"Self-imposed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her prayers and fastings unceasing. She denied herself everything that to us would make life desirable or even endurable—sacrificed the dearest ties of kindred, and pursued with intense fervour the self-imposed rigours of her vocation. Yet, it was not that in her nature she had no love for beauty nor craving for pleasure, for in the sacristy of the Cathedral, carefully preserved in a receptacle in which are kept the vestments of the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... Beneath a majestic grove of the great live-oaks which glorify the South-Carolina soil a liberated people met to celebrate their own peaceful emancipation. They came thronging, by land and water, from plantations which their own self-imposed and exemplary industry was beginning already to redeem. The military escort which surrounded them had been organized out of their own numbers, and had furnished to the nation the first proof of the capacity of their race ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the journey in wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed regime of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds, and all, soon healed the ignominious eruption. Here the whole family passed some months of happy repose, too soon interrupted by the tragical death of Maurice. He had brought back ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... discharge of her self-imposed duties with such ardour as to leave no doubt upon the minds of the parties most interested but that they would be thoroughly performed, and with an alacrity too that positively appalled quiet Esther's ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... big and tireless brain, in his big and gentle heart, as a mother carries under her bosom her unborn babe. God alone knows what sums of money, what deep thought and solicitude, what unflagging energy, what unceasing labor, he spent in his holy and self-imposed task to right the wrongs of those helpless and persecuted men. In the Senate their case pursued him like a shadow, and at home it sat with him like a ghost in his library, and slept for a few hours only when the great brain slept and the generous ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... has been maliciously added that mention of his name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight of a considerable proportion of the assembly, for Bjoernson has always been a fighter as well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed mission to arouse his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness no less than to give creative embodiment to their types of character and their ideal aspirations. But whatever the opposition aroused by his political and social radicalism, even his opponents have been constrained ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... with her, which privilege suggested no lack of substantial and dainty provisions, and my governess was an accomplished and very discreet lady, whom my step-mother secured after much trouble and worry; but here the limit was drawn to her self-imposed duties; having done this much she rested satisfied that she had so far outstepped the obligations ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... familiarity with early authorities; and it is much more than either of these, or of any book with which we are acquainted, a plea in defense of bibliomania in the middle ages. Indeed the charm of the book may be said to rest largely upon the earnestness with which he takes up his self-imposed task. One may fancy that after all he found it not an easy one; in fact his "Conclusion" is a kind of apology for not having made out a better case. But this he believes he has proven, "that with all their superstition, with all their ignorance, their blindness to philosophic light—the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... expression of their opinions on matters coming properly under the head of public opinion. Engineers have felt that they have not had the time. Or, having the time, that the public at large, chiefly owing to the engineer's self-imposed isolation, would not understand a voice from this direction, and so engineers have kept silent. The day has arrived, however, when this silence on the part of engineers must ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... amidst scenes and circumstances ready to exercise his brave and generous propensities, and to put their personal issues to the test on his mind. Hence Poland's sadly-varying destinies seemed to me the stage best calculated for the development of any self-imposed task. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... read tracts and sermons, frequented churches and preachings, gave up driving on Sundays, and appeared in considerable danger of falling into the gulf of methodism; but this turn did not last long, and whatever induced him to take it up, he apparently became bored with his self-imposed restrictions, and after a little while he threw off his short-lived sanctity, and resumed his worldly habits and irreverent language, for he was always a loose talker. Active and ambitious in his pursuits, and magnificent ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... foundations, clad in the ample and voluminous fashion of the day and topped off with a distinctly stylish hat. She had had a long regimen of fencing and dumbbells, and her self-imposed superintendence of the new house had led to many hours spent in the open air. Her hair was blowing airily about her face, and on her cheek there was a slight flush—produced, perhaps, by ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... now, or if she does write, why can't she talk about mushrooms?" which were Cornelia's most recent palliative to her self-imposed and brief sojourns in her little home town. It had been cats when she and Miss Theodosia returned from Spain, Belgian hares after their long stay in Egypt. Miss Theodosia herself had never tried mushrooms nor Belgian hares. She had borne her short homecomings unpalliated, and had ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... her merciless towards herself. She took pleasure in the hardest of self-imposed penances, as if the racking of her soul by incessant prayers, and wasting of her body by vigils and cruel fastings, were a vicarious punishment, borne for the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... on his face, that famous self-imposed mask that hid all emotion, had broken. Lines were there, deep with agony; tiny drops of sweat stood out all over. He saw Ku Sui pick up something and adjust it to his grip while looking down at the man who lay, now strapped on the table. He saw him nod curtly to ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... when the battles were fought by the people itself, and when the cost of the wars was to so large an extent defrayed by its self-imposed contributions, the Scottish and French campaigns should have called forth that national enthusiasm which found an echo in the songs of Lawrence Minot, as hearty war-poetry as has been composed in any age of our literature. They ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... apt to the conditions of a colony, looking as it did like a log-house in a backwoods-clearing. Internally it was well lighted and ventilated, and just sufficient for our numbers. Heureusement il n'y on a pas beaucoup. This was not the only occasion on which we were thankful for the school's self-imposed limit of numbers. The completion of this poor structure was a fact of which those who have but little knowledge of school affairs will appreciate the value. It was a new burden on an embarrassed exchequer, but not a gratuitous one. It ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... name as best she could upon the stone. It was an interesting occupation, and she was amazed to find how quickly the time sped while she was so engaged. The keeper smiled when he found her so intent upon her self-imposed task that she did not ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... end. Ah! a mere look from the son suffices to make me insensible to the mother's fury. I will doubt it no longer; he shares my grief, he sees what I endure, and weeps with me; my sufferings are his too; it is a self-imposed law of love; in spite of Venus, in spite of my crime, he it is who sustains and revives me in the midst of the dangers I have to encounter. He harbours still the tender feelings urged by his passion, and hastens to restore me to new life as soon as I ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... that, before sentence was finally passed, Sister Claire, broken in body and mind, sobbingly affirmed his innocence, protesting that she did not know what she was saying when she accused him; nor that the mother superior, after two hours of agonizing torture self-imposed, fell on her knees before Laubardemont, made a similar admission, and, passing into the convent orchard, tried to hang herself. The commissioner and his colleagues remained obdurate, averring that these confessions were in ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... apart on paper, and mixing the actual cash. Indeed, she could never have brought her conscience to it. Unless she had taken the tenth for "charity" from her dress and pocket-money in coin, and put it then and there into the charity bag, this self-imposed rule of the duty of almsgiving would not have been performed to her ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... head solemnly. "Yes, yes," he said, "I see how it is; s'not only the pigs, and the calves, and hens, but you too I must take to markets and fairs, or we shall never marry you," and he turned away pondering seriously over his self-imposed duties. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... practised many arts upon his individuality and character. He had time and to spare to "abandon the body," and he was growing more and more confident, that in these self-imposed crises he was gaining not only strength, but a keen and absorbing interest in others. If the sense of self debased, then this detachment was his ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... enlarged. These social laws are in the main the groundwork of the exclusion of women from the right of suffrage. In the establishment of these laws, as in their modification, women themselves have even a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is, therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to women the enjoyment of which they desire, and for the exercise of which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... matter of taste, of course, but personally I don't envy Mr. J.G. LEGGE his self-imposed task of convicting the Hun out of his own mouth of—well, of being a Hun. Germans they were and Germans they remain, and the author goes to great lengths, even to the length of 572 pages, to show that their peculiar qualities date back at least ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... a neat little, keen-eyed peasant woman, with an expression in her face that suggested that she was the real watch dog, on behalf of her master, standing between him and an intrusive world. As a matter of fact, as we afterward learned, that is one of her many self-imposed offices, for, having been in the Mistral household for many years, she has long since been as much a family friend as a servant, and generally looks after the Master and Mme. Mistral as if they were her children, nursing and "bossing" ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... in the library seemed to be a sort of household rite—a self-imposed Truce of Bacchus before the resumption of hostilities in the dining-room. It lasted from six forty-five to seven; everybody sipped Manhattans and kept quiet and listened to the radio newscast. The only new face, to Rand, was ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... vows had irrevocably committed Leo's happiness to his honor, it might then be safe to tell him the truth, and solicit release from the self-imposed terms. Five hours ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the cares of life is no doubt merely metaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness reveals the excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his own perception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this time were purely imaginary; that a little resolution and determined activity would have shaken off the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... provided for. In a word, every function of government was from that time exercised in the name and by the authority of the people of North Carolina. Virtually the province was under martial law, but it was under martial law self-imposed. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... with their fancy for going into water. I need not be told that the hen is after all only step-mother to her ducklings, since I am contending that the civilized woman—the artificial product of our self-imposed conditions—cannot have the same relation to her offspring as the uncivilized woman really has to hers. The comparison, therefore, holds good, the mother with us being practically step-mother to children of another race; and if she is sensible, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... idols, nor to injure man by injustice and oppression. The Indians of our country are not found bowing down to numberless idols, as the inhabitants of many countries are: they worship what they call 'the Great Spirit,' with a deep reverence, humbling themselves before him, and undergoing self-imposed torments, to gain his good will, which the generality of Christians, in the manifestation of their faith, would find it hard to endure. They believe also in an Evil Spirit, as well as in a future state; and that they shall be happy or unhappy, just as they have done good or evil, according ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... extreme of drudgery and others because it has shrunk into nothingness and futility. Sometimes people become ill because their personality, hungry for work, is given nothing but introspection to feed upon. This is the self-imposed curse ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... procrastination, have hitherto prevented it being put into shape with a view to publication: one thing after another has intervened, and the work has been passed on from hand to hand, until after these long years a final effort has been made, and the self-imposed task completed. ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... purpose of his life was attained. India-rubber was introduced under his patents, and soon proved to have all the value he had, in his wildest moments, claimed for it. Success thus crowned his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear nor his ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... public life for two years past, and quietly passing along the streets, is recognized, dragged through the gutter and cut to pieces.—After such warnings (murder and pillage) the Assembly can only obey, and, as usual, conceal its submission beneath sonorous words. If the dictatorial committee, self-imposed at the Hotel-de-ville, still condescends to keep it alive, it is owing to a new investiture,[26104] and by declaring to it that it must not meddle with its doings now or in the future. Let it confine itself ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and the means, the difficulty of President Kruger's self-imposed task was not so great as at first appeared. To some it was advisable to do no more than point to the Jameson Raid and say: 'We only wish to live in peace and to be left alone.' To some again that act is construed as a sign that the British people wish to upset the two Republics, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Mrs. Harford filled a large place in Kelley's gloomy world. He was not a romantic person, but he was often lonesome in the midst of his self-imposed penance. He forbade himself the solace of the saloon. He denied himself a day or even an hour off duty, and Harford, secretly amazed and inwardly delighted, went so far one day as to offer him ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... thus occupied was at the mercy of a foreign soldiery, which had renounced all authority but that of self-imposed laws. The King's officers were degraded, perhaps murdered; while those chosen to supply their places had only a nominal control. The Eletto, day by day, proclaimed from the balcony of the town-house the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... entered the service of the mighty Biorn, as a strange wild man, in order that Weigand the Slender should always remain a murderer, and that I might feed on his anguish. So have I fed upon it for all these long years; I have fed frightfully upon his self-imposed banishment, upon his cheerless return home, upon his madness. But to-day—" and hot tears gushed from his eyes—"but to-day God has broken the hardness of my heart; and, dear Sir Weigand, look upon yourself no more as a murderer, and say that you will forgive ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... glaciers, and pass unfathomable seas? There is nothing left but a pursuit till death, single-handed, when one might expire and the other be appeased—onward, with a deluding sight from time to time of his avenging demon. Only in sleep and dreams did Frankenstein find forgetfulness of his self-imposed torture, for he lived again with those he had loved; he endured life in his pursuit by imagining his waking hours to be a horrible dream and longing for the night, when sleep should bring him life. When hopes of meeting his demon failed, some fresh trace would appear to lead him ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... undertaking, of the dangers he was incurring, or of the animosity he was inviting, for the Jews of Russia still regarded all learning not found in the folios of the Talmud as sacrilegious and unholy. To overcome this antagonism to secular knowledge now became Mendel's self-imposed task. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... in our possession from the time of the lodgments effected by Worth and Quitman the day before; that I regretted the silent escape of the Mexican army; that I should levy upon the city a moderate contribution, for special purposes; and that the American army should come under no terms not self-imposed: such only as its own honor, the dignity of the United States, and the spirit of the age, should, in my opinion, imperiously demand ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... more crowded thoroughfares, and found myself plodding along a lonely suburban road, with a keen wind lashing my face, and a suspicion of rain at intervals wetting my cheeks, I confess I had no feeling of enjoyment in my self-imposed task. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... services of this kind to the community, than the Prince of Wales. The multiplicity and variety of his engagements, on behalf of local and special objects of utility, would make a surprising list, and they must have involved a sacrifice of ease and leisure, and endurance of self-imposed restraint, a submission to tedious repetitions of similar acts and scenes, and to continual requests and importunities, which few men of high rank ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... Those who said this were young Barotse who had been drilled to fighting by Sebituane, and used shields of ox-hide. They beat off the party of Limboa, ten being wounded, and ten slain in the engagement. Limboa subsequently sent three slaves as a self-imposed fine to Masiko for attacking him. I succeeded in getting the Makololo to treat the messengers of Masiko well, though, as they regarded them as rebels, it was somewhat against the grain at first to speak civilly ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... that if any hanky-panky was afoot they would discover it and he would be anonymously apprised of it. A few days after the dispatch of the second message, Kenworthy opened his desk drawer to find a copy. For the first and only time, he later explained, he broke his self-imposed rule of relying on negotiations between the military and the committee and its staff in camera. He laid both messages before a long-time friend of his, the editor of the Washington Post's editorial ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and scenes of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... since her illness had enhanced her delicacy, and had made her so appealingly helpless, they were drawn to her as surely as bee to flower. Old and young, dignified and happy-go-lucky, all were moved irresistibly to do something for her, to coddle her, to undertake impossible missions, self-imposed. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... answer that question. The matter was as incomprehensible to Miss Wodehouse as to Dr Rider, but not of such engrossing interest. Bessie Christian, after all, grew tame in the Saxon composure of her beauty before this brown, sparkling, self-willed, imperious creature. To see her among her self-imposed domestic duties filled the doctor with a smouldering wrath against all surrounding her, which any momentary spark ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... "it is my hope that by impregnating the unborn with a specific set of prejudices, they might be induced to settle in particular countries, and I cannot help thinking that patriotism would be more intelligent when it was voluntary; self-imposed from admiration of the ideals and history of a particular people. Indeed this seems to me absolutely the only way in which, reason can be brought to bear on the great war question, for in lieu of that loud eloquence ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... The naturalist, then, ignores the group; he flaunts impartially both the classic and the religious law. He is equally unwilling to submit to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept those restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses. He jeers at the one as hypocrisy and superstition and at the other as mere "middle-class respectability." He himself is the perpetual ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... that the excess of humidity which caused the remarkable mirage of the afternoon helped to continue the "black hour," as the Arabs term it, far beyond its ordinary limits. Hence it was nearly ten o'clock when Royson quitted the camp on his self-imposed task. To all outward semblance, he differed not a jot from the two Arabs who accompanied him. A burnous and hood covered his khaki riding costume. He bestrode a powerful camel nearly eight feet high. Like his companions, he carried a slung rifle; a haversack and water-bottle completed ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... early each spring and returning to his family late every autumn, he had spent sixteen successive summers in Miramichi, engaged in self-imposed labors. Each winter, he wrought at his anvil, and thus helped ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the mind shall be sufficiently drilled in this kind of gymnastics, all their movements will be repeated in an almost unconscious way, and deduction, that essential principle of common sense, will be self-imposed. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... energy, stern force of will, delight in danger for its own sake, contempt for all laws but the self-imposed, those are the cardinal virtues, and challenge our sympathy even when they lead their possessor to destruction. The psychology implied in Jonson's treating of 'humour' is another phase of the same sentiment. The side by which energetic characters lend themselves to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... his soul with infinite consolation. He felt that he had received the pardon of Heaven for his sins, and could now depart bravely to work out his penance. Softened and exalted, he little realised that the penance was unnecessary and self-imposed, that the mood which now took on the heroic tone of self-sacrifice was still a mood of self-seeking, that his love for Lena was selfish now as it had always been, and utterly unworthy of the devotion he received. It was true ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... ensuring that by a given date final action upon a measure shall have been taken. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century liberty of discussion in the Commons was all but unrestrained, save by what an able authority on English parliamentary practice has termed "the self-imposed parliamentary discipline of the parties."[206] The enormous change which has come about is attributable to two principal causes, congestion of business and the rise of obstructionism. The effect has been, among other things, to accentuate party differences and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... The question before his mind was growing clear; whether he was to persist in this self-imposed martyrdom of himself and his family or whether he was to go back upon his outbreak of visionary fanaticism and close with this last opportunity that Lady Sunderbund offered of saving at least the substance of the comfort and social status ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... His self-imposed term of bachelorhood lasted just three months, at the end of which time he made up his mind to enact the part of the generous husband and forgive his wife everything. He would not go into details, but ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... national life, and the dispenser and executor of its laws. Indeed, the artificial organization, whether monastic or sectarian, may become so strong as to interfere with national life, and make men forget their real duty to their king and country, in their self-imposed duty to the sect or order to which they belong. The monastic organization indeed had to die, in many countries, in order that national life might develop itself; and the dissolution of the monasteries marks the birth of an united ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... following day Cyclona sat in the low rocking chair, rocking the baby, singing to it, crooning a lullaby, a memory of her own baby days when some self-imposed mother, taking the place of her own, ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... Lord eighteen hundred and three: All I mean to say is, that the Muse is now free From the self-imposed trammels put on by her betters, And no longer like Filch, midst the felons and debtors, At Drury Lane, dances her hornpipe in fetters. Resuming her track, At once she goes back To our hero, the Bagman—Alas! and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... sex-relation is consecrated to its highest purpose of reproduction, if marriage is felt to be only an added opportunity for self-control, which will be more difficult then because there will be no restraint except that which is self-imposed, then the engagement will be felt to be a time of gradual preparation for that closer relationship which needs more will-power because ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... this proclamation, and promised himself to issue it on the Union Army winning a victory. The driving of Lee's army out of Maryland, and thus relieving Washington from further menace, was accepted by him as a fulfilment of the self-imposed condition. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... given the impression that at the time of my visit there was no lack of food in England, but I fear that I have not done justice to the frugality of the people, much of which was self-imposed for the purpose of helping to win the war. On very, good authority I have been given to understand that food was less abundant during the winter just past; partly because of the effect of the severe weather on our American railroads, which had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... conclusion as to Hood's intention, for if "Actions speak louder than words," there can be no question that Schofield's dispositions were made under the conviction that Hood would march down the river, after crossing, to clear the way for Lee to cross. And so deeply infatuated was he with this self-imposed delusion that, disregarding the order of Thomas and the advice of Wilson, he cherished it for about five hours after Post had reported that Hood ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... strength to the nation, showing it its weak spots and the remedy for removing them. It is a movement of self-reliance. It is the mightiest force for revolutionising opinion and stimulating thought. It is a movement of self-imposed suffering and therefore possesses automatic checks against extravagance or impatience. The capacity of the nation for suffering regulates its advance towards freedom. It isolates the force of evil by refraining from participation in it, in any ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... George Ticknor (the author of the "History of Spanish Literature," &c.), in praising Mr. Wright's translation when it first appeared, said La Fontaine's was "a book till now untranslated;" and since Mr. Wright so happily accomplished his self-imposed task, there has been but one other complete translation, viz., that of the late Mr. Walter Thornbury. This latter, however, seems to have been undertaken chiefly with a view to supplying the necessary accompaniment to the English ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... believe I ever asked her what she likes to do best, and she is so unselfish that it would not be fair to judge her by what she is actually doing when I happen to see her, for I am sure that some of her self-imposed tasks are far from pleasant to her. I have heard her called her mother's right hand. I suppose you know what ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... No one seemed to know where he slept, or seemed to regard the matter as of any consequence. There was about the jet black hero, however, an air of absolute happiness, added to an obvious sense of pride at the performance of his self-imposed and ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... might have murdered his partner to get possession of the claim. It was true that Corbin had voluntarily assumed an unrecorded and hitherto unknown responsibility that had never been even suspected, and was virtually self-imposed. But that might have been the usual one unerring blunder of criminal sagacity and forethought. It was equally true that he did not look or act like a mean murderer; but that was nothing. However, there was no evidence of ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... more damage to-morrow. If Nan lost her chance now she might not have another so good in weeks to come, for the weather was always uncertain and the holidays were short. Everything seemed to urge her to break loose from her self-imposed martyrdom and go her way rejoicing; the crisp air that sang in her ears and filled her with a sense of glorious exhilaration; the shimmering sunlight on the ice that seemed to scud before her and invite her to join in the race; the knowledge that she ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... conscious of a wish in relation to her own individual happiness. Through the sudden crush of a great affliction, she was in that state of self-abnegation to which the mystics brought themselves by fastings and self-imposed penances,—a state not purely healthy, nor realizing the divine ideal of a perfect human being made to exist in the relations of human life,—but one of those exceptional conditions, which, like the hours that often precede dissolution, seem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... sum of money at his disposal if he would consent to reside in the city of New York and represent Southern commerce. Millions would have flowed to him. But he declined. He said: 'No; I am grateful, but I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in life.' And he did. It was beautiful to see him in that glorious valley ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... having lulled Mr. Sikes to sleep, hurried on her self-imposed mission to Rose Maylie, there advanced towards London, by the Great North Road, two persons, upon whom it is expedient that this history should bestow ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... We may some day evolve scenarios that will require nothing more than a title thrown upon the screen at the beginning, they come to the eye so perfectly. This is not the only possible sort, but the self-imposed limitation in certain films might give them a charm akin to that of the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... before any souls at all were baptized on earth, and even now, few[14] in comparison with the total population of the civilized and uncivilized world, have been baptized. The Church nowhere assumes the self-imposed burden of legislation for these, or limits their chance of salvation to the Church Militant. What she does do, is to proclaim her unswerving belief in "one Baptism for the remission of sins"; and her unfailing faith in God's ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... arms all its forces, and bars its gates on the foe. Hence it is that the persons most easy to dupe in matters of affection are usually those most astute in the larger affairs of life. Moliere, reading every riddle in the vast complexities of human character, and clinging, in self-imposed credulity, to his profligate wife, is a type of a striking truth. Still, a foreboding, a warning instinct withheld Lucretia from plumbing farther into the deeps of her own fears. So horrible was the thought that she had ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was one of those dispositions, often peculiar to those who have led an isolated and introspective life, which never do anything half-heartedly; and just as he took his somewhat empty secretarial duties seriously, so did he look on this self-imposed task, against which his better judgment rebelled, ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Orsino was not sure whether he might not be showing too much anxiety to remain in the company of his new acquaintance, and as he realised how unpleasant it would be to sacrifice the walk with her, he endeavoured to excuse to himself his derogation from his self-imposed character of cool superiority and indifference. She was very amusing, he said to himself, and he had nothing in the world to do. He never had anything to do, since his education had been completed. Why should he not walk with Madame d'Aragona and talk to her? It would be ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... pennant whose value was that of the laurel wreaths of the Olympiads. In order to put up the best game possible, Helen attended every skirmish and practice, determined that her substitutes should be the best. In addition to her regular work this self-imposed task of overlooking the substitutes' games, gave ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... and so did my schoolmates, for there was not one of them, who at some time or other, had not felt the effects of my prowess in a striking manner. Still, the drubbings I gave were not always to my credit, for I was a very big and strong lad for my age, and my self-imposed tasks of long rowing trips and other athletic exercises, naturally made me powerful in the arms and chest. Of my brain power I shall say little, as my mind was ever bent on sporting topics when it ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... own pet cars, these having been driven to Hamilton by the chauffeurs of their respective families. Nine automobiles accordingly went to swell the procession that sunny Friday morning and the Sans were in high feather as, two to a car, they set out on their self-imposed welcoming task. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... face with him, I soon set things right. I really believe he had been half mad with his own self-imposed troubles, when he had declared he would give me the lie at ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... The self-imposed sentence of suicide of the afternoon was indefinitely postponed when Alan Hawke amiably nodded as Anstruther at last apologized for glancing at his watch. "I've a bit to do to get ready for to-morrow, and we'll try one more hand and ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... succeeding day. Though no word of love passed between them, and though Miss Carleton sometimes detected on the part of her companion a studied avoidance of personal subjects, yet, while wondering slightly at his self-imposed silence, she often read in his dark eyes a language more eloquent than words, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... in the field of bibliography I cannot plead as palliation for any imperfections that may be discovered in this, that it is the work of a 'prentice hand. Difficult as I found my self-imposed task in the case of the Meredith and Hardy bibliographies, here my labour has been ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... to be bitterly regretting the idleness that had made him give up his self-imposed task, and the dismal hungry looks he kept giving me from time to time were ludicrous ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... 12., I desired to be informed whether this practice has prevailed amongst any people besides the American Indians. As you have established no rule against an inquirer's replying to his own Query, (though, unfortunately for other inquirers, self-imposed by some of your correspondents) I shall avail myself of your permission, and refer those who are interested in the subject to Herodotus, Melpomene 64, where they will find that the practice of scalping ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... hence their fear that you would inform the police, and their frantic efforts to secure the death of both of you. Indeed, you would probably have been dead ere this, had I not taken upon myself the self-imposed duty of being your protector, and had not Louis Lessar most fortunately escaped from Devil's Island to protect his daughter from ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... the creation of those first works I had despaired of myself, and that I had changed my gun to the other shoulder? The image of the Boulevard office rose suddenly before me. I heard the voice of the editor-in-chief saying, "Interview Fauchery? You will never accomplish that;" so, faithful to my self-imposed role, I replied, "I have retired to Nemours to work upon a novel called The Age for Love, and it is on this subject that I wished to consult you, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... village; and it was positively benefited by such mild exercise as a man may take, in company with a little round-eyed woman, feather-light and active, yet in relation to Diana, like a tethered dove, that can only take short flights. Only here it was a tether self-imposed and of the heart. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... itself from professionalism and choosing the better path with Mary and with Ruth. The value of the Romantic movement lay, not in its escape to the wonders of the past, but in its escape from professionalism and all its self-imposed and easy difficulties. For it is much easier to write professional verses in any style than to write songs of innocence; and that is why professionalism in all the arts tempts all kinds of artists. Anyone can achieve it who has the mind. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... of the right kind, which was noticed at the beginning of this History.[400] The excessive devotion of the not yet sainted Julian to sport; the crime and the dooms that follow it; the double parricide which he commits under the false impression that his wife has been unfaithful to him; his self-imposed penance of ferrying, somewhat like Saint Christopher, and the trial—a harder one than that good giant bore, for Julian has, not merely to carry over but, to welcome, at board and bed, a leper—and the Transfiguration ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... up her self-imposed charge; she wanted to be off. With the need for help no longer an attraction, Moloney had almost ceased to interest her; he would remain only as part of the darker background of her mind, as a dim figure among many in the dim coloured atmosphere ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... now! 'Thou art careful and troubled about many things,' poor soul! trying to be good; trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil. Try the other plan, and listen to Him saying, 'Give up self-imposed effort in thine own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... to a country where the taxes are self-imposed and so light as to be almost unfelt is one where each free family pays over five hundred dollars per annum, directly and indirectly, for the support of a system of bigoted tyranny, scarcely equaled elsewhere,—forming an aggregate sum of over twenty-six millions ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... monasteries," he says, "inspired by superstitious fear and the hypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with self-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It is intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for sins, and by self-imposed punishment the sinners expect to do penance, instead of ethically repenting." And again—"All ethical gymnastics consist therefore singly in subjugating the instincts and appetites of our physical system ... a gymnastic exercise rendering the will hardy and robust, which by the consciousness ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... hastened to explain how it came they had not suspected the truth. Then as questions began to follow, he also told who and what they were, even mentioning something concerning their self-imposed mission into the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... the enemy, we could not do at the time. It was delightful during this and the preceding days to witness the calm, but decided manner of the admiral. He had evidently calculated the awful responsibility under which he was placed; and this, at the same time, was self-imposed; for it was by no means incumbent on him as a duty, with only five sail of the line, viz. the Caesar, Superb, Spencer, Venerable, and Audacious, to attack an enemy with six fresh ships, of which number two mounted one hundred and twelve guns each, one of ninety, and ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... no willing fetters wear Which our own hands have made, No self-imposed distresses bear, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... allowed her to take the child because he had felt that a mother's love was more imperious, more craving in its nature, than the love of a father? Had that been severe? And had he not resolved to allow her every comfort which her unfortunate position,—the self-imposed misfortune of her position,—would allow her to enjoy? She had come to him without a shilling; and yet, bad as her treatment of him had been, he was willing to give enough not only to support her, but her sister also, with every comfort. Severe! No; that, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... and the Egyptian ministers and governors now understand quite well that they must cease to hold their offices if they do not adopt the policy recommended by the British diplomatic agent. If it should be found that we cannot with honor and self-respect begin to abandon our self-imposed task of Cuban "pacification" with any greater speed, the impetuous congressmen, as they read over their own inconsiderate resolutions fourteen years hence, can hide their blushes behind a copy of Lord Granville's letter. They may explain, if they like, with the classical excuse of Benedick, ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... was over, and a peculiar feeling of inertia had come over Frank. He was wearied by what he had gone through, and the self-imposed task of playing his dumb part troubled him. All he cared for now was to get back to his quarters in the Emir's palace, to rest and think. He had come out in the faint hope of passing through some new ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... provision that so long as a State shall choose to keep a portion of her people in this subordinate condition, she shall enjoy only this limited degree of representation. To us, it appears to be a concession made to freedom, and not to slavery. There is no obligation, unless self-imposed, to admit any but a minority of her whites to the enjoyment of political power, aristocracy being, in truth, more closely assimilated to republicanism than democracy. Republicanism means the sovereignty ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... boat before we reached this land, and will now keep watch lest any treachery be attempted by these Tamils." We knew that under the circumstances Hassan's keen sense of hearing would be more valuable than our own, and after a slight protest agreed to leave him to his self-imposed task of watching while we slept. He moved close to the entrance of the cave, and we followed his example before seeking repose. Hassan made some further remark, to which I do not clearly remember responding, the next event recalled being that ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... shrieked, with a fiendish laugh, "I've escaped you, have I? escaped you—hurrah!" and with another wild shriek he leaped on the hot deck, and, seizing a bucket, resumed his self-imposed duty of deluging the ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... noisy reminder of the great world that surged around them,—the world of petty aims and transitory pleasures, with which they, filled full of the knowledge of higher and eternal things, had so little in common save sympathy,—sympathy for the wilful wrong-doing of man, and pity for his self-imposed blindness. Presently Heliobas spoke again in his customary light ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... which he had subjected his sight when, in order to educate himself, he had copied out entire many of the works of older masters. Nor can we overlook the fact that, when a child, his sight must have been injured by the long, self-imposed task of copying music by moonlight. He suffered a great deal in consequence of the drugs which were administered in the hope of restoring his eye-sight, but, notwithstanding, he continued to work up to the last. On the morning of the day on which he died—July 28, 1750—he ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the sum of good-fortune! Half-clerical, they loved nevertheless the touch of steel; had a laughing joy in trifling with its latent soul of destruction. In mimicry of the great world, they had their leaders, so inscrutably self-imposed:—instinctively, they felt and underwent that mystery of leadership, with its consequent heats of spirit, its ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed blindness had sent ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... of glowing wind Mother drifted across the fields to the corner of the village where her mother occupied a large single room in solitude upon the top floor, a solitude self-imposed and rigorously enforced. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... idea was in accordance with his frame of mind. But, alas! how soon he was convinced of the vanity of his efforts! His hand and imagination had been too long confined to one line and limit, and his fierce but impotent endeavour to overleap the barrier, to break his self-imposed fetters, had no result. He had despised and neglected the fundamental condition of future greatness—the long and fatiguing ladder of study and reflection. Maddened by disappointment, furious at the conviction of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... gazed sternly at Sam as he sat open-mouthed listening to these fulsome but untimely praises. In every gathering there is sure to be one or two whose self-imposed mission it is to right wrongs, and one of this type present at once suggested returning the clothes to the rightful owner. His suggestion was adopted with enthusiasm, and a dozen men closed round the ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... courts, instead of coming under the jurisdiction of the civil power; but, in reality, it was only another form of the constant endeavours of the English monarchs to free themselves from the foreign bondage which was, to some extent at least, self-imposed. Becket fell a martyr to his own sense of duty and the ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... in his self-imposed task of "showing them." He led them to the bottom of the garden, where a small stream (now almost dry) disappeared into a narrow tunnel to flow under the road and reappear in the field at ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... we had acquired so much dexterity at the work that we did more in one day than we did in two at the beginning of our labours. Then, although at the expiration of the fortnight we seemed to have made scarcely any perceptible inroad upon that enormous deposit, we grew tired of our self-imposed task and mutually agreed that we had accumulated as much wealth as we required. Moreover, as we watched the increase of that wealth day by day, our anxiety grew lest perchance anything should happen to prevent our escape from the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... inherited five millions marriage had added the colossal fortune of a beautiful heiress, whose extravagances aggregated less than his own solely through the limitations of her sex. Yet, were it not for the self-imposed handicap of adhering strictly to the somewhat old-fashioned precept that jewels should be acquired only through affectionate beneficence, Mrs. Fernmore might have succeeded in surpassing the princely prodigalities of her lord ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the same idea abides with him, "even from the flower till the grape was ripe." It may assume various changes—an image of beauty, a figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a type of heavenly wisdom and joy—but still it holds, in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative and versatile and tenacious spirit. It was the dream and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and come to naught—to be other than the seed of the achievement and crown of life. But with all faith in the star and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... meeting she sent, anonymously, her verses entitled "The Ploughman;" and the production being publicly read, was received with warm approbation, and was speedily put to music. She was thus encouraged to proceed in her self-imposed task; and to this early period of her life may be ascribed some of her best lyrics. "The Laird o' Cockpen," and "The Land o' the Leal," at the close of the century, were sung in every ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... this fantasia is the outward and sure expression of a change in Mr. Whiting's way of musical thinking, and the change is decidedly for the better. There is still a display of pure intellectuality; there is still a solving of self-imposed problems; but Mr. Whiting's musical enjoyment is no longer strictly selfish. Here is a fantasia in the true sense of the term; form is here subservient to fancy. The first movement, if you wish to observe traditional terminology, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... rely upon the hue and cry which would be raised and the certain hunt which would be made for her. But what might not happen before any rescue came? The ancient grudge of the Fawes against the Druses had gained power and activity by the self-imposed exile of Gabriel Druse; and Jethro had worked upon it. The veiled threats which Jethro had made she did not despise. He was a barbarian. He would kill what he loved; he would have his way with what he loved, whether ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... person—beautiful, but dressed in a stiff mode. We do not, in every point, homologate the opinions of Prynne, as to the 'unloveliness of love-locks;' but we do certainly look with a mixture of contempt and pity on the self-imposed trammels of affectation in style and manner which bound many of the poets of that period. The wits of Charles II. were more disgustingly licentious; but their very carelessness saved them from the conceits of their predecessors; and, while lowering ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... way a reply to or a comment on Seth's remark, but rather the outcome of the recollection that Sabatier had said that all true patriots must needs meet with him in Paris. Naturally, Sabatier was closely associated in Barrington's mind with his self-imposed mission to Beauvais, and his unexpected presence here on the Soisy road set him speculating once more on the whole circumstances of his adventure. He had had enough of women to last him a lifetime, he had declared to Seth, and he meant it. Seth had smiled. His companion ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... swarthy from exposure, yet marked with the lines of intellect and a fixed enthusiasm of purpose. Here was Bressani, scarred with firebrand and knife; Chabanel, once a professor of rhetoric in France, now a missionary, bound by a self-imposed vow to a life from which his nature recoiled; the fanatical Chaumonot, whose character savored of his peasant birth,—for the grossest fungus of superstition that ever grew under the shadow of Rome was not too much for his ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... feel disappointed with life in the community. A Taoist, as a follower of Lao Tzu is called, withdraws from all social life, and carries out none of the rites and ceremonies which a man of the upper class should observe throughout the day. He lives in self-imposed seclusion, in an elaborate primitivity which is often described in moving terms that are almost convincing of actual "primitivity". Far from the city, surrounded by Nature, the Taoist lives his own ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... think or countenance, those things she—within limitations—did and said and thought and accepted or passed over as matters of fact and no consequence. And though she observed scrupulously certain self-imposed limitations she never made this obvious, she simply avoided what she chose to consider bad taste with a deftness and tact that would have seemed admirable in a woman of the great world twice her age. And with it all she preserved a sort of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... which he could observe, in turn, each point of the compass whence danger might be expected, and could fire his Winchester without exposing himself. Then he began going from post to post on a continuous round of self-imposed sentinel duty. "If I could only climb the sahuaro," he thought, "and fly my red shirt as a flag, to let the Rurales know I've flanked the enemy, it might hurry them along in time to put a crimp in these devils before they get me. But it'll have to be 'Hold the Fort' ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... respect to State court interference with the federal courts and State court refusal to comply with the judgments of federal tribunals, by statutes as regards interference by federal courts with those of the States, and by self-imposed rules of comity applied for the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... that self-imposed task which the gambler had undertaken, though its full significance had never quite been his. Now he felt that in some way he was responsible. Now he felt that the journey should never have been taken. He felt that he should have refused to ship his gold. And yet he knew ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... heavy heart, thinking to herself what a stab of pain the avowal she had to make would send throbbing through that gentle old breast, and how absolutely incapable dear Miss Smith-Waters could be of ever appreciating the conscientious reasons which had led her, Iphigenia-like, to her self-imposed sacrifice. ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... the income of the community determine the amount of communication that is possible. But men's ideas determine how that income shall be spent, and that in turn affects in the long run the amount of income they will have. Thus also there are limitations, none the less real, because they are often self-imposed ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann |
