"Self-imposed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vastness of the undertaking, of the dangers he was incurring, or of the animosity he was inviting, for the Jews of Russia still regarded all learning not found in the folios of the Talmud as sacrilegious and unholy. To overcome this antagonism to secular knowledge now became Mendel's self-imposed task. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... servants be killed, you must not be slain." Those who said this were young Barotse who had been drilled to fighting by Sebituane, and used shields of ox-hide. They beat off the party of Limboa, ten being wounded, and ten slain in the engagement. Limboa subsequently sent three slaves as a self-imposed fine to Masiko for attacking him. I succeeded in getting the Makololo to treat the messengers of Masiko well, though, as they regarded them as rebels, it was somewhat against the grain at first to speak ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... work which she had begun. To the president of the meeting she sent, anonymously, her verses entitled "The Ploughman;" and the production being publicly read, was received with warm approbation, and was speedily put to music. She was thus encouraged to proceed in her self-imposed task; and to this early period of her life may be ascribed some of her best lyrics. "The Laird o' Cockpen," and "The Land o' the Leal," at the close of the century, were sung in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... told him freed him from his self-imposed obligation, which, in a moment of weakness, seemed to him burdensome and dreadful; and yet it was not only unpleasant, but painful. The offer of Simonson destroyed the exclusiveness of his act, minimized in his own and other ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... priest through and through; a member of that caste which never indulged in a jest, and never for a moment forgot to be dignified and solemn before the public; but when among their relations and their colleagues completely threw off this self-imposed restraint, and gave way at times even ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... world of appeal that Prudence felt herself forced to turn in his direction. She now looked squarely into his eyes, nor was there the faintest suspicion of embarrassment in her manner. The moment had come when she must choose between herself and her self-imposed duty. She knew that she loved Iredale, but—she checked something which sounded very like a sigh. She had listened to the precepts of Sarah Gurridge all her life, and, in consequence, she had learned to ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... "They are offering my father everything," his daughter said, "except the only thing he will accept, a place to earn honest bread while engaged in some useful work." This remark led to an offer of the presidency of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, which he accepted. "I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish," he said, "I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... question before his mind was growing clear; whether he was to persist in this self-imposed martyrdom of himself and his family or whether he was to go back upon his outbreak of visionary fanaticism and close with this last opportunity that Lady Sunderbund offered of saving at least the substance of the comfort and social status of his wife and daughters. In which case it ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... forth into the heat again, and blamed herself, according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbing him of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughed at the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day's actualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see what's ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... departure had so widened the breach between the colonel and herself that they practically occupied different parts of the house as far removed from each other as possible. She had denounced him first to his face for the boy's self-imposed exile, and again behind his back to her intimates. Nor did her resolve waver even when the colonel was thrown from his horse and so badly hurt that his eyesight was greatly impaired. "It is a judgment on you," she had said, drawing her ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... advertising locomotives, private carriages, and dodging cabs, when that unhappy functionary is vainly striving to restore order and clear the ways, and he will have some idea of the difficulty I experienced in executing my self-imposed task. Happily, I was acquainted with some pithy expressions in two or three languages, which were familiar to the ears of those I had to deal with; and these, together with the flat of my sword, proved very efficacious in the end. While in the thick of this scene of tumult and confusion, I felt ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... more in the inner lid of the tobacco-box than the inspector seemed to have seen—a few lines and scratches, probably caused by thumb or finger-nail—and I left Mr. Cazalette to his self-imposed labours and rejoined the doctors and the police who were discussing the next thing to be done. That Quick had been murdered there was no doubt; there would have to be an inquest, of course, and for that purpose his body would ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... to think of his selfishness, of his small daily egotism; for, though it was at no great expense to himself, he had been uniformly generous and considerate to her. But she had been conscious that if she should ever remove from her conscience the pressure of a self-imposed censorship, so that her judgment might speak boldly, the verdict of her heart would not have been so indulgent to her husband as was that formal opinion of him which she forced herself to hold. Now, however, it seemed as though the best things ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... by virtue of my self-imposed duty as chronicler of the deeds of Dr. Fu-Manchu—the greatest and most evil genius whom the later centuries have produced, the man who dreamt of an universal Yellow Empire—I should have acquired a certain facility ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... his life was attained. India-rubber was introduced under his patents, and soon proved to have all the value he had, in his wildest moments, claimed for it. Success thus crowned his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... tone was like the clasp of the arm, and Max glowed anew. By a swift, emotional effort, he conjured up the longings that had preyed upon him in his self-imposed solitude—conjured them for the sheer joy of feeling them ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... county officials. Without specific allotment of lands as on the feudal estate, or distribution of tasks as in a socialistic commonwealth, the community accomplishes a natural division of labor and diversification of industry, supports its own institutions by self-imposed taxes and voluntary contributions, and supplies its quota to the larger State of which it forms a democratic part. In spite of the constant exercise of individual independence and competition, there is at the foundation of every rural community ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... who was lying helpless in her house. She saw him in her mind as she had seen him yesterday, bounding into the arena to save another's life: strong and determined—measuring and accepting every risk, looking neither to right nor left whilst he carried his self-imposed burden to safety, and then falling without a groan, felled to the ground by the claws ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the more crowded thoroughfares, and found myself plodding along a lonely suburban road, with a keen wind lashing my face, and a suspicion of rain at intervals wetting my cheeks, I confess I had no feeling of enjoyment in my self-imposed task. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... As if this self-imposed obligation of sleeping on guard, ready to expose his skin in defense of his old-time patron broke the calm in which he had maintained himself until then, the peasant raised his eyes and clasped ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... unconsciously, an interest in the subject which was destined to bear fruit at a later period. At any rate, the fact cannot be gainsaid that she followed in his steps, visiting the Continent in the prosecution of her self-imposed task, and examining into the most loathsome recesses of ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... out the cellar, re-arranged the bins, counted up the cider, made a great cauldron full of raspberry jam, potted, papered, and labelled it. Long after the whole household was in bed she pushed on with her self-imposed tasks until the night was far gone and she very spent and weary. Then she stirred up the smouldering kitchen fire and made herself a cup of tea, and, carrying it up to her own room, she sat sipping it and glancing over an old bound volume of the Leisure Hour. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... premised, I shall confine myself to a brief explanation of the manner in which I have endeavoured to perform my self-imposed task. For one wilful, but as I trust excusable, inaccuracy, I throw myself on the indulgence of my critics. Finding my pages already overloaded with names, and that they must consequently induce a considerable strain upon the memory ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... before that second winter's snow had mantled the hallowed grave, her soul rebelled in indignation and dismay. For a year her heart had held out against him, and softened only when she saw that he was breaking under the self-imposed burden,—a shrewish second wife. However, Mrs. Sanford "held the fort," as has been said, and Marion, high-spirited, sensitive, refined, and loving, was entering on her ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the battles were fought by the people itself, and when the cost of the wars was to so large an extent defrayed by its self-imposed contributions, the Scottish and French campaigns should have called forth that national enthusiasm which found an echo in the songs of Lawrence Minot, as hearty war-poetry as has been composed in any age of our literature. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... conscription legislation bore with fearful severity upon the people of the South. Comprehensive as was the Enrolment Act, which rendered liable to military duty the entire male population between the ages of seventeen and fifty, the South was compelled to overstep its self-imposed limit. The forces which Lee and Johnston surrendered contained so many boys unfitted by youth and so many men unfitted by age for military service, that a Northern General epigrammatically remarked that for its armies the Confederacy had been ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and weaknesses she was painfully aware, had caused her to put from her all thoughts of love and marriage. Her life must be devoted to him, and while he lived she was determined that no thought of self should interfere with her self-imposed duty. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and she left her home for ever in order to present herself ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... history again and again. They had thrashed out the problem in all its bearings, now arguing with and now against each other, and here was the last day. To-morrow in the Theatre they would receive the formal acknowledgment which would crown their academic careers. Vane's self-imposed probation would then be over, the crisis would be passed, and his life's course ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... economy, and to distinguish between that which is really essential to human happiness and human rights, and that which is merely the result of some wild and bootless proposition in political economy, are the great self-imposed tasks that the European people seem now to have assumed; and God grant that they may complete their labors with the moderation and success with which they would appear ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... are bad, and that the taxes are heavy, will not mend matters. Aristocratic government, and the tyranny of masters, are nothing like so injurious as the tyranny of vicious appetites. Men are easily led away by the parade of their miseries, which are for the most part voluntary and self-imposed,—the results of idleness, thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct. To blame others for what we suffer, is always more agreeable to our self-pride, than to blame ourselves. But it is perfectly clear that people who live from day to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... news from the village; and it was positively benefited by such mild exercise as a man may take, in company with a little round-eyed woman, feather-light and active, yet in relation to Diana, like a tethered dove, that can only take short flights. Only here it was a tether self-imposed ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... therefore, that you have any right to reproach yourself. Such hope as I have that my father's murderer may ever be brought to justice rests in your efforts; else I should feel bound to relieve you of a task, which, though self-imposed, is, none the less, onerous and ill-paid. Do not consider me altogether selfish if I ask that you still continue the search, and that I—that I still be held to my covenant. I am aware that I can never fully repay the kindness I am asking of ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... playing the part of a henpecked husband, did remark: "If my wife gets any meaner, I'm going to send Stan Martin after her!" But it didn't get much of a laugh. And the Government organization had nothing to do with that kind of censorship; it was self-imposed. Every one of the really great comics recognized, either consciously or subconsciously, that the Nipe was not a subject for humor. Such jokes would have made them about as popular as the Borscht Circuit comedian who told a funny story about ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that he only goes up "to look at the compass and see how she's heading." I am surprised to find that looking at the compass is attended with such painful and melancholy emotions as those expressed in Mahood's face when he comes back; but he performs the self-imposed duty with unshrinking faithfulness, and relieves us of a great deal of anxiety about the safety of the ship. The captain seems a little negligent, and sometimes does not observe the compass once a day; but Mahood ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... understand the structure of which he had to examine and dissect many of the common forms. The memoir, which was originally designed to describe only his new type, gradually expanded into an elaborate monograph on the Cirripedes (barnacles) as a whole group. For eight years he continued this self-imposed task, getting at last so weary of it as to feel at times as if the labor had been in some sense wasted which he had spent over it; and this suspicion seems to have remained with him in maturer years. But when at last the two bulky volumes, of more than one thousand pages of text, with forty ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... every corner: Italian, Roumanian, South American, North American, each headed by its national flag and hailed with cheering as it passed. But even the cheers were sober: Paris was not to be shaken out of her self-imposed serenity. One felt something nobly conscious and voluntary in the mood of this quiet multitude. Yet it was a mixed throng, made up of every class, from the scum of the Exterior Boulevards to the cream of the fashionable restaurants. These people, only two days ago, had been ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... apartments and at the great hotels—people who wintered in New York and were a part of its social and civic life to that extent, but whose duties and responsibilities for the metropolitan welfare were self-imposed, and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... finds a noble simplicity of line and color scheme, an elimination of useless detail, a contempt for tricks to enforce an effect, and above all a comprehension and mastery of light, vitality, and texture—those three unities of the painter’s art—that bring his canvases very near to those of his self-imposed Spanish master. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts." While in the midst of his laborious though self-imposed duties, Hampden, on one occasion, wrote to his mother: "My lyfe is nothing but toyle, and hath been for many yeares, nowe to the Commonwealth, nowe to the Kinge.... Not so much tyme left as to doe my dutye ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... assure you, that such dreams and visions are but the effect of your isolated life—they come from an over-heated brain and over-strained nerves. And you must consent to throw off those self-imposed weights, and be happy and joyous as a young ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and an high feeling of duty and worth, Adrian had fulfilled his self-imposed task. I had contemplated him with reverence, and a fruitless desire of imitation. I now offered a few words of encouragement and sympathy. He hid his face in his hands, and while he strove to calm ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... irritates me, and I often regret his concessions to the prudery of the age,—no, not of the age but of librarians,—I cannot but feel that his concessions, for I suppose I must call them concessions, are to a certain extent self-imposed, regretfully, perhaps ... somewhat in this fashion—"True, that I live in an age not very favourable to artistic production, but the art of an age is the spirit of that age; if I violate the prejudices ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the murdered Concho brooded,—upon all whom avarice alternately flattered and tortured. From his quiet gains in his legitimate business, from the little capital accumulated through industry and economy, he lavished thousands on this chimera of his fancy. He grew grizzled and worn over his self-imposed delusion; he no longer jested with his customers, regardless of quality or station or importance; he had cliques to mollify, enemies to placate, friends to reward. The grocery suffered; through giving food and lodgment to clouds of unimpeachable witnesses before ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... self-imposition of those systematic habits which to men of business are a necessity; it is, however, one which you cannot at all appreciate until you have experienced its importance: I refer to the advantage of being, by a self-imposed rule, provided with an immediate object, in which the intellectual pursuits of a woman must otherwise be deficient. I would not depreciate the mightiness of "the future;"[77] but it is evident that the human mind is so constituted as to feel that motives ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... be silent and not speak at all when you feel that your temper is getting or has gotten the better of you, you will soon get the better of your temper. There is no such efficient discipline for a hasty temper as determined, self-imposed silence. Then, too, there is a dignity about silence under provocation that is impressive and effective. The greatest disadvantage at which any person can be placed in the eyes of companions and friends is that of losing ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... may believe, in hollow bliss, My rest in the empyrean is. Watch thou; and when up comes the moon, Atowards her turn me; and then, boon, Thyself compose, 'neath wavering leaves That hang these branched, majestic eaves: That so, with self-imposed deceit, Both, in this halcyon retreat, By trance possessed, imagine may We couch in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... exchange for odd jobs around neighboring houses. No one seemed to know where he slept, or seemed to regard the matter as of any consequence. There was about the jet black hero, however, an air of absolute happiness, added to an obvious sense of pride at the performance of his self-imposed and very loving task. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... in the attempt. She was a very faulty and passionately human child, with no aspirations towards being an angel of the house, but she had a sense of duty and a desire to be good,—respectably, decently good. Whenever she fell below this self-imposed standard she was miserable. She did not like to be under her aunt's roof, eating bread, wearing clothes, and studying books provided by her, and dislike her so heartily all the time. She felt instinctively that this was wrong and mean, and whenever ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Scythians—Scandinavian Mythology.—In Vol. ii., p. 12., I desired to be informed whether this practice has prevailed amongst any people besides the American Indians. As you have established no rule against an inquirer's replying to his own Query, (though, unfortunately for other inquirers, self-imposed by some of your correspondents) I shall avail myself of your permission, and refer those who are interested in the subject to Herodotus, Melpomene 64, where they will find that the practice of scalping prevailed amongst the Scythians. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... Venus. She is thought by many to be another statue of Victory. We may some day evolve scenarios that will require nothing more than a title thrown upon the screen at the beginning, they come to the eye so perfectly. This is not the only possible sort, but the self-imposed limitation in certain films might give them a charm akin to that of the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... from our shoulders by such a word as this that I have been poorly trying to speak about now! 'Thou art careful and troubled about many things,' poor soul! trying to be good; trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil. Try the other plan, and listen to Him saying, 'Give up self-imposed effort in thine own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... she muttered as she went about her self-imposed tasks, "'tain't fair." And scowlingly Mary ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... it, and so did my schoolmates, for there was not one of them, who at some time or other, had not felt the effects of my prowess in a striking manner. Still, the drubbings I gave were not always to my credit, for I was a very big and strong lad for my age, and my self-imposed tasks of long rowing trips and other athletic exercises, naturally made me powerful in the arms and chest. Of my brain power I shall say little, as my mind was ever bent on sporting topics when it should have ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... reasonably be supposed, that the excess of humidity which caused the remarkable mirage of the afternoon helped to continue the "black hour," as the Arabs term it, far beyond its ordinary limits. Hence it was nearly ten o'clock when Royson quitted the camp on his self-imposed task. To all outward semblance, he differed not a jot from the two Arabs who accompanied him. A burnous and hood covered his khaki riding costume. He bestrode a powerful camel nearly eight feet high. Like his companions, he carried a slung rifle; a haversack ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... faithfully, in rendering services of this kind to the community, than the Prince of Wales. The multiplicity and variety of his engagements, on behalf of local and special objects of utility, would make a surprising list, and they must have involved a sacrifice of ease and leisure, and endurance of self-imposed restraint, a submission to tedious repetitions of similar acts and scenes, and to continual requests and importunities, which few men of high rank would like ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... rested, through four months, on the discussion of Irish affairs—an interdict self-imposed by the English press, in a spirit of honourable (almost of superstitious) jealousy on behalf of public justice; jealousy for the law, that it should not be biased by irresponsible statements—jealousy for the accused, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... they worked at their self-imposed task of constructing a flying machine which would really soar among the clouds. They had read brief accounts of the experiments carried out by Otto Lilienthal, and in many ways the ground had been ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... world of petty aims and transitory pleasures, with which they, filled full of the knowledge of higher and eternal things, had so little in common save sympathy,—sympathy for the wilful wrong-doing of man, and pity for his self-imposed blindness. Presently Heliobas spoke again in his customary ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... fictions, this world where the many so largely find their inspiration in the performances of the few, was startlingly typified to Ramsey as, out of the upper night and the darkness of her troubles, she came in upon the show; the audience sitting in their self-imposed twilight of a few dimmed lamps, designedly forgetful of the voyage for which all were there, and the players playing their parts as though the play were the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... more civilized French stomach. They were forced to make a part of the journey in wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed regime of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds, and all, soon healed the ignominious eruption. Here the whole family passed some months of happy repose, too soon interrupted by the tragical death of Maurice. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... work, and Toni's eyes and head ached when the luncheon-bell rang to set her free from her self-imposed task; but she did not give in, and after her hasty meal she would return to the library and struggle till tea-time with half a dozen French exercises, which by the aid of a key she sternly ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... emotions, it is a creeping, sly, keen, persevering, insidious sin, assuming various forms, to cheat even itself; for it shames to name itself unto itself; a cowardly, darkness-loving sin, never daring to look human nature in the face; full of lean excuses for self-imposed starvation, only revelling in the impurity and duskiness of its own shut-up heart. At last the joy-bells ring its knell, while it crawls into eternity like a vile reptile, leaving a ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... but Howe was too suspicious of treachery to allow any one else to be sentinel but himself, and as he had slept a while during the day, he was equal to the self-imposed task. As the shades deepened, his practised ear detected sounds that others would have thought little of, but which he considered, unmistakably to be produced by the stealthy tread of Indians. As hour after hour went by, shadows were flitting ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... wind Mother drifted across the fields to the corner of the village where her mother occupied a large single room in solitude upon the top floor, a solitude self-imposed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... her, which privilege suggested no lack of substantial and dainty provisions, and my governess was an accomplished and very discreet lady, whom my step-mother secured after much trouble and worry; but here the limit was drawn to her self-imposed duties; having done this much she rested satisfied that she had so far outstepped the obligations of her ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... solitude, at once deplored and self-imposed, has the still more serious disadvantage of leaving the mind, for lack of proper control, to the domination of the most false ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... opinion that there were few men who, after a night walk and perhaps some labour in forcibly opening a door or a window-shutter, would not cease for a moment in pursuance of their self-imposed task to partake of the refreshments so conveniently left behind them by the occupants of the house when they retired to rest. Should my surmises be correct, I might reasonably expect, should my house be broken into, to find an unconscious burglar in the library when I went down ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... was only half through, so she set grimly to her self-imposed task again. She had very nearly finished the big room when the door softly opened, and who should appear but Beatrice! At the sight of Gwen and her occupation she nearly dropped the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... mother." Without a word, but with trembling lips, he stretched forth his arms to embrace her, and I stole away, leaving to her sacred sorrow the poor woman who for the moment, forgetting her self-imposed ascetic restraint, was yielding to every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... amidst scenes and circumstances ready to exercise his brave and generous propensities, and to put their personal issues to the test on his mind. Hence Poland's sadly-varying destinies seemed to me the stage best calculated for the development of any self-imposed task. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... to meet expenses was also provided for. In a word, every function of government was from that time exercised in the name and by the authority of the people of North Carolina. Virtually the province was under martial law, but it was under martial law self-imposed. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... of many who would have shrunk from following his example, or even from publicly avowing his creed. Moreover, the miserable condition of the masses of the agricultural population, of which we shall give some startling evidence later on, must have prepared a soil favourable to his self-imposed mission, to awaken them to a knowledge both of their rights and of their duties. Especially welcome must have been doctrines in accordance with their simple religious beliefs, as well as with their ancient and well-founded traditions ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... Indeed, the artificial organization, whether monastic or sectarian, may become so strong as to interfere with national life, and make men forget their real duty to their king and country, in their self-imposed duty to the sect or order to which they belong. The monastic organization indeed had to die, in many countries, in order that national life might develop itself; and the dissolution of the monasteries marks the birth of an united and powerful England. They or Britain ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... another, about the time I knew him he was master of four or five hundred thousand pounds; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the summer; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at his window in this damp, close, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the self-imposed question. He could only stand and stare after her and the trotting, rolling Indian, as they moved down the road and disappeared in the shadow of the aspens at the next curve. She had seen him; there could be no doubt of that. She had recognized him; more, Houston felt sure that ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... means, the difficulty of President Kruger's self-imposed task was not so great as at first appeared. To some it was advisable to do no more than point to the Jameson Raid and say: 'We only wish to live in peace and to be left alone.' To some again that act is construed ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of women from the right of suffrage. In the establishment of these laws, as in their modification, women themselves have even a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is, therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to women the enjoyment of which they desire, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... had irrevocably committed Leo's happiness to his honor, it might then be safe to tell him the truth, and solicit release from the self-imposed terms. Five hours later, she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in the library seemed to be a sort of household rite—a self-imposed Truce of Bacchus before the resumption of hostilities in the dining-room. It lasted from six forty-five to seven; everybody sipped Manhattans and kept quiet and listened to the radio newscast. The only new face, ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... driving on Sundays, and appeared in considerable danger of falling into the gulf of methodism; but this turn did not last long, and whatever induced him to take it up, he apparently became bored with his self-imposed restrictions, and after a little while he threw off his short-lived sanctity, and resumed his worldly habits and irreverent language, for he was always a loose talker. Active and ambitious in his pursuits, and magnificent in his tastes, he devoted ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... amusement, even had he been inclined that way. Night found him very tired; morning brought a hundred self-imposed and complicated tasks to be accomplished before the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... hastened to explain how it came they had not suspected the truth. Then as questions began to follow, he also told who and what they were, even mentioning something concerning their self-imposed mission into the danger ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... leveled criticism of fasting is that in its efforts to survive self-imposed starvation the body metabolizes vital tissue, not just fat, and therefore, fasting is damaging, potentially fatally damaging. People who tell you this will also tell you that fasters have destroyed their heart muscle or ruined their nervous system permanently. But this kind of damage ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... met the death he had voluntarily challenged, in the cause of the land he loved, and in the moment of victory. Again and again, both in prose and in verse, he had said that this seemed to him a good death to die; and two years of unflinching endurance of self-imposed hardship and danger had proved that he ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid chicken."[83] Etiquette is refined, elaborate, and vigorous. Politeness has been diffused through all ranks from ancient times.[84] "The discipline of the race was self-imposed. The people have gradually created their own social conditions."[85] "Demeanor was [in ancient times] most elaborately and mercilessly regulated, not merely as to obeisances, of which there were countless grades, varying according to sex as well as ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... touch of vanity, and was quite conscious of what she deemed the romantic side of her way of life, that she should be taken as the sort of incarnation of the prosaic. Nevertheless, all through that table d'hote dinner, Nan kept to her self-imposed task, and was busying herself about the wages of the coastguardsmen, and the probable cost of mackerel, and the chances of Sal's having to face a westerly squall of wind and rain when she was breasting the steep hill rising from Newhaven. Was Sal singing that night ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Fast living, tendency to Felkin, on workmen's savings Ferguson Charity, the Ferguson, the astronomer Flaxman, the sculptor Flowers, use of Foote, and debt Forster, W.E., on Lister Fox, Head, and Co., and cooperation Fox, C.J., and debt Franklin, B., on thrift of time on self-imposed taxes his industry Friendly societies defects of working of objections to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the most deplorable. Yet he had permitted himself to be angry with a creature like M. de Lesdiguieres—a lackey, a fribble, a nothing, despite his potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have discharged his self-imposed mission without arousing the vindictive resentment of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... which have shut her out from the large experiences, the wealth and fullness of the life to which she was called. She is beginning to feel, and to cast off the bonds which oppress her—many of them, indeed, self-imposed, and many gilded and rarely wrought, covered with flowers and delicate tissues, but none the less bonds—bonds upon the speech, upon ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... views of their leader. They could be heard chatting, discussing, arguing, calculating the different chances of an encounter, and observing the vast expanse of the ocean. Voluntary watches from the crosstrees of the topgallant sail were self-imposed by more than one who would have cursed such toil under any other circumstances. As often as the sun swept over its daily arc, the masts were populated with sailors whose feet itched and couldn't hold still on the planking of the deck below! And the Abraham Lincoln's ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... helps the bush-folk, and they, in turn, doing what they can to help it in self-imposed task, are ever ready to "find room somewhere" in pack-bags or swags for mail-matter in need of transport assistance—the general opinion being that "a man that refuses to carry a man's mail to him 'ud be mean enough to steal bread out of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... answer these self-imposed questions, and as her misery and despair grew greater it seemed as if the morning was growing very cold and the bricks of the houses opposite more and more obscure, and then soon after they were quite invisible, for she saw ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... remembered that the Origin was an abstract or condensation of a much bigger book, whereas the Essay of 1844 was an expansion of the sketch of 1842. It is not therefore surprising that in the Origin there is occasionally evident a chafing against the author's self-imposed limitation. Whereas in the 1844 Essay there is an air of freedom, as if the author were letting himself go, rather than applying the curb. This quality of freshness and the fact that some questions were more fully discussed in 1844 than in 1859, makes the earlier work good reading ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... than I have hitherto performed." She left Australia in 1846, bearing with her the warm prayers of the working colonists, whose confidence and gratitude, both bond and free, she had thoroughly secured, charged with the self-imposed mission of representing in England the claims of those powerless classes who have neither honour nor pensions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... of affairs when Pike emerged from his self-imposed retreat in Texas. The case for the Confederate cause among the Indians was becoming desperate. So many things that called for apprehension were occurring. Cooper and Rains were both in disgrace, the failure of the recent campaign having been attributed largely to ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... brightness and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and scenes ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... hill, began rolling and tossing the several tubs, buckets, watering-pots, sacks, and spades, which were destined for the removal and conveyance of the much coveted-bog; we followed, amused and pleased, as, in certain moods, physical and mental, people are pleased and amused at self-imposed difficulties, down the abrupt and broken descent; and for some time the process of digging among the mould at the edge of the bank went ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... his style was laboured, being an obvious blend of Thucydides with Isaeus, an old and practised pleader. Yet he was ambitious and determined; he longed to copy the career of Pericles, the noblest of Athenian statesmen. The stories of his self-imposed exercises and their happy issue are well known; his days he spent in declaiming on the sea-shore with pebbles in his mouth, his nights in copying and recopying Thucydides; the speeches which have come down to us show clearly the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... noble imaginings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and apply in like manner a fit machinery to the working out the projects which made the dungeon of the one a holy place, and sustained the other in his self-imposed exile.—The result is great and decisive! It establishes, in renewed force, those principles of political conduct which have endured, and must continue to endure, 'like truth from age to age.'" The history, on the whole, lacks the grasp in the portrayal of Wentworth ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... of the day, and every spare moment relaxation; little you guess the frightful drudgery undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself,—to live at once two lives, each as severe as the whole of yours,—to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement, a body and brain already worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour. I did it. God forbid, though, that I should take credit to myself for it. Hundreds more have done it, with still fewer advantages than ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... pet cars, these having been driven to Hamilton by the chauffeurs of their respective families. Nine automobiles accordingly went to swell the procession that sunny Friday morning and the Sans were in high feather as, two to a car, they set out on their self-imposed welcoming task. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... five millions marriage had added the colossal fortune of a beautiful heiress, whose extravagances aggregated less than his own solely through the limitations of her sex. Yet, were it not for the self-imposed handicap of adhering strictly to the somewhat old-fashioned precept that jewels should be acquired only through affectionate beneficence, Mrs. Fernmore might have succeeded in surpassing the princely prodigalities of her lord ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... exclamations of delight. What girl does not welcome the very idea of a real dance to the notes of a real orchestra? The Overton girls went upstairs to dress for the coming dance, and for the time being their self-imposed problem of the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... I confess that it was with borrowed money, but under the law he was mine. Ah, Lord," he sighed, "self-imposed frankness will be gone when I am taken from you. And yet ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... be the nature of that eternal punishment to which those will be doomed who shall be judged to have been evil at the last; but methinks that no more terrible torment can be devised than the memory of self-imposed ruin. What wretchedness can exceed that of remembering from day to day that the race has been all run, and has been altogether lost; that the last chance has gone, and has gone in vain; that the end has come, and with it disgrace, contempt, and self-scorn—disgrace ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... they would discover it and he would be anonymously apprised of it. A few days after the dispatch of the second message, Kenworthy opened his desk drawer to find a copy. For the first and only time, he later explained, he broke his self-imposed rule of relying on negotiations between the military and the committee and its staff in camera. He laid both messages before a long-time friend of his, the editor of the Washington Post's editorial page.[14-103] Thus ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the Fairy disappeared, CINDERELLA resumed her self-imposed tasks of making an omelette and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... to carry out this theory, I am not prepared to say that Wordsworth never transgressed his own self-imposed laws. But he adhered to his theory to the last. A friend of the poet's told me that Wordsworth had to him expressed his belief that he would be remembered longest, not by his sonnets, as his friend thought, but by his lyrical ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... favour with the King, and hoped to bring about peace. Becket regarded Foliot as his bitter enemy, and, whilst the latter was engaged in the most solemn service in St. Paul's (on St. Paul's Day, 1167), an emissary from the Archbishop, who was then in self-imposed exile abroad, came up to the altar, thrust a sentence of excommunication into his hands, and exclaimed aloud, "Know all men that Gilbert, Bishop of London, is excommunicated by Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury." When Becket returned to England, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... as though a new and undivided Europe had sprung to arms in moral horror against Germany. She has this to add fierceness to her soul—the reproach that she came in too late. That reproach is being wiped out rapidly by the scarlet of self-imposed sacrifice. She did come in late—for that very reason she will be the last of Germany's ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... mood showed signs of dejection. For a long time now the bottom of the cash-box had been visible, and as more and more workers were turned into the street the product of self-imposed taxation was gradually declining. And the readiness of those outside the movement to make sacrifices was rapidly beginning to fail. The public had now had enough of the affair. Everything was failing, now they would have to see if they could ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... them both good fortune, satisfaction was largely mingled with my regret when the next day I stood in the little station looking after the train which bore Lee and his daughter back to his self-imposed task in smoky Stoney Clough. Neither of them ever crossed my path again; but still Harry and I discuss the old man's doings, and Aline says that there was a trace of the hero hidden under his ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... was safe from further molestation, Madeleine Blanchet hurried back to the house, which the rioters were looting, and saved many treasures from falling into their hands. This dangerous self-imposed task ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore |
