"Self-imposed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... self-imposed embarrassment he suffered to an almost intolerable degree. It was the irrational and fraudulent phase of matters that made him suffer. Did men act as they did because they were so strong in their faith? Not at all. Did he believe in those racial differences ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... "bring her 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 ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... any other father, and had he not allowed her to take the child because he had felt that a mother's love was more imperious, more craving in its nature, than the love of a father? Had that been severe? And had he not resolved to allow her every comfort which her unfortunate position,—the self-imposed misfortune of her position,—would allow her to enjoy? She had come to him without a shilling; and yet, bad as her treatment of him had been, he was willing to give enough not only to support her, but her sister also, with every comfort. Severe! No; that, at least, was ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... he shrieked, with a fiendish laugh, "I've escaped you, have I? escaped you—hurrah!" and with another wild shriek he leaped on the hot deck, and, seizing a bucket, resumed his self-imposed duty of deluging the fire ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... his self-imposed duties to moderate, as far as he might, his sister's views, to temper her enthusiasms and abate her various and easily excited anger. He had other duties toward her which might be said to have come to him ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Mahn, of Berlin, in accordance with a science which did not exist in Webster's day. The immense labor which Webster expended remains only as a witness to that indomitable spirit which enabled him to keep steadfastly to his self-imposed task ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... Since his last visit to Eastbourne he had seen no friends in civilised London, and now that he had no longer lectures to write, his state of mind grew ever more unsatisfactory. Loneliness, though to so great an extent self-imposed, weighed upon him intolerably. He believed that he was going through the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the mind shall be sufficiently drilled in this kind of gymnastics, all their movements will be repeated in an almost unconscious way, and deduction, that essential principle of common sense, will be self-imposed. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... grew weary of this double part, And self-imposed deception caused my heart Sometimes to shrink, I needed but to gaze On Helen's face: that wore a look ethereal, As if she dwelt above the things material And held communion with the angels. So I fed my strength and courage through ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Watkins was out with the Field Hospital, and he and the doctor dismounted in order, if possible, to bring in some wounded from under fire. They had just accomplished this self-imposed mission when a shot, coming a little too near, disturbed Mr. Watkins' horse, which bolted. In trying to find it he lost sight of the hospital, which had moved away, and found himself in desperate plight. Neither ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... 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 right of Asia ...
— 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
... their self-imposed task of constructing a flying machine which would really soar among the clouds. They had read brief accounts of the experiments carried out by Otto Lilienthal, and in many ways the ground had been well paved for them. It was ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... present itself, it being necessary to show my hero amidst scenes and circumstances ready to exercise his brave and generous propensities, and to put their personal issues to the test on his mind. Hence Poland's sadly-varying destinies seemed to me the stage best calculated for the development of any self-imposed task. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... of Japan and China, and everything directly concerning them, have always claimed a peculiar consideration. Their self-imposed isolation, the mystery with which they have sought to surround themselves, the extraordinary habits and character of the people, the evidences of an earlier civilization in China—formerly supposed also to have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... much of what he had already said, with only a softened air and stronger expressions of regret. But what availed his expressions or his air? He was going, and, if not voluntarily going, voluntarily intending to stay away; for, excepting what might be due to his uncle, his engagements were all self-imposed. He might talk of necessity, but she knew his independence. The hand which had so pressed hers to his heart! the hand and the heart were alike motionless and passive now! Her spirit supported her, but the agony of her mind was severe. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... 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
... might cause undue alarm, but also because the convention was by that time so low in funds that, as one of the members said, it did not have enough money to pay a clergyman his fees for the service. I suspect that their controlling reason was their indisposition to break their self-imposed rule of secrecy by contact with the outer world until their work was completed. Perhaps they thought that "God helps those ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... for others by playing the organ in a church which was rich, in everything but money. I knew another fine pianist who gave lessons to children who could not otherwise have had them. In both these cases the ladies were as much bound by their self-imposed tasks as if they had been earning their living, and their characters received almost as great benefit; but it would not have been well that they should be paid for their work. Why should they compete with ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... enough. We do not know that her 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 Songs ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... all whom 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 witnesses ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... silent and not speak at all when you feel that your temper is getting or has gotten the better of you, you will soon get the better of your temper. There is no such efficient discipline for a hasty temper as determined, self-imposed silence. Then, too, there is a dignity about silence under provocation that is impressive and effective. The greatest disadvantage at which any person can be placed in the eyes of companions and friends is ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... 