"Rectitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yellow chickens, sketched a little, certain rose-trees in the garden were committed specially to her care; and what with the care of the house, the care of the chickens, and the care of the poor, she scarcely knew what it was to have an idle minute. An extreme rectitude of mind, rather than any gift, gave her weight in the family. When Mary wrote to say that she had asked Ralph Denham to stay with them, she added, out of deference to Elizabeth's character, that he was very nice, though rather queer, and had been overworking himself in London. No doubt ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... most elaborate swearer I ever heard. That is, when he is driving cattle. At other times he most conscientiously refrains from everything but abstract rectitude of speech. He says that you cannot drive cattle without swearing; that they understand you so far, and never think you are in earnest till they hear an oath. Whip and dogs and roaring will not do without some good hearty swearing, too. The Saint says so, and he ought to know. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... union of both, politics were to receive their direction. The events in Bern were to determine the fate of Switzerland. Statesmen as well as scholars acknowledged this. The city had neglected nothing in order to make clear its honor, its rectitude and its hospitality. The government had exhibited firmness on all sides. To the Emperor himself, who in a very earnest tone had issued a positive command to abolish the Conference, it had been replied respectfully, but decidedly, that the preparations ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... remarkable passages, the scope and object of the vouchsafed message, they have at various times striven to pledge it to a science as false as even that of Buddhist, Teuton, or Hindu. And so, not only has the argument been weakened and obscured which might be founded on the rectitude of the line drawn of old between what ought and what ought not to be the subject of revelation, but even a positive argument has been furnished to the infidel,—ever ready to identify the glosses of the theologian with the enunciations of revelation itself,—similar to that which the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse, and pierce intellectual depths, and give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insousiance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art. If you, have looked on him who has achieved it, you have looked on ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... missionaries and them, of the danger which threatened them, as well from the whites as the savages, and advised them to remove to some situation, where they would be exempt from molestation by either. Conscious of the rectitude of their conduct as regarded both, and unwilling to forsake the comforts which their industry had procured for them, and the fields rendered productive by their labor, they disregarded the [234] friendly monition, and continued in their villages, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... unquestionably plausible; but I was disposed to put a more favourable construction on Mervyn's behaviour. I recollected the desolate and penniless condition in which I found him, and the uniform complacency and rectitude of his deportment for the period during which we had witnessed it. These ideas had considerable influence on my judgment, and indisposed me to follow the advice of my friend, which was to turn him forth from ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... compose the party I find it embarrassing to speak; yet, vanity apart, I may assert with truth that they have each a sufficient strength of head to make the virtues of the heart respectable, and that they are all highly charged with that enthusiasm which results from strong perceptions of moral rectitude, called into life and action by ardent feelings. With regard to pecuniary matters it is found necessary, if twelve men with their families emigrate on this system, that L2,000 should be the aggregate of their contributions—but infer not from hence that each man's "quota" is ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... he believes to be generally approved because it is profitable, not on account of any natural leaning of the mind in its direction. Conscience "is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions." Memory is the power in the mind to revive perceptions which it once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. Wit lies in the assemblage of ideas, judgment in the careful discrimination among them. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... preservation of the unalienable rights of all his fellow-creatures was one of the chief characteristics of that excellent citizen. Let every member in that house imitate him in the purity of their conduct and in the universal rectitude of their measures, and they would pay the same tender regard to the rights of other countries as to those of their own; and, for his part, he should never believe those persons to be sincere, who were loud in their professions of love of liberty, if ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... effect of sentiments which her birth and situation inspired, joined to a studied mode of respect, best calculated to enforce the same from her. The wished-for consequence was produced—for though there was an instinctive rectitude in the understanding of Miss Milner that would have taught her, without other instruction, what manners to observe towards her deputed father; yet, from some volatile thought, or some quick sense of feeling, which she had not been accustomed to subdue, she was perpetually on the verge of ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... she answered, 'I will not sill them to thee save on condition that thou fast, watching by night a whole month, and abstaining by day, all for the love of Allah Almighty; and, if thou do this, they are thy property to use in thy palace as thou please.' So the King wondered at the perfection of her rectitude and piety and abnegation; she was magnified in his eyes and he said, 'Allah make this pious woman to profit us!' Then he agreed with her to fast for a month as she had stipulated, and she said to him, 'I will help thee with the prayers I pray for thee ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... what you eat and I'll tell you what you are," pronounced the doctor. "It's a sign of moral rectitude to eat stewed rhubarb. Now, as to science: what is ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity: In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self; In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... Socrates, Cicero,—from dim and mute surrounding phenomena? What do we know of Eternity? Of our relations to God? Especially of the relations of a sinner to God? What of reconciliation? What of the capital question—How can a God of perfect spotless rectitude deal with me, a corrupt sinner, who have trampled on those of His laws which were even written on ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... spirits. It was, after all, a more serious thing than he had imagined, to cut the cable which binds one to the land of one's birth. There a hundred subtile influences, the existence of which no one suspects until the moment they are withdrawn, unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude, or at least of external respectability; and Ralph's life had been all in society; the opinion of his fellow-men had been the one force to which he implicitly deferred, and the conscience by which he had been wont to test his actions ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "M. de Malesherbes lacked will to remain in power," said Abbe Wry, "M. Turgot conciliatoriness (conciliabilite), and M. de Maurepas soul enough to follow his lights." "M. de Malesherbes," wrote Condorcet, "has, either from inclination or from default of mental rectitude, a bias towards eccentric and paradoxical ideas; he discovers in his mind numberless arguments for and against, but never discovers a single one to decide him. In his private capacity he had employed his eloquence ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... retained her girlish admiration of Mr. Blake. Despite his having been so conspicuous at the forefront of public affairs, no scandal had ever soiled his name. His rectitude, so said people whose memories ran back a generation, was due mainly to fine qualities inherited from his mother, for his father had been a good-natured, hearty, popular politician with no discoverable bias toward over-scrupulosity. In fact, twenty years ago there had been a great to-do ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... firmly, and bowed in the stateliest fashion of the old school as he backed out of the room with grand obsequiousness. Deliberately, heavily and solidly, resounded the echoing footsteps of Francois upon the stairway, like the going of some substantial personage of unimpeachable rectitude. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... twice-born look down upon the rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being "mere morality," and not properly religion. "Dr. Channing," an orthodox minister is reported to have said, "is excluded from the highest form of religious life by the extraordinary rectitude of his character." It is indeed true that the outlook upon life of the twice-born—holding as it does more of the element of evil in solution—is the wider and completer. The "heroic" or "solemn" way in which life comes to ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... distinguished him in every position, public or private. He assumed none of that mock dignity or ascetic reserve in his intercourse with the Bar and the people, so characteristic of little minds in elevated positions: conscious of rectitude in all things, he never feared this familiarity would give cause for the charge of improper bias in his decisions from the bench or his influence ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... enorme"—of Breton parentage. He died at Paris, 1887. Gustave Kahn, the symbolist poet, describes Laforgue in his Symbolistes and Decadents as a serious young man, with sober English manners and an extreme rectitude in the matter of clothes. Not the metaphysical Narcissus that was once Maurice Barres—whose early books show the influence of Laforgue. He adored the philosophy of the Unconscious as set forth by Von Hartmann, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... be remarked that during Captain Glazier's stay in Rochester, an exception was made to the usually courteous reception given him by the local press. One of the papers threw doubts on the genuineness of his credentials and the rectitude of his motives. This, however, had little effect on him. He was conscious of his own integrity of purpose, and of being guided by a desire to do good while seeking knowledge and recreation in his own way, and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... and excellent qualities which the friends of John Martin knew him to possess. Rectitude of principle, abhorrence of injustice and intolerance, deep love of country, the purity and earnestness of a saint, allied with the kindliness and inoffensiveness of childhood; amiability and disinterestedness, together with a perfect abnegation of ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... princely gifts. He had treated her with a fine, old-world chivalry, as something sacred and apart. But he rarely sought her society. He seemed, rather carefully, to elude her pursuit. His name was not exactly a patent of discretion and rectitude in these days, unfortunately. Still Helen found his care of her reputation—as far as association of her name with his went—somewhat exaggerated. She could hardly believe him to be indifferent to her, and yet—— Oh! the whole matter was unsatisfactory, abominably ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... her, and burlesqued her publicly at the theatres, cruelly defaming her intentions and her private life. Strong in the knowledge of her own rectitude, she faced the tempest without flinching; yet inwardly her soul was torn to pieces. The barricading of Paris, the insolence of M. le Prince, the bravado and treachery of Cardinal de Retz, burnt up the very blood in her veins, and brought on her fatal ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... knit together by a common devotion to Christ. It is the school of character which seeks the mutual edification of its members 'by provoking one another to love and to good works.' Hence among Protestants the duty of Church Discipline is acknowledged, which deals with such sins or lapses from rectitude as constitute 'offences' or 'scandals,' and tend to bring into disrepute the Christian name and profession. In the Roman Church, the Confessional, through which moral error is avowed, with its system of penances, has in view the same object—viz., ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... By-and-by she would attack her cream, being partial to that beverage; but for the present she would slumber on, a creature without care, without fear; a gentle, admirable kitchen cat. She brought up her families when they arrived with all a mother's rectitude and propriety, and when they were old enough to leave her, got rid of them as quickly as possible—which means that she took no further notice of them. She regarded them no longer as hers; they were cats, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... so high in the air, stretch the three tiers of the tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothing could well be more Roman. The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpectedness, the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say—at the time—and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from the highway, descends to the level of the river and passes under ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... gives this estimate of her character: "Admirable as was her literary life, her home life was more so; and beautiful as were the examples set forth in her writings, her own example was, if possible, still more beautiful. Her unerring sense of rectitude, her love of truth, her ready sympathy, her active and cheerful beneficence, her winning and gracious manners, the perfection of high breeding, make up a character, the idea of which, as it rests in my mind, ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Dorothy and Richard, although ordinary in outward appearance, was of no common kind; and while these two thus fell apart from each other in their outer life, each judging the other insensible to the call of highest rectitude, neither of them knew how much his or her heart was confident of the other's integrity. In respect of them, the lovely simile, in Christabel, of the parted cliffs, may be carried a little farther, for, under the dreary sea flowing between them, the rock was one still. Such a faith may sometimes, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... paradise without purifying my heart or changing my affections;—if it were an article of my faith that the grace of an indulgence could give me the extraordinary privilege of sinning without guilt or offending without punishment;—if it inculcated any maxim evasive of moral rectitude:—in a word, if the features of my religion corresponded with the pictures drawn of it in flying pamphlets and anniversary declamations, I would consider myself and the rest of my fraternity as downright idiots, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... materially improved by the introduction of mechanical aids to their toil. The second is self-evident,—seeing that there is a moral instructor ever at work in the mazes of ingenious and highly-wrought machinery. Those philosophers are not far wrong, if at all, who assert that the rectitude of the human race has gained strength, as by a tonic, from the contemplation of the severe, arrowy railroad,—iron emblem of punctuality, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... he wished for a toy, he had but to scream for it. If, at school, he had been fortunate enough to contract his friendships with young men of worth and character, their example would have won him to rectitude, for he was always a lad easily led." And again, "If he had but listened to the advice which, when it would have served him, I did not fail daily and hourly to offer him, he might have lived for years, and been respected—for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... crooked, he admitted; but he asked himself whether, between men and women, all ways were not more or less crooked. He believed those which are called straight were the most dangerous of all. They seemed to him, for the most part, to lie between windowless stone walls, and their rectitude had been achieved at the expense of light and air. In their unquestioned regularity lurked every sort of human cruelty and meanness, and every kind of humiliation and suffering. He would rather have any woman he cared ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... ages and countries, do not give us a better knowledge of ourselves! How little does literature benefit us, if the sketches of life and character, the generous sentiments, the testimonies to disinterestedness and rectitude, with which it abounds, do not incite and guide us to wiser, purer, and more graceful action! How little substantial good do we derive from poetry and the fine arts, if the beauty, which delights the imagination, do not warm and refine ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Athens, and was born three hundred and forty-five years before the birth of Christ. He was educated under the illustrious Theophrastus, from whom he learned philosophy and composition. While a brilliant genius directed him to comic poetry, his natural delicacy, his refined taste, his moral rectitude, and true philosophy controlled his fancy, imparted to his comedies a charm unknown before, and obtained for them the suffrage of the most enlightened, witty, and judicious men of his age, though for the same reason they were, as Hamlet says, caviere to the multitude, and never did please the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... world will call me unmaidenly, more than indiscreet, and will say that I have been ready to throw myself into the arms of the first stranger I have met; but what care I for this little world of Shetland? I stand on my own rectitude. I shall be far away, and can afford to despise all such insinuations. But the greatest doubt Bertha, in her over-anxious love, has raised up before me, is that regarding Hernan himself. Still I feel sure that he is all that is honourable and noble. He has given me numberless assurances, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been three times governor of Ohio. He "knew the legislative body thoroughly, its composition, its methods, its habits of thought," said John Hay. "He had the profoundest respect for its authority and an inflexible belief in the ultimate rectitude of its purposes." He was not likely to embarrass business through bluntness or inexperience. He had risen through a kindly disposition, a recognition of the political value of tact, and an unusual skill as a moderator of variant opinions. He believed that his function was to ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... exalting this amiable being mingles largely with the other motives to his enterprise. He is, in fact, a great, and might have been a virtuous man; and though in the pursuit of grandeur he swerves from absolute rectitude, we still respect his splendid qualities, and admit the force of the allurements which have led him astray. It is but faintly that we condemn his sentiments, when, after a night spent in struggles between a rigid and a more accommodating patriotism, he looks out of his chamber, as the sun is rising ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... interesting in the world. The genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality of the English are beyond praise and without limit. In this they show a strange contradiction to their dickering habits in trade and their "unctuous rectitude" in stealing continents. I know a place in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line into other people's territory. I guess they really believe that ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Henry of Valois, the Bastard of Angouleme, and their attendants, had reached the admiral's house. The wounded man was almost alone. Could there be any clearer proof of the rectitude of his purpose, of the utter falsity of the charges of conspiracy with which his enemies afterward attempted to blacken his memory?[983] Guerchy and other Protestant gentlemen had expressed the desire to spend the night with him; but his son-in-law, Teligny, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... consenting to this union, showed a generous mind and the power derived from self-respect. In this absolute intimacy, in which both lovers put off their masks, the young woman never abdicated her modesty, her masculine rectitude, and the strength peculiar to ambitious souls, which formed the basis of her character. Lousteau involuntarily held her in high esteem. As a Parisian, Dinah was superior to the most fascinating courtesan; she could be as amusing ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... barrier to the success which must otherwise have rewarded his energy and talent. But even among those who were envious of his ability, and offended by his eccentricities, they were few who did not do justice to the rectitude of his motives, and none who did not admit the warmth of his affections. There were more to mourn over his untimely death than there had been to forgive the mistakes he made, and by wise and friendly counsel to raise him to that height which he might easily have obtained. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... heart leads to destruction (perdition?) and all rectitude leads to Brahman (spiritual excellence). If this and this only is the aim and object of all true wisdom, then what can mental distraction do (to one who understands this)? Thy Karma has not yet been annihilated, nor have thy enemies been subjugated, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... resisted, and who delighted to tell us—invariably, too, in very bad English—that our perquisite was properly the hangman's perquisite,[2] made over to us because we were like him; not seeing—blockheads as they were!—that the very admission established in full the rectitude of our claim, and gave to us, amid our dire perils and faithful contendings, the strengthening consciousness of a just quarrel. In dealing with these recusants, we used ordinarily to divide our forces into two bodies, the larger portion of the party filling their pockets with ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of this pious rectitude was a certain order given at the Gobelins. Madame de Maintenon had thrust her leading nose between the doors of the factory and had scented outraged modesty in the reproduction there of the tapestries woven from models of Raphael, Giulio Romano ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... may look with confidence for the inspiration of a new literature. But in politics Ireland has no secrets. All her cards are on the table, decipherable at the first glance. Her political demand combines the lucidity of an invoice with the axiomatic rectitude of the Ten Commandments. There is no doubt about what she wants, and none about why she ought to have it. In that sense the case for Home Rule is made, and this book, having justified its title, ought to ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... been sent for and was coming in as a witness in Captain Devers's court startled her inexpressibly, despite her conscious rectitude. She told Willett that very evening, as they were driving slowly among the willow-wooded islands, and he looked imploringly into her eyes, and Mrs. Flight and Mr. Burtis on the back seat could see that he was talking eagerly, earnestly, pleadingly, and that her eyes were downcast, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... by a committee of men of high rectitude, it was decided to act without fear or favour in a strictly impartial manner, so Philip's half-million of bullion was divided between the Prince of Orange and the rigid moralist, Elizabeth, who is credited with having spent her share on the Navy, a very admirable ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... about sins forgiven being sins forsaken. Any person who had been in the habit of dishonest dealing would adopt habits of rectitude, and would make restitution when possible. Those who had uttered falsehoods would no longer persist in untruthfulness, but would speak the whole truth, even if to their own cost. And all this would be because Christ had forgiven ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... cheap prices made possible by inferior articles. Sow that man's seed, and you will reap that man's harvest. Cheat, lie, be unscrupulous in your assertions, and custom will come to you. But if the price be too high, let him have his harvest, and you take yours —a clear conscience, a pure mind, rectitude within and without. Will you part ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... analytical mind, and an outspoken contempt of pretense and sham, it was Smith's misfortune upon more than one occasion to arouse the animosity and opposition of those having higher rank than himself. Direct and vigorous in his methods, and confident of the rectitude of his purposes, he never hesitated to give his views to such as he believed to be entitled to them, without reference to whether they would be well received or not. Loyal and truthful by nature, he ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... make a score of thousands. He is constantly flattered by his friends, who tell him that he is born lucky, that everything he touches turns into gold. Now if he forgets that his economical habits, his rectitude of conduct and a personal attention to a business which he understood, caused his success in life, he will listen to the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... as did most of the early Churchmen, that to do evil that good might follow was not only justifiable, but highly meritorious. So they preached hagiology to scare people into the narrow path of rectitude. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... looked proud, or self-elate, or triumphant, I felt that I could have hated him; but so impassive, and withal now so frail and feeble, yet with an eye so calmly firm, an expression of rectitude so conscious, I could not but perceive that if an enemy of my belle France was before me, it was an enemy who had been made such by duty, not by choice—an enemy who had done nought ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... more moderation of temper, with more justice, more humanity, more honor, or a more gentle disposition. What pity that such a prince should so long have been harassed with rigors, suspicions, calumnies, complaints, encroachments; and been forced from that path, in which the rectitude of his principles would have inclined him to have constantly trod! If some few instances are found of violations made on the petition of right, which he himself had granted, there is an easier and more natural way for preventing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Frenchman," he observed, "the ideas promulgated in France at the present day are distinctly profane and pernicious. There is a lack of principle—a want of rectitude in— er—the French Press, for example, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... are God and man thus in strange antagonism, with regard to earthly dispensations! Man, as he arraigns the rectitude of the Divine procedure, exclaiming—"How unaccountable this dealing! How baffling this mystery! Where is now my God?" This sickness—why prolonged? This thorn in the flesh—why still buffeting? This family blank—why permitted? Why the most treasured and ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... hear; thirteen minutes must yet elapse. But she could not allow so horrible a thing to take place! In this stormy awakening of her rectitude she felt naught but a furious craving to prevent it. She must prevent it; otherwise she would be unable to live. In a state of frenzy ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... oneself from the tyranny of literary catchwords and the dead weight of cultivated public opinion, one comes back to the world of books with an added zest. It is then, and only then, that one reads with real unscrupulousness, thinking solely of the pleasure, and nothing of the rectitude or propriety or adequacy of what we ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... unvarnished human being when one sees him in a true light! Schulz's honest, kindly face seemed to me to typify all that I knew of the finer qualities of the Germans; the frugal simplicity, the tenderness, the proud, stiff rectitude. He and I felt for each other, I think, something of the humorous friendliness of the men in the opposing trenches. Chance had cast us on different sides of the matter. But when I felt tempted to see red, to condemn the Germans en masse, to chant litanies ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... question were soon to open at Washington Park, on the South Side, and were considered quite society affairs among those who did not affect religious rectitude and conservatism. Mrs. Hurstwood had never asked for a whole season ticket before, but this year certain considerations decided her to get a box. For one thing, one of her neighbours, a certain Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, who were possessors of money, made out of the coal business, had done ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... its accomplishment. My mother, knowing that my father publicly resided with his mistress, did not even hope for his returning affection. She devoted herself to her children, and endured her sorrows with the patience of conscious rectitude. ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Creevey's friends and connexions, and to concur in whatever measures may be thought best by them with reference to the character of Creevey, and the interests and feelings of those who might be affected by the contents of the papers. Here is a strange situation in which to find a rectitude of conduct, a moral sentiment, a grateful and disinterested liberality which would do honour to the highest birth, the most careful cultivation, and the strictest principle. It would be a hundred to one against any individual in the ordinary rank of ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... on in a mode equally injurious and unjust to the United States as a neutral nation, the wisdom of the National Legislature will be again summoned to the important decision on the alternatives before them. That these will be met in a spirit worthy the councils of a nation conscious both of its rectitude and of its rights, and careful as well of its honor as of its peace, I have an entire confidence; and that the result will be stamped by a unanimity becoming the occasion, and be supported by every portion of our citizens with a patriotism enlightened and invigorated by experience, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... of official selfishness, folly, ignorance, stupidity, and sloth, French as well as British, not to marvel at times that the conflict had not come to an ignominious end long ago through simple lack of imagination. He knew that he himself had often failed in devotion, in rectitude, in sheer grit. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... don't say that his advice would have been equally judicious for all youths of Percival's age; but he knew well the nature to which he confided; he knew well how strong was that young heart in its healthful simplicity and instinctive rectitude; and he appreciated his manliness not too highly when he felt that all evident props and aids would be but ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not moral culture. The Greeks delighted intensely in the purely physical life about them; they had small conception of anything beyond. To enjoy, to be successful, that was all their goal; the means scarce counted. The Athenians called Aristides the Just; but so little did they honor his high rectitude that they banished him for a decade. His title, or it may have been his insistence on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... of the North," Denmark and Norway exercised in Europe an influence the effects of which were long felt throughout the Scandinavian countries with their vast extent and rival races. She united wisdom and policy with courage and determination, had strength of mind to preserve her rectitude without deviation, and her efforts were crowned by divine Providence with success. She is justly considered one of the most illustrious female rulers in history. Her renown even reached the Byzantine emperor Emanuel Palaeologus, who called her Regina sine exemplo maxima. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... these, and the scale 'where the pure gold is, easily turns the balance.' In the words of Angellier: 'Admiration grows in proportion as we examine his qualities. When we think of his sincerity, of his rectitude, of his kindness towards man and beast; of his scorn of all that is base, his hatred of all knavery which in itself would be an honour; of his disinterestedness, of the fine impulses of his heart, and the high aspirations of his spirit; of the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... teachers of morality as well as of religion. Of their ethical teaching a valuable specimen is preserved in the Triads of the Welsh Bards, and from this we may gather that their views of moral rectitude were on the whole just, and that they held and inculcated many very noble and valuable principles of conduct. They were also the men of science and learning of their age and people. Whether they were acquainted with letters or not has been disputed, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission. Your own mind has the power to transmute every external phenomenon to its own purposes. If happiness arises from cheerfulness, kindliness, and rectitude (and who will deny it?), what possible combination of circumstances is going to make you unhappy so long as the machine remains in order? If self-development consists in the utilisation of one's environment ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... some minds, you know, with the motives which sway them, we too much revere to oppose to them our own. Girl though Fausta be, yet when I see by the lofty expression of her countenance, her firm and steadfast eye, that she has taken her part, I have no assurance sufficient to question the rectitude of her determination, or essay to change it. I have more faith ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... rectitude or of policy could longer restrain the impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and as a first step towards emancipation, he determined to permit the ruin of its original adviser, that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... meanness is not to them a meanness because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness, if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself of right, are anything more than a name. Let the young men who mean to make time minister to life scorn and scotch and kill this debasing and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was regarded by his contemporary, William Wells Brown, as a terse and vigorous writer and an able and eloquent speaker well informed upon all subjects of the day. "Blameless in his family relations, guided by the highest moral rectitude, a true friend to everything that tends to better the moral, social, religious and political condition of man. Dr. Ray," says Brown, "may be looked upon as one of the foremost of the leading men of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... be undertaken by many men, each of whom shall in large measure possess Mr. Haseman's exceptional power of laborious work both in the field and in the study, his insight and accuracy of observation, and his determination to follow truth with inflexible rectitude wherever it may lead—one of the greatest among the many great qualities which lifted Huxley and ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... the religious orders, and the rest of this community, all bitterly sorrowing for the loss of such a pastor and prelate. Although his government at first ran counter to many who were discontented, as he seemed to them excessive in his rectitude, yet finally—his cause justified, and the truth declared by so many tribunals; and his blameless and holy life being seen [by all]—they hailed him unanimously as a holy prelate, and an example worthy of imitation. And even those ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... rising temple of Tira's faith. He had strengthened her at the expense of his own bitter certainties. It was done deliberately and it was not to be regretted, but it did open a window upon his private rectitude. Was his state of mind to be taken so very seriously, even by himself? Not after that! Lounging before his book-shelves in search of a soporific, suddenly he remembered the mottled book. It flashed into his mind as if a hand had hurled it there. He ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the more I had reason to admire her. Her mind seemed to unfold itself leaf by leaf, and every time to discover new sweetness. Nobody knew her so well as I, for she was generally silent.... Never did I meet with more intuitive rectitude of mind, more delicacy, more exquisite propriety in word, thought, and action than in this young creature. Her brilliant little sister used to say that 'people began by admiring her, but ended by ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... thought, against the mere appearance of law. Under what he counted the chiefs contempt, he had already grown worse; and the thought that perhaps the great world might one day look upon him with like contempt, wrought in him bitterly; he had not the assurance of rectitude which makes contempt hurtless. He was crueller now than before the chief's letter to ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... answered, but who can say what converse he may have held with all these placid, colourless forms of men and women peopling that quiet corner of the world as free of danger or strife as a tomb, and breathing equably the air of undisturbed rectitude. It seems amazing that he should belong to it, he to whom so many things "had come." Nothing ever came to them; they would never be taken unawares, and never be called upon to grapple with fate. Here they all are, evoked by the mild gossip of the father, all these ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... human significance. But, yet, in relation to the highest interests of morality or the well-being of society, the pupil must be taught to subordinate without hesitation all that relates exclusively to his own personal comfort or welfare for the well-being of his fellow-men, or for moral rectitude. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... teach you, from your earliest youth, the duty of self-command; I have pointed out to you the great importance of it through life, not only as it preserves us in the various and dangerous temptations that call us from rectitude and virtue, but as it limits the indulgences which are termed virtuous, yet which, extended beyond a certain boundary, are vicious, for their consequence is evil. All excess is vicious; even that sorrow, which is amiable in its origin, becomes a selfish and unjust passion, if ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... with indignation, and having vented his sense of rectitude, he left the room without even bidding his friend good-night or good-morning. The next day he spent the entire afternoon with Lizzie, for Lady Helen's suicide had set his nature ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... no detective is truly fit for his calling, moved him, so with the impatient impulse we so often witness when rectitude is about to subject itself to the persuasions of the evil one for the ostensible purpose of combating them and the private determination to yield, Gratz extended a trembling hand toward the Sepoy, who had drawn himself to the extreme limit of his sinewy height, the better to accommodate ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... sentiments go deeper than is possible to those of more ebullient temperament but fatal clarity of vision; refinement of mind and habit and manner is perhaps the most precious of their achievements, and they have established a code which not only demands rectitude of act but suppression of thought and desire where ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... Several times did she almost resolve to go to her governess, show her the letter, and be guided by her advice: but Charlotte had taken one step in the ways of imprudence; and when that is once done, there are always innumerable obstacles to prevent the erring person returning to the path of rectitude: yet these obstacles, however forcible they may appear in ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day—as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to a candid world. That paragraph on slavery, Mr. Jefferson, meets with my approval heartily, but I fear some of the Southern delegates will oppose it strongly. We can certainly appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions. I believe with you that divine Providence will support us in making this Declaration good. Therefore, I am willing to stand with you in pledging our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... conceive of it, and am quite contented not to. I saw and felt in a moment how beyond computation and desert I was still rich,—richest. Father's sincerity, his childlike guilelessness, his good sense and rectitude, his unaffected piety,—all and each of his qualities made him interesting to my husband. I really do not believe any one else ever listened to his stories and his conversation with as much love and interest. Whatever is real and simple and true attracts ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... your presence and that of my fellow-citizens, about to surrender forever a station full of difficulty, of labor and temptation, in which I have been called to very arduous duties, affecting the rights, property, and at times the liberty of others; concerning which the perfect line of rectitude—though desired—was not always to be clearly discerned; in which great interests have been placed within my control, under circumstances in which it would have been easy to advance private ends and sinister projects;—under these circumstances, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... ever my dear child's wish to aid, by the example of her pen, the education of the Heart. It was her desire, in the truthful exemplification of character, to point out to the youthful of her own sex the paths of rectitude and virtue. The same kindly love—the same heartfelt charity—the same spirit of devotion, which breathes through every line in "Home Influence," will be found pervading the ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... of the English of a loftier, character. The French practise virtue for the sake of reputation, and seek the reward of meritorious actions in popular applause; the English practise it for its own sake, and seek no reward but that which springs from the consciousness of rectitude. There is the same relative difference in their vices as in their virtues. Both commit crimes; the French from the love of gain, the desire of vengeance or similar motives; but the English are often criminal for the mere sake of committing crime. The French, like ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... once seized this opportunity for disembarrassing himself of an importunate beggar by saddling the county with him. He exalted "the worthy, excellent man" to the skies, and especially praised his rectitude, his ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... that, In all who are in a state of grace, there must needs be rectitude of the will, since grace prepares man's will for good, according to Augustine (Contra Julian. Pelag. iv, 3). Now the will cannot be rightly directed to good, unless there be already some knowledge of the truth, since the object of the will is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... resignation under chastisement; by recognizing one's place, rejoicing in one's portion, putting a fence to one's words, claiming no merit for one's self, by being beloved, loving the All-present, loving mankind, loving just courses, rectitude, and reproof; by keeping one's self far from honor, not boasting of one's learning, nor delighting in giving decisions; by bearing the yoke with one's fellow, judging him favorably, and leading him to truth and peace; by being composed in one's study; by asking and ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... ill-favoured and ill-natured; Dee's was comely and agreeable: and he longed to make an exchange of partners, without exciting the jealousy or shocking the morality of Dee. This was a difficult matter; but, to a man like Kelly, who was as deficient in rectitude and right feeling as he was full of impudence and ingenuity, the difficulty was not insurmountable. He had also deeply studied the character and the foibles of Dee; and he took his measures accordingly. The next time they consulted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the thanks of an idolized brother, and "a conscience void of offence," she could but be calmly happy, even though surrounded by circumstances which often jarred upon her pure and delicate nature, and which would have crushed one less conscious of future peace and present rectitude. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... crocuses, to be brought to his bed, and compared them with the figures in Tournefort. His whole existence had been consecrated to the good of the public, and to the alleviation of misery; thus he looked forward to his dissolution with a tranquillity of soul that can only result from a life of rectitude; he never acquired a fortune; and left no other inheritance to his children, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... Mr. Spencer we attempt no exposition. His attitude towards theology is to us more satisfactory than that of any recent thinker of the first class. But whatever his conclusions, every true man will respect and encourage that rectitude of mind which follows the issues of its reasoning at any cost. It was not the philosopher in his brain, but the fool in his heart, who said, "There is no God." It is of little matter what inappropriate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... has a thoroughly loyal nature, a distinguished mind, and a character endowed with a singular charm in its rectitude and earnestness. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... addressed, I think, but unstamped; and I am not sure that that particular hotel will be Christian enough to spare the postage out of the bill, which had a galaxy of small extras running into centimes, and suggesting a red-tape rectitude that would not show blind twenty-five-centime gratitude to the backs of departed guests. So be patient and forgiving if I seem to have written little. I found two of yours waiting for me, and cannot choose between them which ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... lawful rights, rose at day-dawn, or so soon as the first brief slumber had recruited his exhausted frame, to give thanks unto the King of kings in strains that, handed down to us, yet thrill the heart by their fervent piety, and plain, vigorous verse, and animate it to a stricter more manly rectitude. Herbert—saintliest of men and priests—after his sacred toils, refreshed his spirit with "divine music;" the more melodious to his ear, that his heart was teeming with the harmony of that "good-will towards man," which seeks and finds its due expression in active exertions on their behalf—disdaining ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... of rectitude within her she tried to see if there was any reasonable ground for the real dislike of her which now seemed to be in her husband's mind. With every desire to be honest, she could think of none except the fact that she ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... that the demands of nature are, in the married state, not only legal, but should be physically right. So they are, when our physical life is right; but it must not be forgotten that few live in a truly physical rectitude."[15] ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... village pastor with unaffected piety; conducting the school at Lissoy with a degree of industry and ability that gave it celebrity, and acquitting himself in all the duties of life with undeviating rectitude and the mildest benevolence. How truly Goldsmith loved and venerated him is evident in all his letters and throughout his works; in which his brother continually forms his model for an exemplification of all the most endearing of the Christian virtues; yet his affection at his death was ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... time in which he was Assistant Resident, and living in the midst of a large Chinese population, it was necessary to be very firm, and at times almost severely firm, but the Chinese have shown their appreciation of official rectitude by presenting him with a gorgeous umbrella of red silk, embroidered with gold, which they call "A ten-thousand-man umbrella," i.e., an offering from a community which is not only unanimous in making it, but counts at ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... behind the Stand Right Royal shone from a strapper's hand. A big dark bay with a restless tread, Fetlock deep in a wheat-straw bed; A noble horse of a nervy blood, By O Mon Roi out of Rectitude Something quick in his eye and ear Gave a hint that he might be queer. In front, he was all to a horseman's mind, Some thought him a trifle light behind. By two good points might his rank be known, A beautiful head and a Jumping Bone. He had been the hope of Sir Button Budd, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... Bartholomew, who had forsaken the frame rectory near the church to build himself the substantial home now being offered me; Miss Emily, his daughter, who must now, I computed, be nearly seventy; and a son whom I recalled faintly as hardly bearing out the Benton traditions of solidity and rectitude. ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... first created, which without any avenger Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger. Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended To the liquid ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... well one could understand that Bernadette, born in that holy soil, should flower in it, like one of nature's roses budding in the wayside bushes! She was indeed the very florescence of that region of ancient belief and rectitude; she would certainly not have sprouted elsewhere; she could only appear and develop there, amidst that belated race, amidst the slumberous peacefulness of a childlike people, under the moral discipline of religion. And what intense love at once burst forth all ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... pestilence. Apparently, he is not disturbed by this treatment. He makes no protest, offers no excuse, takes no notice; in the face of outrageous insult he maintains an air of dignity and reserve, like a man conscious of inner rectitude.' ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in triumph, as if it were an incontestable evidence of the rectitude of her calculations, a sheet of note-paper so blotted and bespattered with figures, that it would have depressed the heart even of an accountant, because, besides the strong probability that it was intrinsically ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be a living force, must deal with all sides of life, and that little help comes to us from that silly pretence of ours that we are perfect in all things, leading perfect lives, that only the villain of the story ever deviates from the path of rectitude. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... had blue eyes in that old face of his, which were amazingly like a boy's, with that candid expression some quite common men preserve to the end of their days by a rare internal gift of simplicity of heart and rectitude of soul. What induced him to accept me was a wonder. I had come out of a crack Australian clipper, where I had been third officer, and he seemed to have a prejudice against crack clippers as aristocratic and high-toned. He said to me, 'You know, in this ship you will have ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... be encircled by swelling forms and sleek, fat faces, which ever and ever protested against his own martyrlike scragginess and sallow, discontented visage. To him the markets were like the stomach of the shopkeeping classes, the stomach of all the folks of average rectitude puffing itself out, rejoicing, glistening in the sunshine, and declaring that everything was for the best, since peaceable people had never before grown so beautifully fat. As these thoughts passed through his mind Florent clenched his fists, and felt ready for a struggle, more irritated ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... desired the vacant mission, and his pretensions were urged by Monroe and Madison. Washington recognized this as a device of the Opposition to embarrass him, and he had the lowest opinion of Burr's rectitude and integrity. Pressure and wrath produced no effect, but he offered to appoint Monroe. It might be wise to send a Jacobin, and the President hoped that ambition would preserve this one from compromising the country. He made the mistake of not weighing Monroe's mental capacity ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... while at the same time, she was violent in her attachments. Though she was inadvertently drawn into that dishonorable mode of life which has stained her character, and given her a place among the criminals noticed in this work, yet she possessed a rectitude of principle and of conduct, far superior to many who have not been exposed to such temptations to swerve from the path of female ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... idealized memory of pure and pious harmony, in the hearts of your old church friends. Warmly did they fight for your "way of singing;" with most undeniable and open partiality, with most dubious ingenuousness and rectitude, did your old neighbor, Captain Pelatiah Allyn, conduct that hot July music-meeting, counting up boldly sixty-three votes in favor of your way, when there were only forty-three voters on your side of the alley, and crowding a final decision in ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... whom she gave so many cakes and sweetmeats that the apothecary had to be called in about once a week to cure many of surfeit. But this fair young flower-bed was saved from blight and choking weeds, first, by the innate rectitude and nobility of her disposition, which (save only when that dangerous look was in her eyes) taught her to keep a rein over her caprices, and subdue a too warm and vigorous imagination; next, by the entire absence of Vanity and Self-Conceit ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... ground, like white slaves sculptured in graceful but profound obeisance before a storm king that has long since swept on with all his retinue. It is strange to see cedars that have always seemed unbendable models of primness and rectitude bowed and distorted in groups by the same resistless force. Very heavy and long continuing must have been the ice on these to thus permanently crook their red heartwood. The heavy brand of the Northern winter yet marks them ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... other. But of love Maltravers still forbore to speak; they were friends,—no more; such friends as the disparity of their years and their experience might warrant them to be. And in that young and innocent nature—with its rectitude, its enthusiasm, and its pious and cheerful tendencies—Maltravers found freshness in the desert, as the camel-driver lingering at the well. Insensibly his heart warmed again to his kind; and as the harp of David to the ear of Saul, was the soft voice that lulled remembrance and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be acquired; and as he supposed these to be already secured to him by his birth, there was nothing he was solicitous to obtain as the reward of merit, nor any thing that he considered himself to possess as the bounty of Heaven. If the sublime and disinterested rectitude that produces and rewards itself, dwells indeed with man, it dwelt not with ALMORAN: with respect to God, therefore, he was not impressed with a sense either of duty or dependence; he felt neither reverence nor love, gratitude nor resignation: in abstaining from evil, he was ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster issues. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be godlike. The full accord of all the soul with His character, in whom, as their native home, dwell 'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... rectitude of my intentions.... that I may be restored to the favor of my most Gracious Sovereign—... cheerfully cast myself at his feet imploring his Royal Grace and Protection.... the unalterable attachment to the Person, Family, and Interests ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... although somewhat discourteous in your rectitude," replied Bradford, and hasting forward he came in sight of the Town Square, where some fifteen or twenty of the Fortune passengers were amusing themselves at "stool-ball," a kind of cricket, at pitching the bar, wrestling, hopping-matches, and various other old English sports, many of which ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... He loved a will-o'-the-wisp; he had married a butterfly. Why continue to play the martyr and follow the fruitless path of rectitude? Hadn't she said, "I can only live once, and so I shall make life spin whichever way I want it to go?" He could only live once, and if life was not to spin with her, let it spin without her. "Who cares?" he said ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... that William was not a model of integrity, diligence, and rectitude. Though an office boy he had his failings, and William's explanations of them were as curious, but quite as characteristic, as ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... first parents revolted against God, they abandoned the eternal rule of rectitude, which is God's Will. Their passions, which heretofore had been under the control of reason, revolted against them, and their will was turned away from God. We, their children, have inherited all the consequences of their fall. We seek ourselves inordinately—follow our own capricious ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... toward a criminal career, and if such were the case Bridge felt morally obligated to protect his new found friend from arrest, secure in the reflection that his own precept and example would do more to lead him back into the path of rectitude than would any ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... us forget Pyrrhic victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric laughter; quos deus vult and nil de mortuis; Sturm und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of coincidence, and the soul of goodness in things evil; Hobson's choice, Frankenstein's monster, Macaulay's schoolboy, Lord Burleigh's nod, Sir Boyle Roche's ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... St. Austin supposes it to be unlawful for us to admire and praise whatever is either beautiful in the actions, or true in the maxims, of the heathens. He only advises us to correct whatever is erroneous, and to approve whatever is conformable to rectitude and justice in them.(38) He applauds the Romans on many occasions, and particularly in his books De Civitate Dei,(39) which is one of the last and finest of his works. He there shows, that the Almighty ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... benefactor and ornament of the society he snubbed and derided. Like all strong though misguided natures, the power and activity of his mind enhanced his wretchedness, and drove him farther and farther from the path of rectitude; while the consciousness that he was originally capable of loftier, purer aims, and nobler pursuits than those that now engrossed his perverted thoughts, rendered him savagely morose. For nearly fifteen dreary years, nothing but jeers and oaths and sarcasms had crossed his finely sculptured ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... that I could purchase it, so eager was he that I should have the best place; "seeing," said he, "that they are all one price, and that you may as well benefit by being an early bird." I noted the strict rectitude which, for all that men ignorant of modern commerce may say, is at the basis ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... speaking to Donna Corblay, even when paying for his meals, although the democracy of San Pasqual would not have construed speech at such a time as a breach of convention. For there were no angels in San Pasqual; the town was merely sunk in a moral lethargy, and the line of demarcation in matters of rectitude was drawn between those who stole and had killed their man, and those who had not. All the lesser sins were looked upon tolerantly as indigenous to the soil, and as Borax O'Rourke had never been accused of theft and had never killed his man (he had been in two arguments, however, and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... man. In his business as a lawyer and pleader of cases in the Law Courts of the Forum, he had come into personal contact with several of the Christians, finding them to be men and women of the strictest rectitude and following stern moral codes, such as were notably unobserved by ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... Sieyes in particular, and that of Talleyrand, are master-pieces, full of life and expression. But nothing in the book has interested us more than the view which M. Dumont has presented to us, unostentatiously, and, we may say, unconsciously, of his own character. The sturdy rectitude, the large charity, the good-nature, the modesty, the independent spirit, the ardent philanthropy, the unaffected indifference to money and to fame, make up a character which, while it has nothing unnatural, seems to us to approach nearer to perfection than any of the Grandisons ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... poured out upon us during the last twenty years. But you can read—and have read, I am sure—a whole multitude of stories in the newspapers, which are recovering admirably the old frankness in narration, and have discarded the pose of sermonising rectitude which led the journalists of a hundred years ago to call things (the names of which must have been constantly on their lips) "too infamous to be named"; and from these stories you must have become familiar with the existence in our country to-day of every one of the types whom you will discover ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... old families, while it is as inevitable that they should run out, so to speak, as flowers which have flourished too many years in a garden, whose soil they have exhausted, he had not lost the habit of rectitude of his ancestors. Virtue was a hereditary trait ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the irregularities of great genii, delivers himself as follows: "The gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task upon, the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind. Yet, difficult as nature herself seems to have reduced the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation of dullness, to seize upon those ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... ministers, but also from the ancient noblesse and the bourgeoisie, without approaching or identifying himself with the Republican left wing of the Chamber. He stood alone, admired for his genius, his irreproachable rectitude, his devoted patriotism, but considered rather as a poetical abstraction, an impracticable Utopist; and yet he was the only man in the Chamber who had devised a practical means of regenerating the people and the government. Lamartine was now considered a parliamentary oddity rather than ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... speedily divined, however, that Jean Valjean would want to put the river between his pursuers and himself. He bent his head and reflected like a blood-hound who puts his nose to the ground to make sure that he is on the right scent. Javert, with his powerful rectitude of instinct, went straight to the bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with the information which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little girl?" "I made him pay two sous," replied the toll-keeper. Javert reached the bridge in season to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... than that of his own unassuming modest merit, entered the very 16 respectable office of which he is now the distinguished principal, in the situation of a young man who has no other prospect of advancement than such as may accrue from rectitude of conduct, and the consequent approbation and patronage of his employer. By a long exemplary series of diligence and fidelity, he acquired the confidence of, and ultimately became a partner in the firm. His strictly conscientious ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... too late for a great nation to rectify a wrong done to even the humblest of its subjects, let alone a man of such undoubted courage and rectitude as Gen. Arnold." ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... to the avaricious, punishment to the profligate, meets in such an age with very few votaries? Some, doubtless, will always be found, who, disgusted with the profligacy with which they are surrounded, are led only the more rapidly to a life of rectitude and duty by such vice; but how many are they amidst the crowd of sensual and unreflecting? Perhaps one in twenty. The great mass pass quietly by on the other side; they do not say there is no God, but they live altogether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... He taught him to believe that virtue is but a mask worn by hypocrisy, a chimera on which no one can rely in the business of life; that religion is a political invention, of use only to the lower people; that all men are cheats and deceivers, and pretended rectitude a mere cover for intended villany. Madame, the mother of the Regent, early discovered the character of this detestable man. 'My son,' said she, 'I desire nothing but the good of the state and your glory: I ask but one thing for your safety, and I demand your word of honour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... a joke, a light jest, an affectionate manner for each and every one he came across; the other was made of sterner stuff—grave, with deep thoughts and high aspirations, and very strong, almost rigid ideas with regard to honor and rectitude—this was the inner Basil, whose existence Ermengarde knew of, whom ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... mutual want of confidence in the integrity of an alliance, it would hardly be surprising should the Sultan attach more importance to the practical force of Russia than to the moral rectitude and high political principles of England. The power of Russia has been felt, and the position of European Turkey is that of a dislocated and dismembered Empire, which upon the next explosion will reduce the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... solemnly declare and proclaim that if our enemies presume to execute their threats, or persist in their present career of barbarity, we will take such exemplary vengeance as shall deter others from a like conduct. We appeal to the God who searcheth the hearts of men for the rectitude of our intentions; and in his holy presence declare that, as we are not moved by any light or hasty suggestions of anger or revenge, so through every possible change of fortune we will adhere to this ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... qualities. He falls a victim to the fashionable vice, and carries back to his hitherto untainted home the lethal influence he has imbibed. Another and another, within the range of that influence, suffers for his lapse from moral rectitude, and they in turn become the agents and disseminators ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... successful General, but he is denounced by one faction, insulted by another, insidiously praised by a third, and, if he should persevere in serving them, he has more disinterested rectitude than I suspect him of, or than they merit. This is another of that Jacobin ministry which proved so fatal to the King; and it is evident that, had he been permitted to entertain the same opinion of all these people as they now ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... evils which had brought the various commonwealths into such a state of turmoil and dissatisfaction. Philip Livingston (1716-1778), grandson of Robert Livingston, the first of the American family of the name, was Member of Congress from New York in 1776. "His life was distinguished for inflexible rectitude and devotion to the ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... the forefront of this company, there was nothing in his refined and comely exterior to indicate that his real function was to pander to and flatter them; to invest with an air of respectability and rectitude the abominably selfish lives of the gang of swindlers, slave-drivers and petty tyrants who formed the majority of the congregation of the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... on by a family named Davidson, father and sons—in conjunction with the killers. And for more than twenty years this business partnership has existed between the humans and the cetaceans, and the utmost rectitude and solicitude for each other's interests has always been maintained. Orca gladiator seizes the whale for the Davidsons and holds him until the deadly lance is plunged into his 'life,' and the Davidssons let Orca carry the carcass to the bottom, and take his tithe of luscious blubber. ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke |
