"Free will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meaning. Beauty expresses the object of the perceptions of the soul. Truth denotes the quality of the judgments of intelligences. Goodness (I speak of moral goodness) expresses a certain direction of the free will. There exists no means of causing to proceed from nature, or from matter, the attributes of the spiritual being. This is only done by imaginary transformations, by a course of arrant juggling. The flame does not feel its own heat, light does not see itself, the planets ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... gently from him: "Tillie," he said, with a convulsive effort to remain calm, "you gave me up of your own free will—you know that—and now you've come round too late. The other ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... to the general acknowledgment, by thoughtful minds, of the subjection of historical facts to scientific laws, the most fundamental continues to be that which is grounded on the doctrine of Free Will, or, in other words, on the denial that the law of invariable Causation holds true of human volitions; for if it does not, the course of history, being the result of human volitions, can not be a subject of scientific laws, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... his daughter was limited. Her consent was important. "A marriage cannot exist," remarks Paulus, "unless all parties consent."[34] Julianus writes also that the daughter must give her permission[35]; yet the statement of Ulpian which immediately follows in the Digest shows that she had not complete free will in the matter: "It is understood that she who does not oppose the wishes of her father gives consent. But a daughter is allowed to object only in case her father chooses for her a man of unworthy or disgraceful character."[36] The son had an advantage ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... the Sound of Mull one blustery November day, I heard a most animated discussion on the question "Has the Deity unlimited Free Will?" The disputants had all the appearance of sensible crofters—they certainly talked more intelligibly than most commentators on Kant. Some of the ship's crew joined in the talk in such a way as to show that they understood perfectly well the question at ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... obscure the significance of every lamb that bled in the Temple and of every wine-offering poured out before the Holy Place, to deny or to obscure (if we will but penetrate to the roots of things) the free will of Man and the Love of God. If Christ had not died, ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... followed! Strange, that thought employed to so little purpose at other times should pretend to be so edifying in meetings. Reveries on probability, as being a mere relation between a cause and a spectator, or bystander; not between cause and effect. Thought it important touching free will and foreknowledge. God is certain of futurity—we are uncertain. Futurity is certain in relation to God, uncertain in relation to us—probable or improbable in relation to us, neither in relation ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... philosophy and sociology are most widely removed from Marx. It is a view which Chesterton would always have dismissed with the contempt it deserves. Both he and Belloc saw as the determining factor in history, because it is the determining factor in human life, the free will of man. This does not mean that they would deny that the economic factor has often been powerful in conquering man's liberty, or a motive in its exercise. But Chesterton regarded the present age as a diseased one precisely ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... this,—numbers of angels and men above these,—and creatures in glory surpassing them again,—are within the compass of the boundless power and omnipotency of God. But yet for all this it might have fallen out that nothing should actually and really have been, unless his majesty had of his own free will decreed what is, or hath been, or is to be. His will determines his power, and, as it were, puts it in the nearest capacity to act and exercise itself. Here, then, we must look for the first beginning of all things ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... alter such decrees, Fortuna sua a cujusque fingitur moribus, [5903]Qui cauti, prudentes, voti compotes, &c., let no man then be terrified or molested with such astrological aphorisms, or be much moved, either to vain hope or fear, from such predictions, but let every man follow his own free will in this case, and do as he sees cause. Better it is indeed to marry than burn, for their soul's health, but for their present fortunes, by some other means to pacify themselves, and divert the stream of this fiery torrent, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... example of patience. A person of some influence and consideration once applied to Blessed Francis asking him to obtain an ecclesiastical preferment for a certain Priest. The Bishop replied that in the matter of conferring benefices he had, of his free will, tied his own hands, having left the choosing of fitting subjects to the decision of a board of examiners, who were to recommend the person to be appointed after due examination of the merits and talents of the candidates. As for himself, he said, he simply presided over ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... discussion of the perplexed question of fate and free will, which I attempted to agitate. 'Sir, (said he,) we KNOW our will is free, and THERE'S ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... organic life fall into the same category. Man himself with all his differentiated faculties is but a function of matter and motion in extraordinary complex and involved relations. Man's imputation to himself of free will and unending consciousness apart from his machine is an idle tale built on his desires, not on his experiences nor his knowledge of nature. This imputation of a will or soul to nature, independent of it or in any sense above it, is a still ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... impelled by the word of their leader, not by their own free will. Protect your homes! And to save those who are most dear to you, be ready to follow my example, and to fall ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... this all out; and if the boys who have been bullying little Graham have not the bravery to come forward, and confess it of their own free will, I must take measures to discover who they were. But I warn them," added the doctor, "that if I find them out before they have come forward and freely confessed their base conduct, their time at this school will be short. To-day is a half-holiday. All the lower school ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in the mines, but since the emancipation of the colonies and the abolition of that nefarious law, they have returned to their agricultural pursuits, and are only occasionally found of their own free will ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... to travelers that the Mexican Indians possess the secret of a drug which, when administered to a man, will not kill him, or do him any physical harm, but will reduce him to a state of abject imbecility, so that his free will is destroyed, and he may be led by any one who may wish to lead him. This drug administered to Rothsay, by the woman, must have so deprived him of his reason as to induce him to follow any ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... erecting the two symbolic pillars Jachin and Boaz—Jachin so called from the root "Yak" meaning "One," indicating the Mathematical element of Law; and Boaz, from the root "Awaz" meaning "Voice" indicating Personal element of Free Will. These names are taken from the description in I Kings vii, 21 and II Chron. iii, 17 of the building of Solomon's Temple, where these two pillars stood before the entrance, the meaning being that the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... countess and the Castle Richmond people, had frightened her into falseness; and, therefore, it became him to maintain his right by any means—almost by any means, within his power. Give her up of his own free will and voice! Say that Herbert Fitzgerald should take her with his consent! that she should go as a bride to Castle Richmond, while he stood by and smiled, and wished them joy! Never! And so he rode away with a stern heart, leaving her standing ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... living in this place of my free will. I am not devoting myself to works of charity. I am—no, no, I was—merely a poor gentleman, who, on a certain day, found that he had wasted his substance in a foolish speculation, and who, ashamed to take his friends into his ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... two must be trained, of his own free will, (4) to prosecute a pressing business rather ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... conditions shall attend the status of slavery, must depend upon the municipal law which creates and upholds it."[311] A comparative study of the legislation of all the slave States with regard to the Negro both as slave and free will very clearly reveal the effect of these varying conditions in the several States concerned.[312] Nothing is more necessary to a calm and unprejudiced study of the institution of slavery than the realization ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... have bestowed me in marriage at once, I believe, if Heaven had not aided me, and they could not agree on the person. And then my dear Countess promised me that she would never let me be given without my free will.' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... projects. To the lords and knights of North France were joined many of lower rank, whose names show that they came from Gascony, Burgundy, the duchy of France, or the neighbouring districts belonging to the German Empire. Of their own free will they ranged themselves round William, to vindicate the right which he claimed to the English crown, but each man naturally entertained brilliant hopes also for himself. William is depicted as a man of vast bodily strength, which none could surpass or weary out, with ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... rage concerning De Courtenay had spent itself. There remained only the deep anger of the man who has lost in the game of love. And yet, what right had he to cherish even this wholesome anger against his rival when the maid had chosen of her own free will? As well hold grudge to the great Power whose wisdom had given the man such marvellous beauty. As he lay in the darkness listening to the unearthly noises he worked it all out ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Mr. Parasyte had been very uneasy and nervous. It was plain to him that he ruled the boys by their free will, rather than by his own power; and this was not a pleasant thing for a man like him to know. Doubtless he felt that he had dropped the reins of his team, which, though going very well just then, might take it into its head to run away with him whenever it was convenient. Probably he felt the necessity ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... always ready. Could I have lived and kept on scorning myself as I did that night? Do you remember?" She bent her imperative, clears gaze upon Thorne. "I told you the truth when you gave me a chance to lie. Heaven knows what it cost to say, 'I came with him of my own free will!'" ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the Truth; and that, since I was innocent, I shoulde write to my Husband to clear myself. I said briefly, I woulde; and I mean to do soe, onlie not to-daye. Oh, sweet countrie Life! I was made for you and none other. This riding and walking at one's owne free Will, in the fresh pure Ayre, coming in to earlie, heartie, wholesome Meals, seasoned with harmlesse Jests,—seeing fresh Faces everie Daye come to the House, knowing everie Face one meets out of Doores,—supping in the Garden, and remaining in the Ayre long after the Moon has ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... not sorry. Death was the easiest possible solution of all his difficulties. He had looked for it many times; but he was glad to think that on this day, at least, he had not sought it of his own free will. He thought of his mother—he could not call her otherwise in this last hour—he thought of the father and the brother who had been dear to him in this world, and would not, he believed, be less dear to him in the next; he thought of Angela, who would be a little sorry for him, and Hugo, whom he ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that we can hope for great harmony in the future, I consider it as the only remedy, and the one most fitting for the authority of your Lordship, for Don Pedro de Monrroy to display his nobility of character, and resign himself of his own free will to the will of Don Sebastian, thus valuing his favor more than the comforts which he is now enjoying. If he so act, I am sure that it will open a free door for greater promotions [for him], and for the consolation of this community. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... infants and unmarried females under eighteen years, may, of their own free will, bind themselves, in writing, to serve as apprentices and servants, in any trade or employment; males until the age of twenty-one, and females until the age of eighteen years, or for a shorter time. But the minor must have the ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... shalt choose may be thine to have and to possess. The nature allotted to all other creatures, within laws appointed by ourselves, restrains them. Thou, restrained by no narrow bounds, according to thy own free will, in whose power we have placed thee, shalt define thy nature for thyself. We have set thee midmost the world, that thence thou mightest more conveniently survey whatsoever is in the world. Nor have we made thee either heavenly or ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... if it was providential at all, that they were both humbly silent a moment; even Mrs. March was silent. In this supreme moment she would not prompt her husband by a word, a glance, and it was from his own free will that he said, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... who has no vote, and for this reason cannot be considered in politics, and in doing this of its own free will, without any solicitation on my part, the Democratic party of this State has shown that it is in full accord with the Jeffersonian doctrine that the office should seek the man and not the man the office; and also that it fully appreciates the fact which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... its justice, and resisted it with insolence. The king ordered that the exchequer stipulations should be put in force with rigidness and violence. When a business cannot be settled with fair words, we must of necessity make use of foul. When a man will not contribute of his own free will, if another enforces him he ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Unity and Eternity of God, which the two religions had borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed the natural consequence of the last doctrine—a doctrine, however, to which the Jews had not arrived—the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; free will in this life; in the next, recompense for the good, and punishment for the evil. He found, more pure, perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in Protestantism, that sublime morality which preaches equality to man, fraternity, love, charity, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that you have, Don John; more than that, I don't believe you have; but if you answer any question of mine, you must do it of your own free will and accord." ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... by free will, which implies choice between good and evil. With all the evil that there is, there is no man but would rather be a free agent, than a mere machine without the evil; and what is best for each individual ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... to the Queen Costanza: whence I pray thee, when return'd, To my fair daughter go, the parent glad Of Aragonia and Sicilia's pride; And of the truth inform her, if of me Aught else be told. When by two mortal blows My frame was shatter'd, I betook myself Weeping to him, who of free will forgives. My sins were horrible; but so wide arms Hath goodness infinite, that it receives All who turn to it. Had this text divine Been of Cosenza's shepherd better scann'd, Who then by Clement on my hunt was set, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... tell him you are my wife!" And did she—with those blue eyes on her, which she had never met before, but which now caught and chained her gaze, so that she could not look away, try as she might—did she of her own free will answer, "Yes, Monsieur, I am your wife, if you say it; if you will keep me from him, Monsieur!" Then—Marie did not know what came then. There were more words between the two men, loud and fierce on one side, low and fierce on the other; and ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... lives. It was the old, old strife, the insoluble mystery; and the minister's wife, far from making light of it, allowed its full weight to press in upon the members of her class, and wisely left the question as the apostle leaves it, with a statement of the two great truths of Sovereignty and Free Will without attempting the impossible task of harmonizing these into a perfect system. After a half-hour of discussion, she brought the lesson to a close with a very short and very simple presentation of the practical ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... dry powder; but as slaked lime is somewhat soluble in water, and as it evolves 3 calories in so dissolving, if sufficient water is present to take up the calcium hydroxide entirely into the liquid form (i.e., that of a solution), the amount of heat set free will be greater by those 3 calories, i.e., ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... of the Garter one day, for aught I know," said Leicester, "for he advances rapidly—she hath capped verses with him, and such fooleries. I would gladly abandon, of my own free will, the part—I have in her fickle favour; but I will not be elbowed out of it by the clown Sussex, or this new upstart. I hear Tressilian is with Sussex also, and high in his favour. I would spare him for considerations, but he will thrust himself on his fate. Sussex, too, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... evolution from the animal he was. Democracy, for one with any comic and cosmic animal sense, is the only natural form of government, because alone it recognizes States as organisms, with spontaneous growth, and a free will of their own. Democracy is final; other forms of government are but steps on the way to it. It is the big thing, because it can and does embody and make use of Aristocracy. It is the rule of the future, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,(*) but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... entire episcopate. He countenanced, to a certain extent, the current doctrine respecting human tradition and the retention of auricular confession. He discerned a gradual approach to concord in respect to justification, and found no difficulty in the divergent views of free will and original sin. He did, indeed, insist upon the rejection of the worship of saints, and advocate expunging from the ritual all appeals for their assistance. So, too, monks ought to be allowed to forsake the cloister, and ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... throne, he does so either of his own free will, or from compulsion. These acts have been sufficiently numerous as to form quite an interesting history. Take a few of them by way of example. Amadeus of Savoy abdicated in 1439, in order to become a priest. The collapse of his great schemes induced the Emperor Charles ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... a thing as free will in our family? I never detected it. As babes we were yoked to the chariot to drag Jack's soul up to the doors of salvation. I only rebelled, and—Charles, I am ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the salvia leaf at p. 224, that I had marked off the portion of it, x y, because I thought it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards; and I promised the reader that as he had built, so he should decorate his edifice at his own free will. If, therefore, he likes the above triangular spur, c d e, by all means let him keep it; but if he be on the whole dissatisfied with it, I may be permitted, perhaps, to advise him to set to work like a tapestry bee, to cut off the little ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... I had; because I am old, and you two are young. Often, it seems as if the whole world—fate, trial, circumstance—were set against all lovers to make them part. It is a bitter thing when they part of their own free will. Accidents of all kinds—change, sorrow, even death—may come between, and they may never meet again. Agatha, Nathanael—believe one who has seen more of life than you—rarely do those that truly love ever attain ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and he did not want people to know the truth because it would make him look foolish. In fact, the more he considered the matter, the more he felt that he would be wise to put a good face on it, and to let people suppose that he had really brought about the marriage of his own free will. ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... away from here of your own free will, that it may not be said that Monsieur Desroches has dismissed you. You have been careless or absent-minded, and neither of those defects can pass here. The master shall know nothing about the matter; that is all that I can do for ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... my problems more than I can possibly have aided you," Mrs. Carey replied quietly. "Gilbert was so rebellious about country schools, so patronizing, so scornful of their merits, that I fully expected he would never stay at the academy of his own free will. You have converted him, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his own heart, but formularizes in this particular the decrees of the Church, of which he was a distinguished ornament. "Above all," he writes, "never force your subjects to change their religion. No human power can reach the impenetrable recess of the free will of the heart. Violence can never persuade men; it serves only to make hypocrites. Grant civil liberty to all, not in approving everything as indifferent, but in tolerating with patience whatever Almighty God tolerates, and endeavoring to ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... points of view under which this system of men's free will shows us the Deity. This free will becomes a present the most dangerous, since it puts man in the condition of doing evil that is truly frightful. We may thence conclude that this system, far from justifying God, makes him capable of malice, imprudence, and injustice. But this is to overturn all ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... all-powerful will of the "father of the household" (-pater familias-). In relation to him all in the household were destitute of legal rights—the wife and the child no less than the bullock or the slave. As the virgin became by the free choice of her husband his wedded wife, so it rested with his own free will to rear or not to rear the child which she bore to him. This maxim was not suggested by indifference to the possession of a family; on the contrary, the conviction that the founding of a house and the begetting ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... trivial and scientifically useless form. We found that a system with one set of determinants may very likely have other sets of a quite different kind, that, for example, a mechanically determined system may also be teleologically or volitionally determined. Finally we considered the problem of free will: here we found that the reasons for supposing volitions to be determined are strong but not conclusive, and we decided that even if volitions are mechanically determined, that is no reason for denying freedom in the sense revealed by introspection, or for supposing ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... deed or transaction a man performs by his own free will, be it a matter of precept or of option, let the name of God be ready in his mouth. If, for instance, he erects a building, or buys a vessel, or makes a new garment, let him say with his mouth and utter with his lips, "This thing I do, for (the honor of) the union of the Shechinah ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... may be true that an adult, of his own free will, and without incentive, or predisposing causes, does occasionally become a drunkard, I am convinced that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every one thousand individuals who become drunkards are made so in embryo, infancy, or childhood, by the use of alcoholic ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Penfold," said he, with grave politeness, "after what my daughter has said, I must treat you as a man of honor, or I must insult her. Well, then, I expect you to show me you are what she thinks you, and are not what a court of justice has proclaimed you. Sir, this young lady is engaged with her own free will to a gentleman who is universally esteemed, and has never been accused to his face of any unworthy act. Relying on her plighted word, the Wardlaws have fitted out a steamer and searched the Pacific, and found her. Can you, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... regulating the compacts entered into between Christians and Jews. One of the departments of the Exchequer received the register of these compacts, which thus acquired a legal value. However, it was not unfrequent for the kings of England to grant, of their own free will, letters of release to persons owing money to Jews; and these letters, which were often equivalent to the cancelling of the entire debt, were even at times actually purchased from the sovereign. Mention of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... cabinet, foreseeing a scene at which he was unwilling to be present, but which sometimes occurred when James roused himself so far as to exert his own free will, of which he boasted so much, in spite of that of his imperious favourite Steenie, as he called the Duke of Buckingham, from a supposed resemblance betwixt his very handsome countenance, and that with which the Italian ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... as I know well. So like the rest of us you must bear your burden. Mayhap it may please my gods, or your gods in the end, and in some way that I cannot foresee, to give you this woman whom you seek. But of my free will I will never give her to you. To me the deed would be as though in your land of England the King commanded the consecrated bread and cups of wine to be snatched from the hands of the priests of your temples and cast to the dogs, or given to cheer the infidels within your gates, or dragged ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... exiles of 1881 and previous years were pardoned by the same ukase that liberated the Russian exiles of 1825. Just before the insurrection of 1863 there were not many Poles in Siberia, except those who remained of their own free will. The last insurrection caused a fresh deportation, twenty-four thousand being banished beyond the Ural Mountains. Ten thousand of these were sent to Eastern Siberia, the balance being distributed in the governments west of the Yenesei. The decree of June, 1867, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of such action," declared the Empress, "but I dislike to take it. It would bring me in conflict with the Church, and then there is always the chance that the Emperor is indeed within the cloisters, and that, of his own free will, he refuses to sign the documents I have sent to him. In such case what excuse could we give for our interference? It might precipitate the very crisis we are so anxious ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... alive! she loves me—don't you see? The bargain is dissolved. This is none of my seeking. She comes of her own free will. I am ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... child whose body and arms are free will cry less than one bound fast in swaddling clothes. He who feels only physical wants cries only when he suffers, and this is a great advantage. For then we know exactly when he requires help, and we ought not to delay one moment in giving him help, ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and rapidly on any subject, the position of reporter on an old-time daily approached the ideal. Even the drone became animated, when the copy must be in inside of two hours. The way to learn to write is to write. But young men will not write of their own free will; the literary first-mate in way of a Managing Editor with a loaded club of expletives is necessary. Or, stay! there is another way to stimulate the ganglionic cells and become dexterous in the cosmic potentiality—the Daily Theme sent to a woman who thinks and feels. That ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... xii. 46 — a passage expounding the doctrine of free will: "He who doth right doth it to the advantage of his own soul; and he who doth evil, doth it against the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... not say that! You know I was present. He says that if you cannot avoid serving, you should go when you are called; but that to volunteer, is to choose that kind of service of your own free will. ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... wide chair in which I now sat, thinking many somber thoughts. He had slept in the bed from which I had just risen, he had written at the table on which I rested my arms. No, that room deprived me of free will to act, it made my father too living. It was as though the phantom of the murdered man had come out of his grave to entreat me to keep the oft-sworn vow of vengeance. Had these letters offered me ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... just so, exactly so!" said the vicar; "but having chosen the Church of his own free will, I am very anxious he should get on well and be ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... ally, "apple-jack," in the service of his country, drinking freely appeared to him to be about the same thing as going over to the enemy; and he could not permit his men to turn traitors involuntarily, when he knew they would not do so of their own free will and accord. He had settled the liquor question to his own satisfaction in the deck-house, ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... from the Cape of Good Hope. It is rather a striking and not very gratifying fact, that in the same year that spirits were allowed to be sold in Helena, their use was banished from Tahiti by the free will of the people. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... have been averted by treaty. Here and there, under exceptional circumstances or when a given tribe was feeble and unwarlike, the whites might gain the ground by a treaty entered into of their own free will by the Indians, without the least duress; but this was not possible with warlike and powerful tribes when once they realized that they were threatened with serious encroachment on their hunting-grounds. Moreover, looked at from the standpoint ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... arithmetic herself in the schoolroom, and had never found it difficult, but then she had not gone far enough, perhaps. And she went at once to get a Colenso or a Barnard Smith to see. She found them more fascinating when she attacked them of her own free will and with all her intelligence than she had done when necessity, in the shape of her governess, forced her to pay them some attention, and she went through them both in a few weeks at odd times, and then asked her father's advice about ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Judea, now reduced Samaria and Idumea, and was only troubled by the conflicting parties of Pharisees and Sadducees, whose quarrels agitated the State. He joined the party of the Sadducees, who asserted free will, and denied the more orthodox doctrines of the Pharisees, a kind of epicureans, opposed to severities and the authority of traditions. It is one proof of the advance of the Hebrew mind over the simplicity of former ages, that the State ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Greg told him, "if the rain hasn't washed them away. It rains a lot. So much and so drearily that you'll want to leave that mountain and walk down into the swamp, of your own free will, and let the monsters ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... as liberty was denied to him, Adam was in no way subjected to that strict surveillance to which those who had broken the law were supposed to be submitted. It was of his own free will that he disregarded the various privileges which lay open to him: others in his place would have frequented the passages, hung about the yards and grown familiar with the tap, where spirits were openly bought and sold. Money ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... of him. I shall be unwilling to claim any privilege which you do not of your own free will bestow upon me." ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... appearing in rear, then by the rear-rank men, whose main idea is that to desert one's post is base. A want of orderly arrangement, on the contrary, leads to confusion worse confounded at every narrow road, at every passage of a river; and when it comes to fighting, no one of his own free will assigns himself his proper post in ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... character and destiny of nations, or, in other words, towards establishing a science of history; (2) That, while the theological dogma of predestination is a barren hypothesis beyond the province of knowledge, and the metaphysical dogma of free will rests on an erroneous belief in the infallibility of consciousness, it is proved by science, and especially by statistics, that human actions are governed by laws as fixed and regular as those which rule ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... proclaims, nor prevent either his coming out of his philosophical struggle a firm believer in all the dogmas which are imperiously upheld to the human reason, or his proclaiming his belief in one God and Creator, in our free will, and in the immortality ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... think at all; these lines are as it were steps cut on a slope of ice without which there would be no descending it. When we have begun to travel the downward path of thought, we ask ourselves questions about life and death, ego and non ego, object and subject, necessity and free will, and other kindred subjects. We want to know where we are, and in the hope of simplifying matters, strip, as it were, each subject to the skin, and finding that even this has not freed it from all extraneous matter, flay it alive in the hope that ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... they should impart of their substance of their own free will and good desires towards God, and to those priests that stood in need, yea, and to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... standing there, and went upon my errand with a whirling brain. Her enrollment in that company proclaimed her meanly born, and she bore herself as of blood royal; of her own free will she had crossed an ocean to meet this day, and she held in passionate hatred this day and all that it contained; she was come to Virginia to better her condition, and the purse which she had drawn from her bosom was filled with gold pieces. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... me into this frightful shape. Powerless from fright, he brought me hither and cried in my ear: 'Here shalt thou remain, hated and despised, even by the beasts, until thy death, or until someone, with free will, shall desire thee for his wife, even in this horrible shape. In this way I revenge myself upon thee ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... stated in the last chapter. AEacides then called his forces together, and gave orders that all who were unwilling to follow him into Macedon should be allowed freely to return. He did not wish, he said, that any should accompany him on such an expedition excepting those who went of their own free will. A considerable part of the army then returned, but, instead of repairing peaceably to their homes, they raised a general insurrection in Epirus, and brought the family of Neoptolemus again to the throne. A ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... is a thing so villainous, (19) and that is your final judgment, how comes it you are not quit of so monstrous an evil? Neither you, nor, for that matter, any monarch else I ever heard of, having once possessed the power, did ever of his own free will divest himself of sovereignty. ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... from her and having been in her possession was suspected of having acquired thereby virtues which it did not possess before. But these virtues were thought to be beneficial only as long as the object was obtained from her in a legitimate way, and with her own free will and kind consent. In the opposite case, the bad will of the woman went with the feathers, and was thought to work harm to their new owner. It was easy to taunt or to tease Shotaye, but to arouse her anger appeared a dangerous undertaking; and as for harming her person, none ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... cantering by on one bareback horse; a drove of cattle passed the end of the street two or three rods away, driven by mounted cow-boys; a collection of small children in a donkey cart halted just before her door, not of their own free will, but in obedience to a caprice of the donkey's. They did not hurt Mrs. Nancy's feelings by cudgelling the fat little beast, but sat laughing and whistling and coaxing him until, of his own accord, he ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... because he saw fit to fight the drink traffic. There was nothing in the world so heartless as a great corporation. The C. P. R. had shown itself more heartless than a despotic king. It had come to a sorry pass when an employee was robbed of the right of exercising his own free will. By its action the Company had thrown all its weight on the side of the liquor party to which it catered. He had lived in the Northwest several years, and had seen other instances of how this great Company had ground others under its iron heel. 'In discharging the ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... perceives something outside itself, as if it were a different Being face to face with itself, and it is this inverted image which it calls God. Thus morality, justice, order, law, are no longer things revealed from above, imposed upon our free will by a so-called Creator, unknown and ununderstandable; they are things that are proper and essential to us as our faculties and our organs, as our flesh and our blood. In two words religion and society ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... to his mouth, but with an effort he restrained them. He must not tell his mother of her until Babbie of her free will had told him ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... trailed across the floor. It was a strange thing and Omega was at a loss to account for it, but his wonder was eclipsed by his appreciation of The Grinner's companionship. The Grinner was often absent for hours at a time, but he always returned of his own free will. Omega often saw him ambling among the rocks or stretched out in the sun on the beach. He formed the habit of letting him have his way, which was that of extreme laziness. But during all this time he was ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... reduced to three principal or primary articles; the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property: because as there is no other known method of compulsion, or of abridging man's natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... the full independence of our sovereign power. What we did we did of our own free will. . . . If it should be the will of the people of Canada at any future stage to take part in any war of England, the people of Canada will have to have their way. . . . The work of union and harmony between the chief races of this country is not yet complete. . . . But there ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... that in love and affection toward the country he is the equal of any other good and loyal burgher; bearing in mind, too, the labour he has undergone and the diligence he has displayed, gratis and of his free will, in the said work (of fortification) up to this day; and wishing to employ his industry and energies to the like effect in future; we, of our motion and initiative, do appoint him to be governor and procurator-general ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... those Puritans whom the Massachusetts people drove from their colony there were other settlers who left Massachusetts of their own free will. Among these were the founders of Connecticut. The Massachusetts people would gladly have had them remain, but they were discontented and insisted on going away. They settled the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Weathersfield, on the Connecticut River. At about the ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... of Augustus as a kindly despot, supreme, and governed only by his own will. But his compatriots looked on him as simply the chief citizen of their republic. They considered that of their own free will, to escape the dangers of further civil war, they had chosen to confer upon one man, eminently "safe and sane," all the high offices whose holders had previously battled against one another. So Augustus was Emperor or Imperator, which meant no ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Then something began to go wrong, almost equally rapidly, and the glory of this great culture is not so much in what it did as in what it might have done. It recalls one of these typical medieval speculations, full of the very fantasy of free will, in which the schoolmen tried to fancy the fate of every herb or animal if Adam had not eaten the apple. It remains, in a cant historical phrase, one of the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... a stone off my heart. She has kept us all hangin' about this long time. Now she wants to hurry of her own free will. She'd rather have the weddin' ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and even in its new setting military service was still suggestive of the hideous horrors of the past. Those who but yesterday had been dragged like criminals to the recruiting stations could not well be expected to change their sentiments over night and appear there of their own free will. The result was that a considerable number of Jews of military age (21) failed to obey the summons of the first conscription. Immediately the cry went up that the Jews evaded their military duty, and that the Christians were forced to make up the shortage. The ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... decide! We ate the salt, we jezailchis. We chose, and we ate of our own free will. We have been paid the price we named, in silver and rifles and clothing. The arrficers the sirkar sent us are men of faith who have made no trouble with our women. What, then, should the Khyber jezailchis do? For a little while there will be fighting—or, if we be very brave and our arrficers ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... changed. There soon came news that she had put on man's dress again. The judges went to her. She told them (they say), that she put on this dress of her own free will. In confession, later, she told her priest that she had been refused any other dress, and had been brutally treated both by the soldiers and by an English lord. In self-defence, she dressed in the only attire within her reach. In any case, the ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... would suck his life's blood, and that Ludovico, his chief minister and favorite, is a traitor. Of course he is not believed, and Ludovico marks him out for vengeance. His scheme is to get Colonna, of his own free will, to murder his sister's lover and the king. With this view he artfully persuades Vicentio, the lover, that Evadne (the sister of Colonna) is the king's wanton. Vicentio indignantly discards Evadne, is challanged to fight by Colonna, and is supposed to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... to waste time and money in watching your workmen instead of trusting them. Why, what are all poor-rates and county-rates, if you will consider, but God's plain proof to us, that the poor are members of the same body as ourselves; and that if we will not help them of our own free will, we shall find it necessary to help them against our will: that if we will not pay a little to prevent them becoming pauperized or criminal, we must pay a great deal to keep them when they have become so? We may draw a lesson—and a most ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... to underestimate Mr. Blaine's marvelous ability, which is recognized everywhere, but even he can scarcely succeed in locating Mr. Hamilton where we, with all the resources at our command, have failed. Mark my words, my dear Anita; if Ramon Hamilton returns, it will be voluntarily, of his own free will. Until—unless he so decides, you will never see him. It is too bad to have summoned Mr. Blaine here on a useless errand, but I am sure he quite understands the ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard-of in that district. I was looked upon with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Is there only one kind of sin,—namely, voluntary and conscious transgression of God's law, originating with the individual himself, and in the moment of committing it, by means of his free will, which is its only seat? or is there sin which is a tendency in man's nature, something permanent, involuntary, of which he is not conscious, and which has its seat not merely in the will, but in the desires and affections. To this question Liberal Christianity has ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of the day on which this sentence was passed, M. de Laubardemont ordered the surgeon Francois Fourneau to be arrested at his own house and taken to Grandier's cell, although he was ready to go there of his own free will. In passing through the adjoining room he heard the voice ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to him certain, and that was that the United States could not help annexing by force the people who would be too slow to come to them of their own free will. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall |
