"Rectitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the painful past at such a moment, my sweet girl? has it not been redeemed by three years of undeviating rectitude and virtue? I had hoped the recollection had ere this long ceased to disturb you," replied Mrs. Hamilton, with much feeling, as she pressed her lips to ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... formal, the shell of an owner with from three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured against the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity. "Conscious of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly what is necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the world. The person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred and fifty-five pounds each year, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... accuse me of making sport of his hopes. I have not come to my latest determination from cruelty or caprice; I have made it in the strength of my maternal love to shield my child from sin, and in the rectitude of my imperial responsibility to my people, who have a right to claim from me that I bestow upon them a monarch who is worthy to reign over Austria. Therefore, my son, as empress and mother, I say that you shall remain. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... would probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... reader ever stop to consider the wonderful power of a human word. Coming to us in the sweet accents of love, it may lure us from paths of rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse, or it may spur us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... ever saw such shoulders! She is Olympian, Titanic! She makes me think of the Venus de Milo; there's such a largeness and calmness and smoothness of surface about her. I suppose a Saint-Gaudens might say that her mouth was too big and a Gibson might add that her nose hadn't the narrow rectitude of a Greek statue's, but she's a beautiful, a beautiful—"woman" was the word I was going to write, but the word "animal" just bunts and shoves itself in, like a stabled cow insisting on its own stall. But if you regard her as ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... the habit of rising betimes. Dunphy, it would appear, was one of those individuals, who, if they ever perform a praiseworthy act, do it rather from weakness of character and fear, than from a principle of conscientious rectitude. After having gone to bed the previous night he lay awake for a considerable time debating with himself the purport of his visit, pro and con, without after all, being able to accomplish a determination on the subject. He was timid, cunning, shrewd, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... theologians and the sons of the Sovrans and conversed with them and asked them subtile questions and casuistical problems and talked over with them things manifold of all fashions that might direct him to rectitude in the kingship; and he questioned them also of mysteries and religious obligations and of the laws of the land and the regulations of rule and of that which it beseemeth the liege lord to do of looking into the affairs of the lieges and repelling the foe and fending off his malice with force and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... feelings. But—five francs! I have certain scruples of my own, you know, and it irks my sense of rectitude to pay five francs for the flying monk unless you can supply me with six or seven additional books to be included ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... had been besieged in the Castle of St. Angelo. Hildebrand died at Salerno, May 25, 1085. When near his end he uttered the words which are inscribed on his tomb: "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore do I die in exile." Of the rectitude of his intentions, there is no room for doubt, whatever view is taken of the expediency of his measures. He united with an unbending will the power of accommodating himself to circumstances, as is witnessed ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... vision clear enough to distinguish things worth while. And these, scorning to acquire either wealth or power, labored diligently in their separate fields of endeavor. One such became a great educator, the greatest of his day and generation, and by his long life of rectitude set an example to the youth of America that has done more good than all the gold that all the millionaires have given for educational purposes. Another brought to success a prodigious physical undertaking. For no further reason than that he might serve his country where best ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... a Lancashire cotton mill, then, in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton mill. Only the dilettanteism of the studio; that dilettanteism which loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fiber, and which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of reasoning power, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... in my mind into which all serious thoughts fell jumbled. I felt neither pained nor confused, but only vacuous. I battled with this feeling until I subdued it. Then I grasped the situation firmly. What object have I, here and now, and everywhere and always, next to the rectitude of my own soul? There is only one answer to that question: Cecilia's happiness! How to secure that here?—how to save it from the horrible perils which everywhere surround it? Is it to be done by securing her union for life with her brother's murderer? If ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... married the Hon. Caroline Frances Perceval, the youngest daughter of Charles George Lord Arden. Both he and his wife were deeply religious persons, with a strong sense of the duties of their station. Education and influence had done their best work on a character of great rectitude and uprightness, even tending to severity, such as softened with advancing years. Remarkably handsome, and with a high-bred tone of manners, he was almost an ideal country gentleman, with, however, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... in the forefront of this company, there was nothing in his refined and comely exterior to indicate that his real function was to pander to and flatter them; to invest with an air of respectability and rectitude the abominably selfish lives of the gang of swindlers, slave-drivers and petty tyrants who formed the majority of the congregation of the Shining ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... or self-elate, or triumphant, I felt that I could have hated him; but so impassive, and withal now so frail and feeble, yet with an eye so calmly firm, an expression of rectitude so conscious, I could not but perceive that if an enemy of my belle France was before me, it was an enemy who had been made such by duty, not by choice—an enemy who had done nought in ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... that we so often observe in a female Friend; and her low gentle voice, her retiring deportment, and quaker-like simplicity of dress were in perfect accordance with that impression. Her clearness of intellect, also, and rectitude of understanding, were such as are often found amongst that intelligent race of people; although there was an intuitive perception of character and motive, a fineness of observation under that demure and modest exterior, that, if Lucy had ever in her life been ten miles from her native village, ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... that this singular girl had for him an attraction against which he ought to be on his guard. Reine might be said to live alone at La Thuiliere, for her father could hardly be regarded seriously as a protector. Julien's visits might have compromised her, and the young man's severe principles of rectitude forbade him to cause scandal which he could not repair. He was not thinking of marriage, and even had his thoughts inclined that way, the proprieties and usages of society which he had always in some degree respected, would ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... object of the vouchsafed message, they have at various times striven to pledge it to a science as false as even that of Buddhist, Teuton, or Hindu. And so, not only has the argument been weakened and obscured which might be founded on the rectitude of the line drawn of old between what ought and what ought not to be the subject of revelation, but even a positive argument has been furnished to the infidel,—ever ready to identify the glosses of the theologian with ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... temples and brow. How could she help these emotions, when she knew that injustice had been done—that she had been insulted by an implication of falsehood, when she was conscious of a free, full and honorable rectitude of purpose, and that, too, by her own father! These thoughts rushed through her mind with lightning speed, and the tears forced themselves to her eyes—tears half of sorrow, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... peerless pagan—large in intelligence, exalted in character, and guided by a conscientious rectitude which has made his name shine like a star in the lurid light of Roman history, still failed utterly to comprehend the significance of this spiritual kingdom established by Christ on earth. He it was who ordered the first persecution ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... in 1791 at Corbach, a small town in the small principality of Waldeck. His father was poor, but a man of independent spirit, of moral rectitude, and of deep religious convictions. Bunsen, the son of his old age, distinguished himself at school, and was sent to the University of Marburg at the age of seventeen. All he had then to depend on was an exhibition of about L7 a year, and a sum ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... people's unwillingness. How was she to begin? What was she to say that would not be a condemnation of herself? "If I am to have misery anyhow," was the bitter refrain of her rebellious dreams, "I had better have the misery that I can keep to myself." Moreover, her capability of rectitude told her again and again that she had no right to complain of her contract, or ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... watched the growing attachment between his brother-in-law and the girl, and thought of his vow. He realized that here was a way to bring vicarious suffering upon the man whose distinction had first roused his envy and whose rectitude had won his hatred. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... which her birth and situation inspired, joined to a studied mode of respect, best calculated to enforce the same from her. The wished-for consequence was produced—for though there was an instinctive rectitude in the understanding of Miss Milner that would have taught her, without other instruction, what manners to observe towards her deputed father; yet, from some volatile thought, or some quick sense of feeling, which she had not been accustomed to ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... inclinations. For my part, without affecting to be a Socrates, I am sure I have a more than ordinary struggle to maintain with the Evil Principle, and all the methods I can devise are little enough to keep me tolerably steady in the paths of rectitude.' Could the doctor have read even the published correspondence he would have been at no loss for a ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... the condition of slaves are devoid of principle: I have experienced the contrary, and found in them affection and strict honesty: but that there does not result from their situation as slaves any principle of moral rectitude; whereas every other condition of society has annexed to it ideas of duty and mutual obligation arising from a sense of general utility. That sublime species of morality derived from the injunctions of religion it is almost universally their fate to be likewise strangers to, because ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... us to quite an opposite conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth; but warmth and earnestness are a proof at least of a man's own conviction of the rectitude of that which he maintains. Coolness is as often the result of an unprincipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting sometimes than the appearance of this philosophic temper. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity; In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn For miserable aims that end with self; In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... such rectitude of judgment as secured him from every thing that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as laws operate in civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect can hinder faults, but not produce excellence. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... adult age, one severe and virile spirit controls his fashioning of plastic forms. He even exaggerates what is masculine in the male, as he caricatures the female by ascribing impossible virility to her. But the exaggeration follows here a line of mental and moral rectitude. It is the expression of his peculiar sensibility to ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to a thing for ever could make it right once. And Dorothy had formed the habit of actually being right, like Anthony, nine times out of ten. Frances foresaw that this persistence, this unreasoning rectitude, might, in time, become annoying in a daughter. There were moments when she was almost perturbed by the presence of this small, mysterious organism, mixed up of her body and her ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... square that the two parties, leading their maimed and blind, formed in force; Tilliedrum thirsting for its opponents' blood, and Thrums humbly accepting the responsibility of punching the Fast Day breakers into the ways of rectitude. In the small ill-kept square the invaders, to the number of about a hundred, were wedged together at its upper end, while the Thrums people formed in a thick line at the foot. For its inhabitants the way to Tilliedrum lay through this threatening ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... the law and I who am to honor it—is a poor tormented creature, one of God's angels, subjected to iniquitous tortures. The spectacle of this injustice, this unheard-of violence, is what has converted my rectitude into barbarity; my reason into brute force; my honor into violence, like an assassin's or a thief's; this spectacle, senora, is what impels me to disregard your law, what impels me to trample it under foot, braving every thing. This ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... friend the author, Jacky! Oh, not to speak to, of course ... James has broken with him entirely. Besides, he was with a person, a very blonde and pretty person, whom I did not care to meet." She smoothed down her skirts, the gesture of conscious rectitude the world over. "I should not be surprised if she were that woman—you ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Of late he had changed, however, had appeared less formidable and with a lessened vigor of life, as though he had received a secret wound. But still he remained incomprehensible in his simplicity, fearlessness, and rectitude. And when Massy learned that he meant to leave him at the end of the time, to leave him confronted with the problem of boilers, his dislike blazed ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... or leaders of opinion, he always regarded himself as a learner as well as teacher. It is related of Confucius that he at one time desired a governmental position, thinking that through its occupancy he might the better disseminate the ancient doctrines of rectitude and virtue. Offers of individual advantage could not swerve him from his well-grounded principles of honor. On one occasion one of the rulers of the country proposed to confer upon him a city and its revenues, but Confucius replied: "A superior ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... which could be done in the lump. They are now proceeding to instruments, every word of which must be weighed with precision. Heretofore, too, they were hooped together by a common enemy. This is no longer the case. Yet a thorough view of the wisdom and rectitude of this assembly disposes me more to hope they will find some means of surmounting the difficulty of their numbers, than to fear that yielding to the unmanageableness of debate in such a crowd, and to the fatigue of the experiment, they may be driven to adopt, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Biographer of Collins, in his affecting apology for that unfortunate genius, remarks, "That the gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task on the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness, and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind; yet difficult as Nature herself seems to have rendered the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Colambre's mind; so that she ran no risk of being misunderstood by him; and as to what the rest of the world thought, she was so well used to hear weekly and daily reports of her going to be married to fifty different people, that she cared little for what was said on this subject. Indeed, conscious of rectitude, and with an utter contempt for mean and commonplace gossiping, she was, for a woman, and a young woman, rather too disdainful of the opinion of the world. Mrs. Broadhurst, though her daughter had fully explained herself respecting Lord Colambre, before she began this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... was when the vices and ignorance which the old tyranny had generated threatened the new freedom with destruction, that England missed the sobriety, the self- command, the perfect soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude of intention, to which the history of revolutions furnishes no parallel, or furnishes a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had readily and naturally fallen into the habit of controlling and directing almost everything about her, simply because she had been accustomed to self-control and self-direction, and was by nature quick to decide and resolute to act. Conscious of her own rectitude, and fully realizing the dangers which might result from the experiment proposed, she had had no hesitation about withholding her consent, without which the school-house could not be used, and had not ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... ordered him to be released from arrest and restored to his command. General Worth, considering that the President had done him "full and ample justice," withdrew his charges against General Scott; to which the latter said that he "felt strong in conscious rectitude, strong in all the means of defense, defied his accusers, and would not plead the letter withdrawing the accusations against him in bar of trial; that he challenged the writer of that letter to come forward and ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... many noble and excellent qualities which the friends of John Martin knew him to possess. Rectitude of principle, abhorrence of injustice and intolerance, deep love of country, the purity and earnestness of a saint, allied with the kindliness and inoffensiveness of childhood; amiability and disinterestedness, together with a perfect abnegation of self, and total freedom from the vanity ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... peculiarly clean or remarkably well-packed satchel which the trembling hand of the disgraced subaltern took from the Commander, and the latter did not intend to let attention dwell too long upon the grimy details of its exterior. Fixing the steel eye of conscious rectitude on his victim, he leant slightly towards him and very unmistakably shouted at him the one dread word, "GAS!".... Unfortunately for the Commander the subaltern not only knew what to do next, but also had just the physical strength ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... savage heart over the sentiments of duty and humanity. And when we express that detestation against him to which he himself, in a little time, became insensible, it is not that we see any relations, of which he was ignorant; but that, for the rectitude of our disposition, we feel sentiments against which he was hardened from flattery and a long perseverance in the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... of the Blue Mountains, let me but be as any other wife in our land, equal to them in domestic happiness, which is our woman's sphere; and if that priceless honour may be vouchsafed to me, and I be worthy and able to bear it, an exemplar of woman's rectitude." With a low, modest, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... personages, famed as a tribe for grace and comeliness! put aside, I pray, the world's high thoughts, and now accept the abounding lustre of religious teaching. Wealth and beauty, scented flowers and ornaments like these, are not to be compared for grace with moral rectitude! Your land productive and in peaceful quiet—this is your great renown; but true gracefulness of body and a happy people depend upon the heart well-governed. Add but to this a reverent feeling for religion, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... Duchess vaguely, "there are certain things you can't get away from. Right and wrong, good conduct and moral rectitude, have certain ...
— Reginald • Saki
... of mind and style which will recommend it to every reader of taste and feeling. The leading characteristic of Mr. Mann's writings on education, which lifts them altogether out of the sphere of pedants and pedagogues, is soul—a true, earnest, aspiring spirit, on fire with a love of rectitude and truth. This gives inspiration even to his narrative of details, and hurries the reader's mind on with his own, through all necessary facts and figures, directly to the object. The present report cannot but shame a mean spirit out of any person with a spark of manliness in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... that they should be managed with the most frugal economy. They were desired, in consequence of the king's earnest recommendation, to promote harmony and good agreement amongst his faithful subjects; to make the people acquainted with the rectitude and purity of his intentions and measures, and to exert themselves in maintaining the peace and good order of the country, by enforcing obedience to the laws and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... does not any more think it gentlemanlike to blackball attorneys. Snuffler no longer publicly spreads out his great red cotton pocket-handkerchief before the fire, for the admiration of two hundred gentlemen; and if one Club Snob has been brought back to the paths of rectitude, and if one poor John has been spared a journey or a scolding—say, friends and brethren if these sketches of Club ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fur-lined overcoat, which I commanded a hobbardyhoy of the sweeper class to hold, I again mounted upon the saddle, while the proprietor of the machine sustained it in a position of rectitude, and then, supporting me by the superfluity of my pantaloons, he propelled me from the rear, counselling me to press my feet vigorously upon the paddles. But it all proved as the labour of Sisyphus, for the seat ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... by the magnificent balance which subsisted between his mental and his moral powers. "George had always been a good son," his mother said. Nature had endowed him with intense passions and ambitions, but neither could blind him or swerve him one hair from the line of rectitude as he saw it. And he made painful and unremitting effort to see it and see it correctly. He was approachable, but repelled familiarity, and whoever attempted this was met with a perfectly withering look. He rarely laughed, and he was without humor, though he wrote ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the resemblance ceased, for while the Eskimo was free and easy, ready to learn and to sympathise, and quick to see and appreciate a joke, the Indian was sternly conservative, much impressed with his own rectitude of intention, as well as his capacity for action, and absolutely devoid of the slightest tinge of humour. Thus the Eskimo's expression varied somewhat with the nature of the subjects which chased each other through his mind, while that of ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... started at her curiously; she could not understand a word, but she saw that the letter gave pleasure, for which she was glad; she liked Julia, and was very sorry she was going in disgrace; she herself had occasional lapses from rectitude and so consequently had a ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... disciplined (a process which never failed effectually to discipline the hardy individual who attempted it), when she wept and stormed and raged and threw caution to the winds as only tempestuous Split could, then was Sissy's attitude a marvel of disapproving rectitude. She had a great deal of dignity, had Sissy, and the picture of holiness that she presented as, with her books on her arm, she walked past the desk where the sobbing sinner's head lay with tumbled curls and bloated face, came as near as anything could to quench the passion of tears in which Split's ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... it were an article of my faith that the grace of an indulgence could give me the extraordinary privilege of sinning without guilt or offending without punishment;—if it inculcated any maxim evasive of moral rectitude:—in a word, if the features of my religion corresponded with the pictures drawn of it in flying pamphlets and anniversary declamations, I would consider myself and the rest of my fraternity as downright idiots, wickedly stupid, to remain ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... cover of night, an armed force shouting "Hurrah! Washington!" overpowered the garrison of the fort at Baton Rouge, and three days later the convention declared the independence of West Florida, "appealing to the Supreme Ruler of the World" for the rectitude of their intentions. What their intentions were is clear enough. Before the ink was dry on their declaration of independence, they wrote to the Administration at Washington, asking for the immediate incorporation ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... contemplate, as a speculative point of history. But care must be taken not to carry this enquiry farther, than merely for instruction or amusement. The idea, that the consciences of posterity were concerned in the rectitude of their ancestors' decisions, gave birth to those dangerous political heresies, which so long distracted the state, but at length are all happily extinguished. I therefore rather chuse to consider this great political measure, upon the solid footing of authority, than ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... sense of right, duty, and honor; and more and more, in the modern world, large business rests on rectitude and honor, as well as on good judgment. Education does this through the contemplation and study of the moral ideals of our race; not in drowsiness or dreaminess or in mere vague enjoyment of poetic and religious abstractions, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation—"oppressed and afflicted, He opened ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... they came on board, expecting to find the noble-looking, generous spirited tars I had become so familiar with in books. It happened, however, that three out of the five seamen who composed the crew were "old English men-of-war's-men," and had long since lost any refinement of character or rectitude of principle they originally possessed. They were brought on board drunk by the landlord with whom they boarded; for the "old tars" of those days fifty years ago had no homes; when on shore all they cared for ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... to awaken the suspicions of her protegee by too sudden a change. "In truth, I repeat to you, I cannot comprehend that, having so much to praise in your benefactor, you should be a prisoner here; how, after having sincerely returned to the paths of rectitude, could you cause yourself to be arrested in a place to you interdicted? All this seems to me extraordinary. You speak of an oath which so far has imposed silence upon you; but this oath ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... New England, and trained by her best influences; of a temperament singularly sweet and serene, and with the sturdy rectitude of his race; refined and softened by wide contact with other lands and many men; born in prosperity, accomplished in all literatures, and himself a literary artist of consummate elegance, he was the fine flower of the Puritan stock under its changed modern conditions. Out of strength had ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... informed them that Alfonso had been compelled to leave Bologna, and had returned to Ferrara, having committed the search for Cornelia to his care. The friends having told him what had brought them, Lorenzo assured them that the duke was perfectly convinced of their rectitude in the matter, adding, that they both attributed the flight of Cornelia to her great fear, but hoped, and did not doubt, that Heaven would permit her re-appearance before long, since it was certain that the earth had not swallowed the housekeeper, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... {14} Palissy did indeed die shortly after, a martyr, though not at the stake. He died in the Bastille, after enduring about a year's imprisonment,— there peacefully terminating a life distinguished for heroic labour, extraordinary endurance, inflexible rectitude, and the exhibition of many ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... "Seven Victorious Souls." For there are triumphs every day under the drab monotony of an apparently defeated town: conquests worthy of the waving of sun-banners. Above all, The Yellow Jacket points a moral for this chapter because there was conscience behind it. First: the rectitude of the Chinese actors of San Francisco who kept the dramatic tradition alive, a tradition that was bequeathed from the ancient generations. Then the artistic integrity of the men who readapted the tradition for western consumption, and their religious attitude that kept the high teaching and ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... by the Venetians for the Church might save these towns from their aggressors; but, says Guicciardini, Julius II, whose ambition, so natural in sovereign rulers, had not yet extinguished the remains of rectitude, refused to accept the places, afraid of exposing himself to the temptation of keeping them later on, against ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Reason, justice, rectitude—everything was urging Juliette to close her ears to the words of love, spoken by the man whom she had betrayed. But who shall blame her for listening to the sweetest sound the ears of a woman can ever hear—the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... did, I am sure I cannot conceive of it, and am quite contented not to. I saw and felt in a moment how beyond computation and desert I was still rich,—richest. Father's sincerity, his childlike guilelessness, his good sense and rectitude, his unaffected piety,—all and each of his qualities made him interesting to my husband. I really do not believe any one else ever listened to his stories and his conversation with as much love ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... pure doctrines of universal liberty of conscience, and conceive it our duty to endeavor to secure that sacred right to others, as well as to defend it for ourselves; for we undertake not to judge of the religious rectitude of tenets, but leave the whole matter to Him ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... mechanical, common, absolute. Death, in its full Pauline force, includes inward guilt, condemnation, and misery, and outward descent into the under world. Life, in its full Pauline force, includes inward rectitude, peace, and joy, and outward ascent into the upper world. Holiness is necessary, "for without it no one can see the Lord;" yet by itself it can secure only inward life: it is ineffectual to win heaven. Grace by itself merely exempts from the fatality of the condemnation to Hades: ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a most implacable enemy, yes he was capable of warm and most disinterested friendship. He could descend to trickery in dealing, yet as a magistrate he had a high and most inflexible ideal of honour, honesty, and rectitude. He could be coarse in his conduct and demeanour, and yet he could occasionally be as courteous and dignified as the most polished gentleman. He was overbearing where he felt he was safe, yet where he was met by courage and firmness he ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... had crossed the border and settled in and around the district of West Feliciana rose in revolt against the Spanish governor at Baton Rouge, and declared West Florida a free and independent state, appealing to the Supreme Ruler of the world for the rectitude of their intentions. What their intentions were appeared in a petition to the President for annexation to the United States. This was an opportune moment for the realization of the hopes which Madison ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... and restricted bounds of simple and severe convent discipline, where she had been taught that the pomps and vanities of the world were foolish and transient shows, and that nothing could please God more than purity and rectitude of soul. Her character was formed, and set upon a firm basis—firmer than she herself was conscious of. The nuns who had been entrusted with her education had fulfilled their task with more than their customary zeal—they were interested in the beautiful ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... that you should consider the taking anything without leave, however worthless, as trivial," said she. "I have not been so brought up, and neither has my brother." She said this with an indescribable air of offended rectitude. She regarded him like a small, incarnate truth and honesty. Then she turned, and her brother was following with a reluctant backward pull at her leading hand, when suddenly he burst forth with ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dwelt, seemed now to be whispered in my ear or my heart by the voice which with bodily sense I could never hear again:— "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay." The absolute control of my will and conscience, won by her perfect purity and unfailing rectitude, outlasted Eveena's life. Turning to ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... affectionate manner for each and every one he came across; the other was made of sterner stuff—grave, with deep thoughts and high aspirations, and very strong, almost rigid ideas with regard to honor and rectitude—this was the inner Basil, whose existence Ermengarde knew of, whom she adored, ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... kept them mutually silent on the subject; and Elizabeth felt persuaded that no real confidence could ever subsist between them again. Her disappointment in Charlotte made her turn with fonder regard to her sister, of whose rectitude and delicacy she was sure her opinion could never be shaken, and for whose happiness she grew daily more anxious, as Bingley had now been gone a week and nothing more was heard ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... that frame of mind, they would have recovered their own commanding position along with my salvation. For when the spirit of the loyalists had been renewed by your consulship, and they had been roused from their dismay by the extreme firmness and rectitude of your official conduct; when, above all, Pompey's support had been secured; and when Caesar, too, with all the prestige of his brilliant achievements, after being honoured with unique and unprecedented marks of distinction and compliments by the senate, was now supporting ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... particular mood they may happen to be in at the time it is presented to them. They know nothing of human nature beyond their own immediate preference at the moment for port or sherry, for vice or virtue. To tell me there could not be a man so lost to shame, if to rectitude, as Captain Crowfoot, is simply to talk nonsense. Nay, gentle reader, if you—and let me suppose I address a lady—if you will give yourself up for thirty years to doing just whatever your lowest self and not your best self may like, I will warrant you ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... time from your capital. Your Holiness has given so many proofs of being animated by a sincere desire to improve the condition of the people whom, under Divine Providence, you have been chosen to govern, and the clemency of your heart and the rectitude of your intentions are so well known and so truly appreciated, that I cannot but hope that the trials which you have experienced in consequence of popular commotion will speedily come to an end, and will be succeeded by a cordial, good understanding between your Holiness and the Roman people. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... particular society within itself; but to show that, though it were so, yet, for reasons I there give, men, in that way of denominating their actions, did not for the most part much stray from the Law of Nature; which is that standing and unalterable rule by which they ought to judge of the moral rectitude and gravity of their actions, and accordingly denominate them virtues or vices. Had Mr. Lowde considered this, he would have found it little to his purpose to have quoted this passage in a sense I used it not; and would I imagine have spared the application he subjoins to it, as not very necessary. ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... indeed, whatever the Roman pontiff has lost in Italy has been taken from him by Bonaparte alone, and the apparent generosity which policy and ambition required would, therefore, have merely been an act of justice. Confiding foolishly in the honour and rectitude of Napoleon, without any other security than the assertion of Fesch, Pius VII., within a fortnight's stay in France, found the great difference between the promises held out to him when residing as a Sovereign at Rome, and their ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in producing this effect. Instead of unfolding the possibilities of the future, he recapitulated the virtues and achievements of the past. I am not attempting to depreciate the inestimable service, which his system of philosophy has rendered toward enhancing the standard of rectitude among his disciples. But for him Asia might have sunk into the depths of moral chaos. This much at least must be said in justification of his doctrine, that evidently it was not his intention to reproduce an exact duplicate ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... this very attempt, "that the universal, continued rectitude of all intelligent creatures had, we may be sure, been willed with a peremptory, efficacious will, if it had been best." He expressly says, that God might have prevented sin from raising its head in his dominions, if he had chosen to do so. "Nor was ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... So, too, Morton Eden wrote to Grenville on 1st January 1793: "The steadfastness of the Emperor does not equal his moral rectitude" ("F. O.," ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... insult the intelligence and patriotism of the American people to entertain any serious doubt as to the issue of the contest. It can have but one issue, unless the country has lost its senses,—and never has it given better evidence of its sobriety, firmness, and rectitude of purpose than it now daily affords. Were the contest one relating to the conduct of the war, and had the Democratic party assumed a position of unquestionable loyalty, there would be some room for doubting who is to be our next President. It is impossible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... brother, jealous of his own honour, as well as of his sister's reputation; and if your intentions are honourable, you will not refuse it."—"Sir," said Peregrine, "I am not at present disposed to appeal to your opinion for the rectitude of my intentions: and I think you assume a little too much importance, in pretending to judge my conduct."—"Sir," replied the soldier, "I pretend to judge the conduct of every man who interferes with my concerns, and even to chastise him, if I think he acts amiss."—"Chastise!" cried the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... never too late for a great nation to rectify a wrong done to even the humblest of its subjects, let alone a man of such undoubted courage and rectitude ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... of what was due to the establishment and the upholding of the decent administration of religion, I ought to set my face against the sordid intolerance by which they were actuated. This notion I weighed well before divulging it to any person; but when I had assured myself as to the rectitude thereof, I rode over one day to Mr Kibbock's, and broke my mind to him about claiming out of the teinds an augmentation of my stipend, not because I needed it, but in case, after me, some bare and hungry gorbie of the Lord should be sent upon the parish, in no such condition ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude of understanding. Junius was accurately skilled in all the northern languages. Skinner probably examined the ancient and remoter dialects only by occasional inspection into dictionaries; but the learning of Junius ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... wife was serious-minded, and much the superior of her husband in intellect as well as morals. Of seven children born to this couple, only one lived—Manon, the subject of our sketch—who inherited the combined beauty of both parents, with the rectitude and high ideals of the mother. But there lies no explanation of inheritance from either father or mother to make us understand how the child of these common people became at nine years of age a student of Plutarch, Tasso, and Voltaire, and a philosopher at the age of eleven. It requires ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... is the sleep of those whom the King causeth to rest! Neither lands nor houses nor gold, nor yet the joy of a fond and Faithful lover, tempted Elizabeth Hallam to leave the path of honor and rectitude; but when her trial was finished, bear witness how God blessed her! giving her abundantly of all good things in this life, and an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and which shall never pass away ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... grandfather, with whom Fox once quarrelled, and whom Burke loved. Plantagenet Palliser, himself the heir to a dukedom, was the young Chancellor of the Exchequer, of whom some statesmen thought much as the rising star of the age. If industry, rectitude of purpose, and a certain clearness of intellect may prevail, Planty Pall, as he is familiarly called, may ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... in pleasure; the temperate and courageous and wise and healthy exceed the cowardly and foolish and intemperate and diseased lives; and generally speaking, that which has any virtue, whether of body or soul, is pleasanter than the vicious life, and far superior in beauty and rectitude and excellence and reputation, and causes him who lives accordingly to be infinitely happier ...
— Laws • Plato
... Their ridicule would naturally appear to him to arise from envy. We read between the lines of his own eulogies of himself, that there was a widespread skepticism about his greatness and his achievements, which he attributed to jealousy. Perhaps his obtrusive virtues made him enemies, and his rectitude was a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... have begun to think they understood why he was not universally popular with members of his own order. Nor did Luis de Leon's demeanour in court serve to dissipate the atmosphere of almost arrogant rectitude which enveloped him. He felt bound to criticize the machinery of the Inquisition. He may easily have seemed to be criticizing those engaged in working the machinery. At the best of times the procedure of the Court was not expeditious. For example, though Luis de ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... turn-down corners, free of any coarse starchiness, had replaced the original all-round article. His hat was glossy, his gloves newish—though one finger had split and been carefully mended. And a casual observer would have noticed about him a certain rectitude of bearing, a certain erectness of head that marks the man who thinks well of himself. He was a master now, with three assistants. Beside him walked a larger sunburnt parody of himself, his brother Tom, just ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... eulogy of Hampden may, with very little alteration, be applied to Lord Cromer. "The sobriety, the self-command, the perfect soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude of intention," were as truly the qualities of the Ruler and regenerator of Egypt as they were of the great statesman of the Rebellion—the man who fought so nobly against the sullen tyranny of Charles ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of confidence in the integrity of an alliance, it would hardly be surprising should the Sultan attach more importance to the practical force of Russia than to the moral rectitude and high political principles of England. The power of Russia has been felt, and the position of European Turkey is that of a dislocated and dismembered Empire, which upon the next explosion will ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... in peace, we said, and the past shall be utterly forgotten; shall not a whole lifetime of unwavering rectitude atone for this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Jean Valjean would want to put the river between his pursuers and himself. He bent his head and reflected like a blood-hound who puts his nose to the ground to make sure that he is on the right scent. Javert, with his powerful rectitude of instinct, went straight to the bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with the information which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little girl?" "I made him pay two sous," replied the toll-keeper. Javert reached ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... unassuming modest merit, entered the very 16 respectable office of which he is now the distinguished principal, in the situation of a young man who has no other prospect of advancement than such as may accrue from rectitude of conduct, and the consequent approbation and patronage of his employer. By a long exemplary series of diligence and fidelity, he acquired the confidence of, and ultimately became a partner in the firm. His strictly conscientious integrity ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... but never, be assured, never would I commit any act unworthy of myself, and for which I would have to blush. It is possible that not only my father but the whole world would pronounce me guilty if it knew my love; but, believe me, that in the consciousness of my rectitude I would have the courage to brave the verdict of the whole world, provided that my own heart acquitted me, and that I am guilty of no other crime than this accidental one, which fate, and not my own will and ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... house of Turner & Co., of Paris and London. The moment my friend's affairs were on a safe footing he placed himself at my service to help with the Vicomtesse de Clericy's more complicated difficulties. I was glad to avail myself of the assistance of one whose name was a by-word for rectitude and stability. Here, at all events, I had a colleague whose word could not be doubted by Isabella, of whose father John Turner had been a friend as well as of ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... M. Paderewski pledged his word to Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson that he would have an armistice concluded with the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia, and the Duumvirs rightly placed implicit confidence in his word as in his moral rectitude. They also felt grateful to him for having facilitated their arduous task by accepting the inevitable. To my knowledge President Wilson himself addressed a letter to him toward the end of April, thanking him cordially ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... would that all, making a resolution similar to my own, would regard the words of the Saviour, for they possess a terrible power in themselves, and are sufficient to inspire those who turn aside from the path of rectitude with awe, while the sweetest rest is afforded to those who diligently ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... for each fantastic whim provides, And certain science ev'ry current guides! Oh, may thy days, from human sufferings free, Be blest with glory and felicity, With full fruition, to a distant hour, Of all thy magic and creative power! Blest in thyself, with rectitude of mind, And blessing, with ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... the watch thus kept upon her. Though confident of her own rectitude, she knew that it is not enough for a woman to be virtuous—she must be above the reach of slander. For the whole term of her probation, therefore, she proclaimed a strict non-intercourse with the other sex. She had females for cabinet ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... call'd a Prince, the Prince of the Power of the Air; the Prince of Darkness, the Prince of Devils, and the like, and his attending Spirits are call'd his Angels: so that however Satan has lost the glory and rectitude of his Nature, by his apostate state, yet he retains a greatness and magnificence, which places him above our rank, and indeed above our conception; for we know not what he is, any more than we know ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Miss HUNTER, pink of parlour-maids, not the conventional flirty soubrette nor the low-comedy waiting-woman, but a self-respecting, responsible young person, conscious of her own and her young man's moral rectitude, and satisfied with quarter-day ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... of Leonard Jasper taking to themselves wings. Unhappy man! How wretched was he during that and many succeeding days! Rolling, so to speak, in wealth, he yet possessed not life's highest blessing, a truly contented mind, flowing from conscious rectitude and an abiding trust in Providence. Without these, how poor is even he who counts his millions! With them, how rich is the humble toiler, who, receiving day by day his daily bread, ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... edited by this clerk in Mr. Jefferson's department, was quite enough to raise an outcry among the Federalists; and Madison's explanation, when it came to be known, of his share in that business, did not add to his reputation either for frankness or political rectitude. Perhaps it was at first more the seeming want of frankness that disgusted his old friends. They could have more readily forgiven him had he openly declared that he had gone over to the enemy, instead of professing to find in the Constitution ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... not to eat to the full; who has a home, but craves not for comforts in it; who is active and earnest in his work and careful in his words; who makes towards men of high principle, and so maintains his own rectitude—that man may be ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... but whatever he said was pregnant with meaning, and uttered with rectitude of articulation and force of emphasis of which I had entertained no conception previously to my knowledge of him. Notwithstanding the uncouthness of his garb, his manners were not unpolished. All topics were handled by him with skill, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... he had apprenticed to a firm of optical instrument makers in York. The boy was not very much like his father. He was indifferent to that religion by which his father lived, but he inherited an aptitude for mathematics, which was very necessary in his trade. Benjamin also possessed his father's rectitude, trusted him, and looked to him for advice to such a degree that even Baruch, at last, thought it would be better to send him away from home in order that he might become a little more self-reliant and independent. It was the sorest of trials to part with ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... their defence, stepping forth to meet in hostile array, the veteran troops of a proud and powerful nation. We behold too, these colonies, amidst want, poverty and misfortunes, animated with the spirit of liberty and fortified by the rectitude of their cause, sustaining for nearly eight years, the weight of a cruel conflict upon their own soil. At length we behold them victorious; their enemies sullenly retiring from their shores, and these feeble colonies enrolled on the page of history as a free, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... to discuss the matter then or to offer any sort of explanation; in his amazement he could not think of any possible explanation. He could not convince himself that Vona needed other protection than her own thoroughness and rectitude gave her; however, he wanted to extend ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... he said to his sister, who was in her New York home on the day when he was starting for Crompton, and had expressed her doubts of Howard's perfect rectitude in everything. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... result of this pious rectitude was a certain order given at the Gobelins. Madame de Maintenon had thrust her leading nose between the doors of the factory and had scented outraged modesty in the reproduction there of the tapestries woven from models of Raphael, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... and that of my fellow-citizens, about to surrender forever a station full of difficulty, of labor and temptation, in which I have been called to very arduous duties, affecting the rights, property, and at times the liberty of others; concerning which the perfect line of rectitude—though desired—was not always to be clearly discerned; in which great interests have been placed within my control, under circumstances in which it would have been easy to advance private ends and sinister projects;—under these circumstances, I inquire, as I have a right ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... produce any very exact method of distinguishing the one from the other; yet this hinders us not from correcting the first appearance by a more accurate consideration, and by a comparison with some rule, of whose rectitude from repeated trials we have a greater assurance. And it is from these corrections, and by carrying on the same action of the mind, even when its reason fails us, that we form the loose idea of a perfect standard to these figures, without being ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... wife, who, having that morning finished embroidering a centre-piece for the dinner-table of the missionaries in Madagascar, was full of conscious rectitude. "A perfect shame; who's ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... carried on by a family named Davidson, father and sons—in conjunction with the killers. And for more than twenty years this business partnership has existed between the humans and the cetaceans, and the utmost rectitude and solicitude for each other's interests has always been maintained. Orca gladiator seizes the whale for the Davidsons and holds him until the deadly lance is plunged into his 'life,' and the Davidssons let Orca carry the carcass to the bottom, and take his tithe of luscious ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... new-born instinct of rectitude within her she tried to see if there was any reasonable ground for the real dislike of her which now seemed to be in her husband's mind. With every desire to be honest, she could think of none except the fact that she had not answered to his rein. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... of the strictest of abstainers there must be some regret for the passing of rum. What man who lived through the bad old days does not remember the thrill of rectitude which came to him the first time he ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... proposition with a proviso. The proposition, Most persons who have uncontrolled power employ it ill, is a generalization of this class, and may be transformed into the following: All persons who have uncontrolled power employ it ill, provided they are not persons of unusual strength of judgment and rectitude of purpose. The proposition, carrying the hypothesis or proviso with it, may then be dealt with no longer as an approximate, but as a universal proposition; and to whatever number of steps the reasoning may reach, the hypothesis, being carried ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... seem to understand," he answered, "it is all over—the whole thing. I ran Churchill and his conscious rectitude gang for all they were worth.... Well, I liked them, I was a fool to give way to pity.—But I did.—One grows weak among people like you. Of course I knew that their day was over.... And it's all over," he said ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... our correspondent's "claim to release," but doubt whether he can establish it; inasmuch as St. Ivo or Evona, canonized on account of his great rectitude and profound knowledge both of civil and canon law, was both lawyer and churchman, like the CLERICUS so recently discussed in our columns; and clearly sought for and obtained his patron saint in his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... life a lack of courage to do justice and be generous to one another. But surely, in the interest of political, historical, and personal rectitude, the dying man's message to the world should absolve him from having his lucid, succinct conversations jargoned into a tattered tedium. It is either a perversion of understanding or a misanthropic egoism that can twist ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... tempted by such idle baits. We have plenty of chanting and chiming in among some modern writers with the triumphs over their own views and principles; but none of a patient resignation to defeat, sustaining and nourishing itself with the thought of the justice of their cause, and with firm-fixed rectitude. I do not pretend to defend the tone of Milton's political writings (which was borrowed from the style of controversial divinity), or to say that he was right in the part he took,—I say that he ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... contains, and does it as none but Wendell Phillips can. His voice is beautifully musical, and it is calculated to attract wherever it is heard. He is a man of calm intrepidity, of a patriotic and warm heart, with manners the most affable, temper the most gentle, a rectitude of principle entirely natural, a freedom from ambition, and a modesty quite singular. As Napoleon kept the Old Guard in reserve, to turn the tide in battle, so do the Abolitionists keep Mr. Phillips in reserve when opposition is expected ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown |
