"Sense of duty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress—Jesuit missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he made a fresh discovery—that Plausaby was standing guard over his wife, and that the restraint he exercised was intentional. The mystery of the thing fascinated him; and the impression that it had something to do with Charlton, and the yet stronger motive of a sense of duty to the afflicted woman, made him resolute in his determination to penetrate it. Not more so, however, than was Isabel, who endeavored in every way to secure an uninterrupted interview for Mr. Lurton, but ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... could lend him a more telescopic vision in his, and keep his aims high, if his self-concentration ever made him short-sighted. He would write plays because he could not help it, but she would inspire him to write them with the lofty sense of duty she would have felt in writing them ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... numerous reasons for undertaking this work, chief among them, however, being because I have for many months, felt it to be a duty to my God, and to my fellow-man. Nay, I may put it in a yet more concise form; and simply say, because of a sense of duty to my God, for I believe the two to be inseparable. As the green calyx of the rosebud holds within its embrace everything required to make up the perfect rose in all its beauty of form, texture, tint and perfume, so my duty to my God embraces ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... person for whom Eleanore Leavenworth stood ready to sacrifice herself was one for whom she had formerly cherished affection, I could no longer doubt; love, or the strong sense of duty growing out of love, being alone sufficient to account for such determined action. Obnoxious as it was to all my prejudices, one name alone, that of the commonplace secretary, with his sudden heats and changeful manners, his odd ways and studied self-possession, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... been falling after they had left Dorogobouge had seriously increased the general misery. Except among the soldiers of the rear guard which had been commanded with inflexible firmness by Davout, and which was now led by Ney, the sense of duty began to be lost by almost ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... treatment. All admit more or less the need of some external stimulus to induce school-children to study and behave well, although some are of opinion that it would be well to instil into the child the love of good for its own sake, and that a sense of duty rather than the fear of punishment should deter from evil. This opinion is generally recognized as lofty, but impracticable. To imagine that the child could be stimulated to work merely by a desire to do his duty is a "pedagogic absurdity"; nor is it credible that a child ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the library struck twelve, and he tossed the manuscript skeleton back into his despatch-box. His mind was vaguely disturbed with a sense of duty undone, until he remembered promising to tell Barbara if he heard any news of Jack Waring. For a moment he thought of writing to her; but in fact there was no news, he would have only himself to blame if he re-established communications with her in ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... to the girl. Could it be that she was capable of changing the life of a powerful man like this? It filled her with a sense of duty as well as exaltation, an emotion that made a woman of her. She seemed suddenly to have put the hotel and all its worriments far, far ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Clinton came to a narrow slum, down which he turned, and so filthy was it that the lady almost feared to follow. But indignation, curiosity, and a stern sense of duty prevailed. She went along with up-turned nose, making her way carefully between cabbages and other vegetable refuse, sidling up against a house to avoid a dead cat which lay huddled up in the middle of the way, with a great ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... treacherous. Twelve months ago there had been a goal before him which he might attain, a winning-post which was still within his reach. There was in store for him the tranquillity of retirement which he would enjoy as soon as a sense of duty would permit him to seize it. But now the prospect of that happiness had gradually vanished from him. That retirement was no longer a winning-post for him. The poison of place and power and dignity had got into his blood. As he looked forward he feared rather than ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 142 men. And it is equally painful to behold its colonel, recently a major-general and a distinguished corps commander, reduced to the necessity of fighting, rifle in hand, as a private soldier, and compelled by a sense of duty to lead a mere squad of men as a forlorn-hope against a savage enemy from whom defeat ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... each human effort. In other and in greater words, what is needed is a sense of immediate duty, and a feeling of impalpable constraint. Indeed, seamen and duty are all the time inseparable companions. It has been suggested to me that this sense of duty is not a patriotic sense or a religious sense, or even a social sense in a seaman. I don't know. It seems to me that a seaman's duty may be an unconscious compound of these three, something perhaps smaller than either, but something much more definite for the simple mind ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... translation at the nearest cake-shop. But the little maid, whose dress and manner certainly did not betray an habitual disregard of gifts of this kind, looked at the coin thoughtfully, but not regretfully. Some innate sense of duty, equally strong with that of being polite to strangers, filled her consciousness. With the utterly unexpected remark that her father 'did not allow her to take money', the queer little figure moved away, leaving the two Americans covered ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... your anserine ignorance in the governor's office. The people don't care two whoops in hades what your "opinions" may be on any subject within the purview of the United States Senate. If you want to spend the "spring and summer" rainbow chasing, a proper sense of duty to your employers, even a slight conception of commercial honor, would induce you to resign your present position. If you are destitute of both honor and decency you will probably campaign at our expense as you have promised; but I opine ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... could; but her sense of duty came to her aid, and she said, 'That is quite impossible, Vava; we must stay in London. So the best thing we can do is to try and be as happy as we can here, and do our duty. We will live upon as little as we can, and save money, so that we can ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... could not work. We followed him into the stable, and found the horse looking oppressed by care, its head lowered and motionless; it had evidently got no appetite. His master began a pathetic oration, looking tenderly at the animal, as if to arouse it to a sense of duty, and then taking its head, and kissing it lovingly, he put it into the manger, but to no purpose. Then the man began to weep bitterly, but in such a way that I had the greatest difficulty to prevent myself laughing, for I could see that he wept in the hope that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... entombment, when he was killed, each of the funeral guests inflicting a small wound with a spear. His head was hung on the tomb. From circumstantial accounts of this incident which reached one of us, we infer that those who took part in this brutal act were moved only by a sense of duty and that the co-operation was repugnant to all ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... really been guilty of a sin against his conscience—satisfied his desires irrespective of all sense of duty? ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... been a shock. With his sense of duty and family pride, the Colonel had, when the news of the frontier disaster first reached him, found it almost impossible to believe that his nephew had been guilty of shameful cowardice; and now it looked as if the disgrace might be brought still ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... brilliant charges made by this gallant prince, and at last fell in his arms at the battle of Naseby. Colonel Beverley had married into the family of the Villiers, and the issue of his marriage was two sons and two daughters; but his zeal and sense of duty had induced him, at the commencement of the war, to leave his wife and family at Arnwood, and he was fated never to meet them again. The news of his death had such an effect upon Mrs Beverley, already worn with anxiety on her husband's ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... repented of his folly, and promised obedience for the future. The chaplain was a tender-hearted man, and he thought that some gentle words might touch the feelings of the prisoner, and bring him to a sense of duty. With the principal's permission, therefore, he paid a visit ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... too lofty a position, Sire, for a rough, simple warrior like myself," he said. "Nothing but a sense of duty to my country would have made me ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of the public mind." May not the cloud of celestial witnesses deplore in a measure the state of your mind which leads you to turn your back on the opened book of judgment, and refuse to read it? Does your sense of duty to your country claim from you to send forth such a cry against your fellow-citizens and your nation that you have no ears for the solemn teachings of Providence? Might it not be more heroic in us all to cease to denounce, and to begin to enquire?—with humility and courage to look God in the ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... free life of the cattle range, and the wide expanse of the boundless prairie, to that rugged mountainous section of Arizona, where many fabulous fortunes have been won through the discovery of rich ore. The Broncho Rider Boys find themselves impelled, by a stern sense of duty, to make a brave fight against heavy odds, in order to retain possession of a valuable mine that is claimed by some of their relatives. That they meet with numerous strange and thrilling perils while enlisted in this service, can be ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... been up all night, doctors may be worked off their feet, seven hundred men may have passed through the station, all wounded and all fed, but when our visitors arrive they discover that "This poor fellow has had none," and firmly, and with a high sense of duty and of their own efficiency, they make the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... the science which they oppose, but to the religion which they profess to defend. I was not a little struck lately by finding in a religious periodical of the United States, a worthy Episcopalian clergyman bitterly complaining, that whenever his sense of duty led him to denounce from his pulpit the gross infidelity of modern geology, he could see an unbelieving grin rising on the faces of not a few of his congregation. Alas! who can doubt that such ecclesiastics as this good clergyman must virtually be powerful ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... calm, gentle tones; "No, Horace; 'perfect love casteth out fear,' and I cannot judge you hardly for what may have been only a mistaken sense of duty, and has ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... Camp Comfort, as Jane called the little spot where she kept house in the open air for her father, listening to the roar of the Yosemite Falls back of her, and prepared their humble meals over the camp-fire. Job was going home; the old man would expect him on the Fourth, and that keen sense of duty which was ever stronger than his longing to linger near Jane, impelled him to go. He had come to say good-by. Old Tom Reed, sick and selfish, had been blind to the new light in Jane's eyes and did not know the secret which the birds and trees and sky had learned and seemed never to cease whispering ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... and eminent statesmen, announced their purpose to vote for Fillmore. Mr. Choate, the eminent lawyer and statesman of Massachusetts, declared his purpose to vote for Buchanan, upon the plausible ground that, as the choice was between Buchanan and Fremont, he was compelled, by a sense of duty, to vote for Buchanan. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... on the weeds, and to calculate the distance advanced. It is quite true that we ought to learn to do things irrespective of the reward; but plenty of opportunities will be given in the progress of life, and in much higher kinds of action, to exercise our sense of duty in severe loneliness. We have no right to turn intellectual exercises into pure operations of conscience: these ought to involve essential duty; although no doubt there is plenty of room for mingling duty with those; ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... handsome head and gave her the caress she coveted; but for him was gone all the old rapture that a kiss from those flower-like lips would have brought. By Hubert Varrick, at this moment, it was given only from a sense of duty, as love for ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Conscious of a sense of duty, he left the house and went to see Maslennikoff in order to obtain from him a permission to visit Maslova in prison, and also the Menshoffs—mother and son—about whom Maslova had spoken to him. Nekhludoff had known this Maslennikoff a long time; they had been ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... that men are a law to themselves, as well as a bundle of desires which they obey; but what he charges upon us, and what I venture to bring as an indictment against you, and myself too, is this: that apart from Christ it is not conscience that rules our lives; that apart from Christ it is not sense of duty that is strongest; that apart from Christ the real directing impulse to which the inward proclivities, if not the outward activities, do yield in the main and on the whole, is, as this text says, the things that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Orleans he crossed an arm of the Gulf of Mexico to the Floridas, and after remaining in that territory for a considerable time, and taking part under a sense of duty in a campaign (more to scatter than annihilate), against the Seminole and Cherokee tribes of Indians, who, in conjunction with numberless fugitive slaves, from the districts a hundred miles round, were devastating the settlements, and indiscriminately ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... sense of duty could tempt me to set forth on that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language. The path is beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the serious causes of dissension between England and America have begotten half the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... gathered, liberal; they certainly included more than can be considered strictly incumbent on young men in society. And, besides being polite, Eugene was also curious. It is one thing to silently suffer under a passion which a sense of duty forbids; such a position has its pleasures. The situation is altered when the idea dawns upon you that there is no reciprocity of graceful suffering; that, in fact, the lady may prefer somebody else. Eugene wanted ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... of it the stronger his wrath grew. Had it not been for his fear of leaving a betraying trail he would have gone back to see if the warriors were already approaching the hollow; but his sense of duty and obvious necessity kept him at the edge of the brake in which his comrades lay, ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was to return, perhaps I could make an impression on the minds of some, and recall two or three, if not more, to a sense of duty. What a great thing that would be, wouldn't it? And if I did, I would get our bishop to send me a pious, zealous, humble-minded, affectionate, able young man, as a successor; and I would leave my farm, and orchard, and little matters, as a glebe for the Church. And who knows ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the governor forwarded speeches to the different tribes, and instructed the Indian agents to use all possible means to recall them to a sense of duty. He also wrote to the governors of Illinois and Missouri, on the subject of the border difficulties, in the hope that a general and simultaneous effort might avert an appeal ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... magazines of the country. His oratory was not of the cold and unimpassioned kind which falls upon the ears but fails to make an impression on the heart. He did not lose sight of the fact that the chief end and aim of oratory is to arouse men to a sense of duty, deter them from the commission of evil, and inspire them with high and holy purposes and noble, generous resolves, the accomplishment of which demands that the living, breathing spirit or soul should be infused into the words. ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... had a high sense of duty and honour would not have accepted a single favour from either one or the other of the inimical sovereigns, even if it had been offered to her; much less would she have cringed and whined indelicately in order ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Miss Erema," Mrs. Busk replied, without any congenial excitement. "It does seem hard for them that have the liability on them. But still, miss, you have always shown such a high sense of duty, and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... hard at Bordogni for half an hour, and Nino did not open his mouth except to produce the notes. But as his blood was up from the preceding interview he took great pains, and Ercole, who makes him sing all the solfeggi he can from a sense of duty, himself wearied of the ridiculous old-fashioned ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... officer commanding the militia and others were indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine and imprisonment, for resisting the writ of a federal court; but they were pardoned by the President because "they had acted under a mistaken sense of duty." ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... reached England early in December; and though, if "he had been consulted beforehand, he would have been inclined to dissuade the dismissal of the last ministry as premature and impolitic," he did not consider it compatible "with his sense of duty" to decline the charge which the King laid upon him, and at once accepted the office of Prime-minister, being fully aware that by so doing he "became technically, if not morally, responsible for the dissolution of the preceding ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... to the world of poor Andrew Walkingshaw, bereft of his father and deserted by his sister, living in that great house in company only with his sense of duty and his aunt. People were very sorry for him indeed; they said he should marry; in fact, such as enjoyed the privilege of his acquaintance even began to select suitable young women for his approval. Andrew inspected ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... Brigaud were therefore in favor of going and begging her highness to appoint some other time or place for the rendezvous. Malezieux and D'Harmental were of the same opinion regarding the danger of the step; but they both declared—the first from devotion, the second from a sense of duty—that the more perilous the order was, the more honorable it ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... was there. Nor indeed have I forgotten the letter which you sent to me after meeting Caesar, in the district near Trebula, as I remember it. Next came that ill-fated moment when either my regard for public opinion, or my sense of duty, or chance, call it what you will, compelled me to go to Pompey. What act of kindness or thoughtfulness either toward me in my absence or toward my dear ones in Rome did you neglect? In fact, whom have all my friends thought more devoted to me and to themselves ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... be done. No matter if the desired end were far away; all time was lost in which she was not making progress, however slow, towards it. To have a school, was to have some portion of daily leisure, uncontrolled but by her own sense of duty; it was for the three sisters, loving each other with so passionate an affection, to be together under one roof, and yet earning their own subsistence; above all, it was to have the power of watching over these two whose ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... now, since she had come to understand her feelings toward him. Even so, she reflected with horror that if her articles created the comment she anticipated their effect would be to rob him of his holdings. But she took her work very seriously, and her sense of duty was unwavering. She was one of the few who guide themselves by the line of principle, straight through all other considerations. She would write what she found true, for that was her mission in life. If Murray proved culpable she would grieve over ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... thing it is to be married,' said Will, 'and how careful and considerate all these husbands are. There's not a man among them but his heart is leaping to forestall me in this adventure, and yet a strong sense of duty keeps him back. The husbands in this one little town are a pattern to the world, and so must the wives be too, for that matter, or they could never boast half the influence ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... how it is, Augusta; step by step, you are sinking—dragged down by a vain sense of duty to one no longer worthy. I cannot bear it any longer; I have come to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... me back that money untouched. You have not even spent the interest of it, and now I see how I have wronged you in accusing you of greed. All your tender care, your delicate attention, your patient indulgence were given to me out of your magnanimous sense of duty, the heavenly generosity of your soul! And now that I know you in all the glory of your goodness, now that I have found my ideal in you and my love has grown into worship, now you tell me that you are lost to me for ever, that you will not be mine, and I must choose the paths ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... know where Major Duncan's heart is, and that is in Scotland, where a beautiful lady is ready and willing to make him happy, as soon as his own sense of duty shall permit." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... a dull way, "that you are not angry with him because he came first to me. It was a sense of duty—I know, I feel—compelled him to do it, together with his honest diffidence about your affection for him. Do not let pride ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... been quick to note the haggard expression on Kennedy's face and turn it into an argument to carry his point. Kennedy smiled as he read the other's enthusiasm. I would have added my own urging, only I knew that nothing but a sense of duty would weigh ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... be still more frugally stinted; and the old and sick slaves were to be sold along with other superfluities.[11] Now, Cato was a moralist of wide repute, a stoic it is true, but even so a man who had a strong sense of duty. If such were his maxims, the oppressions inflicted by his fellow proprietors and their slave drivers must have been ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... mean, gentlemen who have received in their blood and in their training those notions of graciousness, sweetness, and nobleness which flow from centuries of piety and learning. Only here and there will such a man accept the odious conditions of our public life, inspired by a sense of duty, and prepared to endure the intolerable ugliness and dishonesty of politics for the sake of a cause which moves him with all the force of a great affection. But on the whole it is probable that the political fortunes of this great ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... grows from constitution often forsakes people when they have occasion for it; courage that arises from a sense of duty ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... this monthly account of his stewardship, punctually rendered, to be the business weighing on his mind. But no: as he passed out through the park gates, the imp perched itself again behind his crupper, urging him forward, tormenting him with the same vague sense of duty ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... When we show that what awaits us is no fools' paradise, but the danger of a temporary reverse of humanity and culture, then the facile Utopianist will shout us down with his two parrot-phrases,[4] and when we, out of a sense of duty, of harmony with the course of the world and confidence in justice at the soul of things, tread the path of danger, precipitous though it be, then we shall be scorned by all the worshippers of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... socially ostracize or to deride him for his political views and his intense application to his sense of duty deterred the great Massachusetts statesman from pursuing the "even tenor ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... what those who knew little Victoria at this time say about her. She was, we are told, exceedingly affectionate, very full of high spirits, fond of life in the open air, and already possessed a strong sense of duty ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... be most wanted in France, is that of disinterested public-spirited individuals, of high honour and integrity, and of large possessions and influence, who do not interfere in public affairs from views of ambition, but from a sense of duty—who have no wish to dazzle the eyes of the multitude, and do not seek for a more extensive influence than that to which their observation and experience entitle them. While this character continues so much more frequent in our own country than ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... hanged them all as traitors and cowards. The only event in 1848 which gave me real pleasure was the days of June, when Cavaignac did what, if he had been a man or not got into a fright about his soul, or if he had had a real sense of duty instead of a wretched consciousness of weakness and a false position, Louis Philippe would have done months before.' He cannot, he admits, write with calmness to this day of the king's cowardice; and he never passed the Tuileries in later ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and looked unexpectedly into a lovely face made the more attractive by an expression only given by a sense of duty unselfishly done. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the power and the right to create! She had no window to let in the perpendicular light of heaven; all the light she had was the horizontal light of duty—invaluable, but, ever accompanied by its own shadow of failure, giving neither joy nor hope nor strength. Her husband's sense of duty was neither so ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... war was concluded? But all that we can say is, It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. So far as my going round to Rangoon, at the time I did, was instrumental in bringing those heavy afflictions upon us, I can only say, that if I ever acted from a sense of duty in my life, it was at that time; for my conscience would not allow me any peace, when I thought of sending for your brother to come to Calcutta, in prospect of the approaching war. Our society at home have lost no property in consequence of our difficulties; but two ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a gasp of helplessness. It had been difficult to speak, but a sense of duty had driven her on, and now it was too late to stop. "Don't—don't talk to him so much. Don't look at him." (Did Pixie realise how instinctively her eyes sought Stephen's for sympathy and appreciation?) "Don't sit by ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... drew this spark away from the paths of virtue and goodness at about sixteen years old, after which time he lost all sense of duty to his parents, respect of laws divine or human, and even care of himself. It seems he found certain houses in Chick Lane, where they met abundance of loose young men and women, accustomed themselves to every kind of debauchery which it was possible for wicked people to commit or the most fruitful ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... a highly-strung, introspective temperament. He went to the front from a high sense of duty, but he was temperamentally unfit for the ghastly work of modern warfare, and broke down under the strain. Men like Penreath feel it keenly when they are discharged through shell-shock. They feel ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Happy? Why so, indeed, dear love, I trust thou art! But thou dost sigh and contemplate the floor So deeply, that thy happiness seems rather The constant sense of duty than true joy. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... alone. But when five eye-witnesses, suppressing all mention of the word "drink," declared that Captain Hudson had refused to leave the vessel, and described his going down with the ship, from an obstinate and too exalted sense of duty, every chink was closed; and, to cut the matter short, the insurance money was paid to the last shilling, and Benson, one of the small underwriters, ruined. Nancy Rouse, who worked for Mrs. Benson, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... toad-stools and other curiosities of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul, on the formation of a temporary breakwater across a small green pool that had collected in a corner. She was still busily engaged in that labour, when sought and found by Susan; who, such was her sense of duty, even under the humanizing influence of shrimps, delivered a moral address to her (punctuated with thumps) on her degenerate nature, while washing her face and hands; and predicted that she would bring the grey hairs of her family in general, with sorrow to the grave. After ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... customs, such as the Augury of Public Health, and identified himself closely with the rites and customs of the people. He inculcated that sense of duty which the Romans called pietas, and attempted to improve the morals of the citizens by the enactment of sumptuary laws; the philosophers hoped to do good in the same direction by appealing to the intellect and reason, a method that was equally ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... money, for we shall be so original and ingenious. People are so stupid in this world. I always feel I could do things so much better myself. Who wants to go to a stuffy old bazaar in the Mission Room? No one does! They go from a sense of duty. Mother groans and says, 'Oh dear, if I could only give a subscription and be done with it! More cosies and chairbacks! I've a drawerful already!' And bazaar things are hideous! Father gave me ten shillings to spend at the Christmas sale, and I wandered round and round like ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... understood men so well as to be able to produce in a few words upon the man who had just visited the palace, the impression that he believed that that man had been impelled by a strong sense of duty without a touch of vanity. He understood man so well as to cause that same visitor of his to make a resolution never again to publish anything in the same strain as the Zeit Geist article, without first consulting ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... a Commissioner of the Treasury, and had greatly distinguished himself in the House of Commons. Of the members of the Cabal he was the most respectable. For, with a fiery and imperious temper, he had a strong though a lamentably perverted sense of duty and honour. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that the world has ever seen, Richard Hunt always claimed, was there so little need of it. For Southern soldiers, he argued, were, from the start, obedient, zealous, and tolerably patient, from good sense and a strong sense of duty. They were born fighters; a spirit of emulation induced them to learn the drill; pride and patriotism kept them true and patient to the last, but they could not be made, by punishment or the fear of it, into machines. They read their chance of success, not in ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... family history to be called The Shovels of Newton French; and in the latter part of the year worked hard in continuation of The Wrecker. Having completed this during November, he turned at once, from a sense of duty rather than from any literary inspiration, to the Footnote to History, a laboriously prepared and minutely conscientious account of recent events ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... taxation, the process of supply is too facile. The funds so easily procured are in danger of being too profusely spent. Individual responsibility in money-matters, aided by direct self-interest, is usually more efficient in imposing limits to improvidence than a general sense of duty on the part of official personages. But if funds could be obtained ad libitum by the speculator, without the necessity of giving security for the payment of principal or interest, bankruptcy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... not find the form of words which would permit her to impart to her paid companion this information about her grand-nephew. Mrs. Maldon, when the moment for utterance came, had discovered that she simply could not do it, and all her conscientious regard for Rachel and all her sense of duty were not enough to make her do it. So that Rachel, unsuspectingly, had been spared a tremendous emotional crisis. By this time she had grown nearly accustomed to the fact of the disappearance of the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... exactly like another. There is an individual isolation, a conscious personality, which he can share with no other; which resists the idea of absorption; which claims its own distinct immortality; which has its own wants and woes, its own sense of duty, its own spiritual experiences. Christianity insists upon nothing more strongly than this. Piercing below all conventionalisms, it recognizes man as an individual soul, and, as such, addresses him ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... Phipps enjoined earnestly. "Your wife is one of those misguided women with a strong sense of duty. Unless you behave like a damn fool, you can reestablish some measure of control over her. Do so. There are certain circumstances," he went on, his face wrinkled a little with emotion, his voice deep and earnest, "there are certain circumstances, Dredlinton, under ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... surroundings and the strenuousness of her occupation, which opened up no vista of hope and usually robbed her of four nights' sleep in a week, had made of Mrs. Schmidt an embittered person suffering from homesickness. What aggravated matters was that she was dominated by an obstinate sense of duty and that dogged insistence on saving characteristic of the Swiss. Since her parents' letters strengthened her in her notions, she was not to be shaken in her resolve not to return home until after a certain sum had been ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... him that I was very much obliged for the attention. If he had stopped there all would have been well, and we should have had a pleasant little chat. But I suppose it was his sense of duty which would not ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... by whatever name we call this powerful sentiment, exists in the majority of men, where it exists at all, independently of argument. It is a matter of affection, sympathy, association, aspiration. Hence, even while, in quality, sense of duty is a stationary factor, it is constantly changing in quantity. The amount of conscience in different communities, or in the same community at different times, varies infinitely. The immediate cause of the decline of a society in the order of morals is a decline in the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... that Mildred admitted that for nearly a month she had practically ignored these people, and that she was becoming selfish in her trouble; and yet, not so much from a sense of duty, as from a kindling zest in life, she began to take an interest in them and their ways. She was still far too young for her spirit to lose its spring, even under a continuous weight of misfortune. Her nature was not morbid, but sunny ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... 'steadfastness' of my text, and that 'steadfastness' is regarded by the Apostle as drawing its most animating motives from the contemplation of that great hope. Blessed be God! The effort of the Christian life is not one which is extorted by fear, or by the cold sense of duty. There are no taskmasters with whips to stand over the heart that responds to Christ and to His love. But hope and joy, as well as love, are the animating motives which make sacrifices easy, soften the yoke that is laid upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... than teaching the peasant to read and write, helping him to get hospitals, etc.? Of what use are talents, even learning, for such work? One needs only a heart that can sacrifice its own egotism. You cannot even speak of a profession in the case (much less of our friend Blank's star). A sense of duty, the magnificent feeling of patriotism in the true sense of the word,—that is all that is needed. Bazaroff was the type of "one sent with a message," a great figure, gifted with a definite charm, not without a certain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... with it a full realization of the terrible mistake I had made. In the eyes of Zarlah I was a Martian, her life-long friend, Almos, and her anxiety for me to return to the observatory was the prompting of her Martian sense of duty—her sole creed. In what words could I ever hope to explain that I was not Almos, when the voice, the manners, the features, and even the knowledge of her affairs were those of her intimate friend? And even if it were possible to make Zarlah believe ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... ever stopping to take breath, and had at last caught it by the antlers, and carried it home alive. And he had fought with a very odd race of people, half horses and half men, and had put them all to death, from a sense of duty, in order that their ugly figures might never be seen any more. Besides all this, he took to himself great credit for having cleaned ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... which have been claimed for the Prince Consort, this work affords us small means of judging. But of his wisdom, strong sense of duty, and great dignity and purity of character, the volume furnishes ample evidence. In this way it will be of service to any one who reads it."—From the New ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... had taken up. By the side of her livelier sister he had regarded her as a quiet and retiring girl, and was sure that to her these midnight outings by stealth must have been very terrible, and that only from the very strongest sense of duty would she have undertaken them. Now her open avowal of Christianity, when she must have known what were the penalties that the confession entailed, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... misfortune that could possibly have befallen one so dangerously gifted. Her mother was a kind, good, gentle woman, who having by necessity worked hard in the early part of her life, still continued the practice, partly from inclination, partly from a sense of duty, and partly from mere habit, and amongst her many excellent qualities had the Ailie Dinmont propensity of giving all her children their own way,* especially this the blooming cadette of the family: and her eldest brother, a bachelor,—who, succeeding to his father's business, took his place ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... ought to fill with quick activities. They seem to have no true appreciation of the value of time, or of their own accountability for its precious moments. They live conscientiously, it may be, but they have no strong constraining sense of duty impelling them to ever larger and fuller achievement. They have a work to do, but there is no hurry for it; there is plenty of time in which ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... the young ones untiringly. Some of the pigeons of Australia, indeed, go even further. Not only do they build a much more substantial nest of leafy twigs, but the male bird actually sits throughout the day, such paternal sense of duty being all the more remarkable from the fact that these pigeons of the Antipodes usually lay but a single egg. Australia, with the neighbouring islands, must be a perfect paradise for pigeons, since about half of the species known to science occur ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... said, because she was disgusted with the way in which her sisters professed love, when really they had not even a right sense of duty to ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... libraries, we realize how the works of the ambitious are neglected, and their names forgotten, while we cannot fail to be impressed with the value of the truth, that the only labor which brings a certain reward is that performed under a sense of duty. ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... toward permanent Re-establishment are concerned, no consideration should tempt us to pervert the national victory into oppression for the vanquished. Should plausible promise of eventual good, or a deceptive or spurious sense of duty, lead us to essay this, count we must on serious consequences, not the least of which would be divisions among the Northern adherents of the Union. Assuredly, if any honest Catos there be who thus far have gone with us, no longer will they do so, but oppose us, and as resolutely ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... through the meal she was unusually preoccupied, puzzling, pondering, struggling, longing to be alone with herself, and yet held to her post by her sense of duty. At last, however, the hungry appetites were satisfied, the chattering children had gone back to their play, the dishes were washed and piled away in the cupboard, and Tabitha slipped away to the little room which she shared with Gloriana ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... nothing. I don't want to frighten you. I know you're doing it from a sense of duty. But I've been there to the Navigator Islands, and I'm acquainted with the people's little ways, and I—well, I—I—the fact is, you see, that—well, sooner'n disguise the truth, I don't mind telling you straight out that the last day ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... reason. She foreshadowed a future of steely self-sacrifice, propaganda, hammers, riots, and prison; with no self-indulgence in it, no fine clothes, no art, and no young men save earnest young men. She saw herself in the iron clutch of her own conscience and sense of duty. And she was frightened. But at that moment Nick rushed into the room, and the spell was broken. Nick considered that she had the right to monopolise Rosamund, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... will always be, when people of dispositions naturally good become unjust, he had many scruples before he determined to forsake Julia, and become the rival of Valentine; yet he at length overcame his sense of duty, and yielded himself up, almost without remorse, to his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment—This for our little girl was at first very reasonable—more the effect of reason, a sense of duty, than feeling—now, she has got into my heart and imagination, and when I walk out without her, her little figure is ever ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... world, and far away from its busy jar and fret, the simple and kindly natures that these children of Pitcairn Island must have inherited from their Otaheitan mothers were trained to an almost perfect sense of duty and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... to see your uncle. He told us, at evening prayers, what an obstinate boy you were; how kind, and tender, and forgiving he had been to you, and how he had exhausted good nature in trying to bring you to a proper sense of duty." ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... suddenly enlightened by the mention of Bezuquet. He understood all and guessed the rest, and, tenderly moved by the ingenious lie of the apothecary to recall him to a sense of duty and honour, he choked, and stammered in his short beard: "Ah! my children, how kind you are! What good ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet |