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 advent ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... watch lest any treachery be attempted by these Tamils." We knew that under the circumstances Hassan's keen sense of hearing would be more valuable than our own, and after a slight protest agreed to leave him to his self-imposed task of watching while we slept. He moved close to the entrance of the cave, and we followed his example before seeking repose. Hassan made some further remark, to which I do not clearly remember responding, the next event recalled ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... believe in this very city, was made to him to place an immense sum of money at his disposal if he would consent to reside in the city of New York and represent Southern commerce. Millions would have flowed to him. But he declined. He said: 'No; I am grateful, but I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in life.' And he did. It was beautiful to see him in that glorious valley where Lexington ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... 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; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... was inducted by that "Royal Council" into power. Unequal to the exploit of 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
... to the point of her self-imposed mission, "perhaps there may be some other way to settle this case ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... Navy Yard, and prepared an ample repast for the soldiers, caring at the same time for any sick or wounded among them. No previous fatigue or weariness, no inclemency of the weather, or darkness of the night was regarded by these heroic women as a valid excuse from these self-imposed duties or rather this glorious privilege, for so they deemed it, of ministering to the comfort of the defenders of the Union. And through the whole four and a-third years during which troops passed through Philadelphia, no regiment or company ever passed ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... task, self-imposed and in the ends of justice; Sir Lionel Trevalyon is free to go to God's altar with the proudest and fairest woman in the world; and may the blessing of heaven rest upon his union. Had he not exposed the facts, he could not have wed, while your lips ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... and before he knew it, Jack found himself once more back at the barracks. The corporal on "gate duty," who, for want of something better to do, had been chastising his own leg with a "swagger cane," ceased in the performance of this self-imposed penance, and shot a ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... this advice seemed, with all the loose gold lying about, we ended by adopting it. Indeed, we added slightly to our self-imposed tasks by determining on the construction of cradles. Yank had figured out a scheme having to do with hollowed logs and canvas with cleats that would obviate the need of lumber. We deputed Johnny to help him. Bagsby and ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... 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 history should ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... over-sensitive, he knew; but all the danger he ran in bearing down and overmastering the feeling, he did not know. A too great confidence in himself, a sense that everything was possible to the will that would make it so, laid occasionally upon him self-imposed burdens greater than might be borne by any one with safety. In that direction there was in him, at such times, something even hard and aggressive; in his determinations a something that had almost the tone of fierceness; something in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... first works I had despaired of myself, and that I had changed my gun to the other shoulder? The image of the Boulevard office rose suddenly before me. I heard the voice of the editor-in-chief saying, "Interview Fauchery? You will never accomplish that;" so, faithful to my self-imposed role, I replied, "I have retired to Nemours to work upon a novel called The Age for Love, and it is on this subject that I wished to consult ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... like "hoisting the Norwegian flag." It has been maliciously added that mention of his name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight of a considerable proportion of the assembly, for Bjoernson has always been a fighter as well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed mission to arouse his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness no less than to give creative embodiment to their types of character and their ideal aspirations. But whatever the opposition aroused by ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... from history, but allows us to feel that genuine moderns are masquerading in the dress of a bygone century. Even in the last case, it generally results in a kind of dance in fetters and a comparative breakdown under self-imposed obligations. 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth' and 'Quentin Durward,' and the rest are of course audacious anachronisms for the genuine historian. Scott was imposed upon by his own fancy. He was probably not aware that his Balfour of Burley was real flesh and blood, because painted from real people round ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 fill and swing the camp-kettle across the cheery ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... 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 ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... would not have been enough coppers in his pocket to pay for the funeral expenses. Nowadays, having solved the problem of how to live on 85 pounds a year, he stayed for another reason as well: to annotate Perrelli's ANTIQUITIES. It sweetened his self-imposed exile. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... replaced the arrogant and quarrelsome Hillsborough with the more amiable Lord Dartmouth. It looked for a while as though the political skies might clear, for the American merchants, tired of their self-imposed hardships, began to weaken in opposition. In 1769 the New York assembly voted to accept the parliamentary terms; and in 1770 the merchants of that colony voted to abandon general non-importation, keeping only the boycott ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... but spent fully a half hour in his self-imposed task, during which Fred stood in the background, trying to make out what he was driving at. He saw that Mickey was so intently occupied that he was scarcely conscious of the presence of any one ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... 