"Sense of duty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boards, and blistered my hands with that obstinate screw! And how cordially I hated it all! I liked the fun of gathering the flowers, the triumph of finding new specimens, and the excitement of hazardous scrambles; but as for the rest it was drudgery, which I went through only from a stern sense of duty. Now, thanks to the busy little fingers that passed over these leaves, I have a fund of amusement laid up for me; for every page has its story, and each mutilated flower is the centre of a beautiful picture. Here the ludicrous and the pathetic are so exquisitely blended, that ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... years since I had seen it in Mysore: I did not start; but a cold and melancholy chill came over me; yet I might possibly have gazed long on this humble little flower, and recalled many dormant thoughts, had not a sense of duty (for we momentarily expected an attack) summoned my attentions to the realities of life: so, drawing the back of my hand across my eyes, I cheered my party with, "Forward, lads," and pursued my route, and saw it no more, until England and all her flowery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... in Catholic intrigues, Coleman need only tell him that Oates was not in England in April, and could not have been, as he swore he was, at the 'consult.' Next, Godfrey was not the man (as Mr. Pollock supposes) to reveal his knowledge to the world, from a sense of duty, even if the Court 'stifled the plot.' Mr. Pollock says: 'Godfrey was, by virtue of his position as justice of the peace, a Government official. . . . Sooner or later he would certainly reveal it. . . . ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... TEMPER of our Minds, and the RULE of our Lives"; and again, "Heaven is FIRST a Temper, and THEN a Place."(1) To the man of heavenly temper, they taught, the performance of good works would be no irksome matter imposed merely by a sense of duty, but would be done spontaneously as a delight. To drudge in religion may very well be necessary as an initial stage, but it is ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... people that have to look to their outgoes, and know what every mouthful costs them. But their lives are not worth having. Eveleth Strange does it—or she did do it when she was in the country; I dare say she won't when she gets back—just from a sense of duty, and because she says that a housekeeper ought to know about her expenses. But I ask her who will care whether she knows or not; and as for giving the money to the poor that she saves by spending economically, I tell ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... that the shot had told. "It was astonishing that Miss Torrance did not honour me with her confidence. A sense of duty, perhaps, although one notices that the motives of young women are usually a trifle involved. It, however, appears to me that if Miss Torrance makes up her mind to stay, we are still quite capable of guarding our women ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... that in the nature of things there could be no such knowledge as that upon which religion was based, and hence that religion was an idle thing unworthy of a true man's interest. Yet all the philosophy in the world could not take away from a Roman his sense of duty to the state. Now the state in its experience had found religion so necessary that she had built up a formal system of it and made it a part of herself. As it was the duty of the citizen to support the state in every part of her activity, ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... the greatest misfortune that could possibly have befallen one so dangerously gifted. Her mother was a kind, good, gentle woman, who having by necessity worked hard in the early part of her life, still continued the practice, partly from inclination, partly from a sense of duty, and partly from mere habit, and amongst her many excellent qualities had the Ailie Dinmont propensity of giving all her children their own way,* especially this the blooming cadette of the family: and her eldest brother, a bachelor,—who, succeeding to his father's business, took ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... said, "I have acted all through this business, from the first, under a strong sense of duty. I do not regret anything I have done, and I believe that the course which I have opened is only commenced. The Roman," he continued in one of those bursts of eloquence, with which he used to electrify men, stretching forth his ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... discontent; but it is satisfactory to know that this disposition yields to proper explanations and more just apprehensions of the true nature of the law, and I entertain a full confidence that it will in all give way to motives which arise out of a just sense of duty and a virtuous regard ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... not satisfied with the condition and remuneration of labour to transport milk and other provisions during the night so that the townspeople may have them early in the morning? Will men be induced by their sense of duty to clean the sewers? To ask these questions is to answer them. Bebel puts the question, "What becomes of the difference between the industrious and the idle, the intelligent and the stupid?" and answers, "There will be no such difference, because that which ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... for her to attack him now, since she had come to understand her feelings toward him. Even so, she reflected with horror that if her articles created the comment she anticipated their effect would be to rob him of his holdings. But she took her work very seriously, and her sense of duty was unwavering. She was one of the few who guide themselves by the line of principle, straight through all other considerations. She would write what she found true, for that was her mission in life. If ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... For it was possible that the hellish plot had developed much further, and that the warriors from the north were lurking already near by to pounce upon the Queres at daybreak. It was not only from the instinct of the old warrior scout, it was out of a sense of duty as head war-chief that he determined at once upon following the Tehua. As soon as Shotaye, too, was out of sight, he went over to the spot where the interview had taken place and examined the soil carefully. The round impression made by a war-sandal struck his eye; it proved ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... early in December; and though, if "he had been consulted beforehand, he would have been inclined to dissuade the dismissal of the last ministry as premature and impolitic," he did not consider it compatible "with his sense of duty" to decline the charge which the King laid upon him, and at once accepted the office of Prime-minister, being fully aware that by so doing he "became technically, if not morally, responsible for the dissolution of the preceding ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... absolutely filled her eyes. "Poor dear old man," she said to herself; and yet the poor dear old man had simply been a trouble to her, adding a most disagreeable task to her life, and one which she was not called on to perform by any sense of duty. "How is he?" she said anxiously, when she met Lady Glencora in the hall at Matching. The two women kissed each other as though they had been almost sisters since their birth. "He is a little better now, but he was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... political position was such that, if he would not break with the glorious past, if he would not deceive the expectations of his party and in fact of the nation, if he would not be unfaithful to his own sense of duty, he must check the maladministration of public affairs and put an end to the government of the restoration; and if he only possessed the internal qualities of a head of the people, he might certainly dispense with those which he lacked ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... had always regarded his Lordship as one of the most dangerous ministers England could possibly have, and that his views had not undergone the slightest change. He felt that it would be doing violence to his own sense of duty, and injuring his own character for consistency in the eyes of his countrymen, to profess to act with a minister to whom he had all along ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Tabs. "You said that I was the better man. I'm not. It was your sense of duty that always urged me. I have to thank your Lordship for the greatest happiness that can befall any man. You made me see it as my greatest happiness, when I was in danger of becoming a cad. There was one thing you said to me that sank into my mind. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... an equivalent; and that a landlord owed duties to his people, of the value of the moneys they paid him. Formerly the lord gave his vassals armed protection for their rents: now there is nothing to which the law forces him; thus his returns must be fixed by his sense of duty." ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the meal she was unusually preoccupied, puzzling, pondering, struggling, longing to be alone with herself, and yet held to her post by her sense of duty. At last, however, the hungry appetites were satisfied, the chattering children had gone back to their play, the dishes were washed and piled away in the cupboard, and Tabitha slipped away to the little room which she shared with Gloriana and Janie, knowing that no one would molest her here as ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Mons. Roland I should not have shot myself for her sake, and I question whether he would not have left undrawn the trigger if he could have seen all she intended to say of him to posterity: she has painted him as a harsh, stiff, pedantic man, to whom she devoted herself from a sense of duty; her own superiority, and his infinite obligations to her, she has taken sufficient pains to blazon forth to the world. I do not like all this, and her duty work, and her full-length portrait of herself by herself. The foolish and haughty Madame de Boismorrel, who sat ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... may have inclined him to linger near the home of the lady he still loved, his stern sense of duty soon summoned him away. News had come to King Louis that the people of Milan, who owed fealty to the French king, had revolted, and made Ludovic ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... endeavoring to impress their young and tender minds with divine truth, and the obligation I feel to try to be useful, have induced me to comply. I was enabled to open the school with prayer. Though the cross was very great, I felt constrained by a sense of duty to take it up. O may I have grace to be faithful in instructing these children in such a way as shall be pleasing to ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... with Dr. Holmes I had very little. He struck me as being wonderfully erect, active, and vivacious for his great age. He spoke (perhaps I should not chronicle this impression)—he spoke much, and freely, but rather as if he were wound up to speak, so to say—wound up, I mean, by a sense of duty to himself and kindness to strangers, who were naturally curious about so well-known a man. In his aspect there was a certain dryness, and, altogether, his vivacity, his ceaselessness, and a kind of equability of tone in his voice, reminded me of what Homer says concerning the old men around ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... spark away from the paths of virtue and goodness at about sixteen years old, after which time he lost all sense of duty to his parents, respect of laws divine or human, and even care of himself. It seems he found certain houses in Chick Lane, where they met abundance of loose young men and women, accustomed themselves to every kind of debauchery which it was possible for wicked people to commit or the most fruitful ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... qualities of consecration and courage which have come out of our correspondence with our honored teachers. Never did their fathers or brothers, years ago, when deadly war called them to face the perils of battle, show higher courage or a larger sense of duty. Almost all of our Southern schools are now in session, ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... 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. It is a substitute for expression, as mere duty is a substitute for virtue. But, as a forbidding sense of duty makes virtue itself seem unattractive, so professionalism destroys men's natural delight in the arts. Like the artist himself, his public becomes anxious, perverse, exacting; afraid lest it shall admire the wrong thing, because it has lost the immediate sense of the ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... is, Miss Erema," Mrs. Busk replied, without any congenial excitement. "It does seem hard for them that have the liability on them. But still, miss, you have always shown such a high sense of duty, and of what ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... reverse or wisdom deplore." His greatness did not consist so much in his intellect, his skill, and his genius, though he possessed all these, as in his honor, his integrity, his truthfulness, his high and controlling sense of duty—in a word, his character, honest, pure, ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... felt that deep down in her heart she cared a good deal more for him than her conduct showed, and to tell her of his intentions before he carried them out would be to subject her to needless days of suspense and possibly affect his own sense of duty. Now that it was all over, she must be the first to be told, and how much he dreaded it only those who have passed through the same experiences can tell. He scarcely slept at all that night, and when he presented himself ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... reference to a particular organization which has been proposed in those counties. I have, however, issued a general order on this subject, a copy of which I hand you, regretting that you have felt yourself compelled to take this view of the subject, and I know you are prompted by a sense of duty. I beg to remind you that for twelve or fifteen consecutive nights passengers travelling in the stage between here and Vicksburg have been robbed, and these things have occurred within twelve or fifteen miles of your own headquarters. ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... father, for consolation, but with the unalterable determination to learn the cause of your suffering. I will not go away without knowing what misfortune it is that has so long deprived me of your love. No matter how much I may venerate you and respect your silence, the sense of duty is greater even than veneration. I must—I will—know the ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... with a quiet distant severity. Aunt Elizabeth, she fancied, would like to have been kind to her, but she was entirely under the influence of her sister, and there, too, Maggie was generous enough to see that Aunt Anne behaved as she did rather from a stern sense of duty than any real unkindness. Aunt Anne could not feel unkindly; she was too far removed from human temper and discontent and weakness. Nevertheless she had been deeply shocked at the revelation of Maggie's bad behaviour, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... sense of duty demanded that he stay and see the matter through, since his newly-made acquaintance with the tertium quid of Walsh's little party might lead to an introduction to the big man, and for the rest Morris trusted ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... awakening knowledge that by her own deeds it was irreparably ruined. No monarch has ever more utterly subordinated personal interests, personal affections, all that makes life desirable, to a passionate sense of duty; none ever failed more utterly to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Having satisfied my sense of duty, I turned and ran rapidly back to the corridor through which my men had passed. To my horror, however, I found that my retreat in this direction had been blocked—across the mouth of the corridor stood a massive steel grating that had evidently been lowered ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pursuit, followed at no great distance by the legions, which marched in readiness for an instant engagement. It was hopeless for Hasdrubal to think of continuing his retreat before them. The prospect of immediate battle might recall the disordered part of his troops to a sense of duty, and revive the instinct of discipline. He therefore ordered his men to prepare for action instantly, and made the best arrangement of them that the nature of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... threatened, it appeared, with the penalties of the law. He had sold a "love-philtre" (pronounced infallible for recalling errant fiances to a sense of duty) to an amorous kitchen-maid who was seeking to rekindle the sacred flame in the bosom of an unresponsive policeman. The damozel had mingled the potion in a plate of beefsteak pudding, and had handed the same out of the scullery window to her peripatetic ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... it isn't that," he said; "it's your coming here at all. Why, only three of the fellows have been near me this morning. And they only came from a sense of duty. I know they did—I could feel it. You shouldn't have come here. I'm not a proper person; I'm an outlaw. You might think this was a pest-house, you might think I was a leper. Why, those Stickney girls have been watching me all morning through a field-glass." He clasped and unclasped ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... for beauty's sake alone. Their atmosphere is not soft or gay but somewhat stern. The logical arrangement of them is less one of feeling than of thought. There is a stronger manhood in them, a grimmer view of life. The sense of duty to God and Man, but little represented in the Italian poems of the Renaissance, does exist in these two German poems. Moreover, there is in them a full representation of aspiration to the world beyond. But the Italian Renaissance lived for the earth alone, and its ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Self it was therefore that slyly thanked her for an unspeakable blessing: she had brought to an end not only the life of her husband but the false position she herself had been obliged to maintain through a mistaken sense of duty and self-respect. And who was to say, outside the law, that this frail girl had not just cause ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... arrived for Juan, ordering him to evacuate it. Alas! had it come sooner, he and his companions might have preserved their lives, as I believe he would have succeeded, had he made the attempt, in cutting his way through the enemy; but, influenced by a stern sense of duty, he had held it after all hope of successfully defending it had gone. This added greatly to ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing as wrong which her young mistress thought right—nor have suffered any obstacles whatsoever to deter her in the execution of that thing which she had once understood to be her mistress's pleasure. In the present case however there was nothing that could press heavily on her sense of duty; nor any need to appeal to her affections against her natural sense of propriety. On the contrary both were in perfect harmony. She had long known, in common with all the country, the circumstances ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... the irons on the wrists of Levi Fairfield, not from a sense of duty, but with a keen relish for the act itself. It is but justice to the officer, prejudiced though he was, to say that he was entirely sincere in the belief that his prisoner had stolen the miser's gold. He was needlessly rough and severe in the discharge of his duty, ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... cannot believe," said he. "The deletion was made from a sense of duty so pure that the delator did not hesitate to confess the sin of his own commission through which he had discovered the treachery of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... The things of this world and the desire for them press more heavily upon their minds than the extension of God's cause. Their Christian consciousness is not trained, hence their sense of duty is not high. They depend too much on spasms of effort and frequent appeals to the emotions in the performance of duty. Their idea of the gospel is too confined to hearing sermons on Sunday. Their gospel does not touch the many interests of life. Their virtues are not concrete. Holiness, purity, ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... intelligent boy, who did not much like books. His father intended to make him a lawyer, and he got on well enough in Arithmetic and Geography, but Grammar came hard, and when he got into Latin he blundered dreadfully. He studied to please his parents, and from a sense of duty, but it mortified him greatly to think that he could not succeed as the other boys did. For you know it is hard to succeed at anything unless your heart is in it. And so one night he sat down and cried to think he must always be a dolt. His mother found him weeping and tried to comfort ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... A sense of duty, however, obliged him, in his general despatch, to put the governor on his guard against La Force. "I really think, if released, he would do more to our disservice than fifty other men, as he is a person whose active spirit leads him into all parties, and has brought him acquainted ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... all his boyhood, and much of his youth. As yet, however, the project hovered before him at a great distance, and the path to its fulfilment offered him but little entertainment. His studies did not seize his attention firmly; he followed them from a sense of duty, not of pleasure. Virgil and Horace he learned to construe accurately; but is said to have taken no deep interest in their poetry. The tenderness and meek beauty of the first, the humour and sagacity and capricious pathos of the last, the matchless ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... vainly pressed his hospitality by assuring him of perfect secresy on our part, as regarded my aunt, and offering him Sewis and one of the footmen to lift him to bed. 'You are very good, squire,' said the captain; 'nothing but a sense of duty restrains me. I am bound to convey the information to my brother that the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... do we mean by "public sanction," or "public neglect?" There are some convenient synonyms which help us to cover up our personal responsibility—help us to transfer our own sense of duty to a vague secondary agent, and keep peace with our own consciences. And yet they are only synonyms, after all. Now this term "public" is but another word for the aggregate of our personal obligations, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... person who ever understood you. People now think you go into hospitals from a sense of duty; from benevolence, like those good people who expect to get to heaven by doing disagreeable things on earth; but I know you go because you must; go for your own pleasure; you do not care for heaven or anything else, but yourself." He stopped, looked down, traced the ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... ladys reluctance, Richard, stimulated doubtless by his sense of duty, prevailed; and they were soon so near as distinctly ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... proportion of the scientific world and, too, upon subjects of strictly scientific import. That he does thus find himself placed in such relations at the present time, has not been a matter of his own seeking. No other consideration than the profoundest sense of duty and responsibility could have influenced him in the course pursued. Perhaps some apology is yet due for so boldly trespassing upon hypotheses which were very generally thought to be well established, and certainly ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... very greatest admiration. He admired her for her truthfulness, for her cleanness of mind, and the clean-run-ness of her limbs, for her efficiency, for the fairness of her skin, for the gold of her hair, for her religion, for her sense of duty. It was a satisfaction to ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... the village to engage some one to go and bring to the river the unfortunate lad who had been missed. I told them that, in two hours, a man mounted on a dromedary could reach the place where he had disappeared, and save his life: I appealed to their humanity, to their sense of duty towards God and man, to engage them to go and save him. Finding them deaf to my entreaties, I offered them money, and Khalil Aga his musket, to bring him safe and sound to the river. I appealed to their humanity ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... the old Major persisted in declaring that Edward O'Connor was a self-sufficient jackanapes, and forbade most peremptorily that further intercourse should take place between him and his daughter; and she had too high a sense of duty, and he of honour, to seek to violate the command. But though they never met, they loved not the less fondly and truly; and Dick, grieved that a frolic of his should have interrupted the happiness of a sister he loved and a friend he ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... may have been gathered, liberal; they certainly included more than can be considered strictly incumbent on young men in society. And, besides being polite, Eugene was also curious. It is one thing to silently suffer under a passion which a sense of duty forbids; such a position has its pleasures. The situation is altered when the idea dawns upon you that there is no reciprocity of graceful suffering; that, in fact, the lady may prefer somebody else. Eugene wanted ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... me to resent your attitude or contradict your calumnies. Miss Hamilton will see very little of me. An inflexible sense of duty will keep me away from the frivolous circle of society, sir. Alert ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... husband, whom she has divorced on account of his dissipated habits, and now keeps, in the hope of saving him, on a sort of probation. She believes that without her he would go straight to perdition, and from a sense of duty she tolerates him, not daring to shirk her responsibility for the old reprobate's soul. Truth to tell, she treats him like a naughty boy, punishing him, when he has been drunk, with a denial of favors; and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... BROTHERTON,—I am compelled to write to you under very disagreeable circumstances, and to do so on a subject which I would willingly avoid if a sense of duty would permit me to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... it. But there's one thing more I will say. Whether I marry Marian or Miss Rupert, I sacrifice my strongest feelings—in the one case to a sense of duty, in the other to worldly advantage. I was an idiot to write that letter, for I knew at the time that there was a woman who is far more to me than Miss Rupert and all her money—a woman I might, perhaps, marry. Don't ask any questions; ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... from her father and the Governor the fact of his pressing need; they were high officials with an inflexible sense of duty, and did all they could to enforce the law against trading with foreigners. He was to maintain the fiction of belting the globe, but admit that he had indulged in a dream of commercial relations—for a benefit strictly mutual—between ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... St. Louis, were types, in their several ways, of which humanity, in any age, might well feel proud, and yet they were as unsparing of the heretic as Ezzelino da Romano was of his enemies. With such men it was not hope of gain or lust of blood or pride of opinion or wanton exercise of power, but sense of duty, and they but represented public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century."[574] That is to say, that the virtues of the individuals were overruled by the vices of the mores of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... * * With consciences satisfied with the discharge of duty, no consequences can harm you. There is no evil that we can not either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... me pain, indeed. But when the king Commits an error, 'twould beseem the king, Methinks, to remedy the fault in person. I am Don Philip's son—and curious eyes And slanderous looks are on me. What the king Hath done from sense of duty ne'er will I Appear to owe to your considerate favor. I am prepared to appear before the Cortes, And will not take my ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sense of duty to all pure womanhood enables me to indite these lines to you; and, by so doing, to invite, nay, to encourage a cruel ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... rubbed off the top of the table with her winter Tam o' Shanter, from which the moths flew as she worked. She gazed thoughtfully at the litter on the desk and decided against touching it. Then with a sense of duty well done, she lifted little Patience and carried her up into the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... scriptures regained his composure. Then that foremost of strong persons, the mighty-armed Bhimasena endued with great strength encouraging the king greatly, spake these words, 'Looking up to thy face (for permission), the wielder of the Gandiva, acting according to his sense of duty hath not yet, O king, shown any rashness! And although fully able to destroy the foe, Nakula and Sahadeva of dreadful prowess have been ever prevented by me! Never shall we swerve from that in which thou wilt engage us! Do thou tell us ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... dogs. Does not a puppy, that has stolen a sweet morsel from some butcher's stall, fly, though none pursue him? Is a fox-hound not conscience-stricken for his harry of the sheep-fold? and who will deny some sense of duty, and no little strength of affection, in a shepherd's dog? Have not Cowper's now historic hares displayed an educated and unnatural confidence; and many a gray parrot, though limited in speech, said many ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic, and he had very nearly attained the same end by entering once more upon pacific relations with them, when death came and struck him down at the age of fifty-three. He died sorrowing over the concessions he had made from a patriotic sense of duty as much as from necessity, and full of disquietude about the future. He felt a sincere affection for Francis de Valois, Count of Angouleme, his son-law and successor; the marriage between his daughter Claude and that prince had been the chief and most difficult affair connected ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hoping to get a passage in her to some place off the mainland. It was by no means an unusual thing for sailors to desert their ship when she touched at a port; some, indeed, undertook a voyage with this end in view, the allurements of the golden tropics proving stronger than any sense of duty. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... became a splendid nurse. She was quite fearless—not with dash, but with the steady fearlessness that comes from an ever-present sense of duty, which is the best. She was kind and tender, but she was a little absent. In spirit she was nursing at Capoo; with us she was ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the girl. Could it be that she was capable of changing the life of a powerful man like this? It filled her with a sense of duty as well as exaltation, an emotion that made a woman of her. She seemed suddenly to have put the hotel and all its ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... bivouacked in the hall, where some mattresses and bear-skins had been laid down. Here it was arranged that, for the common safety, each during the night should watch in turn. But about two in the morning, Ernest had no sooner relieved Fritz than, fatigue overcoming his sense of duty, the poor fellow fell comfortably asleep, and he was soon perfectly unconscious of all that ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... tale of the Gold Bug; how the planters of certain Southern States, and even the Governor of North Carolina, paid him blackmail, and received blackmail from him likewise; and lastly, how he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant of the Pearl, who found him after endless difficulties, and fought him hand-to-hand in Oberecock River, in Virginia, 'the lieutenant and twelve men against Blackbeard and fourteen, till the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... it with my sense of duty to your interests to leave you any longer in ignorance of reports current in this town and its neighborhood, which, I regret to say, are reports ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... a misstep in the darkness would surely lead to wounds and perhaps to death. Its crossing, under such conditions, might well be deemed impossible, had not Captain Lee succeeded, borne up by his strong sense of duty, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... utterance than the parson was in the habit of displaying; but he liked the doctor, and, although as well as every one else he knew him to be no friend to the church, or to Christianity, or even to religious belief of any sort, his liking, coupled with a vague sense of duty, had urged him to this most unassuming attempt to cast the friendly arm ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Subsequently the officer commanding the militia and others were indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine and imprisonment, for resisting the writ of a federal court; but they were pardoned by the President because "they had acted under a mistaken sense of duty." ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... upon abstinence at night. But I shall cut this matter short by stating one plain fact; there were two things, and no more, for which Kant had an inordinate craving during his whole life; these were tobacco and coffee; and from both these he abstained almost altogether, merely under a sense of duty, resting probably upon erroneous grounds. Of the first he allowed himself a very small quantity, (and everybody knows that temperance is a more difficult virtue than abstinence;) of the other none at ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... during the ensuing year, as far as the expenses of the convict department with respect to those items are incurred. At the same time they desire to place on record an expression of regret that they should, by a sense of duty, be compelled to adopt any measure likely even temporarily to embarrass his ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... away with the impulse of an alien. He had no ambitious schemes or hopes for the future; he had buried the "lost cause" as he had buried his wife, with a grief that was too deep for tears. He had come to value life only for Ella's sake, and he tried to do his best from a soldier-like and Christian sense of duty, until he too could join ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... acknowledgment of defeat, Ed turned to go. Some tardy sense of duty, however, prompted ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the body, so with that of the soul, the conception that dominated the mind of the Greeks was primarily aesthetic. In speaking of their religion we have already remarked that they had no sense of sin; and we may now add that they had no sense of duty. Moral virtue they conceived not as obedience to an external law, a sacrifice of the natural man to a power that in a sense is alien to himself, but rather as the tempering into due proportion of the elements ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... plain to him. She feared that he was come to her with an offer of marriage out of a sense of duty, as an amende, to correct the false position into which, for his sake, she had placed herself. And he himself by his blundering phrase had given colour to that ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... get results. But it's dangerous to do that with Selma. At least, I think so. I don't know. I don't understand her. I've got nothing to offer her—nothing that she wants—as she frankly told me. Even if she loved me, I doubt if she'd marry me—on account of her sense of duty. What you said awhile ago—about women never doing things from a sense of duty—that shows how hard it is for a woman to understand what's perfectly simple to a man. Selma isn't the sheltered woman sort—the sort whose moral obligations are all looked after by the men ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... on the part of all who in any way stand in the position of teachers. We are dependent upon leaders in a democratic country, and all leaders in whatever place in society would now, one might hope, feel a heightened sense of duty, both to understand and to influence American life, to represent in their own persons and teachings the highest ideals, and indeed to become truly creative forces in society. Boutroux says that Germany is a product of an external phenomenon—education. America, ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... more weight with them than any amount of angry severity. To make them feel as remote as possible from the plantation, this was essential. By adhering to this, and constantly appealing to their pride as soldiers and their sense of duty, we were able to maintain a high standard of discipline,—so, at least, the inspecting officers said,—and to get rid, almost entirely, of the more degrading class of punishments,—standing on barrels, tying up by the thumbs, and the ball ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... disgusting. In this way the reader's sense of right is lowered and an appetite created—an appetite that can not be satisfied; the more it is fed, the more depraved and exacting it becomes. Gradually the desire for the romantic increases until the novel-reader longs to have a romance of her own. Her sense of duty is so blunted and her better judgment so blinded that she often agrees to a secret marriage with some one who is wholly unfit to be her life companion. It is in this way that many a girl has been deceived and led into ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... make the best of the roughest fare, and not to consider himself a martyr if he is sent on a forlorn hope. I often say if we could only get Christians to have one-half of the practical devotion and sense of duty that animates even the commonest Tommy Atkins what a change would be brought about in ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... to all studious men who, by circumstances or by a sense of duty, may be thrown into the whirlpool of politics. Perhaps I may yield to the temptation of developing it, when I shall have to characterize Bailly's connection with his co-laborers in the first municipality ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... criminal, but one of the most astute, clever and unscrupulous individuals who ever adopted dishonesty as a profession. If I ask you questions which appear to you to be irrelevant and possibly impertinent, will you give me credit for being actuated only by my sense of duty, and answer those questions as fully and as accurately ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... platonic friendship it will be to your sorrow in after years. If your letter was a jest, discontinue it. Perhaps this little romance is to end here—is it? It has not been without fruit. My sense of duty is aroused, and you, on your side, will have learned something of Society. Turn your thoughts to real life; throw the enthusiasms you have culled from literature into the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He was keenly read in woman's heart, this Knowles. He left her silently, and she passed through the dark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... sense of her condition before proceeding to any extreme measure. If she remained in a hardened state, it would then be our duty to bring charges and proof. And we should do it, bein' supported by a sense of duty—and by the grace ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... that while the endurin' of it wuz hard and tejus for him (for truly he was not a addep at the business; it come tuff, feerful tuff on him), the endin' wuz sure to be harder. And I tried to convince him, from a sense of duty, that she wuz makin' fun of him — he had told me lots of the pretty things she had said to him — and out of principle I told him that she didn't mean one word of 'em. But I couldn't convince him, and as ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... of other races, but the Frenchwoman will stay in her country, if possible in her home. All girls, the major part of the young widows (who have created a panic among the little spinsters) will marry if they can, not only because marriage is still the normal career of woman but because of their sense of duty to the State. But that social France after the war will bear more than a family resemblance to the France that reached the greatest climax in her history on August second, nineteen-fourteen, has ceased to ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Happy? Why so, indeed, dear love, I trust thou art! But thou dost sigh and contemplate the floor So deeply, that thy happiness seems rather The constant sense of duty than ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... intimation, some outline, of the character of the men who composed the directors and stockholders of the California Insurance Company, who acted well their part, who fought the good fight and held the faith, whose stern sense of duty and heroic courage led them to lay upon the altar of their idealism the financial sacrifices which ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... been gradually becoming excited, uttered these last words in a firm voice, as though he would have wished his conduct to be ascribed to conscientious motives and a sense of duty. In reality, as Renine and Hortense clearly saw, his was an unusually weak nature, incapable of reacting against a ridiculous position from which he had suffered ever since he was a child and which he had come to look upon as final and irremediable. He endured it as a man bears a cross ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... my taste for bread Tended to make me much too stout, And all the leading doctors said I should be better far without; Not that my health may be more rude, More svelte my rounded style of beauty, I sacrifice this staple food— But from a sense of duty! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... observe that they were not taken in marriage out of a conscious sense of duty to the Commonwealth and to Population? They were taken because they were needed. The colonial gentleman had to have his soap-kettles and candle-molds and looms and smokehouses and salting-tubs and spinning-wheels and other industrial machines operated ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... to the outflowing crowd in the arena, and bought a caterwauling toy balloon, but showed no great enthusiasm in manipulating it. Near the exit, as he came out, was a hot-waffle stand which he had overlooked, and a sense of duty obliged him to consume the three waffles, thickly powdered with sugar, which the waffle man cooked ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... be done. No matter if the desired end were far away; all time was lost in which she was not making progress, however slow, towards it. To have a school, was to have some portion of daily leisure, uncontrolled but by her own sense of duty; it was for the three sisters, loving each other with so passionate an affection, to be together under one roof, and yet earning their own subsistence; above all, it was to have the power of watching over these two whose life and happiness ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... opportunity of aggravating it by a natural and unaffected expense, to which my air of negligence gave a lustre, and by my great alms and bounty, which, though very often secret, had the louder echo; whereas, in truth, I had acted thus at first only in compliance with inclination and out of a sense of duty. But the necessity I was under of supporting myself against the Court obliged me to be yet more liberal. I do but just mention it here to show you that the Court was jealous of me, when I never thought myself capable of giving them the least occasion, which made me reflect that a man is ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... fallacy in this behavior. Why coitus without sensual desire for it? No sense of duty impelled me, nor dread of sexual aberration. The explanation is this: attraction to females was not expunged, simply sublimed; my imagination, no longer importing women from observation, created its own delectable sirens, grown exacting and transcendental, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong: vain as the search for ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... artificial light imposed upon his eyes, he would write late in his rooms, or read up on subjects he was writing about in the reading-room in the Radcliffe Library building till it closed at ten P.M. He had, it will be seen, a high sense of duty, and "business before pleasure" was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... with the end of all their moves—St. Germains or St. James's. And one other man, and one only, because his life had been passed on their wider plane, and he could judge of the relative value of Connaught and Kent, divined the trend of their thoughts, and understood the deliberation, almost the sense of duty with which they ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... instructions about that shop: what went on about there was not to be meddled with unless absolutely disorderly, but any observations made were to be reported. There were no observations to make; but from a sense of duty and for the peace of his conscience, owing also to that doubtful flutter of the darkness, the constable crossed the road, and tried the door. The spring latch, whose key was reposing for ever off duty in the late Mr Verloc's waistcoat pocket, held as well as usual. While the conscientious officer ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... General Morgan was detached to raise troops in the western part of the State and in South Carolina. He soon became distinguished as a partisan officer, inspiring confidence and arousing the despondent Whigs to a more active sense of duty. His victory at the Cowpens was justly considered as one of the most brilliant and decided victories of the Revolution, and Congress accordingly voted him a gold medal. At the close of the war, he returned to his farm. In 1794 he was appointed by General ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... arms folded, stood looking after her till she was out of sight in the dark. Then a sense of duty well done came over his unsuspecting innocence. "Well, did you ever see anything like that? God, imagine being married to her! Poor Tonet! Swallows everything she hears, and tries to use it to get even! But ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... great strain on his moral sense, while he has not been altogether insensible to humanizing influences. He has been thus far in the service of others, and had wisdom enough to understand it was best for him to serve with fidelity. Thus, his sense of duty did not conflict with his interests, and he won ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that Annie and Doctor Morrell talked over half in joke took a more and more serious character in her sense of duty to the minister's memory and the wish to be of use, which was not extinct in her, however she mocked and defied it. It was part of the irony of her fate that the people who were best able to counsel with her in regard to it were Lyra, whom she could not approve, and Jack ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... to rebuke Gheta and had not calculated the effect of her speech upon Cesare. She was scrupulously careful not to mislead the latter with regard to her feeling for him. She went to a rather needless extreme to demonstrate that she conducted herself from a sense of duty and propriety alone. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... glances Darsie's embarrassment increased rather than diminished. She had no spirit left; a succession of monosyllables and an occasional "Oh, really!" made up the sum of her contributions to the conversation. It must have been a strong sense of duty which nerved Noreen Percival to offer the invitation which presumably was the object of ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a religious aptitude, "a feeling after God," and some longing to return to Him. There are still ideas in the reason, which, in their natural and logical development compel him to recognize a God. There is within his conscience a sense of duty, of obligation, and accountability to a Superior Power—"a law of the mind," thought opposed and antagonized by depraved passions and appetites—"the law in the members." There is yet a natural, constitutional sympathy of reason with the law of God—"it delights in that law," and consents "that ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Penelope had become rather more composed. She still stood guard over the coffee-pot; she never left it till she carried it to the table with her own hands, but she was lapsing into a sort of spent silence. She merely sighed at intervals with the contented weariness that comes from a sense of duty well done. But her half-sister still eyed her as a fat, motionless spider eyes a buzzing little fly which is ceasing to flutter. Miss Penelope had not observed a large pewter cup resting on the floor near the widow Broadnax's chair. It had been left there ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... tradition in opposing mountains to our course, which human enterprize and exertion would attempt in vain to pass. The determined and resolute character, however, of the corps, and the confidence which pervaded all ranks dispelled every emotion of fear and anxiety for the present; while a sense of duty, and of the honor which would attend the completion of the object of the expedition; a wish to gratify the expectations of the government, and of our fellow-citizens, with the feelings which novelty and discovery invariably inspire, seemed to insure to us ample support in our future ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... What sense of duty do Montaigne's Essays promote? What noble deed can ripen in the light of the disordered and discordant ideas they contain? All they can do is, to disturb the mind, not to clear it; to give rise to doubts, not to solve them; to nip the buds from which great actions ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... must, consequently, have warm and permanent interest in its prosperity: she becomes attached to her pupils from gratitude to their parents, from sympathy, from generosity, as well as from the strict sense of duty. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... of a suspicious person seen in that neighbourhood. It was a vague and improbable rumour and the superintendent was setting out merely as a matter of form, and to demonstrate his vigilance and almost abnormal sense of duty. Darkness had already fallen for an hour or two when he strode with dignified gait down the platform, exchanging a greeting with an acquaintance or two, till he came to the front carriage of the ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... very much. She was—as indeed she always is—beautifully dressed. Although she talked a good deal to Babberly who sat on the other side of her, she left me with the impression that I was the person who really interested her, and that she only turned occasionally to her other neighbour from a sense of duty. Babberly talked about Unionist clubs and the vigorous way in which the members of them were doing dumb bell exercises, so as to be in thoroughly good training when the Home Rule Bill became law. The subject evidently ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... date from the days of her childhood, and the remarkably high sense of duty of which she is possessed, makes her continually in search of some object of charity upon which to exert her beneficence and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... "well! Give an account of yourself, sir!" Pobloff watched her, completely stupefied. Only his discipline, his routine had carried him through this tremendous resurrection: he had beaten time from a sense of duty—why he found himself at the head of his band he understood not. He only knew that the experiment of playing the enchanted symphony backward was a success: that it had become disenchanted; that Luga, his violet, his harpist, his wife was restored to him to bring him the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... capitally at present. Habit, inclination, and now a sense of duty keep me at work, and the nature of our cruise affords me opportunities such as none but a blind man would fail to make use of. I have sent two or three papers home already to be published, which I have ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... this story, from the free life of the cattle range, and the wide expanse of the boundless prairie, to that rugged mountainous section of Arizona, where many fabulous fortunes have been won through the discovery of rich ore. The Broncho Rider Boys find themselves impelled, by a stern sense of duty, to make a brave fight against heavy odds, in order to retain possession of a valuable mine that is claimed by some of their relatives. That they meet with numerous strange and thrilling perils while enlisted in this service, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... note the haggard expression on Kennedy's face and turn it into an argument to carry his point. Kennedy smiled as he read the other's enthusiasm. I would have added my own urging, only I knew that nothing but a sense of duty would weigh ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... has probably said to him, paraphrasing Othello's speech to Cassio; "it is my duty, and—as by this time you must be aware—it is my keen if occasionally somewhat involved, sense of duty that is the cause of almost all our troubles in this play. You will always remain the object of what I cannot help feeling is misplaced affection on my part, mingled with contempt. But never more ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... President and Vice-President to the people and limiting the service of the former to a single term. So important do I consider these changes in our fundamental law that I can not, in accordance with my sense of duty, omit to press them upon the consideration of a new Congress. For my views more at large, as well in relation to these points as to the disqualification of members of Congress to receive an office from a President in whose election they have had an official agency, which I proposed ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... not show consideration for others cannot be an ideal lady. If she is considerate in a mechanical way, because she knows a lady must be so, it does not amount to much. And some women do all they can for others from a sense of duty. They study to make others happy in even trivial ways. They are good women, and on the whole—ladies. But the woman whose love for others is spontaneous, who sheds the radiance of kindness about her because she cannot help it—she is the lovely lady whose charm we all feel. Truth ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... the forerunner of Wordsworth and even of Cowper, but it would be a tragedy were he to drop out of the category of poets that are read. A dainty little edition in eight volumes is among my most treasured possessions. I have read it not as we read some so-called literature, from a sense of duty, but with unqualified interest. We have had much pure realism in these latter days; why not let us return to the most realistic of the poets. He was beloved by all the greatest among his contemporaries. Scott ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter |
