"Rectitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inscrutably at this miracle of physical unfitness. Under his gaze the pitiful and insignificant figure bore itself as with a majesty of rectitude. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... 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 ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... incarceration, he sent for Mr. Wallingford, who visited him without delay. He found him a shrinking, cowed, and frightened culprit; not a man, conscious of rectitude, and therefore firm in bearing, though in a false and ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... stainless history of her race, and tenacious of the dignity and of the magnitude of her House, she yet was too courageous and too haughty a woman not to be capable of braving calumny, if conscious of her own pure rectitude beneath it; not to be capable of incurring false censure, if encountered in the path of justice and of magnanimity. It was possible, even on herself it dawned as possible, that so great might become her compassion and her tenderness for this man that she would, in some distant ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in the dusk, was walking briskly up the path that led in from the road. It proved to be the Wild Ram of the Mountains, freshened by the look of rectitude that the razor gave to his face ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Myself! the steel-strong Rectitude of soul And Poverty sublime 'mid circling virtues! The giant Victories my counsels form'd Shall stalk around me with sun-glittering plumes, 120 Bidding the darts ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... parties might be embarrassed. There was danger too of collisions with his family, and Mr. Parsons took counsel with Miss Charlecote, knowing indeed that where her affections were concerned, her opinions must be taken with a qualification, but relying on the good sense formed by rectitude ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... virtues were, however, contrasted by vices of considerable magnitude; or rather, he wanted strength of mind to preserve his rectitude of character ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... demand that the frivolous male be visited with even more idiotic penalties than those which now visit the aberrant female; some even advocate gravely his mutilation by surgery, that he may be forced into rectitude by a physical disability ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... continual answers. The consequence of all this was a marriage: and my aunt having been noted for her prudence, during the life of her first husband, (though not indeed in having made him her husband) and Mr. Elford's character, for propriety, rectitude and good intention, being still more permanently established, there was not the least doubt entertained, especially by the parties, but that this would be a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... was not at all abashed nor degraded by being made to assume the guise of the mediaeval furred robe, or the close-fitting tunic with elaborate ruff, or the breastplate and gorget, or the flowing wig, or whatever the actual costume might be; and one is sensible of a rectitude and reality in the affair, and respects the dead people for not putting themselves into an eternal masquerade. The dress of the present day will look equally respectable in one ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... people, of such life, Mr. Arbuton could have made nothing if he had known them. In many things he was an excellent person, and greatly to be respected for certain qualities. He was very sincere; his mind had a singular purity and rectitude; he was a scrupulously just person so far as he knew. He had traits that would have fitted him very well for the career he had once contemplated, and he had even made some preliminary studies for the ministry. But the very generosity of his creed perplexed him, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... valley, from side to side and ever 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 one of the arches. This road has a wide ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Hopkins, 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, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... 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 For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, Breathing as beauteous ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... to the flag of your country, not only to the institutions of the land, not only to the Union which our fathers established, and which the blood of our countrymen has cemented, but to be true to yourselves and the principles of honor, of rectitude, of temperance, of virtue, which have always characterized the great and successful soldier, and must always characterize such ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... was a broad-minded 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 the Roman ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... time was upon her before the mother guessed at the blinding and awful truth. She was a proud, stern, old woman, come of a race strong in rectitude, and she would scarcely have believed an angel if one had come to testify to her daughter's dishonour. But the time came when it could no longer be hidden, when the birth-pains were on the wretched girl, and in the quietness of the winter night, her sin ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... were the teachers of morality as well as of religion. Of their ethical teaching a valuable specimen is preserved in the Triads of the Welsh Bards, and from this we may gather that their views of moral rectitude were on the whole just, and that they held and inculcated many very noble and valuable principles of conduct. They were also the men of science and learning of their age and people. Whether they were acquainted with letters or not has been disputed, though ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... is three-fourths of character," and Christian benignity draws the line for conduct. A high sense of rectitude, a lowly soul, with a pure and kind heart are elements of nobility which will work out in the life of a human being at home—everywhere. "Private refinement ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... with astonishment. 'This child!'—he thought—'Has this child heroically persevered under all doubts and dangers, struggled with poverty and suffering, upheld and sustained by strong affection and the consciousness of rectitude alone! And yet the world is full of such heroism. Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day! And should I be surprised to hear the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... "affair;" weighed in the scale of his impartial judgment no more than would unconsidered dust. For the first time in the life to which he had been the guiding-star, she ventured to wonder if the unswerving rectitude that had elevated him above the level of other men, in her esteem and affection, were so glorious a thing after all; if a tempering, not of human frailty, but of charity for the shortcomings, sympathy for the needs, of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... systems. The only God whom our thoughts can rest on and our hearts can cling to, and our consciences can recognize is the God whose image dwells in our own souls. The grand ideas of Power, Reason, Wisdom, Love, Rectitude, Holiness, Blessedness, that is, of all God's attributes, come from within, from the action of our own spiritual nature. Many indeed think that they learn God from marks of design and skill in the outward world; but our ideas of design and skill, of a determining cause, of an end ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... obedience of the child, to hearken to every word, watch every look, divine every wish of the old man! Child Hercules could not have waited on mighty old Saturn as Gibbie waited on Robert. For he was to him the embodiment of all that was reverend and worthy, a very gulf of wisdom, a mountain of rectitude. Gibbie was one of those few elect natures to whom obedience is a delight—a creature so different from the vulgar that they have but one tentacle they can reach such with—that ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... quietly, but with a voice as steady as a fearless nature and the consciousness of rectitude could make it. "I should have been untrue to the right, had I done otherwise," returned the Deerslayer, steadily; "and neither you, nor any other man has authority to demand that much of me. The lad came on a lawful business, and the meanest red-skin that roams the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... by honor's righteous law In strictest rectitude he wrought— The man who calmly, clearly saw His duty, and who dallied not— To garner life's necessities For those whose comfort ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... 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 ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... 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 Sultan to the small extremity on the Bosphorus between ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... I fear dwells upon the mind of Clifton; and I scarcely myself can tell whether it were or were not worthy of Frank. How can Clifton be wilfully blind to such courage, rectitude of heart, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... be bribed are often timid, and afraid of offending bold knaves, lest they should raise a set of hornets about themselves. The fear of censure undermines all energy of character; and, labouring to be prudent, they lose sight of rectitude. Besides, nothing is left to their conscience, or sagacity; they must be governed by evidence, though internally convinced that it ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... suavity, tempered and chastened by a lofty air of moral rectitude, carried the speaker to the door. There she inclined her head in a ghostly and statue-like manner, and so withdrew to her carriage, to seek comfort and consolation in the arms ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... thing called love worth having at the cost of character? The trouble with the poets is that they take their ladies and gentlemen of pliable virtue and uncertain rectitude, only to the altar. One may ask with some degree of propriety if the duplicity they practiced, the lying they did and justified by the sacredness of their passion, the crimes they committed and the meannesses ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the bosom of her dress, set the book in its former position upon the table, and left the garden. Nobody looking at her could have supposed that she had been guilty of such an act; for if ever conscious rectitude and high resolve for good shone in a human face, they lighted hers. Once she stopped short in the lonely lane, and stamped one small foot ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... is little doubt but that Mary Lyon would have kept her word. So far as speech was concerned, my Aunt Jen was silenced. But she was a creature faithful to her prejudices, and could express by her silence and air of injured rectitude more than one less gifted could have put ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... Erhart Borkman is a very interesting one to the theatrical student. In the ruin of the family, all hopes concentre in him. Every one claims him, and in the bosoms of each of his shattered parents a secret hope is born, Mrs. Borkman believing that by a brilliant career of commercial rectitude her son will wipe out the memory of his father's crime; Borkman, who has never given up the ambition of returning to business, reposing his own hopes on the co-operation of ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... perhaps the only member of the senatorial party in whom Caesar felt genuine confidence. His known integrity, and Caesar's acknowledged regard for him, made his accession to the conspiracy an object of particular importance. The name of Brutus would be a guarantee to the people of rectitude of intention. Brutus, as the world went, was of more than average honesty. He had sworn to be faithful to Caesar as the rest had sworn, and an oath with him was not a thing to be emotionalized away; but he was a fanatical republican, a man of gloomy habits, given to dreams and omens, and easily ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... usual gentleness in the tone of his voice; this appeared the 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 ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... interested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of such persons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless impostors who have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with human practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level of vulgar rectitude. ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... this very attempt, "that the universal, continued rectitude of all intelligent creatures had, we may be sure, been willed with a peremptory, efficacious will, if it had been best." He expressly says, that God might have prevented sin from raising its head in his dominions, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... this, rose in his turn. There was an unwonted light in his eyes, and a slight trembling of his lips. Aouda looked into his face. The sincerity, rectitude, firmness, and sweetness of this soft glance of a noble woman, who could dare all to save him to whom she owed all, at first astonished, then penetrated him. He shut his eyes for an instant, as if to avoid her look. When he opened them again, "I love ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... peerless pagan—large in intelligence, exalted in character, and guided by a conscientious rectitude which has made his name shine like a star in the lurid light of Roman history, still failed utterly to comprehend the significance of this spiritual kingdom established by Christ on earth. He it was who ordered the first persecution ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... tongue refused its office; at length he confessed the truth. The King ordered him to be hung immediately, his carcass and head to be treated as had been done with those of the Giaour. The people returned with quickened appetites to their dinner, and admired more than ever the wisdom and rectitude of their Prince. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... illustrious statesman, whose distinguished abilities had raised Great Britain to the highest pitch of renown, inspired the Americans with additional confidence in the rectitude of their claims of exemption from parliamentary taxation, and emboldened them to further opposition, when, at a future day, the project of an American revenue was resumed. After much debating, two protests ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... reason, and for this reason alone, that, my suspicions fully aroused, I have been at some pains to verify them. A heart conscious of its moral rectitude does not flinch from the duty before it or from the pain which, unfortunately, the execution of that duty so often ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the price others are made to pay for a favorable effect on the wages of the organized laborers. Now the strictly economic question concerns merely the part as to the effects upon wages, and the economist (as such) is going outside of his special field when he pronounces on the moral rectitude (and the desirability in law) of such acts and policies. One who fully shares the feelings of the organized workers will believe that the winning of a strike or the general improvement of the strikers' condition ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... laughable result 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 and the classicists, cartoons in great ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... upon a new centre of union. Your grace will not, I trust, wonder if, after so recent and so strange a phenomenon in politics, I have no disposition to quit the free condition of a man standing single, and daring to appeal to his country at large, upon the soundness of his principles and the rectitude of his conduct." See Chatham Correspondence, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... would 'see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor than it did for the old player. But at length this comedy was like to have grown to a tragedy by the weak and feeble estate that H. W. was brought unto,' owing to Avisa's unflinching rectitude. Happily, 'time and necessity' effected a cure. In two succeeding cantos in verse W. S. is introduced in dialogue with Willobie, and he gives him, in oratio recta, light-hearted and mocking counsel which Willobie accepts with results disastrous to ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and in spite of the abstention of those of New York, of a Declaration of Independence. "We," ran its solemn words, "the representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... farmer, which he sees executed by the people under his charge. He exercises a direct control over the ploughmen and field-workers.... It is his duty to enforce the commands of his master, and to check every deviation from rectitude he may observe in the servants against his interests. It is not generally understood that he has control over the shepherd, the hedger, or the cattleman, who are stewards, in one sense, over their respective ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... not legitimately its own. After the lapse of a hundred years the word is perhaps no longer synonymous with everything traitorous and vile, but when it is desirable to suggest possible respectability and moral rectitude in any member of the conservative party of Revolutionary days, it must be done under the less historically disgraced title,—loyalist. In fact, then, as always, two parties stood contending for principles to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... I may have wounded your characteristically haughty, shrinking, and Sclavic susceptibilities in rendering so public a tribute to your artistic skill, forgive me! The high moral worth and manly rectitude which distinguish you, and which alone render even the most sublime genius truly illustrious in the eyes of woman, almost force these inadequate and imperfect words from the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... proud of his great bodily strength, and even of his personal appearance, conscious of his worth, and firm in his rectitude, there had remained to him, like the heritage of departed prosperity, the tranquil bearing of a man who had proved himself fit in every sort of way for the life of his choice. He strode on squarely under the projecting brim of an ancient Panama hat. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... considerable difference. The only thing which Count Rostopchin could properly be reproached with, was his concealing too long the bad news from the armies, either from flattering himself, or believing it to be necessary to flatter others. The English, with that admirable rectitude which distinguishes all their actions, publish as faithful an account of their reverses as they do of their victories, and enthusiasm is with them sustained by the truth, whatever that may be. The Russians cannot ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... schemes to gratify it. His own wife was 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... of the whole army. His death, though honourable, is lamented, not only as the death of an amiable, worthy friend, but as an experienced, brave general; the whole country suffers greatly by such a loss at this time. The native goodness and rectitude of his heart might easily be seen in his actions. His sentiments, which appeared on every occasion, were fraught with that unaffected goodness which plainly discovered the goodness of the heart from ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... to-day seems so simple—namely, the vault. And yet they were marvellous pioneers, these architects. They had already succeeded in evolving out of the dark, as it were, a number of conceptions which, from the beginning no doubt, slumbered in mysterious germ in the human brain—the idea of rectitude, the straight line, the right angle, the vertical line, of which Nature furnishes no example, even symmetry, which, if you consider it well, is less explicable still. They employed symmetry with a consummate ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... the little seamstress that she had tried the way of transgressors, and found it hard. Mingling with her intense sorrow over Liz was another and, if possible, a more painful fear—lest this deviation from the paths of rectitude might be fraught with painful consequences to the gentle girl whom Teen had learned to love with a love which had in it the elements of worship. These melancholy forebodings banished sleep from the eyes of the little seamstress, and early in the morning she rose, sore, stiff, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... poring over the pictures in a toy- book, my Uncle Amos calling me a good little boy for so industriously reading, I felt guilty and ashamed because I could not read, and did not like to admit it. Whatever my faults or follies may be, I certainly had an innate rectitude, a strong sense of honesty, just as many children have the contrary; and this, I believe, is due to inherited qualities, though these in turn are greatly modified by early association and influences. That I also had precocious talent and taste ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Latin is found among dogs, may not have as good a right to standing-room as a low-bred quadruped with a tail like you.' Non usque adeo summis permiscuit ima longa dies, &c. We remember no instance which ever so powerfully illustrated the courage given by the consciousness of rectitude. So long as we felt that we were trespassing on the grounds of a stranger, we certainly sneaked, we seek not to deny it. But once landed on the high-road, where we knew our own title to be as good as the dog's, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... lauded and bowed down to him whom it called "his Grace" (despite what we consider his graceless actions); the same world, alas! ignoring the open and evident fact when he steps aside from the narrow path of honor and rectitude; while, should she swerve in the least, pouring out mercilessly its harshest taunts, or overwhelming her with pitiless scorn. This, because woman should hold an exalted position, and "be above suspicion"? Then why do not the so-called "lords of creation", as ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... course. Desiree was kept in some measure from the servants, but she teased and pillaged her mamma instead. Whatever belonging to Madame's work-table or toilet she could lay her hands on, she stole and hid. Madame saw all this, but she still pretended not to see: she had not rectitude of soul to confront the child with her vices. When an article disappeared whose value rendered restitution necessary, she would profess to think that Desiree had taken it away in play, and beg her to restore it. Desiree ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... how unlike the one people is to the other, and how necessary it is that their policies should be different; seeing how deep are their antipathies, and how fixed is each side in the belief of its own rectitude and in the belief also of the other's political baseness, I can not believe that the really Southern States will ever again be joined in amicable union with those of the North. They, the States of the Gulf, may be ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... vacancy. "H-m-m! And he had the nerve to call me 'little man.' Now I should call him a decidedly suspicious character. Looks something like an overgrown spider. Birds of a feather," he added sententiously, with an air of conscious rectitude, and a disregard for the propriety of the implied metaphor. It is not quite certain whether he had Andover or Pete in mind. But it is most probable that had he allowed The Spider to see Pete that evening and talk with him, The Spider would have left El Paso the next day, as he had ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... lead her to bestow upon him her especial interest and regard; and so well was this part played that before long Eve found herself learning unconsciously to regard Adam as severe and unyielding toward Jerrem, whose misfortune it was to be too easily influenced. Seeing her strong in her own rectitude and no less convinced of the truth of Jerrem's well-intentioned resolutions, Adam felt it next to impossible to poison Eve's ears with tales and scandals of which her innocent life led her to have no suspicion: therefore, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... been called Independence Hall at Philadelphia. Much discussion there was, but at length the solemn declaration was drawn up. "We, the Representatives of the United States of America," so it ran," in General Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intention, do, in the name, and by the 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." These are but a few words of the long, gravely ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... settled in and around the district of West Feliciana rose in revolt against the Spanish governor at Baton Rouge, and declared West Florida a free and independent state, appealing to the Supreme Ruler of the world for the rectitude of their intentions. What their intentions were appeared in a petition to the President for annexation to the United States. This was an opportune moment for the realization of the hopes which Madison had cherished ever since the acquisition of Louisiana. On October 27, 1810, he issued ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... minds of all who read this eventful history there may grow up a knowledge and a conviction that the gaining of vast wealth is not worth the sacrifice of manhood, and that poverty and abstinence with honor are better worth having than millions and luxury at the cost of candor and rectitude. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... are triumphs every day under the drab monotony of an apparently defeated town: conquests worthy of the waving of sun-banners. Above all, The Yellow Jacket points a moral for this chapter because there was conscience behind it. First: the rectitude of the Chinese actors of San Francisco who kept the dramatic tradition alive, a tradition that was bequeathed from the ancient generations. Then the artistic integrity of the men who readapted the tradition for ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... conscious of this side of his character. We felt our little hypocrisies shrivel up before him; we felt a confidence in the infallible rectitude of his moral judgments which inspired a kind of awe. His arbitrament was instant and final, though rarely invoked, and was perhaps the more tremendous in proportion to its rarity. This aspect, as if of an oracle without appeal, was heightened ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... straight will see the straight. But yet the saying was a notably sad one; for it came of the conviction in the speaker's mind that there was in reality no crooked and no straight; that all so called discernment was fancy, and that men might, with equal rectitude of judgment, and good-deserving of their fellow-men, perceive and paint whatever ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... never 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 ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... is cast, he becomes the serf of circumstance, at the mercy of the white-livered representative's cowardice, or the venal one's itching palm. Our only safety, then, is in the aggregate fidelity to personal rectitude, which may lessen the chances of representative dishonesty, or, at the worst, constitute a public opinion that shall make the whole country a penitentiary for such treason, and turn the price of public honor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... etymologies I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner.... Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning and Skinner in rectitude of understanding.... Skinner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge, but his variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced by his absurdities.' Ib. v. 29. Francis Junius the younger ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... would be mistaken. Ochterlony was a man, not a battle. And he did good and honorable service, too; as good and honorable service as has been done in India by seventy-five or a hundred other Englishmen of courage, rectitude, and distinguished capacity. For India has been a fertile breeding-ground of such men, and remains so; great men, both in war and in the civil service, and as modest as great. But they have no monuments, and were not expecting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his greatest disciple charges him are certainly significant. We find, says Mill, no reference to 'Conscience,' 'Principle,' 'Moral Rectitude,' or 'Moral Duty' among the 'springs of action,' unless among the synonyms of a 'love of reputation,' or in so far as 'Conscience' and 'Principle' are sometimes synonymous with the 'religious' motive or the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... him is a proof of dilettantism.) What it all comes to is merely that his subject-matter does not as a rule interest me. I simply state my personal view, and I expressly assert my admiration for the craftsman in him and for the magnificent and consistent rectitude of his long artistic career. Further I will not go, though I know that bombs will now be laid at my front door by the furious faithful. As for "The Finer Grain," it leaves me as I was—cold. It is an uneven collection, and ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... made absolute. There is no intimation of any distinction between the deliberate and the accidental shedding of human blood, and until some such distinction is made our conceptions of the eternal rectitude and justice of God, must be of a very peculiar and imperfect kind. That some distinction ought to be made is a fact which men in all ages and of all degrees of civilization have recognized, and have found their authority for making such a distinction, not in ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... not hear; thirteen minutes must yet elapse. But she could not allow so horrible a thing to take place! In this stormy awakening of her rectitude she felt naught but a furious craving to prevent it. She must prevent it; otherwise she would be unable to live. In a state of frenzy she ran about ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the wide expanse of lawn and flower beds and tenderly nursed shrubs, and then at the pile of red brick with its many windows under gay-striped awnings, and its surmounting white cupola, which he had often admired from afar. He glowed with rectitude. True, he suffered a brother lost to all sense of decent human values, but this could not dim the lustre of his own virtue or his pleasant suspicion that it was somehow going to be suitably rewarded. Was he not being driven by ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... shortly, though his plans were as yet but half formed, and, moreover, he shrank from doing anything which would offend May. He might not be afraid of his relations; but at the back of his mind he was sufficiently conscious of his own departure from the paths of rectitude to feel the weakness of ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... childhood. Parental authority checks the independence of the child and compels conformity to the will of his elders. Family tradition makes its power felt in many homes, and family pride is a compelling reason for moral rectitude. Every member of the family is restrained by the rights of the others, and often yields his own preferences for the common good. When the child goes out from the home he is still under restraint, and rigid regulations become even more pronounced. The rules of the schoolroom permit ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... ordinary ability tries to do the work of two men, he is apt to find that the two men are mediocrities. The Paris attorney never spends himself in forensic eloquence; and as he seldom attempts to argue for and against, he has some hope of preserving his mental rectitude. It is true that he brings the balista of the law to work, and looks for the weapons in the armory of judicial contradictions, but he keeps his own convictions as to the case, while he does his best to gain the day. In a word, a man loses his head not so much by thinking as ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... then the highest type of manhood that remained was the culture of those refined sensibilities, those ornamental arts, and that keen sense of the beautiful, in which Italy as far surpassed other lands, as it was for centuries inferior to them in physical bravery and in moral rectitude. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... this! Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation—"oppressed and afflicted, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... call of loyalty to a gratuitous personal master, may have some difficulty in appreciating the force and the moral austerity of this spirit of devotion to an ideal of dynastic aggrandisement, and in seeing how its paramount exigence will set aside all meticulous scruples of personal rectitude and veracity, as being a shabby with-holding of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Mid-Lothian, succeeded in some degree in awakening an interest in behalf of one devoid of those accomplishments which belong to a heroine almost by right, I was next tempted to choose a hero upon the same unpromising plan; and as worth of character, goodness of heart, and rectitude of principle, were necessary to one who laid no claim to high birth, romantic sensibility, or any of the usual accomplishments of those who strut through the pages of this sort of composition, I made ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the watch thus kept upon her. Though confident of her own rectitude, she knew that it is not enough for a woman to be virtuous—she must be above the reach of slander. For the whole term of her probation, therefore, she proclaimed a strict non-intercourse with the other sex. She had females for cabinet ministers and chamberlains, through whom she ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... the most immoral excess—a barbarous intensity of every passion. The first half of the sixteenth century marks the beginning of the third period. Secularity appears now as gaining a consciousness of its intrinsic worth; it becomes aware that it possesses a value of its own in the morality, rectitude, probity, and activity of man. The consciousness of independent validity is aroused through the restoration ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... where he can 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
... of our people unto Him that He will not leave us nor forsake us as a nation, but will continue to us His mercy and protecting care, guiding us in the path of national prosperity and happiness, enduing us with rectitude and virtue, and keeping alive within us a patriotic love for the free institutions which have been given to us ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... we may judge him by his mood at the time of the action, an ill-conditioned one. Luitolfo's gentleness is allied to physical timidity, but his moral courage is always equal to the occasion. Chiappino is a man more of words than of deeds, and wants both the courage and the rectitude which ill-conditioned people often possess. Faenza is governed by a provost from Ravenna. The present provost is a tyrant; and Chiappino has been agitating in a somewhat purposeless manner against him. He has been fined for this several ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... cheated out of its rectitude, following this grave delight, and seems to dilate and grow dreamy in the cool shade of imaginative cloisters and groves, the wanton joyousness of Life, with its long waving lily-stems and the luscious pending ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... one moment thought of his respected friend as the author of a deed of violence, and quite believed his account of the meeting with Jentham. The bishop's simple way of relating the episode would have convinced any liberal-minded man of his innocence and rectitude. His accents, and looks, and candour, all ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... altered speeches of others, had created for himself a respectability that always vanished on an acquaintance with him; while the former declared that the population of a city was no proof of the amount of moral rectitude by which its government was conducted, seeing that he had found those of the city fathers with whom he had come in contact, very craggy headed men, and sadly deficient in everything but creating disorders and bringing disgrace upon the city: in fine, that they were not ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... thy friend. Never speak of his faults to another, to show thy own discrimination; but open them all to him, with candor and true gentleness; forgive all his errors and his sins, be they ever so many; but do not excuse the slightest deviation from rectitude. Never forbear to dissent from a false opinion, or a wrong practice, from mistaken motives of kindness; nor seek thus to have thy own weaknesses sustained; for these things cannot be done without injury ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... rectitude of judgment as secured him from every thing that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as laws operate in civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect can hinder faults, but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... robberies, and violations of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been suspected of many such deviations from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit dollar and handed it to the district attorney in his office in ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... this sort he said to his sister, who was in her New York home on the day when he was starting for Crompton, and had expressed her doubts of Howard's perfect rectitude ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... of Doctor South, where he speaks of Man's Rectitude and Freedom from Sin before the Fall, ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... much. That word I forbore to speak, partly for other reasons, but chiefly for Mr. Edwards' sake, losing the office (that he might gain it) I was always for; but to lose his friendship, by the effort for him, would oppress me very much, were I not sustained by the utmost consciousness of rectitude. I first determined to be an applicant, unconditionally, on the 2nd of June; and I did so then upon being informed by a telegraphic despatch that the question was narrowed down to Mr. B and myself, and that the Cabinet had postponed the appointment three weeks, for my benefit. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... forgetfulness; and where female beauty is so cheap, so complying, that, while it inveigles, it disgusts the man of pleasure: in one of those houses, to attend upon its wretched inhabitants, Agnes was hired. Her feelings of rectitude submitted to those of hunger; her principles of virtue (which the loss of virtue had not destroyed) received a shock when she engaged to be the abettor of vice, from which her delicacy, morality, and religion shrunk; but persons of honour and of reputation ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... confess, for me, is a somewhat peculiar position. I am on the side of the established authorities. I am in the cast-iron position of the man who falls into line with the law of the land. In other words, you behold in me, so far as regards this affair, respectability and rectitude personified. I may even choose to give our friend Mr. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came with manifest signs of anger and indignation, and began with a bold and direct charge against me of a shameful assault on one of her daughters; of having used the basest of means in order to lead her aside from the paths of rectitude; and, on the failure of these, of having resorted ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... two countries, I stated then, what I thought and now think, that in any controversy which should terminate in war between the United States and England, the only eminent advantage that either would possess would be found in the rectitude of its cause. With the right on our side, we are a match for England; and with the right on her side, she is a match ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... correspondent's "claim to release," but doubt whether he can establish it; inasmuch as St. Ivo or Evona, canonized on account of his great rectitude and profound knowledge both of civil and canon law, was both lawyer and churchman, like the CLERICUS so recently discussed in our columns; and clearly sought for and obtained his patron saint ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... His mastery in this region is displayed in the creation of that dignified and beautiful woman, the Duchess of Malfi, who, with nothing in her nature, had she but lived prosperously, to divide her from the sisterhood of gentle ladies, walks, shrined in love and purity and conscious rectitude, amid the snares and pitfalls of her persecutors, to die at last the victim of a brother's fevered avarice and a desperado's egotistical ambition. The apparatus of infernal cruelty, the dead man's hand, the semblances of murdered sons and husband, the masque of madmen, the dirge and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... promised to marry me," he said. "Remember that, as a principle of rectitude, I have recognised my son and accepted your very 'accident of descent' as chief reason for according him all a first-born's rights. That was your instinct towards ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... have children taught, in the first instance, to regard him under that aspect alone; simply as a being who displayed infinite goodness in the creation, in the government, and in the redemption of the world. Language itself indicates, that the whole system of moral rectitude is comprised in it—[Greek: energetein], benefacere, beneficencethe generic term being, in common parlance, emphatically restricted to works of charity. Nor was this mere theory in Parr. Most men who have been economical from necessity in their youth, continue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... our own pundits, though on this occasion they went to Birmingham, summoned by the greatness of the occasion, by the dignity of foreign names, by interest in the question, and by the influence of such men as Lord Boanerges, went there without any doubt on their minds as to the rectitude of their own practice, and fortified with strong resolves to resist all idea ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... voluptuous, probity 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
... honour and integrity, for a man who forfeits either cannot be independent or brave at all times; and he should not be afraid to be singular, for, if he is, the ridicule of the vicious would beat him out of his rectitude as well as out of his attention to his duty. I do not speak this from my fear of him, but from my anxiety to see him the shining character which I am sure he is capable ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... such a good mother as you have, and such dear sisters as you leave behind, you will never need a chaplain to remind you that you have something to preserve more precious than this mortal life of ours,—the purity and rectitude of ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... 