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 desires, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of its laws. Indeed, the artificial organization, whether monastic or sectarian, may become so strong as to interfere with national life, and make men forget their real duty to their king and country, in their self-imposed duty to the sect or order to which they belong. The monastic organization indeed had to die, in many countries, in order that national life might develop itself; and the dissolution of the monasteries marks the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... be the future of vivisection, as conducted in America to- day? Is it to continue, without other limitations against cruelty than those which are self-imposed, without legal restriction or restraint, so long as civilization endures, ever widening its scope, ever increasing the hecatombs of its victims, until uncounted milions shall have been sacrificed? Is protest against excess to grow weaker, until the ideal of humaneness in the laboratory ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... 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
... fine ladies. HE care for A peerage? no truly! Secondo; he rarely Or never goes out: dines at Bellamy's sparely, And abhors what you call the gay world. "Then, I ask, What inspires, and consoles, such a self-imposed task As the life of this man,—but the sense of its duty? And I swear that the eyes of the haughtiest beauty Have never inspired in my soul that intense, Reverential, and loving, and absolute sense Of heart-felt admiration I feel for this man, As I ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... this 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. She caught cold and suffered other ills ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... thoroughfares, and found myself plodding along a lonely suburban road, with a keen wind lashing my face, and a suspicion of rain at intervals wetting my cheeks, I confess I had no feeling of enjoyment in my self-imposed task. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... He too seemed to be bitterly regretting the idleness that had made him give up his self-imposed task, and the dismal hungry looks he kept giving me from time to time ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... believe them. Even where the knowing part of the mind doesn't grant belief, the imagining part—and through it the feeling part—does; and, as conduct and mood are governed by feeling, the effect of a self-imposed make-believe on one's behavior and disposition—on one's life, in short—may be much the same as that of actuality. All depends on the completeness and constancy with which the make-believe ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... henceforward all personal 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the doctor or his 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 ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... rivalry of party leaders or the incidents of court life excite a much keener interest than painful efforts for the good of the humbler classes. During the closing years of George III.'s reign there were no party conflicts of special intensity. The whigs acquiesced in their self-imposed exclusion from office, and contented themselves with damaging criticism; the radicals had not yet acquired the confidence or respect of the electors. Liverpool remained prime minister; Castlereagh, foreign ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... monstrosity of horrid ugliness cannot be made pleasing, except it be made to suggest—to recall—the perfection, the beauty, from which it is a deviation. Perhaps in extreme cases no art is equal to this; but then such self-imposed problems should not be worked by the artist; these out-of-the-way and detestable subjects should be let alone by him. It is rather characteristic of Mr. Browning to neglect this rule. He is the most ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... determined to go on again with his self-imposed labor. He was ashamed of his own outburst. He looked eagerly for the ax. "Work, work! Nothing for it but work." He found the ax, ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... the public. He devoted himself mainly to the study of military matters, and out-door exercises, roughing it in all sorts of weather, sometimes,—to his mentor Baron Polier's uneasiness,—setting out on dark and stormy nights, and making his way across country from point to point. This self-imposed training was no doubt with the secret hope that he might some day be called upon by the Swedes to oust Bernadotte, and mount the throne of the great Gustavus. Mr. Skene saw a good deal of him, and gives many interesting details of his life in Edinburgh, such as the following account ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of Europe that Americans are maniacs of money. European conservatism draws a money-line beyond which it will not pass. When any man of Europe has a proposal of business too big for the European mouth—wearing its self-imposed half-muzzle of conservatism—that promoter and his proposal head for America. It was this which gained Washington the advantage of a visit from Storri; his stop in Canada—being a six-months' stay in Ottawa—was only preliminary to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 to sex as ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of dejection. For a long time now the bottom of the cash-box had been visible, and as more and more workers were turned into the street the product of self-imposed taxation was gradually declining. And the readiness of those outside the movement to make sacrifices was rapidly beginning to fail. The public had now had enough of the affair. Everything was failing, now they would have to see if they could not come to some arrangement. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... cards that his companion might have murdered his partner to get possession of the claim. It was true that Corbin had voluntarily assumed an unrecorded and hitherto unknown responsibility that had never been even suspected, and was virtually self-imposed. But that might have been the usual one unerring blunder of criminal sagacity and forethought. It was equally true that he did not look or act like a mean murderer; but that was nothing. However, there was ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 traditions ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... road would the author attain the desired end? would the self-imposed task be fulfilled? would his or her own convictions become those of others? Should not authors sacrifice themselves to their subject in all works inspired by a devoted spirit? Shall it be said that oftentimes ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... either of these, or of any book with which we are acquainted, a plea in defense of bibliomania in the middle ages. Indeed the charm of the book may be said to rest largely upon the earnestness with which he takes up his self-imposed task. One may fancy that after all he found it not an easy one; in fact his "Conclusion" is a kind of apology for not having made out a better case. But this he believes he has proven, "that with all their superstition, with all their ignorance, their blindness ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... than five hundred years, up to the present day, the dress remains the same, and no human being, either of those to whom their services are rendered, or of the thousands who see them going about in the performance of their self-imposed duty, can know whether the mysterious weird-looking figure he sees be prince or peasant. He knows that he may be either, for the members of the brotherhood are drawn ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... greater 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, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... pocket of the Burberry coat which she slipped on in the hall. Then she tore down to the landing-stage, and made straight for Glasnabinnie in the Jenny Spinner. She had got about half a mile when Dennis, coming up to the top of the cliff on his self-imposed coastguard duties, saw her and ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... cushion is lifted. Here it is an open trap in the middle of the room. A bath is a necessity—not a luxury—so near the equator, and it is usual to take one three, four, or even five times a day, with much refreshment. One part of Babu's self-imposed duty is to look under our pillows for snakes and centipedes, and the latter have been found ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... contemporary events. Until a few years before her death she rose early to secure a space of time for reading and meditation before the duties of the day began. Unless ill-health could be pleaded, fiction and light reading were banished from the morning hours. She believed in strict adherence to such self-imposed sumptuary regulations, whether they applied to the body or to the pleasures of ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... assistance, and in most cases this was forthcoming. On the other hand some of the lesser-known early travellers were murdered, and the goods they travelled with, stolen. It is really only those travellers who were able to complete their self-imposed tasks, and return to Britain, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... that I have been poorly trying to speak about now! 'Thou art careful and troubled about many things,' poor soul! trying to be good; trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil. Try the other plan, and listen to Him saying, 'Give up self-imposed effort in thine own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which is broken ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... were already in possession of their own pet cars, these having been driven to Hamilton by the chauffeurs of their respective families. Nine automobiles accordingly went to swell the procession that sunny Friday morning and the Sans were in high feather as, two to a car, they set out on their self-imposed welcoming task. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... conclusion as to Hood's intention, for if "Actions speak louder than words," there can be no question that Schofield's dispositions were made under the conviction that Hood would march down the river, after crossing, to clear the way for Lee to cross. And so deeply infatuated was he with this self-imposed delusion that, disregarding the order of Thomas and the advice of Wilson, he cherished it for about five hours after Post had reported that Hood ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... split and piled firewood far beyond his immediate need. He could not sit passive too long. Enforced leisure made too wide a breach in his defenses, and through that breach the demons of brooding and despondency were quick to enter. When neither books nor self-imposed tasks about the cabin served, he would take his rifle in hand, hook on the snowshoes, and trudge far afield in ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... dealt with from the standpoint of plainest simplicity and truth,—so that they may feel the sympathetic touch of human love and care emanating from those very quarters which they seek to assail. This had been the self-imposed mission of the King who had played the part of 'Pasquin Leroy';—and thus, fearing nothing, doubting nothing, and relying simply on his own strength, discretion, and determination, he had gained a moral victory over the passions of his secret foes such ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... don't 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 what ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going." "The spiritually conscientious one," he is called in this discourse. Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task, speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge—his little hand's breadth of ground on Zarathustra's territory, philosophy. "Where mine honesty ceaseth," says the true scientific specialist, "there am I blind and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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 tastes or Balzac's affectations in regard to a special attire for work, but when ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... law, the law of right, which binds the 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
... avoiding the cares of life is no doubt merely metaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness reveals the excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his own perception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this time were purely imaginary; that a little resolution and determined ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... suffered severely 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 woman. They had not yielded, but they had accepted the slate in order to minimize the ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... "native modesty." Judging it at this distance from the time of its occurrence, it is perhaps difficult to understand fully his motive. But if we view it in the light of the consistent wisdom and high-mindedness that seemed to guide his whole life we can hope that his reasons for the self-imposed coventry on that occasion were sufficient unto himself, and that they fully ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... 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 a Prince Murat, the relative ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... driving on Sundays, and appeared in considerable danger of falling into the gulf of methodism; but this turn did not last long, and whatever induced him to take it up, he apparently became bored with his self-imposed restrictions, and after a little while he threw off his short-lived sanctity, and resumed his worldly habits and irreverent language, for he was always a loose talker. Active and ambitious in his pursuits, and magnificent ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... anxiety, however, to ascertain from one who had seen her lately, how Flora had borne his absence, at length induced Charles Holland to break his self-imposed silence. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... detect behind his superfluity of technical, and at times archaic phrase, an unconscious desire to convince himself that he is saturated in essential Englishness, and we incline to think that even his choice of an actual subject was less inevitable than self-imposed. He would isolate the quality he would capture, have it more wholly within his grasp; yet, in some subtle way, it finally eludes him. The intention is in excess, and in the manner of its execution everything is (though ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... driven away by the other birds; that is, a feigned place of printing, adopted by those who would have caught it if orthodoxy could have caught them. Thus, in 1656, the works of Socinus could only be printed at Irenopolis. The author deserves his self-imposed title, as ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... spirit, and an high feeling of duty and worth, Adrian had fulfilled his self-imposed task. I had contemplated him with reverence, and a fruitless desire of imitation. I now offered a few words of encouragement and sympathy. He hid his face in his hands, and while he strove to calm himself, he ejaculated, "For a few ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... pursuits of life. There is another important reason for the self-imposition of those systematic habits which to men of business are a necessity; it is, however, one which you cannot at all appreciate until you have experienced its importance: I refer to the advantage of being, by a self-imposed rule, provided with an immediate object, in which the intellectual pursuits of a woman must otherwise be deficient. I would not depreciate the mightiness of "the future;"[77] but it is evident that the human mind is so constituted as to feel that motives ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... 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"
... people in America obeys the law not only because it emanates from the popular authority, but because that authority may modify it in any points which may prove vexatory; a law is observed because it is a self-imposed evil in the first place, and an evil of transient duration in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... (including the author) have spared neither pains nor pence in visiting the scattered tribes and exhorting them to obey all the demands of the South African Government under the Grobler law pending a peaceful intercession from the outside world. But for this self-imposed duty on the part of the native leaders, I am satisfied that numbers of the native peasantry would have been mown down early in 1914, and humanity would have been told that they were justly punished for disobedience ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... 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 ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... shouldn't go, she either went or had been there; if there 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 spirits ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... her husband go forth into the heat again, and blamed herself, according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbing him of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughed at the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day's actualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... home, the uncle who was now even more convinced that Ethel had never outlived the shock of the loss of her parents, she found that honest study and devotion to her self-imposed tasks, and a life of much physical comfort and rarely artistic surroundings, were all failing to make living worth while. In fact, things were getting into a tangle. She was becoming noticeably restless. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... unnerving, the most jading, however, of all her self-imposed performances at this moment, was the constraint to laugh and be merry, when others laughed and were merry over the frequently empty horse-play of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... coming forward on the 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... I do not feel, therefore, 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
... faithfully, in rendering services of this kind to the community, than the Prince of Wales. The multiplicity and variety of his engagements, on behalf of local and special objects of utility, would make a surprising list, and they must have involved a sacrifice of ease and leisure, and endurance of self-imposed restraint, a submission to tedious repetitions of similar acts and scenes, and to continual requests and importunities, which few men of high ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the surgeon had discontinued his steady investigation of Geoffrey's face, and had given all his attention to the discussion, with the air of a man whose self-imposed task had come to an end. As the last sentence fell from the last speaker's lips, he interposed so quickly and so skillfully between Geoffrey and Sir Patrick, that Geoffrey ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... 