but eloquent appeals to my interest on behalf of my would-be page; and when Joe himself appeared, fresh from an hour's self-imposed work in my garden, I saw he had become quite one of the family; for Bogie, my little terrier, usually very snappish to strangers, and who considered all boys as his natural enemies, was leaping about his feet, evidently asking for more games, and our old ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... been more than a dozen yards from him. There could be no mistaking a target so conspicuous and so close at hand; but when the aim was sure and Ned's finger was pressing the trigger, he restrained himself by the self-imposed question whether it was right to pick off a foe, savage though he was, in that fashion. He was well aware that no mercy would have been shown him had the position been reversed; still, he could not justify in his own mind an act that looked ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... my opinion that there were few men who, after a night walk and perhaps some labour in forcibly opening a door or a window-shutter, would not cease for a moment in pursuance of their self-imposed task to partake of the refreshments so conveniently left behind them by the occupants of the house when they retired to rest. Should my surmises be correct, I might reasonably expect, should my house be broken into, to find an unconscious burglar in the library when I went down ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... ranchman in raising cattle, he found more agreeable occupation for the greater part of his time in thinning out the social weeds that are apt to grow quite too luxuriantly for the general good in new Western settlements. His work was not done as an officer of the law either. It was rather a self-imposed task, in which he performed, at least to his own satisfaction, the double functions of judge and executioner. And in the unwritten code governing his decisions all offences had a ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... was girlish in its enthusiastic demonstrativeness. Lord Chetwynde, himself intellectual, recognized and respected the brilliant intellect of his companion. He saw that the woman who had saved his life at the risk of her own, who had dropped down senseless at his bedside, overworn with duties self-imposed through love for him—the woman who had overwhelmed him with obligations of gratitude—could also dazzle him with her intellectual brilliancy, and surpass him in familiarity with the greatest ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... wife to add a word. Theodora's sorrow and shame were intense; intense, too, was her power of self-abasement. For a week, she spent most of the time in her own room, as if she feared to meet the eyes of her family; and, in this self-imposed isolation, it chanced that she had heard no mention ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... explanation of my silence hitherto. I don't even apologize for it. Faced by a similar dilemma tomorrow I should probably take the same line. But, to adopt your own simile, now that Mr. Forbes has come out of his shell, and admits his presence here on Monday night, my self-imposed restrictions cease. In the first place, then, Miss Beale came ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... long she grew tired of her self-imposed task of reading. It seemed so silly to be continually holding open the pages and casting her eyes over and over them without taking in a word. It gave one a crick in the neck too, keeping it bent so long, and, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... inventions of Art and Science in order to contend against violence. Self-imposed restrictions, almost imperceptible and hardly worth mentioning, termed usages of International Law, accompany it without essentially impairing its power. Violence, that is to say, physical force (for there is no moral ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... Boileau is constructive; he exhibits the true doctrine of literature, as he conceived it. Granted genius, fire, imagination—the gifts of heaven—what should be the self-imposed discipline of a poet? Above all, the cultivation of that power which distinguishes false from true, and aids every other faculty—the reason. "Nothing," declares Boileau, "is beautiful save what is true;" nature is the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... safely, I turned-to and gave Tonnison a hand with his self-imposed task of excavating; yet, though we put in over an hour's hard work, turning over the whole of the upheaped stones and rubbish, we came upon nothing more than some fragments of broken wood, that might have been parts of a desk or table; and so we gave up searching, and went ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... hain't done by ye like a brother," said Lucas, anxious to get his self-imposed humiliation over, "and I'm sorry, and I'd like ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... the sex-relation is consecrated to its highest purpose of reproduction, if marriage is felt to be only an added opportunity for self-control, which will be more difficult then because there will be no restraint except that which is self-imposed, then the engagement will be felt to be a time of gradual preparation for that closer relationship which needs more will-power because ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Eliot's noble imaginings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and apply in like manner a fit machinery to the working out the projects which made the dungeon of the one a holy place, and sustained the other in his self-imposed exile.—The result is great and decisive! It establishes, in renewed force, those principles of political conduct which have endured, and must continue to endure, 'like truth from age to age.'" The history, on the whole, lacks the grasp in ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... brother of the great Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain and Rome, passed many years of his self-imposed exile in Bordentown, in a house made beautiful with furnishings he brought from France, it is possible this old mirror has an interesting story, if only it could talk! Then, too, it was Bordentown that sheltered ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... Sadie Adams were aunt and niece, the former a little, energetic, hard-featured Bostonian old-maid, with a huge surplus of unused love behind her stern and swarthy features. She had never been from home before, and she was now busy upon the self-imposed task of bringing the East up to the standard of Massachusetts. She had hardly landed in Egypt before she realised that the country needed putting to rights, and since the conviction struck her she had been very fully occupied. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... whose value was that of the laurel wreaths of the Olympiads. In order to put up the best game possible, Helen attended every skirmish and practice, determined that her substitutes should be the best. In addition to her regular work this self-imposed task of overlooking the substitutes' games, gave her ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... soliloquy returned without delay to Sam Yen's, who welcomed him with a wan smile, and after explaining some minor details of the work, crept off to his cot. Ah Moy immediately began his self-imposed task, and worked with a will, crooning the while a quaint Celestial air. It was ironing day at Sam Yen's, and the new hand did not object particularly to that part of the process. By a quarter after four he had completed the job, and surveyed with much satisfaction ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... work of clearing off the logs was prosecuted with increasing spirit and resolution. And so eagerly intent had all the hands become, in pressing forward to its completion their self-imposed task, which all could see was now fast drawing to a close, that they took no note of the flight of time, and were consequently taken by surprise when the sound of the horn summoned ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... stones, and fitted them together according to their shape; and for want of hods they carried the mortar, wherever it was required, on their backs, stooping forward and clasping their hands together behind them, to prevent it from slipping off. They carried out their self-imposed task with great energy, and after six days of vigorous labour the fort was completed, for the natural defences of the site were so strong that in most places there was no need of a wall. As the weather was now favourable, the fleet proceeded on its voyage, leaving Demosthenes ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the foundations, clad in the ample and voluminous fashion of the day and topped off with a distinctly stylish hat. She had had a long regimen of fencing and dumbbells, and her self-imposed superintendence of the new house had led to many hours spent in the open air. Her hair was blowing airily about her face, and on her cheek there was a slight flush—produced, perhaps, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... common forms. The memoir, which was originally designed to describe only his new type, gradually expanded into an elaborate monograph on the Cirripedes (barnacles) as a whole group. For eight years he continued this self-imposed task, getting at last so weary of it as to feel at times as if the labor had been in some sense wasted which he had spent over it; and this suspicion seems to have remained with him in maturer years. But when at last the two bulky volumes, of more than one thousand pages of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... the individual has been one long conflict. This is necessarily true because every human organism has instincts, feelings and desires and is naturally impatient at any limitations placed upon it unless self-imposed. On the other hand, organized society functions to preserve itself, and if the activities of the individual are hostile to this preservation the individual must give way. Theorists of various schools are forever propounding ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... known to the two Indians, the officer, and several of the cavalry. They knew he had joined the hostiles, and were therefore suspicious of him. This fact rendered his self-imposed task one of considerable difficulty. But after a while he ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... minds of many who would have shrunk from following his example, or even from publicly avowing his creed. Moreover, the miserable condition of the masses of the agricultural population, of which we shall give some startling evidence later on, must have prepared a soil favourable to his self-imposed mission, to awaken them to a knowledge both of their rights and of their duties. Especially welcome must have been doctrines in accordance with their simple religious beliefs, as well as with their ancient and well-founded ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... leisure for amusement, even had he been inclined that way. Night found him very tired; morning brought a hundred self-imposed and complicated tasks to be accomplished before the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... a part of the journey in wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed regime of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds, and all, soon healed the ignominious eruption. Here the whole family passed some months of happy repose, too soon interrupted by the tragical death of Maurice. He had brought back from Spain a formidable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... very taken aback, and a little unhappy, but when she had convinced him it was really quite hopeless, he forced himself back to the old comradeship, and took up his self-imposed burden ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... unhealed wound she had sustained and the cramp of a bondage of such old date as to seem iron—induced her to say, as if consenting: "You think he is not quite at home in society?" But she wished to defend him strenuously, and as a consequence she had to quit the self-imposed ideal of her daily acting, whereby—the case being unwonted, very novel to her—the lady's intelligence became confused through the process that quickened it; so sovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the acting of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fantasia is the outward and sure expression of a change in Mr. Whiting's way of musical thinking, and the change is decidedly for the better. There is still a display of pure intellectuality; there is still a solving of self-imposed problems; but Mr. Whiting's musical enjoyment is no longer strictly selfish. Here is a fantasia in the true sense of the term; form is here subservient to fancy. The first movement, if you wish to ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... believe I ever asked her what she likes to do best, and she is so unselfish that it would not be fair to judge her by what she is actually doing when I happen to see her, for I am sure that some of her self-imposed tasks are far from pleasant to her. I have heard her called her mother's right hand. I suppose you know ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This co-existence of freedom and self-imposed restraint—of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it—may be found in the aristocracy of England, (since about 1688,) as well as in the democracy of the American United States; and, because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... moment, however, the transitory spell was shaken off, and, once more the bold and reckless schoolboy, I turned to the performance of my self-imposed task. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... go out with you," wails this housewife, "but there's something I must finish to-day." The word must, self-imposed, becomes the mania of her life, to the open rebellion of her household. The word drives her to the real neglect of her husband, who becomes irritated at her constant and to him needless ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... His self-imposed term of bachelorhood lasted just three months, at the end of which time he made up his mind to enact the part of the generous husband and forgive his wife everything. He would not go into details, but issue ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... helps the bush-folk, and they, in turn, doing what they can to help it in self-imposed task, are ever ready to "find room somewhere" in pack-bags or swags for mail-matter in need of transport assistance—the general opinion being that "a man that refuses to carry a man's mail to him 'ud be mean enough to steal bread out of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... her distraction she sniffed audibly. A tear ran down either side of her pink shiny nose and dropped on the folds of shepherd's-plaid silk veiling her plump bosom. For, with some obscure purpose of living up to her self-imposed indispensability, Miss Bilson was distinctly dressy at this period, wearing her best summer gown on every possible occasion and tucking a bunch of roses or ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... could not meet that need, and in fact implied the recognition of an inferior status so repugnant to any one's sensibility. When people are ignored they resent even light impositions and taxes, but if allowed a voice will cheerfully submit to heavy burdens, because they then become, in a manner, self-imposed. Representation is the panacea against popular disaffection and for assuring governmental stability. To concede to Uitlanders one-fifth of the seats in the Legislature could not operate to the prejudice of burgher interests, but less would not meet ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Joyce Harker's self-imposed task was at an end, and George Jernam's long brooding upon his brother's fate was over. A solemn stillness came upon the happy party at Allanbay, and Rosamond's tears fell upon little Gerty, as she slept upon her bosom—slept where George's child was soon to slumber. Mr. Colburne asked no questions ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of the month rolled round with incredible swiftness. It brought to Nance not only an end to all her good times, but the disheartening knowledge that she would soon be out of employment again with no money saved, and under the self-imposed necessity of making a clean breast of her misdeeds ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... mind" to keeping the funds apart on paper, and mixing the actual cash. Indeed, she could never have brought her conscience to it. Unless she had taken the tenth for "charity" from her dress and pocket-money in coin, and put it then and there into the charity bag, this self-imposed rule of the duty of almsgiving would not have been performed ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... chimes played I found that I was a great deal more anxious about Jonkheer Brederode than I had thought. The tears came to my eyes, and when Lady MacNairne asked what was the matter, I said impulsively that I couldn't help being frightened for our friend, doing his self-imposed duty ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and she left her home for ever in order to present herself at the dauphin's ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... of recovering his seat at the end of the week after. In the seclusion of the faggery we indulged in a few mild recriminations, which were the natural outcome of our rivalry; but they only served to blow off steam, and we were too keen to win our self-imposed battles in class to allow personal feeling to interfere ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... work, the same idea abides with him, "even from the flower till the grape was ripe." It may assume various changes—an image of beauty, a figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a type of heavenly wisdom and joy—but still it holds, in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative and versatile and tenacious spirit. It was the dream and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and come to naught—to be other than the seed of the achievement and crown of life. But with all faith in the star and the freedom of genius, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... self-imposed, and to what end? That some dozen harpies may fatten on your flesh; that your labor may give them leisure; that your suffering may give them pleasure; that your sweat may cool their brows, and your money fill ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... with respect to State court interference with the federal courts and State court refusal to comply with the judgments of federal tribunals, by statutes as regards interference by federal courts with those of the States, and by self-imposed rules of comity applied for ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... that didst imitate that life of mine When I in lonely sadness on the great Rock Pena Pobre sat disconsolate, In self-imposed penance there to pine; Thou, whose sole beverage was the bitter brine Of thine own tears, and who withouten plate Of silver, copper, tin, in lowly state Off the bare earth and on earth's fruits didst dine; Live thou, of thine eternal glory ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... told of a first King Ninus and his wonderful queen Semiramis; of Sennacherib the conqueror; of the effeminate Sardanapalus, who neglected the warlike ways of his ancestors but perished gloriously at the last, with Nineveh itself, in a self-imposed holocaust. And that was all. How much of this was history, how much myth, no man could say; and for all any one suspected to the contrary, no man could ever know. And to-day the contemporary records ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... effort to speak to Marion. He avoided her systematically. He, on his side, was watched, was spied on, was protected from himself, was never given a chance of yielding to temptation. His self-imposed gaoler loved him. He was very lovable. The manager was enthusiastic. Ignorant people said he was reformed. It almost seemed as if he might grasp the great position to which his talent entitled him. But how often before he had fallen just when he was doing well! No one could depend on him. His record ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... avarice alternately flattered and tortured. From his quiet gains in his legitimate business, from the little capital accumulated through industry and economy, he lavished thousands on this chimera of his fancy. He grew grizzled and worn over his self-imposed delusion; he no longer jested with his customers, regardless of quality or station or importance; he had cliques to mollify, enemies to placate, friends to reward. The grocery suffered; through giving food and lodgment to clouds of unimpeachable ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... men, and they were nearly all uneducated as regards clerical instruction. One of the most successful was Isaac Vidal, a lame young man, a mechanic of Colognac, near St. Hypolite, in the Cevennes. His self-imposed ministrations were attended by large numbers of people. He preached for only six months and then died—a natural death, for nearly all who followed him were ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... government that it should represent the supreme power of the State, and be capable of subjecting the will of its individual citizens to its authority. Such a government can derive its just powers only from the consent of the governed, and can be established only under a fundamental law which is self-imposed. Every person of suitable age and discretion who is to be subject to such a government has, in my judgment, a natural right to participate in its formation. It is a significant fact that, should Congress pass this bill and authorize the people of Washington Territory ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Toni's eyes and head ached when the luncheon-bell rang to set her free from her self-imposed task; but she did not give in, and after her hasty meal she would return to the library and struggle till tea-time with half a dozen French exercises, which by the aid of a key she sternly ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... busy, amused and perhaps a little excited (sometimes psychology is exciting). But, though much occupied with my own affairs, I did not altogether neglect my self-imposed task regarding Miss Grief. I began by sending her prose story to a friend, the editor of a monthly magazine, with a letter making a strong plea for its admittance. It should have a chance first on its own merits. Then I forwarded the drama ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... It was favourable to the integrity of my work of restoration, that the press was not waiting for me, and that when portions of the creatures on which I wrought were wanting, or plates turned up whose places I was unable to determine, I could lay aside my self-imposed task for the time, and only resume it when some new-found specimen supplied me with the materials requisite for carrying it on. And so the restorations which I completed in 1840, and published in 1841, were found, by our highest authorities in 1848, after they had been set aside ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... was a hot one, and the heat from the fire, together with that from the sun, was almost insupportable; but, stripped of all clothing that could conveniently be cast aside, each one continued at his self-imposed task of averting the threatened ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... and the good will and affection beaming in his honest blue eyes gave Mattie renewed courage to go on with her self-imposed and most embarrassing task, although before she ended her voice shook and dwindled away to such a low whisper that Jed had to bend his head close to hers to hear ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... by their self-imposed dumbness, but they suffered like Stoics. Maggie also suffered, and Maggie would not stand it. Maggie it was who had invented the slate. Indeed, they had heard some plain truths from that stout, bustling ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... by your charming letter, and grieved at not being able to accept your friendly invitation. That would certainly be more agreeable than to attend to all sorts of duties; but, since three parts of these are self-imposed, I am all the more bent upon fulfilling them; and, in order to keep faith with myself, I am returning to Budapest before the middle of November, and shall remain there till April. Perhaps I am less useless there than elsewhere; it is an idea or an ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... that when the battles were fought by the people itself, and when the cost of the wars was to so large an extent defrayed by its self-imposed contributions, the Scottish and French campaigns should have called forth that national enthusiasm which found an echo in the songs of Lawrence Minot, as hearty war-poetry as has been composed in any age of our ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... day after her twenty-first birthday. I was pleased at this hint of deep feeling. It was as if she had grown impatient at last of the self-imposed delay. I supposed that Jasper's recent visit ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad |
