"Volition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tide of anger was rising in him so terribly that it pressed against the skin of his forehead, drawn tight, and threatened to split it. What he wanted to do was to rise and assault the woman standing in front of him. His hands longed to take her! They seemed to have life and volition of their own and to move across the ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... list of books in our library, and the third one, indexed by subjects, the bulletins on horticulture coming from the various state experiment stations and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These indexes are invaluable for their various purposes and may be used by the membership at their volition. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... lies partly in the fact that they lead to a more correct account of scientific procedure, partly in the fact that they remove the analogy with human volition which makes the conception of cause such a fruitful source of fallacies. The latter point will become clearer by the help of some illustrations. For this purpose I shall consider a few maxims which have played a great part in ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... mental phenomena, as revealed in consciousness, and not constructed in an "independent" and a priori method. The most careful psychological analysis has resolved the whole complex phenomena of mind into thought, feeling, and volition.[61] These orders of phenomena are radically and essentially distinct. They differ not simply in degree but in kind, and it is only by an utter disregard of the facts of consciousness that they can be confounded. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... just beginning to discover that it had made a revolution for other people. Then it was happiness itself to be with Adrienne, and when I felt the dear girl pressing me to her heart, by an act of volition of which pocket-handkerchiefs are little suspected, I threw up a fold of my gossamer-like texture, as if the air wafted me, and brushed the first tear of happiness from her eye that she had ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... in which some trace of the original meaning of these auxiliaries cannot be found is the one in which the subject of will names something incapable of volition; as, The wind will blow. Even this may be a kind ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the mind; anon, those figures which had before been called up only at will became the cause, instead of the effect, of the mind's employment; in other words, they came before me in the night-time, like real images, and independent of any previous volition of thought. I have often, after retiring to my bed, seen, looking through the thick wall of darkness round about me, the faces of those whom I had not known for years, nay, since childhood; faces, too, of the dead, called up, as it were, from the church-yard ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... palanquin and exhibited to the eyes of the crowd the "Good Mzimu." M'Rua and all the warriors fell on their faces so that their bodies formed a long, living deck. Not one of them dared to move, and fear prevailed in all hearts all the more when the King, either at Stas' order or of his own volition, raised his trunk and began to trumpet strongly; and after his example Saba emitted the deepest bass of which he was capable. Then from all breasts issued, resembling entreating groans, "Aka! Aka! Aka!" and this continued until ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... apprehensions through her heart. They seemed to satisfy him so little while they sapped from her every atom of vitality, leaving her helpless as an infant, her body drawn to his as a needle to the magnet, not of her own volition, but simply by his strength. And ever the fire of his passion grew hotter till she felt as one bound on the edge of a mighty furnace which scorched her ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... office into the yellow glare of the sun, her feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along the dusty road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers, march, march, came . . . first what Eugenia had said, the advance from that to Mrs. Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's, to the name on the envelope . . . and then ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... triad, and the suspicious and unexplainable conduct of the prisoner in various respects, furnishes, in connection with other circumstances of this case, the strongest presumptive evidence of her guilt. These circumstances, far beyond the realm of human volition, smelted and shaped in the rolling mills of destiny, form the tramway along which already the car of doom thunders; and when they shall have been fully proved to you, by unassailable testimony, no ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... observed that something happened in the world. The world was not dark, nor still, nor dead. The sun rose, and man awoke, and asked himself and the sunshine. 'Whence?' he said; 'stop, what is there? who is there?' Such an object as the sun cannot rise of its own volition. There is something behind it. At first the sun itself was considered a labourer; it accomplished the greatest work on earth, gave light, heat, life, growth, fruits. It was quite natural, then, to pay great honour to the sun; to be grateful ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... nor prov'd But through effect, as vegetable life By the green leaf. From whence his intellect Deduced its primal notices of things, Man therefore knows not, or his appetites Their first affections; such in you, as zeal In bees to gather honey; at the first, Volition, meriting nor blame nor praise. But o'er each lower faculty supreme, That as she list are summon'd to her bar, Ye have that virtue in you, whose just voice Uttereth counsel, and whose word should keep The threshold of assent. Here is the source, Whence cause of merit in you ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... own volition Tomlinson and Fraser found themselves proceeding toward the pulpit—yet Sam's hands did not seem to be exerting any force. The force came from his own vigorous personality, which was one that invariably inspired confidence. If Burnett was going up to speak ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... experiences of external Nature we meet with nothing but succession, never with Causality. The Uniformity of Nature is a postulate of Physical Science, not a necessity of thought. The idea of Causality derived from our consciousness of Volition. CausalityActivity, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... that the workers can, in truth, hardly be blamed for yielding to such overwhelming pressure. Drunkenness has here ceased to be a vice, for which the vicious can be held responsible; it becomes a phenomenon, the necessary, inevitable effect of certain conditions upon an object possessed of no volition in relation to those conditions. They who have degraded the working-man to a mere object have the responsibility to bear. But as inevitably as a great number of working- men fall a prey to drink, just so inevitably does it manifest its ruinous influence ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Upanishads above), one, the northern road leading to brahma; one, the southern road to the moon, leading back to earth. At the end of a period of time all beings reenter the divine nature (Prakriti[11]), and at the beginning of the next period the Deity emits them again and again (they being without volition) by the volition of his nature. "Through Me, who am the superintendent, nature gives birth to all things, and for that cause the world turns about. They of demoniac nature recognize me not; they of god-like ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... storms—and it opened like the folds of a balloon, even before these gentle impulses; occasionally collapsing, it is true, as the ground-swell swung the yards to and fro, but, on the whole, standing out and receiving the air as if guided more by volition than any mechanical power. The effect on the hull was almost magical; for, notwithstanding the nearly imperceptible force of the propelling power, owing to the lightness and exquisite mould of the craft, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a curious phenomenon a short distance before him—another Christmas-tree, but one which moved, apparently of its own volition, along the sidewalk. As Mr. Carter overtook it, he saw that it was borne, or dragged, rather by a small boy who wore a bright red flannel cap and mittens of the same peculiar material. As Mr. Carter looked down at him, he looked ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... bonded debt might be refunded at a less rate of interest and the difference between the old and new security paid in cash, thus finding use for the surplus in the Treasury. The success of this plan, it is apparent, must depend upon the volition of the holders of the present bonds; and it is not entirely certain that the inducement which must be offered them would result in more financial benefit to the Government than the purchase of bonds, while the latter proposition ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... woman never leave the house with her lover? Why does a man never kill a man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever accomplished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common occurrence; but Mr James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothing happens. The suppression ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... possessed her thoughts for a month past; he had come back to her. She had not to consider whether she should ever see him again; he was with her now. She had not to think whether he was there for good or evil, she had lost all volition in the will of the man who stood before her; she was the slave of his ring, rejoicing in her slavery, and ready to do his bidding as all the other ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... his mind reasons for the abandonment of his useless pledge. It was a period in his history full of painful interest. Heaven was moving forward to aid and rescue him, and hell to claim another victim. But neither the one nor the other could act upon him for good or for evil, except through his own volition. It was for him to turn himself to the one, and live, or to the other, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... from the idea of future destination, dependent upon the volition of the agent—will. Shall is simply predictive; will is ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... constant disturbance of national interests, and the injury resulting from an indefinite continuance of this state of things. It was stated that at this juncture our Government was constrained to seriously inquire if the time was not ripe when Spain of her own volition, moved by her own interests and every sentiment of humanity, should put a stop to this destructive war and make proposals of settlement honorable to herself and just to her Cuban colony. It was urged that as a neighboring nation, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... welfare is deeply involved in the operations of nature, man's chief interest is in the gods. In this interest religion originates. Man, impelled by his own volition, guided by his own purposes, aspires to a greater happiness, and endeavor follows endeavor, but at every step his progress is impeded; his own powers fail before the greater powers of nature; his powers are pygmies, nature's powers are giants, ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... clash of instincts, the struggle between different foci of the vegetative system competing for the possession of the brain, is a common everyday process in conduct. Which will win means which will will. And so we have an energetic basis for volition. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... excited, the sheep were running wildly; but the girl's exquisite voice was as clear and calm as ever, and the big horse cantered over the broken ground, taking a big boulder now and again with lilting jump, as if he were going by his own volition and was well up in all the points of the game. After a time the dogs got the sheep into a heap, and the young girl rode round them; but something still seemed to be wrong, for she got down, and, leaving the horse quite free, made ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... gradually decreasing in width' (very much as Fuseli depicted the wings of his Satanic Majesty, though H.S.M. would seem to have the advantage of the lunar Bat-men in not being influenced by gravity[48]). 'The wings seemed completely under the command of volition, for those of the creatures whom we saw bathing in the water spread them instantly to their full width, waved them as ducks do theirs to shake off the water, and then as instantly closed them again in a compact form. Our further observation of the habits ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... stirred. To move hand or foot, or even so much as one finger, would have been an exertion beyond the powers of either volition or motion. She was so tired, so stunned, that she thought she never slept at all; her feverish thoughts passed and repassed the boundary between sleeping and waking, and kept their own miserable identity. She could not be alone, prostrate, powerless as she was,—a cloud of ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever she went he was near, as near as possible, but of no deliberate volition of his own. Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla was nothing loth. He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer than an instant, and more rarely still did he speak to her except as a reply. What few remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... our acts. We still obey the strongest motive doubtless, but there is something in ourselves which makes it a motive and regulates its strength. We can drift like other animals, and often do; but we can also obey our own volition. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... easy to deride martinets and pipe-clay: all the drill in Christendom will not make a good soldier out of a weakling or a coward; but, unless you can turn men into machines, so far as to make them act independently of individual thought or volition, you can never depend on a body of non-fatalists for advancing steadily, irrespective of what may be in their front; nor for keeping their ranks unbroken under a hail of fire, or on a sinking, ship. As skirmishers, the Federal soldiers act admirably; and in ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Borealis from heaven?" Crossman cut in. He spoke unconsciously. He had not wished to say that, he had not wanted to speak at all, but his subconscious mind had welded the thought of her so fast to the great mystery of the Northern Lights that without volition ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... them, and "conquered all along from Mexico" to Virginia.[329] He was now an extremely aged man. Being unable to walk he was carried from place to place upon a litter. His eyelids were so heavy that he could not of his own volition move them, and attendants stood always ready to raise them whenever it became necessary for him to see.[330] But his mind was clear, his force of will unshaken, and the Indians paid him the reverent obedience ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... interest in religion has emphasized this truth. How, then, may we describe it in terms of certain constant conditions of human life, and yet escape the abstractness of the facultative method? Modern psychology suggests an answer in demonstrating the interdependence of knowledge, feeling, and volition.[58:2] The perfect case of this unity is belief. The believing experience is cognitive in intent, but practical and emotional as well in content. I believe what I take for granted; and the object of my belief is not merely known, but also felt and acted upon. What ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... glittering arch of her upper third, occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comblike row; sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide out of it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle took the shapely, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the body, but were most acute in the mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. He showed some disposition to maintain the popular notions of the Greeks and Romans, that the rivers and streams are endowed with reason and volition; and endeavoured to prove that some of their windings and deviations from a straight line, cannot be explained ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... never can know anything! We didn't take in society papers, because father does not care for gossip or grandees. He has other pursuits. I can show you some of dear mother's articles. There's one called 'Unconscious Volition,' and another on the 'Progress of Species.' I'll bring them ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hawk turned to go, his eye took in a little slip on the desk, a radio memo, with the name of Ku Sui at its top. Almost without volition he glanced over it, hoping to discover useful information about Ku Sui's asteroid—and with the passing of those few extra seconds his chance for escaping out the ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... fortunes in the tens of thousands camped on the ruins of their homes, eating as primitive men ate—gnawing; thinking as primitive men thought. Ashes and the dull pain of despair were their portions. They did not have the volition to help themselves, childlike as the men of the stone age, they awaited quiescent what the next ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the soldiers now close upon us. It darted at their throats, striking, coiling, and striking again; coiling and uncoiling with incredible rapidity and flying from leverage points of throats, of faces, of breasts like a spring endowed with consciousness, volition and hatred—and those it struck stood rigid as stone with faces masks of inhuman fear and anguish; and those still ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... had passed, and the love-story was presently enacting itself, as all past and all future must for ever be enacting to beings for whom time is not. Then, too, where was he who, by some means, whether of his own volition or not, had become so much a part of the pulsing life of a young girl that, when all else of life passed from her with the weight of years, her heart still remained obedient to him? Where was he? Had his life gone out like the flame ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... scoundrel," said Ross, his eyes ablaze with scorn and rage. He had already shed his coat and vest. Now he rolled up his shirt-sleeves. "Will you go into that tube of your own volition, conscious, so that you may take a long breath before I flood the tube, or unconscious, and pushed in like a bag of meal, to drown before you know ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... it is hard work to write a poem?—said the old Master.—I had an idea that a poem wrote itself, as it were, very often; that it came by influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have spoken of it as an inspiration rather than a result of volition. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... well—resolves to play the Nereid, and takes her little ones in fancy down among the slopes and dells of Ocean to watch the lovely growths and the strange creatures in which, through plant and mineral, or what seem such, Life is yearning upward toward the higher individuality of Volition. She tells us (for we seemed among her hearers as we read, and drew our stool nearer) all about the sea-anemones and corals, the coral-reefs, the jelly-fishes, star-fishes, and sea-urchins,—which last are not to be confounded with the buoys so frequently to be met with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... had no hatred of the enemy. His spirit did not need that ugly stimulant. Tenderness and pity filled his heart and yet he had the overflowing enthusiasm and contempt of death which alone can give troops the volition to attack when they have been crouching so long under a pitiless fire. Doughty Wylie was no flash-in-the-pan V.C. winner. He was a steadfast hero. Years ago, at Aleppo, the mingled chivalry and daring with which he placed his own body as ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... arises from internal causes, without any external impulse. To this source may be referred consciousness, memory, imagination, volition, and other affections of the mind. These are called the internal senses. The senses, whether internal or external, have never been accurately reduced to classes, orders, or genera; the external indeed are generally referred to five orders; namely, seeing, hearing, smelling, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... crossed over whilst I went round. At last, by long and patient waiting, he, too, allowed me to come near and present my seductive food to his notice—the wiry proboscis was uncoiled and felt about for the honey; once plunged into that, all volition seemed to cease, he allowed me to coax him upon my finger, and he, too, was safely caged; but he behaved very differently from "fair Cynthia." The moment his repast was ended he flapped with desperate force against the bars, and in a minute he was out and on the ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... is one of the most specious and imposing of birds. Its flight in the upper regions of the air is really sublime, extending its immense wings, and wheeling slowly and majestically to and fro, seemingly without exerting a muscle or fluttering a feather, but moving by mere volition, and sailing on the bosom of the air, as a ship upon the ocean. Usurping the empyreal realm of the eagle, he assumes for a time the port and dignity of that majestic bird, and often is mistaken for him by ignorant crawlers upon the earth. It is only when he descends from the clouds ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... through these pathless regions over which she was now compelled to pass; she could only feel her way. The thoughts which began to course through her mind did not originate in any efforts of the will, but issued spontaneously from the depths of her soul, and as they arose without volition, so did they flow on until they finally became as pure and clear as the waters of the brook by ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... for victims. I believe that only a small proportion of the women who are in the houses of ill-fame—only a small proportion—make their way there of their own volition, and that small proportion are of the degenerate class who are born with a screw loose somewhere. From their babyhood they who are born with this taint—and we could, perhaps, trace that taint back—but born with that taint, they gradually go into that life—but ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... divine existence. He first proves the existence of personality and will,(569) and uses this idea for the purpose of exploring the outer world; arguing that matter is inert and not self-active, he regards matter in motion as indicating force, and therefore volition; uniformity in its motion as proving a law, and therefore an intelligent will,(570) in which wisdom, power, and goodness combine.(571) This being is God, to whom man is subject. The universe is universal order. The physical evil therein originates ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... he seemed to say, to act rashly. The irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important instances when she had acted of her own volition ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Idiot, with an irritating shake of his head, as if he were confidentially hinting to the School-Master to keep quiet—"really you pain me by these futile denials. Nobody forced you into the confession. You made it entirely of your own volition. Now I ask you, as a man and brother, what's the use of saying anything more about it? We believe you to be a person of the strictest veracity, but when you say a thing before a tableful of listeners one minute, and deny it the next, we are forced ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... searching party of her own volition, was the only one of the Martians whose face had not been twisted in laughter as I battled for my life. She, on the contrary, was sober with apparent solicitude and, as soon as I had finished the monster, rushed to me and carefully examined my body for possible wounds or injuries. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had been legally passed prior to the Coup d'etat of the 4th November, 1913. But Yuan Shih-kai's first care after that coup d'etat had been to promulgate with the assistance of Dr. Goodnow and others, a bogus Law, resting on no other sanction than his personal volition, with an elaborate flummery about three candidates whose names were to be deposited in the gold box in the Stone House in the gardens of the Palace. Therefore since the provisional nature of this prestidigitation had always been clear, the ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... had completely thrown her off her balance; but at the same time they had wonderfully developed her intellect, and made her what she could not otherwise have become. It was a very singular phenomenon: a system of philosophy growing up in this woman's mind without her volition,—contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her volition,—and substituting itself in the place of everything that originally grew there. To have based such a system on fancy, and unconsciously elaborated it for herself, was almost as wonderful as really to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... impossible, manacle the arm of God. Comte may not put his extinguisher upon the great underlying verities of our being, nor Tyndall jump the iron track of his own principles to smuggle into matter a 'potency and promise' of all 'life.' Huxley cannot play fast and loose with human volition, nor juggle the trustiness of memory into a state of consciousness, to save his system; nor may Haeckel lead us at his own sweet creative will through fourteen stages of vertebrate and eight of invertebrate life up to the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... that the question was deciding itself apparently without any volition whatever on his part. His fate was sealed; he had lost his heart and his appetite to his neighbor. Having come to this conclusion, it was wonderful how the thought excited him. He took a bath and changed his clothes, ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... the question fell from his lips without volition. The man did not believe his own ears. He thought that he must have ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... while your attention is concentrated upon the artistic character of the music. If somebody thoughtlessly interrupts you with a question about Egyptian politics, you go on playing while you answer him politely. That is, where you had at first to make a conscious act of volition for each movement, the whole group of movements has now become automatic, and volition is only concerned in setting the process going. As the delay involved in the perception and the movement disappears, so does ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... live out their lives, three stages. First, the personality of the man develops, powerfully influenced by the restricting environment. It tries to reconcile incompatibilities, while in the depth of his soul ideas and convictions are gradually translated into volition. At last they burst forth in a definite action, and the solitary individual enters upon the contest with the world. Then follows a period of greater activity, more rapid growth, and larger victories. The influence of the one man upon the masses grows ever greater. Mightily ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... death: the mother, the wife, the children. I struggled to get away from the question, but the vagaries which had lightly dispersed themselves before clung persistently to the theme now. I felt that it was like a bad dream. That was a promising diversion. Had one any sort of volition in the quick changes of dreams? One was aware of finding a certain nightmare insupportable, and of breaking from it as by main force, and then falling into a deep, sweet sleep. Was death something like waking from a dream such as that, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... having, seemingly, regarded the attempt to board them as men regard the natural phenomena of the planets, or in other words, as if the ship, of which they were merely parts, had escaped by her own instinct or volition. This habit of considering the machine as the governing principle is rather general among seamen, who, while they ease a brace, or drag a bowline, as the coachman checks a rein, appear to think it is only permitting the creature to work her own will a little more freely. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the elephant stopped of its own volition close to a great iron picket which was being driven into the soft earth, and by which a truss of hay had been placed ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... fetching and carrying for Lady Brotherton, was yet, in virtue of a poor-relationship, allowed an uneasy seat at the table. Her obedience was mechanically perfect. One wondered how the mere nerves of volition could act so instantaneously upon the slightest hint. I saw her more than once or twice withdraw her fork when almost at her lips, and, almost before she had laid it down, rise from her seat to obey some ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... from the direct line is the cause of our liberty of will. But, I say, this declination of atoms in their descent was itself either necessary or voluntary. If it was necessary, how then could that necessity ever beget liberty? If it was voluntary, then atoms had that power of volition before; and what becomes then of the Epicurean doctrine of the fortuitous productions of worlds? The whole business is contradiction and ridiculous nonsense."—Bentley's Works, Vol. III., pp. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... still for a moment as if robbed of all volition. Then, with a suppressed cry, she dragged out the accusing document and carried it to the light. Who could do such a thing! Who would be such a lying coward! Her helplessness made her rage. Oh, to be ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... kataplexy, so far as Spiders are concerned. "I have frequently watched Spiders in this condition," he observes, "to determine the point in question, and their behaviour always impressed me as being a genuine feigning of death, and therefore entirely within their volition. The evidence is of such indefinite nature that one can hardly venture to give it visible expression, but my conviction is none the less decided. I may say, however, that my observations indicate that the Spiders remained ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... had streamed by her; by night she had seen nothing but the dull, stuffed walls of her sleeping compartment, and it was an exquisite physical pleasure to have the firm, unshaken floor underfoot, to be surrounded by the appointments of a beautiful house, to be able to move of one's own volition again, and not to be taken like a parcel in a van from one end of Europe to the other. And how delicious also it was to be clean, to have revelled in soap and water, instead of being coated and pelted at by dust and coal-grime! On the surface of life ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... to Maurice that he was being swept away by the simple power of the emotion of Frontford. He felt the tears in his eyes, and almost without his volition his hand responded to the pressure of the hand that clasped it. He made a strong effort to call back ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... began to accuse her as men were used to accuse their daughters in the bright days of the Sailor King. He invented enormities which she had committed, and there would have been no obscene infamy of which Maggie was not guilty, if Edwin—more by instinct than by volition—had not pushed open the door and entered ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of differentiation and manifestation begins. The disturbance of equilibrium is due to the action of the individual Purushas or souls on Prakriti, but this action is mechanical and due to proximity not to the volition of the souls and may be compared to the attraction of a magnet for iron.[744] Thus at the beginning of the evolutionary process we have quiescent matter in equilibrium: over against this are souls innumerable, equally quiescent but exerting on matter a mechanical force. This upsets ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... convey it to others. To make the machine requires a vast amount of labor expended upon matter; to get the thought requires the awakening of a human spirit. The work of the machine is done when the crank stops; the mental work, through internal volition, goes on to ever ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... shades of grey. Neither are we sheep or goats, but moral alpacas, all of us,—something between a sheep and a goat. But no less are we divided into two clear-cut classes. Each of us puts himself of his own volition into the class of the self-centred, or the self-forgetting, and in the act marks himself as happy ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... regular form, the disease is said to be put under (not into) the patient. The assertion that the chairs "have swiftly moved away" would seem from analogy to mean that the disease has been placed upon the seats and thus borne away. The verb implies that the seats move by their own volition. Immediately afterward it is declared that relief is accomplished. The expression "us[^u][']hita nutan[^u][']na" occurs frequently in these formulas, and may mean either "let it not be for one night alone," or "let it not stay a single night," ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... at these fantastic views, although I admit, that we women ought to be more masters of our fates than we are. In my own case I suppose it would have been better if I had left Julian of my own volition, because it was right to leave him, instead of waiting for an automobile accident to ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... expresses much of the "time-spirit" of our modern day. It is a doctrine with no God in it, and no invisible world. It assumes that man has no vision and no volition; that he is a mere billiard-ball in the game of existence, which goes whithersoever the cue of blind fate sends it. That one man rises, and another falls, is neither the virtue of one nor the vice ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... titled foreigners have proved a drain upon the Vanderbilt fortune, although, thanks to their large share in the control of laws and industrial institutions, the Vanderbilts possess at all times the power of recouping themselves at volition. The American marriages, on the other hand, contracted by this family, have interlinked other great ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... refused. In respect of them he set his jaw and sternly averted his eyes. Yet, though the will may be steady to resist and to abstain, the tides of feeling ebb and flow, contemptuous of control as those of some unquiet sea. They defy volition, notably in illness when vitality is low. Refuse as he might to go behind the fact, it remained indisputable that the Lady of the Windswept Dust had given him his dismissal. Out of his daily life a joy had ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... or whither, or by what volition; Borne now here, now thither, in blind inanition. Out of this abysmal, nebulous dim distance, Haunted by a dismal, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... leave untouched. Muller is then taken off the case, and left idle for a while if he persists in his opinion as to the true facts. And at other times, Muller's own warm heart gets him into trouble. He will track down his victim, driven by the power in his soul which is stronger than all volition; but when he has this victim in the net, he will sometimes discover him to be a much finer, better man than the other individual, whose wrong at this particular criminal's hand set in motion the machinery of justice. Several ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... she was told, without much volition of her own; and she quitted the carriage, and was drawn into her place by Norman, trusting that Meta would not let her do wrong, and relieved that just in front of her were the little ones, over whose heads she could see her father, with Flora's ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... he might wonder and doubt, Lanyard would never question her. Never of his own volition would he probe more deeply into this mystery, take one farther step into ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... her eyes with a steady, inquiring glance, and Joan experienced a new emotion. Joe had never looked like that; nor yet her father. She felt a will stronger than her own was busy with her inclinations. Volition remained free, and yet she doubted whether under any circumstances could she refuse his petition. As it happened, however, she already liked the man. He was so respectful and polite. Moreover, she felt sad to hear that he suffered in health. He would not ask her ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... art, is an impossible thing. It was not my purpose to flatter you. I only expressed half consciously my knowledge that the representative alone is the true artist. Our creations as poets and composers are in reality volition, not power; representation only is power—art. [Footnote: In the German original there is here a play upon the word "konnen" and its derivative, "kunst," which cannot be translated.] Believe me, I should be ten times happier if I were ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in imagining that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some pre-existent Being. Then, as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism; and, given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation. I had not then, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the canoe floated almost of its own volition into a dead and distorted strip of country. Black water which gave off an evil odor covered almost half an acre of ground. From this arose the twisted, gaunt gray skeletons of dead oaks. To complete the drear picture a row of rusty-black vultures sat along the broad naked limb of the nearest of these ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... was by nature, but during Sir Jovian Belamour's lifetime she had been kept within bounds. Then came a brief widowhood, when debt and difficulty hurried her into accepting Mr. Wayland, a thoughtful scientific man, whose wealth had accumulated without much volition of his own to an extent that made her covet his alliance. Enthralled by her charm of manner, he had not awakened to the perception of what she really was during the few years that had elapsed before he was sent abroad, and she refused to ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well known, Kant placed the aesthetic faculty under the jurisdiction of the 'judgment', which he regarded as a sort of connecting link between the pure reason and the practical reason, that is, between cognition and volition. A judgment is teleologic, according to his scheme, if it implies a pre-existing notion to which the object is expected to conform; it is aesthetic when pleasure or pain is produced directly by the object itself. In the good and the agreeable we have an ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... have brought upon the Pope himself an amount of hatred greater than he deserved. Gregory XIII. appears as a pale figure between the two strongest of the modern Popes, without the intense zeal of the one and the ruthless volition of the other. He was not prone to large conceptions or violent resolutions. He had been converted late in life to the spirit of the Tridentine Reformation; and when he showed rigour it was thought to be not in his character, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... ends of the long line of watchers curled a little inward, almost imperceptibly, a half step taken without volition. The crippled boy, swaying upon his crutch, his lips parted, trembling in every limb, edged forward hesitantly, fearfully, now a foot, now another, now the bare space of a single inch. And now down the entire length of the line from end to end that wavering, rocking movement in ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... their time on the other side. During the past decade it has come about that every European city of any consequence has its "American Colony," a society no longer composed of poor art students or those whose residence abroad is not a matter of volition, but consisting now of many of the wealthiest Americans. By these expatriates money is spent extremely freely, their drafts on London and Paris requiring the frequent replenishment, by remittances of exchange from this side, of their bank balances ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... hypothesis quite unnecessary, by showing that similar results must be produced by the action of principles constantly at work in nature. The powerful retractile talons of the falcon- and the cat-tribes have not been produced or increased by the volition of those animals; but among the different varieties which occurred in the earlier and less highly organized forms of these groups, those always survived longest which had the greatest facilities for seizing their prey. Neither ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... went on relentlessly, her face growing colder and harder with every word. "Hear me through and then decide for yourself. Let no opinion of mine bias your judgment. I stood there a moment longer, and then, when suspended volition came back to me, I fled from the place. Margie, words cannot express to you my distress, my bitter, burning anguish! It was like to madness. But sooner than have divulged my suspicions, I would have killed myself! ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... gesture, perhaps by dealing a blow at that bust which stood there so placidly before him, just as the poor youth did at the British Museum, who threw a stone at the Portland vase, to prove that he also was a man, and had volition, and was not to be looked into stone by the Gorgon of society. Fortunately, however, Sir John Steventon himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the alleged wrongdoer, resides, which means generally where no part of the transaction giving rise to the action took place. What could be more irrational? "Granted that no state can of its own volition make its process run beyond its borders * * * is it unreasonable that the United States should by federal action be made a unit in the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... another instant, in a wide stare comprehending the incredible, the utterly impossible fact of his presence there. The one conceivable explanation voiced itself without her volition: ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... mind—not of thinking. The unparticled matter, or God, in quiescence, is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind. And the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is, in the unparticled matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence; how I know not, and now clearly see that I shall never know. But the unparticled matter, set in motion by a law, or quality, existing within ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... did he not feel and know that he could command and control the action of his brain, and even of every part of it? Now, I said, if the brain is only dumb matter, which you admit, and cannot create thought, where is this volition, or what is it? It is not cerebral, for then matter would create thought; that is, be the creator and the created at the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... is the apprehension of the end; then the desire of the end; then the counsel about the means; then the desire of the means. Now the appetite tends to the last end naturally: wherefore the application of the appetitive movement to the apprehended end has not the nature of consent, but of simple volition. But as to those things which come under consideration after the last end, in so far as they are directed to the end, they come under counsel: and so counsel can be applied to them, in so far as the appetitive ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... conscious, and voluntary, but in a large measure simply yielding to inclination and temptation. Then there is the coin that trundles away under some piece of furniture, and is lost—that is a picture of the manner in which a man, without volition, almost mechanically sometimes, slides into sins and disappears as it were, and gets covered over with the dust of evil. And then there is the worst of all, the lad that had full knowledge of what he was doing. 'I am going into a far-off country; I cannot stand this any longer—all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren |