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 of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... party to his base transactions, and who believes him an injured saint. Perhaps, too, he hoped to gain something against me from these gossips, or knowing that I was unaccustomed to poverty and isolation, believed that I might break through these self-imposed barriers and resort to crime. But he should know me better. It is no relief from misery to plunge into infamy, but only hurls the wretched victim into darker woes. I know that I have been far from perfect, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... appeal that Prudence felt herself forced to turn in his direction. She now looked squarely into his eyes, nor was there the faintest suspicion of embarrassment in her manner. The moment had come when she must choose between herself and her self-imposed duty. She knew that she loved Iredale, but—she checked something which sounded very like a sigh. She had listened to the precepts of Sarah Gurridge all her life, and, in consequence, she had learned to regard her duty before ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 this account the name of ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... be disposed to deny the artist, dedicated to this high achievement by his love of the material not less than by his peculiar gift, the range of a liberal idealism. We would not have him bound by any precedent or any self-imposed law of literality. If he should see his work as a mighty historical picture, or series of such pictures, we should not gainsay him his conception or bind him rather to any genre result. We ourselves have been evolving here the notion of some large allegory which should ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... her lonely pastimes, or gentle task-work self-imposed among her pastimes; and itself, the sweetest of them all, inspired by a sense of duty, that still brings with it its own delight—and hallowed by religion, that even in the most adverse lot changes slavery into freedom—till the heart, insensible to the bonds of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... person—beautiful, but dressed in a stiff mode. We do not, in every point, homologate the opinions of Prynne, as to the 'unloveliness of love-locks;' but we do certainly look with a mixture of contempt and pity on the self-imposed trammels of affectation in style and manner which bound many of the poets of that period. The wits of Charles II. were more disgustingly licentious; but their very carelessness saved them from the conceits of their predecessors; and, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the States to representation, was practically ended. Eight of the eleven Confederate States, at the close of June 1868, had their senators and representatives in Congress. Three—Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas—were prevented by self-imposed obstacles from enjoying the same privilege until after President Johnson had retired from office. Of the representatives on the floor of the Fortieth Congress from the eight states lately in rebellion, only two were Democrats. The senators were unanimously Republican. Of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... threadbare garb of black, their brows swarthy from exposure, yet marked with the lines of intellect and a fixed enthusiasm of purpose. Here was Bressani, scarred with firebrand and knife; Chabanel, once a professor of rhetoric in France, now a missionary, bound by a self-imposed vow to a life from which his nature recoiled; the fanatical Chaumonot, whose character savored of his peasant birth,—for the grossest fungus of superstition that ever grew under the shadow of Rome was not too much for his ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... 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 ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... five millions marriage had added the colossal fortune of a beautiful heiress, whose extravagances aggregated less than his own solely through the limitations of her sex. Yet, were it not for the self-imposed handicap of adhering strictly to the somewhat old-fashioned precept that jewels should be acquired only through affectionate beneficence, Mrs. Fernmore might have succeeded in surpassing the princely prodigalities of her lord ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... wrote to Frejus, judging, with a deadly common sense, that no news is better than bad news. Day by day she continued her self-imposed task, on the slippery hill-sides and in the muddy valleys, until at last she passed for a peasant-woman, so bedraggled was her dress, so lined and weather-beaten her face. Her hair grew white in those days, her face greyer. She had not even enough to eat. She lay down and slept ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... court knew nothing of Prince Hamlet's determination until he had sailed from Elsinore; their knowledge then was confined to the fact of his departure. It was only to Horatio, his fellow-student and friend, that Hamlet confided the real cause of his self-imposed exile, though perhaps ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... especially Mrs. Huzzard, were taken aback by finding a newly arrived, self-imposed guardian at the door of Tana's tent. It was the blanket-draped figure of old Akkomi, and his gaily painted canoe was pulled up on the bank ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... endeavoured to smile down the haunting feeling of some unseen, creeping presence. Still it was with a sense of trepidation that she entered the small room where she was wont to meditate each evening when the day's wearisome, self-imposed labours were ended. This room lay beyond her Highness's sleeping chamber and had a small balcony ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the day, and every spare moment relaxation; little you guess the frightful drudgery undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself,—to live at once two lives, each as severe as the whole of yours,—to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement, a body and brain already worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour. I did it. God forbid, though, that I should take credit to myself for it. Hundreds more have done it, with still fewer advantages than mine. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... 