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More "Singleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirit; soul yearns for soul. It is the genius of woman to be electrical in movement, intuitive in penetration, and spiritual in tendency. She excels not so easily in classification or recreation as in an instinctive seizure of causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives, that has the singleness of life, rather than the selecting and energizing of art. More native is it to her to be the living model of the artist, than to set apart from herself any one form in objective reality. More native to inspire and receive ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... upon the general question of the interdependence of the parts of the world, a question which has already appeared as pertinent in ontology. Monism and pluralism now obtain a new meaning. Where the world process is informed with some singleness of plan, as teleology proposes, the parts are reciprocally necessary, and inseparable from the unity. Where, on the other hand, the processes are random and reciprocally fortuitous, as Leucippus proposes, the world ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... as the partners and servants of the North-West Company were called, were bold competitors. Their enthusiasm for the conflict was all the more eager because their trade was regarded as illicit by their rivals. There was singleness of purpose in their ranks; almost every man in the service had been tried and proved. All the Montreal partners of the company had taken the long trip to the Grand Portage, a transit station at ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... Barnaby that day, otherwise than as an actor in a show which was to take place to-morrow. But if the whole population had had him in their minds, and had wished his life to be spared, not one among them could have done so with a purer zeal or greater singleness of heart than ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of union with the Whole. (The state of Ekagrata in the Hindu philosophy: one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness of the Whole, and of things past and things to come and things far around—which consciousness had been shut out by the concentration on the local self—begins to return again. This is not to say, of course, that ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the mate's speech that he thought little of his big junior officer. A good, or even fair opinion would have been simply expressed as yes, or good enough. Having in view the possibility of conflict when their destination was reached and the necessity for singleness of purpose among the ship's company, he went quietly to work on a mental register of every man on board from chief mate down to cook, to the end that he might have to depend on nobody's ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... unborn offspring they devote To misery through ill-assorted unions, Or habits reckless of maternal dues; How marriage, sacredest of mortal steps, Is entered on from motives all unworthy; Social ambition, mercenary aims, The dread of poverty, of singleness,— The object of uniting families,— And momentary passion fatuous. So I resolved, God helping, to be true To my own self, and that way true ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... of decency"; that "satire never, in his hands, descended into scurrility"; that "a moral purpose ever underlaid his humour"; that "he sought to instruct and improve whenever he amused." The absurdity of this statement we have already exposed. In reference to a supposed singleness of heart and honesty of purpose, some writers have termed him "honest George." All this was very well. We all know, of course, that he "never pandered to sensuality" or "glorified vice"; but in spite of these facts, "honest George" himself, so far at least as we personally know, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... word—of the shaft delivered promptly and once for all. I should have indeed to cure myself of hesitation first. I see too many ways of saying things; a more decided mind hits on the right way at once. Singleness of phrase implies courage, self-confidence, clear-sightedness. To attain it there must he no doubting, and I ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shortened now, and he was more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I was suspected of an intention of carrying poison to him, I asked to be searched before I sat down at his bedside, and told the officer who was always there, that I was willing to do anything that would assure him of the singleness of my designs. Nobody was hard with him or with me. There was duty to be done, and it was done, but not harshly. The officer always gave me the assurance that he was worse, and some other sick prisoners ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... was born in 1835, in one of the mission cabins on the shores of Lac-qui-Parle, who has spent his whole life among the Sioux Indians, and who with a singleness of purpose, worthy of the apostle Paul, has devoted his whole life to their temporal and spiritual uplift, thus vividly sketches missionary life among the Sioux in his boyhood days: "My first serious impression of life was that I was living under ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, after several failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma glittered upon him to the last with a keen impenetrable candor, a child- like singleness of glance, covering ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... on which the picture rests for its singleness of purpose. No picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards built up on the same canvas or not. The sketch points the way. But all the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition or color; ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... scarcely taken her first step in the path of duty before the next was made plain. In her case this was so marked as to fill her with surprise. She had undertaken to save a human soul wellnigh lost, and was entering upon her work with that singleness of purpose which gives success where success is possible. Such being the case, she was an instrument through which a divine love of saving could operate. She became, as it were, the human hand by which God could reach down ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... regarding him amusedly. In those first three days of their life together, in her woman's way, she had been studying him. And that which she had learned filled her with a tender, almost motherly amusement. He was transparent in his simplicity. His singleness of purpose was almost amazing. But under it all she had become aware of a strength and latent force that could only be guessed at. Their talks had been less intimate during the time of their preparations, and she understood that it was the result ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... to get that miserable, stripped, undecked, smouldering shell of a ship back again with her head pointing at her port of destination. Bankok! That's what he was after. I tell you this quiet, bowed, bandy-legged, almost deformed little man was immense in the singleness of his idea and in his placid ignorance of our agitation. He motioned us forward with a commanding gesture, and went ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... where a woman may, a native instinct teaches and qualifies her to make a home for herself. If single, taste and housewifery are combined within even the narrow limits of one or two rooms. Her singleness need not chill the heart,—for there are other things to love than men. The power to make tender friendships was born with her, and is part of her nature; nor does it leave her now. She has, moreover, the proud satisfaction of knowing that she has never lived to tempt others to an act of sin and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... indeed, these considerations seemed vague, far-fetched, little better than affectations. The clear thing to be done was to get that bird. This done, I could consider the rest. To admit any other thought militated in some way against the singleness and compactness of my being. Wise or unwise, what had I to do with far-off matters of that sort? My business was to succeed in a certain task, not to be sage and so forth. I actually felt a kind of shame to be debating any other than the all-important ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... malcontents than with the deliberate intention of betraying their country. Kosciuszko was ill-versed, either by nature, training, or inclination in the art of politics; but through this tangled web of perplexity and uncertainty, when present and future were equally enveloped in obscurity, his singleness of aim supplied him with the unerring instinct with which through the whole of his life he met and unmasked the pitfalls that were spread before the unhappiest and the most cruelly betrayed of nations. Under the dictates of this pure patriotism he directed himself ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... the special limitations of his time, will "age fail to wither him." That he cannot entirely shake off the fetters which fasten him to his epoch is manifest. But in proportion as his vision is clear, in proportion as he has with singleness of eye striven to draw the past with reverent loyalty, will his bondage to his own time be loosened, and his work will remain faithful work for which due gratitude will ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... National faith is only another name for the tremendous earnestness that set the whole land ablaze with singleness of purpose, consecrated to a ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... God has given, or who neglect to seek it when it is within their reach, are left in darkness. But the Saviour declares, "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."(509) Whoever is with singleness of purpose seeking to do God's will, earnestly heeding the light already given, will receive greater light; to that soul some star of heavenly radiance will be sent, to guide him ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... who pass their lives in singleness, devotion, or meditation, for those in holy matrimony, those engaged in life's battle in mountains, and caves, and pits of the earth, our holy fathers and ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... enlarge the party. It became a quasi-religious movement, ministers and churches, without any very far-reaching hopes and plans, labouring to bring about a spirit which should induce men to renounce Masonry; and in their zeal they worked with the singleness of thought and the accepted methods that dominate the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... He had the power of inspiring confidence in defeat and danger. His judgment and good sense seemed to fit him for any emergency. He had the same control over himself that he had over others. His patriotism and singleness of purpose inspired devotion. He felt his burdens, but did not seek to throw them off. "Hardship and sorrow," said he, "not a king but would wish to be without these if he could; but I know he cannot." "So long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily." "I ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking, uncalculating, which I knew lay ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... daughters, after a long evening, in which the two had sat discoursing of men and books and the topics of the day—"if he live, John Clarke will make a mark in the university, if not in the world. I have seldom met a finer intellect, seldom a man of such singleness of mind and purity of spirit. Small wonder that students flock to his lectures and desire to be taught of him. Heaven protect him from the perils which too often threaten those who think too much for themselves, and who overleap ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... people became an holy zeal, and their warfare noble; so that they did accept both victory and defeat with equal humbleness. Because there was no war in their hearts, but peace, and they did fight to defend and not to acquire, they buried their foe with tears and their own with singleness of heart and quiet joy, for that they did rest from their labours. In this manner was the great tragedy and glory of the world made to the people a present thing, transforming them to the body of the Life that hath neither spot nor ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perfect deference to the feelings of others with absolute certainty of himself and his own opinions. He is a remarkable example of the educating influence of tactful perception, combined with entire singleness of aim, considered quite apart from its moral character. His early life was passed among the uncouth and illiterate; his daily associations, since he embraced Mormonism, have been with the least cultivated grades of human society,—a heterogeneous peasant-horde, looking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... editions of the same book. You see what a literary tendency I have developed! We both have the habit, or the gift, of looking at every subject broadly, of taking in all its points of view, and the proof we are constantly giving ourselves of the singleness of our inward vision is an ever-new pleasure. We have actually come to look on this community of mind as a pledge of love; and if it ever failed us, it would mean as much to us as would a breach of fidelity in an ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... rivermen, but strong in their experience and their discipline. To be sure, they might not last quite as long as their antagonists could—a whisky training is not conducive to long wind—but they always lasted plenty long enough. Sand-bags and brass knuckles helped some, ruthless singleness of purpose counted, and team work finished the job. At times the storm rose high, but up to now ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... afternoon tea, when she is sitting on someone's lap, facing an empty, uninteresting plate, she sees another plate three chairs distant, and upon that plate there is a biscuit or some other sweet attraction. Upon such occasions Lulla all but plunges into space between the chairs, in her singleness of purpose. Having reached the lap nearest that plate, she turns and smiles at her late entertainer just to make sure she is not offended. But even if she knew she would be, Lulla would not hesitate. Curly head foremost, eyes on the goal: that ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... aware not only of the abundance of this quality in his own nature, but of the danger in which it placed consistency and singleness of character, did not require the note on this passage, where he calls it "an unhappy attribute," to assure us. The consciousness, indeed, of his own natural tendency to yield thus to every chance impression, and change with every passing impulse, was not only for ever present in his mind, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... opportunity, has, up to this moment, risen to the full measure of the duty assumed. The management of the exposition has never despaired, but with a realizing sense of the mighty task it has undertaken, and mindful of the limitations of human capabilities, with singleness of purpose and with personal sacrifice for which it neither asks nor deserves credit, has striven to meet the expectations of those whose ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... forgetfulness and decay, in the sight of his own shortcomings and limitations, or on the edge of the tomb, he alone who has found his soul in losing it, who in singleness of mind has lived in order to love and understand, will find that the God who is near to him as his own conscience has a face ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no part in his mental process as he swung down the steep, familiar streets. A singleness of purpose, high as it was foolish, possessed and inspired him. He loved Blake with a wonderful, unsexual love, and he yearned to lay himself at his feet, to offer him of his best—gifts of the gods, given with free hands ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... on his lips, the master walked slowly forward, continuing his orders to repair the damages with a singleness of purpose that rendered him, however uncouth as a friend, an invaluable man in ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had not passed his days in singleness. He had a Wife, a comely Matron, old Though younger than himself full twenty years. She was a woman of a stirring life Whose heart was in her house: two wheels she had Of antique form, this large for spinning wool, That small for flax, and if one wheel had rest, It was because the other was ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... strongly impressed Leigh Hunt and Keats. Holman Hunt—though apparently not his associates—had also read with eager approval the first volume of Ruskin's "Modern Painters," in which the young artists of England are advised to "go to nature in all singleness of heart . . . rejecting nothing, selecting nothing." Pre-Raphaelitism was a practical, as "Modern Painters" was a theoretical, protest against the academic traditions which kept young artists making school copies of Raphael, instructed them ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... were needed as to the sincerity and singleness of purpose of the Committee, the action taken by the deputation in Pretoria and the rest of the Committee in Johannesburg, whilst acting independently of each other and without any opportunity of discussing ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... whole kingdom did not contain a man more attached to the king and queen. But he combined statesman-like prudence with his loyalty; and his conduct before he took office elicited a very remarkable proof of the singleness of mind and purpose with which the king and queen had accepted the Constitution. M. Bertrand had previously refused office, and was very unwilling to take it now; and he frankly told Louis that he could not hope to be of any real service to him unless ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... mansion; thus anticipating, through the prompting of his individual taste, that general reaction from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style, towards a restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his fox-hunting neighbours, who wondered greatly that a man with some of the best blood in England in his veins, should be mean enough to economize ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... old ladies of my acquaintance," replied Mr. Ingram. "Beatrice owes a great deal of her nobleness of heart and singleness of purpose to her mother. Mrs. Bertram, I have never heard that woman say an unkind word. I have heard calumny of her, but never from her. Then, of course, Meadowsweet was quite ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... jealousy for good, A loving-kindness for the great man's fame, Dwells here and there with people of no name, In noisome alley, and in pathless wood: And where we think the truth least understood, Oft may be found a "singleness of aim," That ought to frighten into hooded shame A money mong'ring, pitiable brood. How glorious this affection for the cause Of stedfast genius, toiling gallantly! What when a stout unbending champion ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... occupations of many of the Staff precluded an earlier attendance, it was quickly seen that the chief practical use and effect of the Dinner was to broaden the men's view of things, to produce harmony of tone and singleness of aim, to keep the Editor constantly in touch with his whole Staff, and through them with the public; and thus to secure the fullest advantage which their combined wit and counsel could afford. When the transfer of the paper was completed from Ebenezer Landells to ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... in combination with his subtlety of understanding, the excellence of his advocacy may be attributed, is one more rarely possessed— and scarcely ever in such association— the entire singleness of a mind equally present in every part of a cause. If the promotion of the interest of the client were an advocate's highest duty, it would be another name for the exactest virtue; and inasmuch as that interest is not, like the objects of zeal, fixed in character, but liable ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... wilderness, and the candle of the Lord shone brightly upon it; now, the blending of many inferior lights distracted my mind from its one object of contemplation, and broke the harmony that was so sweet in its singleness. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... was a great and crowning mercy; yet might we seem to be but small in our thankfulness for the same, did we not do what in us lies towards the ultimate improvement and final conclusion of the great work which has been thus prosperous in our hands, professing, in pure humility and singleness of heart, that we do not, in any way, deserve our instrumentality to be remembered, nay, would rather pray and entreat, that our name and fortunes were forgotten, than that the great work were in itself incomplete. Nevertheless, truly, placed as we now are, it concerns us more nearly ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... distinguishable from hundreds of his countrymen, who were not sharers of his military abilities. Does not his broad forehead indicate thoughtfulness? While his keen and penetrating eyes and firmly set lips are marks of determination and singleness of purpose. And his broad chin, does it not reveal the man of tenacity and endurance? As an individual he was sympathetic, generous, and magnanimous; he was endowed with discretion and tact, simplicity and honesty. As a soldier, vigilant, persevering, never ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... this letter comes from by opening slap-dash upon the text, as in the good old times. I never could come into the custom of envelopes,—'tis a modern foppery; the Plinian correspondence gives no hint of such. In singleness of sheet and meaning, then, I thank you for your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil of thanks for your "Book of the Church." I scarce feel competent to give an opinion of the latter; I have not reading ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... their children after them." Zech. xiv. 9. "And the Lord shall be King over all the earth: in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one." Acts ii. 46. "And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread, from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." Acts iv. 32. "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart, and one soul." I Cor. vii. 17. "But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk; and so ordain ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... Singleness of purpose is one of the prime requisites of success. Fortune is jealous, and refuses to be approached from all ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... last chapter of the tract on the Creation (De Opifico, lxi.), Philo enumerates what he terms the five most beautiful lessons, superior to all others. These are—(i) God is; (ii) God is One; (iii) the World was created (and is not eternal); (iv) the World is one, like unto God in singleness; and (v) God exercises a continual providence for the benefit of the world, caring for His creatures like a parent ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... are deeply enlisted for the students of students; having already seen in many instances their [25] talents, culture, and singleness of purpose to uplift the race. Such students should not pay the penalty for other people's faults; and divine Love will open the way for them. My soul abhors injustice, and loves mercy. St. John writes: "Whom God hath sent speaketh [30] the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the love sentiment does not usually display the singleness of energy shown among the lower animals. It is affected and often checked in its development by an intricate series of influences, which act on savage and civilized man alike. The family formed ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... account an extraordinary tenacity of belief and will. There is no complication and systematic combination of political, moral, and social views, but a few axioms of life adhered to with a most admirable energy; and we therefore find a singleness of purpose, a unity of national and religious feeling, among all ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... southern headland of the Kwantung coast, hurling nearly or quite all the vessels on the shore or sinking them beneath the waves. The bold leader had been counselled to seek shelter from the storm under the lee of the shore, but he refused, and kept on despite the storm, daring death in his singleness of purpose. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away from him; and he was astonished at himself. Only last Sunday desire had seemed simple—just his freedom and Annette. 'I'll go and dine there,' he thought. To see her might bring back his singleness of intention, calm his exasperation, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it were not her real name, she was an admirer of the principles of the German play from which she had taken it, and took an opportunity of leading the conversation to that subject; but to his great surprise, the lady spoke very ardently of the singleness and exclusiveness of love, and declared that the reign of affection was one and indivisible; that it might be transferred, but could not be participated. 'If I ever love,' said she, 'I shall do so ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... just received by our Church, and by the hands of Tychicus and Onesinius himself, from the Apostle, we find these words: "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God; and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... very deliberate; there was an absence of superfluous energy that told of intensity of thought and singleness of purpose. He shouldered the saddle with a single movement, walked with it to the lean-to, threw it upon its accustomed peg, hung the bridle from the pommel, and then turned and for a brief time listened to the talk and laughter that issued from the open door and windows ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... be granted by even his most extravagant opponents, he addressed himself with the loftiest resolution and singleness of purpose, excluding all puerile questions of ways and means. He was, by the moral law, no more bound to take into account the process whereby the accused was brought to book and the weight of retribution brought to bear than a detective is bound to remember how any ordinary prisoner is snared ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... remain ed for him to strengthen the many defences of his subject, and, now and then, to scatter by a fierce sortie the doctrinal skirmishers who might occasionally approach his parish. There was a remarkable singleness of mind in this religionist, which, while it in some measure rendered even his bigotry respectable, greatly aided in clearing the knotty subject, with which he dealt, of much embarrassing matter. In his eyes, the strait and narrow ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... has to be made to forget anything about the President. In his case injurious gossip has long since died away and been buried. Whatever may be said of him in other respects, at least the purity and the singleness of his patriotism shine brilliant and luminous through all this cloud-dust of derogation. By his position he had more at stake, both in his lifetime and before the tribunal of the future, than any other person in the country. But there was only one idea ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... if you will keep a secret, I will tell it you; and yet, when I began, I did not intend it: the poor youth must not know it. It is done in the singleness of our hearts; and if you think we mean to gain your love for us by it, I do assure you, that you wrong us.—My nephew declares, that he never will marry, if it be not somebody: and he has made his will, and so have I his uncle; and, let me tell you, that if as how ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... in addition, one good quality without any defect to balance it. He was always ready to help people. And when he set himself to do this, he was never put off by discomfort or risk. He went at the thing with a singleness of ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... would have cost any {179} man but one with absolute singleness of purpose a poignant effort. At the age of twenty-seven, he decided to enter the Royal Navy. Now, in a democratic age, we don't talk about such things; but there are unwritten laws and invisible lines just ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Committee, in which I entirely concurred, on the points at issue. I observed, in substance, that in the struggle for the liberation of the slaves in the British Colonies, one great source of our moral strength was, the singleness of our object, and our not allowing any other subject, however important or unexceptionable, to be mixed up with it; that though the aid of our female coadjutors had been of vital importance to the success of the anti-slavery enterprize, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... not deal in moral subtleties, that was clear. Regret, penitence, sufferings, tears, or dreamy aspiration: he did not stay to split such hairs as these. His eye was for the large, the stark effect. And by the intense singleness of his vision, he had freighted his opinions with an extraordinary conviction. He had shouted down, as from a high bench, the world's judgment on the life of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... manner American "Faith Missions," not a few, have planted the banner of the cross in that land of the trident and are prosecuting their mission and proclaiming their message with singleness of purpose and exemplary zeal. The "Christian Alliance" is the most pretentious organization of this class which does work in that land. Its efforts are chiefly confined to the Bombay Presidency where it has a goodly ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... for this? And sick in mind and sick in body, but one wish remains to him, that death will come quickly and end all. It is a cry from the very depths of a single and simple heart. But for such simplicity and singleness his friends could not give him credit; possessed beforehand with their idea, they see in his misery only a fatal witness against him; such calamities could not have befallen a man, the justice of God would not have permitted it, unless they had been deserved. Job had sinned and he had ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... grasped. A navy, ships, a railroad to the sea—those he could understand. Treaties were beyond his comprehension. And, with a child's singleness of idea, he returned to ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... whom, deemed a fool or a drunkard, the guards pricked off with their spears, while the king passed on into the mosque: and how the man came on the morrow with yesterday's blood-spots on him, and cried out for right. What follows is told with great singleness and truth: ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... way it was an unequal struggle, for youth, ablaze with a holy fire, was matched against age, stiffened only by stubborn determination. Neither man longer had any compunctions; each fought with a ferocious singleness of purpose. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of family connexions and national habits on her conduct, both public and private, and given a concise outline of the domestic, as well as the general history of her times, and its effects on her character, and we have done so with singleness of heart, unbiassed by selfish interests or narrow views. Such as they were in life we have endeavoured to portray them, both in good and ill, without regard to any other considerations than the development ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... have been induced to all these omissions by a conviction, that the existing system of government, if not the most eligible that could have been devised, was at least unproductive of those glaring ill consequences, with which it has subsequently been attended. A singleness of design and a unity of action, could not be deviated from during the period of its infancy by the most ignorant and inexpert bungler in political science. There was a broad path open to its government, which it could ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... the Beauty here referred to is of the human being, we do not gainsay it; but this is beauty in its mixed mode,—not in its high, passionless form, its singleness and purity. It is not Beauty as it descended from heaven, in the cloud, the rainbow, the flower, the bird, or in the concord of sweet sounds, that seem to carry back the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... presented itself—the Impeachment of Warren Hastings— which, by embodying the cause of a whole country in one individual, and thus combining the extent and grandeur of a national question, with the direct aim and singleness of a personal attack, opened as wide a field for display as the most versatile talents could require, and to Mr. Sheridan, in particular, afforded one of those precious opportunities, of which, if Fortune ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Columbus, nor Washington, nor Lincoln was what we call a genius—a genius, that is, in the sense in which Shakespeare or Napoleon or Galileo was a genius. But they combined in singular degree those three characteristics without which no man may be truly great: sincerity and courage and singleness of purpose. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... and, more especially, to those choosing the profession of the physician, and the reader can discern therein something of the man himself, can get some glimpse of his life and its meaning, can gain some sense of the sincerity, the simplicity, the self-sacrifice and singleness of purpose which guided him and finally lifted him so far out of and above the ordinary, then will the pleasant task of recalling fully justify ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... resolute flow, and its hue, though dark as ink, exquisitely polish'd and sheeny under the August sun. Different, indeed, this Saguenay from all other rivers—different effects—a bolder, more vehement play of lights and shades. Of a rare charm of singleness and simplicity. (Like the organ-chant at midnight from the old Spanish convent, in "Favorita"—one strain only, simple and monotonous and unornamented—but indescribably penetrating and grand and masterful.) Great place for echoes: while ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... have aroused images in the heads of civilians that might well have turned a reverse into a disaster. The High Command could be disappointed, and yet pull itself together; the people at home and abroad, full of uncertainties, and with none of the professional man's singleness of purpose, might on the basis of a complete story have lost sight of the war in a melee of faction and counter-faction about the competence of the officers. Instead, therefore, of letting the public act on all the facts which the generals knew, the authorities presented only certain facts, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... singleness of purpose he made very few and no entangling acquaintances, nor did he impart to any one the secret of his fortune, loyally reserving it for his partner's first knowledge. To a man of his natural frankness and simplicity ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... and our hostess too distracted at the moment for any explanations. We were swept away, and both of us spent the remainder of the evening feebly protesting our singleness. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... most righteously done, should be perverted by the slanders of malicious men, and that one should bear the reproach of sin where he has rather deserved the hope of honour. Many things are done with singleness of eye, the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doth, the lump is uncorrupted by leaven, nor is the garment woven of wool and linen; and yet by the trickery of perverse men a pious work is mendaciously transformed into some monstrous act. Certes, ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... his nature, or rather seem necessary to arouse his faculties and to give an interest to his existence. Surrounded by hostile tribes whose mode of warfare is by ambush and surprisal, he is always prepared for fight, and lives with his weapons in his hands. As the ship careers in fearful singleness through the solitudes of ocean, as the bird mingles among clouds and storms, and wings its way, a mere speck, across the pathless fields of air, so the Indian holds his course, silent, solitary, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... saw mountains, which drew him strangely. In particular, one uplifted peak, silver and sapphire as the clear day, and soaring supreme over the jumble of lesser summits, attracted him. He knew now that that was where he was going, and thither he pressed on with singleness of purpose, delaying only when absolutely necessary, to hunt or to sleep. The cage, the stage, the whip, Hansen, the bear, even the proud excitement of the flaming hoops, were swiftly fading to dimness in his mind, overwhelmed ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... taunted, and thwarted, Angelina faithfully persevered in her efforts at reform, at the same time as faithfully striving after more meekness and singleness of purpose herself. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... and groundless confidence that you have reached me. You have employed without scruple all those advantages it put into your hands. You have undermined me at your ease. I left you to protect my life's blood, my heart of heart, from every attack, to preserve the singleness of her affections, and the constancy of her attachment. It was yours to have breathed into her ear the sighs of St. Julian. It was yours ambitiously to expatiate upon his amiable qualities. You were every day to have added fuel to the flame. You ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... of heart, a singleness of idea in herself, that prevented her from ever attaching suspicion to others. But a sort of vague, undefined apprehension floated through her brain as she revolved the extraordinary behaviour of her cousin. Yet, it was ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... a surpassing singleness of mankind. The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un- dimmed, the hen will nestle over her chickens, we shall love, we shall hate, but it will be like music, sheer utterance, issuing straight out of the unknown, the lightning and the rainbow ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... blackened fireplace, and the flat doorstones before what was once the threshold. Grass and brambles covered the foundations; lilacs, with spikes of brown dead blossoms, grew tall and thick around it, and roses, gone back to wild singleness, blossomed near the steps and along a path, which was only a memory, the grass had tangled ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... this; and, with joy and satisfaction, abide thou under his tutory and at his school. And withal, be not discouraged, be thy case of ignorance and corruption what it will, lay it before him with sincerity and singleness of heart, and then "thou mayest glory in thine infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest on thee," 2 Cor. xii. 9; for thou shalt see, in due time, what advantage infinite love and wisdom can bring to thy ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... the heroic commander of the army, the President said appealingly, "He and his brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns, moving to his and their support." This patriotic singleness of thought for the country's safety defeated and scattered all more political plans, and the hearts of the people turned more and more to Mr. Lincoln. He had been steadily growing in the esteem of his countrymen. The patience, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Griggs "being a butterfly," with utter intensity of joy and singleness of purpose, was a sight to be remembered. For Carlotty was a pickaninny four years old, and blacker than the Ace of Spades! Her purple calico dress, pink apron, and twenty little woolly braids tied with bits of yellow ribbon ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... recognised stir of his better nature, this clearing of his mental eyesight under the light of a bright example, that made him call the little torch-bearer his good angel. If this were truth, this purity, uprightness, and singleness of mind, as conscience said it was, where was he? how far wandering ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Edwards on pastoral work reveal the singleness of purpose of the man as a student and thinker. He never made pastoral calls. He had no criticism to make of those pastors who had talent for entertaining people by occasional calls, but as he had no gifts in that direction he regarded ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... rest, M. PAUL ANDREEV, as Prince Igor, gave his plaint of captivity with a noble pathos. As for the chorus, it sang with the singleness and intensity of spirit which are only possible to a national chorus in national opera, and which (I hope) are the envy of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... thing of curious patches, of strength and weakness, of light and shade; perhaps the greatest weakness is its lack of cohesion, of unification: on the one hand we find much provision for the children's real needs, much singleness of purpose in the teacher's work, such a genuine spirit of whole-hearted desire for their education: on the other hand, an unreasoning sense of haste, of pushing on, of introducing prematurely work for which the children admittedly are unready; an acceptance of new things on popular report, without ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... to be as sound as those of Euclid himself, that the moment the taint of money enters into the business of reading the Future the accuracy and credit of the Fortune told disappears. The Fortune-teller no longer possesses the singleness of mind or purpose necessary to a clear reading of the symbols he or she consults. The amount of the fee is the first consideration, and this alone is sufficient to obscure the mental vision and to bias the judgment. This applies to the very highest ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... disputed on two grounds: both are contrary to truth and contrary to human nature. An officer is not only an administrator but a magistrate, and it is this dual role which makes his function so radically different than anything encountered in civil life—to say nothing of the singleness of purpose by which the service moves forward. Moreover, the armed service officer deals with the most plastic human material within the society—men who, in the majority, the moment they step ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Love righteousness, O rulers of the earth, Think of the Lord with sincerity, And seek him in singleness of heart. For he is found by those who do not tempt him, And manifests himself to those who do not distrust him. For perverse thoughts separate from God, And his power, when it is tried, convicts the foolish; For wisdom will ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... can hardly believe my eyes—and you talk just like him too—no one would say that people of such different ages could speak so much alike. He and I never had any kind of difference from first to last neither in camp nor council, but in singleness of heart and purpose we advised the Argives how all might ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... will, he made no doubt; and there were times when he was strongly tempted to carry the war boldly into the wider field of graft and bossism. That he postponed the bigger battle was due quite as much to the singleness of purpose which was his best gift as to the desire to spare his father. Telling himself resolutely that the reformation of the railroad company's political methods was his chief object, and the only ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... room—the drawings, the furs and skins, the harpoons and other instruments, all remaining in their respective places, as when I last had an interview with Mr Turnbull. I remembered his kindness, his singleness of heart, his honesty, his good sense, and his real worth; and I shed many tears for his loss. My thoughts then passed to Sarah Drummond, and I felt much uneasiness on that score. Would she receive me, or would she still remember what I had been? I ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... girl's face looking over her bunch of sweet-peas. There was in it something indescribably youthful and innocent, almost angelic. The light from the window made her hair toss into gold; her blue eyes sought Cynthia with the singleness of blue stars. It was evident whom she had come to see. She held out her flowers towards her with a gesture at once humble and worshipful, like that of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... women whose natural singleness of heart and sincerity are such that they could not have two lovers at the same time. You believed your mistress such an one; that is best, I admit. You have discovered that she has deceived you; does that oblige you to depose and to abuse her, to believe her ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... don't deserve it; it scorches me," he protested with eyes suddenly grave and glowing. "The 'one' is of course one's self, one's conscience, one's idea, the singleness of one's aim. I think of that pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hour of his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him with reproachful eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an artist, you know, I've married for ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... incline to share the long up-hill struggle of a rising barrister? Those dull Temple-chambers are lucky enough if the sun condescends to visit them at rare intervals in his journey westward. But Waring's own singleness of purpose beguiled him more effectually than the most inordinate vanity could have done. Putting character out of the question, he thought a woman could only derogate by allying herself to one of inferior birth; and he ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... while the English tongue exists and English history is read. The national enthusiasm for her was at once intense, and it grew deeper and more intense as week by week revealed her powers. "Less talent and energy of character, less singleness of purpose and devotion, could never have combined the heterogeneous elements which she gathered together in one common work and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the supreme authority had been confided to Leicester. He had not perhaps proved himself extraordinarily qualified for his post, but he was the governor-in-chief, and his departure, without resigning his powers, left the commonwealth headless, at a moment when singleness ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which thou receiv'st not gladly, Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, Strikes each in each by mutual ordering; Resembling sire and child and happy mother, Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechless song being many, seeming one, Sings this to thee: 'Thou single ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... get the praise of men by it; but remember that you cannot deceive Almighty God, who sees your wickedness and deceit, and will punish you accordingly. For the rule is, that you must obey your masters in all things, and do the work they set you about with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good-will doing service as to the Lord, and ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... discontent, a savage self-pillorying. He was genuinely sorry that this young woman was so pretty; still, had she the graces of Calypso, he must have come. She would distract him, and he desired at that time distraction least of all diversions. Concentration and singleness of purpose—upon these two attributes practically hung his life. How strangely fate had stepped with him. What if there had not been that advertisement for a private secretary? How then should he have gained a footing in this ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... noble envy. To be able to devise such things and straightway say 'It shall be done!' How blest beyond all utterance was the man to whom fortune had given such power! He reverenced Egremont profoundly. It was the man's nature to worship, to bend with singleness of heart before whatsoever seemed to him ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... find yourself. In the effort to do so, I'm afraid your playing would become warped, eccentric." He threw back his head and looked at his pupil intently with that one eye which sometimes seemed to see deeper than any two eyes, as if its singleness gave it privileges. "Oh, I have watched you very carefully, Miss Kronborg. Because you had had so little and had yet done so much for yourself, I had a great wish to help you. I believe that the strongest need of your nature is to find yourself, to ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... temporary compromise, not a final solution. It depended on presumptions of the imagination, not on convictions of the intellect; and as we have seen, it destroyed itself by the process of its own development. The beauty, the singleness, and the freedom which attracts us in the consciousness of the Greek was the result of a poetical view of the world, which did but anticipate in imagination an ideal that was not realised in fact or in thought. It depended on the assumption ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... in which he has drawn the portrait of his elder brother. "Bridget Elia," so he commences the former, "has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable comfort upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy."—("Works", vol. ii, p. 171.) He describes her intellectual tastes in this ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... his singleness of purpose, had been, as Alcibiades suggested, by natural constitution a twofold power, an embodied paradox. The infinitely significant Socrates of Plato, and the quite simple Socrates of Xenophon, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... His singleness of purpose, his unselfishness, his determination to succeed, have been cited for four centuries, and will be cited for centuries more, among the noblest illustrations which history has given, of success wrought out by the courage of ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... pageants and bands and thundering salvos and romantic tales; the king must cut himself off from humanity and become an idol. There is no escape whilst such classes exist. Mahomet, the boldest prophet that ever threw down the gage of the singleness and supremacy of God to a fierce tribe of warriors who worshipped stones as devotedly as we worship dukes and millionaires, could not govern them by religious truth, and was forced to fall back on revolting descriptions ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... but cannot either grasp or see. It was not thus when I read Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck; it is not thus when I read such articles as Mr. Vines's just referred to. Love of self-display, and the want of singleness of mind that it inevitably engenders—these, I suppose, are the sins that glaze the casements of most men's minds; and from these, no matter how hard he tries to free himself, nor how much he despises them, who is ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... has been kindled in the heart of Manuel. It was not devotion to Don Valerian Miranda that moved him to follow the fortunes of his master into exile; his love for Conchita accounts for his presence there. And he loves her with an ardour and singleness of passion such as often burns in ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Institution is to provide and maintain boats that shall save the lives of shipwrecked persons, and to reward those who save lives, whether by means of its own or other boats. The grandeur of its aim and singleness of its purpose ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... happy in his cause, and more fortunate in the issues of his career. They are taught to see in him a soldier whose sword wrought only mercy and justice for mankind; a statesman who steadied a remarkable generation of public men by his mental poise and exalted them by his singleness of heart; and a ruler whose exercise of power established for the time on earth a righteous government by ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... eager eyes, large dark-brown eyes that could light with sudden, almost volcanic heat, or smile their soft, lazy smile of amusement at the quaintnesses of life about him. The Padre understood the largeness of heart, the courage which urged him, the singleness of purpose which was always his. Then, when their decision had been taken, he remembered the abrupt falling back of the man into the quiet, almost monosyllabic manner which usually belonged ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... which made Amy Kaye make use of the first opportunity which offered, even though it was an humble one and she was handicapped by ignorance. But having once decided what course was right for her, she followed it with a singleness of purpose and a thoroughness of effort which brought a prompt success. The help she was to others was no small part of this success. For in an age of shams and low ideals the influence of even one sincere girl is far-reaching; and when to that sincerity she adds the sympathy which makes another's ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... a Christian socialist; he spoke on the inequalities of taxation; the strikers were pretty sure of his sympathy; he argued the injustice of the present ownership of land. Some said that he had joined a lodge of the Knights of Labor. Perhaps it was these things, quite as much as his singleness of purpose and his spiritual fervor, that drew Dr. Leigh to him with a feeling that verged on devotion. The ladies up-town, at whose tables Father Damon was an infrequent guest, were as fully in sympathy with this handsome and aristocratic young priest, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... let go the anchor (to wit, a rope tied to a large stone on the shore), ate our dinner "with gladness and singleness of heart" like the early Christians, and slept the sleep of the just, lulled by the murmuring of the waters, and defended from the insidious attacks of the mosquito by the breeze blowing down the river and the impregnable ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... summary of his early and late activities brings out the singleness of the central purpose moving through his life. His first fight, in 1888, for Ballot Reform was made that the will of the people of the State might be honestly interpreted; later, in Tacoma, Washington, he sided with his printers, against his ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... to the iron-house to fifteen of my dear companions in tribulation; and there we were a sweet company, being all of one judgment. There serving the Lord, day and night, in singleness of heart, his blessing was seen amongst us; for his love was better than life. We were all with one accord trysted sweetly together: and O it was sweet to be in this company, and pleasant to those who came in to see us, until the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... shamefully abandoned? Surely it was time to dwell soberly and seriously upon the affairs of life. I had numbered years and undergone trial sufficient to be acquainted with true policy and the line of duty. Both bade me instantly reject the new solicitation, and pursue, with singleness of purpose, the occupation which fortune had mercifully vouchsafed to me. All this was specious and most just, and sounded well to the understanding that was not less able to look temperately and calmly upon the argument in consequence of the previous overflow of feeling. Reason is never so plausible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... as on the best of friends. Who if he rise to station of command Rises by open means, and there will stand On honorable terms, or else retire, And in himself possess his own desire: Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; And therefore does not stoop nor lie in wait For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state; Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall Like showers of manna, if they come at all. 'Tis finally the man, who, lifted high, Conspicuous object in a nation's eye, Or ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... his dominions, but from the moment Great Britain assumed responsibility and the advance of European civilization became inevitable, all the influence acquired by Coillard's exceptional personal magnetism and singleness of purpose was used to prepare the way for the extension of British rule. Only those few pioneers who knew the Barotse under the old conditions can fully realise what civilization and England owe to the co-operation of this ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... come round to matrimony, only give her time. He could indeed recall to mind one woman—and he never knew a nobler—whose whole soul was devoted and who believed that her life was consecrated to a certain benevolent project in singleness of life, who yielded to the touch of matrimony, as an icicle yields to ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... marine. The whole kingdom did not contain a man more attached to the king and queen. But he combined statesman-like prudence with his loyalty; and his conduct before he took office elicited a very remarkable proof of the singleness of mind and purpose with which the king and queen had accepted the Constitution. M. Bertrand had previously refused office, and was very unwilling to take it now; and he frankly told Louis that he could not hope to be of any real service to him unless he knew the plans which the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Greek civilisation, was a temporary compromise, not a final solution. It depended on presumptions of the imagination, not on convictions of the intellect; and as we have seen, it destroyed itself by the process of its own development. The beauty, the singleness, and the freedom which attracts us in the consciousness of the Greek was the result of a poetical view of the world, which did but anticipate in imagination an ideal that was not realised in fact or in thought. It depended on the assumption of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... in quest of his daughter, appeared in view in pursuit of the fugitives. It was not till Mahtoree had taxed his courage that the Big Horse had ventured on the perilous and fearful quest. He approached with the strength of heart and singleness of purpose which accompany an Indian warrior who deems the eyes of his nation upon him. When first the Brave was discovered thus wantonly, and with no other purpose but the shedding of blood, intruding on the dominions of the spirits, no words can tell the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... remained for Tonelli to do but to come to that open understanding with the Paronsina and her mother which he had long dreaded and avoided. He could not conceal from himself that his marriage was a kind of desertion of the two dear friends so dependent upon his singleness, and he considered the case of the Paronsina with a real remorse. If his meditated act sometimes appeared to him a gross inconsistency and a satire upon all his former life, he had still consoled himself with the truth of his passion, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... an Arab's steed starts at a bush in the desert, his master asks him if he expects to see Richard issue from the covert. He possessed that surprising personal strength and daring valour which are so highly prized by warriors in all rude periods, and united with those qualities that singleness of heart and bonhommie of disposition, which, not less powerfully in the great, win upon the hearts of men. His chief qualities—those which have given him his deathless fame—undoubtedly were his heroic courage, extraordinary personal ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... sorrows piercingly, produce himself completely. Gracious and urbane as his music is, proper to the world of modern things and modern adventures and modern people, there is still a gray, piercing lyrical note in it that is almost primitive, and reflects the childlike singleness and intensity of the animating spirit. The man who shaped not only the deliberately infantine "Ma Mere l'Oye," but also things as quiveringly simple and expressive and songful as "Oiseaux tristes," as "Sainte," ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... its deadly singleness of purpose, should have been simple. It attained a complexity at times at which he marveled. An inclination to blurt out the truth with panicky abruptness when he wanted to lie, plunged him into more ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... general matters which affect all laboring men as a class. To combine effectually these dual interests, the Federation espouses the principle of home rule in purely local matters and of federal supervision in all general matters. It combines, with a great singleness of purpose, so diverse a variety of details that it touches the minutiae of every trade and places at the disposal of the humblest craftsman or laborer the tremendous powers of its national influence. While highly centralized ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... Danish Pastor did his work with exact conscientiousness interested me. There was never a thought of postponing a duty under any circumstances. There was never a thought that a duty done was a sacrifice of self, but his duty was done with a serious singleness of purpose and thorough trust in God, that had a strong influence on his parishioners. They saw he ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... the heat of excitement, to forget the deference due his age, his experience, and commanding abilities, yet there was ever a deep, under-current feeling of veneration for him, pervading all hearts. Those who were excited to the highest pitch of frenzy by his proceedings, could not but admire the singleness of his purpose, and his undaunted courage in discharging his duties. On all subjects aside from slavery, his influence in the House has never been surpassed. Whenever he arose to speak, it was a signal for a general abandonment of listlessness and inattention. Members dropped their newspapers ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the elder Herschel's inferences of orbital motion were, in many cases, strikingly confirmed. A star in the Northern Crown, for instance (Eta Coronae), had completed more than one entire circuit since its first discovery; another, Tau Ophiuchi, had closed up into apparent singleness; while the motion of a third, Xi Ursae Majoris, in an obviously eccentric orbit, was so rapid as to admit of being traced and ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... man for what I knew him to be. He groped, as one in the dark, or as a sea animal taken out of its element and placed on the sands. Courage had given place to fear; decision to wavering; and singleness of purpose to a divided counsel. He who had so thoroughly dominated the entire ship, eagerly accepted advice of me—a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... dearest old ladies of my acquaintance," replied Mr. Ingram. "Beatrice owes a great deal of her nobleness of heart and singleness of purpose to her mother. Mrs. Bertram, I have never heard that woman say an unkind word. I have heard calumny of her, but never from her. Then, of course, Meadowsweet was ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... webs the foot; for that which takes to the trees it makes the toes prehensile; for the one which learns to stand erect and run along the ground it flattens the sole, making it steady and supporting. To resist, to survive, to win through, is the end to which the life-principle sets itself with such singleness of aim as to unfold a wealth of potentiality astounding to us in ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... before Scott and his companions struggled back to safety the great event of the season had happened in the arrival of the Morning. How the funds were raised by means of which this ship was sent is a tale in itself; briefly, however, it was due to the untiring zeal and singleness of purpose shown by Sir Clements Markham that the Morning, commanded by Lieutenant William Colbeck, R.N.R., was able to leave the London Docks ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... all his blank slabs of marble and full occupation in lettering and ornamenting them. He was an elderly man, a descendant of the old Puritan family of Wigglesworth, with a certain simplicity and singleness both of heart and mind which, methinks, is more rarely found among us Yankees than in any other community of people. In spite of his gray head and wrinkled brow, he was quite like a child in all matters save what ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... employed without scruple all those advantages it put into your hands. You have undermined me at your ease. I left you to protect my life's blood, my heart of heart, from every attack, to preserve the singleness of her affections, and the constancy of her attachment. It was yours to have breathed into her ear the sighs of St. Julian. It was yours ambitiously to expatiate upon his amiable qualities. You were every day to have added fuel to the flame. You were to have ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... from his troubled thought imbued with a forced strength and singleness of purpose that made themselves felt by the quiet girl ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... but in singleness of heart, fearing God. Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... Lord Curryfin said to Miss Niphet. 'You took no part in the conversation of last evening. You gave no opinion on the singleness and permanence of love.' ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... work to strengthen and enlarge the party. It became a quasi-religious movement, ministers and churches, without any very far-reaching hopes and plans, labouring to bring about a spirit which should induce men to renounce Masonry; and in their zeal they worked with the singleness of thought and the accepted methods that dominate the revivalist ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... proportions were evidently no more to be regulated by the laws hitherto observed in detached colonnades. The column expanded into the shaft, or into the huge pilaster rising unbanded from tier to tier; shaft and pilaster were associated in ordered groups, and the ideas of singleness and limited elevation once attached to them, swept away for ever; the stilted and variously centered arch existed already: the pure ogive followed—where first exhibited we stay not to inquire;—finally, and chief of all, the great mechanical discovery of the resistance of lateral pressure by ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not deterred by that nor by the conviction that her conquest, if she prevailed, would be transitory. She had a code of her own. It included an uncertain element of honour, fixed rather rigidly upon what she would have called constancy. Singleness of purpose was her notion of morality. She would not have believed herself to be a bad woman any more than she would have looked upon her lover as a bad man. To her, morality in its accepted sense signified ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... does not mean unity of subject—note the variety of subjects treated in "The German Senator"—but, rather, the singleness of impression that a monologue gives of the "character" who delivers it, or is ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Wonderful Characters, published in 1869 by John Camden Hotten, London, I find an account of Chamouni, the Russian Salamander: "He was insensible, for a given time, to the effects of heat. He was remarkable for the simplicity and singleness of his character, as well as for that idiosyncrasy in his constitution, which enabled him for so many years, not merely to brave the effects of fire, but to take a delight in an element where other men find destruction. He was above all artifice, and would ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... continuance &c (inaction) 143; permanence &c (absence of change) 141; firmness &c (stability) 150. constancy, steadiness; singleness of purpose, tenacity of purpose; persistence, plodding, patience; sedulity &c (industry) 682; pertinacy^, pertinacity, pertinaciousness; iteration &c 104; bottom, game, pluck, stamina, backbone, grit; indefatigability, indefatigableness; bulldog courage. V. persevere, persist; hold on, hold ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... partners and servants of the North-West Company were called, were bold competitors. Their enthusiasm for the conflict was all the more eager because their trade was regarded as illicit by their rivals. There was singleness of purpose in their ranks; almost every man in the service had been tried and proved. All the Montreal partners of the company had taken the long trip to the Grand Portage, a transit station at the mouth of the Pigeon river, on the western shore of Lake ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... which appointed Orson Hyde and Smith's brother Hyrum to write to the Missouri brethren. In this letter they were told plainly that, unless the rebellious spirit ceased, the Lord would seek another Zion. To Phelps the message was sent, "If you have fat beef and potatoes, eat them in singleness of heart, and not boast yourself in these things." It was, however, as a concession to this spirit of complaint, according to Ferris, that Smith announced the "revelation" which placed the church in the hands of a supreme governing body ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... gayety; yet, surely, all that which seemed so strong, so true, so real could not be gone so soon,—and it could not be so soon consoled. Mary wondered at her, as the Anglo-Saxon constitution, with its strong, firm intensity, its singleness of nature, wonders at the mobile, many-sided existence of warmer races, whose versatility of emotion on the surface is not incompatible with the most intense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... better; but it is possible to say something more. Such in fact is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet's character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth, and its variety. There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a whole; and to attempt to analyze the impression thus conveyed at once to soul and sense, is as if while hanging over a half-blown rose, and revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder, leaflet ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Rundle street, where I listened with embarrassment to the avalanche of eulogium that overwhelmed me. "What a good thing it is, Miss Spence, that you have only one idea," a gentleman once said to me on my country tour. He wished thus to express his feeling concerning my singleness of purpose towards effective voting. But at this welcome home I felt that others realized what I had often said myself. It is really because I have so many ideas for making life better, wiser, and pleasanter all ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... decisive in his judgments, or more scornful of the arts and hypocrisies by which the champions of opposite opinions are flattered and propitiated. But his spirit is that of the knight "without reproach," as well as the knight "without fear"; and even his adversaries cannot but delight in the singleness and simplicity of purpose with which he strives after the truth. Nothing in his position or in his character gives them the slightest pretence for supposing that his bold advocacy of liberal views is connected with any ulterior designs or any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... and discouragements. He had a beautifully balanced character and a many-sided nature. He had the power of inspiring confidence in defeat and danger. His judgment and good sense seemed to fit him for any emergency. He had the same control over himself that he had over others. His patriotism and singleness of purpose inspired devotion. He felt his burdens, but did not seek to throw them off. "Hardship and sorrow," said he, "not a king but would wish to be without these if he could; but I know he cannot." "So long as ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... was a man of observation. Others might have drawn seemingly nicer shades of character, but this sincerity of feeling, truth of conduct, and singleness of purpose, formed the distinguishing traits of Lucy's virtues. I was excessively gratified at finding that Marble rightly appreciated one who was so very, very dear to me, and took care to let him know as much, as soon as he ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... world of forgetfulness and decay, in the sight of his own shortcomings and limitations, or on the edge of the tomb, he alone who has found his soul in losing it, who in singleness of mind has lived in order to love and understand, will find that the God who is near to him as his own conscience has a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Providence,—but why was life given to him at all, if only for this? And sick in mind and sick in body, but one wish remains to him, that death will come quickly and end all. It is a cry from the very depths of a single and simple heart. But for such simplicity and singleness his friends could not give him credit; possessed beforehand with their idea, they see in his misery only a fatal witness against him; such calamities could not have befallen a man, the justice of God would not have permitted ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... elementary sounds in our language, different orthoepists report differently; because they cannot always agree among themselves, wherein the identity or the simplicity, the sameness or the singleness, even of well-known sounds, consists; or because, if each is allowed to determine these points for himself, no one of them adheres strictly to his own decision. They may also, each for himself, have some peculiar way of utterance, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... unsophisticated. It sees with everybody's eyes, and hears with everybody's ears. It has no capricious distinctions, no perplexities, and no mysteries. It never equivocates, and never trifles. Its language is always intelligible. It is known by clearness of speech and singleness of purpose. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... voice and hand, from the inevitable doom? I see the honesty of your faith, father, though there seems a strained harshness in it when I think of the complacency with which you must needs contemplate the irremediable perdition of such hosts of outcasts. In Adele, too, there seems a beautiful singleness of trust; but I suppose God made the birds to live in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the London world was to try whether I could not find, amongst the fairest and most attractive women that the world produces—at least to an English eye—some one who could inspire me with that singleness of affection which could alone justify the hope that I might win in return a wife's esteem and a contented home. That object is now finally relinquished, and with it all idea of resuming the life of cities. I might ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Columbus is an illustration constantly brought for the success which God gives to those who, having conceived of a great idea, bravely determine to carry it through. His singleness of purpose, his determination to succeed, have been cited for four centuries, and will be cited for centuries more among the noblest illustrations which history has given of success wrought out by the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... the excellence of much of the wit, that, whatever the play may in other respects have lacked of subtlety or refinement, such defect was no fault of hers. What Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY himself thought of it all I cannot say, but the play did not begin to compare, either for irony or singleness of motive, with the last two in which he figured, The Naughty Wife and Home and Beauty. He clearly enjoyed his own part, but it was rather noticeable that in his brief speech at the fall of the curtain he confined himself to a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... which through hearty cooperation the legislative and executive branches of this Government can do much. The absolute essential is the spirit of united effort and singleness of purpose. I will allude only to a very few specific examples of action which ought then to result. America can not take its proper place in the most important fields for its commercial activity and enterprise unless we have a merchant marine. American commerce and enterprise can not ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... that crossed his ways in the dark and boisterous taverns where love finds strange ways for expression, that the singleness of feeling possessed him. It was among the rougher elements of dock life that his refinements found their level. Dowson sang and sang and sang, until he grew old at thirty-three, "worn out by what was ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... inner, more spiritual life; sentiment and mystery find an unwonted place in the art. Rodin's "Psyche" is a good illustration. Yet, despite these differences, the classic demand for living surfaces, for rhythmical lines, for perspicuity and totality of silhouette, for singleness and unity of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... the following morning Mrs. Makebelieve returned again to her labor. She intended finishing her week's work with Mrs. O'Connor (it might not last for a week). She wished to observe that lady with the exact particularity, the singleness of eye, the true, candid, critical scrutiny which had hitherto been impossible to her. It was, she said to Mary, just possible that Mrs. O'Connor might make some remarks about soap. It was possible that the lady might advance theories as to how this or that ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... forthwith," said the one-eyed man, and he fairly beamed upon Moussa Isa, doubtless with the said light of which his body was full, in consequence of his singleness of vision. The whole party was by this time awake and Moussa Isa the cynosure of neighbouring eyes. The Leading Gentleman drew his beautiful knife from its tawdry sheath and gave it a last loving ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... and wife, father and son, elder and younger brother, and friends; of 'the three virtues by which those duties are carried into effect,' namely, knowledge, benevolence, and energy; and of 'the one thing, by which those virtues are practised,' which is singleness or sincerity [1]. It sets forth in detail the 'nine standard rules for the administration of government,' which are 'the cultivation by the ruler of his own character; the honouring men of virtue and talents; ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... hardly be found without a tendency to versatility of principle. Byron was fully aware, not only of this characteristic quality of his nature, but also of its danger to singleness of character; and this consciousness had the effect of keeping him in a general line of consistency, throughout life, on certain great subjects, and helped him to preserve unbroken the greater number of his personal ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... his early and late activities brings out the singleness of the central purpose moving through his life. His first fight, in 1888, for Ballot Reform was made that the will of the people of the State might be honestly interpreted; later, in Tacoma, Washington, he sided with his printers, against ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... recovered: one married a dancer, others stole a friend's wife, or stagnated or maundered, or else, unmarried, strove to believe that the peace of singleness was peace, and not—what they were finding it! But whatever these rejected suitors did, the truth about her was ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... been convinced that all her plans had come to naught, earnestly and with much severity and singleness of purpose she considered the situation. It did not take her long to arrive at the conclusion that the proper thing for her to do was to marry Lanigan Beam, and to do it without loss of time. Having come to this decision, she immediately began to make arrangements ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... the daughter of a distinguished officer, whose merits were universally recognized, but not rewarded in proportion. Wardlaw's suit was favorably received by the father, and the daughter gradually yielded to an attachment the warmth, sincerity and singleness of which were manifest. And the pair would have been married but for the circumstance that her father (partly through Wardlaw's influence, by the by) had obtained a lucrative post abroad which it suited his means to accept, at all events for a time. He was a widower, and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... certain of, and that was the overweening vanity of his companion. It was direct, uncomplicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been making use of him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He had discovered a complete singleness of motive behind the varied manifestations of a consistent character. This was why the man remained so astonishingly simple in the jealous greatness of his conceit. And now there was a complication. It was evident that he resented having ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... thought was to get that miserable, stripped, undecked, smouldering shell of a ship back again with her head pointing at her port of destination. Bankok! That's what he was after. I tell you this quiet, bowed, bandy-legged, almost deformed little man was immense in the singleness of his idea and in his placid ignorance of our agitation. He motioned us forward with a commanding gesture, and went to ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... presence should be as constant as are His gifts. 'My voice shalt thou hear in the morning.' 'They walk all the day long in the light of Thy countenance.' 'I will both lay me down in peace and sleep.' 'They ate their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... FEMALES,—.... Our heart warms with pity towards these unfortunate creatures. We fancy that we can see them, deserted of men, and bereft of those rich enjoyments and exalted privileges which belong to women, languishing their unhappy lives away in a mournful singleness, from which they can escape by no art in the construction of waterfalls or the employment of cotton-padding. Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power, when she rules the world by a glance of her eye! There was sound philosophy in the remark of an Eastern monarch, that ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... prompting of his individual taste, that general reaction from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style, towards a restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his fox-hunting neighbours, who wondered greatly that a man with some of the best blood in England in his veins, should be mean enough to economize in his cellar, and reduce his ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... could prevail on the Sub-Prior to break his fast. "This day," he said, "I must not taste food until the sun go down, happy if, in so doing, I can expiate my own negligence—happier still, if my sufferings of this trifling nature, undertaken in pure faith and singleness of heart, may benefit the soul of the deceased. Yet, dame," he added, I may not so far forget the living in my cares for the dead, as to leave behind me that book, which is to the ignorant what, to our first parents, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... independent ministry. The Puritan zeal for reform possessed him, and he tried to do by his pen what Wesley was doing by his preaching, without, however, having any great measure of the latter's sincerity or singleness of purpose. This zeal for reform marks all his numerous works, and accounts for the moralizing to be found everywhere. Third, Defoe was a journalist and pamphleteer, with a reporter's eye for the picturesque and a newspaper man's instinct for making a "good story." He wrote an immense ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... made with such variety of forms and with so great dexterity in some of them, to all that is prejudice and passion in the heart, are either the effects or the instruments of artifice and deception, and then let them see the subject once more in its singleness and simplicity. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the sketch on which the picture rests for its singleness of purpose. No picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards built up on the same canvas or not. The sketch points the way. But all the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition or color; are not conceptions of the brain. ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... in the morning," said Eddring, quietly. His singleness of purpose had its effect. Captain Wilson abruptly turned ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... of her inclinations, Captain Ludlow, but herself. It never shall be said, that any of the sex had aught but fitting reverence for their dependent state, their constant and confiding love, their faithfulness in all the world's trials, and their singleness of heart, from me." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... to us, down the centuries, the comment of that King for whom Berkeley was so zealous, a man who fell behind his colonial Governor in singleness of interest but excelled him in good nature. "That old fool," said the second Charles, "has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the unborn offspring they devote To misery through ill-assorted unions, Or habits reckless of maternal dues; How marriage, sacredest of mortal steps, Is entered on from motives all unworthy; Social ambition, mercenary aims, The dread of poverty, of singleness,— The object of uniting families,— And momentary passion fatuous. So I resolved, God helping, to be true To my own self, and that way true ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... rise to station of command, Rises by open means; and there will stand On honourable terms, or else retire, And in himself possess his own desire; Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; 40 And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state; Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall, Like showers of manna, if they come at all: Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, Or mild concerns of ordinary ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... obstacle was Kaiser Wilhelm himself. The old sovereign had very many claims on the gratitude of the German race, for his staunchness of character, singleness of aim, and homely good sense had made the triumphs of his reign possible. But the newer light of to-day reveals the limitations of his character. He never saw far ahead, and even in his survey of the present situation Prussian interests and family considerations held far too large a space. It ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... kind of obstinate pride, which refused to see anything but the view she had adopted. As long as her life continued to be with her dearest brother, all was well with her. She had a noble aim, and her heart was more than full. Later on, this very singleness of character brought her other years of wretchedness. It is necessary to understand the almost spaniel-like allegiance she gave, in order to comprehend the value which her services were to HERSCHEL. She supplied him with an aid which was utterly loyal, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... simplicity and singleness of purpose, however, she had innocently drawn my attention to her uncle; then, in a measure, she had verified my awakened suspicions. While Maillot and Felix Page were in the library, engrossed in their own affairs, could Alfred Fluette have been ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... contrary to human nature. An officer is not only an administrator but a magistrate, and it is this dual role which makes his function so radically different than anything encountered in civil life—to say nothing of the singleness of purpose by which the service moves forward. Moreover, the armed service officer deals with the most plastic human material within the society—men who, in the majority, the moment they step into uniform, are ready to seek his guidance toward a ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... affidavit that it was false and forced from them by torture. Rizal made a splendid defence, but he was condemned, and sentenced to the death of a traitor. On that day Jose Rizal y Mercado and Josephine Bracken were married. Then the sweetness and strength of his character and his singleness of purpose made a beautiful showing. In the night, which his bride spent on her knees outside his prison, he wrote a long poem of farewell to his patria adorado, fine in its abnegation and exquisite in the wanderings of its fancy. He received the ministrations of a Jesuit priest. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... machine. That this work was being directed toward the subversion of the popular will, he made no doubt; and there were times when he was strongly tempted to carry the war boldly into the wider field of graft and bossism. That he postponed the bigger battle was due quite as much to the singleness of purpose which was his best gift as to the desire to spare his father. Telling himself resolutely that the reformation of the railroad company's political methods was his chief object, and the only one which warranted him in retaining his place on ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... inexpressible sentiment in the presence of these cocoa-palms. They are the symbol of the simplicity and singleness of the eternal summer of the tropics; the staff and gonfalons of the dominion of the sun. My heart leaps at their sight when long away. They are the dearest result of seed and earth. I drink their wine and esteem dwelling in their sight a rare ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Joanna Baillie and Madame Roland as the best specimens which have been hitherto offered of women of a Roman strength and singleness of mind, adorned by the various culture and capable of the various action opened to them by the progress of the Christian Idea. They are not sentimental; they do not sigh and write of withered flowers of fond affection, and woman's heart born to be misunderstood by the object or objects of her ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Hoadly;' and adds: 'Of all the writers whom he must have irritated—Freethinkers, Methodists, actors, Hanoverians,—of all the nonjuring friends whom he alienated by his quietism, none doubted his singleness of purpose.' It may be added that there were few of his opponents who might not have learnt from him a lesson of Christian courtesy. Living in an age when controversy of every kind was, almost as a rule, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... painters of any time or country, though his work as a painter was, as in the case of William Hogarth, subservient to his work as an engraver. With the knowledge of a later generation to that of the earliest Italian and Flemish painters, Albrecht Duerer had much of their singleness of purpose, assiduity of application, and profound feeling. He had to labour against a tendency to uncouthness in stiff lines and angular figures; to petty elaboration of details; and to that grotesqueness which, while it suited in some respects his allegorical engravings, marred his historical ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... region and a settler of the wilderness, his was a genius which, as it came to the guidance of affairs, instinctively attached itself to general principles, and inspired by the truth which his own heart revealed to him in singleness and simplicity, he found always a response in the breast of his countrymen. Crowned with glory in war, in his whole career as a statesman he showed himself the friend and lover of peace. With an American heart, whose throbs were all for republican freedom and his native land, he yet ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Mr. Weller; ''cos it 'ud ha' gone agin their consciences. A reg'lar coachman's a sort o' con-nectin' link betwixt singleness and matrimony, and every ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... was only one, with the blood of mothers in his veins, whelmed by a consciousness that reached back far as the consciousness of the race. Somehow, his simple manhood, the inheritance in his blood of men and women, who had loved, fused the conflict of his nature to a singleness of purpose and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... devise such things and straightway say 'It shall be done!' How blest beyond all utterance was the man to whom fortune had given such power! He reverenced Egremont profoundly. It was the man's nature to worship, to bend with singleness of heart before whatsoever seemed to him ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Meanwhile Paul, from his hiding-place in the bushes, had listened with anxiety to the foregoing colloquy. When John described his appearance so minutely, he was seized with a sudden apprehension that the boy meant to betray him. But he dismissed it instantly. In his own singleness of heart he could not believe such duplicity possible. Still, it was not without anxiety that he waited to hear ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... the objects of its action, and between its own processes; and language, being a chief instrument of culture, has to follow and subserve these multiplied and diversified demands, Any fall, therefore, on its part from the obedient fineness of its modes and modulations back into barbaric singleness and crudeness, any slide into looseness or vagueness, any unweaving of the complex tissue, psychical and metaphysical, into which it has been wrought by the exquisite wants of the mind, will have a relaxing, debilitating influence on thought itself. To use the clear, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... greatest poetry, all the elements of human nature are burning in a single flame. The artifice of criticism is to detect what peculiar radiance each element contributes to the whole light; but this no more affects the singleness of the compounded energy in poetry than the spectroscopic examination of fire affects the single nature of actual flame. For the purposes of this book, it has been necessary to look chiefly at the contribution of intellect to epic poetry; for it is in that contribution ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... that.' He was silent for a while. 'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied. 'Some even write that; and so he comes here, a special being, as you ought to know.' 'Why ought I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. 'Yes. Today he is chief of the best station, next year ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... five courts—by that experienced judge, the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who often presumed upon the venerable Duchess's candour in telling her unpalatable truths, which none but the honest could have borne to hear. It was this uprightness and singleness of mind which rendered the Duchess unwilling to believe in the duplicity and the influence of her cousin. Warned of it by Mr. Mainwaring, it was not until she found in the Queen a defender of Mrs. Masham's ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... mind on the subject, nor know what to think or do till I hear from you; and Mr. Moore appeared to me in a similar state of indetermination. I do not know that it may not be better to reserve it for the entire publication you proposed, and not adventure in hardy singleness, or even backed by the fairy Jacqueline. I have been seized with all kinds of doubts, &c. &c. since I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "Singleness of mind and purity," replied Madame de la Chanterie. "Your ignorance shows that you have neglected the reading of our book." she added, laughing at the innocent trick she had played to know if Godefroid had read the "Imitation of Jesus Christ." "And, lastly," she went on, "fill your soul ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... best happiness in his society and in carrying out his experiments and fancies. She was Miss Esther Milnes, of Yorkshire, an heiress; and though at first Day hesitated and could not believe in the reality of her feeling, her constancy and singleness of mind were not to be resisted, and they were married at Bath in 1778. We hear of Mr. and Mrs. Day spending the first winter of their married life at Hampstead, and of Mrs. Day, thickly shodden, walking with him ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... with him. A stronger respect for him was growing in her,—a new reverence for his faithfulness. She had always liked and trusted him, but of late she had learned to do more. She recognized more fully the purity and singleness of his life. She accused herself of ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... secret of our Lord's life, and it is the secret of all those who have at all succeeded in imitating Him. They have followed Him with singleness of purpose. They have felt life to be before all else a vocation to manifest the will of God and to finish a given work. That was the attitude of our Blessed Mother; she began on that note: "Behold the hand-maid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... the great city who thought of Barnaby that day, otherwise than as an actor in a show which was to take place to-morrow. But if the whole population had had him in their minds, and had wished his life to be spared, not one among them could have done so with a purer zeal or greater singleness of heart than ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... desired that Dr. Dana should be his successor. No stronger proof could be given of the confidence felt in him, than these concurrent last wishes of two such men. Each had brought to the office he held not merely intellectual pre-eminence, but a dignity and elevation of character, and a singleness of purpose, rarely equaled; and to each the future welfare of the institution over which he presided was an ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... theory that the cabby's singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... appealingly, "He and his brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns, moving to his and their support." This patriotic singleness of thought for the country's safety defeated and scattered all more political plans, and the hearts of the people turned more and more to Mr. Lincoln. He had been steadily growing in the esteem of his countrymen. The patience, wisdom, and fidelity with which he had guided the government during ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... school—twenty-four and twenty-six—and they seemed to feel their position; their speech was strained and odd; all the "sceptical, wicked, immoral French novels, over forty of them, the best substitute for French conversation to be met with," which the girls had toiled through with so much singleness of spirit, had not cured the broadness of their accent nor the artificial idioms of their Yorkshire French. Monsieur Heger, indeed, considered that they knew no French at all. Their manners, even among English ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... states, it is necessary to understand what that statement implies in order to appreciate the great need for the higher culture of the vocal organism. If the individual's condition were attuned to perfect harmony, to perfect unity of action, and to singleness of purpose, together with the habit of personal expression rather than expression through some limited mode of action—if, indeed, this were so, his voice would scarce need training,—certainly not corrective training,—nor would he need "culture" ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... eyes staring into the thick darkness, a thousand painful wearying thoughts stinging his brain. Talbot, tired and worn out with bodily fatigue, but with that mental calm that comes from an absolute singleness of aim and hope and purpose, fell into a deep and tranquil sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. He lived now but to work; the night had come when he could not work, therefore he slept that he might work again ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... Filtering down through so many generations, the mannerism had ceased at last to be merely a physical peculiarity, and had become strangely spiritual in its suggestion. The craving for possession, the singleness of desire, the tenacity of grasp, the dread of relinquishment, the cold-blooded determination to keep intact the thing which it had cost so much to acquire—all that was bound up in the spirit of Cyrus ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... had his sympathy, and of many he has been the prime mover. He gave to each his strong support, but uniformly shunned to appear in public. For himself or his friends he asked no reward: for himself, he asked only to do the hard work. His transparent singleness of purpose, his freedom from all by-ends, his plain good sense, courage, adherence, and his romantic generosity disarmed first or last all gainsayers. His examination before the United States Senate Committee on the Harper's Ferry Invasion, in January, 1860, as reported ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... to be made to forget anything about the President. In his case injurious gossip has long since died away and been buried. Whatever may be said of him in other respects, at least the purity and the singleness of his patriotism shine brilliant and luminous through all this cloud-dust of derogation. By his position he had more at stake, both in his lifetime and before the tribunal of the future, than any other person in the country. But there was only one idea in his mind, and that was,—not that ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... words and what of song I may at last most gloriously uncloud For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view The core of being at the centre hid. And for the rest, summon to judgments true, Unbusied ears and singleness of mind Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged For thee with eager service, thou disdain Before thou comprehendest: since for thee I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky, And the primordial germs of things unfold, Whence Nature all ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... anecdotes are told, chiefly caused by his inordinate vanity, and his mental singleness of purpose. He thought of no one but himself; he saw nothing beyond the one and immediate object at which he grasped; and yet these faults were caused rather by natural weakness of intellect than by an unkind or selfish disposition. In fact, Incledon lived ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... beliefs, but only argued Dull, cold self-absorption Gift of waiting for things to happen He's so resting Life alone is credible to the young Morbid egotism Motives lie nearer the surface than most people commonly pretend Real artistocracy is above social prejudice Singleness of a nature that was all pose Submitted, as people always do with the trials of others Sunny gayety of self-forgetfulness Understood when I've said something that doesn't mean anything We change whether we ought, or not When she's really sick, she's better ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... daily occupations of many of the Staff precluded an earlier attendance, it was quickly seen that the chief practical use and effect of the Dinner was to broaden the men's view of things, to produce harmony of tone and singleness of aim, to keep the Editor constantly in touch with his whole Staff, and through them with the public; and thus to secure the fullest advantage which their combined wit and counsel could afford. When the transfer of the paper was completed from Ebenezer ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... her,—happily without any recurrence of his previous doubts as to his own efficacy as a special Providence,—he returned to the rancho. If he thought again of Jim's defection and Gilroy's warning, it was only to strengthen himself to a clearer perception of his unselfish duty and singleness of purpose. He would give up brooding, apply himself more practically to the management of the property, carry out his plans for the foundation of a Landlords' Protective League for the southern counties, become a candidate for the Legislature, and, in brief, try to fill Peyton's ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... think of you always, and your name will be sacred to us, and that will teach us singleness and devotion," Verena went on, in the same tone, still not meeting Ransom's eyes again, and speaking as if she were trying now to stop herself, to tie ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... merely mean a man who was like God in purity of nature and in closeness of communion. For the force of the analogy and the emphasis of that word which is even more emphatic in the Greek than in the English 'His own Son,' point to a community of nature, to a uniqueness and singleness of relation, to a closeness of intimacy, to which no other is a parallel. And so we have to estimate the measure of the surrender by the tenderness and awfulness of the bond. 'Having one Son, His well-beloved, He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... richness of her citizens, giving larger leisure in which to cultivate other pleasures than those which their offices or homes could afford, she was ripe for the coming of the day of open-air games. And having turned to them, she threw herself into their pursuit with the ardour and singleness of purpose which are characteristic of the people and which, as applied to games, seem to English eyes to savour almost of professionalism. As a matter of fact they are only the manifestations of an essential trait of ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... books! This, if you please, is the simple creature whom any one could overreach in a bargain! This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman! Not of this world; not he! He has too much simplicity for this world's cunning. He has too much singleness of purpose to be a match for this world's double-dealing. What did he ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... Life, and so always keeping on repeating the one Creative Process at an ever-rising level; and since these are the sole working conditions, the progress is one which logically admits of no finality. And this is where the importance of realizing the Singleness of the Originating Power comes in, for with a Duality each member would limit the other; in fact, Duality as the Originating Power is inconceivable, for, once more to quote "Paddy's Philosophy," "finality would be ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... forgot the girl's face looking over her bunch of sweet-peas. There was in it something indescribably youthful and innocent, almost angelic. The light from the window made her hair toss into gold; her blue eyes sought Cynthia with the singleness of blue stars. It was evident whom she had come to see. She held out her flowers towards her with a gesture at once humble and worshipful, like that of some ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... than with the deliberate intention of betraying their country. Kosciuszko was ill-versed, either by nature, training, or inclination in the art of politics; but through this tangled web of perplexity and uncertainty, when present and future were equally enveloped in obscurity, his singleness of aim supplied him with the unerring instinct with which through the whole of his life he met and unmasked the pitfalls that were spread before the unhappiest and the most cruelly betrayed of nations. Under the dictates of this pure patriotism he directed ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... to Henry that he loved his sister, previously piling upon himself many anticipatory terms of ignominy for daring to do so presumptuous a thing. Henry, however, was so taken with the idea that, in his singleness of mind, he suffered no pang of retrospective suspicion of his friend's love for himself. Pending Esther's decision,—and of her mind in the matter, he had something more than a glimmering,—he welcomed Mike with gladness as a prospective brother-in-law, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... truth of the statement came within the grasp of the daughter, who was looking across the idle churn with her mind fixed in singleness of purpose upon remedies, and yet she felt that there was some other element in the matter not yet accounted for. The hopeless tone of the older woman, however, goaded her young spirit into forgetting the caution necessary to dealing with the subject. Her blood fired with resentment that ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... of creatures. All its desires and views are reduced to this alone, of attaining to the perfect union with God. Unfeignedly to desire this one thing, to belong to God alone, to arrive at his pure love, and to do his will in all things, is that simplicity or singleness of heart of which we speak, and which banishes all inordinate affections of the heart, from which arise the most dangerous errors of the understanding. This is the essential disposition of every one who sincerely desires to live by the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of a younger generation and, more especially, to those choosing the profession of the physician, and the reader can discern therein something of the man himself, can get some glimpse of his life and its meaning, can gain some sense of the sincerity, the simplicity, the self-sacrifice and singleness of purpose which guided him and finally lifted him so far out of and above the ordinary, then will the pleasant task of recalling fully ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... name, she was an admirer of the principles of the German play from which she had taken it, and took an opportunity of leading the conversation to that subject; but to his great surprise, the lady spoke very ardently of the singleness and exclusiveness of love, and declared that the reign of affection was one and indivisible; that it might be transferred, but could not be participated. 'If I ever love,' said she, 'I shall do so without limit or restriction. I shall hold all difficulties light, all sacrifices ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest. Sprung from brutal passion, nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation in England displayed little of what had, in other countries, distinguished it; unflinching and unsparing devotion, boldness of speech, and singleness of eye. These were indeed to be found; but it was in the lower ranks of the party which opposed the authority of Rome, in such men as Hooper, Latimer, Rogers, and Taylor. Of those who had any important ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... recognition of this situation that Regnier ended by making a proposition which testified, more strongly than anything else could have done, both to the enthusiasm and sincerity with which he himself held the faith he preached, and to his confidence in my own equal singleness of heart. He had never before spoken of his personal history or home life. Several times I had spent the evening at his house, but on these occasions I had seen only himself. Certain womanly belongings, however, which I had noticed, and ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... one good quality without any defect to balance it. He was always ready to help people. And when he set himself to do this, he was never put off by discomfort or risk. He went at the thing with a singleness of ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... of a desire to conciliate. And conciliation means weakness every time. Your lumber-jack likes to be met front to front, one strong man to another. As you value your authority, the love of your men, and the completion of your work, keep a bluff brow and an unbending singleness of purpose. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... river is straighter and of more resolute flow, and its hue, though dark as ink, exquisitely polish'd and sheeny under the August sun. Different, indeed, this Saguenay from all other rivers—different effects—a bolder, more vehement play of lights and shades. Of a rare charm of singleness and simplicity. (Like the organ-chant at midnight from the old Spanish convent, in "Favorita"—one strain only, simple and monotonous and unornamented—but indescribably penetrating and grand and masterful.) ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... this it was less thrilling. There, he believed, they were not singular; or, anyhow, he wasn't; he saw what he was convinced was the same failure in the men past youth about him. But in Fanny there was, he recognized, that fierce if narrow singleness of impulse, of purity. His thoughts of other women were not innocent of provocative conjecture—Anette's sinuous body, now as dead to him as Alohabad, recurred to his mind—but in this Fanny was utterly loyal. Yes, she had, a thing impossible for any man he had known, a mental singleness ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... such a taste, if I may use the expression, under those principles, that I feel no apprehension Emily will ever allow her affections to be ensnared by a man of the opinions and views of Colonel Egerton. I am impressed with a twofold duty in watching the feelings of my charge. She has so much singleness of heart, such real strength of native feeling, that, should an improper man gain possession of her affections, the struggle between her duty and her love would be weighty indeed; and should it proceed so far as to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... valorous temper, his singleness of purpose, his military skill in handling troops, and his fine appearance and manners, had given him influence and authority. He soon, also, gained a wonderful power over Bram; and even the temperate wisdom and fine patience of Joris gradually kindled, ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... have turned a reverse into a disaster. The High Command could be disappointed, and yet pull itself together; the people at home and abroad, full of uncertainties, and with none of the professional man's singleness of purpose, might on the basis of a complete story have lost sight of the war in a melee of faction and counter-faction about the competence of the officers. Instead, therefore, of letting the public act on all the facts which the generals knew, the authorities presented only ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Luther, the general characteristics of the earliest manner;—that is, every part popular, and the discourse addressed to all degrees of intellect;—the sentences short, the tone vehement, and the connexion of the whole produced by honesty and singleness of purpose, intensity of passion, and pervading ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... pastorate, and henceforth, with singleness of purpose, devoted himself to his one calling. From time to time new buildings were added to meet new needs. In 1852 an insane asylum for Protestant women was founded, as sisters were often called upon to nurse patients of this class. ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... was the spirit of the first Christians. Was not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did not St. Peter have more joy of his life than Nero? It is said of the first disciples that they "did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." Not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the Church regain her early charm for the souls of men. Every great revival of Christian power—like those which came in the times of St. Francis of Assisi and of John Wesley—has ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... San-ron school and the three-grade idea. The scriptures of other sects are in Sanskrit and Chinese, which only the learned are able to read. The special writings of Shinran are in the vernacular. Three of the sutras, also, have been translated into Japanese and expressed in the kana script. Singleness of purpose characterised this sect, which was often called Monto, or followers of the gate, in reference to its unity of organization, and the opening of the way to all by Shinran and the doctrine taught by him. Yet, lest the gate might seem too broad, the Shin teachers insist that morality is ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the season should seriously incline to share the long up-hill struggle of a rising barrister? Those dull Temple-chambers are lucky enough if the sun condescends to visit them at rare intervals in his journey westward. But Waring's own singleness of purpose beguiled him more effectually than the most inordinate vanity could have done. Putting character out of the question, he thought a woman could only derogate by allying herself to one of inferior birth; and he knew his own blood to be ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... had the news from Lawyer Means, he could not sleep until nearly morning. He lay awake, spending, mentally, principal and interest of his little fortune over and over, and spending, besides that, much of the singleness and unselfishness of his ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the same methods are yet more completely and conscientiously applied. The sounder scholar is invincible by the brilliant rhetorician, and the eloquence and ingenuity of De Maistre and Schlegel would be of no avail against researches pursued with perfect mastery of science and singleness of purpose. The apologist's armour would be vulnerable at the point where his religion and his science were forced into artificial union. Again, as science widens and deepens, it escapes from the grasp of dilettantism. Such knowledge as ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... judged gemmes gay I set her singly in singleness. Alas! I lost her in an arbour; Through the grass to the ground it from me went. I pine, sorely wounded by dangerous love Of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... the heroine of that war will she be while the English tongue exists and English history is read. The national enthusiasm for her was at once intense, and it grew deeper and more intense as week by week revealed her powers. "Less talent and energy of character, less singleness of purpose and devotion, could never have combined the heterogeneous elements which she gathered together in one common work and labor ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... and various faculties run into the main stream. With Browning the passion is indeed a regal power, but intellect, imagination, fancy are its office-bearers for a time; then in a moment it resumes all authority into its own hands, resolves of a sudden all that is complex into the singleness of joy or pain, fuses all that is manifold into the unity of its own life and being. His dramatic method requires that each single faculty should be seen in the environment of a character, and that its operations ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... fussing, they speedily transferred Pao-yue into the I Hung court, where they stretched him out comfortably on his own bed. Then after some further excitement, the members of the family began gradually to disperse. Hsi Jen at last entered his room, and waited upon him with singleness of heart. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the sex in general, whom he considered as mercenary and treacherous. His parties were numerous and expensive, but women were never to be seen in his house; and his confirmed dislike to them was the occasion of his seldom visiting, except with those who were like himself in a state of happy singleness. In other points, he was a liberal, worthy man, and a perfect gentleman, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... preceding page I have justified the use of technical terms in philosophy, whenever they tend to preclude confusion of thought, and when they assist the memory by the exclusive singleness of their meaning more than they may, for a short time, bewilder the attention by their strangeness. I trust, that I have not extended this privilege beyond the grounds on which I have claimed it; namely, the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... deliberate; there was an absence of superfluous energy that told of intensity of thought and singleness of purpose. He shouldered the saddle with a single movement, walked with it to the lean-to, threw it upon its accustomed peg, hung the bridle from the pommel, and then turned and for a brief time listened to the talk and laughter ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Krishna. Fearlessness, singleness of soul, the will Always to strive for wisdom; opened hand And governed appetites; and piety, And love of lonely study; humbleness, Uprightness, heed to injure nought which lives, Truthfulness, slowness unto wrath, a mind That lightly letteth go what others prize; And equanimity, and charity ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... on himself, whom, deemed a fool or a drunkard, the guards pricked off with their spears, while the king passed on into the mosque: and how the man came on the morrow with yesterday's blood-spots on him, and cried out for right. What follows is told with great singleness and truth: "Thou knowest," ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... questions is in the hands of the same person. The ultimate authority in the English constitution is a newly-elected House of Commons. Whatever the question on which it decides, a new House of Commons can despotically and finally resolve. No one can doubt the importance of singleness and unity. The excellence in the British constitution is that it has achieved this unity. This is primarily due to the provision which places the choice of the executive in "the people's house." But it could not have been effected without what I may call the "safety valve" and "the regulator." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... said that he utilized his vast wealth for this reason, and none other, and that whatever might have been the irregularities of his youth—and there were adduced concrete instances—he was working toward an end with a singleness of purpose, from which it ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... Babylon. The Bible is full of such examples, and those examples were given for our instruction. Those men rose, not because they wished to rise, but because they strove to do their duty—to worship the Lord their God with singleness of heart. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... appearance of men whom she thought arrayed in the unholy cause of rebellion. Miss Peyton looked on the gallant show with an exulting pride, which arose in the reflection that the warriors before her were the chosen troops of her native colony; while Frances gazed with a singleness of interest that absorbed ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
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