"Freewill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the necessity for appeasing justice reveals itself in sacrifices. There are sacrifices which are merely offerings of gratitude, and freewill gifts of love. But when you see the blood of animals flowing in the temples, and not seldom human blood gushing forth upon the altars, you will be unable to escape the conviction that man, in presenting himself before ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... is wrong. Khizr is the Elijah who puzzled Milman. He represents the Soofi, the Btini, while Mus (Moses) is the Zhid, the Zhiri; and the strange adventures of the twain, invented by the Jews, have been appropriated by the Moslems. He derides the Freewill of man; and, like Diderot, he detects pantaloon in a prelate, a satyr in a president, a pig in a priest, an ostrich in a minister, and a goose in a chief clerk. He holds to Fortune, the {Greek: Txae} of Alcman, which is, {Greek: Eunomas te ka Peithos adelph ka Promatheas ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... Captain Carteret, "we might have purchased everything upon the Freewill Islands that we could have brought away. A few pieces of old iron hoop presented to one of the natives threw him into an ecstasy little short of distraction." At Otaheite the people were found generally well-behaved and honest; but they were not proof ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... reverend fathers, the mind, deprived of all nourishment and all external support, soon began to droop and pine away in solitude. The heart seemed to beat more slowly, the soul was benumbed, the character weakened; at last, all freewill, all power of discrimination, was extinguished, and the boarders, submitting to the same process of self-annihilation as the novices of the Company, became, like them, mere "corpses" in the hands ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... years, through every vicissitude of this long period, while nations vanished and empires fell, the self-consisting independence of Hungary was never disputed, but was recognized by all powers of the earth, sanctioned by treaties made with the Hapsburg dynasty, at the era when this dynasty, by the freewill of my nation, which acted as one of two contracting parties, was invested with the kingly crown of Hungary. Even more, this independence of the kingdom was acknowledged to make a part of the international law of Europe, and was guaranteed not only by foreign European governments, such ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... old quarrel between Predestination and Freewill which cannot be solved except by assuming ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... had him upon his own tenterhooks, "you rebuked me as sharply as lies in your nature for daring to talk about fate just now; but to what else comes your own conduct, if you are bound to go against your own desire? If you have such a lot of freewill, why must you do what you do ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... blockheads, and running their errands, and smirkingly pocketing their money, and wheedling them into helping the new play to success. You complained I treated you like a lackey; it was not unnatural when of your own freewill you played ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... provision, and with a covenant blessing, and among the all things that work together for our good. Lord, enable us to be rich in good works. How condescending, that thou acceptest a part of thine own as freewill-offerings, and hast annexed promised blessings to those who consider the poor; hast said, 'He who giveth to the ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... and discontent, of yesterday, by leaving me to my own strength in preaching, and bringing temporal want upon me, has given me a good day. I have preached with much assistance and comfort, and the Lord has given me rich temporal supplies: for besides the freewill offerings of 2l. 8s. 10d., a 5l. note was put into my hand for the supply of any want I may have. Thus the Lord melted the heart by love, and made me still more see the baseness of my conduct yesterday. Thanks be to God, the ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... force of this predestination is shown to be too strong even for royal opposition. It does not follow that the pre-arrangement of marriages implies that the pair cannot fall in love of their own accord. On the contrary, just the right two eventually come together; for once freewill and destiny need present no incompatibility. The combination, here shadowed, of a predestined and yet true-love marriage, is effectively illustrated in ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... parts with these sums of money so little of his own free-will, that when he was spoken to on the subject he seemed to remember nothing of the matter; that whenever anybody of any weight has questioned him as to his devotion to these two persons, his replies have shown so complete an absence of ideas and of ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... called one. These things I heard whilst the minister sat in his study up-stairs, and held his head upon his hands, thinking over the theology of the schools; his wife, meanwhile, in the room below, working out a strange elective predestination, free-will gifts to be, for some little ones that had strayed into the fold to be warmed and clothed and fed. At length the village "news" having all been imparted to me, I gave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... audience from the pews lined with satin. It is twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be told, that he—and not perverse nature, as the homilies would make us imagine, is the true cause of all the irregularities in his parish. This is striking at the root of free-will indeed, and denying the originality of sin in any sense. But men are not such implicit sheep as this comes to. If the abstinence from evil on the part of the upper classes is to derive itself from no ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... in fiction, Mr Wilmot," replied Mr Swinton; "to study man is only to study his inconsistencies and his aberrations from the right path, which the free-will permitted to him induces him to follow; but in the study of nature, you witness the directing power of the Almighty, who guides with an unerring hand, and who has so wonderfully apportioned out to all animals the means ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... pleasure that is connected with a successful display of energy. The scientist gets this satisfaction without diminishing the value of life of his fellow being, and the same should be true for the business man.... Although we recognize no metaphysical free-will, we do not deny personal responsibility. We can fill the memory of the young generation with such associations as will prevent wrong doing or dissipation.... Cruelty in the penal code and the tendency to exaggerate punishment are sure signs of a low civilization ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... is duty, whereas the Epicureans make an ideal out of an interest. Two tendencies, two systems of morals, two worlds. In the same way the Jansenists, and before them the great reformers, are for predestination, the Jesuits for free-will—and yet the first founded liberty, the second slavery of conscience. What matters then is not the theoretical principle; it is the secret tendency, the aspiration, the aim, which ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a treasury at Shiloh. He bade the people bring contributions, whether of gold or of silver. They were only to take heed not to carry anything thither that had originally belonged to an idol. His efforts were crowned with success. The free-will offerings to the temple treasure amounted to twenty talents of gold and two hundred and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... same time his pencil was making notes—on the 'Prentice Pillar in Roslyn Chapel. Then he smiled at the thought of the contrast it offered to his own chapel in the meadows by the lake shore. In that, every stone, as in the making of the Tabernacle of old, had been a free-will offering from the men—each laid in its place by a willing worker; and, because willing, the rough walls were as eloquent of earnest endeavor as the famed 'Prentice ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... elsewhere [35] that, "when analyzed by science, spiritualism leads straight to materialism;" free-will "can be annihilated by the simple mechanical expedient of looking at a black wafer stuck on a white wall;" that if "Smith falls into a trance and believes himself to be Jones, he really is Jones, and Smith has become a stranger to him while the trance lasts.... I often ask myself the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... and all that I am: all this I have only through GOD'S grace." The second degree of grace is more special: that GOD gives freely to every man who is a good and reasonable creature: and this grace stands ever at the gates of our hearts, and knocks on our free-will, and bids it let it in. This, GOD says that He does: "Behold, I stand at the door knocking," that is, "I stand at the door of thine heart and knock; let Me in." And this grace is given freely to man before he deserves it. Then let every man make himself worthy and ready to receive ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... would seem. "Down South" envelopes are laboriously addressed with the names of stations and vias here and vias there; and throughout the Territory men move hither and thither by compulsion or free-will giving never a thought to an address; while the Department, knowing the ways of its people, delivers its letters in spite of, not because of, these addresses. It reads only the name of the man that heads the address of his letters ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... believed that the very first person whom Lorischen told the news to was her special antipathy, Burgher Jans? She actually went up to and accosted him of her own free-will on the Market Platz for the very purpose of telling him of Fritz's promotion! Yes, such was the case; and she not only was friendly to the little fat man on this occasion, but she actually patted his dog ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... occasionally be useful. But what are men? How much easier is it to occupy their attention and to strike their imaginations by absurdities than by rational ideas! But can a man of sound sense listen for one moment to such a doctrine? Either predestination admits the existence of free-will, or it rejects it. If it admits it, what kind of predetermined result can that be which a simple resolution, a step, a word, may alter or modify ad infinitum? If predestination, on the contrary, rejects the existence of free-will ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... than the hypothetical substratum of matter. If we assume the Infinite as omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, we cannot suppose Him excluded from any part of His creation, except from rebellious souls which voluntarily exclude Him by the exercise of their fatal prerogative of free-will. Force, then, is the act of immanent Divinity. I find no meaning in mechanical explanations. Newton's hypothesis of an ether filling the heavenly spaces does not, I confess, help my conceptions. I will, and the muscles of my vocal organs ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hair upon their heads, they are none the less content, if only he gives them good strong exercise. Under their hard and, as some would say, stolid faces, great thoughts are brewing, and these keep them warm. Free-will, fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute, trinity, redemption, special grace, eternity—give them anything high enough, and the tough muscle of their inward man will be climbing sturdily into it; and if they go away having something to think of, they have had a good day. A perceptible ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... addressed to John the Archimandrite, and Venerius, deacon of Constantinople, are another fruit of the leisure which his exile gave him. In the first part he shows, that grace is the pure effect of the divine goodness and mercy; in the second, that it destroys not free-will; and in the third, that the Divine election both to grace and glory is purely gratuitous. In another treatise or letter, to the same John and Venerius, who had consulted the Confessors in Sardinia about the doctrine ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... on, "can calculate for years to come exactly where his steeds will be at each minute of the time. So no one can be more completely a slave than he to whom so many mortals pray that he will, of his own free-will, guide circumstances to suit them. I, therefore, regard the sun as a star, like any other star; and worship should be given, not to those rolling spheres moving across the sky in prescribed paths, but to Him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... foreknowledge assumed by the theologian, as from the universality of natural causation assumed by the man of science. The angels in 'Paradise Lost' would have found the task of enlightening Adam upon the mysteries of "Fate, Foreknowledge, and Free-will," not a whit more difficult, if their pupil had been educated in a "Real-schule" and trained in every laboratory of a modern university. In respect of the great problems of Philosophy, the post-Darwinian generation is, in one sense, exactly where ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and it was as it had been described. Again and again it was repeated in various phrases that the property was yielded of free-will. It was impossible to find in it even the hint of a threat. The properties in question were enumerated in the minutest manner, and the list included all the rights of the priory over ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Satan, these gifts would most assuredly have existed in Cain, to whom belonged the birthright and the promise of the blessed seed. But in that very same condition are all men! Unless nature be helped by the Spirit of God, it cannot maintain itself. Why, then, do we absurdly boast of free-will? Now follows ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... of social life, their psychology and philosophy, their theistic and eschatological ideas, have led to investigations of all these subjects. Early Moslem science sprang from the study of the Koran, and the later Moslem discussions of free-will, immortality and other points were called forth by Koranic statements. The philosophical writings of Maimonides, produced under Greek influence (through Moslem translations of Aristotle), were directed to the elucidation of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... duty. "I call God to witness, whom I serve in my spirit:" although it be a work of the lips, yet the heart, and the whole man must be interested, if we expect this worship to be acceptable. "Accept the free-will offering of my mouth, and ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Lord God (said Luther), why should we any way boast of our free-will, as if it were able to do anything in divine and spiritual matters were they never so small? * * * I confess that mankind hath a free-will, but it is to milk kine, to build houses, &c., and no further: for so long as a man sitteth well and in safety, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... never having been either prohibited any, or spoken to for any, in this land, by your majesty, these seven years that I have lived in your majesty's house, I could not conceive that your majesty regarded my marriage at all; whereas if your majesty had vouchsafed to tell me your mind, and accept the free-will offering of my obedience, I would not have offended your majesty, of whose gracious goodness I presume so much, that if it were now as convenient in a worldly respect, as malice make it seem, to separate us, whom God hath ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... on religion, I never ain't had no show; But I've got a middlin' tight grip, sir, On the handful o' things I know. I don't pan out on the prophets And free-will, and that sort of thing,— But I b'lieve in God and the angels, Ever ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... so omnipresent that we treat it as we treat death, or free-will, or fate, or air, or God, or the Devil—taking these things so much as matters of course that, though they are visible enough if we choose to see them, we neglect them normally altogether, without for a moment intending to deny their existence. This neglect is convenient ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... been precisely to find a position intermediate between 'moral Liberty' and 'Free Will.' Liberty, such as I understand it, is situated between these two terms, but not at equal distances from both; if I were obliged to blend it with one of the two, I should select 'Free-Will.'" Nor is Liberty to be reduced to spontaneity. "At most, this would be the case in the animal world where the psychological life is principally that of the affections. But in the case of a man, a thinking being, the free ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... of good) but God only (whom ye do not see)?" But whence have we the conception of God as the supreme good? Simply from the IDEA of moral perfection, which reason frames a priori, and connects inseparably with the notion of a free-will. Imitation finds no place at all in morality, and examples serve only for encouragement, i. e. they put beyond doubt the feasibility of what the law commands, they make visible that which the practical rule expresses more generally, but ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... fate and slaves of circumstance, Life is a fiddler, and we all must dance. From gloom where mocks that will-o'-wisp, Free-will I heard a voice cry: "Say, ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... believe the surplice fees and voluntary contributions, one year with another, may be worth 3l.; but as the inhabitants are few in number, and the fees very low, this last-mentioned sum consists merely in free-will offerings. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... unalterable laws; that there is everywhere a necessary causal connection of phenomena; and that, therefore, the whole knowable universe is a harmonious unity, a monon. It says, further, that all phenomena are due solely to mechanical or efficient causes, not to final causes. It does not admit free-will in the ordinary sense of the word. In the light of the Monistic philosophy the phenomena that we are wont to regard as the freest and most independent, the expressions of the human will, are subject just as much ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... Academy; and there has lately been "a good deal of feeling" because the Sandemanian trustees did not regularly attend the exhibitions. It has been intimated, indeed, that the Sandemanians are leaning towards Free-Will, and that we have, therefore, neglected these semi-annual exhibitions, while there is no doubt that Auchmuty last year went to Commencement at Waterville. Now the head master at New Coventry is a real ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... learned Dutch theologian and founder of Arminianism, an assertion of the free-will of man in the matter of salvation against the necessitarianism ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... not influences which governed dost. Porson was certainly right, and we wonder how any one could ever have understood the passage in any other way. The mediaevals had as much trouble in reconciling free-will with judicial astrology as we with the divine foreknowledge. A passage in Dante, it appears to us, throws light on the meaning of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... his violin again, and played "Home, Sweet Home," and "Auld Lang Syne"; and Phil fancied the violin was a bird, and sang of its own free-will, and thinking this reminded him how soon he would hear the dear wild birds in the woods, and he wondered if the fairies ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... how in this he was considered entirely from the religious point of view, as an instrument in the hands of God, preordained to His work. Then he would make them read Guizot, and see how, in this view, Cromwell was endowed with the utmost power of free-will, but governed by no higher motive than that of expediency; while Carlyle regarded him as a character regulated by a strong and conscientious desire to do the will of the Lord. Then he would desire them to remember that the Royalist and Commonwealth men ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... frequently. It is certain that both Homer and Virgil were Masters of all the Learning of their Times, but it shews it self in their Works after an indirect and concealed manner. Milton seems ambitious of letting us know, by his Excursions on Free-Will and Predestination, and his many Glances upon History, Astronomy, Geography, and the like, as well as by the Terms and Phrases he sometimes makes use of, that he was acquainted with the whole Circle of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world." They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in singing; Haman, retaining ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Universahs.'' It must, however, be admitted that much of his knowledge was ill digested; it even appears that he regarded Plato and Speusippus as Stoics. Albertus is frequently mentioned by Dante, who made his doctrine of free-will the basis of his ethical system. Dante places him with his pupil Aquinas among the great lovers of wisdom (Spiriti Sapienti) in the Heaven of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the Huguenots who emigrated from France for the sake of worshiping God in their own way rather than that of the Pope. We Puritans did not take all the free-will," ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the principles of positive science had already been proclaimed, he lived in entirely supernatural ideas. To him the marvellous was not the exceptional but the normal statf of things, since to him the whole course of things was the result of the free-will of the Deity. This led to a profound conception of the close relations of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... paid the price, In his only death was man's life always resting, And not in will-works, nor yet in man's deserving, The light of our faith makes this thing evident, And not the practice of other experiment. Where is now free-will, whom the hypocrites commend, Whereby they report they may at their own pleasure Do good of themselves, though grace and faith be absent, And have good intents their madness with to measure? The will ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... wills, and engage too soon, before due examination. To prevent this, we have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire; as every one daily may experiment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in this seems to consist that which is (as I think improperly) called FREE-WILL. For, during this suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action, and the action (which follows that determination) done, we have opportunity to examine, view, and judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do; and when, upon due examination, we have judged, we have ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... of any creative intelligence, Divine initiative, nor human free-will; by denying the law-giving Intellect, it denies all intelligent Providential law; and the philosophy of the squirrel in its cage, which men term Pantheism at the present day, by confounding the subject and the object in one, cancels alike the Ego ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the course of Herbert Spencer that I had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things which to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well the arguments we used to have on the vexed question of 'Free-will,' and being myself more or less of a fatalist, it annoyed me that I never could in the very slightest degree shake his convictions on that point. Moreover, when I plagued him too much with Herbert Spencer, he had a way of retaliating, and would foist upon me his favourite ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... many different kinds of people, with various sorts and shades of belief. Some were Free-Will and some were Hard-Shell, some were High-Church and reminded one of a Masonic Lodge working at 32 deg., while others were Low-Church and omitted crossing themselves frequently while putting down a new ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... is the nature of the belief? To a certain extent the answer is very easy. When we speak and think of free-will ordinarily, we know quite well what we mean by it; and we one and all of us mean exactly the same thing. It is true that when professors speak upon this question, they make countless efforts to distinguish between the meaning which they attach ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... out what you was a-tryin' to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a CHURCH! Why, boss, he's ben the pizenest kind of Free-will Babtis' for forty year. They ain't no pizener ones 'n what HE is. Mighty good man, pap is. Everybody says that. If they said any diffrunt they wouldn't say it whar I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... queen, "that it is not to depend upon my free-will when and at what times I am to walk in the park, but it will be allowed me only at certain hours, just as prisoners are allowed to take their walks ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the liberty which our soldiers and our sailors are fighting by land and by sea to maintain and to extend for others. There is no question of compulsion or bribery. What we want we believe you are ready and eager to give as the free-will offering of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... which there seemed little or no hope of their being able to effect their escape. The protest was, of course, utterly ineffectual, as they quite expected it would be—indeed it was only made because they wished it to be clearly understood by all hands that they were not leaving the ship of their own free-will—and when the engineer had finished speaking, all that Williams said in ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the man crushed her; and yet a voice cried in her ear that she deserved to have him for her master. She was helpless against her fate. Flore Brazier had had a room of her own in Rouget's house; but Madame Rouget belonged to her husband, and was now deprived of the free-will of a servant-mistress. In the horrible situation in which she now found herself, the hope of having a child came into her mind; but she soon recognized its impossibility. The marriage was to Jean-Jacques what the second marriage ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... combined action of many small influences, and in none of the thirty-five cases is it largely, much less wholly, ascribed to that cause. In not a single instance have I met with a word about the growing dissimilarity being due to the action of the firm free-will of one or both of the twins, which had triumphed over natural tendencies; and yet a large proportion of my correspondents happen to be clergymen, whose bent of mind is opposed, as I feel assured from the tone of their letters, to a necessitarian ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... explained, he had now no anxieties as to the validity of the marriage by English law, at least, in spite of the decree from Rome, which, as he pointed out to his grandson, was wholly contingent on the absence of subsequent consent, since the parties had come to an age for free-will. Had he known of this, the re-marriage, he said, he should certainly have been less supine. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... survival of the fittest,—must appear to us superfluous laws of Nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free-will and predestination. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... each person, used for a pedestal, as will be shown in detail in Eleh Pekude[76]; the second, the contribution of the altar, consisting of a beka from each person, thrown into the coffers for the purchase of congre gational sacrifices; and, third, the contribution for the Tabernacle, a free-will offering. The thirteen kinds of material to be mentioned were all necessary for the construction of the Tabernacle and for the making of priestly vestments, as will be evident ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... Creed. Swedenborgians, Or, The New Jerusalem Church. Fighting Quakers. Harmonists. Dorrelites. Osgoodites. Rogerenes. Whippers. Wilkinsonians. Aquarians. Baxterians. Miller's Views on the Second Coming of Christ. Come-Outers. Jumpers. Baptists. Anabaptists. Free-Will Baptists. Seventh-Day Baptists, Or Sabbatarians, Six-Principle Baptists. Quaker Baptists, Or Keithians. Pedobaptists. Anti-Pedobaptists. Unitarians. Brownists. Puritans. Bourignonists. Jews. Indian Religions. Deists. Atheists. Pantheists. Mahometans. Simonians. Pagans. Satanians. Abelians, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... for free-will is therefore rendered ineffective by reason of the fact that it does not really leave the individual free. The only "free" thing is the aboriginal "spirit," pouring forth in its "durational" stream, and moulding bodies and brains ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... in our behalf. Persia never fought a better field, and with slightly larger numbers would have accomplished our rescue. My proposition is, that we sue again at the court of Sapor—no, not again, for the first was a free-will offering—and that we fail not, I would go myself my own ambassador, and solicit what so solicited, my life upon it, will not be refused. You well know that I can bear with me jewels gathered during a long reign of such value as to ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... range, as it were, only among lawful objects of choice. But the answer to this seems sound, that such a will would only be free in name; it would be free to choose among certain things, but would not be free-will. The objector again urges, that either the choice is free and may fall upon evil objects, against the goodness of God, or it is so restrained as only to fall on good objects. Against freedom of the will ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... to religion, rebuilds the partition wall, is an usurpation upon the family of God, challenges successive ages backward and forward, assigns new boundaries in the world, takes away the opportunity of free-will offerings." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... all their cattle, for the Lord's treasury, to be employed for the priests, the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger. The first-born, also, of their children, were the Lord's, and were to be redeemed by a specified sum, paid into the sacred treasury. Besides this, they were required to bring a free-will offering to God, every time they went up to the three great yearly festivals. In addition to this, regular yearly sacrifices of cattle and fowls were required of each family, and occasional sacrifices for ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for expecting. The old masters grant them nothing, except at the requirement of the nation,—as a military and political necessity; and any plan of reconstruction is wrong which proposes at once or in the immediate future to substitute free-will for this necessity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... complete harmony and understanding. The organisation of our independent State is rapidly proceeding. Austria-Hungary, exhausted economically and bankrupt politically, has fallen to pieces by the free-will of her own subject peoples, who, in anticipation of their early victory, broke their fetters and openly renounced their allegiance to the hated Habsburg and Hohenzollern rule, even before Austria had actually surrendered ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... class encroachments, and the highest in authority know that it is above President or Senate. The free pulpit, sustained not by legally exacted tithes wrung from an unwilling people, but by the free-will offerings of loving supporters, gathers about it the millions, inculcates the highest morality, points to brighter worlds, and when occasion demands will not be silent before political wrongs. Its power, simply as an educating agency, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... see by this, what a value I set upon the free-will of a person already in my power; and who, if these proposals are not accepted, shall find, that I have not taken all these pains, and risked my reputation, as I have done, without resolving to gratify my passion for you, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... taking them out with me for recreation, and into all companies. I wish at these times to pass for a good-humoured fellow; and good-will is all I ask in return to make good company. I do not desire to be always posing myself or others with the questions of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, etc. I must unbend sometimes. I must occasionally lie fallow. The kind of conversation that I affect most is what sort of a day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold up fine for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the otium cum ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... theology never shrank from inconsistency. It accepted at once God's foreknowledge and man's free-will. So it described the knowledge of God as far above man's reach; yet it felt God near, sympathetic, a Father and Friend. The liturgy of the Synagogue has been well termed a 'precipitate' of all the Jewish teaching as to God. He is the Great, the Mighty, the Awful, the Most High, the King. But ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after with great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was presently entangled in the briars and thorns of subtle distinctions,—of "fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," though I cannot add that "in their wandering mazes I found no end;" for I did arrive at some very satisfactory and potent conclusions; nor will I go so far, however ungrateful the subject might seem, as to exclaim ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "You lock up your house, or leave me in charge with Lizbet and Lenora, and you and the two other children start off at once to ask the help of the Goat-king. He is a mild, humane creature, and will very likely order out a detachment of the 'Free-will' goats to help to ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... deck. My engagement is with a Rev. Mr. Barrows, who is bound as missionary to Hong Kong. This worthy Methodist gentleman is very much exercised because I insist that potentiality is necessity and rebut his arguments on free-will. He got quite excited yesterday, and said to me severely: "Do you mean to say, young man, that I can't do as I please?" I must say I don't think his warmth was much allayed by my replying: "I certainly mean to say you can't please as you please. You may ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... that opposition in his opinion between the ideas of play and work, which exists so strongly in the imaginations of those school-boys who are driven to their tasks by fear, and who escape from them to that delicious exercise of their free-will ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... never stopped of his own free-will, though he was stopped: once when he walked up to a man kneeling—and he was a poacher—and did not see him till, if I may so put it, the man coughed, when he ran like winkle into the hedge, and promptly became a ball for ten minutes; and once when ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... thus taken up with each other, and the curate and widow soberly paced the cliffs or sat on the beach discoursing together of lofty matters—of the mysteries of our being and the hunger of the spirit, and argued of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, wandering through eternity without lighting on any fresh discovery of importance in that extensive field—Fan not infrequently found herself taking part in a somewhat monotonous trio, with ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... that certainty of freedom any more than you could doubt away the certainty of necessity and determination. From the outside they were part of the show of existence, the illusion of separation from God. From the inside they were God's will, the way things were willed. Free-will was the reality underneath the illusion of necessity. The flash point of freedom was ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... does lead—to most unphilosophical conclusions. They are used very much as synonyms; not merely in this passage, but in the mouths of men. Are you aware that those who carelessly do so, blink the whole of the world- old arguments between necessity and free-will? Whatever may be the rights of that quarrel, they are certainly not to be assumed in a passing epithet. But what else does the writer do, who tells us that an inevitable sequence, an irresistible growth, exists in the moral as well as in the physical world; and then ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... posterity lost their free-will, being put to an unavoidable necessity to do or not to do, whatsoever they do or do not, whether it be good or evil, being thereunto predestinated by the eternal and effectual ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... receive. 'Mrs. Johnson, how many?' 'Two, sir.' 'What ages?' 'Seven and ten.' 'Mrs. B., how many?' and so on, until the required number is made up. The people who go upon the stage, however poor their pay or hard their lot, love it too well ever to adopt another vocation of their free-will. A mother will frequently be in the wardrobe, children in the pantomime, elder sisters ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... which recalls a mighty Indian idol being carried through the streets, with people thronging about its feet. How delicately she steps, lest she hurt one of the little limbs! And, meanwhile, mark the driver—for though the old pig pretends to ignore any such coercion, as men believe in free-will, yet there is a fate, a driver, to this idyllic domestic company. But how gentle is he too! He never lets it be seen that he is driving them. He carries a little switch, rather, it would appear, for form's sake; for he seldom does more with it than tickle the gravely striding posteriors of the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... will to the event which shall befall. If the present moment can again intersect the stream of past conscious experience, it may equally do so with regard to the future. This brings up the tremendous questions of free-will and fore-ordination. Upon these the Oriental doctrines of karma and reincarnation cast the only light by which the reason consents to be guided. As these doctrines are intimately related both to higher time and to trance revelations, some consideration of karma and reincarnation ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore an abstract word, a general word, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not state that all men are always beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are not ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... But as such a person was not secured, he felt proud of the position he occupied amongst them. He little thought that the movement would have proved so successful when he embarked in it, for with but little effort we have received the free-will offerings of L170. Of course printing, advertising, and other incidental expenses were incurred, and cannot be dispensed with in order to succeed in similar objects. The Royal Humane Society had awarded to Ellerthorpe an especial vote of thanks; the ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... at rest now. But still the everlasting question,—mocking terrible question, with its phrasing of farce and its enigmas of tragical sense,—"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?" Do with what? The all that remains to him, the all he holds! the all which man himself, betwixt Free-will and Pre-decree, is permitted to do. Ask not the vagrant alone: ask each of the four there assembled on that flying bridge called the Moment. Time before thee,—what wilt thou do with it? Ask thyself! ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... individual man is of a mixed nature. In part he submits to the free-will impulses of himself and others, in part he is under the inexorable dominion of law. He insensibly changes his estimate of the relative power of each of these influences as he passes through successive stages. In the confidence of youth he imagines that very much is under his control, in ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of nature were satisfied they began seriously to turn their attention to the introduction of those customs and observances which had been the principal care of their fore fathers. There was certainly a great variety of opinions on the subject of grace and free-will among the tenantry of Marmaduke; and, when we take into consideration the variety of the religious instruction which they received, it can easily be seen that it could not ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... for him with unerring exactitude. Happily, when the occasion presents itself, his thoughts are generally too much occupied with the crisis before him, to be able to indulge in any dangerous speculations on predestination and free-will; his practice, therefore, is not invariably ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... was right!' said the Moor Maiden. 'No Gottmar but is fickle and inconstant. Well it is for thee, youth, that thou art here of thy own free-will, and didst not tarry for my summons. Thou hast kept thy promise badly, and thou wilt keep it so again, if I give thee no monitor to aid thee. Take this, and carry it, henceforward, in thy bosom; it will protect thee from harm, and keep thee faithful in spirit, albeit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Samas-palassar, the son of the priest of the Sun-god, has, of his own free-will, sealed all his estate, which he had inherited from Nebo-balasu-iqbi, the son of Nur-Ea, the son of the priest of the Sun-god, the father of his mother, and from Kabt, the mother of Assat-Belit, his grandmother, consisting of a piece of land, a house and the slaves ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... young man hastily, "I know not what you mean. Have I ever asked for more than the allowance you make me? Do I complain? Except for the two or three bills that you have paid for me of your own free-will, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer |