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 yourself ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... familiarly know of Free-Will is that capricious exercise of it which we experience in ourselves and other men; and therefore the notion of Supreme Will, still guided by Infallible Law, even if that law be self-imposed, is always in danger of being either stripped of the essential quality of Freedom, or degraded under the ill-name of Necessity to something of even less moral and intellectual dignity than the fluctuating ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... this insensible state he never knew himself, but his slumbering visions had been long lost in total forgetfulness, when he was awakened by a light tap on the shoulder. Aroused by this signal, slight as it was, he sprang upon his feet with a confused recollection of the self-imposed duty he had assumed with the commencement ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... to supply this need to the best of my ability, and herewith offer to the public the results of an arduous, though self-imposed task. ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... sense of life, that looks no higher than the lust of blood, and is satisfied with it, I admit. True to the unreal, temporal sense of existence, that is here to-day, and to-morrow has gone out in the agony of self-imposed suffering and death. True to that awful, false sense of life which we must put off if we would ever rise into the consciousness of real life, I grant you. But the production of these horrors on the stage, even in a framework ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... character seem to be wholly confined to the one virtue of generosity. Whenever you hear it said of a man, "Il s'est conduit en vrai gentilhomme," be sure that it means no more than that he performed a simple act of justice in a courteous and graceful manner. The sacred and self-imposed qualities which make up the significance of the English word "gentleman" no Frenchman, nor indeed any foreigner, can understand, and the word itself is never translated, but always left in its original English. Bulwer defines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... of my self-imposed duty as chronicler of the deeds of Dr. Fu-Manchu—the greatest and most evil genius whom the later centuries have produced, the man who dreamt of an universal Yellow Empire—I should have acquired a certain facility in describing bizarre happenings. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... multiplicity of opposing intentions, struggle of good and evil powers in the intricacies of some rich arabesque; or monotonous repetitions of design which distressed her as with the terrors of imprisonment and of unescapable fate. She was filled with feverish anxiety until such portions of her self-imposed task were completed. Then she would be very glad. And Iglesias, glancing up silently from the pages of his newspaper or book, would see the sorrow pass out of her face as she leaned back in her chair and softly laughed. And he would perceive that, in the achievement of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... reference to some great reform about to be introduced in monetary matters. Mr. Palliser, who was now Chancellor of the Exchequer, was intending to alter the value of the penny. Unless the work should be too much for him, and he should die before he had accomplished the self-imposed task, the future penny was to be made, under his auspices, to contain five farthings, and the shilling ten pennies. It was thought that if this could be accomplished, the arithmetic of the whole world would be so simplified that henceforward ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... of birds, beasts, fishes, and plants from every part of Scotland, England, and Ireland—to the disgust of his old nurse, whose duty it was to dust them, and to the delight of his little brother, whose self-imposed duty it was to pull out their tails and pick out ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... occupied was at the mercy of a foreign soldiery, which had renounced all authority but that of self-imposed laws. The King's officers were degraded, perhaps murdered; while those chosen to supply their places had only a nominal control. The Eletto, day by day, proclaimed from the balcony of the town-house the latest rules and regulations. If satisfactory, there was a clamor of applause; if ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Marindin; "it is my hope that by impregnating the unborn with a specific set of prejudices, they might be induced to settle in particular countries, and I cannot help thinking that patriotism would be more intelligent when it was voluntary; self-imposed from admiration of the ideals and history of a particular people. Indeed this seems to me absolutely the only way in which, reason can be brought to bear on the great war question, for in lieu of that loud eloquence of Woolwich ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... perception of the causes which have hitherto impeded her free and perfect development, which have shut her out from the large experiences, the wealth and fullness of the life to which she was called. She is beginning to feel, and to cast off the bonds which oppress her—many of them, indeed, self-imposed, and many gilded and rarely wrought, covered with flowers and delicate tissues, but none the less bonds—bonds upon the speech, upon the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... 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 ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... now. The question before his mind was growing clear; whether he was to persist in this self-imposed martyrdom of himself and his family or whether he was to go back upon his outbreak of visionary fanaticism and close with this last opportunity that Lady Sunderbund offered of saving at least the substance of the comfort and social status of his wife and daughters. In which case it ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... with ever-increasing difficulty, and her hand went up suddenly to her throat. It was obvious that this self-imposed disclosure of the truth was taking her strength ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... self-imposed charge; she wanted to be off. With the need for help no longer an attraction, Moloney had almost ceased to interest her; he would remain only as part of the darker background of her mind, as a dim figure among many in ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... some of the limits of friendship are not essential to the relation, but are due to a defect in the relation, perhaps an idiosyncrasy of character or a peculiarity of temper. Some of the limits are self-imposed, and arise from mistake of folly. A friend may be too exacting, and may make excessive demands, which strain the bond to the breaking point. There is often a good deal of selfishness in the affection, which asks for absorption, and is jealous of other interests. ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... 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
... had once more dashed back into the stifling smoke. Again he appeared, this time weak and staggering, every trace of his white coat gone. He was singed and blackened beyond recognition; but he was a four-footed hero, who had nobly performed a self-imposed duty. As he feebly dragged another little dead puppy to his master's feet, Billy Brackett seized the brave dog in his arms, and sprang over the side of the doomed steamboat into the waiting skiff. Tears stood in the young man's eyes ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... 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 literature. They were put forth in 1352, and considering ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... of literature, even in the mother tongue, cannot be a discipline and a delight together. The two are very far from incompatible: indeed that discipline is most effective which is almost or quite unconsciously self-imposed in the joyous exercise of one's own faculties. The genuine footballer and the genuine scholar will both agree with Ferdinand ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... 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 of the city are before us in such profusion as no other nation ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... restlessness was upon me, which I could not overcome. Many strange things had happened since Christmas, but this, surely, was the strangest thing of all, that Jack Osborne, who had persuaded me to help him in his self-imposed task of tracking down these people, should actually have come under the spell of Jasmine Gastrell's beauty and undeniable fascination. I recollected now his saying, when, weeks before, he had spoken of Jasmine ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... 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 ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... from Mr Perch, on the occasion of his next visit, by dryly informing that gentleman, that he thanked him for his company, but had cut himself adrift from all such acquaintance, as he didn't know what magazine he mightn't blow up, without meaning of it. In this self-imposed retirement, the Captain passed whole days and weeks without interchanging a word with anyone but Rob the Grinder, whom he esteemed as a pattern of disinterested attachment and fidelity. In this retirement, the Captain, gazing at the packet of an evening, would ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and influence, and with a brilliant commercial career opening before him. Above all, he was a foreigner, and unpopular in the city. Yet he did not hesitate to take the post from which others shrank. He and Helm were regarded as doomed men, but they did not falter from their self-imposed task. They went to work at once. Girard chose the post of honor, which was the post of danger—the management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive character was at once felt. Order began to appear, medicines and nurses were procured, and ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... coming home from her self-imposed exile to the lean, clean Island in Maine, Jane had dreaded, a little, her re-meeting with Michael Daragh, but on the trip home from Mexico and California she had no such feeling. Doubts were over and done with forever. The flight had been for the purpose of getting perspective; perspective made ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... as unveracious and careless of justice, as full of catch-penny devices and stagey attitudinising as on examination his writing shows itself to be? By no means. He has arrived at his present pass in "the literary calling" through the self-imposed obligation to give himself a manner which would convey the impression of superior knowledge and ability. He is much worthier and more admirable than his written productions, because the moral aspects exhibited in his writing are felt to be ridiculous or disgraceful in the personal relations ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... I think we will rob you of your commission and see how you will stand the discipline. 'Co. S, Hilton Volunteers!' pretty good—pretty good!" and a light laugh rippled over the man's lips. "And Miss Tuttle is 'first lieutenant,'" he continued, "and gallantly came forward to share the self-imposed mission of her friend 'to go to the front.' There's pluck there, too; but you are a precocious pair—you two— and keep one busy guessing what you will do next. All the same, with the right check-rein, I believe you'll both make fine ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... about oppression and emancipation. It is the word obey that constitutes the one, and shows the need of the other. Whoever is pledged to obey is technically and literally a slave, no matter how many roses surround the chains. All the more so if the slavery is self-imposed, and surrounded by all the prescriptions of religion. Make the marriage tie as close as church or state can make it; but let it be equal, impartial. That it may be so, the word obey must be abandoned or made ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... holds death back to see you. His self-imposed penance makes him steadfastly refuse the comparative comfort of our meagre infirmary, and it is his wish to die, where he has spent so many nights in penitential prayer. For several days, the paralysis of years has been gradually ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... supper Grant had never seen General Morrison looking quite that old. The man was sustaining an overload of responsibility, and probably self-imposed ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... child upon her lap with a fondling touch and tender words. Betty pillowed a downy head against her neck and almost immediately fell asleep. Eileen and Molly laboured on at their self-imposed task in the autumn sunshine, and Toby ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... troops into his territory. But he would not swell the triumph of the upstart Durbar by showing himself at Ranjitgarh, nor would he lower his dignity by making any response to Colonel Antony's overtures. He remained in self-imposed seclusion within the borders of his province, declining either to move or to be moved in anything relating to ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... and it is that circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of minorities; and nobody accuses the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers |
