"Free will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their followers in every age; and, until a very recent period, all who wished to "point a moral or adorn a tale," about unreasoning ambition, extravagant pride, and the formidable frenzies of free will when leagued with free power, have never failed to blazon forth the so-called madman of Macedonia as one of the most glaring examples. Without doubt, many of these writers adopted with implicit credence traditional ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... from here of your own free will, that it may not be said that Monsieur Desroches has dismissed you. You have been careless or absent-minded, and neither of those defects can pass here. The master shall know nothing about the matter; that is all that I can do for ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... what I was doing, Squire Carne, when they wanted to make a slave of me? I would serve King George with a good heart, in spite of all that father has said against it. But it must be with a free will, Squire Carne, and not to be tied hand and foot to it. How would you like ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Bowbearer," in 1787, stated to the Commissioners that he claimed by virtue of his office to be entitled to the right shoulder of all bucks and does killed within the Forest, and also to ten fee bucks and ten fee does, annually to be there killed and taken at his own free will and pleasure, with licence to hawk, hunt, fish, and fowl within the Forest." As bowbearer, it was his duty "to attend His Majesty with a bow and arrow, and six men clothed in green, whenever His Majesty shall be pleased to hunt within the said Forest." Edmund ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... ceremony of "coming to scratch". When time was called for the second round the brindled dog was let loose in his own corner, and was required by the rules to go across the ring of his own free will and attack the other dog. If he failed to do this he would lose the fight. The white dog, meanwhile, was held in his corner waiting the attack. After the next round it was the white dog's turn to make the attack, and so on alternately. The ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... steam is valuable, and noise onpolite. They call it a "subdued tone." Poor tame things, they are subdued, that's a fact; slaves to an arbitrary tyrannical fashion that don't leave 'em no free will at all. You don't often speak across a table any more nor you do across a street, but p'raps Mr. Somebody of West Eend of town, will say to a Mr. Nobody from West Eend of America: 'Niagara is noble.' Mr. Nobody will say, 'Guess it is, it got its patent afore the "Norman Conquest," ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Camilla said to her, "I am ashamed to think, my dear Leonela, how lightly I have valued myself that I did not compel Lothario to purchase by at least some expenditure of time that full possession of me that I so quickly yielded him of my own free will. I fear that he will think ill of my pliancy or lightness, not considering the irresistible influence he brought to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 'ligious man en he let us go ter chuch. He willed land fer a culled chuch at Thompson Station. I 'longs ter de foot washin' Baptist, called de Free Will Baptist. De marster bought mah husband William Gray en ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... to do? I could not explain to my fellow-passengers, as I have explained to you, my reason for Ramsgate. So long as the label was there, I had to rest under the hideous suspicion of having gone there for pleasure, gone of my own free will. I did rest under it during the next two or three journeys. But the injustice of my position maddened me. At length, a too obvious sneer on the face of a fellow-passenger steeled me to a resolve that I would, for once, break my rule against obliteration. On the return journey, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... euphoniously termed Benevolences. Magna Charta forbade the king to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. But Henry did not like to convene Parliament, as he wished to rule like the kings of the Continent, guided simply by his own free will. Furthermore, his title not being above question, it was his policy to relieve the poorer classes of the burden of tax-paying, in order to secure their good-will and support. So Benevolences were made to take the place of regular taxes. These were nothing more ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... own method of reconciling foreordination and free will. To Advena his supplication came with that mysterious double emphasis of chance words that fit. Her thought played upon them all through the sermon, rejecting and rejecting again their application and their argument and the spring of hope ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... gaze with stupid awe—then turn to the window, and attempt to repress his sobs—return again—and refuse to credit his bereavement. Surely the hand moved? No! of its free will shall it never move more! The eye! was there not a slight convulsion ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Napoleonic militarism was not crushed at Waterloo and revived in 1849, because Napoleon still retained the allegiance of the French people. It is inconceivable that the German reactionaries will abdicate of their own free will. It is equally inconceivable that the reaction will develop slowly and gradually into a free democratic government, as von Bethmann-Hollweg would make us believe in the historic speech of February 27. No doubt this war has hastened on the day ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... of Rys, you are among your own people once again," he said. "From everywhere in the world they have come to show their love for you. You would not have come to them of your own free will, because a madness 'got hold of you, and so they came to you. You cut yourself off from them and told yourself you had become a Gorgio. But that was only your madness; and madness can be cured. We are the Fawes, the ancient Fawes, who ruled the Romany people before the Druses ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... answered: 'For fear of what may befall us, the sons of Usna, shalt thou never leave us, nor shalt thou go forth from us, but of thine own free will.' ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... about. Yes, after all, he would take the ragged, fuzzy cloth dog that Kathleen had insisted on giving him. The dog had lost an ear, a forepaw and one eye; still he cherished it because Kathleen had given it to him of her own free will, something that Danny nor Chris nor Celia Jane nor ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... Post Office was the most trying one to Quincy. Of his own free will he would not have called either Huldy or Lindy, but Strout and Abner and all the rest of them had letters for both of these young ladies. He was afraid that his failure to call them out might lead to remark, as he knew that Strout and Abner and Robert Wood were watching ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... flaming monster, it seemed; but, as he watched, he saw that the huge circle whirled ever faster and faster, and that up and down on the flame of it coloured horses rose and fell, vanishing from light to darkness, from darkness to light, and seeming of their own free will and motion to dance to ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... she was not sent off to Jersey," said Roderick grimly. "She left home of her own free will; because she could not hit it with ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... enthusiasm of those Catholic Princes who had been taught to look on the insurrection of the Irish as a species of Crusade. Remonstrances, warm, eloquent, and passionate, were poured in upon the most influential members of the Supreme Council, from those who had either by delegation, or from their own free will, befriended them abroad. These remonstrances reached that powerful body at Waterford, at Limerick, or at Galway, whither they had gone on an official visitation, to hear complaints, settle controversies, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... had been the Empress of the French, the Queen of Italy, the Regent of a vast empire, was in her father's presence merely a humble and docile daughter, who told him everything, obeyed him in everything, who abdicated her own free will, and promised, even swore, to entertain no other ideas or wishes than such as agreed ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... I must do so. I am in great danger myself and can only look to you," she whispered. Combined fear and entreaty filled her eyes and she put her hand upon his sleeve. His own caught it and pressed it. He forgot everything before her words. She had come to him at last of her own free will. ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... this one," Uncle John replied, "because it will make it easier for all of us. Of my own free will and accord I will make a present to Tato of fifty thousand dollars, and she shall have it for her dowry ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... being all of them carnal, human or antichristian inventions," contrary to many texts of scripture, particularly 2 Tim. i. 13. Hold fast the form of sound words: and the old Pelagian and Arminian errors appear again upon the stage, the merit of the creature, free will and good works[15] being taught from press and pulpit almost every where, to the utter discarding of free grace, Christ's imputed righteousness, and the power of true godliness.—All which pernicious errors were expunged and cast over the hedge by our ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... huge iron spur, with spikes two inches long. One spur of the kind would be quite sufficient, I should imagine, to get out of a horse all the energy of which he was capable. When I entered he was holding forth on the pretty well-worn theme of fate versus free will; his arguments were not, however, the usual dry philosophical ones, but took the form of illustration, chiefly personal reminiscences and strange incidents in the lives of people he had known, while so vivid and minute were his descriptions—sparkling with passion, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... imprisonment, though now and then in a fit of anger she could hurl bitter names at her son, yet, when calm, she had usually maintained that he was kept away from her, and refused to be convinced that his absence was of his own free will. The longer the illusion lasted, the more stubbornly ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... silent a while; then he said, but halted in his speech: "And with me—wouldst thou go with me of thine own free will, if I swore to deal with thee ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... to you for the account which you have delivered, of three lacs of rupees said to have been paid to the Governor and Mr. Middleton, or did you deliver the account of your own free will, and unsolicited? ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... which tells more than could a volume of how seamen were then cared for. It was the days of the press and of the advance-note system, which prevailed well into the present century, and those seamen who went with Dampier of their own free will on a voyage where nothing but the poorest pay and no prize money was to be got were probably the lowest and most ill-disciplined rascals, drawn from a class upon whose characters, save for their bulldog courage and reckless prodigality, the ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,(*) but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... In the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-point; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard-of in that district. I was looked upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regards the character of her husband, whether he deceived her in this, or whether they just drifted together, each to blame as much as the other, through the attraction of sex and the cruelty of ignorance. She may regret it a thousandfold—but she has done the thing of her own free will, no one forced her to wed the man; she may have done so unwillingly in some cases—and for ulterior motives, but at all events she was consenting and not dragged to church resisting, and so if she is sensible she will use the whole of her intelligence to make the best of ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... together," said Cecilia, opening a door into her own dressing-room. "You may shut this up whenever you please, but I hope you will never please to do so. You see how I leave you your own free will, as friends usually do, with a proviso, a hope at least, that you are never to use it on any account—like the child's half guinea pocket-money, never to be changed." Her playful tone relieved, as she intended it should, Helen's too keen emotion; and this too was felt with the quickness with which ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... don't know!" Then she related the story of the liberated canary bird. "Hetty understands. The cage door is open. She may return when she chooses, but—don't you see?—she must come of her own free will." ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... agent represented to her that this could not be done without considerable loss. From year to year the business was delayed, till at length a gentleman, who had a plantation adjoining to hers, offered to purchase her estate. She was neither one of those ladies who, jealous of their free will, would rather act for themselves, that is to say, follow their own whims in matters of business, than consult men who possess the requisite information; nor was she so ignorant of business, or so indolent, as to be at the mercy of any designing agent or attorney. After consulting proper ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For Eloquence the Soul, Song charms the Sense) Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate— Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and apathy, and glory and shame: Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!— Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm Pain for a while or anguish, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... found another length of small cable which Mr. - dropped in 100 fathoms of water. If this also gets full of kinks, we shall probably have to cut it after 10 miles or so, or more probably still it will part of its own free will or weight. ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... foreknowledge, will and fate, Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... since I was innocent, I shoulde write to my Husband to clear myself. I said briefly, I woulde; and I mean to do soe, onlie not to-daye. Oh, sweet countrie Life! I was made for you and none other. This riding and walking at one's owne free Will, in the fresh pure Ayre, coming in to earlie, heartie, wholesome Meals, seasoned with harmlesse Jests,—seeing fresh Faces everie Daye come to the House, knowing everie Face one meets out of Doores,—supping in the Garden, and remaining in the Ayre long after the Moon has risen, talking, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... must therefore take it for granted, my good M. Ratichon, that your man of all work is—of his own free will—keeping out of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it. The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading to the recovery of ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... deal with them exactly as if they occupied the same moral and social level as the best of their generation. We are amply justified in employing towards them, wherever their offences endanger order, the same methods of coercion which originally made society possible. No tenable theory about free will or necessity, no theory of praise and blame that will bear positive tests, lays us under any obligation to spare either the comfort or the life of a man who indulges in certain anti-social kinds of conduct. Mr. Carlyle has ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... they unjustly tax us with fraud, circumvention, and the practice of undue influence; and, indeed, have endeavored to stamp an indelible stain upon your character and honor. Every man, my dear, as the proverb has it, is at liberty to do what he pleases with his own, according to his free will, and a reasonable disposition. Let me hear no more of this, then, but enjoy with gratitude that which God and your kind friend ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... busy going over the Peninsula. I have not seen much of him. A G.S. Officer has been told off to help him along and to see that he does not get into trouble. I am not going to dry nurse him. He showed me of his own free will a copy of a personal cable he had sent to Lord Kitchener in which he says, speaking of his first visit to Anzac, "Australians are superbly confident and spoiling for a fight." This is exactly true and I feel it is good that one who has ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... leaped to his mouth, but with an effort he restrained them. He must not tell his mother of her until Babbie of her free will had told him all ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... it, is it?" He came to a sudden stop in our walking. "I should only confess the body—is that it, Simon Kippen? And, of course, when a man confesses to one thing of his own free will, you know there must be something worse behind? Is that it, Simon?" He chuckled beside me and, as if only to scandalize me, let his tongue ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... alteration of things, which we have of late seen, and do every day see, beyond all humane conjecture: upon which, I sometimes thinking, am in some parte inclind to their opinion: neverthelesse not to extinguish quite our owne free will, I think it may be true, that Fortune is the mistrisse of one halfe of our actions; but yet that she lets us have rule of the other half, or little lesse. And I liken her to a precipitous torrent, which when it ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... he said solemnly, "she never did this, never in the world, not of her own free will, never in her right mind. She's been hypnotized, some one has gotten her under his power—some scoundrel. No—I'll not harm her, I'll not hurt a hair of her head—but when I ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... descent is fully recognized, the free will of the female to choose a husband from any of the clans, excluding only her own, is made to govern and determine the distribution of political power, and to fix the political character of the tribe. Another peculiarity may ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called for me. "Barrymore considers that he has a grievance," he said. "He thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when he, of his own free will, ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... opposite tendency, namely, to the liberty of the press. The nations among which this liberty exists are as apt to cling to their opinions from pride as from conviction. They cherish them because they hold them to be just, and because they exercised their own free will in choosing them; and they maintain them, not only because they are true, but because they are their own. Several other reasons conduce ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... more of an inclination to become a schoolmaster; 'tis true that I did not know how to read, but that's no reason. I perceived at the end of a certain time, that I lacked something in every direction; and seeing that I was good for nothing, of my own free will I became a poet and rhymester. That is a trade which one can always adopt when one is a vagabond, and it's better than stealing, as some young brigands of my acquaintance advised me to do. One day I met by luck, Dom Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... not to be caught in this way. They must present themselves for capture of their own free will, or be taken after a little coyness only. They are like wealth and power, which, if a man is not born to them, are the more likely to take him, the more he has restrained himself from an attempt ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... categorically: which have not been explained thus far by anybody). The three questions are: How has the living sprung from that which is without life? the sentient (and conscious) being from that which is without sensation? that which possesses reason (self-consciousness and free will) from that which is without reason?—questions equally embarrassing to thought." But even the question as to the origin of the organic and of life can not be discussed without an investigation, leading us farther back to the question as to the elements of the world in general. The doctrine of ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... Egyptian yoke. Accordingly, no sooner did the Phoenicians of the mainland conclude the arrangement by which they became part and parcel of the Persian Empire than the Cyprians followed their example, and, revolting from Egypt, offered themselves of their own free will to Persia.[14260] Cambyses, it is needless to say, readily ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... do things by our own free will, but not under compulsion. The great Washington himself wrote of the evils of slave labor. The 'old fields' scattered all over Virginia show what it has ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... well; I had occasion to say so to myself the other day. She came to see me, of her own free will, and for an hour she was deeply interesting. I think she 's an actress, but she believes in her part while she is playing it. She took it into her head the other day to believe that she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you are sitting, and told me a tale ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... besought him so to do. Then King Don Sancho, at my Cid's request, granted to Dona Urraca what she had asked. And he released King Don Alfonso from prison, and Don Alfonso became a Monk in the Monastery at Sahagun, more by force than of free will. And being in the Monastery he spake with Don Peransures, and took counsel with him, and fled away by night from the Monks, and went among the Moors to King Alimaymon of Toledo. And the Moorish King welcomed him with a good will, and did great honour to him, and gave ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... the 30th of April, I addressed myself to the journey once more, taking the cars to Cumberland, whither Falcon had preceded me by two days, and this time I bound myself by a vow—not lightly to be broken—that I would not see Baltimore again, of free will or free agency, till I had heard the tuck of Southern drums. The most remarkable part of the road is from Point of Rocks to Harper's Ferry, inclusive, where the rails find a narrow space to creep between the river and the cliffs ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... "spots" to be "humored." Wives there are, and not a few of them, sagacious and tender, who have learned the knack of insinuating a scheme upon husbandly attention until the logical spouses find themselves proposing—they believe of their own free will—the very designs born of their partner's brains. This is genius, and the practical application thereof is an art in itself. It may also be classified for John's admonition, as the natural reaction of ingenious ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... I introduced the subject of the origin of evil[366]. JOHNSON. 'Moral evil is occasioned by free will, which implies choice between good and evil. With all the evil that there is, there is no man but would rather be a free agent, than a mere machine without the evil; and what is best for each individual, must be best for the whole. If a man would rather be the machine, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... by Colonel Blount, of the Edenton District, to deprive him of his command. But a Council of State, held at Camp Norfleet Mills to inquire into the matter, declared that as Colonel Blount had resigned of his own free will and accord—in favor of Gregory—he should not now ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... walk with an erect bearing and a light step, but in true leisurely savage fashion. I have seen the black race in four different quarters of the globe, and I never saw one single individual move quickly of his own free will. We must bear in mind, however, that it is a new and altogether revolutionary idea to a Kafir that he should do any work at all. Work is for women—war or idleness for men; consequently, their fixed idea is to do as little as they can; and no Kafir will work after he has earned money ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... McNorton, "this telegram disposes of the idea that she has gone to Liverpool. It also settles the question as to whether she went of her own free will. If his name were on that telegram," he said thoughtfully, "I would take a risk and ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... your own free will, did you? Weren't crowded out at home? Or bamboozled by a pack o' lying tales?" Tangye's voice was husky ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... send word to their friends. Some of the fellows did not believe it, and wanted to know how he knew it; and he said he read it in a paper; after that nobody could deny it. But he said that if you went with the circus men of your own free will they would treat you first-rate; only they would give you burnt brandy to keep you little; nothing else but burnt brandy would do it, but that would ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... interrupted my meditations and destroyed in an instant the cobweb tissue of my fancy. With his usual zeal he had gathered facts concerning the scene, which put my fictions all to flight. The heroine of my romance was neither young nor handsome; she had no lover; she had entered the convent of her own free will, as a respectable asylum, and was one of the most ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in gentle deprecation, "'decoy' is hardly the word I expected from a gentleman who has been so unfortunate as to take, unsolicited and of his own free will, another person's place in a boat. But," he continued, assuming an easy argumentative attitude, "let us look at it from your view-point. Let us imagine that YOUR ship had anticipated mine, and that MY messenger had unwittingly gone ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... his own account,—by the bye, I forgot to say that he is wonderfully conceited in his opinion of himself, as well as mean and underhand to look at,—according to his own account, he leaves his old trade and joins ours of his own free will and preference. You will no more believe that than I do. My notion is, that he has managed to ferret out some private information, in connection with the affairs of one of his master's clients, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... suppose that he reaches London and sees the foreign agent. He must bring back the papers before morning or the loss will be discovered. He took away ten. Only seven were in his pocket. What had become of the other three? He certainly would not leave them of his own free will. Then, again, where is the price of his treason? Once would have expected to find a large sum of money in ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him certain, and that was that the United States could not help annexing by force the people who would be too slow to come to them of their own free will. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... religious truths which reason proclaims, nor prevent either his coming out of his philosophical struggle a firm believer in all the dogmas which are imperiously upheld to the human reason, or his proclaiming his belief in one God and Creator, in our free will, and in the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... I had; because I am old, and you two are young. Often, it seems as if the whole world—fate, trial, circumstance—were set against all lovers to make them part. It is a bitter thing when they part of their own free will. Accidents of all kinds—change, sorrow, even death—may come between, and they may never meet again. Agatha, Nathanael—believe one who has seen more of life than you—rarely do those that truly love ever attain the happiness ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... make the degradation any the less?" she demanded. "When I married you did I become your property? Do you own me? Have I surrendered all rights in myself? When you placed a wedding ring on my finger did it mean that I forfeited my free will? If so—then marriage ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... . I don't understand what's the matter," he murmured at length. "Last night . . . You did it of your own free will, Babs. . . . And unless you wanted to hurt me more completely and ingeniously than you've ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... forces against Messrs. Jervase & Jervoyce, and discuss the partition of the spoils when we have secured them. They are thoroughly solvent; I know that, for I have made inquiries; and they are well worth powder and shot. Until the case is heard, or until they themselves come to heel of their own free will, I cannot in honesty ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... seemed to have taken possession of your understanding, and to have thrown every thing into confusion. You appeared peculiarly averse to philosophy: let me recall your own words to you; you asked "of what use philosophy could be to beings who had no free will, and how the ideas of just punishment and ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and out into the boulevard. Frankly, he was beginning to feel concerned. He still held to his original opinion that the diva had disappeared of her own free will; but if the machinery of the police had been started, he realized that his own safety would eventually become involved. By this time, he reasoned, there would not be a hotel in Paris free of surveillance. Naturally, blond ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... himself into the arms of this unknown friend; and were there not in our nature a certain helplessness which forces us to submission, and compels us to have faith in all things we are to believe, I doubt whether any man, notwithstanding all his weariness, could close his eyes of his own free will and enter into this unknown dream-land. The very consciousness of our weakness and our weariness gives us faith in a higher power, and courage to resign ourselves to the beautiful system of the All, and we feel invigorated and refreshed when, in waking or in sleeping, we have loosened, even for ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... convincing than the one Miss Blake had tried to make clear to her. Ruth's logic she could understand; the governess' seemed vague and incomprehensible. In one case she had been coerced into making a promise from which she had later been absolved; in the other she had given her word of her own free will, and she was being stoutly held to it. There were other influences at work, but Nan did not know it. She honestly believed she was waiving all considerations but those with which her duty was concerned, and she thought she had done so ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... maitre, that mademoiselle is not coming of her own free will. I am holding her wrist with an energy similar to that which ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... real and deadly that the old spectres became almost comic, like ghosts made up of dust-sheets and broom-handles. Supposing Christine went still further from him—supposing she left him altogether alone? She wouldn't do it of her free will, but there were things people couldn't help. People died. The thought was a cruel hand twining itself into the strings of his heart. He tried to see her face. Was she young? He didn't know. He had never thought about it. She had been grown-up. That covered everything. Now in the pale, unreal light ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... hour I have been waiting for this chance—until I knew you were alone," she continued. "If you are thinking of giving me up to the police, at least remember that I came here of my own free will. Of course, I know you are quite entitled to take advantage of that; but please let me say what I ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... MR. WEST: As you have inferred from the postmark I am back at Truesdale; we returned Wednesday. I have about despaired of seeing you here, at least of your own free will, so I have decided to kidnap you. Will you come to a coaching party Saturday afternoon—or rather a brake party? We shall start from our house, weather permitting, at four o'clock, and drive out ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... either one or the other," he answered promptly. "I went of my own free will, and if I was let out, as long as I had a gun and powder and shot, I should go and make use of it. But I don't want to go to prison; and if I'm sent to sea, I should like to choose how and when I ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... does not of necessity imply a greater degree of spirituality and spiritual impulse than the normal, it does at any rate make this possible. The conditions are provided for finer work than is open to the majority, but so long as man has a measure of free will he is able to turn the use of his gifts upward or down. The freedom of the artist may of course degenerate into license, and the spiritual impulse may be turned to perverted ends. There is a distinct difference between the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... Hungarians than were Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Wilson, and M. Clemenceau, required guaranties which could be supplied only by armed forces—Rumanian or Allied. Unless and until Hungary received a government chosen by the free will of the people and capable of offering guaranties of good conduct, the troops must remain where they were. For the line which they occupied at the moment could be defended with four divisions, whereas the new ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... repudiate this statement is to knock the props out from under the whole philosophy. Better stay an old-thoughter and let Jesus suffer for your sins and those of your relatives and friends. At least Jesus took the sins of the world to bear, all of his own free will. There is some comfort in letting Jesus do what he chose ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... forecast fulfilled in Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, who won his kingdom of the two Sicilies by as hard and as cruel fighting as ever dinted the armour or soiled the fame of a knight; and that, finally, Sancie, the third in order of birth, but last to find a lover, should of her own free will choose for her husband a king of good fellows, whose kingdom was but ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... sad look in his eyes as he said this, and we asked if he liked being in the monastery. "Of course. Certainly. It is quite of my own free will." ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... don't want you to do anything because I told you. I won't make that mistake again. Go and do what you are able to do of your own free will. You know what you ought to do as well as I do; and you know a great deal better what you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by a pretended enchanter, that the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso could be freed from the enchantment under which a wicked magician had placed her, if Sancho would of his own free will give himself three thousand three ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to lime; The snare hast entered of thine own free will: Let him who holds the devil, hold him still! So soon he'll catch him not a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... time for to-day's post. I failed to make it as short a letter as I could have wished. But I think I have made it plain. It leaves her entirely mistress of her own decision. If she consents to assist the experiment, she consents of her own free will, and not as a favour to Mr. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... wife nor children, all for the hoard's sake; but while the hoard was there, to be handled any hour, he regretted nothing. Besides, there was the peasant's rooted distrust of offices, and paper transactions, of any routine that checks his free will and frightens his inexperience. He was still eagerly thinking when the light began to flood into his room, and before he could compose himself to sleep the ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worthy. I ask, I beseech of you: suffer me to wait upon you like a servant, to serve you with my rank, my name, the whole devotion of my life. I am a gentleman—ay, in spite of my fault—an upright gentleman; and I swear to you that you shall order your life and mine at your free will. Dorothy, at your feet, in remorse, in respect, in love—O such love as I have never felt, such love as I derided—I implore, I conjure you to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Billet was writ hum by a Yung feller of our town that wuz cussed fool enuff to goe atrottin inter Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife. it ain't Nater for a feller to let on that he's sick o' any bizness that He went intu off his own free will and a Cord, but I rather cal'late he's middlin tired o' Voluntearin By this Time. I bleeve u may put dependunts on his statemence. For I never heered nothin bad on him let Alone his havin what Parson Wilbur calls a pongshong ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the soldier and then advise him to leave the neighborhood immediately. Unless he departed of his own free will, taking his chances as he must, she then would be compelled to tell that he ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... her family by the Immanent Will, or whatever it was that governed humanity. As she spoke she looked at the man she had called Bobbie, who was Sir Robert Syng, private secretary to a prominent minister, and when she stopped speaking he said he had never been able to believe in free will, though he always behaved as if ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... of assuming all sorts of queer attitudes." Brehm describes one as lying prone on a thick branch placed in its cage, with all four legs hanging down straight, two on each side of the branch—certainly a remarkable position for an animal to assume of its own free will. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward; until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... marvelous ability, which is recognized everywhere, but even he can scarcely succeed in locating Mr. Hamilton where we, with all the resources at our command, have failed. Mark my words, my dear Anita; if Ramon Hamilton returns, it will be voluntarily, of his own free will. Until—unless he so decides, you will never see him. It is too bad to have summoned Mr. Blaine here on a useless errand, but I am sure he quite understands ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander |
