"By choice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in India for over two years and a half after my return from South Africa. Over one quarter of that time I have passed on the Indian trains travelling third class by choice. I have travelled up north as far as Lahore, down south up to Tranquebar, and from Karachi to Calcutta. Having resorted to third class travelling, among other reasons, for the purpose of studying the conditions under which this class of passengers travel, ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... rejects the company and conditions of love Men make them (the rules) without their (women's) help Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer) Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime O, the furious advantage of opportunity! Observed the laws of marriage, than I either ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... friend of mine, a spinster by choice, takes exception to my views on the single estate. I should be deeply grieved if any words of mine were to cause pain to other women. I have said before that some of the best women are spinsters, which is sad to a believer in marriage like myself. Two of the sweetest and noblest women I know ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... destroyed a great part of the town during the siege; and after he had regained possession, he granted the sites of the demolished tenements to his English subjects. In choosing this material, they may have been guided partly by choice, as being a domestic fashion, and partly by necessity; for the use of stone was restricted by Henry, to the building and repairing of 'eglises, chasteaulx, et forteresses.' The king, by letters-patent, declared ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... with a smile. "Be comforted. The brazen trumpets will be sure to drown the whisper from the well, and ten thousand mortals to one, be sure, will always turn by choice ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... monotonous. His life's happiness consisted in the acceptance of every misfortune without a murmur, and its wealth, in the total renunciation of life's joys and material benefits. He was a beggar by choice, a fantastic personage whose life was sacrificed to an idea of which he himself had ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... motto,—and it is written on the stars and the sod alike,—starve mentally, starve morally, starve physically. It is an inexorable law of nature that whatever is not used, dies. "Nothing for nothing," is her maxim. If we are idle and shiftless by choice, we shall be nerveless ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... in them. But a People, who, through a Winter of seventy Years Continuance, have never failed, or forsaken, or given us Cause of Offence, surely merit some Consideration, some grateful and chearing Ray to warm them to a Sense that Protestants are not, by Choice, of a cruel, unforgiving, and ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... oh! forgive An exiled Englishman if he esteem His native country highest, and would live By choice in England. Do not let it seem That on thy charms he sets but little store; He loves thee well, ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... met men at Disko and Uppernawik who consented to live in such climates; but my ideas upon the matter were that they lived there by compulsion and not by choice." ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... without saying or hearing anything of particular interest. He had been secretly delighted at his daughter's engagement, and had given his consent with gentle and reserved cordiality. He was a Tory, not exactly by choice, but simply—for the same reason as he was Church of England—because he was unable, in the fiber of him, to imagine anything else. Of course, Lord Talgarth was the principal personage in his world, simply because he was Lord Talgarth and owned practically the whole parish and two-thirds ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... independent—she could earn sufficient, and more than sufficient to keep herself in positive luxury if she chose,—but for this she had no taste. Her little rooms in Miss Leigh's house satisfied all her ideas of rest and comfort, and she stayed on with the kind old lady by choice and affection, helping her in many ways, and submitting to her guidance in every little social matter with the charming humility of a docile and obedient spirit all too rare in these days when youth is more full of effrontery than modesty. She had managed her "literary" business so far ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... through a silken loop at her waist. From the loop swung a tiny golden padlock, but in the lock stood an even tinier key, signifying that she was a higher caste than her husband or consort, that her fettering was by choice and not command. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... shoulders with a lion's hide And yellow spoils; then, on my bending back, The welcome load of my dear father take; While on my better hand Ascanius hung, And with unequal paces tripp'd along. Creusa kept behind; by choice we stray Thro' ev'ry dark and ev'ry devious way. I, who so bold and dauntless, just before, The Grecian darts and shock of lances bore, At ev'ry shadow now am seiz'd with fear, Not for myself, but for the charge I bear; Till, near the ruin'd gate arriv'd at last, Secure, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... alone can give! For whether the days be dark or bright,—whether tempest fills the air, or sunshine illumines the sky,—whether we are followed with fair blessing from friends, or pursued with the hate, envy and slander of injurious foes,—whether we drown by choice in tempestuous waters of passion, or float securely to the shores of peace,—whether our ships are bound for Death or for Life, we are safe in the hands of Love! And in the midst of what the world deems storm and wreckage, we can gaze ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the chain cried out that he was mayor or provost— I forget which—and the woman must be given up as a proved witch who had laid the wickedest spells upon many citizens of Dunquerque. All this he had to shout; for Affonzo, who—either ignorantly or by choice—was already on Satan's side, would not suffer him to come aboard or even nigh the ship's ladder. Moreover, he drove below so many of our crew as had gathered to the side to listen, commanding me with curses to see to this. Yet I heard something of the mayor's ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... sharing her simple habitation with him, had by choice formally become the wife of Olafaksoah. And according to the unwritten law of ages she was now as much his property as his dogs. He might abuse her, and desert—and thus divorce—her whenever he chose. She might, at ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... most insulting; one would think I were a milksop. I was hoping for a ghost—a white lady by choice. Did no Carnegie murder his wife, for instance, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... think it worth my while to deny it here; but what of that?—I am an Englishman by birth, but (let us say) a Dane by choice. You are a Dane by the fortune of birth, but an Englishman by choice; the worse choice, you ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... thou art, whose steps are led, By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, No greater wonders east or west can boast Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, The current pass, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Poor by choice!" The words were hardly audible, for Isabella was busying her fingers with some books that lay on the table between us. It may have been the effect of the lamp shade, but I thought her colour heightened when I glanced ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Venner was her father—looked like a man of culture and breeding, but melancholy and with a distracted air, as one whose life had met some fatal cross or blight. He saluted hardly anybody except his entertainers and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl's that brought him there, for he had the air of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... evening, through fast day and feast day, at weddings and at funerals got again and again endlessly, everlastingly this flow of war words. Let him reflect that peaceful men in corn-growing counties do not by choice sleep among the dogs of war nor wash their linen in the blood of their country's foe. Let him, in his sympathy with the talkers, remember with kindness the heroism of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... from any one or anything which is likely to overstrain nerves already at the threatening point, and none have the right to feel hurt if they are told they can neither be of use nor be received. At such a time, to some people companionship is a comfort, others shrink from dearest friends. One who is by choice or accident selected to come in contact with those in new affliction should, like a trained nurse, banish all consciousness of self; otherwise he or she will be or no service—and service is the only gift of value ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... poet, "live by choice. Every man is placed in the present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly co-operate; and, therefore, you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a little into the sun, as though to partake of its warmth for a minute in memory of his absent child. And then the dismal monotonous walk recommenced, until, exhausted, he regained the chamber and his bed, his domicile by choice. For several days the comte did not speak a single word. He refused to receive the visits that were paid him, and during the night he was seen to relight his lamp and pass long hours in writing, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had the insolence to speak of President Davis and Mister Lincoln in the same paragraph. No wonder the "dirt-eaters" of the Carolinas could be taught to despise a race among whom creatures might be found to do that by choice which they themselves were driven to do ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Pierre, daughter of the commandant of Fort Le Boeuf, now—Waterford, Pennsylvania, that the French had setup on the Ohio River, was Parisian by birth and training, but American by choice, for she had enjoyed on this lonesome frontier a freedom equal to that of the big-handed, red-faced half-breeds, and she was as wild as an Indian in her sports. Returning from a hunt, one day, she saw three men advancing along the trail, and, as it was easy to see that ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... that he was bold to act but timid to speak. He had no fear of death. When the ponds were first frozen, or when the bogs were most dangerous in the spring, when the quagmires were hidden under richly flowering grasses and cloudberry, he took his way over them by choice. He seemed to feel the need of exposing himself to danger as a compensation for the storms and terrors of the ocean, which he had no longer to meet. At night he was afraid in the woods, and even in the middle of the day the darkest thickets or the wide-stretching roots of a fallen pine could ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... played a brilliant part in the military activities which marked the winning of Mexican Independence from Spain in the eighteen-twenties, and also in the incessant Indian wars. He was a fighter by necessity, but also by choice. They shed blood with grace and nonchalance in those days, and the Delcasars were always known as ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... of doors altogether by choice, and they managed to make their escape in all weathers. If the vigilant watch that was kept upon them were relaxed for a moment, they disappeared as if by magic, and would probably only be recovered at ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... frankly materialistic view of life and of life's responsibilities, is shrewder than we generally credit, and the diplomatist's intimacy with the Pargeter household had aroused but small comment in the strange polyglot society in which lived, by choice, Tom Pargeter, the cosmopolitan millionaire who was far more of a personage in Paris and in the French sporting world than he could ever have hoped to ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... produced on the minds of the men engaged in such a contest as this, or, indeed, in any contest of arms whatever, when it assumes the proportions of a regular war. The volunteering of our young men of all classes, in numbers so immense, is an extraordinary phenomenon. These soldiers by choice, many of them educated and intelligent, and impelled by deliberate considerations of principle, willingly undergo the hard labor of military training, of marches and campaigns, and the still more trying inactivity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and satisfaction in relationships with both sexes, there is usually a greater degree of satisfaction in connection with one sex. Most of the bisexual prefer their own sex. It is curiously rare to find a person, whether man or woman, who by choice exercises relationships with both sexes and prefers the opposite sex. This would seem to indicate that the bisexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... should presume to depose one emperor and choose another without his consent, refused to confirm the election of Albert, and loudly inveighed him as the murderer of Adolphus. Albert, with characteristic impulsiveness, declared that he was emperor by choice of the electors and not by ratification of the pope, and defiantly spurned the opposition of the pontiff. Considering himself firmly seated on the throne, he refused to pay the bribes of tolls, privileges, territories, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... bill described above caused a breach between his majesty and his ministers; a breach which admitted of no reparation. Confidence, indeed, between his majesty and his cabinet had never existed; for the king had accepted his ministers, not by choice, but by necessity. This was well known; and it is easy to believe, as some have represented, that his suspicion of them was increased by the whispers of men who were in search of place and power. Secret ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... followed by Johanna's eager eyes, gave the spike its first wavering tap, the president of the road drove it home, and "Susie" was bound in wedlock to the Age. Married for money, some might say. Yet married, bound—despite all incompatibilities—to be shaped—if not at once by choice, then at last by merciless necessity—to all that Age's lines and standards, to walk wherever it should lead, partner in all its ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... change your eyes," said Dean boldly, that is boldly for a chauffeur, but he knew that Jane knew he wasn't a chauffeur except by choice, so that made it ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... Macedonians; then, leaving a moderate interval, he formed a reserve of Italian troops, consisting principally of Bruttians, more of whom had followed him on his departure from Italy by compulsion and necessity than by choice. His cavalry also he placed in the wings, the Carthaginian occupying the right, the Numidian the left. Various were the means of exhortation employed in an army consisting of a mixture of so many different kinds of men; men differing in language, customs laws, arms, dress, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... by choice, do some of the lighter forms of manual labor—but they are very few. Nearly every woman marries within a few years after she receives her land; if it is to be cultivated, her husband then takes ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... his gentle shade takes any satisfaction in the discovery? His was by choice a vita fallens. Early in life he made, as we learn from a passage in Centuries of Meditations, his election between worldly prosperity and the life of the Spirit, between the chase of fleeting phenomena and ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... criminal beside the way he looked to be sleepin'. 'N' he don't remember nothin' a tall to-day, not one livin' doughnut does that boy recolleck, 'n' she says 'f she didn't know it to be so on a'count o' the empty tin she'd doubt herself an' believe him by choice, he looks so truthful. But empty tins is empty tins, 'n' no one can deny ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... different this language from that held to our admirals during the last war; for it would be an error to believe that they followed by choice and temper the timid and defensive system which predominated in the tactics of the navy. The government, always finding the expenses exacted by the employment of the navy excessive, too often prescribed to its admirals to keep the sea as long as possible without ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... unrolled. Now, none of us had ever seen a circus performer, save in the ring; and I think we were disappointed, for a moment, at finding we had in our midst no spangled angels in rosy tights, no athletes standing on their heads by choice, and quite preferring the landscape upside down, but a set of shabbily dressed, rather jaded men and women, who were, for all the world, just like ourselves, save that they walked more gracefully, and spoke in softer voice. But when the report went round that the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... who would naturally have played a prominent part in Kentucky politics, failed to do so from a variety of causes. This was George Rogers Clark. He was by preference a military rather than a civil leader; he belonged by choice and habit to the class of pioneers and Indian fighters whose influence was waning; his remarkable successes had excited much envy and jealousy, while his subsequent ignominious failure had aroused contempt; and, finally, he was undone by his fondness for strong drink. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... vicar ever intends to enter the holy estate of matrimony," returned Mr. Carlyon. "He is an old bachelor by choice, and in my humble opinion is likely to remain so; and then his worthy housekeeper, Mrs. Finch, makes him ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... noted in his countrymen began to work so soon as the new king was well installed in his office; the coveted post of chief vizier could but be assigned to one, and the selection of the fortunate individual was the disappointment of a host of expectants; nobles absent from the coronation, whether by choice or necessity, began to be afraid that their absence would cost them dear, when Tiridates had time to reflect upon it and to listen to their detractors. The thoughts of the malcontents turned towards their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... to Atterbury, were considered by him as the most excellent of Pope's performances; and the writer was advised, since he knew where his strength lay, not to suffer it to remain unemployed. This year (1715), being by the subscription enabled to live more by choice, having persuaded his father to sell their estate at Binfield, he purchased, I think only for his life, that house at Twickenham to which his residence afterwards procured so much celebration, and removed thither with his father and mother. Here ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... thief, flying from a friendly pursuit with a notorious reprobate; afterwards implicated in some discreditable transaction about a horse, rejecting all—every hand that could save him, clinging by choice to the lowest companions and the meanest-habits, disappearing from the country, and last seen, ten years ago—the beard not yet on his chin—with that same reprobate of whom I have spoken, in Paris; a day or so only before his companion, a coiner—a murderer—fell by the hands of the police! You ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sauntered into the cul-de-sac to which Sapps Court was an appendix. He appeared to be unconcerned in human affairs, and indeed independent of Time, Space, and Circumstance. He addressed a creature that was hanging upside down on some railings, apparently by choice. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... saying that men's characters and habits are formed in the earliest years of their lives. Froude was by profession and by choice a man of letters. He loved writing, and whatever he read, or heard, or saw, turned itself without effort into literary shape. The occupations and amusements of his life can be traced in his Short Studies. But he had not been reared in a literary atmosphere. He had been brought ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Highland Boy oft visited The house that held this prize; and, led By choice or chance, did thither come One day when no one was at home, And ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... too blest, Elwina, could I hope You met me here by choice, or that your bosom Shar'd the warm transports mine must ever feel ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile and vicious men cannot do any of these things. Their thoughts are scattered, vague, uncertain, cumbersome: and the worst stick to them the longest; many indeed by choice, the greater part by necessity, and accompanied, some by weak ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... praise confiscations or counter-confiscations as long as I live. When they happen by necessity, I shall think the necessity lamentable and odious: I shall think that anything done under it ought not to pass into precedent, or to be adopted by choice, or to produce any of those shocking retaliations which never suffer dissensions to subside. Least of all would I fix the transitory spirit of civil fury by perpetuating and methodizing it in tyrannic government. If it were permitted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I can not think that Philip, either if he was forced into his former measures, or if he were now giving up the Thebans, would pertinaciously oppose their enemies; his present conduct rather shows that he adopted those measures by choice. All things prove to a correct observer, that his whole plan of action is against our state. And this has now become to him a sort of necessity. Consider. He desires empire: he conceives you to be his only opponents. He has been for ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... these things? Was the world cruel by choice to a girl against whom nothing more serious could be charged than that she was obscure ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... having loved too well. There was in him a vital scorn of all, As if the worst had fall'n which could befall. He stood a stranger in this breathing world, An erring spirit from another hurl'd; A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped By choice the perils he by ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... word, a laugh, or a cheer. But this was the only sort of reply in which he appears to have excelled. He was perhaps the only great English orator who did not think it any advantage to have the last word, and who generally spoke by choice before his most formidable antagonists. His merit was almost entirely rhetorical. He did not succeed either in exposition or in refutation; but his speeches abounded with lively illustrations, striking apophthegms, well-told anecdotes, happy allusions, passionate appeals. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in this book is to teach precision in writing; and of good writing (which, essentially, is clear thinking made visible) precision is the point of capital concern. It is attained by choice of the word that accurately and adequately expresses what the writer has in mind, and by exclusion of that which either denotes or connotes something else. As Quintilian puts it, the writer should so write that his reader not only may, but ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... say to Dame Isold': "Though Cornwall's crown and England's isle for Ireland's child he chose, his own by choice she may not be; he brings the king his bride. A hero-knight Tristan is hight! I've said, nor care to measure ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... a powder-magazine.' Such were the points connected with the Irish, which first awakened in my mind the desire of acquiring it; and by acquiring it I became, as I have already said, enamoured of languages. Having learnt one by choice, I speedily, as the reader will perceive, learnt others, some of which ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... inconsiderate Jade! had you been hang'd, it would not have vex'd me, for that might have been your Misfortune; but to do such a mad thing by Choice; The ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... the changes that they brought were few. The descendants of the ancient criminals remained in the ruined city, at first of necessity, afterwards by choice, finding there fuel and shelter in abundance besides large stores of non-perishable food supplies. When, in the next generation, these provisions became exhausted it was inevitable that the refugees should fix ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... living was very simple: coffee in the morning, tea in the evening, animal food by choice only once a day, wine only when with others using it, but always pie at breakfast. "It stood before him and was the first thing eaten." Ten o'clock was his bed-time, six his hour of rising until the last ten years of his life, when he rose at seven. Work or ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in some measure, with the progress of time? If it stops because there is now no need of it, then it is plain there is, and ever has been, an all powerful intelligence. But stay! (said he, with one of his satyrick laughs[131].) Ha! ha! ha! I shall suppose Scotchmen made necessarily, and Englishmen by choice.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... and, sure enough, in a minute they saw the figure approaching them. Malone smiled at her, and, tentatively, she smiled back. They began the long march to the exit of the club, slowly and regally, though not by choice. ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... present. There are no marriageable girls in any of these three ato now, and the small girls occupy near-by o'-lag. These three o'-lag will be rebuilt when the girls are large enough to cook food for the men who build. The o'-lag of Amkawa is in Buyayyeng near the o'-lag of the latter; it is there by choice ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... one May morning, as I was higgling over the purchase of a fine Virgil, I made the acquaintance of a remarkable young gentleman, Mr. Sam Adams, a genius by birth, a maltster by trade, and a politician by choice. We would discuss books together in Master Wilkins', or slip out to a retired inn called "The Two Palaverers" and discuss politics over a glass of wine and a pipe of tobacco. I liked him so much ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... feelings of my heart were not regulated by choice: whatever the Prince may be, there is nothing in him to make me prefer his love. Don Silvio shows, as well as he, all the qualities of a renowned hero. The same noble virtues and the same high birth made me hesitate ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... of his life, though ignorant of what literary men regard as the a-b-c of knowledge, he was supremely well satisfied with himself; that till he was past forty he worked irregularly at odd jobs, but was by choice a loafer; that he was a man of superb physical health and gloried in his body, without much regard for moral standards; that his strength was broken by nursing wounded soldiers during the war, a beautiful and unselfish service; that ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... ancients had all this knowledge, how came it not to display itself in their performances? How came they to make such difficulties of what are now esteemed trifles? And how came they never to make any voyages, by choice at least, that were out of sight of land? Again, with respect to the Chinese, if they excel us so much in knowledge, how came the missionaries to be so much admired for their superior skill in the sciences? But to cut the matter short, ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... do I try to give you this personal description of him? If you ever subscribed to a Ladies' Charity in London, you know Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well as I do. He was a barrister by profession; a ladies' man by temperament; and a good Samaritan by choice. Female benevolence and female destitution could do nothing without him. Maternal societies for confining poor women; Magdalen societies for rescuing poor women; strong-minded societies for putting poor women into poor men's places, and leaving the men to shift for themselves;—he was vice-president, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... this place at ease and by choice, and had no evils to suffer or to fear; yet the imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens, a flattering notion of ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... have gradually ripened up to a moment when we should have become transfigured, and in the surpassing brilliance have been translated to higher planes of being. Perhaps our Lord had reached this material consummation, and was now on the wonderful border land, and could by choice slip into ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... merchant, who wished to follow in the steps of Robinson Crusoe. He was put to the test, and became convinced in the end that it is better to live the life of a wealthy merchant in a great city than to endure hardship by choice."—School ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... exterior. In this she dropped the will, and fastened it securely. What and who instigated her to evil? Shall any dare say it was religion? She was a Catholic by birthright—but an alien from the practices of her holy faith by choice, and through human pride and worldliness—did its spirit lead her into crime? Judge of its effects by May's humble and earnest life. She was true and practical in her character, and acted out the precepts of her faith. Judge it, by ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... his French friends. The literary forms which have had so much attraction for the best French minds both before and after 1789— the chronicle and the memoir—were precisely those to which his unfailing interest in human nature led him by choice. Paradin and Froissart were companions of whom he never grew tired; and it would be difficult to decide whether he found more absorbing matter of entertainment in Sully or ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... not mistaken in her surmise that the doctor was by choice at least more of a scientist than a physician. Patients he had to be sure, a respectable number, composed mostly of English and American tourists, well-to-do people. Esther thought that if he had been more ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... power, but by those ideas and methods which were common to human nature, and were to make a people great, and able to govern themselves. [Applause.] The great elements of that State thus developed, were education, industry and commerce. Education which, as Aristotle says, "makes one do by choice what others do by force;" industry, which by occupying and satisfying all the avidities of our nature, leaves to government only the simple duty of curbing the vicious and punishing the wicked. Commerce, that, by unfolding to the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... by choice," he said; "after much prayer and study of Scripture, I have come to the conclusion that, as Judaism was the first religion, so it's to be the last. Christianity I consider an episode in ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Friends are not easily made," answered Thorleif, laughing. "Now tell me what you are thinking of doing. Maybe I can advise you, being an adventurer by choice, as it seems you must be by need. But first I will offer you both a share in our cruise, if you will turn viking and go the way of Hengist and Horsa, your forbears. Atheling and thane's son you will be to us still, if you have to take an oar now ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... maidens in whose lives there is but one fixed and certain fact—that of having missed the matrimonial market. The shrine of their devotions, and the present citadel of their attack, was seated between them—he also being lean, pale, high-arched of brow, high anglican by choice, and noticeably weak of chin, in whose sable garments there was framed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... hardly knew what I wished with those charming girls. I do not say: that had the arrangement been in my power, I should have divided my heart between them; I certainly felt some degree of preference: though I should have been happy to have had Mademoiselle de G——, for a mistress, I think, by choice, I should have liked her, better as a confidante; be that as it may, I felt on leaving them as though I could not live without either. Who would have thought that I should never see them more; and that here our ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... "No one does by choice," explained Jocelyn. "My father was a judge on the Coast, and since his death my brother Maurice has held an appointment at Loango. We are obliged to live there for ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the Teuton was a hardier, more sturdy warrior than the Celt: he had not spent centuries of quiet settlement and imitative civilisation under the aegis of Imperial Rome: he had not learnt to love the arts of peace and he cultivated none but those of war; he was by choice a warrior and a sailor, a wanderer to other lands, a plougher of the desolate places of the "vasty deep," yet withal a lover of home, who trod at times, with bitter longing for his native land, the thorny paths of exile. To him physical cowardice was the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... A vegetarian by choice and usually by necessity, Bruin is accused of anthropophagy, and every child is taught that the depths of the woodland are infested by ravening bears with a morbid taste for tender youth. Poor, harried, timid Ursus, nosing among the fallen ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... medley created by the hasty arrangements of the various clans under their respective banners, for the purpose of getting into the order of march, was in itself a gay and lively spectacle. They had no tents to strike, having generally, and by choice, slept upon the open field, although the autumn was now waning, and the nights began to be frosty. For a little space, while they were getting into order, there was exhibited a changing, fluctuating; and confused appearance of waving tartans and floating plumes, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... By choice cookery is meant exactly what the words imply. There will be no attempt to teach family or inexpensive cooking, those branches of domestic economy having been so excellently treated by capable hands already. It ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... of the cotillon obtaining at that period do not concern us here. It is sufficient to say that, as a result of some evolution, by chance or by choice Counsellor found himself with the Countess on a raised dais at one end of the room, while Mademoiselle Selpdorf and Rallywood formed the corresponding couple at the other end. Between them the dance proceeded, thus leaving the respective couples virtually ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... repulsion to that coarse vulgar that will be sure to continue in existence, in this country, long enough to be a trial of the moral taste of this better cultivated race. It will be seen that they cannot associate with it by choice, and in the spirit of companionship. And while they are thus withheld on their part, from approximating, it may be hoped that in certain better disposed parts of that vulgar, there may be a conversion of the repelling principle into an impulse to approach and join them on their own ground. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... famishing, down-breaking sieges in them, must largely be left untold—Hilary's, Anna's, Flora's, all. Kincaid was in greater temptation than he knew. Many a battery boy, sick, sound or wounded—Charlie for one—saw it more plainly than he. Anna, supposed to be far away and away by choice, was still under the whole command's impeachment, while Flora, amid conditions that gave every week the passional value of a peacetime year, was here at hand, an ever-ministering angel to them and to their hero; yet they never included ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... a still small voice Under your waistcoat, where your heart is: "We fought by contract, not by choice, Ay, and the spoils are not our party's; The Tories may be beat, but we know This is not ASQUITH'S, it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... therefore free, not through indolence but by choice; loving, moreover, all that God had made and very little that man had made. Of life I knew nothing but love, of the world only my mistress, and I did not care to know anything more. So, falling in love upon leaving college, I sincerely believed that ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... pass to another branch of our subject, on the physical relations of her who by choice or other reasons never marries. It is a common observation among physicians who have devoted themselves to the study of woman's physical nature, that, in spite of those perils of maternity which we have ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... me on my first visit against coming to the consulate again, as the surveillance of the Fenians was constant, and if my business with him were suspected it might lead to needless complications, so that I was obliged, in order to consult him, to meet him at some prearranged place, a restaurant by choice, where we could exchange information without attracting the attention of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... But though they counted among them Englishmen of eminence (one of these was Chaucer's friend, "the philosophical Strode"), they in truth never played a more than secondary part in this country, to whose soil the delicate machinery of the Inquisition, of which they were by choice the managers, was never congenial. Of far greater importance for the population of England at large was the Order of the Franciscans or (as they were here wont to call themselves or to be called) Minorites or Grey Friars. To them the poor had habitually looked ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... happier and my mind much more at ease since I find myself here. On the other side of the island everything reminded me that we had been shipwrecked; and I could not help thinking of home and my own country; but here we appear as if we had been long settled, and as if we had come here by choice." ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... placed under an oak, by the side of the river, and a round low table in the middle of it was soon covered with soup, sheeps' kidneys, and a fat capon, roasted to a minute, preceded by onions and cheese, as a rinfresco, and followed by choice grapes and clotted cream, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... what has preceded upon his manner of preserving his balance, it must be at once apparent that, supposing a kestrel were hovering in a calm and a wind arose, he would at once face it, else his balance could not be kept. Even on the ground almost all birds face the wind by choice; but the hovering kestrel has no choice. He must hover facing the wind, or it would upset him: just as you may often see a rook flung half aback by a sudden gust. Hence has arisen the supposition that ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... be lonely here, Julia," he said, that evening at dinner. "I have come to be known as something of a hermit by choice; but while Madge and Eloise lived with me, I fancy they had a good many callers, and they went out, to the mild degree that society smiles upon in the case of a recent widow and orphan. They were able to manage their own affairs; ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... by choice or chance, To Modena, where still religiously Among her ancient trophies is preserved Bologna's bucket (in its chain it hangs Within that reverend tower, the Guirlandine), Stop at a Palace near the Reggio-gate. Dwelt in of old by one of the Orsini. Its noble gardens, terrace above terrace, Its sparkling ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... is to warn them of the fact. Those who hitherto have devoted themselves to the preparatory tasks of criticism have either chosen them in preference to others because they had a taste for them, or else have submitted to them because they knew they were necessary; those who engaged in them by choice have less merit, from the ethical point of view, than those who submitted to them, but, for all that, they have mostly obtained better results, because they have worked, not as a matter of duty, but joyfully and whole-heartedly. It is important that every one should realise the situation, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... downwards to the bark, then slacked the grip of its ten toes, unhooked its thumbs, dropped, and flew. Never was flight more graceful, never more perfectly controlled. For fear of the swallows, the summer beetles fly by choice at twilight; even then they must needs fly low, for the noctule never misses, and the crunch of his teeth in a beetle's horny back is all he knows ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... on equal ground, such was his ambition, and it never did occur to him that this very striving might make him unfit in other ways to be her mate. His isolated life, absolutely unrelieved by any social intercourse with his fellows, made him silent by choice, still and self-contained in manner, abrupt of speech. In his unconsciousness it never occurred to him that it is the little courtesies and graces of speech and action which commend a man first to the notice of the ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the foot of the hill on which Asisi is built a farm-school was established a few years ago, the first director being the Benedictine abate Lisi, a nobleman by birth and a farmer-monk by choice. His death a year or two ago was deeply regretted. To this establishment boys are sent, instead of to prison, after their first conviction for an offence against the law. We saw this school on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... selection we mean union by choice among males and females. In the vertebrates, the female chooses much more commonly than the male, the latter being more disposed to pair with all the females than the females with all the males. We may ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... first sight of Rothley Temple, with its background of hill and greenwood. He is remembered as sitting at the window in the hall, reading Dante to himself, or translating it aloud as long as any listener cared to remain within ear-shot. He occupied, by choice, a very small chamber on the ground floor, through the window of which he could escape unobserved while afternoon callers were on their way between the front door and the drawing-room. On such occasions he would take ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... other people. According to him, the red cassocks of the acolytes at St. Margaret's are cut out of the very skirts of the Woman of Babylon, and Father Turney and his curates—they're all Fathers there, and celibates by choice—are wolves in wool, and Mephistophelean plotters against the liberties of the Church. Punch published a cartoon of the Bishop shutting his eyes and charging at a windmill in a cope and chasuble. He is sending out a string of Protestant-Church-Integrity vans all over England, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves |
