"Free spirit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the royal prerogatives, particularly with regard to purveyance, and the levying of the ancient feudal aids for knighting the king's eldest son, and marrying his eldest daughter. The new parliament, called by the guardian, retained the same free spirit; and though they offered a large supply of thirty thousand sacks of wool, no business was concluded; because the conditions which they annexed appeared too high to be compensated by a temporary concession. But when Edward himself came over to England, he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... sacrament naked, according to the statement quoted by St. Augustine, seem to have caused little scandal so long as they only practiced nudity in their sacred ceremonies. The German Brethren of the Free Spirit, in the thirteenth century, combined so much chastity with promiscuous nakedness that orthodox Catholics believed they were assisted by the Devil. The French Picards, at a much later date, insisted on public nakedness, believing that God had sent their leader into the world as a new Adam to reestablish ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... her at the moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But gradually the captive's gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit quivered for flight. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... of repressing it. The broken and contrite heart is the heart of which the hard complexes have been shattered by sorrow and love, and their elements brought up into consciousness and faced: and only the self which has endured this, can hope to be established in the free Spirit. It is ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... had Timothy said? He had had a fit after Majuba. These Boers were a grasping lot! The dark-haired Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious touch which became the free spirit of a daughter of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to consider is the form of life, not its quantity. In a world that is perhaps infinite, moral life can spring only from definite centres and is neither called upon nor able to estimate the whole, nor to redress its balance. It is the free spirit of a part, finding its affinities and equilibrium in the material whole which it reacts on, and which it is in ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... seen in this hymn to a king: "Firm is the sky; firm is the earth; firm, all creation; firm, these hills; firm the king of the people (shall be)," etc.[4] In another hymn there is an incantation to release from possible ill coming from a foe and from inherited ill or sin.[5] A free spirit of doubt and atheism, already foreshadowed in the Rig Veda, is implied in the prayer that the god will be merciful to the cattle of that man "whose creed is 'Gods exist.'"[6] Serpent-worship is not only known, but prevalent.[7] The old gods still hold, as always, their nominal ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... England, so also is democracy, and all those elements in the national life which feed and sustain it. British democracy does not depend upon our popular franchise or on any legal rights or enactments. It depends upon the free spirit and self-respect of the British people. We have been accustomed for centuries to the unrestrained discussion of public affairs; and we treat our governors as being in fact, as they are in name, our "ministers" or servants. There is a force called public opinion which, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... "Here the free spirit of mankind at length Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's untamed strength, Or curb its swiftness in the forward race? Far, like the comet's way through infinite space, Stretches the long ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... sakes with that which belongs only to the truth, that we become such fools of logic and temper that we lie in the prison-houses of our own fancies, ideas, and experiences, shut the doors and windows against the entrance of the free spirit, and will not inherit the love ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... of gipsy blood, Sir John,' repeated Gabriel, 'and had a high, free spirit. This, and her good looks, and her lofty manner, interested some gentlemen who were easily moved by dark eyes; and efforts were made to save her. They might have been successful, if she would have given them any clue to her history. But she never would, or did. There was reason to suspect ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... My son," he thus began, "was without love, Or natural, or the free spirit's growth. Thou hast not that to learn. The natural still Is without error; but the other swerves, If on ill object bent, or through excess Of vigour, or defect. While e'er it seeks The primal blessings, or with measure due Th' inferior, no delight, that flows ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... must perforce Leave him in wardship to his innocence. His young and open soul—dissimulation Is foreign to its habits! Ignorance Alone can keep alive the cheerful air, The unembarrassed sense and light free spirit, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... allowed; "a pretty taste for music and singing she has, is a friend of poets and such like. The antechamber is full of them; and there they are—on promotion, you understand. But though she has a wonderful free spirit, she is no beauty, you must know. Her mouth is too big, and her eyes are too small. It is a kissing mouth, as we say, my dear, and a speaking eye—and there you have Madama ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... book of the Theodosian code represents, under a variety of titles, the authority which they assumed in the government of the Catholic church. But the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers, [81] which had never been imposed on the free spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced and confirmed by the legal establishment of Christianity. The office of supreme pontiff, which, from the time of Numa to that of Augustus, had always been exercised by one of the most eminent of the senators, was at length united ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... began to use their tunes, they, too, buried them beyond recognition in the contrapuntal mass. The people were invited to sing paraphrases of the psalms to familiar tunes, it is true, but the choir's polyphony went far to stifle the spirit of the melody. Soon the free spirit which I have repeatedly referred to as Romanticism, and which was powerfully encouraged by the Reformation, prompted a style of composition in which the admired melody was lifted into relief. This could ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... forth, in his awful agony of sin, and in God's redemption for him—set him forth independent of kings and rulers, and in whose sight a king was but God's vassal. When Englishmen had to come in contact with John Calvin, the iron of his free spirit became steel, and then Puritanism was born, and at that time God raised the curtain that hung over a whole hemisphere, and gave that hemisphere to these free Teutonic English people. We know how they conquered the country for this free spirit, and how the Revolutionary War came on, and ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... his career a tragic weakness of will takes possession of Coleridge, making it impossible for him, with all his genius and learning, to hold himself steadily to any one work or purpose. He studied in Germany; worked as a private secretary, till the drudgery wore upon his free spirit; then he went to Rome and remained for two years, lost in study. Later he started The Friend, a paper devoted to truth and liberty; lectured on poetry and the fine arts to enraptured audiences in London, until his frequent failures to meet his ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... extraordinary work, perhaps the last Rembrandt painted, is modelled with prodigious vigour and freedom. With superb audacity, the master shows us once more the familiar features, on which age and sorrow have worked their will. They are distorted, disfigured, almost unrecognisable. But the free spirit is still unbroken. The eyes that meet ours are still keen and piercing; they have even the old twinkle of good-humoured irony, and the toothless mouth relaxes in frank laughter. What was the secret ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... sovereignty. Gothic and other chiefs gave themselves the name of Roman patricians. Thus, superficially, the German world appears to be a continuation of the Roman. But there dwelt in it an entirely new spirit—the free spirit which reposes ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... that no grammar, and least of all that derived from the prim, meager Latin contingent of it, is adequate to legislate for the free spirit of our magnificent tongue. Again, if this is ever done and English ever has a grammar that is to it what Latin grammar is to that language, it will only be when the psychology of speech represented, e.g., in Wundt's Psychologie ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Branch was a free spirit in a free land, a doer rather than a thinker, more concerned with the "hows" than the "whys" of survival. This practical approach to problems can be seen in the homes he built, the tools he made, ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... the advancement, through her greatness, of the surrounding nations. He was anxious that all should benefit by her commercial prosperity and the blessings of her constitution. Perhaps no minister was ever more thoroughly influenced by the free spirit of the British constitution than he was, at least in the latter part of his career. He began life, indeed, on Tory principles; but he gradually imbibed that spirit, until at length he threw off the trammels of that oligarchy, and acted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... saw him next condemned To meet a traitor's doom at morn; The tide of lying tongues I stemmed, And honored him midst shame and scorn. My friendship's utmost zeal to try, He asked if I for him would die; The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill, But the free spirit ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... time had come when he could tell her all, it was a harder thing to do than he had thought. If she withdrew from him now—what would she do after she had learned? Yet he must do this to be a free man, to be even a free spirit. There must be no more shadows between them, not ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly—the magnificent turn of the short upper lip—the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under—the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke—the teeth glancing back, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... eyes. During the day he remarked to me, 'I prayed for the teachings of God's Holy Spirit that I might be made wise unto salvation; that he would lift upon me the light of his countenance, and uphold me with his free Spirit; give me more light that I may tell around what a precious Savior I have found. I say, Precious Savior, wash me in thine own blood, and make me one of thine own children. I come to thee just as I am, a ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... unharmed the fiery furnace seven time heated. He who was with them was surely with thee; and the Angel of Death hath bidden thee come forth, naught harmed by the fire, save the bonds of flesh which thy free spirit hath left behind. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... nor the red-bearded officer replied, but the former waved his hand, and the two sailors who had led Lancey to the cabin again seized him and led him away, more roughly than before. The free spirit of my poor servant resented this unnecessary rudeness, and he felt a strong inclination to fight, but discretion, or some faint remembrance of scimitars and ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... new form given to the old idea of the Empire. It was further necessary that the modern nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages should be formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth accumulated, before the indispensable conditions for a resurrection of the free spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation which fulfilled these conditions was the first to inaugurate the new era. The reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy possessed a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... of world conquest by Soviet Russia endangers our liberty and endangers the kind of world in which the free spirit of man can survive. This threat is aimed at all peoples who strive to win or defend their own freedom and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... met with a case in which the results of true culture, an open mind and a free spirit, have become apparent amongst them. Even Mendelssohn, whose manifold gifts had been cultivated most assiduously, never got over a certain anxious timidity; and in spite of all his well-merited successes, he remained outside the pale of ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a cheerful, willing, free spirit, disposed to serve our neighbour voluntarily, without taking any account of gratitude or ingratitude, praise or blame, gain or loss. Its object is not to lay men under obligations, nor does it distinguish between friends ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther |
