"Prompting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to mind what the boatswain had told me concerning a certain conversation in which he had overheard Hearne prompting Martin Holt to ask the half-breed what were the circumstances of his brother's death on board the Grampus. Had a portion of the secret got out, or was this apprehension on the part of Dirk Peters ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... took the letter from his pocket and tore it into fragments and scattered the fragments upon the Road. "So I thought. The letter is of their prompting." ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... it was not the Bishop only who was prompting the Holy Inquisition, but the Daughter of Kings, the Mother of Learning, the Bright and Shining Sun of France and of Christendom, the University of Paris. She arrogated to herself a peculiar jurisdiction in cases of heresy or other matters of doctrine occurring in the city or its neighbourhood; ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... get mad, Maria!" implored Jedidiah, feeling that at the prompting of jealousy; he had put his foot in it. ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... whim! The girl believed that she understood better than he the instinct which was prompting him to deliver over the scepter which he had treasured for ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... that the true Gospel of Christ demanded a complete reversal of the generally accepted rudiments of worldly thrift, and that its key word for the use of money was not "get," but "give." Sometimes he hesitated and turned pale before a radical step which he found his heart prompting, and again he looked at the possessions now in his own right and was glad he had so much to place at the absolute disposal of ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... was as brilliant and scintillating as ever; sparks of wit would greet every newcomer, flying out as the sparks fly from that log. Whittier was there, too, looking nervous and uneasy and very much out of his element. But he stood next to Emerson, prompting his memory and supplying the words his voice refused to utter. When I was presented, Emerson said in a slow, questioning way, 'Burroughs—Burroughs?' 'Why, thee knows him,' said Whittier, jogging his memory ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... seems to vie with Balzac or Zola. Of course this is intensely characteristic of Browning. The quickened spiritual pulse which these poems betoken betrays itself just in his more daringly assured embrace of the heights and the depths of the universe, as communicating and akin, prompting also that not less daring embrace of the extremes of expression,—sublime imagery and rollicking rhymes,—as equally genuine utterances of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... become a disciple of the Master. It was for this reason that Jesus turned to him with a statement which implies a rebuke and suggests that the Master realized the thoughtlessness and rashness which were prompting this professed follower. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Of course Jesus is eager to have men vow their allegiance ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... said Savarus. "I am attached to you, and I could do a great deal for you, Father! Perhaps we may compound with the Devil. Whatever Monsieur de Watteville's business may be, by engaging Girardet, and prompting him, it will be possible to drag the proceedings out till the elections are over. I will not undertake to plead till the day after ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... page, some there will be to divine his feelings without prompting. They are such as had happy homes in their youth, no matter how far that may have been back in time—homes which are now the starting-points of all recollection; paradises from which they went forth in tears, and which they would now return to, if they could, as little ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Plucked out, stamped down, torn to shreds, it had remained with me secret, intact, invincible. Before the danger of the situation it sprang, full of life, up in arms—the undying child of immortal love. What incited me was independent of honour and compassion; it was the prompting of a love supreme, practical, remorseless in its aim; it was the practical thought that no woman need be counted as lost for ever, unless she ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the Cointets, going to their office every evening for the sheets, and returning them in the morning. He came to be on familiar terms with them through the daily chat, and at length saw a chance of escaping the military service, a bait held out to him by the brothers. So far from requiring prompting from the Cointets, he was the first to propose the espionage ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that the beautiful, comforting messages that refreshed his own soul were meant to be shared with others. Months, if not years, of struggle followed, before he could rise in his place in Meeting and obey this inward prompting. But directly he did so, his fears of making a mistake, or being laughed at, vanished utterly away. After agony, came joy. 'The Lord shewed me how He is mouth, wisdom and utterance to His true and faithful ministers; that it is from Him alone that they ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... off their frenzies with a few dashes of paint or some ferocious chords on the piano. The really dangerous ones were not here; they were hidden away in offices or dens of their own, where they were prompting strikes and labor agitations, and preparing incendiary literature to be circulated among ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... calculated to provoke. Her examination of me was soon ended; and she walked off in the direction towards which she had already turned her steps. She seemed scarcely satisfied, however: as I observed that she looked repeatedly back. What thought was prompting her to this? Women have keen perceptions—in intuition almost equalling instinct in its perceptive power. Could she have a suspicion? No, no: the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... way to confidence, and I may even fire broadsides at the tobacco habit now, even if it hits home. They are a trying, promising, and loveable people. I admire those of my classmates who have heard the voice of God (not the prompting of inclination) calling them to remain in dear old hair-splitting New England; but, while I admire their bravery, I am sorry for them, for it must seem as if they were striking in the air. Here we see the enemy, and can ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... Malaysia ceased gas and oil exploration in their disputed offshore and deepwater seabeds and negotiations have stalemated prompting consideration of international legal adjudication; Malaysia's land boundary with Brunei around Limbang is in dispute; Brunei established an exclusive economic fishing zone encompassing Louisa Reef in southern Spratly Islands in ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... like that of Europe in the Middle Ages—is one of the strongest interests of the people, and also of the rulers simply because they are the rulers; and responsibility on their part could not strengthen, though in many conceivable ways it might weaken, the motives prompting them to pursue this object. During the greater part, of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of many other monarchs who might be named, the sense of identity of interest between the sovereign and the majority of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... guilty—I asked the Colonel what he considered the first duty of a soldier? 'Ere he could reply, the President of the United States rose and informed the court that my foe the Admiral had suggested "Bravery," and that prompting a witness wasn't fair. The President of the Court immediately ordered the Admiral's mouth to be filled with leaves, and tied up with string. I had the satisfaction of seeing the sentence carried into effect, before ...
— The Trial of William Tinkling - Written by Himself at the Age of 8 Years • Charles Dickens
... imputing to them cowardly conduct, on the part of some of the highest officials of the army, aroused a spirit of indignant protest that echoed far and wide, and would not down. Had it not been for the misleading report of General Morgan, followed by that of Commodore Patterson, and prompting that of General Jackson to the Secretary of War, saying that "the Kentuckians ingloriously fled," and imputing blame to no other party, the incident of the battle and defeat would have been ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... not. Half an hour before the appointed time I resolved to do so; but the evil spirit grew uppermost in that brief interval, and suggested to me a course more in unison with its previous counsellings. Under this mean prompting I prepared to go to the gallery, but not till my wife had already gone there under Edgerton's escort. The object of this afterthought was to surprise them there—to enter at the unguarded moment, and read the language of their mutual eyes, when ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... first place, their central connection with Palestine, which they generally visited once in their lives, and whither thousands of them, as age advanced, flocked to lay their bones. There were the claims of kindred, prompting them to seek out and visit the children of dispersion, whether seated on the banks of the Vistula, the Euphrates, or the Nile; and there were the incentives of commerce, which drew them through the perils of land and sea. From the instructions ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... respectable man now well on in middle life, had fallen absolutely and hopelessly in love with this white sorceress. Nonsense; it must be nonsense! She had warned me fairly, and I had refused to take the warning. Curses on the fatal curiosity that is ever prompting man to draw the veil from woman, and curses on the natural impulse that begets it! It is the cause of half—ay, and more than half—of our misfortunes. Why cannot man be content to live alone and be happy, and let the women live alone ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... there was home, the strong desire to be free, and a love of adventure prompting him ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... rapid growth is also to be reckoned fame of a false and artificial kind; where, for instance, a book is worked into a reputation by means of unjust praise, the help of friends, corrupt criticism, prompting from above and collusion from below. All this tells upon the multitude, which is rightly presumed to have no power of judging for itself. This sort of fame is like a swimming bladder, by its aid a heavy body may keep ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... bilious-looking man with hair long and greasy and a face expressive of extraordinary sullenness. Handing Ikonin a copy of Cicero's Orations, he bid him translate. To my great astonishment Ikonin not only read off some of the Latin, but even managed to construe a few lines to the professor's prompting. At the same time, conscious of my superiority over such a feeble companion, I could not help smiling a little, and even looking rather contemptuous, when it came to a question of analysis, and Ikonin, as on previous ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... judge, kindly. "Well, Anne, what is it? How can I serve you? Speak up, like a good girl. Make believe we are back in the little red schoolhouse again, and you are prompting ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... from Mr. Matthew Arnold's essays on criticism that the endeavour of the critic should be to see the object criticized "as in itself it really is," or as in another passage he says, "Real criticism obeys an instinct prompting it to know the best that is known and thought in the world." "In order to do or to be this, criticism," he says, in italics, "ought to be disinterested." He points out how much English criticism is not ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... themselves were good, and would have been profitable unto me and acceptable unto the Lord, if they had been performed in His will, in His time, and in the ability which He gives. But being wrought in the will of man and at the prompting of the evil one, no wonder that it did me hurt instead ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... the poniard of this assassin, and saw him seized by her guards, her first words were, "Pray, spare the life of that man!" This is another proof of Isabella's kind and forgiving disposition, especially when it is considered that she uttered the words spontaneously, without prompting or premeditation, but on the ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... read in a book for twenty years; not since the time, back in Ohio, when he had bought Scott's complete Works at auction, and had to sell them again to pay his way to Missouri, whither he had gone in obedience to that mysterious prompting of the setting sun. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... something in her throat as she read her letter. There was one grain of comfort in it, though, prompting ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... said that science is callous, and I admit that it needed little prompting from Nahemah to urge me to take the next step. It is worthy of note, however, from a scientific point of view, that whilst I was prompted by motives of expediency, she was actuated solely by a lust to destroy everything that ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... notion of limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of movement and accuracy of "time." It was performed by a circle of girls with no raiment on them to speak of, who went through an infinite variety of motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was their "time," and in such perfect concert did they move that when they were placed in a straight line, hands, arms, bodies, limbs and heads waved, swayed, gesticulated, bowed, stooped, whirled, squirmed, twisted and undulated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was a vain boast, the heat of passion alone prompting it. Gerald Yorke was not scrupulously particular in calm moments; but little recked he what he said in his violent moods. Tom repudiated it with scorn. But there was another upon whom the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the lama stretched out his hand, and with a little low-voiced prompting would point out the road to Spiti and ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... high as fives, and were commencing the sixes. A few of the scholars, the youngest, or those who had come latest to the school, were learning the alphabet. At the close of the school, they recited in concert the Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd," requiring prompting at the beginning of some of the verses. They sang with much spirit hymns which had been taught them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... This was the prompting to exultation as it might have been set in words; but in Griswold's thought it was but a swift suggestion, followed instantly by another which was much more to the immediate purpose. He was hungry: there was a restaurant next door ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of The Ring and the Book, this intensity of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the most gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... young lady is?" says the attorney, with a furtive prompting from Hardin. "I do!" answers ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... be Divine Providence that prompted me to take a little exercise to shake off a traveler's morning drowsiness," said the churchman. "A divine prompting to fulfil my mission here on earth by consoling you.—What great trouble can ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... very bland voice, and aside, as being addressed to his daughter's private ear. With a cheerfulness of conscience, prompting almost a sprightly demeanour, he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... mistress, and it was not always a "woful ballad" sung to her eyebrow. Frequently musicians were hired, and the tribute took the form of a nocturnal concert. In Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," Proteus, prompting Thurio what to do to win Silvia's ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... indifference of others is no excuse. Said Father Hecker one day to a friend: "There is too much waiting upon the action of others. The layman waits for the priest, the priest for the bishop, and the bishop for the pope, while the Holy Ghost sends down to all the reproof that He is prompting each one, and no one moves for Him." Father Hecker was original in his ideas, as well as in his methods; there was no routine ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... one of those noncommittal sounds that may be taken to mean almost anything. But the manicure lady was of a temperament needing no prompting. She went on, blithe to be talking to ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... French prisoners abroad. Could they be provoked to unequivocal proofs of violence, it would be a good point gained. This your situation may bring about, by encouraging the arming of vessels manned by Frenchmen, and by prompting the captains to provoke unjustifiable reprisals, on the part of the inhabitants ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... perhaps, the first happy awakening of Harriet to the faults of her own character; she began to perceive the sweetness of gentle, unselfish humility, which, prompting ever to a contented fulfilment of our duties, is sure to make its presence felt, even as we know, by its delicious perfume, that the violet is near, though hidden from sight beneath its green canopy ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... exalted, so proof against all those considerations of self, those temptations of interest, before which all other ties are seen to give way, and, while thus realizing, found his yearning bosom oftener and oftener prompting him ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... pass over Henry's neglect to do homage, for Gascony seemed likely to emancipate itself from the yoke of its English dukes without any prompting from Paris. After the failure of 1243, a limited amount of territory between the Dordogne and the Pyrenees alone acknowledged Henry. This narrower Gascony was a thoroughly feudalised land: the absentee dukes had little authority, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... wings they were prompting, whispering fiercely.... But I couldn't.... I stood there.... Then I said: I'll go off the stage. But I couldn't do that even.... My feet were shackled to the ground.... I seemed to have been charmed.... My hand fell to my side.... And ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... or mother that saw it?" asked Charles, quickly, as he recalled the injustice he had just experienced at their hands, under Robert's prompting. ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay, looked small and graceful beneath ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... once; who has not been? I have revelled; who is uninitiated in revels? nay, I was mad; at whose prompting but a god's? Let them go; for now the silver hair is fast replacing the black, a messenger of wisdom that comes with age. We too played when the time of playing was; and now that it is no longer, we ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... began to quote Mr. Addison, even the rector was silent, save for an occasional prompting, as, "I was reading the Spectator until eleven last night, sir," or "I have been trying to recall the lines in The Campaign before. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... that little den of darkness and smells, where Billy, the knife-and-shoe boy, better known in the circle in which he moved as Young Bonehead, pursued his menial tasks. What exactly was at the back of the Efficient Baxter's mind prompting these maneuvers he did not know; but that there was ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... arm about her waist, led her slowly out into the corridor. She followed his guidance, resting her weight upon him. And he who had come into this foul place in terror and despair walked out in a dizzy bewilderment of joy. As he passed the open door of Sorez' cell he hesitated. The evil prompting of his heart was to pass by this man—so to let him go forever out of his life. He had but to move on. He could find a refuge for the girl where she would be safe from this influence, but this would not be possible if he stopped to take Sorez with them. Once the girl knew the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... in a cornfield, listening to bells ringing for Cyril's homecoming with his bride. All the softness and youth gone from Alma's tragic face, and the last gleams of penitence from her heart, since her perjury. Jealousy is prompting her to go and tell Marion all. But Judkins comes and interrupts these wild thoughts. He offers marriage, rehabilitation, and a home in America. She hesitates. She is shunned by all, and can get no work in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... on this occasion to have long arms when supported by the frenzy of its opponent. Whatever might be the real weakness of this body, the rude soldiers yet felt a blind traditionary veneration for its sanction, when prompting them as patriots to an act which their own multiplied provocations had but too much recommended to their passions. A party entered the tent of Maximin, and dispatched him with the same unpitying haste which he had shown under similar circumstances to the gentle-minded Alexander. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... A gentle prompting from the Other roused him from his self-immersion and for a moment he was all panic lest his secret had been observed. Mechanisms he had not known he possessed slammed doors and banged shutters over windows ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... conceive him to be bland, without being so decreed by the law) there would be a manifest accession to his fund of self-respect. The idea of holding him a minor, and as one who cannot be kept to his engagements is a mistake, and its effect is only to stimulate the dishonest bent of his nature, prompting him to take advantage of his white brother in every conceivable way, where the latter's business ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... any prompting from the Guentzes, Reimers said to his stout friend: "Guentz, doesn't it strike you that Mariechen Falkenhein ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... trying it even though he asserts he cannot do it. In many such cases an effort is crowned with success. Say nothing about hurrying, as this confuses some subjects. Prompting is not permissible. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... stopped, he stopped. In response to an urgent suggestion from some one behind him, he dropped it. In obedience to an equally urgent inner prompting, he sat down on it and gazed around. The walk had been rather a long one. Now the big house he was in was very still, save for one voice, saying something to Babs. It was all strange and unfamiliar, and Babs seemed far ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Pointed architecture, in the doctrines of romantic love, in the poetry of Provence, the rude strength of the middle age turns to sweetness; and the taste for sweetness generated there becomes the seed of the classical revival in it, prompting it constantly to seek after the springs of perfect sweetness in the Hellenic world. And coming after a long period in which this instinct had been crushed, that true "dark age," in which so many sources of intellectual ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... done my best to like the life of a sheep-farmer, but I was becoming weary of it, and something was always prompting me to seek for more congenial employment. So far as stockriding, pig-hunting, and shooting were concerned, the life was delightful, but such recreations could be enjoyed anywhere. To sheep and sheep-farming I conceived a growing aversion as a life's work, and although I was prepared ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... to-night! Why, the first thing I knew, I had poured it all out into my own cup till it ran over, and half filled the waiter, which is the first time I ever did such a ridiculous thing in my life. But, dearest, I bid you good night, praying you may have sweet dreams and an inward prompting to write me a long, long, blessed letter, such as shall make me dance about the house ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... is a delusion to attribute the growth of armaments to the "exactions of militarism." The "exactions of industrialism," generated by international commercial competition, may, I believe, claim a much larger share in prompting that growth. Add to this the French thirst for revenge, the most just determination of the German and Italian peoples to assert their national unity; the Russian Panslavonic fanaticism and desire for free access to the western seas; the Papacy ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of the Frazer cottage two weeks. In that time he had not once stepped out of his character. If his attitude toward the world were a pose it had become so habitual as to require no objective prompting or effort to maintain. This character was that of the leader of men, the zealot for the cause of the under dog. It held him aloof from personal concerns. Individual affairs did not touch him, but functioned unnoticed on a plane below his clouds. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... all the world over, and Syd could not resist the prompting which led him to drag a great piece of stone to the edge of the crack and push ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... prompting book and setting the partially cocked hat upon her head, Nyoda made a flourishing entrance upon the stage as the Father of her Country, and the second touching scene of the drama was enacted, in which George is informed ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... said, Emlyn, who was crouched beneath the parapet, prompting him from time to time; "I, Clement Maldon, Abbot of Blossholme, in the presence of Almighty God in heaven, and of Christopher Harflete and others upon earth," and he jerked his head backwards towards the windows of the house, where all therein were gathered, listening, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... sent two embassadors or messengers to our Generall, to signifie that their Hioh, that is, their king, was comming and at hand. They in the deliuery of their message, the one spake with a soft and low voice, prompting his fellow; the other pronounced the same, word by word, after him with a voice more audible, continuing their proclamation (for such it was) about halfe an houre. Which being ended, they by signes made request to our Generall, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... he had assumed to be an example. Was there no distinguishing good and evil? Could every motive and every act change form and color as you looked at it, and be now the counsel of Heaven, and now the prompting of Satan? How, then, could a man choose his path? In his bewilderment the darkness closed round him, and he ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... forward, like Ella, she was turning ever backward, and drawing her inspiration from the past, and a dead, hopeless past, at that. It fell upon her like a shadow. All its incentive tended toward negation, prompting her to frown on changes, progress, and the hopefulness springing up in many hearts. The old can hug their gloom in a sort of complacent misanthropy; the young cannot. If they are unhappy they chafe, and feel in their deepest consciousness that ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... it is scarcely possible to assist the hounds; a dozen different animals, or even a disturbed elk, may cross the scent in parts of the jungle where the cry of the hounds is even out of hearing. Again, an elk has a constant habit of running or swimming down a river, his instinct prompting him to drown his own scent, and thus throw off his pursuers. Here is a trial for the hounds!—the elk has waded or swum down the stream, and the baffled pack arrive upon the bank; their cheering music has ceased; the elk has kept the water for perhaps ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... other aim but that of making verses for a composer; the latter, no other motive than the ordinary creative impulse prompting him to try his powers in a different and important sphere. The result on both sides could not therefore be other than phrases, although the better of the two proceeded from the composer, and that composer was Beethoven. ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... first prompting of what I call God, And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend, Accept the obligation laid on thee, Mother elect, to save the unborn child. . . . Go past me, And get thy praise—and be not far to seek Presently when I follow if ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the Babylonian religion has in this way most definite limitations imposed upon it. There is a point beyond which it could not go without giving rise to a totally changed conception of the gods and their relationship to men. Prayer in its higher form, as the result of an irresistible prompting of the emotions, without any other purpose than the longing to come into closer communion with a superior Power, involves such a change in religious conceptions, and hence is conspicuous in the Babylonian ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... can quote Scripture for his purpose,' Reuben! and I think he is prompting you now! What! do you, a mortal, take upon yourself the divine right of punishing sin by death? Reuben, when from the dust of the earth you can make a man, and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... she accepted the prompting. "I think any of us might have been a little—annoyed," she said steadily, as if striving to be utterly truthful. "Nita told us—" she turned to Dundee, whose pencil was flying, "that Polly had made no excuse at all; in fact, she quoted ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... they were plunging into the naked and primordial conflict of man against woman, without reservations and without indirections—and it left her with a vague fear of some impending helplessness and isolation. She had a sudden prompting to delay or evade that final step, to temporize and wait for some ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... yond the body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle: that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of heaven; that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villany; instilling and steal- ing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world. But that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... "have been the self-ordained guides of the human conscience, blind leaders of the blind, would-be saviours of the world! Why should a mazed wandering soul be so eager to summon followers, so ready to point the way? What strange prompting of love or daring is here? It surely is not from desire of applause that men seek the leadership on the road to heaven, for what man so decried in the history of the world as he who arrogates to himself the place and name ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... make automatic and habitual as many useful actions as we can and carefully guard against growing into ways which are likely to be disadvantageous." His advice for self-discipline is to "seize every first possible opportunity to act on any resolution made, and on every emotional prompting in the direction of habits one aspires to gain." Professor Thompson, in his book on Brain and Personality, says, "We can make our own brains, so far as special functions or aptitudes are concerned, if only we have wills strong enough to take the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... spasms of indignation, half real, half assumed, aroused at first by a desire to be eloquent, and urged on by the sudden prompting of a clear judgment, ordinarily obscured by an easy-going nature, he showed how those persons whose sole occupation in life is to pay visits and dine in town find themselves becoming, by an irresistible fatality, light and graceful ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... cared for stern and sympathetic delineations of the French peasant's unlovely life of unremitting toil, such as Millet loved to set before them. Yet, in spite of discouragement, he did well to follow out this inner prompting of his own soul; for in that direction he could do his best work—and the best work is always the best worth doing in the long run. There are some minds, of which Franklin's is a good type, so versatile and so shifty that they can turn with advantage to any opening that chances to offer, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... start—'Our Farrer,'"—then overwhelmed by the consciousness that she had spoken out in meeting, she sank down behind a pew-door, completely extinguished. At this there was an audible titter, that was immediately suppressed; after which, Charlie recovered his memory, and, started by the opportune prompting of Aunt Comfort, he recited it correctly. A few questions more terminated the examination, and the children sat down in front of the altar until ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... How the deuce was he going to fascinate Kitty if he couldn't see her? But there was a bit of silver lining here. If he couldn't see her, what chance had Hawksley? The whole sense and prompting of this problem was to keep Kitty and Hawksley apart. How this was accomplished was of no vital importance. Problem Three, then, hung fire for the present. Funny, how this idea stuck in his head, that Hawksley was a menace to Kitty. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... his death in a sufficiently tragic, if appropriate, manner. This man had served the term of his transportation, and both as a convict and a free man had passed a great part of his time wandering through the bush with the aboriginals. He had been suspected, justly or unjustly, of prompting the blacks to attack the settlers; aiding them with his knowledge of the habits of the whites, and the best season for carrying out their designs. At any rate, his long intercourse with the natives had rendered him careless of consequences, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... to sacrifice for it. It is true that there are many who do love and who prove it by their sacrifices. But it is just as true that there are many others who do not deny themselves and will not even from a sense of duty, to say nothing of making willing sacrifices through the prompting of love. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... ample. Most men and women, at least the unthinking, prefer fashionable show rather than health! A fearful statement, but sadly true. There is doubtless more danger from impure air than from cold. Our senses warn us quickly of the latter; the prompting of knowledge is needed to guard us against the former,—of a practical knowledge unfortunately rare. Men, women, and children are dying daily through ignorance and indifference on this subject. There is hardly a school-house to be found in which the murder of the innocents is not continually ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the crowd stood about him in some dismay. A few were for carrying him back to the public-house; but at some evil prompting a voice cried out, "Take him to the widow Johnstone's! A witch should know how to deal with her sib, the black man." I believe so godless a jest would never have been played, had not the cottage stood handy and (as one may say) closer than their better thoughts. But certain it is that ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... off" much as all Christmas Eve services do, an occasional prompting, a song a trifle off key, a crying baby quickly hushed ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... (at least according to the notion about patrons that then prevailed), was invited to the country-house of Herr von Fuernberg, a wealthy amateur, to stay there and compose quartettes for him—a style of music for which von Fuernberg had an especial liking. To his prompting it is that we owe the lovely series of quartettes which Haydn wrote—still as fresh and full of serene beauty as when first tried over by the virtuosi of Weinzirl. The next piece of good fortune was Haydn's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... her own prompting, sometimes prompted by Jim, who was prompted by Freddie—warned her every few days that she was skating on the thinnest of ice. But she went her way. Not until she accompanied a girl to an opium joint to discover ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... assigned, must be passed over, that we may have space to deal with the chief cause. In an exhaustive statement, something would have to be said on the credulity of consumers, which leads them to believe in representations of impossible advantages; and something, too, on their greediness, which, ever prompting them to look for more than they ought to get, encourages the sellers to offer delusive bargains. The increased difficulty of living consequent on growing pressure of population, might perhaps come ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... up at the word of his comrade, eager to go and see the prisoners, his humane and kindly nature prompting him to ascertain that no undue harshness was displayed towards them by the rude soldiers. But Joanna, although her face was full of interest and eagerness, shook her head with a little grimace and a glance in the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with Nourhadeen, and she was not half alive and half not." "Very good," said Polly, who had given the biggest subscription, and had therefore the best right to speak; "it is plain to us, dear papa, that you want more prompting. When I tell you that Nourhadeen, in this case, is a little basket house, with a lovely red rug in it, that will let the cat out of the bag;" whereupon dear, clever papa guessed ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... temperament they had come near forgetting the real subject of discussion, but the sight of the letter on the table before her recalled it to Bridgie's remembrance. She straightened her back and assumed an air of responsibility, a natural dramatic instinct prompting her to play her ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... their joy, hearing the tale and sharing the pain of their grief, and in frequent interchange of honest, household sensibility—if we look about us on character, marking distinctly what we can see, and feeling the prompting of a hundred questions concerning what is out of our ken:—if we live thus, we shall be good readers and critics of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... stimulated thereby, is automatically returned to the dealer buyer, without increasing cost or lowering the quality of the product so advertised; that it eliminates advertising waste by producing a given volume of sales for a given expenditure of money; that it reduces the cost of advertising by prompting a continuous series of purchases at one advertising expense; that it promotes cash payments and discourages credit business. Premium users claim that the force of a printed advertisement is often spent in stimulating the first purchase; while to secure ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... night, when the girls were going to bed—whether the inspiration still lingered, in spite of soapsuds, about the red frock, and was by it imparted to its owner, or whether it was merely the prompting of that demon of self-assertion that had been tormenting her of late—Baubie Wishart volunteered a song, and, heedless of consequences, struck up one of the two which formed her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... for relief, no, I do him injustice, not that, but he began to intimate, you understand. Well, being very busy just then, I declined; quite rudely, too, in a cold, morose, unfeeling way, I fear. At all events, not three minutes afterwards I felt self-reproach, with a kind of prompting, very peremptory, to deliver over into that unfortunate man's hands a ten-dollar bill. You smile. Yes, it may be superstition, but I can't help it; I have my weak side, thank God. Then again," he rapidly went on, "we have been so very prosperous ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... women, at the prompting of the artful Mengwe; it is not necessary to say that they were listened to. The Delawares at length came to believe that it would be an honour to a powerful nation, who could not be suspected of wanting either courage or strength, with arms in their ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... bought was a success, a great success, if the newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted. I read the criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of them were alike: they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive. I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negatives for the most part of my poor way of thinking. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... originated with Judge Fine, without any outside prompting. On the third day of the session he gave notice of his intention to introduce it, and only one petition was presented in favor of the bill, and that came from Syracuse, and was due to the action of my personal friends—I ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class, of the continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him to judge conduct by results rather than by principle, there was at the bottom of his heart a sort of uneasiness. His son ought, under the circumstances, to have gone to the dogs; that law was laid down in all the novels, sermons, and plays ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was nearing his end, he wrote of the disease as a "providential agent to detach the heart from all earthly affection, prompting much the desire of a Christian soul to be united—the sooner the better—with Him who is ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... If he possessed it, and in transmuting all existence falsified nothing, giving that picture of everything which human experience in the end would have drawn, he would achieve an ideal result. In prompting mankind to imagine, he would be helping them to live. His poetry, without ceasing to be a fiction in its method and ideality, would be an ultimate truth in its practical scope. It would present in graphic images the total efficacy of real things. Such a poetry ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... spoken of carefully adjusted strings, by which all the crockery in Pastor Tappau's house could be pulled down or disturbed; but of such intelligible malpractices the gossips of Salem took little heed. One of them said that such an action showed Satan's prompting, but they all preferred to listen to the grander guilt of the blasphemous sacraments and supernatural rides. The narrator ended with saying that Hota was to be hung the next morning, in spite of her confession, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... turned back to Gosnold House only on the prompting of instinct, vaguely conscious that the night had now turned its nadir and the time was drawing near when she must present herself first to her employer with the tale of last night's doings, then to Savage to learn his version of the happenings in ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... poetry and acting; second, a deer-stealing frolic, which resulted in making Stratford too hot for him; third, the pecuniary embarrassments of his father. It is not unlikely that all these causes, and perhaps others, may have concurred in prompting the step. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the conditions prompting emigration were persistent and widespread. News items from here and there continued for decades to tell of movement in large volume from Tide-water and Piedmont, from the tobacco states and the eastern cotton-belt, and even from ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... superiority to himself was a mere matter of human arrangement. One of his observations relative to the original constitution of the Christian commonwealth has been often quoted. "Before that, by the prompting of the devil, there were parties in religion, and it was said among the people, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, the Churches were governed by the common council of the presbyters. But, after that each, one began to reckon those whom he baptized as belonging ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... at last, and I had means enough to live in luxury and ease the rest of my days; but a strange inward prompting continually urged me to give up my former mode of living. I disposed of my property, exchanging it for ready money, and one day found myself penniless, through the treachery of one who professed to be my friend. I had not been allowed to learn his motives, and ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... thought came to him and gradually growed till it mastered him and led to a wonderful stroke. And it showed, if that wanted showing, that you never know what gifts be hid in anybody, or what the simplest man will rise to in the way of craft, given the soil to ripe his wits and the prompting to lift ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... egg—glad they had given him no more than three—the popular screen idol at the prompting of Baird, back by the cameras, arose, withdrew a metal cigarette case, purchased that very morning with this scene in view, and selected a cigarette. He stood negligently, as Parmalee had stood, tapped the end of the cigarette on the side of the case, as Parmalee ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... George needed no prompting. The cord was eight or nine feet away from him; to reach it he must move out on the telegraph wire, hand over hand, with his feet dangling in the air. Slowly he swung himself from the cross-bar to the wire, and began to finger his way towards the cord. But this was ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... I describe exactly as its discoverers and explorers have done. The men who appear in my narrative are endowed with no supernatural properties and virtues, but are spirit of our spirit, flesh of our flesh; and the motive prompting their economic activity is neither public spirit nor universal philanthropy, but an ordinary and commonplace self-interest. Everything in my 'Freeland' is severely real, only one fiction underlies the whole narrative, namely, that a sufficient ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... up by the entire people, standing, during the singing of which a priest appeared, bearing a torch kindled at the sacred fire, which was kept alight throughout the year. This torch he presented to Harry, who, at Motahuana's prompting, and with several qualms of conscience, rose to his feet and thrust it in among the pile of wood on the top of the altar, beneath the body of the llama. The crackling of the dry twigs that formed ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... all stripping, all loss, all that brings us low, low into the Lord's path of humility—a cherishing of every whisper of the Spirit's voice, every touch of the prompting that comes to quicken the hidden life within: that is the way God's human seed-vessels ripen, and Christ becomes "magnified" even through the things ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... may command the admiration of mankind, but to be is better than to do. The measure of our spiritual excellency lies within us. It is in the heart rather than the deed. Beauty, purity and generosity may appear in the external act, while the motive prompting it may be mean, ignoble and selfish. Sweet truth, purity and noble traits of character may be enshrined within the soul and the life be so modest that they may not manifest themselves ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Love, of Righteousness and of Peace, animating, inspiring, pervading and governing the whole Creation; he still holds to his doctrine of the Inward Light, the spark of the Divine Spirit of Reason, within man, prompting each and all to act righteously and equitably one toward the other. Yet he is decidedly less mystical. He lays emphasis on the necessity to study the works of God rather than the Word of God; and has evidently become less ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... him I must stay,' And with the help of my prompting the old fellow put my case in the most persuasive light possible, but, although we talked and knocked with perseverance, the owner of the voice neither appeared, nor would he vouchsafe us another answer. One might have thought the house had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the bursting clusters sweet Were in the wine-press trod; Song followed soon, a prompting of the god, And rhythmic dance of lightly leaping feet. Of Bacchus the o'er-wearied swain receives Deliverance from all his pains; Bacchus gives comfort when a mortal grieves, And mirth to men in chains. Not to Osiris toils and tears belong, But revels and ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... but from some who believed themselves to be Italy's best friends abroad, came the prompting of the tempter: more power! Few ministers in a predicament of such vast difficulty would have resisted the evil fascination of those two words. Cavour heard them unmoved. He told his various counsellors that they counted too much on his influence, and were too distrustful of liberty. ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... in private life they were often helpless wasters of their inheritance, like the people in Tchekov's Cherry Orchard. Even those who lived within their incomes were really kept going by their solicitors and agents, being unable to manage an estate or run a business without continual prompting from those who have to learn how to ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... once reading this sweet little poem, the student will need no prompting to teach him that it is not possible for him to deliver it with too ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... whole cycle of little Mophez' dleams over again. And for the life of her Meg couldn't remember them either in their proper substance or sequence—and this in spite of the most persistent prompting, and she failed utterly to reproduce the entertainment of the afternoon. Both children were disappointed, but little Fay, accustomed as she was to Auntie Jan's undeviating method of narrating "Clipture," was angry as ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... fields. Liberty of speech was given them, and they might satirise those vices of their lords to which, on other days, they had to minister. Rome on this day, by a strange negation of logic, which we might almost call a prompting of blind conscience, negatived the philosophic dictum that barbarians were by law of nature slaves, and acknowledged the higher principle of equality. The Saturnalia stood out from the whole year as a protest in favour of universal brotherhood, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and waited: not from curiosity, but in response to the prompting of a neighborly instinct. Travellers in the desert are never strangers ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Bunyip Bluegum, "to the prompting of a certain curiosity as to the nature of this present;" and Sam added, "Anyway, there's no harm in ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... had long been nothing, and any slight emotion he might awaken was in the nature of resentment that the man could still harden his heart against her husband and remain thus stubborn and obdurate after such lapse of time. When, therefore, John Grimbal, moved thereto by some sudden prompting, addressed Will's wife, she started in astonishment and a blush of warm blood leapt to her face. He himself was surprised at his own voice; for it sounded unfamiliar, as though some intelligent thing had suddenly possessed him and was ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... professed creed nor denying any. He had received no early impetus, and had up to now been too preoccupied with his earthly interests, with no great grief or happiness to arouse him, to formulate any theory in his own mind. Even at the moment he had swallowed the poison the motive prompting him to it had been so intensely material that it had started but the most momentary questions. It was the thought of Mrs. Wentworth, the sight of the baby, the indefinable boundaries of his own love—it was love that pressed the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... papa, that is what the children do themselves. And what do you think, papa, one of the little fellows actually comes regularly and weeds our beds, because we haven't time to attend to them ourselves. He did it at first without any prompting but that of gratitude, and now some of the others help him, and so they keep our garden tidy as well ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... remarks made a few weeks ago by our teacher on the practice of prompting each other in the classes. We wish she would repeat them, for we fear that, by some, they are forgotten. In the class in Geography, particularly in the questions on the map, we have noticed sly whispers, which, we suppose, were ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... his cap—some inborn spirit of courtesy prompting him to be reverent toward the glorious vision which burst upon him. For a moment he thought he saw an angel, and almost expected that she would unfold her silvery wings, and vanish in a golden cloud from his sight. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... mesmeric sleep. When I went to bed that night, I willed to be in the front bedroom of that house at Kew at twelve; and to make my presence felt by the inmates. Next day I went to Kew. Miss V.'s married sister told me, without any prompting from me, that she had seen me in the passage going from one room to another at half-past nine o'clock, and that at twelve, when she was wide awake, she saw me come to the front bedroom, where she slept, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... possible for pupils to guard consciously against known types of error which they are accustomed to make in their oral recitations. Every recitation in whatever subject provides opportunity for such training in habits of watchfulness. Only as the pupil is brought to do it himself, without prompting on the part of the teacher, ...
— What the Schools Teach and Might Teach • John Franklin Bobbitt
... the eyes of each prompting the other. They must be at their brightest. They knew the sight of their happiness warmed and lightened ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the most dangerous variety, are familiar with the whole scale of criminality. Their special offences are assault and battery, rape, theft, and forgery. The first offences are committed intermittingly at the prompting of attacks of cortical irritation, the last two almost continuously owing to a ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... "Insane"! "Vindictive"! So ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the Armory, clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: "No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master in ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... is all in all. The more we love, the more we know; and so reversed. Oro we love; this isle; and our wide arms embrace all Mardi like its reef. How can we err, thus feeling? We hear loved Alma's pleading, prompting voice, in every breeze, in every leaf; we see his earnest eye ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the room, feminine instinct prompting her to freshen her appearance, to change her soiled, crumpled nightdress, to throw a piece of lace over her dishevelled head, to pull up the linen sheets which had been rolled clumsily to the foot of the bed, so that the blankets could be wrapped round her. But she sank again presently, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... halts, he drew her into prompting him throughout, then exclaimed, 'There! you know it much better. I thought you were a clever little girl! Come, won't you say it once, and let me hear ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there been between them?" Mary asked, when it became clear that her aunt needed prompting. "Between father and Paula, I ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to it as a whole. The world to which the poet transports his readers is truly poetic; all the factitious wants of common life, its cold calculations and its imaginary distinctions, disappear; love and honor reign supreme, and the prompting of the one and the laws of the other are alone permitted to stimulate and regulate a life, of which war is the only business and gallantry the only pastime. The magic and sorcery, borrowed from the East, which pervade these chivalric fictions, lead us still farther from the world of realities. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... creature she is!" she was saying. "How graceful! On her lips the utterances of treachery sound like witticism; an act of infidelity seems the prompting of reason, a sacrifice to propriety; while she is never reckless, she is always lovable; she is seldom tender and never sincere; amorous by nature, prudish on principle; sprightly, prudent, dexterous ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... spoke in solitude, with his good judgment prompting him; but louder and more distinct sounded another voice within him. As he glanced once more at the gold, it was not thus that his twenty-two years and fiery youth reasoned. Now everything was within his power on which he had hitherto gazed with envious eyes, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the ninth chapter, the law concerning the death-penalty for murderers was not promulgated until afterward when the patriarchs beheld murder becoming alarmingly frequent, Adam did not put Cain to death, but safeguarded his life in obedience to the prompting and direction of the Holy Spirit; still, it is a fact not to be gainsaid that the punishment ordained for him and all his posterity was anything but light. For in addition to that curse upon his body he suffered ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... much about it, in a blind prompting of my whole being toward a great adventure which I did not clearly see, but which attracted me in a mysterious fashion, one day, finding myself surrounded by a band of the enemy, though still in a position to fight, I ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... be provisionally defined as an almost instinctive fear prompting to concealment and usually centering around the sexual processes, while common to both sexes is more peculiarly feminine, so that it may almost be regarded as the chief secondary sexual character of women on the psychical side. The woman who is lacking in this kind ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... key of the situation is held by Belcher. Name of a pipe! What prompting does Belcher need from me or anybody else after ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... for human actions to account, Whether from reason or from impulse only— But some internal prompting bade me mount ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... not now a short one in public affairs has enabled me to know any thing of what the public interest demands, the state of the country requires an essential reform in the system of revenue and finance such as shall restore the prosperity, by prompting the industry and fostering the labor of the country, in its various branches. There are other things important, but I will not allude to them. These three I hold to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and resentment of his undisguised contempt—the passions of one who had been used for vile ends—conscious of self-degradation and the loss of honour, yet mindful of his intellectual superiority—did these emotions take fire in him and mingle with a scholar's reminiscences of antique heroism, prompting him to plan a deed which should at least assume the show of patriotic zeal, and prove indubitable courage in its perpetrator? Did he, again, perhaps imagine, being next in blood to Alessandro and direct heir to the ducal crown by the Imperial Settlement of 1530, that the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... discipline and suffering, lay the belief in one only God. The other nations of the world, surfeited with sinful pleasure and worn out with a vain pursuit of happiness, were ready to abandon the gods of their imaginations. Some lofty souls among them, following intently every prompting of their better nature, had developed high characters, while of God's peculiar people many pure hearts waited, with joyful expectancy, the coming ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... because of his earlier initiation he had taken Laura's intellectual radiance as the shining of a virtually disembodied spirit. His own senses had led him, he recognised now, to disastrous issues; his love for Connie had been the prompting of mere physical impulse, and he had emerged from it with a feeling of escaping into freedom. Too much Nature he had learned during those months of mental apathy is in its way quite as destructive as ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... child we act nobly, its call to us is always to our finer side, and so gradually we are lifted higher. Did any man in history ever do a cruel or wicked thing because of the appeal made to him by the smile of his child? He may have accredited his action to the prompting of love for his baby, but I believe it would be found that there was another motive, generally an overwhelming personal vanity; so great a lust for power, perhaps, that it would carry across ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... connection with the remarks of his sister, and the retirement to Auvergne, it suggests that the family may have sought there, in rural isolation and domestic reunion, the means of entirely withdrawing Pascal from his severer studies, and the scientific companions who were constantly prompting them in Paris. It may be, also, that the father sought the means of withdrawing Jacqueline from the neighbourhood of Port Royal, and from the equally exciting associations to her connected with ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... officers are drilling squads too. They are a little shaky in what an actor would call their "patter," and they are inclined to lay stress on the wrong syllables; but they move their squads about somehow. Their seniors are dotted about the square, vigilant and helpful—here prompting a rusty sergeant instructor, there unravelling a squad which, in a spirited but misguided endeavour to obey an impossible order from Second Lieutenant Bobby Little, has wound itself up into a formation closely resembling the third ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and fifty miles, and after that he would average a hundred miles a day until caught. He always arrived back lean and hungry and savage, and always departed fresh and vigorous, cleaving his way northward in response to some prompting of his being that no ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... from my lessons to bed before midnight." The ordinary school tasks cannot have exacted so much time from so gifted a boy: he must have read largely outside the regular curriculum, and probably he practised himself diligently in Latin verse. For this he would have the prompting, and perhaps the aid, of the younger Gill, assistant to his father, who, while at the University, had especially distinguished himself by his skill in versification. Gill must also have been a man of letters, affable and communicative, for Milton in after-years reminds him of their "almost ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... Jacob's right hand was given to vague clutching and throwing; it suddenly clutched the guineas as if they had been so many pebbles, and was raised in an attitude which promised to scatter them like seed over a distant bramble, when, from some prompting or other—probably of an unwonted sensation—it paused, descended to Jacob's knee, and opened slowly under the inspection of Jacob's dull eyes. David began to pray again, but immediately desisted—another resource ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... to me that you will not harbour evil thoughts, that you will put aside the devil who is prompting and luring you ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths |