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 ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... of rectitude or of policy could longer restrain the impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and as a first step towards emancipation, he determined to permit the ruin of its original adviser, that unpopular minister, but vigorous ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... altar-piece, of which I give a reproduction on the opposite page. The picture in its grouping is typical of its painter, and nothing from his hand has a more pervading sweetness. The musical angel at the foot of the throne is among his best and the bland old men are more righteous than rectitude itself. To see this altar-piece aright one must go in the early morning: as I did on my first visit, only to find the central aisle given ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Majesty will not deem him too presuming if he expresses his fear that this decision will be both painful and embarrassing to your Majesty, but your Majesty will meet this crisis with that firmness which belongs to your character, and with that rectitude and sincerity which will carry your Majesty through all difficulties. It will also be greatly painful to Lord Melbourne to quit the service of a Mistress who has treated him with such unvarying kindness and unlimited confidence; ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... Belonging to the same period, I find in another private collection in Frankfort a portrait in delicate pencilling of a young girl of about eighteen; the hair is in close curls all round the head, the necklace is marked with utmost detail. Perhaps I have not laid sufficient stress on the truth and rectitude of Overbeck's work, as seen, for instance, in the Head of an Old Monk among the drawings of the National Gallery, Berlin. This is so close to nature that a deformity in one ear has been conscientiously registered. The handling here is masterly, the touch firm and strong; the play of lines in ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... greater mind who, when he is eating, craves not to eat to the full; who has a home, but craves not for comforts in it; who is active and earnest in his work and careful in his words; who makes towards men of high principle, and so maintains his own rectitude—that man may be styled ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Organic architecture bear much the same relation to one another that a piano bears to a violin. A piano is an instrument that does not give forth discords if one follows the rules. A violin requires absolutely an ear—an inner rectitude. It has a way of betraying the man of talent and glorifying the genius, becoming one with his body ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... make up her mind to marry him, and had failed. And yet he might be surprised, he might even be horrified when she told him. It was such an ugly story, such a hideous story. And Seymour was full of natural rectitude. Whatever he had done in his life, he must always have been incapable of stooping down to the gutter, as she had stooped. She grew hot and then cold at the thought of telling him. Perhaps he would not be able to bear it. Perhaps even ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... gentle as they say. But you never see her in any moment of revolt. Her simple poems, at their bitterest, express no more than a frail agony, an innocent dismay. That little raising of the head in conscious rectitude is all that breaks the long plaint ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, I resign the appointment I accepted with diffidence; which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the nation, and the patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of my official life, by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... she might after all be wrong, her constant fear. She, too, had heard of public censors, of the girl of the period, and of the forward indelicacy with which women of the age were charged. She knew not why, but it seemed to her that the laws of the world around her demanded more of such rectitude from a woman than from a man, and, if it might be possible to her, she would comply with these laws. She had convinced herself, forming her judgment from every tone of his voice, from every glance of his eye, from every word that fell from his lips, that this separation ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... man of absolute rectitude. He was not so much high-minded as large-hearted. He had, besides, certain foibles. In the first place, he was vain, and vanity in a very plain man is all the more acute since it centres in his capabilities, rather than in his appearance. Had Sweetwater ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Shape or Condition he appears in, it still sits free and easie upon him; but in some Part of his Character, 'tis true, he differs from him; for as he is altogether equal to the Largeness of his present Circumstances, the Rectitude of his Judgment has so far corrected the Inclinations of his Ambition, that he will not trouble himself with either the Desires or Pursuits of any thing ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mine To curb the sigh which bursts o'er Heaven's decree; To tread the path of rectitude—that when Life's dying ray shall glimmer in the frame, That latest breath I may in peace resign, "Firm in the faith of ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... the rectitude of his purpose, and impelled by a sense of overhanging danger closing in around, he resolved, if his mother would still admit of no approach, to make a desperate appeal to Affery. If she could be brought to become communicative, and to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... an enemy to himself. He raises against himself animosity and disfavour. Men of self-respect, conscious of their own honest motives and upright actions, will not submit to his unrighteous detraction. They will stand on their own consciousness of rectitude, and, with Right on their side, will cause him to fall into the pit which he has digged ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... myself, I can truthfully say that it was she who educated me; during the whole course of my life I had the profoundest respect for her judgment and rectitude. When, in my enthusiasm, I was filled with a longing to play a part as a leader of the people, she held me back by showing how my name would destroy any influence I might have; since they would distrust me, and imagine my ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... great physical vigour notwithstanding his age. He was highly respected for his skill and bravery, and for his stern rectitude and obedience to strict duty. He feared nothing except the supernatural powers of evil. There is nothing the Indian fears, nay hates, so much as sorcery. Topanashka could scarcely believe that his daughter had tampered with magic by causing the dark-coloured ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier |
