"Prompting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wasn't for want of prompting," returned Hastings dryly. "The will was sealed, and handed to me by Harry on the express understanding that it was not to be opened until we had proof that he was dead or until the six months mentioned had expired. If he turned up it would, of course, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... then true?" he said, in an undertone. "Doth the muse live? Not a mere prompting inward sense, but in bodily semblance visiting the poet's eye? Or art thou a creature of Fancy's colors blended, ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... were extremely pretty, the particular attraction about Gladys being her lovely violet eyes. It was Blanche who, with much hysterical emotion, told me the story of their painful experience, Gladys occasionally prompting her sister with a few ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... made accordingly, though not in proportion to the strength of the several colonies; for those south of New York felt little interest in the plan. Shirley was told to "dispose Massachusetts to do its part;" but neither he nor his province needed prompting. Taking his cue from the Roman senator, he exclaimed to his Assembly, "Delenda est Canada;" and the Assembly responded by voting to raise thirty-five hundred men, and offering a bounty equivalent to L4 sterling ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... submissive, and again Resume my half-abandon'd strain! Leading enchain'd sad thoughts along, Remembrance prompting all the song! But, in the journey, drawing near To what I mourn, and what I fear, The sad realities impress Too deeply; hues of happiness, And gleams of splendors past, decay; The storm despoiling such a day, Gives to the eye no clear, full scope, But scatters ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... no other aim but that of making verses for a composer; the latter, no other motive than the ordinary creative impulse prompting him to try his powers in a different and important sphere. The result on both sides could not therefore be other than phrases, although the better of the two proceeded from the composer, and that composer was Beethoven. To conceal or palliate this would be derogatory to the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... saving the ammunition, to eke out this hour of mine with her. Every note from the revolver summoned the end a little nearer. But we had our game to play; and after all, the end was certain. So under her prompting (she being partner, commander, everything), when the next painted ruffian—a burly fellow in drapery of flannel-fringed cotton shirt, with flaunting crimson tassels on his pony's mane—bore down, I guessed shrewdly, arose and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... a great thing to recollect, and I held my tongue. It was hard work, and something seemed to keep prompting me to shout the bad news, but somehow I mastered it, and instead of swimming faster made myself take my strokes more slowly, so as to save ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... recess under the steep, high-pitched roof common among houses in old Paris. In the one dingy window of the place sat a young girl, who sprang up at once when she heard some one at the door; it was the prompting of love; she had recognized the painter's ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... wind-shelter it was strange that she could be so oblivious of his presence. It was distasteful to him to have to signal the train of her attention. To be sure, a very little signal served,—a word, a look, a thoughtful gesture,—but he preferred a homage that required no prompting. Moreover, she was guilty of "smiling on all she looked upon," and her acceptance of Andy Black into the ever-widening circle of her ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... lucky men fish large hauls, exceeding 200 in value in the brief fishing season. As a rule, fishermen marry young; and how can the young fisherman so easily procure the means or chance of livelihood as by accepting the boat and nets which the curer so readily offers? But, apart from any such special prompting, our fishermen, essentially venturous, all too eagerly incur the debt and risk a life of indebtedness for the chance of winning the comparative comfort to which a few, a very few, of their class attain. I know of no class requiring protection from their own recklessness in these ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... in visible ice the underlying emotion. Not since his boyhood had their mutual affection found free, natural expression; and now, in this final hour, that bondage of habit caused the words of tenderness to stumble on their lips. The awful majesty of approaching death, prompting them to "catch up the whole of love and utter it" ere it be too late, wrought this involuntary ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... quietly obtained it, without the voice of the people, the real inclination of the senate, or the support of the army, can be imputed only to the influence of his mother, and his own dissimulation. Ardently solicitous to attain the object, yet affecting a total indifference; artfully prompting the senate to give him the charge of the government, at the time that he intimated an invincible reluctance to accept it; his absolutely declining it in perpetuity, but fixing no time for an abdication; his deceitful insinuation of bodily infirmities, with hints likewise of approaching old age, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... me. This, Sir, I hope, will convince you of my innocency. And if the world will not believe what even I dying swear, God forgive them, and turn their hearts. One day all must appear together at one bar. There no prompting of witnesses, no lies, no little arts of law will do. There, I doubt not, I shall meet my poor father and mother, and my much loved friend (through the mercies of Jesus Christ, who died for sinners) forgiven and in bliss. There the tears that cannot move man's heart shall be ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... replied, "O my lord, when I was last at Messina I looked upon her with a soldier's eye, that liked, but had no leisure for loving; but now, in this happy time of peace, thoughts of war have left their places vacant in my mind, and in their room come thronging soft and delicate thoughts, all prompting me how fair young Hero is, reminding me that I liked her before I went ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... had fallen absolutely and hopelessly in love with this white sorceress. Nonsense; it must be nonsense! She had warned me fairly, and I had refused to take the warning. Curses on the fatal curiosity that is ever prompting man to draw the veil from woman, and curses on the natural impulse that begets it! It is the cause of half—ay, and more than half—of our misfortunes. Why cannot man be content to live alone and be happy, and let the women live ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... abandon it, and her gaze was so keenly fixed on the end in view that it must be admitted she was found by some to be "ruthless" in the way in which she pushed on one side any who seemed to her to be delaying or obstructing the fulfilment of her project. There was, however, never any selfish motive prompting her; the end was always a noble one, for she had an unselfish, generous nature. An intimate friend, well qualified to judge, herself at first prejudiced ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... stroll off, leaving the confessed lovers alone by some musical water-fall, or in the secluded and twilight dimness of some curve in an overhanging ravine—places where only to breathe is to love—I still felt an instinctive prompting to rather anticipate than wait for these reminders, she alone knowing what it cost me to be without her in that delicious wilderness; and Palgray, as well as I could judge, having a mind out of harmony with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister, prompting the question if misfortune would never have ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... of his host did not express surprise so much as questioning interest. This man, at least, had discovered that one need find no cause for astonishment in any discovery that he had been doing a thing for some time for some reason or through some prompting of his own, and had said nothing whatever about it until he was what he called "good and ready." When he was "good and ready" he usually revealed himself to the duke, but he was ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nobody answered; on which he opened the door and found his page fast asleep in an elbow-chair. He advanced toward him, and was going to awaken, him, when he perceived a letter hanging out of his pocket. His curiosity prompting him to know what it was, he took it out and read it. It was a letter from the young man's mother, in which she thanked him for having sent her part of his wages to relieve her in her misery, and finished with telling; him that God would reward him for his dutiful affection. The King, after ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... good. It is an enemy that will never be reconciled to God, and therefore will not be reconciled with the believer as such; for it is called enmity itself, and so it is always actively seeking to promove the ruin of the soul, what by prompting, inclining, moving, and forcibly drawing or driving, sometimes with violence and rage, to evil; what by with standing, resisting, opposing, counter-working, and contradicting what is good; so that the believer cannot get that done which he would do, and ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... he had got us seats, dusting the kitchen chairs with his long coat-tails, resumed his task, and as Juno's garrulousness ran on, he shook his head and chuckled, and muttered and grinned, just as if he were behind the scenes and prompting her to amuse us. He always had that funny way of grimacing and conversing with himself gaily, whilst Juno indulged in her talkative fits. He admired his old partner hugely. Once, when travelling with my father, he heard at an Assize some great lawyer make a speech, and ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... as a hundred and fifty miles, and after that he would average a hundred miles a day until caught. He always arrived back lean and hungry and savage, and always departed fresh and vigorous, cleaving his way northward in response to some prompting of his being ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... accepted. Where there is no taste, it seems cause of regret, when time, perhaps health, are sacrificed to the accomplishment. Even where a tolerable performance of instrumental music might probably be attained, without the prompting of decided taste, there may be danger of absorbing too much of time and attention from those employments which a female ought to understand and will be expected to discharge, and which are in reality ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... entire, almost a revolt, is characteristic of the aesthetic poetry. Here there is no delirium or illusion, no experiences of mere soul while the body and the bodily senses sleep, or wake with convulsed intensity at the prompting of imaginative love; but rather the great primary passions under broad daylight as of the pagan Veronese. This simplification interests us, not merely for the sake of an individual poet—full of charm as he is—but chiefly because it explains through him a transition which, under many ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... all the world and we— Till "Run," she said, "and bring him back to me!" I ran, I called ... but in the nearing rain, No mortal answered, nothing stirred. Was it uprisen death we heard? .... Perhaps the hills and night Had made a prophet of some wandering boy, Prompting him in that instant to rejoice As never in his life before. He must have had his own delight As well in silence as in song; For, though we waited long, ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... hide their weakness. They hate going over the parapet when the machine guns are playing; so they don't hesitate, but plunge over with a smile to hide their fears. Their cure for every mental worry is a smile, their answer to every prompting of fear is a plunge. They have no philosophy or fanaticism to help them—only the sporting instinct which is ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... upon him. Besides, he greatly loved his daughters, and though it is easy to say that the greatest love is the greatest unselfishness, yet do we find a weakness in our hearts which we cannot believe wholly wrong, strongly prompting us to yearn and cling—even unwisely—to those who have our best affection. "And what seems wise to-day may be proved folly to-morrow," is our argument, "so let us cling to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the prompting of the artful Mengwe; it is not necessary to say that they were listened to. The Delawares at length came to believe that it would be an honour to a powerful nation, who could not be suspected of wanting either courage or strength, with arms in their hands and recent ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... that the beautiful, comforting messages that refreshed his own soul were meant to be shared with others. Months, if not years, of struggle followed, before he could rise in his place in Meeting and obey this inward prompting. But directly he did so, his fears of making a mistake, or being laughed at, vanished utterly away. After agony, came joy. 'The Lord shewed me how He is mouth, wisdom and utterance to His true and faithful ministers; that it is from Him alone that they are to communicate to the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... without thinking much about it, in a blind prompting of my whole being toward a great adventure which I did not clearly see, but which attracted me in a mysterious fashion, one day, finding myself surrounded by a band of the enemy, though still in a position to fight, I allowed myself ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... frame. He felt that there was an ugly suggestion in these words. How easily might some disastrous turn of fortune's wheel that other night have left him a victim upon those fields instead of the gallant horse who carried him! How skilfully and easily had Lord Claud played upon him, prompting him to an act which a few months ago he would have shrunk from in the greatest horror! There was something almost diabolic in the beauty, the fascination, the cleverness, of the man. Tom made a resolution, as these things flashed through his mind, that he would have no more dealings ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... head of the poll for the city of Dublin. His associate, however, the banker, La Touche, was defeated; the second member elect being Mr. Robert Shaw, the Orange candidate. The Catholic electors to a man, under the vigorous prompting of John Keogh and his friends, polled their votes for their Protestant advocate; they did more, they subscribed the sum of 4,000 pounds sterling to pay the expenses of the contest, but this sum Mrs. Grattan induced the treasurer to return to the subscribers. Ever watchful for her husband's honour, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... you might extend him on his back, with helpless legs in air; you might put him in any attitude possible to be maintained, and maintain it he would, faithfully, until the signal was made. From this prompting came the illustration of Mother Hubbard. Also, Leslie Goldthwaite had seized the hidden suggestion of application, and hinted it in certain touches of costume and order of performance. Nobody would think, perhaps, at first, that the striped scarlet ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the remarks of his sister, and the retirement to Auvergne, it suggests that the family may have sought there, in rural isolation and domestic reunion, the means of entirely withdrawing Pascal from his severer studies, and the scientific companions who were constantly prompting them in Paris. It may be, also, that the father sought the means of withdrawing Jacqueline from the neighbourhood of Port Royal, and from the equally exciting associations to her connected ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Walton, that Mr. Hunting's manner and feelings toward me were sincerely cordial and friendly? Was it the prompting of his heart, or your influence, that led him to put ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... inclination to poetry and acting; second, a deer-stealing frolic, which resulted in making Stratford too hot for him; third, the pecuniary embarrassments of his father. It is not unlikely that all these causes, and perhaps others, may have concurred in prompting ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... through knowing the frailties of his sex, yet one immeasurably superior to them. When he was led to talk of himself—of whom, it seemed, she could never learn enough—he at once came to take high views of himself: to gaze, through her tactful prompting, with a gentle, purring appreciation upon the manifest spectacle of ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... glory he perhaps could love, But there again he must the cause approve. Our hero thought no deed should gain applause Where timid virtue found support in laws; He to all good would soar, would fly all sin, By the pure prompting of the will within; "Who needs a law that binds him not to steal," Ask'd the young teacher, "can he rightly feel? To curb the will, or arm in honour's cause, Or aid the weak—are these enforced by laws? Should we a foul, ungenerous action dread, Because a law condemns th' adulterous bed? ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... Scheme Book in confirmation of my views. The book was kept in the office to be handy for such occasions; and in many cases it was the means of suggesting ideas of machine tools to our customers, and thus led to orders which might not have been obtained without this effective method of prompting them. Amongst our foreign visitors was M. Schneider, proprietor of the great ironworks at Creuzot, in France. We had supplied him with various machine tools, and he was so pleased with their action that the next time he came to England he called at our ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... gaze at him till the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest, wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning, dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... crimes of one man, committed under some impulse of motiveless malignity and thirst for innocent blood—or as the equally appalling effect of IMITATION acting contagiously upon a criminal imagination; of which contagion there have been, unfortunately, too many examples—horrible crimes prompting certain weak and feverish imaginations, by the very horror they inspire, first to dwell on, and finally to realize ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... IV. made on succeeding to the throne, after his long Regency, was Scott, who not only accepted the honour gratefully, but dwelt with extreme pride on the fact that it was offered to him by the king himself, and was in no way due to the prompting of any minister's advice. He wrote to Joanna Baillie on hearing of the Regent's intention—for the offer was made by the Regent at the end of 1818, though it was not actually conferred till after George's accession, namely, on the 30th March, 1820,—"The Duke of Buccleuch and Scott of Harden, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... oracle that Pelias heard, that a hateful doom awaited him to be slain at the prompting of the man whom he should see coming forth from the people with but one sandal. And no long time after, in accordance with that true report, Jason crossed the stream of wintry Anaurus on foot, and saved one sandal from the mire, but the other ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... spiritualization of the Babylonian religion has in this way most definite limitations imposed upon it. There is a point beyond which it could not go without giving rise to a totally changed conception of the gods and their relationship to men. Prayer in its higher form, as the result of an irresistible prompting of the emotions, without any other purpose than the longing to come into closer communion with a superior Power, involves such a change in religious conceptions, and hence is conspicuous in the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... he knew vaguely what was coming. Before she answered his curious question—prompting it indeed—rose in his mind that strange idea of the Group-Soul: the theory that big souls cannot express themselves in a single individual, but need an entire group for their ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... laugh from Lanstron. Pressing the button, a panel door flew open, revealing a telephone mouthpiece and receiver set in the recess. Without giving him time to refuse permission, her thought all submissive to the prompting spirit of adventure, she took down ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... himself was so little able to measure the force by which he was swayed as to believe that he had extracted the confession from a reluctant accomplice. He would never have allowed that the sight of the money and the prompting of his own words could have caused the old woman to invent the perfectly imaginary story which he had seemed so fully determined to hear. He did not see that Caterina Ranucci had merely confirmed each statement ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... other people tends to improve them. If we allowed ourselves to speak in such a case of efficacy at all, we should say that pain perpetuates and propagates itself in various ways, now by weakening the system, now by prompting convulsive efforts, now by spreading to other beings through the contagion of sympathy or vengeance. In fact, however, it merely betrays a maladjustment which has more or less natural stability. It may be instantaneous only; by its lack of equilibrium ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... They are a little shaky in what an actor would call their "patter," and they are inclined to lay stress on the wrong syllables; but they move their squads about somehow. Their seniors are dotted about the square, vigilant and helpful—here prompting a rusty sergeant instructor, there unravelling a squad which, in a spirited but misguided endeavour to obey an impossible order from Second Lieutenant Bobby Little, has wound itself up into a formation closely resembling the third ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... as cheerful as an undertaker in a healthy season, got down from his seat and trudged back. Thus two chaperons were disposed of at a stroke, and the young men all said that they hated to assume so much responsibility. Mr. King didn't need prompting in this emergency; the wagons were already moving, and before Irene knew exactly what had happened, Mr. King was begging her pardon for the change, and seating himself beside her. And he was thinking, "What a confoundedly clever woman ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Sally was really prompting Gaga in this last sentence. He frowned, and moved one of his long hands impatiently across some crumbs which lay before ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... countrymen, "The Romans govern the world, but it is the women that govern the Romans." The discovery of this very continent testifies to the political influence of woman. Who favored the bold genius of Columbus? Do you say Ferdinand of Spain? I answer, it was Isabella, prompting her partner to the patronage he so reluctantly bestowed. Her influence unexerted, the Genoese mariner had never worn the laurel that now graces his brow. Will you leave this all-potent being illiterate, to rear ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... maxim may be added to the preceding pair: Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... add the pleasures and pains of 'sympathy' and 'antipathy' which, he says, are not self-regarding. Moreover, as we have seen, he has some difficulty in denying that 'benevolence' is a necessarily moral motive: it is only capable of prompting to bad conduct in so far as it is insufficiently enlightened; and it is clear that a moralist who makes the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number' his universal test, has some reason for admitting as an elementary pleasure the desire for the greatest happiness. This comes out ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a delighted chorus, and eight more hands were raised. Prompting was reckless now and hands sprang up in ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of a spirited horse. And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory, he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing. He is too doubtful—too ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... praise, which was promptly taken up by the entire people, standing, during the singing of which a priest appeared, bearing a torch kindled at the sacred fire, which was kept alight throughout the year. This torch he presented to Harry, who, at Motahuana's prompting, and with several qualms of conscience, rose to his feet and thrust it in among the pile of wood on the top of the altar, beneath the body of the llama. The crackling of the dry twigs that formed the substructure of the cunningly arranged pile, and ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... not send any soldiers to fight against him, now that I am a saint, for that would not look well. It would have an irreligious appearance of prompting Heaven." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... was not the Bishop only who was prompting the Holy Inquisition, but the Daughter of Kings, the Mother of Learning, the Bright and Shining Sun of France and of Christendom, the University of Paris. She arrogated to herself a peculiar jurisdiction in cases of heresy or other matters of doctrine occurring in the city or its ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the undergraduates), was about to commence his supper, when he heard a low whine, and looking down, saw a large yellow dog cross the floor in front of him, and disappear immediately under the full-length portrait that hung over the antique chimney-piece. Something prompting him, he glanced at the picture. The eyes that ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... who specialised in that article. But, a second thought prompting, he wondered whether it were a lie. His knowledge of Cassy refuted it. At the same time, where women are concerned, you never know. One thing, however, he did know. In his quality of expert he knew that there are statements which, whether true or false, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... centres of boasted prosperity, at factory, smoke and mine, the arid life and spiritual death. Do you call those miserable myriads a humanity? We look at those people in despair and pity. Where is the ancient image of divinity in man's face: where in man's heart the prompting of the divine? There is nothing but a ceaseless energy without; a night terrible as hell within. Is this the only way for us as a people? Is nature to be lost; beauty to be swallowed up? The crown and sceptre were taken from us in the past, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... ardent thought" does not enable him to see that he is himself a slave of metaphysics. All this "mystery" is nothing but the "meat-roasting power of the meat-jack." He question of why oxygen and hydrogen form water is a prompting of anthropomorphism. Intellectually, it is simply childish. It could only be put by one who has not grasped the great doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge. Man can no more get beyond his own knowledge—which is and ever must be finite—than he can get outside himself, or run away from ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... sent to the general on June 2: "With these continuous rains I am very anxious about the Chickahominy,—so close in your rear, and crossing your line of communication. Please look to it." This curt prompting on so obvious a point was a plain insinuation against McClellan's military competence, and suggests that ceaseless harassment had at last got the better of Lincoln's usually imperturbable self-possession; for it lacked little of being an insult, and Mr. Lincoln, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... (O gentle, kindly heart!) The noble prompting of unselfish grace. He would not disappoint the waiting crowd Who came to gaze upon his ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... blissful world, Of sweet communion with those dwelling there. But having tasted, seen and felt the joys Of that bright world where love is all in all, Filling each heart, inspiring every thought, Guiding each will and prompting every act, He yearned to see the other, darker side Of that bright picture, where the wars and hates, The lust, the greed, the cruelty and crime That fill the world with pain and want and woe Have found ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... morning went uncomfortably for me. I escaped being "lagged" for my neglect of preparation, chiefly owing to the friendly prompting I received from Dicky Brown. But it was a time of anxiety and trepidation, and my nerves were somewhat strained ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... to me that you will not harbour evil thoughts, that you will put aside the devil who is prompting and luring ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... service, and who are eager to see or hear or read anything pertinent to their welfare. For many such parents, if they are of the scientific, matter-of-fact type, Dr. Moll's book may prove the means of answering many troublesome questions and of prompting to a wiser cooperation with church, school, and the medical profession in safeguarding their own—and, we may hope, all other—children ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... not care. For his birthday, he received a typewriter from Paul Brennan. Brennan never found out that the note suggesting it from Jimmy's Third Grade teacher had been written after Jimmy's prompting. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... itself its smoothest vizard and most alluring excuse. And it was, indeed, a mighty and perilous trial to Glendower, when rushing from the presence of his wife and child, when fainting under accumulated evils, when almost delirious with sickening and heated thought, to hear at each prompting of the wrung and excited nature, each heave of the black fountain that in no mortal breast is utterly exhausted, one smooth, soft, persuasive voice forever whispering, "Relief!"—relief, certain, utter, instantaneous! the voice of one pledged never to relax an effort or spare ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... outlive death by the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle; that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of heaven: that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischief, blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of the world: but that those phantasms appear ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... frightened. I was a little nervous and rather sad, and I felt strange among all those foolish lads, taking such immense delight in that which gives me so very little, dressing themselves up and acting. To be sure, "nothing pleaseth but rare accidents." Mr. M——, our prompter, thought fit by way of prompting to keep up a rumbling bass accompaniment to our speaking by reading every word of the play aloud, as the singers are prompted at the opera house, which did not tend much to our assistance. Everything went very smoothly till an unlucky young "mountaineer" rushed on the stage and terrified ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... turned your forehead so near, 'Twas in painful dread that I kissed it, For some cruel prompting of fear Made me timidly seek ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... a trace of bepuzzlement to it too. Even so, she did not herself know what she meant to say to the woman when she had found her in her present abiding place or what questions she would ask. Only she knew that an inner prompting stronger than any reasoned-out process drove her forward upon her vague and blinded mission. Fool's errand it might be—probably was—yet she meant ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... to account, Whether from reason or from impulse only— But some internal prompting bade me mount The gloomy stairs ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay, looked small and graceful beneath ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... tampered with before he got it away, if he neglected to double-lock it at once and put the key in his pocket. He has always a keen eye to money; indeed the whole Odyssey turns on what is substantially a money quarrel, so this time without the prompting of Minerva he does one of the very few sensible things which he does, on his own account, throughout ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... remarked with perfect coolness, "That, master, I call smart hitting." "Honest lad," whispered one of the women immediately after, "it will be a reugh time wi' us here the nicht: you had just better be stepping your ways." I had already begun to think so without prompting; and so, taking my leave of the gipsies, I failed being, as I had proposed, one of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... subsequent match. But to us, who regard war as a hateful necessity, from which we do not shrink, but which we did everything in our power to avert—to us there can be no thought of relinquishing our task, until there is a reasonable prospect of a really lasting settlement. We should need no prompting from our statesmen to realise that this must be "a fight to a finish." There must be no reversion to the status quo, that accursed device of a worn-out diplomacy, with its inevitable seeds of new quarrels ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Basiliscus, criminal in their private lives, in their public lives adventurers, who gained the throne by the worst Byzantine arts, opened the line of the theologising emperors. Basiliscus, during the short time he occupied the eastern throne, issued, at the prompting of a heretic whom he had pushed into the see of St. Athanasius—and it is the first example known in history—a formal decree upon faith, the so-called Encyclikon, in which only the Nicene, Constantinopolitan, and Ephesine Councils were ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... nothing, nor indeed Mistress Peniston much. Letters were difficult to get through our lines, and if he or Darthea still wrote, my aunt knew no more than I. When I told her in confidence of the errand on which, at my cousin's prompting, General Arnold had sent me, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... last was in store for her. She was satisfied with her husband and recognized his righteous purpose and capacity as a statesman, but she believed secretly that his rapid success was due in a large measure to her genius. Her prompting had inspired him to make a notable speech in his first Congress. Her charms and clever conversation had magnetized Mr. Elton so that he had seen fit to nominate him for Governor. A fresh impulse to her self-congratulation that virtue and ability were reaping their reward was given ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... commonly spent for vanity and deceit will be ample. Most men and women, at least the unthinking, prefer fashionable show rather than health! A fearful statement, but sadly true. There is doubtless more danger from impure air than from cold. Our senses warn us quickly of the latter; the prompting of knowledge is needed to guard us against the former,—of a practical knowledge unfortunately rare. Men, women, and children are dying daily through ignorance and indifference on this subject. There is hardly a school-house ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... And so was the Major. Something alive and tangible had come to link them with the happy past. The three sat and talked over the olden times, the Major and Uncle Mose correcting or prompting each other as they reviewed the plantation scenes ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... instant he recognized his cruelty, and atoned by relenting a little in his intolerance of her presence. She sat gazing at him with a face of blank misery, to which he could not refuse the charity of a prompting question: "Is there something I can do for ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... turned back to Gosnold House only on the prompting of instinct, vaguely conscious that the night had now turned its nadir and the time was drawing near when she must present herself first to her employer with the tale of last night's doings, then to Savage to learn his version of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... campaign with an eagerness born of the lively hope that it might end the war. He sent several telegrams to the startled Pennsylvania authorities to assure them that Philadelphia and Harrisburg were in no danger. He ordered a reinforcement of twenty-one thousand to join McClellan. He sent a prompting telegram to that general: "Please do not let him [the enemy] get off without being hurt." He recognized the battle of Antietam as a substantial, if not a complete victory, and seized the opportunity it afforded him to issue his preliminary ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... first place, their central connection with Palestine, which they generally visited once in their lives, and whither thousands of them, as age advanced, flocked to lay their bones. There were the claims of kindred, prompting them to seek out and visit the children of dispersion, whether seated on the banks of the Vistula, the Euphrates, or the Nile; and there were the incentives of commerce, which drew them through the perils of land and sea. From the instructions given ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... sleep. She may be sitting at her window even now, wakeful and wretched as I, and ready to trust me, to let me lead her far away from all this misery and despair. Heaven never could mean us to suffer as we do. It is a natural prompting. She must be waiting for ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... adopts regular strategic tactics, and is familiar with all the child's devices in this covert and deceitful contest. Children are "capable of anything" to support one another and communicate one with another. If "prompting" when one child is repeating a lesson might reach the teacher's ear, we find a companion sitting in front of him with the open book fastened to his shoulders, where the other is able to read it. Or if the wily teacher ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the situation is held by Belcher. Name of a pipe! What prompting does Belcher need from me or anybody else after the ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... to the prompting of his impatience, the duke would have started at once. But how could he thus abandon the Marquis de Courtornieu, who had accepted his hospitality, and especially ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... two hills of moderate elevation. Lagny, on the left bank of the river, was within less than a league of him on his right hand. On the other side of the hills, hardly out of cannon-shot, was the camp of the allies. Henry, whose natural disposition in this respect needed no prompting, was most eager for a decisive engagement. The circumstances imperatively required it of him. His infantry consisted of Frenchmen, Netherlanders, English, Germans, Scotch; but of his cavalry four thousand were French nobles, serving at their own expense, who came to a battle as to a banquet, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Juggie!" was the prompting of an unknown voice. Juggie seized one of the spy's fat legs, but pulled in vain. It was an impossible feet. Sid and Charlie now appeared as continentals, supposed to be armed with guns, and were helping Juggie, when the cry was raised, "The British army is coming!" At the ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... that so confidently, that we judge it needless to deserve them. I think it improbable that I shall ever write like Shakespeare, conduct an army like Hannibal, or distinguish myself like Marcus Aurelius in the paths of virtue; and yet I have my by-days, hope prompting, when I am very ready to believe that I shall combine all these various excellences in my own person, and go marching down to posterity with divine honours. There is nothing so monstrous but we can believe it of ourselves. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rage and indignation. I was tempted to abandon him, but a feeling of humanity restrained me. I made enquiries all round; everybody had seen him, but not a soul knew where he was. I walked along the High Street, and some instinct prompting me to put my head in at the window of a cafe. I saw the wretched man standing at the bar drinking chocolate and making love to the girl. Catching sight of me, he pointed to the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... know who this young lady is?" says the attorney, with a furtive prompting from Hardin. "I do!" answers the lady, with ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... the presence of the guide Ringfield always lost his austere calm; his manners underwent deterioration and he stood now with a rigid gaucherie spoiling his fine presence, and a pitiful nervousness prompting him to utter and do the ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... voice from a stout and benevolent-looking elderly gentleman from behind, "how can you say so, Snooks? It's your petition." The prompting, however, seemed to produce but little impression upon him for whom it was intended, whatever effect it may have had upon the minds of those whose ears it reached, but for whose service it ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various |
