"Free spirit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the sole Truth," "the only true principle." The waves of his soul would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving currents ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... "This extraordinary work, perhaps the last Rembrandt painted, is modelled with prodigious vigour and freedom. With superb audacity, the master shows us once more the familiar features, on which age and sorrow have worked their will. They are distorted, disfigured, almost unrecognisable. But the free spirit is still unbroken. The eyes that meet ours are still keen and piercing; they have even the old twinkle of good-humoured irony, and the toothless mouth relaxes in frank laughter. What was the secret of this gaiety? In spite of his poverty, he had still a corner in which ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... had was for an instant's passage fused in one clear, concentrated anger against a sister who could play so ruthlessly upon my poor child's woman pulses and emotions, so disarm her of her self-control and right free spirit. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... greatest river was an American—an American who had fought bravely and suffered many privations for his country. And as they watched the eagle, whirling in his flight over their heads, they felt glad that he had chosen this spot for his home, in which to rear his young in the same proud, free spirit which made him so fit an emblem for ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... he resided at court, tasting the sweets and bitters of ambition—the caresses of a powerful king, and a still more powerful cardinal—mingled with the envious intrigues and malicious detraction of jealous rivals. Poussin loved not such a life; his free spirit languished, his noble heart was pained; and in 1642, he requested and obtained leave to visit Italy, promising, however, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... the law is superseded in some sense or other by the all-sufficing, all-emancipating free spirit ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... It was not known even in Christendom, not even in the protestant part of it, till the seventeenth century. It was Milton who first enunciated the principle in its breadth. The idea of individualism, though long in spreading, was created in germ by two causes; viz.. the free spirit of independence introduced by the Teutonic system; and the idea of the sacredness of the individual soul introduced through Christianity. If the highest end of man be to live for eternity, not to live for society, the individual is invested with a new dignity; ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... him next condemned To meet a traitor's doom at morn; The tide of lying tongues I stemmed, And honored him midst shame and scorn. My friendship's utmost zeal to try, He asked if I for him would die; The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill, But the free spirit cried, ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... that a popular principle would insensibly have entered the forms of the constitution they transplanted. In the first place, the power of the prince would be more circumscribed—in the next place, the free spirit of the aristocracy would be more diffused: the first, because the authority of the chief would rarely be derived from royal ancestry, or hallowed by prescriptive privilege; in most cases he was but a noble, selected from the ranks, and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race? The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Heaven Woo the free spirit for dishonored breath To sell its birthright? Doth Heaven set a price On the clear jewel of unsullied faith And the bright calm ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... bequest to the Luxembourg Gallery gave rise to a storm of indignation among the official painters. I shall, in the course of this book, enter upon the value of these attacks. Meanwhile I can only say how regrettable this obstinacy appears to me and will appear to every free spirit. It is unworthy even of an ardent conviction to condemn a whole group of artists en bloc as fools, enemies of beauty, or as tricksters anxious to degrade the art of their nation, when these artists worked during ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... spirit. The advocates for the large estates tell us, that the masses are too ill-educated to be trusted with independence; that without authority over them, these small proprietors become wasteful, careless, improvident; that the free spirit becomes a democratic and dangerous spirit; and finally, that the resources of the land cannot properly be brought out by men without capital to cultivate it. Either theory is plausible. The advocates ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the picture of the fight, 350 When met my clan the Saxon might. I'll listen, till my fancy hears The clang of swords, the crash of spears! These grates, these walls, shall vanish then, For the fair field of fighting men, 355 And my free spirit burst away, As if it soared from battle fray." The trembling Bard with awe obeyed— Slow on the harp his hand he laid; But soon remembrance of the sight 360 He witnessed from the mountain's height, With what old Bertram ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In the laughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shots that some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, we went to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. "There's a certain natural justice done here in spite of them," he said. "They are not one cent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... behaviour, at which you yourself could laugh with him, you have the sneerer, who will keep you company from morning to night, to gather your follies of the day (which perhaps you commit out of confidence in him), and expose you in the evening to all the scorners in town. For your man of sense and free spirit, whose set of thoughts were built upon learning, reason, and experience, you have now an impudent creature made up of vice only, who supports his ignorance by his courage, and want of learning by ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... for a pair of twins who entered existence with a concerted shriek, and continued it for ever afterwards, as if their only purpose in life was to keep the lungs well inflated. Her supreme wish was to be freed from the carking cares of the flesh, and thus for ever ready to wing her free spirit in the pure ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Branch was a free spirit in a free land, a doer rather than a thinker, more concerned with the "hows" than the "whys" of survival. This practical approach to problems can be seen in the homes he built, the tools he made, the clothes he wore, the political and social systems under which ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... democracy, and all those elements in the national life which feed and sustain it. British democracy does not depend upon our popular franchise or on any legal rights or enactments. It depends upon the free spirit and self-respect of the British people. We have been accustomed for centuries to the unrestrained discussion of public affairs; and we treat our governors as being in fact, as they are in name, our "ministers" or servants. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... holy children trod unharmed the fiery furnace seven time heated. He who was with them was surely with thee; and the Angel of Death hath bidden thee come forth, naught harmed by the fire, save the bonds of flesh which thy free spirit hath ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... youth's brief span, And more than all is mortal man. Receive unending youth, and be Immortal, O my loves, with me," The hundred girls, to wonder stirred, The wooing of the Wind-God heard, Laughed, as a jest, his suit aside, And with one voice they thus replied:— "O mighty Wind, free spirit who All life pervadest, through and through— Thy wondrous power we maidens know; Then wherefore wilt thou mock us so? Our sire is Kusanabha, King; And we, forsooth, have charms to bring A God to woo us from the skies; But honor first we maidens prize. Far may the hour, we ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... you, gentle reader, to note how "Protestant" this New Artistic Movement is? Shakespeare, in his aesthetic method, as well as in his piety, had a Catholic soul. In truth, the hour has arrived when a "Renaissance" of the free spirit of Poetry in Drama is required. Why must this monstrous shadow of the Hyperborean Ibsen go on darkening the play-instinct in us, like some ugly, domineering John Knox? I suspect that there are many generous Rabelaisian souls who ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... other hand, the free spirit, the political and speculative genius in man, chafes under those blind involutions and material bonds. Natural, beneficent, sacred, as in a sense they may be, they somehow oppress the intellect and, like a brooding mother, half stifle what they feed. Something drives the youth afield, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... to wonder stirred, The wooing of the Wind-God heard, Laughed, as a jest, his suit aside, And with one voice they thus replied: "O mighty Wind, free spirit who All life pervadest, through and through, Thy wondrous power we maidens know; Then wherefore wilt thou mock us so? Our sire is Kusanabha, King; And we, forsooth, have charms to bring A God to woo us from the skies; But honour first we maidens prize. Far may the hour, we pray, be ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... several centuries, but from the middle of the sixteenth century, it had become much more oppressive by reason of the universal impoverishment of the country. For an account of the pantheistic "Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," with their community of goods and of women, see Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, II, 18 ff. They were very numerous from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in Italy and France, as well as in Germany, and lead us ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... fellows) to avoid muskrat-traps, the big muskrat enjoyed his lazy summer life on Bitter Creek with a care-free spirit that is permitted to few, indeed, of the furtive kindred of the wild. There was no mink, as we have seen, to beware of; and as for hawks, he ignored them as none of the other small wild creatures—squirrels, hares, or even the fierce and fearless weasel—could afford ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... novel, but rather the confession of a free spirit telling of its mistakes, its sufferings and its struggles from the midst of the tempest; and it is in no sense an autobiography either. Some day I may wish to write of myself, and I will then speak without ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... demonstrated that men to be manly must be well born, must have noble mothers. How can a mother give birth to a noble soul while herself a slave? How can she impart a free spirit when her own is servile? A stream cannot ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... impulse. Any really great artist is almost sure to be thought incompetent by those among his seniors who would be generally regarded as best qualified to form an opinion. And the mere fact of having to produce work which will please older men is hostile to a free spirit and to bold innovation. Apart from this difficulty, selection by older men would lead to jealousy and intrigue and back-biting, producing a poisonous atmosphere of underground competition. The only effect of such a plan would be to eliminate the ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... away from his fellows. Let him but get into the wrong house or take the wrong overcoat or chuck the wrong person under the chin—Pff! Let him forget where the long procession leads and wander about a free spirit and his wanderings will lead him to ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... the Theodosian code represents, under a variety of titles, the authority which they assumed in the government of the Catholic church. But the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers, [81] which had never been imposed on the free spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced and confirmed by the legal establishment of Christianity. The office of supreme pontiff, which, from the time of Numa to that of Augustus, had always been exercised ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... burthensome piece of generosity unknown to our forefathers, who only gave gifts to servants at Christmas-tide, which custom is yet kept into the bargain; insomuch that a maid shall have eight pounds per annum in a gentleman's or merchant's family. And if her master is a man of free spirit, who receives much company, she very often doubles her wages by her veils; thus having meat, drink, washing, and lodging for her labour, she throws her whole income upon her back, and by this means looks more like the mistress of the family than ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honours not founded in the approbation of my country, I would not desire, in the least degree, to suppress a free spirit of inquiry into any part of my conduct that even faction itself may deem reprehensible. The anonymous paper handed you exhibits many serious charges, and it is my wish that it may be submitted to congress. This I am the more inclined to, as the suppression ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... nor the red-bearded officer replied, but the former waved his hand, and the two sailors who had led Lancey to the cabin again seized him and led him away, more roughly than before. The free spirit of my poor servant resented this unnecessary rudeness, and he felt a strong inclination to fight, but discretion, or some faint remembrance of scimitars and bowstrings, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... side by side in silence. Neither of them were wholly at their ease. A new element had entered into their intercourse. The wonderfully free spirit of comradeship which had sprung up between them since her coming, and which had been so sweet a thing to him, was for the moment, at ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... Jerningham, thou art a gallant boy; And were he not my pupil, I would say He were as fine a mettled gentleman, Of as free spirit, and of as fine a temper As is in England; and he is a man That very richly may deserve thy love. But, noble Clare, this while of our discourse, What may Mounchensey's honour to thy self Exact upon the measure of ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... had generally some friend or relative with them, and in summer the house was often filled to overflowing, during the whole season, with parties of friends, or the different branches of a large family connection; for the Wyllyses had their full share of that free spirit of hospitality which seems characteristic of all classes of Americans. After a time, however, another member was received into the family. This was the orphan daughter of Mr. Wyllys's eldest son, an engaging little girl, to whom her grandfather and aunt were called upon to fill the place of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... by Soviet Russia endangers our liberty and endangers the kind of world in which the free spirit of man can survive. This threat is aimed at all peoples who strive to win or defend their own ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my country, I would not desire in the least degree to suppress a free spirit of inquiry into any part of my conduct, that even faction itself may deem reprehensible. The anonymous paper handed to you exhibits many serious charges, and it is my wish that it should be submitted to Congress. This I am the more inclined to the suppression or concealment may possibly involve ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... herd mentality, the mentality of sheep who would ask the shepherds and the sheep-dogs to tell them where to feed. Take heart! Not all the furies in the universe shall prevent the world from hearing the cry of faith and hope uttered by a single free spirit, from hearing the song of the Gallic ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... at once more powerful and more enduring than the influence of Goetz von Berlichingen, and Goethe himself has suggested the reason. The so-called Werther "period," he says, belongs to no special age of the world's culture, but to the life of every free spirit that chafes under obsolete traditions, obstructed happiness, cramped activity, and unfulfilled desires. "A sorry business it would be," he adds, "if once in his life every one did not pass through an epoch when Werther appeared to have ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... as much as possible not to scold. I know how perpetually scolding crushes the free spirit and the innocent joyousness of childhood; and I sincerely believe that if one will only sedulously cultivate what is good in character, and make in all instances what is good visible and attractive, the bad will by degrees fall away ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... not a student of political economy nor a reader of sociology, but what he did was done through an innate sense of justice, with a spirit of generosity, and the munificent treatment of his men was the manifestation of his noble, free spirit. To-morrow will be the greatest event so far in the life of Charles Herne, for he brings ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... propositions, and enlarged or abridged them. We mean the frame of mind which produced them, that wonderful unity between the relative view of things and the absolute estimate of the highest good attainable by the free spirit that is certain of its God. But a time came, nay, had already come, when a sense of proportion and relation was ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... it was not bound by the Karma of previous incarnations—as is the case with the ordinary soul. It had no entangling ties—it had no seeds of desire and action planted in previous lives, which were pressing forward toward expression in His life. He was a Free Spirit—an Unbound Soul. And therefore He was not only unbound by any Karma of His own, but was also free (by nature) from the Karma of the race or ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... she said, doubtfully; he had made her throb with indignation once or twice, but his conversation interested her and her free spirit approved of a ride over the hills unattended by duena. "But—you ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... dread cruelty will be slow to adopt a fanatical creed. I do not know whether Bolshevism can be prevented from acquiring universal power. But even if it cannot, I am persuaded that those who stand out against it, not from love of ancient injustice, but in the name of the free spirit of Man, will be the bearers of the seeds of progress, from which, when the world's gestation is accomplished, new life ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... What had Timothy said? He had had a fit after Majuba. These Boers were a grasping lot! The dark-haired Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious touch which became the free spirit of a daughter ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the spot. Complaints to the governor were followed by fresh outrages, until no one, even in the most secluded valleys, considered himself safe. Here tyranny as usual overstepped the bounds of safety. The free spirit, born of toil and privations in the mountain-fastnesses, would not long endure the outrages to which the people were subjected. A leader only was needed to induce a general revolt, and this leader was found in ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... should be passed constituting a society, and, as far as those present were concerned, designating its objects. Some exception was taken to this course as being an undesirable formality not in harmony with the free spirit of the undertaking, but meeting with general approval ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... of Nature such will surely find. In tropic climes, live like the tropic bird, Whene'er a spice-fraught grove may tempt thy stay; Nor be by cares of colder climes disturbed— No frost the summer's bloom shall drive away; Nature's wide temple and the azure dome Have plan enough, for the free spirit's home!' ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "Here the free spirit of mankind at length Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's untamed strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race? Far, like the comet's way through infinite space, Stretches the long ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... had not very much to say. "A great-hearted lady, amorous, generous, a great lover," he allowed; "a pretty taste for music and singing she has, is a friend of poets and such like. The antechamber is full of them; and there they are—on promotion, you understand. But though she has a wonderful free spirit, she is no beauty, you must know. Her mouth is too big, and her eyes are too small. It is a kissing mouth, as we say, my dear, and a speaking eye—and there you have ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... laugh of a free spirit—fluted over the broomsedge. "Can you imagine it? One might quite as well be in love with one's Thanksgiving turkey. No, she isn't in love with him now, but she's in love with the idea that she used to be, and that's almost as bad. I know it's her own past that makes her think all ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... ancient frontiers of French Flanders. We had long been looking for this transition, to discover if it still exhibited the striking change described by Arthur Young, "between the effects of the despotism of old France, which depressed agriculture, and the free spirit of the Burgundian provinces, which cherished and protected it." No sooner had we crossed the old line of demarcation between the French and Flemish provinces, than we were immediately struck with the difference, both in the aspect of the country, the mode of cultivation, and the condition ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... years. As before, my health is sound and my free spirit is clear. Let some call me a fool and laugh at me; in their pitiful blindness let others regard me as a saint and expect me to perform miracles; an upright man to some people, to others—a liar and a deceiver—I myself know who I am, and I do not ask them to understand ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... follow him. So Telemachus has attained the age when he must know ancestral wisdom. Such is his strong instinct, he feels his limitation, he is penned up in a narrow life at Ithaca, whose barriers cramp his free spirit. This intense desire for education, for finding out something about the world in which he is placed, is the starting point for the boy. He shows his spirit by breaking through the restraint of the Suitors and his mother in order to get an education. Like many a youth to-day, he has to ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... pushed aside for the "excellency" of such knowledge as this. To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a kind of dark ingratitude; the one sin, to believe directly or indirectly in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, because involving denial of the indwelling spirit. A free spirit, certainly, as of old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon, it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... legal mandate which here compelled us to "go no faster than a man can walk." Under an air of blithe insouciance I disguised my fears, never starting perceptibly at "any toot" behind us which might mean Sir Alec on our track, and appearing to enjoy with the free spirit of a boy, the one great ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... My son," he thus began, "was without love, Or natural, or the free spirit's growth. Thou hast not that to learn. The natural still Is without error; but the other swerves, If on ill object bent, or through excess Of vigour, or defect. While e'er it seeks The primal blessings, or with ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But gradually the captive's gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... knitting or patching designs for quilts. The younger ones and the girls passed theirs in the saddle. They would scatter in groups over the plains to investigate distant objects, then race back, and with song and banter join husband and brother, driving the loose cattle in the rear. The wild, free spirit of the plain often prompted them to invite us little ones to seats behind them, and away we would canter with the breeze playing through our hair and giving a ruddy ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... constituency, as in the present, by a minister and factor over a social glass. But the objection taken by anticipation to popular heats and contendings in such cases is as old as the first stirrings of a free spirit among the people, and the first struggles of despotism to bind them down. We ourselves have heard it twice urged on the unpopular side,—once when the rotten burghs were nodding to their fall, and once when an unrestricted patronage was imperilled by the encroachments of the Veto. There will, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... that the time had come when he could tell her all, it was a harder thing to do than he had thought. If she withdrew from him now—what would she do after she had learned? Yet he must do this to be a free man, to be even a free spirit. There must be no more shadows between them, not even shadows ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... is the highest law—would not brook the inflexible dogmatism of the Greek nor the iron ecclesiasticism of the Roman. The Teuton loved liberty in religion as well as in other things, and asserted his right to stand before his God for himself. The free spirit revealed in Christianity through Luther can never die. "Christianity as an authoritative letter is Roman; as a ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... and the most perfect is the first submerged; for the next age scales with ease the height which cost the preceding the full vigour of life. Yet two things remain of him and will not perish—the one, the tribute left by his free spirit to the finest productions of the human mind; and what he felt, thought, and has immortalised in many men of excellence gone before. Read his explanations of Tischbein's engravings from Homer, his last preface to Virgil, and ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Let who will have written this, I can not for an instant believe that it was written by a divine inspiration. Such dogmas and threats as these are not of God, but of man, and not of any man of a free spirit and heart eager for the truth, but a narrow man who would cripple and confine the human soul in its quest after the whole truth of God, and back those who have done the shameful things in the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... minstrel-spirit glanced, Fling me the picture of the fight, When met my clan the Saxon might. I'll listen, till my fancy hears The clang of swords' the crash of spears! These grates, these walls, shall vanish then For the fair field of fighting men, And my free spirit burst away, As if it soared from battle fray.' The trembling Bard with awe obeyed,— Slow on the harp his hand he laid; But soon remembrance of the sight He witnessed from the mountain's height, With what old Bertram told at night, Awakened the full power of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... done,—spend a long time in training your wings to be swift enough to take the journey yourself. If you will not do this, you must patiently wait until the clods of clay are shaken off, so that your free spirit may go out to live the life more ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... cannot accuse the foregoing with containing the least ingredient of persecution. The free spirit on which the American cause is founded, disdains to mix with such an impurity, and leaves it as rubbish fit only for narrow and suspicious minds to grovel in. Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... perforce Leave him in wardship to his innocence. His young and open soul—dissimulation Is foreign to its habits! Ignorance Alone can keep alive the cheerful air, 115 The unembarrassed sense and light free spirit, That make the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were for Communism, but differed as to the form which it ought to assume. One contended that all should be perfectly free,—that each should be a law unto himself, and should work, and rest, and eat, and drink, as his own free spirit should prompt him. Another said that the principle had been tried, and had failed,—that some were anxious to do all the eating, and sleeping, and loving, and left others to do all the working. Joseph Treat was there, advocating Atheism, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... that when he was asked what he had left for himself, he answered, "My hopes;" and his hope was not merely to conquer that great world, but to tame it, bring it into order, and teach the men there the wisdom and free spirit of the Greek world; for he had learnt from Aristotle that to make men true, brave, virtuous, and free was the way to be godlike. It was in his favour that the direct line of Persian kings had failed, and that there had been wars and factions all through the last reign. The present ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reader with no farther discourses of Pastorals, but being informed that I am taxed of partiality, in not mentioning an author, whose Eclogues are published in the same volume with Mr. Philips's, I shall employ this paper in observations upon him, written in the free spirit of criticism, and without apprehensions of offending that gentleman, whose character it is, that he takes the greatest care of his works before they are published, and has the least concern for them afterwards. I have laid it down as the first rule of Pastoral, that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... sympathizing with the "aristocracy" of the South,—could not make common cause with anti-slavery people. Fortunately, however, Mr. Adams was returned by a country district where the old Puritan instincts (p. 247) were still strong. The intelligence and free spirit of New England were at his back, and were fairly represented by him; in spite of high-bred disfavor they carried him gallantly through the long struggle. The people of the Plymouth district sent him back ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... fortified Yorktown and Gloucester, we shall have the British between two fires, and all aid cut off, even escape. I think we shall capture them, and if so, it will be a blow they cannot recover from. War is cruel enough. I do not wonder Christian people oppose it. But slavery of the free spirit is worse still, and if one must strike, let it be in earnest. But we ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... plain, therefore, that no grammar, and least of all that derived from the prim, meager Latin contingent of it, is adequate to legislate for the free spirit of our magnificent tongue. Again, if this is ever done and English ever has a grammar that is to it what Latin grammar is to that language, it will only be when the psychology of speech represented, e.g., in Wundt's Psychologie der Sprache,[5] which is now compiling and organizing the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... dramatic contrast between the free spirit and its prison-house—is the basis of the two lyrics that serve as prologues to Pacchiarotto and to La Saisiaz. As Dryden's prefaces are far better than his plays, so Browning's Prologues to Pacchiarotto, to La Saisiaz, to The Two Poets of Croisic, to Jocoseria are ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... Coleridge, making it impossible for him, with all his genius and learning, to hold himself steadily to any one work or purpose. He studied in Germany; worked as a private secretary, till the drudgery wore upon his free spirit; then he went to Rome and remained for two years, lost in study. Later he started The Friend, a paper devoted to truth and liberty; lectured on poetry and the fine arts to enraptured audiences in London, until his frequent failures ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... manner. They know that a life depending on hunting and fishing means poverty, dirt, and ignorance; and they don't mean to go back to this. We don't wish to un-Indianize them altogether, we would not overcurb their free spirit; we would not pluck the feather from their cap or the sash from their waist or the moccasin from their foot. They are a proud, grand nation in their way. An Indian was never a slave any more than a Briton. An Indian has no words of profanity in his language. An Indian ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... alive! sitting surrounded by his wife, children, and companions! I fell on my knees to him. I owned all the mischief I had done him. I conjured him, for God's sake, to forgive me. I was half frantic; and the worthy fellow, in the same free spirit with which he had fought, stretched out his hand, in token ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... direction, was, however, the first institution of higher learning to give men and women equal opportunity. The new States of the Mississippi Valley early established State universities. These institutions were little more than seminaries, but the free spirit of the frontier was so strong in them that in 1863 Wisconsin University admitted women to its privileges, and Kansas and Indiana ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... submitted in this instance, the Assyrians indulged in a variety of crested helmets. [PLATE. C., Fig. 5.] We cannot positively say that they invented the crest; but they certainly dealt with it in the free spirit which is usually seen where a custom is of home growth and not a foreign importation. They used either a plain metal crest, or one surmounted by tuffs of hair; and they either simply curved the crest forwards over the front of the helmet, or extended ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... oftentimes is killed by the bite of a fly, or by some insect creeping into the inner passage of his system! Yet what rights can one exercise over another, save only as regards the body, and that which is lower than the body—I mean fortune? What! wilt thou bind with thy mandates the free spirit? Canst thou force from its due tranquillity the mind that is firmly composed by reason? A tyrant thought to drive a man of free birth to reveal his accomplices in a conspiracy, but the prisoner bit off his tongue and threw it into the furious tyrant's ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... presbyteries or synods was vested in the Prelates, and the King could prevent any Assembly from being held, as long as he thought proper. But the Presbyterian Church, though overborne, was not destroyed, nor was its free spirit wholly subdued. When, in 1617, the King attempted to arrogate to himself and his prelatic council the power of enacting ecclesiastical laws, he was immediately met by a protestation against a measure so ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... universe. Then it was seen that the only meaning of progress is a return to Greek modes of thought. The monkish hymns which obscured the pages of Greek manuscripts were blotted out, the splendours of a new method were unfolded to the world, and out of the melancholy sea of mediaevalism rose the free spirit of man in all that splendour of glad adolescence, when the bodily powers seem quickened by a new vitality, when the eye sees more clearly than its wont and the mind apprehends what was beforetime hidden from it. To herald the opening of the sixteenth century, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde |
