"Purposeful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delivered you to me. Now you pretend to grieve at your deliverance; you ask me to respect the memory of your jailer! Decency? Delicacy? What are they except artificialities, which vanish in times of stress? Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Porfirio Diaz—they were strong, purposeful men; they lived as I live. Senora, you ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... to whom its processes were easy. We became very good friends. He was a genial fellow, capable as I have said of taking or making a joke, yet his moods were prevailingly serious, and he had already hitched his waggon to a star. Abnormally purposeful perhaps, a cropping out no doubt of heredity, he had set a high mark for himself and was already striving toward it. In an autobiographical fragment he says, referring to his early surrender of his ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... till the gharry stopped and he jumped out without leave-taking, he swore to himself steadily, horribly; muttering great, purposeful, trooper oaths, to which the worst a sailor can do is like the prattle of a child. For my part I had just the strength to crawl into Schomberg's coffee-room, where I wrote at a little table a note to the mate instructing him to get ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... no effort to draw away when Alcatraz sprinted up beside her. She gave him not so much as a toss of the head or a swish of the tail but kept her gaze on the far Western mountains for she was still sick with the scent of blood; and she maintained a purposeful, steady, lope. It was far other with the stallion. He kept at her side with his gliding canter but he was not thinking of the peace and the shelter from man which they might find in the blue valleys of yonder mountains. His mind was back at the slaughter of Mingo Lake hearing the crackle ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... go on in their separate, incooeperant, abortive ways, keeping God's earth in chaos, when a great wisdom and great virtue like Washington's a hundred years ago would convert them into a family of nations, into a federation and fraternity, with a comprehensive law, an efficient police, and a purposeful economy. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a pretty, clever, and high-spirited boy. Usually well-behaved, he was, however, sometimes violent. He had a will of his own, and asserted it; his elder brother was less passionate, less purposeful, and, in their wrangles, it was Albert who came out top. The two boys, living for the most part in one or other of the Duke's country houses, among pretty hills and woods and streams, had been at a very early age—Albert was less than four—separated from their nurses and put under a tutor, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... affairs. The extreme rapidity with which ideas and thoughts now circulate, due to the new invention of speech, makes it probable that what is said in Eden to-day will be known in the land of Nod within a year. The greatest need is plainly for big-visioned and purposeful men, efficient men, men with forward-looking minds. I hope you will pattern after your admirable father in this respect; he truly was a forward-looking man, for he had nothing ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... translations suggests that the critic was striving merely for accuracy in correcting the errors of Zckert, and that Bode in his formal translation shows a riper and more certain feeling for the choice of words; the effect of purposeful reflection is unmistakable. Of course this in no way proves Bode to have been the reviewer, but the indications at least allow ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... expecting him to speak. Every second her hesitation seemed more purposeful. Julien, however, with an effort which was almost savage, set his teeth and walked on. She looked after him for a moment and began to laugh softly to herself. Julien walked steadily on till he had reached the corner ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the people of the United States, there is evident a serious and purposeful rekindling of confidence. And I join in the hope that when my time as your President has ended, people might ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... a group they suddenly split up, as if at a given signal, scattering the length of the block and dismounting singly. There was something purposeful in this act and a vague apprehension superseded the rush of gladness she had experienced with the first unexpected view of the Three Bar crew. Men who stood on the board sidewalks turned hastily inside the open doors as they glimpsed the riders, spreading the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... influence of human thought. The action of the mere casual wandering thought upon it, causing it to burst into a cloud of rapidly-moving, evanescent forms, has already been described; we have now to note how it is affected when the human mind formulates a definite, purposeful thought or wish. The effect produced is of the most striking nature. The thought seizes upon the plastic essence, and moulds it instantly into a living being of appropriate form—a being which when once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives out a life of its ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... different from when he had first traversed them. They were full of patches of wet earth and of sunshine; of dark pine, looking suddenly worn, and of fresh green shoots of needles, looking deliciously springlike. This was the contrast everywhere—stern, earnest, purposeful winter, and gay, laughing, careless spring. It was impossible not to draw in fresh ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Plymouth or Massachusetts were of the sifted wheat. Under the stress of persecution and the stimulus of migration, the mass of the first settlers doubtless caught something of the spiritual exaltation which inspired the leaders. But it was not for the many to live on that high level of purposeful resolution and enduring courage. It is a significant fact that of those who came over with Winthrop and Dudley two hundred returned in the ships that brought them out; and of those who remained who shall say how many met the stern realities ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... found something reassuring in those quick and purposeful words of command, but they only served to bring the horror of the situation closer home to me. They brought before me more graphically than ever the thought that I'd been trying to get out of my head, the picture of a huddled ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... This was purposeful vagueness and Miss Falconer's crayon snapped. She made a sound of annoyance, then began gathering her sketching things tidily together. Presently, "He's rather an agreeable person, that young American, after ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the faces of the men about him with a purposeful eye. Especially he watched one—a lean man in red shirt and leather breeches, booted and spurred, who ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... by wealth also affords a motive to accumulation. That propensity for purposeful activity and that repugnance to all futility of effort which belong to man by virtue of his character as an agent do not desert him when he emerges from the naive communal culture where the dominant note of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... jerked itself out of the Gare de Lyons. For a few minutes the lights of outer Paris twinkled past its windows and then with a spring it reached the open night. The jolts and lurches merged into one regular purposeful throb, the shrieks of the wheels, the clatter of the coaches, into one continuous hum. And already in the upper berth of her compartment Mrs. Thesiger was asleep. The noise of a train had no unrest for her. Indeed, a sleeping compartment in a Continental express was the most permanent home ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... choosing clean white clothes in honour of the summer's day, unpacking her suit-cases, tidying her adorable little room. She moved about with quick, purposeful steps, her long thin body held up straight, her small face, so much puckered at home with effort and fear, smoothed out. All she had been and done before this morning, all she had felt and worried about, was gone. Each of her worries behaved as the image of Mellersh had behaved, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... out of the station and the small, purposeful figure had vanished from sight she sat back and tried to collect her thoughts to review the situation. She was feeling tired and desperately unhappy. They had let her see, even these dear people whom of all others in the world she loved, that she had gone outside their pale. She was in their ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... driving first to the Lexicographer's house, where he was greeted by a suspiciously new "TO LET" board, and thence to the Official Receiver's flat, where a typewritten card informed him that this bell was out of order. Embarrassed but purposeful, he directed his four-wheeler to Eaton Square, but the blinds were down, and a semblance of mourning draped the Iron King's house. In Park Lane a twenty-yard expanse of straw, nine inches thick, prayed silence ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of Elizabeth, the English nation became more and more a people of one book, and that book the Bible. As, deeply dyed with Calvinism, they read over and over its sacred pages, they became a serious, sombre, purposeful—and almost fanatic people. The faults and extravagances of the Puritan party and of the later Commonwealth do not at this time concern us. It is with their purposefulness, their determination to make the church a home of vigorous and visible righteousness, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... stepped towards them, very purposeful of mien. Gaubert turned at his approach, and smiled. Marius looked up quickly; then made a sign to the men. Instantly two of them went out by the door they guarded, and ere it swung back again Rabecque saw that they ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... his visit and gone away. Firefly's heart gave a bound of delight, for her father was alone. He was lying supported high in bed with pillows. His almost sightless eyes were not bandaged, they were simply closed; his hands, with their long, sensitive, purposeful fingers lay on the white sheets in a restful attitude. Already the acute hearing of the blind had come to him, and as Firefly glided up to the bedside, he turned his head quickly. Her two small hands went with a kind of bound into one of his. ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... hand, had not been impressed by the clothes; or, at any rate, he had been more impressed by something which robbed them of their oddity. His observing eyes were fixed with growing interest on the purposeful face still thrust forward, and for a moment they were startled by something uncanny, something back of a normal human enthusiasm. It was only for a moment, only for a fleeting glimpse through the dilating pupils which shot defiance ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... other women do, but holding back sufficiently to let it be visible to the house that she was conversing with no less a person than Mr. Peter Van Degen. Mr. Popple's talk was certainly more brilliant and purposeful, and she saw him cast longing glances at her from behind Mrs. Lipscomb's shoulder; but she remembered how lightly he had been treated at the Fairford dinner, and she wanted—oh, how she wanted!—to have Ralph Marvell see her talking to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... end she invented and, arranged games and songs and stories, contrived little incidents and managed little surprises with never failing ingenuity. Learning as well as teaching, she gradually gave a purposeful bent to her song-and-dance diversions, making them effective lessons as well as pleasant pastimes. Health and strength for the growing babies were promoted by proper exercises, a good carriage and graceful movement of little arms and ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... the text. It would have been easy to fill many pages with script illustrations, but experience shows that a much greater impression is made upon the memory by the hand forming the outlines described than if they were provided in pictorial form. In other words, the student should supply this purposeful omission by himself constructing the illustrations from the description. The trifling extra time and trouble thus demanded will be amply repaid by the ease and rapidity with which the various points will be fixed in the memory. Nor is this the only advantage to be ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... out, and, treating the whole incident in the most matter-of-fact way possible, lightly to stroke his head or pat his back rhythmically without speaking. With older children, if the crying is more purposeful and less emotional, the mother may busy herself for a little with some task in the room, ostentatiously neglecting the storm and making no reference to it. If she speaks to the child at all she should do so in a matter-of-fact way, referring lightly ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... that was true. And Graver, in contrast to Dalon's agitation, had the calm, purposeful air of a man who had pondered deeply upon an unpleasant future and had taken steps to ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... and beneath her were swarms, literally, of fresh-faced, purposeful youths and maidens, an astonishingly large number of whom were meeting after the manner of friends long separated. Later Kate discovered how great a proportion of that enthusiasm took itself out in mere gesture and vociferation; ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Within him there was a feeling of extraordinary physical sickness; it was quickly followed by one of inertia, just as extraordinary. He felt as if he had been mesmerized; as if he could neither move nor speak. And Kitely sat there, a hand on his victim's arm, his face sinister and purposeful, close ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... a close look at the pump-man. The trick of light speech, his casual manner in speaking of serious things, was not unbecoming, but this was a more purposeful sort of person than he had reckoned; a more set man physically, a more serious man morally, than he had thought. There was more beef to him, too, than ever he guessed; and the face was less oval, the jaw more heavily hung. The under teeth, ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... effective way of making the school work function in the home than by the educative process called the project. Stevenson defines a project as a problematic act carried to completion in its natural setting, while Kilpatrick says a project is a whole- hearted purposeful activity proceeding in ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... lines of the life beyond in its simplest expression, for it is not all simple, and we catch dim glimpses of endless circles below descending into gloom and endless circles above, ascending into glory, all improving, all purposeful, all intensely alive. All are agreed that no religion upon earth has any advantage over another, but that character and refinement are everything. At the same time, all are also in agreement that all ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meant the purposeful distribution of water over soil by man by means of diverting streams or by the use of canals in the shape of ditches or troughs for conveying and directing part of a water supply, or by means of some other man-directed power to raise water ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... interesting triumphs of mechanism are produced which become immediately valuable, and the stage for their proving and testing is again the water. On the surface and below it, the boys have jolly, contagious fun, and the story of their serious, purposeful inventions challenge ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... sorts that are bereft of a distinctive, spiritual individuality, and have failed to display normal, independent capacity for culture. The term historical, on the other hand, is applied to the nations that have had a conscious, purposeful history of appreciable duration; that have progressed, stage by stage, in their growth and in the improvement of their mode and their views of life; that have demonstrated mental productivity of some sort, and have elaborated principles of civilization and social life more or less rational; nations, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... the monstrosities of the witch trials. Once more the simple hallucination of a dead person's appearance in his house demanded an explanation. This was easily given by evolving a legend that he was a spirit, escaped from purgatory or the grave, to fulfil a definite purpose. The rarity of such purposeful ghosts in an age like ours, so rich in ghost stories, must have a cause. That cause is, probably, a dwindling of ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... reappeared. Caroline DeS. (Case 2) lost her resistiveness as she became more accessible, although the inactivity and apathy persisted. This tendency, which is quite common, suggests that muscular resistiveness represents a lower level of expression of opposition which patients put into words or purposeful actions when there is other evidence of some contact with the environment. Sometimes one observes both general resistiveness and specific acts. For instance, Mary G., who said, "Leave me alone," and covered her head or buried it in the pillows, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... clouds that frowned close and threatening upon him—fearless of the future and heedless of the ominous roar of dissatisfaction far and near—sat the ruling spirit of the storm he had raised. Grim, steady and purposeful, Jefferson Davis worked his busy brain and frail body almost past belief, to redeem the errors of his chosen instruments—seeking no counsel, asking no aid—and day by day losing the confidence of the sand-shifting populace, who had once made him their ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meant seven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room, and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Easton that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic glow that tinged its ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... with the addition of a little boyfriend, gathered together in a very purposeful and alarming way in the library There was about them an undefinable air of the chase, for they were all well-booted and belted, and Peggy had a large clasp-knife dangling at her waist. "It is for the hare," she said, "when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... terrace of the building. It was followed closely by another and then another, like a flight of birds. They shot up swiftly, circled once or twice, and moved away in different directions, straight and purposeful. One of them ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... so quickly this afternoon that I had no chance to thank you, but the echoes of that discharge penetrated as far as my library. Also, I have viewed the debris. What on earth did you do to poor Sterry? Watching the purposeful set of your shoulders as you strode toward the carriage house, I was filled with sudden compunction. I did not want the man murdered, merely reasoned with. I am afraid ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... to make among the different nerve centers governing the muscles? As Prof. Ladd says, our ignorance on this point is almost complete. There resides in the central nervous mechanism governing the muscles something which for lack of a better name may be called an instinct. When a purposeful movement of any part of the body is willed, the mental picture of the movement is translated by the central nervous mechanism into a succession of nerve impulses; these impulses are transmitted through the lower ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... release from some emergency in which she stood. One thing was sure; if that was the way I must go, I had at least been taught how to tread it; and all through the dizzy, blurred day that followed, I saw, as I sat at my work, repeated visions of that stealthy, purposeful figure stealing down the stairs and entering with uplifted pistol into the unconscious presence of my employer. I even found myself a dozen times that day turning my eyes upon the door through which it was to come, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... know about it if they are fools enough to think? They get thrown into false notions. They see about them a lot of fine purposeful women maybe caring for their children and they blame themselves for their vices and are ashamed. Then they turn to the other women anyway, shutting their eyes and going ahead. They pay for what they want as they would pay for a dinner, thinking no more of the women who serve them than they ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... been. In such trivial things the evidence had come that I was not aware of it until repetition forced my attention: the veils rising from valley and hill; the mountain tops as personalities that shout or murmur in the darkness; the crying of the sea birds and of the living, purposeful wind; above all, the feeling that Nature about me was instinct with a life differing from my own in degree rather than in kind; everything, from the conspiracy of the gorse-bushes to the disappearing hat, showed that a fundamental attitude of mind in me had ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... indetermination, too great susceptibility, a minimum acuteness, false constructiveness, untrained capacity for inference; in the same way, again, the most cruel hardness depends on properties which, taken in themselves, are good: determination, energy, purposeful action, clear conception of one's fellows, healthy egotism, etc. Every man is the result of his nature and nurture, i. e. of countless individual conditions, and every one of his expressions, again, is the result ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... that the sensory surface of consciousness devoted to the Forec. is rendered less excitable by sleep than that directed to the P-systems. The giving up of interest for the nocturnal mental processes is indeed purposeful. Nothing is to disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to sleep. But once the dream becomes a perception, it is then capable of exciting consciousness through the qualities thus gained. The sensory stimulus accomplishes ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud |
