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Voluntary   Listen
adjective
Voluntary  adj.  
1.
Proceeding from the will; produced in or by an act of choice. "That sin or guilt pertains exclusively to voluntary action is the true principle of orthodoxy."
2.
Unconstrained by the interference of another; unimpelled by the influence of another; not prompted or persuaded by another; done of his or its own accord; spontaneous; acting of one's self, or of itself; free. "Our voluntary service he requires." "She fell to lust a voluntary prey."
3.
Done by design or intention; intentional; purposed; intended; not accidental; as, if a man kills another by lopping a tree, it is not voluntary manslaughter.
4.
(Physiol.) Of or pertaining to the will; subject to, or regulated by, the will; as, the voluntary motions of an animal, such as the movements of the leg or arm (in distinction from involuntary motions, such as the movements of the heart); the voluntary muscle fibers, which are the agents in voluntary motion.
5.
Endowed with the power of willing; as, man is a voluntary agent. "God did not work as a necessary, but a voluntary, agent, intending beforehand, and decreeing with himself, that which did outwardly proceed from him."
6.
(Law) Free; without compulsion; according to the will, consent, or agreement, of a party; without consideration; gratuitous; without valuable consideration.
7.
(Eccl.) Of or pertaining to voluntaryism; as, a voluntary church, in distinction from an established or state church.
Voluntary affidavit or Voluntary oath (Law), an affidavit or oath made in an extrajudicial matter.
Voluntary conveyance (Law), a conveyance without valuable consideration.
Voluntary escape (Law), the escape of a prisoner by the express consent of the sheriff.
Voluntary jurisdiction. (Eng. Eccl. Law) See Contentious jurisdiction, under Contentious.
Voluntary waste. (Law) See Waste, n., 4.
Synonyms: See Spontaneous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Voluntary" Quotes from Famous Books



... my fancy so that consciously and deliberately I may try to imitate it. This is a clear case of voluntary imitation. Threading crowded city streets, I see a man crossing at a particular point and voluntarily follow in his path. In learning a new skating figure I watch an expert attentively and try to repeat his perform- ance. In writing letters or advertisements or magazine articles, I analyze the ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... to foster multinational cooperation and assistance, as a voluntary association that ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... His sufferings, and his alone, made atonement for sin. Then again no one can be compelled to take up the cross. There are burdens in life which cannot be evaded but one can refuse the cross. It is a type of the voluntary suffering endured for the sake of Christ; it is a symbol of the complete sacrifice of self and the complete submission to his will which is necessary for all who share in the redeeming benefits ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... my host, with, of course, all the delicacy which is ever to be preserved by a well-bred man in confiding to another any degree of favour by which one of the fair sex may condescend to distinguish him. Thus, at all events, I should be freed from responsibility or suspicion of voluntary participation in the sentiments of Zee; and the superior wisdom of my host might probably suggest some sage extrication from my perilous dilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the ordinary instinct of civilised and moral man, who, erring though he be, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... entered into voluntary relations with "the Party" was when he took his pen in hand and manufactured for the Brull weekly a series of articles on "Law and Morality" and "Liberty and Faith,"—the rehashings of a faithful, industrious plodder at school, prolix commonplaces ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... no suggestion in the teaching of Jesus, as recorded, of compelling individuals, authorities, or powers, to acknowledge God. The religion of Jesus is a voluntary acceptance of truth. "God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." There can be no compulsory life of the spirit, quickened by the source of life, light and love. The masculine idea of compelling a formal acknowledgment of God by the State ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... aristocracy. But, remarkably enough, the aristocracy has always reappeared. This measure of abolition showed that the nobility were no longer regarded as a real class, for to abolish a real class would be an absurdity. It is quite possible to contemplate a voluntary breaking up of the peasant or citizen class in the socialistic sense, but no man in his senses would think of straightway "abolishing" citizens and peasants. The aristocracy, then, was regarded as a sort of cancer, or excrescence of society. Nevertheless, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... many ways by which animals maintain their existence; and having done this we are prepared to consider the phenomena of what has been termed "mimicry." It is to be particularly observed, however, that the word is not here used in the sense of voluntary imitation, but to imply a particular kind of resemblance—a resemblance not in internal structure but in external appearance—a resemblance in those parts only that catch the eye—a resemblance that deceives. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... he declares that the question of the provision of elementary education is not one between its provision by the Government on the one hand, and its provision through voluntary agencies on the other. The full cost of the education of the children of the lower working classes in Great Britain as in other countries has never been wholly paid for out of the wages of the labourer, ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... the more violent counsels then in the ascendant, had received permission to retire from the royal court to his estate in the vicinity of Etampes.[1348] It was none the less an exile that it wore the appearance of a voluntary withdrawal. Birague discharged the real functions of the chancellor's office. Finally, after barely escaping a violent death in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, the chancellor received, in January, 1573, the formal order to give up the guardianship of the seals, which for more ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... cackling harem. To them he no doubt related, in the appropriate language of the bipeds with feathers, what a couple of sleepy-heads he had seen upon the piazza, and how he had startled them both with a voluntary upon his private organ. Meanwhile the Colonel had dropped back ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... enactment of a system of annuities for the families of deceased officers by voluntary deductions from the monthly pay of officers. This again is not attended with burden upon the Treasury, and would for the future relieve much distress which every old army officer has witnessed in the past—of officers ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... incendiaries of our own or any other nation may be permitted to disturb the natural effects of our just and friendly offices, we may render ourselves so necessary to their comfort and prosperity that the protection of our citizens from their disorderly members will become their interest and their voluntary care. Instead, therefore, of an augmentation of military force proportioned to our extension of frontier, I propose a moderate enlargement of the capital employed in that commerce as a more effectual, economical, and humane instrument ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the possession of the other hemisphere on the Pope's decision, Protestant ideas, which mocked at this supremacy of the Romish See over the world, now contributed also to impel men to occupy lands in these regions. This was always effected in the main by voluntary efforts of wealthy mercantile houses, or enterprising members of the court and state, to whom the Queen gave patents of authorisation. In this way Walter Ralegh, in his political and religious opposition to the Spaniards, founded an English colony on ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... condition and their moral composition as a class, the conduct of the clergy here appears just as revolting. The Irish clergy are generally sprung from the lowest class, and have received a bad education at Maynooth; they depend for subsistence upon the voluntary liberality or devotion of their people, they have few motives or principles of restraint, and every incentive to follow the shameful course which they do; but the English clergy are generally respectably born, well educated, and amply endowed, and yet they are content to be the ministers ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... the people which gave the future novelist his first practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge that he accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life and the towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile from England. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and they thought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles was continued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even to ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... exact proportion to the curtailment of communal autonomy, voluntary self-taxation was gradually supplanted by compulsory Government taxation, a circumstance which not only increased the financial burden of the Jewish masses, but also tended to aggravate it from a moral point of view. The "tax," as the meat tax was called for short, became in the course of time ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... Bartley returned to his home. Autumn was painting the trees about the place before the necessity of being at his father's side called him from his voluntary exile. And then he did not go to see Mima. He was still bowed with shame at what he thought his unmanly presumption, and he did not blame ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... utterly misliking her first entertainment. . . . The Spanish ships were filled with companies of soldiers, in some two hundred, besides the mariners; in some five, in other eight hundred. In ours there were none at all beside the mariners, but the servants of the commanders and some few voluntary gentlemen only." And yet the Spaniards "were still repulsed, again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own ships, or ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... his life, this killing himself vacates the bargain; This (as in England almost every thing begets a contradiction) has produced an office for insuring in spite of self-murder; but not beyond three hundred pounds. I suppose voluntary deaths were not the bon-ton. of people in higher life. A man went and insured his life, securing this privilege of a free-dying Englishman. He carried the insurers to dine at a tavern, where they met several other persons. After dinner he said to the life—and-death brokers, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... they pay to learn these steps from dancing-masters, there is unusually small value in the market, Miss Marigold. I resigned myself to the approach of the sunset years, and became a voluntary exile in the garden of the wallflowers, when ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... whom Milton does not mention. The next stage in his pilgrimage was the Eternal City, by this time resigned to live upon its past. The revenues of which Protestant revolt had deprived it were compensated by the voluntary contributions of the lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the centres of European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was well represented ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... highest method of forming great political bodies is that of federation. The element of fighting was essential in the two lower methods, but in this it is not essential. Here there is no conquest, but a voluntary union of small political groups into a great political group. Each little group preserves its local independence intact, while forming part of an indissoluble whole. Obviously this method of political union requires both high intelligence and high ethical development ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... connected with great industrial, shipping, or commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic amateurs who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian auxiliary to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a home of convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing for chance of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, good for anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit by hard riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... canal, may not be ruinous to a man. A man may fail and be quite as able a man as ever, as those who succeed; for human beings can do only so much and no more. Nothing that he has done or not done would alter the result. And he need not take the failure greatly to heart. But voluntary and heedless acts of folly, precipitate and unconsidered leaps in the dark, these indeed are ruinous. Oh, yes, they do the business. They become balls and chains. Leave him no choice or action. If it were only so simple as the game ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... forfeit his share of the inheritance. This was no new procedure. King Philip had taught its practice, nay not only the estates of countless innocent persons who had been executed, banished or gone into voluntary exile for the sake of the new religion, but also the property of good Catholic patriots had been confiscated for his benefit. After being anvil so many years, it is pleasant to play hammer; and if that was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of the late war proved but too abundantly that a man may be wounded in one part of the body and suffer from paralysis of voluntary motion in another part. Thus, a soldier struck in the neck fell unconscious, and on awaking was astonished to find his right arm powerless at his side. This is the so-called "reflex paralysis." Very commonly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... has been one of the principal places of resort in the South Seas. At the Sandwich Islands, the potent institution of the Taboo, together with the entire paganism of the land, was utterly abolished by a voluntary act of the natives some time previous to the arrival of the first missionaries ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... of his countrymen who have a dungeon-vault for feelings that should not be suffered to cry abroad, and into this oubliette he cast them, letting them feed as they might, or perish. It was his heart down below, and in no voluntary musings did he listen to it, to sustain the thing. Grimly lord of himself, he stood emotionless before the world. Some worthy fellows resemble him, and they are called deep-hearted. He was dungeon-deep. The prisoner underneath might ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... English country house, yet lacked the riches of the higher culture. Through two months of various trials Shelley remained on terms of great intimacy, visiting Godwin's house and constantly dining there. This was during his wife's voluntary withdrawal to Bath, from May—when he seems to have entreated her to be reconciled to him—till July, when she, in her turn, becoming anxious at a four days' cessation of news, wrote an imploring letter to Hookham, the Bond Street ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... joys you like," they cry; "We'd bear the loss, however much we missed 'em; Let truth and justice, fame and honour die, But spare, O spare, our Voluntary System!" ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and inextricable entanglement of speech and action as you would grow giddy in contemplating. We perform "A Roland for an Oliver," "A Good Night's Rest," and "Deaf as a Post." This kind of voluntary hard labour used to be my great delight. The furor has come strong upon me again, and I begin to be once more of opinion that nature intended me for the lessee of a national theatre, and that pen, ink, and paper have spoiled ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... memberships, after all, are only voluntary ones, not involuntary. They are assumed by man himself—the worldly associations on the ground of mutual interest; the spiritual associations on that of identity of opinions. They are not instituted by God, and nature, and fact, whether the man knows of them or not, likes them or not. They are ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... that this difficult matter of food administration can be successfully accomplished through the voluntary co-operation and direction of legitimate distributers of foodstuffs and with the help of ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... answered Mr. Juxon politely. The information was wholly voluntary as he had not asked any question concerning the ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... They accordingly despatched a force of six thousand men, with thirty galleys, leaving the city almost bare of defenders. This, then, was the moment for successful treachery. One Koutrilzakes, a Greek voluntary, secured the assistance of certain friends within the town. Either a subterranean passage was to be opened to the Greeks, or they were to be assured of friends upon the walls. Alexius, at dead of night, brought his army close to the city. At midnight, against a certain stipulated spot the scaling-ladders ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... mutual insurance companies attracted the attention of many trade unionists. The formation of insurance associations under the auspices of the national unions with a membership limited to the members of the unions was discussed in the most important organizations of the day. In many of them voluntary associations of one kind and another were inaugurated. The Granite Cutters, the Iron Molders and the Printers all experimented after this fashion. Only in the railway brotherhoods did these insurance systems develop ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy

... had been performed, the organ-blower observed to the organist, "I think we have performed mighty well to-day." "We performed!" answered the organist, "if I am not mistaken it was I that performed." Next Sunday, in the midst of a voluntary, the organ stopped all at once. The organist, enraged, cried out, "Why don't you blow?" The fellow, popping out his head, said, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... their occupation was ancient. Their withdrawal was probably gradual, and completed before the advent of the ancestors of the present tribes, or simultaneous with their arrival. It seems more likely that their retirement from the country was voluntary than that they were expelled by an influx of wild tribes. If their expulsion had been the result of a protracted warfare, all remembrance of so remarkable an event would scarcely have been lost among ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... satisfying measure, or not at all': Il faut que je me rejouisse au-dessus du temps ... quoique le monde ait horreur de ma joie et que sa grossierete ne sache pas ce que je veux dire. And the book is the history of a Thebaide raffinee—a voluntary exile from the world in a new kind of 'Palace of Art.' Des Esseintes, the vague but typical hero, is one of those half-pathological cases which help us to understand the full meaning of the word decadence, which ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... its angels to her. One might wonder what the town used her for, this inarticulate one—it made her a teacher because of her good memory. Then it regarded her as "good material." It sent its angels, those voluntary servants of the state, the acquaintances who call themselves friends. These at first approved of her, always misunderstood her, and at length despised her. They misunderstood her, because a person truly inarticulate was incomprehensible to them. Her naivete they mistook for insolence, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... would have failed to dismiss summarily both Seward and Chase. But, thanks to his magnanimous forbearance, Seward became not only useful to the country, but devotedly loyal to his chief. After Chase's voluntary retirement Lincoln appointed him Chief Justice. To his credit be it said that he adorned the judiciary, but he never did appreciate the man who saved him from oblivion, not to say disgrace. Up to the year 1862, his only personal knowledge of Stanton was ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... even in regard to matters which might appear trivial and unimportant. So, in the present day, GOD is willing to give to His people fulness of blessing, but it must be on His own lines. Though we are not our own, it is, alas! possible to live as though we were; devotion to GOD is still a voluntary thing; hence the differences of attainment among Christians. While salvation is a free gift, the "winning CHRIST" can only be through unreserved consecration and unquestioning obedience. Nor is this a hardship, ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor

... and all voluntary mental processes take place in the cerebrum, or brain, as we shall hereinafter call it. The brain is the headquarters of the nervous system—its "home office"—just as the stomach is the home office of the Alimentive system and the heart ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... No one whose opinion or judgment he cared about blamed him openly. It would have required some courage to do so. For Jacob was the rich man of the church, as he was of the town, and had much in his power in a community where voluntary offerings were depended upon as a means of covering all expenses. But the work commenced on the Varney place made matter for discussion among people who had not the motive for silence that existed among Jacob's ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... but indispensable aids and spurs to the attainment of the highest and most enjoyable things man is capable of. Political society, the life of men in states, is an abiding natural relationship. It is neither a mere convenience nor a mere necessity. It is not a mere voluntary association, not a mere corporation. It is nothing deliberate or artificial, devised for a special purpose. It is in real truth the eternal and natural expression and embodiment of a form of life higher than that of the individual—that common life of mutual ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson

... moral superiority, instead of dragging them under scourges and chains to misery and death, we shall then have accomplished a useful and a glorious enterprise; we shall have raised our commercial prosperity on the greatest interest of those who have been the voluntary instruments of it, and above all, we shall have expiated, by an immense benefit, this immense crime of the outrages, with which we ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... of it were to be reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy—for it implies much voluntary self-degradation—is mere popularity. Against all such low aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches the muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs on the public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... there is ahead of us a long hard test of strength and stamina, between the free world and the communist domain-our politics and our economy, our science and technology against the best they can do—our liberty against their slavery—our voluntary concert Of free nations against their forced amalgam of "people's republics"—our strategy against their strategy-our nerve ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... very amusing," replied the interpreter, "that their inability to speak should be regarded by any one as an affliction; for it is by the voluntary disuse of the organs of articulation that they have lost the power of speech, and, as a consequence, the ability even ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... had been voluntary. His work had come to a standstill; his waking hours were passed in a restless misery which threatened to make him ill. And to-night he had not dared to go to Ida; in his present state the visit could have but one result, and even yet he hoped that such a result might not ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... me is the threat of murder: it attaints the prerogative of chopping off the heads of Kings in a legal way. We here have been still more interested about a private history that has lately happened at Paris. It seems uncertain by your accounts whether Lady Mary Wortley is in voluntary or constrained durance - it is not at all equivocal that her son and a Mr. Taaffe have been in the latter at Fort LEvesque and the Chatelet.(286) All the letters from Paris have been very cautious of relating the circumstances. The outlines are, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... we had succeeded, my friend B. and I, in dispensing with almost three of our six months' engagement as Voluntary Drivers, Sanitary Section 21, Ambulance Norton Harjes, American Red Cross, and at the moment which subsequent experience served to capitalize, had just finished the unlovely job of cleaning and greasing (nettoyer is the proper word) the own private flivver of the chief of section, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... does not permit to men to maintain their opinions against women in society, this politeness, it may be said, is near akin to pride; we yield a victory of no importance; defeat does not humiliate when it is regarded as voluntary. Is it seriously believed that it would be the same in a public discussion on an important topic? Does politeness forbid the bringing of an action ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet

... England we should have no market at all." The patriots will not "part." "I'm sorry for you," said the kind old lady. "How much are you sorry?" said the tramp. Tried by this test, Irish patriotism comes out very small. If "patriot" members had to live on the voluntary offerings of their constituencies, the trade would expire of inanition. The members would return to their bogs, their tripe shops, their shebeens, and patriotism would become a lost art. Irishmen will applaud with enthusiasm. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... advantage of having a constant and important pursuit—viz. earning the necessaries and comforts of life; and when we consider the uneasiness of a life without any steady pursuit, and how slight is the influence that such as one merely voluntary has over most men, it seems certain that, as a general rule, we do not err in representing the necessity of labour as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... sort. Do not you know that this mighty man begs as it were with a drawn sword? Particularly this power (of the Crown), under guise of asking, really forces. Our English first attract with their gentle greetings, and then they force men with harshest compulsion to pay not what is voluntary but just what they choose to exact. They often compel unwilling folk to do what they know was once done spontaneously, either by this generation or the last. I have no cause to be mixed up in such dealings. These may please an earthly ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... sentences really belong to what we should now call 1303, when Dante had undoubtedly been in exile for some months, and this is corroborated by Benvenuto's statement, "bannitus fuit anno MCCCIII."—"bannitus" meaning, no doubt, "placed under ban," as distinct from voluntary exile. But it appears that Cante de' Gabrielli went out of office in June, 1302. So, unless we can suppose this last date to be wrong—and there is some little ground for suspecting it—we must assume that, though a Florentine official, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... 1914, a kind of profit-sharing plan in which the minimum wage for any class of work and under certain conditions was five dollars a day. At the same time we reduced the working day to eight hours—it had been nine—and the week to forty-eight hours. This was entirely a voluntary act. All of our wage rates have been voluntary. It was to our way of thinking an act of social justice, and in the last analysis we did it for our own satisfaction of mind. There is a pleasure in feeling that you have made others happy—that you have lessened in some degree ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... Lena was unhappy because of her inability to compete for the prize was strengthened when she saw her, and the other children were inclined to agree with her, for Lena seemed so little disposed to talk upon the subject that they were all convinced that it was a disagreeable one to her. The only voluntary allusion she made to it was when Maggie bade her good-by with the promise of a return after the matter had been decided; then she drew her down to her and whispered, "I hope you will have it, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... survival of the feudal relation, long before the humbler men had risen from the condition of status to that of contract, when fixed pay in the ordinary sense was unknown, and where the relation between servant and master was one of ostensible voluntary service and voluntary support, was for life, and in its best aspect was a relation of mutual dependence and kindness. Then the spasmodic payment was, as tips are now, essential to the upper man's dignity, and very especially to ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... superstiticus, 'cept when I'm gamblin', but of course I know the' 's such things as ghosts an' devils an' sich, an' I don't take no liberties with 'em. I screeched out, a "Great Scott! what's that?" My hands shut up voluntary, both my guns went off in the air, the rail broke, an' me an' Ches sort o' chuck-lucked to the ground. We didn't miss any limbs on the way down, nor the guns didn't neither. Every time they bumped a limb, they went off, an' it ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... of a colossal Venus, one of those artificial fools, those voluntary buffoons whose duty was to make kings laugh when Remorse or Ennui possessed their souls, muffled in a glaring ridiculous costume, crowned with horns and bells, and crouched against the pedestal, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... went to Naples to procure proofs. He has obtained them. They are chiefly living persons. He is bringing them to England, and their testimony will convict Mrs. Capella of some wrong-doing, either voluntary or involuntary. Holden knows what Capella has accomplished, and thinks it is unnecessary to remain longer in Naples. He is right. I tell you, Winter, I ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... school, continuation school, convent school, County Council school, government school, grant-in-aid school, high school, higher grade school, military school, missionary school, naval school, naval academy, state-aided school, technical school, voluntary school, school; school of art; kindergarten, nursery, creche, reformatory. pulpit, lectern, soap box desk, reading desk, ambo^, lecture room, theater, auditorium, amphitheater, forum, state, rostrum, platform, hustings, tribune. school book, horn book, text book; grammar, primer, abecedary^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... The price paid for his ticket is also enough to pay the cost of carrying his trunk or other baggage, therefore the carrier cannot escape paying for its loss when having possession of it on the ground that the service is purely voluntary and without compensation. As the company gets compensation it must pay for any loss while taking baggage from one place to another unless the loss or damage should be due to no fault or negligence of ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... my mind there is no reason on earth strong enough to account for voluntary silence. So ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... would not owe my life to a jealous court, Whose shallow policy I know it is, On some reluctant acts of prudent mercy, (Not voluntary, but extorted by the times, In the first tremblings of new-fixed power, And recollection smarting from old wounds,) On these to build a spurious popularity. Unknowing what free grace or mercy mean, They fear to punish, therefore do they pardon. For this cause have I oft forbid ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... I ask you to take into consideration the fact that by having ceased to shave you will in future be effecting a slight economy in your daily expenditure? Might I also suggest to you that during the remainder of the War you should make a voluntary contribution to the national exchequer of every shilling saved under this head? The total sum will not be large, but everything counts. Yours is, if I may be allowed to say so, the finest beard I have been instrumental in producing during my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various

... power of voluntary action with the muscles of the nose, and can move it horizontally, or to the right and left,—draw it up or protrude it,—so as to make it take any position they please. Painters have been provokingly deceived by this stratagem, and have in vain attempted the portraits of such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... understood and appreciated, came unprecedented good times. To all appearances, therefore, Jay's re-election in 1798 seemed assured by an increased majority, and the announcement that Chancellor Livingston was a voluntary rival proved something of a political shock.[81] For many years the relations between Jay and Livingston were intimate. They had been partners in the law, associates in the Council of Revision, colleagues in Congress, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... was awful, yet the Naya, surrounded by priestly dwarfs, stood regarding it with satisfaction. Such voluntary sacrifices to Zomara, were, to them, gratifying in ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... them, yes! But the imagination is not voluntary; it works to supply a necessity; its function is creation, and creation is needed only to fill a vacuum. The wild Arab, feeling his own insignificance, and comprehending the necessity for a Creating Power, finds between himself and that Power, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... two different distinct functions of the human mind. The active function performs the volitional, voluntary thinking. It is the conscious focusing of the mind on some mental problem. Banishing from the mind all thoughts and ideas not in harmony with your special subject of study implies Active Mentation. This function is used by the active, wide-awake man in his busy and energetic ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... prolonged his voluntary task beyond the prescribed time. His task accomplished, each one handed in turn to his panting companions the apparatus that supplied him with life. Captain Nemo set the example, and submitted first to this severe discipline. When the time came, he gave up his apparatus ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... religious exaltation is the practice of fasting. In various guises, this is the most persistent form of religious self-torture. Amongst more civilised people the reason given for fasting is that it is a form of repentance, the genuineness of which is attested by voluntary punishment. But originally there seems little reason to doubt that it was adopted for a different purpose. It was valued not because the fasting person felt that he had done anything for which it was necessary to repent, but because it was believed to bring people into closer touch with ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... self-scourging has been established in the Roman Catholic Church from time immemorial. In the religious orders, particularly those of the Capuchines, there were appointed days, such as Good Friday, on which a whipping, self-inflicted, was a rigorous obligation. Among devotees it is a voluntary act, except when imposed by the confessor by way of penance. The number of lashes depends on the time which it takes to pray the Miserere. The instrument employed is exactly the same as that known to the English as the ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... of this commission, and the difficulty of executing it in a satisfactory manner, were by no means lessened by the voluntary companionship of Mr. Bob Sawyer. Truth to tell, Mr. Pickwick felt that his presence on the occasion, however considerate and gratifying, was by no means an honour he would willingly have sought; in fact, he would cheerfully have given a reasonable sum of money to have had Mr. Bob Sawyer removed ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... delirium of its enthusiasm, this religion forbids a man to love himself. It commands him to hate all pleasures but those of religion, and to cherish a long face. It attributes to him as meritorious, all the voluntary evils he inflicts upon himself. From thence originate those austerites, those penances, destructive to health; those cruel privations by which the inhabitants of the monastic cell kill themselves by inches, in order to merit the joys of ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... how rapidly her newly awakened conscience was driving her along to a point where confession would become essential to her own peace of mind. But she had some distance yet to travel before she reached it, and as it happened she missed for ever the opportunity of making a voluntary confession of her misdeeds, for on the afternoon of the day on which Margaret left The Cedars, Mr. Anstruther made a totally unexpected appearance at ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... New York City. Here suddenly a new path, hitherto untrodden by his imagination, opened before him as a possibility. Judged by the standards used among his friends it was an undesirable road. It involved a voluntary sacrifice of that position of social prominence and leadership which he had striven so hard to secure. He resolved to put the thought ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... Except as the result of the Washington Conference, and by that to only a very limited extent, there has been almost no reduction or limitation of armaments by {2} international agreement since the war.[4] Such lessening of armaments as has taken place has been by voluntary ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... much. He was prepared for the worst by seeing Smith come along so soon. He listened to his story with an air of gentle sadness, even as a stern father might listen to the voluntary confession of a wayward child; then he held the bottle up to the fading light of departing day, looked through ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... were signs of real sorrow on most of the rough faces of the gathering, and tears flowed over the rugged cheeks that sun and wind and labor in the fields had tanned and wrinkled. The sentiment of voluntary kinship was easy to explain. There was not one in the place who had not pitied the unhappy creature, not one who would not have given him his daily bread. Had he not met with a father's care from every child, and found a mother in the merriest ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... king wished above all things to be admitted into Rome without resistance; that, an condition of a voluntary, frank, and loyal admission, he would respect the authority of the Holy Father and the privileges ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... slowly coming to be a city-dwelling animal. Although it is a voluntary process with him, he still usually visits the country with much enjoyment. He has not as yet learned to adapt himself thoroughly to the city, for somehow city life kills him. Families that move into the city gradually have a smaller number of children in each ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... established church in Virginia, and particularly with the very human dislike which even churchmen might have to paying in the form of a compulsory tax what they would have cheerfully paid in the form of a voluntary contribution. Perhaps the best modern defense of these laws is by A. H. Everett, in his Life of Henry, 230-233; but his statements seem to be founded on imperfect information. Wirt, publishing his opinion under the responsibility of his great professional and ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... societies of farmers and others interested in agriculture. These societies ought to be auxiliary to the county societies, and they never can become their rivals or enemies unless they are grossly perverted in their management and purposes. As such societies must be mutual and voluntary in their character, they can be established in any town where there are twenty, ten, or even five persons who are disposed to unite together. Its object would, of course, be the advancement of practical agriculture; and it would look to ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... superior to those which every reasonable man might imagine? They are divine solely because it is impossible for the human mind to discover their utility. They make virtue consist in a total renunciation of nature, in a voluntary forgetfulness of reason, a holy hatred of ourselves. Finally, these sublime precepts often exhibit perfection in a conduct, cruel to ourselves, ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... faculties, in proportion as they fail to realize such relations in their own region, have a similar incapacity. Insanity, in the broad sense, is involuntary error in a nature incapable of effectual enlightenment, and hence abnormal or diseased; but the state of error, whether more or less, whether voluntary or involuntary, whether curable or incurable, in itself is the same. To take an example from one sphere, in the moral world the criminal through ignorance of or distrust in or revolt from the supreme divine ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... affair. Meanwhile, Barney Corse and James S. Gibbons called upon Mr. Darg to inform him of the amount recovered and safely deposited in the bank, and to pay him the sum brought from Albany. Instead of giving the deed of manumission, which had been his own voluntary offer at the outset, and which he knew had been the impelling motive to exertion, Mr. Darg had two police-officers in an adjoining room to arrest Barney Corse for having stolen money in his possession. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... had to consist of soldiers, themselves highly trained in military organization, who had devoted their lives to this work as a profession. It takes many years in peace time to train such officers. Because they must be professional, they can only be recruited under a voluntary system. ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... before whom in youth a brilliant career in the world of Greek affairs opened; but, coming under the influence of Socrates, he resolved to give up all his prospects in politics and devote himself to philosophy. Upon the condemnation and death of his master he went into voluntary exile. In many lands he gathered knowledge and met with varied experiences. He visited Sicily, where he was so unfortunate as to call upon himself the resentment of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, through having worsted him in an argument, and also ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... exposed beyond all theory or controversy: and the religion of God has received a testimony as clear of its moral influence, by the atrocious acts of the Convention since it has been cast aside, as of its divine, in the voluntary sacrifices offered up at its shrine by those who still ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney

... same process which is today exalting national society into world society, and transforming simple civilization into enlightenment. Thus the evoluffon of social organization is from the simple and definite toward the complex and variable; or from the involuntary to the voluntary; or from the environment-shaped to the environment-shaping; or from ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... suddenly inspired with the instinct of a bird, and precipitated itself from a cliff, would not the descent be hazardously rapid?" Doubtless the animal would be no better supported than the objection. Darwin makes very little indeed of voluntary efforts as a cause of change, and even poor Lamarck need not be caricatured. He never supposed that an elephant would take such a notion into his wise head, or that a squirrel would begin with other than short and easy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... act were I to give the man ten rupees with which to procure an "outfit" suitable for one going to the north. "It's sometimes done, but not often enough to make it a custom," explained the agent; "but it would be the right thing—and because voluntary, the poor fellow should serve you all the better for your generosity. Give him but ten rupees, and see that he spends it all for ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... transition as death in its experience, furnishes us with a sufficient task in the mere ceaseless government and education which it requires, without our superadding to this difficult charge the culpability of infinite neglect, the absolute damage and injury and all the voluntary deterioration, sin, and sorrow ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... immediately commenced to repair the injury. So in all diseases, organic or functional, this mysterious healing power sets itself to work at once to triumph over the morbid condition.... Cannot this healing process be greatly accelerated by a voluntary and conscious action of the mind, assisted, if need be, by some other person? I unhesitatingly affirm, from experience and observation, that it can. By some volitional, mental effort and process of thought, this sanative ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... according to the UNHCR, about 150,000 Eritrean refugees in Sudan have registered for voluntary repatriation, following the restoration of diplomatic relations between Eritrea and Sudan ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... irritated when I told them of the deplorable condition of Jackson's family, and when I wondered that they had made no voluntary provision for the man. I was told that they thanked no one for instructing them in their social duties. When I asked them flatly to assist Jackson, they as flatly refused. The astounding thing about it was that they refused ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... could not have believed it. That the voluntary charity of Americans would count by millions yearly, would flow out in a steady, deep, increasing tide, that giving would be the rule, free, glad giving, and refusing the marked exception, the world would not have believed it, we would not have believed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... corners, where a dog could hardly hide. I now took in my hand the pole with the chisel fastened to it; but Makarov, with tears in his eyes, begged me not to defend myself, or injure any of the Japanese, for if I did so I would ruin not only us two, but all my companions, whilst by a voluntary surrender, we might all perhaps be saved. These words made such a deep impression on me, that I immediately struck my spear in the ground, and walked ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... but there is no voluntary Self-denial, which was the Thing you spoke of. The Mortifitation which they feel is like that of Vagabonds in a Work-House: There is no Virtue in the Confinement of either. Both are dissatisfied, without Doubt, but it is because they ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... open attraction of his Richard, Iago, Edmund, and others in particular. But again; of all intellectual power, that of superiority to the fear of the invisible world is the most dazzling. Its influence is abundantly proved by the one circumstance, that it can bribe us into a voluntary submission of our better knowledge, into suspension of all our judgment derived from constant experience, and enable us to peruse with the liveliest interest the wildest tales of ghosts, wizards, genii, and secret talismans. On this propensity, so deeply rooted ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... latter certainly possessed many admirable qualities, quickness of comprehension and patient stubbornness of will and strength to draw conclusions and act. Of all his powers, however, that of intuition was certainly the most wonderful, for was it not this alone which, owing to his voluntary imprisonment, enabled him to divine the vast evolution of humanity at the present day? He was thus keenly conscious of the dangers surrounding him, of the rising tide of democracy and the boundless ocean of science which threatened to submerge the little islet where ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... the jealousy of the men. Admitting this to have been the case, the Chinese must be allowed to be well versed in the management of the sex, to have so far gained the ascendancy over them, as to prevail upon them to adopt a fashion, which required a voluntary relinquishment of one of the greatest pleasures and blessings of life, the faculty of locomotion; and to contrive to render this fashion so universal that any deviation from it should be considered as disgraceful. The desire of being thought superior to the rest of his fellows sometimes, indeed, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... flatter ourselves that we enjoy independence because no foreign power can impose laws upon us, we are groaning beneath the tyranny of opinion,—a tyranny more severe than the laws of monarchs; a dominion, voluntary, indeed, but, for that reason, more effectual; an authority of manners, which commands our services, and sweeps away the fruits of ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... School of Medicine, and some years later was sent to Lahore, where he also established a medical school. After twenty years' service he was discharged with a considerable pension. His return to Europe falling in with the outbreak of the war, he hastened to offer his voluntary services to the army as surgeon. Owing to temperate habits and a strong physique, he had kept in good health, and no one would have dreamed that this strong, fifty-year-old man had passed so many years in an enervating tropical climate. The only signs ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... less wheat, meats, fats and sugar in order that more might be exported to the Allies. Millions of housewives hung cards in their windows to indicate that they were cooperating with the United States Food Administration. "Wheatless" and "meatless" days were set apart. These voluntary efforts were supplemented by government regulation, and dealers in food products were compelled to take out federal licenses which enabled the Administration to control their operations and to prevent prices from going to panic levels. The Food Administration ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... Hatton-garden, died John of Gaunt. Brook House, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brook, the 'friend of Sir Philip Sydney.' In the same street, died, by a voluntary death, of poison, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various

... organised bodies, and one of their most important characteristics is that membership of them depends on birth, not on the choice of the individual. In modern society, on the other hand, associations of this sort have entirely disappeared and man is grouped in voluntary societies, membership of which depends on his ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... other hands then his own, unlesse it be those of Artists, or others whom he hires, and whom the hope of profit (which is a very powerfull motive) might cause exactly to do all those things he should appoint them: For as for voluntary persons, who by curiosity or a desire to learn, would perhaps offer themselves to his help, besides that commonly they promise more then they perform, and make onely fair propositions, whereof none ever succeeds, they would infallibly ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes

... time for performing it, is late in the Fall, when there is but little brood in the hive; or about ten days after the voluntary or forced departure of a first swarm from the old stock. By this time, the brood left by the old queen, will all be sealed over, and old enough to bear exposure, especially as the weather, at swarming ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... the Bench because it annoyed him, and because he held the very human but not legitimate belief that some criminals would be better off with a trip to the seaside than with a sentence of imprisonment. After his retirement from public life he stuck to his old trade as the judge of a Voluntary Criminal Court. "My criminals were tried for the faults which really make social life impossible. They were tried before me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, or for scandal-mongering, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... young men, and condemned to return them within a year, or to furnish a legal certificate of their death, on pain of one thousand livres, with exemplary punishment.[G] It is imagined that these young voluntary Huguenot exiles emigrated to Massachusetts, from the fact that the same year when this strange cause was tried in France, Jean Touton, a French doctor, requested from the authorities of that colony the privilege of sojourning there. This favor was immediately granted; and from that ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... across the heath, leaving Bertram in some perplexity as to the course he ought to adopt. He was aware that the most favourable step to the establishment of his own innocence would be to disclaim all voluntary participation in the late rescue by surrendering himself again to the officers of justice. Yet he could not but feel that to retrace his steps to Ap Gauvon was a matter of peril or impossibility under any state of the weather: and at this moment the threatening aspect of the sky, over which ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... Lessons for Children (p. 68, ed. of 1878). Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 16), speaking of books for children says:—'Mrs. Barbauld had his best praise; no man was more struck than Mr. Johnson with voluntary descent from possible splendour to painful duty.' Mrs. Piozzi alludes to Johnson's praise of Dr. Watts:—'Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action, will look with veneration on the writer, who is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... with a glimpse at the great town-world on Saturday; they have their loafers and their rascals; but the great mass of them work continuously and faithfully for a return, and under circumstances that would call forth equal voluntary effort from few if any other modern laboring class. Over eighty-eight per cent of them—men, women, and children—are farmers. Indeed, this is almost the only industry. Most of the children get their schooling after the "crops are laid by," and very few there ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... first established in Duck Lane, and was instituted by Thomas Jekyll, D.D., one of the chaplains of the Broadway Chapel. It is said to have been the first school in the Metropolis supported by voluntary contributions. It was at first for boys only, but in 1713 twenty girls were included in the scheme, but these were afterwards dispersed and only the boys retained. Westminster was exceptionally rich ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... of inquiring knowledge in Anticipations. That I call Anticipations the voluntary collections that the mind maketh of knowledge; which is every man's reason. That though this be a solemn thing, and serves the turn to negotiate between man and man (because of the conformity and participation of men's minds in the like errors), yet towards inquiry of ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... increased our numbers a little, and decreased our standard a good deal. The reason that this system, which is so well adapted to continental requirements, confers no advantages upon us is obvious. Our army is recruited by a voluntary system. Short service and conscription are inseparable. For this reason, several stern soldiers advocate conscription. But many words will have to be spoken, many votes voted, and perhaps many blows struck before the British people would submit to such an abridgment ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... ceases to be a passion; it cannot be so completely achieved that it ceases to be accepted or endured. And in this last aspect of it the original character which it bore in relation to sin still makes itself felt. Transfigure it, as it may be transfigured, by courage, by devotion, by voluntary abandonment of life for a higher good, and it remains nevertheless the last enemy. There is something in it monstrous and alien to the spirit, something which baffles the moral intelligence, till the truth dawns upon us that for all our race sin and death are aspects of one ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... Yogi practises Pratyahara, a kind of voluntary trance, which is recognizable by the full suspension of all the senses. After this stage the Yogis study the process of Dharana; this not only stops the activity of physical senses, but also causes the mental capacities to be plunged into a deep torpor. This stage brings abundant suffering; ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... distinguished from the indirect part we take in government through representatives. A man's duty as citizen does not end with the ballot-box, or with the election of members either to the national or local council. A great part of the business of the nation is carried on by the voluntary efforts of its members. There are men and women that have no part in representative government, who yet can discharge nobly the duties of citizenship. (a) All can take a part in forming a healthy public opinion. This is done in all free countries in various ways: through the press, through ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... historian) he was denied even the necessaries of life; and though, because of the ill treatment he met with, he was brought almost to the gates of death, yet he could not have the benefit of the free air until he signed a bond obliging himself to a voluntary banishment, and that ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... was both natural and powerful, her principal concern was the arrangement of her own conduct: the next day Miss Belfield was to tell her every thing by a voluntary promise; but she doubted if she had any right to accept such a confidence. Miss Belfield, she was sure, knew not she was interested in the tale, since she had not even imagined that Delvile was known ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... a final sweep of the wonderful view of plain and city and ocean, and so ended our visit to the garden and the Towers of Silence; and the last thing I noticed was another symbol—a voluntary symbol this one; it was a vulture standing on the sawed-off top of a tall and slender and branchless palm in an open space in the ground; he was perfectly motionless, and looked like a piece of sculpture on a pillar. And he had a mortuary look, too, which was in keeping ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... penetrating critic of those which he knew, discerned this vein of true feeling in his friend's work, and has idealized a small landscape which Sir George had given him, in a sonnet which reproduces the sense of happy pause and voluntary fixation with which the mind throws itself into some scene where ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... Tragedy passed, and the authors of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actors,—these and other similar details remain unknown. As for the plot, it came originally ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... forms in which all visible connection with the originals is lost. The agencies through which this result is accomplished are chiefly the mechanical restraints of the art acting independently of voluntary modification and without direct ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... hereditary predisposition to consumption. If it is systematically practised along with other means of health, we would guarantee any child, no matter how many relatives have died of this disease, against its invasion. It is voluntary inspiration. Nothing is more simple. Let her stand erect, throw the shoulders well back, and the hands behind; then let her slowly inhale pure air to the full capacity of the lungs, and retain it a few seconds by an increased effort; then it may ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... he stayed a quarter of an hour and then he stayed longer, and during this time his appreciation of what she had in her mind gathered force. She showed him that precious quantity clearly enough, though she showed it by no clumsy, no voluntary arts. It looked out of her sombre, conscious eyes and quavered in her preoccupied, perfunctory tones. She took an extravagant interest in his future proceedings, the probable succession of events in his career, the different honours ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... our modern jurors, who are only judges of the testimony given. With this assize too a practice which had prevailed from the earliest English times, the practice of "compurgation," passed away. Under this system the accused could be acquitted of the charge by the voluntary oath of his neighbours and kinsmen; but this was abolished by the Assize of Clarendon, and for the fifty years which followed it his trial, after the investigation of the grand jury, was found solely in the ordeal or "judgement of God," where innocence ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... blessings, natural and spiritual, are enjoyed by us only in the degree of our free and voluntary cooeperation with the intentions of the Divine Giver. No good thing is forced upon us, and nothing that we ought to have is withheld if we put forth the power granted us to obtain it. The atmosphere surrounds ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... been awakened at the beginning of the century was not sustained. The population of the country had far outgrown the resources of the National Church, even if her ministers had been as energetic as they were generally the reverse; and there were no voluntary societies for home missions to supply the defects of the parochial machinery. The good old plan of catechising not only children but domestic servants and apprentices on Sunday afternoons had fallen into disuse.[680] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... of the ancient Germans has the appearance of a voluntary alliance of independent warriors. The tribes of Scythia, distinguished by the modern appellation of Hords, assume the form of a numerous and increasing family; which, in the course of successive generations, has been propagated from the same original ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... however, it seems, has demonstrated (though it was not directly our object at the moment to inquire whether anything can be called an evil except what is base) that it is in our power to discern that all the evil which there is in affliction has nothing natural in it, but is contracted by our own voluntary judgment of it, and the error ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... on one side. How differently they acted when the Gospel began to touch their hearts! They built their Church and their Schools then, by their own free toil, rejoicing to labor without money or price; and they have ever since kept them in good repair, for the service of the Lord, by their voluntary offerings of wood and ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... eye generally incident to childhood or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. In some that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or summon them; or as a child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, "I can tell them to go, and they go; but sometimes they come when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told him that he had almost ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... influence of the Whigs and Dissenters. More than a hundred constituent bodies had been deprived of their charters by tribunals devoted to the crown, or had been induced to avert compulsory disfranchisement by voluntary surrender. Every Mayor, every Alderman, every Town Clerk, from Berwick to Helstone, was a Tory and a Churchman: but Tories and Churchmen were now no longer devoted to the sovereign. The new municipalities were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... period of land development running its course between 1909 and our entrance into the World War in 1917. The people were land crazy. The western fever became an epidemic that spread like a prairie fire. Day by day we watched the vast, voluntary migration ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... husbands at specified times on the floor below the men's quarters, whither man and woman were duly and separately conducted by plantons. In this case no charges had been preferred against the women; they were voluntary prisoners, who had preferred to freedom this living in proximity to their husbands. Many of them had children; some babies. In addition there were certain femmes honnettes whose nationality, as in the case of the men, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... for our ills, it is, no doubt, fitting to examine through what phases of consent, through what voluntary falls the creature has passed, before ending in the gloomy disaster it deplores. We may well curse the vices of our ancestors and our own passions which beget the greater part of the woes from which we suffer; we may well loathe the civilization which ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... he felt conscious of deserving applause more ardent than any which he had yet obtained. He was, probably, not pleased to find that his journal of the siege of Calvi did not appear, as perhaps it ought to have done, in the Gazette; nor even the letter in commendation of his voluntary coadjutors, which he had sent to Lord Hood. His lordship, however, it is but just to remark, could by no means be considered as accountable for these omissions, as he certainly transmitted both these documents ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... with those who have formed wrong habits of breathing, is to take a voluntary breath before coming into action. This of course defeats the whole thing. Again, the tendency of beginners or of those who have formed wrong habits, is to sing before finding the level of the tone through the movements, or to start the tone ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer

... Evening Voluntary,' I know—one of his finest and truest and deepest poems. It begins, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... only granted to the King religious houses which possessed an endowment of less than two hundred pounds a year; the dissolution of the greater monasteries was now gradually effected by a process of more or less voluntary surrender. In some cases the monks may have been willing enough to go; they were loaded with debt, and harassed by rules imposed by Cromwell, which would have been difficult to keep in the palmiest days ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... the great Caliph, particularly in the sultanate of Egypt. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was destroyed. Other Christian buildings shared the same fate. Then as now, the Jews had to suffer from suspicions created by their voluntary segregation as well as by their forced isolation. The Christians in France heard that the French Jews had sent word to the Sultan Hakim that a great Christian invasion of the Holy Land was intended. This led to a revenge, the justice of which in any ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell

... invariable manner upon the surface of water, and especially upon mercury, it is necessary to take precautions in regard to cleanliness, this being something that we have purposely neglected to mention to our readers. For we wished, through this voluntary omission, to stimulate their sagacity by bringing them face to face with difficulties that they will perhaps have succeeded in overcoming, with causes of error that they will have perceived, and the principal one of which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... a rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to my intelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly contraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me that the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as it still stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by, an emblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but an accident; that pain is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the great organ with a brave but serious spirit. The bell ceased tolling; the minister entered; and Jonas pressed his slight fingers upon the first chord of the voluntary, which, extemporaneous as it was, may be considered the corner-stone ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... aware I had ever requested any help from Mr. Winston," she returned clearly, her slight form held erect. "Your following after Albrecht was entirely voluntary, but I naturally presumed the money you brought back belonged to me. You said it did, and hence I supposed it could be disposed ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... surrender, the surrender is either voluntary or under compulsion; voluntary, when the citizens appeal to you for protection against some threatened danger from without, as Capua submitted to the Romans; or where they are moved by a desire to be better governed, and are attracted by the good government which he to whom they surrender ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... Abraham (who attended the gentlemen), and all their ladyships' servants, and their two women, were there; which pleased me, however, because it shewed, that even the strangers, by this their second voluntary attendance, had no ill opinion of the service. But they were all startled, ours and theirs, to see ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... March 10, 1871, after his voluntary exile. He soon yielded to a painful disease, doubtless regretting that he had not finished his work, but courageous ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... us herein, it had been much more expedient to have told us what was unlawful than what was wearisome. As for the burning of those Ephesian books by St. Paul's converts; 'tis replied the books were magic, the Syriac so renders them. It was a private act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a voluntary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books which were their own; the magistrate by this example is not appointed; these men practised the books, another might perhaps have read them in ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... a storm on Palapag (north coast of Samar); and I personally had the opportunity, in Manila, of photographing a company of Palaos and Caroline islanders, who had been the year before cast on the coast of Samar by foul weather. Apart from the question of their transport, whether voluntary or not, these simply were six examples, such as still occur occasionally, of Micronesians cast up on the shore of the Philippines; and probably it would not be difficult to find several more; but how often, both before and after the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... prooued and the benefites to all most apparant, let vs no longer neglect our happines, but like Christians with grilling and voluntary spirits labour without fainting for ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... chance remark of May's spoken at Joseph Fenton's funeral, the only occasion on which he had met any of the Griersons since the interview at Walter's office, had shown him that the family would welcome his departure, that it even regarded voluntary exile as the proper course for him to take under the circumstances, and, if only for that reason, he determined to stay. Probably he would have stayed in any case, for, though he had cut himself adrift from Lalage, had never seen her since she left London, and heard from her but seldom—brief, gentle ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... lustrous flickering patterns on the snowy whiteness of the marble altar, and slowly, softly, majestically, as though an angel stepped forward, the sound of music stole on the incense-laden air. The unseen organist played a sublime voluntary of Palestrina's, and the round harmonious notes came falling gently on one another like drops from a fountain trickling ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli



Words linked to "Voluntary" :   unforced, war machine, willful, intended, military, military man, conscious, involuntary, uncoerced, physiology, draftee, willing, military volunteer, serviceman, volunteer, man, wilful, self-imposed, unpaid, military machine, armed forces, military personnel, freewill, solo, armed services



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