"Rectitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than his single arm, in the dangerous and precipitate counsels of the Chieftain,—to be whirled along by him, the partaker of all his desperate and impetuous motions, renouncing almost the power of judging, or deciding upon the rectitude or prudence of his actions,—this was no pleasing prospect for the secret pride of Waverley to stoop to. And yet what other conclusion remained, saving the rejection of his addresses by Flora, an alternative not to be thought of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... of others. When I came to know her intellectually, all my ideal picturings of her were confirmed. Her newness to the world, her delightful susceptibility to every thing beautiful and agreeable in nature, reminded me of my own emotions when first I escaped from the convent. Her rectitude of thinking delighted my judgment; the sweetness of her nature wrapped itself around my heart; and then her young and tender and budding loveliness, sent a ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... enthusiastically devoted. He could not but admire the generosity and nobleness of feeling which thus voluntarily condemned itself to a life of solitude and despair, rather than deviate in the smallest degree from moral rectitude. Yet he was inwardly mortified at her superiority, and would fain have persuaded himself that her scruples proceeded rather from a deficiency of passion than from a sense of honor and filial duty. He looked on her with a mixture of compassion and disappointment ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... was one of those people—there were plenty such—before whom a nature like Laura's was inclined, at the best of times, to shrink away, keenly aware of its own paltriness and ineffectualness. Mary was rectitude in person: and it cannot be denied that, to Laura, this was synonymous with hard, narrow, ungracious. Not quite a prig, though: there was fun in Mary, and life in her; but it was neither fun nor ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... and protection of more than one royalist, had brought him perilously near to the guillotine. Burr had desired the vacant mission, and his pretensions were urged by Monroe and Madison. Washington recognized this as a device of the Opposition to embarrass him, and he had the lowest opinion of Burr's rectitude and integrity. Pressure and wrath produced no effect, but he offered to appoint Monroe. It might be wise to send a Jacobin, and the President hoped that ambition would preserve this one from compromising the country. He made the mistake of not weighing Monroe's mental capacity more studiously. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... way through this false opinion, we are in the next place to lay down positively what this image of God in man is. It is, in short, that universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul, by which they stand apt and disposed to their respective offices and operations, which will be more fully set forth by taking a distinct survey of it in the several faculties ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historic localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least striking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had watched the growing attachment between his brother-in-law and the girl, and thought of his vow. He realized that here was a way to bring vicarious suffering upon the man whose distinction had first roused his envy and whose rectitude had won his hatred. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... is something wrong in his work; or, if he is too proud to think that, still the bribe of wealth and honour warps him from his honest labour into efforts to attract attention; and he gradually loses both his power of mind and his rectitude of purpose. This, according to the degree of avarice or ambition which exists in any painter's mind, is the necessary influence upon him of the hope of great wealth and reputation. But the harm is still greater, in so far as the possibility of attaining fortune of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... which no detective is truly fit for his calling, moved him, so with the impatient impulse we so often witness when rectitude is about to subject itself to the persuasions of the evil one for the ostensible purpose of combating them and the private determination to yield, Gratz extended a trembling hand toward the Sepoy, ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... enough good to obliterate the memory of all the grief and shame that I have caused him to suffer. That is my story, Troubridge; and all that I will add to it is this: If ever you feel tempted to stray, though ever so slightly, from the path of rectitude, think of the man whom you once knew as George Gurney; and let his history serve as a warning to you. And now I will say good night; for we must ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... flower which the Proserpina of our Northern Sicily cherishes more dearly: and scarcely any of us recognize enough the beautiful power of its close-set stars, and rooted radiance of ground leaves; yet the stubbornness and ungraceful rectitude of its stem, and the besetting of its wholesome substance with that fringe of offence, and the forwardness of it, and dominance,—I fear to lacess some of my dearest friends if I went on:—let them rather, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... years. Mr. John, with his innate niggardliness, at once seized this opportunity for disembarrassing himself of an importunate beggar by saddling the county with him. He exalted "the worthy, excellent man" to the skies, and especially praised his rectitude, his sobriety, ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... this college," she said, "is almost perfect immunity from the bondage of rules. The principals of these halls have fully trusted the students who reside in them and relied on their honor, their rectitude, their sense of sound principle. Hitherto we have had no reason to complain that the spirit of absolute trust which we have shown has been abused; but the circumstance which has just occurred has given Miss Eccleston ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... double sense, one spiritual, individual, contingent, the other mechanical, common, absolute. Death, in its full Pauline force, includes inward guilt, condemnation, and misery, and outward descent into the under world. Life, in its full Pauline force, includes inward rectitude, peace, and joy, and outward ascent into the upper world. Holiness is necessary, "for without it no one can see the Lord;" yet by itself it can secure only inward life: it is ineffectual to win heaven. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... officer of Engineers who was stationed near the place, asked that the prisoner be allowed to wait in his tent. "Captain Hale entered," he says; "he was calm and bore himself with gentle dignity in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him; he wrote two letters, one to his mother, and ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... spirit that we owe the mysteries lying buried in every human word? In the word True do we not discern a certain imaginary rectitude? Does not the compact brevity of its sound suggest a vague image of chaste nudity and the simplicity of Truth in all things? The syllable seems to me singularly ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... felt by the Venetians for the Church might save these towns from their aggressors; but, says Guicciardini, Julius II, whose ambition, so natural in sovereign rulers, had not yet extinguished the remains of rectitude, refused to accept the places, afraid of exposing himself to the temptation of keeping them later on, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her with astonishment. 'This child!'—he thought—'Has this child heroically persevered under all doubts and dangers, struggled with poverty and suffering, upheld and sustained by strong affection and the consciousness of rectitude alone! And yet the world is full of such heroism. Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day! And should I be surprised to hear the story of ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace; but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder; let him take both reputation and life in his hands, and with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and rectitude of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... that Sarah should, by his own or her ingenuity, contrive to domicile herself in Jerry Sullivan's house for a few days previous to the execution of their design; not only for the purpose of using her influence, such as it was, to sway the young creature's mind and principles from the path of rectitude and virtue, by dwelling upon the luxury and grandeur of her future life with Henderson, whose intentions were to be represented as honorable, but, if necessary, to leave a free ingress to the house, so as that under any circumstances, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... transmit one pitying ray, To lighten and to cheer. Oh, lead my mind, (A mind that fain would wander from its woe,) Lead it through various scenes of life and death, And from each scene the noblest truths inspire. Nor less inspire my conduct, than my song; Teach my best reason, reason; my best will Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear; Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd On this devoted head, be pour'd ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... continued to discuss her future of rectitude and honor—his imagination reaching in a bound amazing heights. Why not be a trained nurse?—and have a hospital of her own, and gather about her, as assistants, girls who—"well, had had a tough time of it," he said, delicately. As he talked, fatigue at the boredom of ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... illustrious statesman, whose distinguished abilities had raised Great Britain to the highest pitch of renown, inspired the Americans with additional confidence in the rectitude of their claims of exemption from parliamentary taxation, and emboldened them to further opposition, when, at a future day, the project of an American revenue was resumed. After much debating, two protests in the House of Lords, and passing an act, "For securing the dependence of America on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... scorn of shams; Wordsworth, who teaches the oneness of man and nature; I find an exquisite pleasure in the oddities and surprises of Hood, in Herrick's quaintness and the palpable scent of lily and rose in his verses; I like Whittier for his enthusiasms and moral rectitude. I knew him, and the gentle remembrance of our friendship doubles the pleasure I have in reading his poems. I love Mark Twain—who does not? The gods, too, loved him and put into his heart all manner of wisdom; then, fearing lest he should become a ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... birth of Christ. He was educated under the illustrious Theophrastus, from whom he learned philosophy and composition. While a brilliant genius directed him to comic poetry, his natural delicacy, his refined taste, his moral rectitude, and true philosophy controlled his fancy, imparted to his comedies a charm unknown before, and obtained for them the suffrage of the most enlightened, witty, and judicious men of his age, though for the same reason they ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... the letter, and be guided by her advice: but Charlotte had taken one step in the ways of imprudence; and when that is once done, there are always innumerable obstacles to prevent the erring person returning to the path of rectitude: yet these obstacles, however forcible they may appear in general, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... depraved people as the phenomenon of a race of men in whose word perfect confidence may be placed[84].... The natives are conscious of their inferiority in nothing so much as in this. They require to be taught rectitude of conduct much ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... of horror. His mastery in this region is displayed in the creation of that dignified and beautiful woman, the Duchess of Malfi, who, with nothing in her nature, had she but lived prosperously, to divide her from the sisterhood of gentle ladies, walks, shrined in love and purity and conscious rectitude, amid the snares and pitfalls of her persecutors, to die at last the victim of a brother's fevered avarice and a desperado's egotistical ambition. The apparatus of infernal cruelty, the dead man's hand, the semblances of murdered sons and husband, the masque ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Victorious Souls." For there are triumphs every day under the drab monotony of an apparently defeated town: conquests worthy of the waving of sun-banners. Above all, The Yellow Jacket points a moral for this chapter because there was conscience behind it. First: the rectitude of the Chinese actors of San Francisco who kept the dramatic tradition alive, a tradition that was bequeathed from the ancient generations. Then the artistic integrity of the men who readapted the tradition for ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... "claim to release," but doubt whether he can establish it; inasmuch as St. Ivo or Evona, canonized on account of his great rectitude and profound knowledge both of civil and canon law, was both lawyer and churchman, like the CLERICUS so recently discussed in our columns; and clearly sought for and obtained his patron saint in his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... and had returned to Ferrara, having committed the search for Cornelia to his care. The friends having told him what had brought them, Lorenzo assured them that the duke was perfectly convinced of their rectitude in the matter, adding, that they both attributed the flight of Cornelia to her great fear, but hoped, and did not doubt, that Heaven would permit her re-appearance before long, since it was certain ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... points. How admirable in its moral aspect is the character of Leatherstocking! he is ignorant, and of very moderate intellectual range or grasp; but what dignity, nay, even grandeur, is thrown around him from his noble moral qualities,—his undeviating rectitude, his disinterestedness, his heroism, his warm affections! No writer could have delineated such a character so well who had not an instinctive and unconscious sympathy with his intellectual offspring. Praise of the same kind belongs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... disappointed by your uncompromising rectitude, friend Martin. We were, you see, greatly desirous of obtaining that envelope you had in your pocket. We had hoped to discover some weakness, some vice, in your composition—a fondness for drink, or for ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... what wrong he had done to bring this on himself, any more than he knew what he had done to provoke the horrible calumny about his treatment of poor Morrison. For he could not forget this. It had reached the ears of one who needed to have the most perfect confidence in the rectitude of his conduct. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... through the resolute expostulations of his friends. Mme. Malibran instantly resigned for the benefit of her husband's creditors any claims which she might have made on the remnants of his estate, and her New York admirers had as much occasion to applaud the rectitude and honor of the woman as they had had the genius of the artist. Garcia himself, hampered by pecuniary difficulties, set sail for Mexico with his son and younger daughter, to retrieve his fortunes, while Maria remained ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... cannot be bribed are often timid, and afraid of offending bold knaves, lest they should raise a set of hornets about themselves. The fear of censure undermines all energy of character; and, labouring to be prudent, they lose sight of rectitude. Besides, nothing is left to their conscience, or sagacity; they must be governed by evidence, though internally convinced that it ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... what sort of Latin is found among dogs, may not have as good a right to standing-room as a low-bred quadruped with a tail like you.' Non usque adeo summis permiscuit ima longa dies, &c. We remember no instance which ever so powerfully illustrated the courage given by the consciousness of rectitude. So long as we felt that we were trespassing on the grounds of a stranger, we certainly sneaked, we seek not to deny it. But once landed on the high-road, where we knew our own title to be as good as the dog's, not all the world should ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be godlike. The full accord of all the soul with His character, in whom, as their native home, dwell ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... all rectitude, on your side, John; and all impertinence, all inconsiderateness, on mine. I am so much convinced of your honour in the whole transaction, that I shall for the future mistrust myself in everything. And if it be possible, whenever I differ from you on any point I shall take an hour's ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... against God, they abandoned the eternal rule of rectitude, which is God's Will. Their passions, which heretofore had been under the control of reason, revolted against them, and their will was turned away from God. We, their children, have inherited all the consequences of their fall. ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... almost superstitious in obeying the Levitical laws and in practising the sad and rather gloomy symbolism of his faith. A famous Talmudist, a pillar of the synagogue, one of the two wardens of the Chevra in Brick Lane, and consequently a great upholder of moral rectitude. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... reasoning it has been objected that the President, by the influence of the power of nomination, may secure the complaisance of the Senate to his views. This supposition of universal venalty in human nature is little less an error in political reasoning, than the supposition of universal rectitude. The institution of delegated power implies, that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind, which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence; and experience justifies the theory. It has been ...
— The Federalist Papers
... do with these puerilities? At last Smithers went away foiled, and met Parkson by the entrance. Parkson, by-the-bye, had not spoken to Lewisham since their painful misunderstanding. He made a wide detour to his seat at the end table, and so, and by a singular rectitude of bearing and a dignified expression, showed himself ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... uprightness. The idea of straightness or evenness is the primary meaning of the word, and is, of course, appropriate to the image of a path. In the moral view, it suggests how much more simple and easy a course of rectitude is than one of sin. The one goes straight and unswerving to its end; the other is crooked, devious, intricate, and wanders from the true goal. A crooked road is a long road, and an up-and-down road is a tiring road. Wisdom's way is straight, level, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is not without extreme sorrow I understand the deplorable situation, which a chain of misfortunes has reserved for you, the rest of my generals, and my whole army; but we must acquiesce in the dispensations of Providence, and console ourselves with the rectitude of our sentiments and intentions. They would force me, it seems, as you gave me to understand by major-general the baron de Dyherrn, to submit to conditions the more severe, in proportion as the circumstances become more necessitous. I cannot hear them mentioned. I ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... twin looked blandly over the wide expanse of lawn and flower beds and tenderly nursed shrubs, and then at the pile of red brick with its many windows under gay-striped awnings, and its surmounting white cupola, which he had often admired from afar. He glowed with rectitude. True, he suffered a brother lost to all sense of decent human values, but this could not dim the lustre of his own virtue or his pleasant suspicion that it was somehow going to be suitably rewarded. Was he not being ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... spent, while trembling on the threshold of literature, was with them at their pretty road-side cottage, in the village of Esher, before the death of their venerable and dearly-beloved mother, whose rectitude and prudence had both guided and sheltered their youth, and who lived to reap with them the harvest of their industry and exertion. We remember the drive there, and the anxiety as to how those very "clever ladies" would look, and what they would say; we talked over the various ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... town had been opposed to him. But he knew himself to be clever, and he still hoped that he might overcome these difficulties. Then it occurred to him that in doing this he must take care to have his wife entirely on his side. He did not doubt her love; he did not in the least doubt her rectitude;—but there was the lamentable fact that she thought well of Arthur Fletcher. It might be that he had been a little too imperious with his wife. It suited his disposition to be imperious within his own household;—to be imperious out of it, if that were possible;—but he was conscious ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... hear; thirteen minutes must yet elapse. But she could not allow so horrible a thing to take place! In this stormy awakening of her rectitude she felt naught but a furious craving to prevent it. She must prevent it; otherwise she would be unable to live. In a state of frenzy she ran about ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... to dream that she is wearing a hood, is a sign she will attempt to allure some man from rectitude and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the first edition of his Grammar, S. 312-13.) But what is quite decisive is the fact that these two words, which occur with such extraordinary frequency, are never found in a physical, but always in a moral sense only. The only passage in which, according to Winer, [Hebrew: cdq] signifies "rectitude" in a physical sense, is Ps. xxiii. 3: [Hebrew: megli cdq] which, according to him, means: "Straight, right ways." But that verse runs thus: "He restoreth my soul, He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake." The ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... {14} Palissy did indeed die shortly after, a martyr, though not at the stake. He died in the Bastille, after enduring about a year's imprisonment,— there peacefully terminating a life distinguished for heroic labour, extraordinary endurance, inflexible rectitude, and the exhibition of many rare and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... there in the forefront of this company, there was nothing in his refined and comely exterior to indicate that his real function was to pander to and flatter them; to invest with an air of respectability and rectitude the abominably selfish lives of the gang of swindlers, slave-drivers and petty tyrants who formed the majority of the congregation of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... long before heard of the fall of Sam Yates from his early rectitude. They had once been proud of him, and when he left them for the city, they expected to hear great things of him. So when they learned that, after entering upon his profession with brilliant promise, he had ruined himself with drink, they bemoaned him for ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... definition of these lines, nor produce any very exact method of distinguishing the one from the other; yet this hinders us not from correcting the first appearance by a more accurate consideration, and by a comparison with some rule, of whose rectitude from repeated trials we have a greater assurance. And it is from these corrections, and by carrying on the same action of the mind, even when its reason fails us, that we form the loose idea of a perfect standard to these ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... consider the taking anything without leave, however worthless, as trivial," said she. "I have not been so brought up, and neither has my brother." She said this with an indescribable air of offended rectitude. She regarded him like a small, incarnate truth and honesty. Then she turned, and her brother was following with a reluctant backward pull at her leading hand, when suddenly he burst forth with ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... inevitably prevail unless their supporters can be driven away. This is an ingenious policy, for guns certainly cannot be served if the gunners are dispersed. Men shrink from ridicule and ludicrous publicity. However conscious of rectitude a man may be, it is exceedingly disagreeable for him to see the dead-walls and pavements covered with posters proclaiming that he is a liar and a fool. If he recoils, the enemy laughs in triumph; if he is indifferent, there ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... years and ten; one whom it has been the especial object of my endeavours to follow, in my own path through life—so long, I can have no wish to shrink from the situation in which I am placed; I can find no room for doubts or misgivings, as to the wisdom and rectitude of the course ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... idolized brother, and "a conscience void of offence," she could but be calmly happy, even though surrounded by circumstances which often jarred upon her pure and delicate nature, and which would have crushed one less conscious of future peace and present rectitude. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... despoiled of liberty and estate for their religious opinions. James, as a Catholic, had in some sort a common interest with his dissenting subjects, and the declaration was for their common relief. Penn, conscious of the rectitude of his own motives and thoroughly convinced of the Christian duty of toleration, welcomed that declaration as the precursor of the golden age of liberty and love and good-will to men. He was not the man to distrust the motives ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ultra-intelligent electors had been polled as to which one man in all the town had done most to insure its position in the van of American progress; as to who best represented the community in the matter of liberal intelligence and ripe culture; as to who was most to be honored for steadfast rectitude and immaculate purity of life; as to who was its highest type of enlightened Christianity—an overwhelming if not unanimous vote would have been cast for Colonel ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... could properly be reproached with, was his concealing too long the bad news from the armies, either from flattering himself, or believing it to be necessary to flatter others. The English, with that admirable rectitude which distinguishes all their actions, publish as faithful an account of their reverses as they do of their victories, and enthusiasm is with them sustained by the truth, whatever that may be. The Russians cannot yet reach ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... was theirs. They rang true to every moral appeal. They were not only men of letters, but they were also gentlemen, and they have associated literature in the thought of the country with dignity, culture and beauty of life—Emerson's unworldliness, Lowell's loyalty to truth, and Curtis's splendid rectitude, as enduring as the granite, are of lasting value to the higher life ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... guaranteeing to its humblest citizen his just right to life, liberty, protection from injustice, the enjoyment of the fruits of his own labor and the pursuit of happiness in his own way, as long as he walks in the path of rectitude and duty and does not trespass upon the rights ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day—as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... steel-strong rectitude of soul And poverty sublime 'mid circling virtues! The giant victories, my counsels form'd, Shall stalk around me with sun-glittering plumes, Bidding the darts ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Frankfort a portrait in delicate pencilling of a young girl of about eighteen; the hair is in close curls all round the head, the necklace is marked with utmost detail. Perhaps I have not laid sufficient stress on the truth and rectitude of Overbeck's work, as seen, for instance, in the Head of an Old Monk among the drawings of the National Gallery, Berlin. This is so close to nature that a deformity in one ear has been conscientiously ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... nation, the governor of the State, the mayor of this city, and the president of this exposition, with all their associations. God of our fathers, give unto us all that sincerity of purpose, that rectitude of action so necessary for the preservation of our rights and privileges. Make us the toiling means for promulgating for Thee, and ever more successfully, the divine message of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and to Thee, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, shall be ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... usurpation which threatened the Government at an earlier period; if the Union is to become powerless for the purposes for which it was established, and we are vainly to appeal to it for protection—then, sir, conscious of the rectitude of our course, and self-reliant within ourselves, we look beyond the confines of the Union for ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... call me unmaidenly, more than indiscreet, and will say that I have been ready to throw myself into the arms of the first stranger I have met; but what care I for this little world of Shetland? I stand on my own rectitude. I shall be far away, and can afford to despise all such insinuations. But the greatest doubt Bertha, in her over-anxious love, has raised up before me, is that regarding Hernan himself. Still I feel sure that he is all that is honourable and noble. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... he held them subdued and over-mastered, the fabric of their scheme of corruption and dishonesty trembled to its base. It was the last protest of the Old School, rising up there in denunciation of the new order of things, the statesman opposed to the politician; honesty, rectitude, uncompromising integrity, prevailing for the last time against the devious manoeuvring, the evil communications, the rotten ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... his grandfather, with whom Fox once quarrelled, and whom Burke loved. Plantagenet Palliser, himself the heir to a dukedom, was the young Chancellor of the Exchequer, of whom some statesmen thought much as the rising star of the age. If industry, rectitude of purpose, and a certain clearness of intellect may prevail, Planty Pall, as he is familiarly called, may ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... interesting study—the most interesting in the world. The genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality of the English are beyond praise and without limit. In this they show a strange contradiction to their dickering habits in trade and their "unctuous rectitude" in stealing continents. I know a place in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line into other people's territory. I guess they really believe that the earth belongs ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... was a natural sovereign in the sphere in which she moved, and impressed her son with the qualities which made his Anti-slavery life nothing but an expression of the rules of conduct which governed him in all other particulars. Believing in his inmost soul in principles of rectitude, all men believed in him, his "yea," or "nay," passing current wherever he went. Tall, dignified, and commanding, he had that in his face which inspired immediate confidence. Said one who looked: "If that is not a good man, there is no use in the Lord writing His signature on human countenances." ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Condition he appears in, it still sits free and easie upon him; but in some Part of his Character, 'tis true, he differs from him; for as he is altogether equal to the Largeness of his present Circumstances, the Rectitude of his Judgment has so far corrected the Inclinations of his Ambition, that he will not trouble himself with either the Desires or Pursuits of any ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... basin brought in at dinner, and would cut the best slice to tempt the invalid appetite. Money she rarely, if ever, gave, but she would find a day's work, or busy herself to seek permanent employment for any one seeking aid. Stern in rectitude herself, and iron to the fawning or the dishonest, her influence, whether she was feared or loved, was always for good. Of the strictest sect of the Evangelicals, she was an Evangelical. On the Sunday no books were allowed ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Sensation, is that there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses. The Transcendentalist claimed an intuitive knowledge of God, belief in immortality, and in man's ability to apprehend absolute ideas of truth, justice, and rectitude. The one regarded expediency, prudence, caution, and practical wisdom as the highest of the virtues, and distrusted alike the seer, the prophet, and the reformer. The other was by nature a reformer and dissatisfied with men as they are, but with ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... No rectitude of intention will save us from mistakes. Sympathies and antipathies are but synonyms of prejudice, and indifference is impossible. Love is blind, and so is every other passion; love believes eagerly what it desires; it excuses or passes lightly over blemishes, it dwells on what is beautiful, while ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... attempt was making to render him odious to the populace, he had the courage (some might say, the rashness) to proceed to Paris, and present himself to the bar of the National Assembly. Few men, in such a situation, would have thus hazarded their lives; but he was strong in conscious rectitude. He appeared before his enemies with dignity and firmness. "He entreated the assembly to come forward and save the country from ruin, by dissolving the factious clubs and inflicting exemplary punishment on the authors of the late disgraceful riots." ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Titian and a Lancashire cotton mill, then, in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton mill. Only the dilettantism of the studio; that dilettantism which loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fibre, and which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of reasoning power, would make a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... should do that unless one has something better to offer," Longmore returned. "And yet I'm haunted by the dream of a life in which you should have found no compromises, for they're a perversion of natures that tend only to goodness and rectitude. As I see it you should have found happiness serene, profound, complete; a femme de chambre not a jewel perhaps, but warranted to tell but one fib a day; a society possibly rather provincial, but—in spite of your poor opinion of mankind—a ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... obscenity would have been odious to them, and the inducement to it infinitely smaller."[58] There is no trace in Diderot of this deep contempt for the viciousness of his time. All that can be said is that he did not escape it in his earlier years, in spite of the natural wholesomeness and rectitude of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... degree of perfection of his beatitude; and for the perfection of beatitude it is required that a man "should have whatever he wants, and should desire nothing in an inordinate fashion."[271] Each one, however, rightly desires to know those things which concern himself. Hence, since no rectitude is lacking to the Saints, they wish to know those things which concern themselves, and consequently they must know them in the Word. But it belongs to their glory that they should be able to help on the salvation of those who need it, ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... incidentals to her "affair;" weighed in the scale of his impartial judgment no more than would unconsidered dust. For the first time in the life to which he had been the guiding-star, she ventured to wonder if the unswerving rectitude that had elevated him above the level of other men, in her esteem and affection, were so glorious a thing after all; if a tempering, not of human frailty, but of charity for the shortcomings, sympathy for the needs, of ordinary mortals, would not subdue the effulgence ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... appropriate their labors or usurp their honors, but that I might spare perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude of understanding. Junius was accurately skilled in all the northern languages, Skinner probably examined the ancient and remoter dialects only by occasional inspection into dictionaries; but the learning ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... had been sent for and was coming in as a witness in Captain Devers's court startled her inexpressibly, despite her conscious rectitude. She told Willett that very evening, as they were driving slowly among the willow-wooded islands, and he looked imploringly into her eyes, and Mrs. Flight and Mr. Burtis on the back seat could see that he was talking eagerly, earnestly, pleadingly, and that ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... incline the hearts of our people unto Him that He will not leave us nor forsake us as a nation, but will continue to us His mercy and protecting care, guiding us in the path of national prosperity and happiness, enduing us with rectitude and virtue, and keeping alive within us a patriotic love for the free institutions which have been given to us as ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... necessary that a prince should be moral, humane, religious, or just; indeed, that if he had these qualities and displayed them they would harm him, but if he were new to his place in the principality he might seem to have them. It would be as useful to him to keep the path of rectitude when this was not too inconvenient as to know how to deviate from it when circumstances dictate. In other words, a prudent prince cannot and ought not really to keep his word except when he can do it without injury ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... what she was—an exuberant, gluttonous dame, with volcanic eyes, heavy golden bracelets, the soupcon of a moustache, and arms as thick as other people's thighs; an altogether impossible person. Nobody but a man of genuine refinement, scrupulous rectitude, delicate sense of honour and kindly disposition would have risked being seen in the same street with such a horror; nobody but a real gentleman could have fallen in love with her. Mr. Eames ran after ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... it down for her to trample it; he caught it back ere it was trodden on. Yes; he had pride: he had it as a dagger in his breast: his pride was his misery. But he was too proud to submit to misery. "What I do is right." He said the words, and rectitude smoothed his path, till the question clamoured for answer: Would the world countenance and endorse his pride in Laetitia? At one time, yes. And now? Clara's beauty ascended, laid a beam on him. We are on board the labouring vessel of humanity in a storm, when cries and countercries ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... another line of argument, proceeding from the assumed "rectitude of human nature," that the Unitarians came, tardily and hesitatingly, to the Universalist position. The long persistence of definite boundary lines between two bodies so nearly alike in their tenets ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... return to witness the innocent happiness of Daphne, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in trying to soothe the agitation of Daphne's mother; listening to her tirades against her suddenly masterful son, hearing her protestations of faith in the rectitude of Jack Marston, alternating with her outbursts of anger and grief at ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... that is called the marriage of good and truth, that is, of love and wisdom. Any one can comprehend intellectually and see rationally, that so far as he flees from and turns away from theft and cheating, so far he loves sincerity, rectitude and justice; so far as he flees and turns away from revenge and hatred, so far he loves the neighbor; and so far as he flees and turns away from adulteries, so far he loves chastity; and so on. And yet scarcely any one knows what there is of heaven and the Lord ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... more than half an hour. What they had talked about it concerns us not to know. We take them as we find them, each leaning back in his chair, confirmed in the opinion that he had maintained, convinced only of his opponent's ability and rectitude of purpose, and enjoying the gradual subsidence of the excitement that accompanies the friendliest intellectual strife as surely as it does the gloved set-tos between those two "talented professors of the noble science of self-defence" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... course, the doctor never for one moment thought of his respected friend as the author of a deed of violence, and quite believed his account of the meeting with Jentham. The bishop's simple way of relating the episode would have convinced any liberal-minded man of his innocence and rectitude. His accents, and looks, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... killed. Snooks does not any more think it gentlemanlike to blackball attorneys. Snuffler no longer publicly spreads out his great red cotton pocket-handkerchief before the fire, for the admiration of two hundred gentlemen; and if one Club Snob has been brought back to the paths of rectitude, and if one poor John has been spared a journey or a scolding—say, friends and brethren if these sketches of Club Snobs have ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... far from being agreed on the application of the term luxury, or on that degree of its meaning which is consistent with national prosperity, or with the moral rectitude of our nature. It is sometimes employed to signify a manner of life which we think necessary to civilization, and even to happiness. It is, in our panegyric of polished ages, the parent of arts, the support of commerce, and the minister of national greatness, and of opulence. It is, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... supposition is not in harmony with what little is known of him from other sources; and John Putnam's conduct at the meeting described proves that his mind was fully perverted, and bereft as it were of all moral rectitude of judgment, in reference to Mr. Burroughs. We must part with Mr. Burroughs for the present. We shall meet him again, where the powers of malignity will be more shamelessly let loose upon him, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... same combination of natural sagacity with acquired information; of pictorial eye with dramatic effect; of observation of character with reflection and feeling; of graphic power with poetic fervour; of ardour of imagination with rectitude of principle; of warlike enthusiasm with pacific tenderness, which have rendered the Grecian bard immortal. It is in his novels, however, more than his poetry, that this resemblance appears; the author of Waverley more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... was now in a state of the utmost confusion. The rectitude of her heart and the soundness of her judgment had hitherto guarded her both from error and blame, and, except during her recent suspence, had preserved her tranquility inviolate: but her commerce with the world had been small and confined, and her actions had had little ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... September, under cover of night, an armed force shouting "Hurrah! Washington!" overpowered the garrison of the fort at Baton Rouge, and three days later the convention declared the independence of West Florida, "appealing to the Supreme Ruler of the World" for the rectitude of their intentions. What their intentions were is clear enough. Before the ink was dry on their declaration of independence, they wrote to the Administration at Washington, asking for the immediate incorporation of West Florida into the Union. Here was the blessed consummation ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... rectitude—everything was urging Juliette to close her ears to the words of love, spoken by the man whom she had betrayed. But who shall blame her for listening to the sweetest sound the ears of a woman can ever hear—the sound of the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was so equable, so gentle! There was never a trace of harshness in his treatment of us. Indeed, it was only in his unfailing rectitude that he surpassed us, for, our senior although he was, he could barely keep up in our classes. Harry was the quickest of the three, but with a mortal hatred of hard study: he had an easy capacity for mastering knowledge without tedious assiduity; and, as he was resolved to be a painter, he held ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... sun never sets, the Bible that had blown Indian mutineers from its muzzle in the 'fifties and was prepared to-day to have a shot at any other mutineers, Teuton or Turk, who dared to dispute its claim that the meek shall inherit the earth. The unctuous rectitude that converts the word of God into wadding for a gun is certainly a formidable opponent, as Cromwell proved. To challenge English supremacy becomes not merely a threat to peace, it is an act of sacrilege. And yet this world-wide ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... man himself. The situation is such as is described by Goethe, when he speaks of the two souls dwelling within the human breast; the soul itself in its own sphere being divided against itself. The man is conscious of rectitude in one part of his conduct, of magnanimous impulses, of high and noble aspirations. He feels himself allied on one side to what is best and purest, and at the same time is aware of another side which ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... the teachers of morality as well as of religion. Of their ethical teaching a valuable specimen is preserved in the Triads of the Welsh Bards, and from this we may gather that their views of moral rectitude were on the whole just, and that they held and inculcated many very noble and valuable principles of conduct. They were also the men of science and learning of their age and people. Whether they were acquainted with letters or not has been disputed, though the probability ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... we shall do our duty well if we constantly guard the rectitude of our intentions, maintain unsullied our love of country, and with unselfish purpose strive for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... He acted under the advice of Jefferson, who sought to destroy Washington; and the present Secretary Randolph is a grandson of Jefferson. Washington, the inflexible patriot, frowned indignantly upon every departure from the path of rectitude. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... this reason, and for this reason alone, that, my suspicions fully aroused, I have been at some pains to verify them. A heart conscious of its moral rectitude does not flinch from the duty before it or from the pain which, unfortunately, the execution of that duty so often inflicts ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... without conceiving the highest idea of the author's probity, whoever he may have been—without desiring to have had him for a friend, to have lived with him, and, in a word, without rendering justice to the rectitude of his intentions, even when we do not approve of his sentiments. The love of virtue, universal benevolence, respect to the laws, an inviolable attachment to the duties of morality, and, in fine, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... she had had her snooze. By-and-by she would attack her cream, being partial to that beverage; but for the present she would slumber on, a creature without care, without fear; a gentle, admirable kitchen cat. She brought up her families when they arrived with all a mother's rectitude and propriety, and when they were old enough to leave her, got rid of them as quickly as possible—which means that she took no further notice of them. She regarded them no longer as hers; they were cats, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... She, too, had heard of public censors, of the girl of the period, and of the forward indelicacy with which women of the age were charged. She knew not why, but it seemed to her that the laws of the world around her demanded more of such rectitude from a woman than from a man, and, if it might be possible to her, she would comply with these laws. She had convinced herself, forming her judgment from every tone of his voice, from every glance of his ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... axiom; on the contrary, that material prosperity without an offset, diminishes the capacity for happiness and debases character, is a fact which a thousand examples are at hand to prove. The worth of a civilization is the worth of the man at its center. When this man lacks moral rectitude, progress only makes bad worse, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... She was thankful for the opportunity of expressing her high admiration of a writer, whom, as she says, she regarded "as the social regenerator of his day—as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped state of things. . . . His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius, that the mere lambent sheet-lightning, playing under the edge of the summer cloud, does to the electric death-spark ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... HUNTER, pink of parlour-maids, not the conventional flirty soubrette nor the low-comedy waiting-woman, but a self-respecting, responsible young person, conscious of her own and her young man's moral rectitude, and satisfied with quarter-day ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... Talleyrand, are master-pieces, full of life and expression. But nothing in the book has interested us more than the view which M. Dumont has presented to us, unostentatiously, and, we may say, unconsciously, of his own character. The sturdy rectitude, the large charity, the good-nature, the modesty, the independent spirit, the ardent philanthropy, the unaffected indifference to money and to fame, make up a character which, while it has nothing unnatural, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The evidence of that love, as shown in Darrow's letter, filled her with a vain compunction. The very extravagance of his offer lent it a deeper pathos. It was wonderful that, even in the urgency of affection, a man of his almost morbid rectitude should have overlooked the restrictions of professional honour, should have implied the possibility of his friend's overlooking them. It seemed to make his sacrifice the more complete that it had, unconsciously, taken the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... fat faces, which ever and ever protested against his own martyrlike scragginess and sallow, discontented visage. To him the markets were like the stomach of the shopkeeping classes, the stomach of all the folks of average rectitude puffing itself out, rejoicing, glistening in the sunshine, and declaring that everything was for the best, since peaceable people had never before grown so beautifully fat. As these thoughts passed through his mind Florent clenched his fists, and felt ready for a struggle, more ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... said, 'I have endeavoured to teach you, from your earliest youth, the duty of self-command; I have pointed out to you the great importance of it through life, not only as it preserves us in the various and dangerous temptations that call us from rectitude and virtue, but as it limits the indulgences which are termed virtuous, yet which, extended beyond a certain boundary, are vicious, for their consequence is evil. All excess is vicious; even that sorrow, which is amiable in its origin, becomes a selfish and unjust passion, if indulged ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... and bodily derangement is attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... had not lost all faith in his own fearlessness and rectitude of motive, but he was obliged to acknowledge to himself that just then he was a rather ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... question were soon to open at Washington Park, on the South Side, and were considered quite society affairs among those who did not affect religious rectitude and conservatism. Mrs. Hurstwood had never asked for a whole season ticket before, but this year certain considerations decided her to get a box. For one thing, one of her neighbours, a certain Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, who were possessors of money, made ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... never would I commit any act unworthy of myself, and for which I would have to blush. It is possible that not only my father but the whole world would pronounce me guilty if it knew my love; but, believe me, that in the consciousness of my rectitude I would have the courage to brave the verdict of the whole world, provided that my own heart acquitted me, and that I am guilty of no other crime than this accidental one, which fate, and not my own will and trespass, imposes on me. Love allows itself neither to be given nor ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... "a good tree." We must not look for truth from an untrue soul. If the bullet-mould is deformed, all the bullets will share its deformity. First get the mould right, and every bullet will share its rectitude. When the soul is "true," all our words, and deeds, and gestures will be "of the truth," and will be true indeed. "Make the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... No considerations of rectitude or of policy could longer restrain the impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and as a first step towards emancipation, he determined to permit the ruin of its original adviser, that unpopular minister, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... harmony, and proportion, if there should ever be, as it is impossible there ever should be, any inconsistence between them, though these last, too, as expressing the fitness of actions, are real as truth itself. Let it be allowed, though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good, as such, yet, that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... of being. Mortal mind is constantly producing on mortal body the results of false 403:18 opinions; and it will continue to do so, until mortal error is deprived of its imaginary powers by Truth, which sweeps away the gossamer web of mortal illusion. 403:21 The most Christian state is one of rectitude and spir- itual understanding, and this is best adapted for heal- ing the sick. Never conjure up some new discovery from 403:24 dark forebodings regarding disease and then acquaint your patient ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... serious, practical-minded man of five and thirty, with great powers of advice. He was the up-line ticket clerk at Easewood Junction, and felt the responsibilities of his position. He was naturally thoughtful and reserved, and greatly sustained in that by an innate rectitude of body and an overhanging and forward inclination of the upper part of his face and head. He was pale but freckled, and his dark grey eyes were deeply set. His lightest interest was cricket, but he did not take that ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... riches of Leonard Jasper taking to themselves wings. Unhappy man! How wretched was he during that and many succeeding days! Rolling, so to speak, in wealth, he yet possessed not life's highest blessing, a truly contented mind, flowing from conscious rectitude and an abiding trust in Providence. Without these, how poor is even he who counts his millions! With them, how rich is the humble toiler, who, receiving day by day his daily bread, looks ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... States as a neutral nation, the wisdom of the National Legislature will be again summoned to the important decision on the alternatives before them. That these will be met in a spirit worthy the councils of a nation conscious both of its rectitude and of its rights, and careful as well of its honor as of its peace, I have an entire confidence; and that the result will be stamped by a unanimity becoming the occasion, and be supported by every portion of our citizens with a patriotism enlightened and invigorated by experience, ought ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... intellect, and he continued from his bed of suffering to prepare the reports for the Council-General of Mines, and that which recently he addressed to the Academy on the occasion of his election. The greatness and the rectitude of mind of Delesse, his astounding power of work, his profound knowledge of science, his sympathetic sweetness, which were associated with sterling modesty and loyalty of character, made him esteemed ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... than he could have expected on board the Proserpine. Lord Cochrane, however, preferred to accept Admiral Heyden's more generous invitation. "It is gratifying," he said in a letter to Dr. Grosse on the 18th of December,[13] "that even the authority to which wicked men refer in proof of the rectitude of evil deeds fails to sanction infamous conduct. Alas! if Capodistrias suffers—and he seems not inclined to oppose—I say, if he suffers the base intrigues of the Phanar to be introduced as the means of ruling a nation, Greece must fall back, if not into a darker state, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... certain that your Majesty will not deem him too presuming if he expresses his fear that this decision will be both painful and embarrassing to your Majesty, but your Majesty will meet this crisis with that firmness which belongs to your character, and with that rectitude and sincerity which will carry your Majesty through all difficulties. It will also be greatly painful to Lord Melbourne to quit the service of a Mistress who has treated him with such unvarying kindness and unlimited confidence; ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... is her own pure and native lustre. Measures never lose any thing of their firmness by their moderation. They win their way as much by the candor and kindness with which they are conducted, as by their intrinsic rectitude. ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... fully represented the greatness of the house of Kuru, the virtuous principles of Gandhari, the wisdom of Vidura, and the constancy of Kunti. The noble Rishi hath also described the divinity of Vasudeva, the rectitude of the sons of Pandu, and the evil practices of the sons and partisans ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was actually under a kind of obligation not to force on him the knowledge of a fact that he could not alter and could not completely judge.... Was there any flaw in this line of reasoning? Did it not show a deliberate weighing of conditions, a perfect rectitude of intention? And, after all, she had had Amherst's virtual consent to her act! She knew his feelings on such matters—his independence of traditional judgments, his horror of inflicting needless ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... dignity, serene and calm, Wearing a careless cheerfulness—unschooled In all the trained restraints of conduct, far Removed from boldness and timidity, With firm, heroic step, she walks along The narrow middle path of rectitude, Unconscious of the worship she compels, Where she of self-approval never dreamed. Say, does my Carlos in this mirror trace The features of his Eboli? The princess Was constant while she loved; love was the price, The understood condition of her virtue. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... every word of disloyalty spoken to the parent. And I hold it to be highly disloyal for my son to accuse me of making sport of his hopes. I have not come to my latest determination from cruelty or caprice; I have made it in the strength of my maternal love to shield my child from sin, and in the rectitude of my imperial responsibility to my people, who have a right to claim from me that I bestow upon them a monarch who is worthy to reign over Austria. Therefore, my son, as empress and mother, I say that you shall remain. That is ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... reply, because none of them ever admit the least doubt of the rectitude of their own individual creed, that there can be no proportion between these idols and mortals, who are the work of their hands; that it is not permitted to the clay to demand of the potter who has formed it, "why ye have ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... herself with an air of studied negligence upon one part of the sofa. I felt the awkwardness of my position duly increased, as her house, dress, and manner, convinced me that she was not yet subdued to hers; but a conscious rectitude of intention carried me forward, and lightened ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... character who comes out best is Pilate. He is a noble Roman, whose impartiality and rectitude, coupled with an anxious desire to take the line of least resistance and find out some practical middle course, is worthy of that imperial race to whose vices, as well as to many of their virtues, we English have succeeded. ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead |
