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More "Initiative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... absolutely to excite a sense of wasted commiseration and uninteresting prosperity. Conversation constrained both by the grating and the presence of the warder, and Aubrey, more tenderly sensitive than his brother, and devoid of his father's experienced tact, was too much embarrassed to take the initiative, was afraid of giving pain by dwelling on his present occupations and future hopes, and confused Leonard by his embarrassment. Hector Ernescliffe discoursed about Charleston Harbour and New Orleans; and Aubrey stood with downcast eyes, afraid to seem to be scanning the convict garb, and thus ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vie ne pouvait trouver que dans la societe sa pleine satisfaction. He seems inclined to turn his attention to the unity of life, not simply as due to an identity of original impulse but to a common aspiration. There is involved a process of subordination and initiative on the part of the individual. The existence of society necessitates a certain subordination, while its progress depends on the free initiative of the individual. It is extremely dangerous for any society, whether it be an International League, a State, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... well be called the cavalry of the sea. It calls for dashing initiative, aggressiveness and courage and daring to the point of rashness. Where an officer would be justified —even duty bound — by navy standards to run away with a bigger and more valuable vessel, the commander of a destroyer often must close in ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature; like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... initial disorder of her first attempt as follows: "I must confess that the first four weeks were disheartening; the children could not settle to a task for more than a few moments; they showed no perseverance, no initiative; at times they followed one another like a flock of lambs; when one child took up an object, all the others wanted to imitate him, sometimes they rolled on the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... and, failing to subdue them by force, effected a compromise, and bought up their leaders. The concession which followed of the tribunitial veto was only a further development. By that veto the plebeians gained no initiative, no positive power, indeed, but their tribunes, by interposing it, could stop the proceedings of the government. They could not propose the measures they liked, but they could prevent the legal adoption of measures they disliked—a faculty Mr. Calhoun ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... if we dared to presume to criticise this magnificent theory of disease, we would simply say that it is not "cellular" enough, that it hardly as yet sufficiently recognizes the individuality, the independence, the power of initiative, of the single constituent cell. It is still a little too apt to assume, because a cell has donned a uniform and fallen into line with thousands of its fellows to form a tissue in most respects of somewhat lower rank than that ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... afternoon; but, for all that, Lee Bryant was proceeding on important business—important for him, anyhow. When everything one possesses is about to be risked on a venture, the matter is naturally vital; and at this moment he was moving straight to the initiative ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... think for himself; and even if little more were accomplished than this, it would be of ten thousand times greater value to the individual, and to the community at large, than the acquisition of a large stock of facts at the price of losing all power of reflection and initiative. ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... rested upon Orchard Knob that night, having taken thus the initiative in the great battle of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. That night was a busy one all along the lines of both armies. Mystic signs were written upon the skies all night by the signal corps of each army. Hooker upon the right was preparing to assault Lookout Mt. We of the center ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... in Miss Gorman, "would be two active, intelligent young men with some initiative and executive ability. You see, I am giving a going away dinner for some soldiers of the Rainbow Division who are about to be sent to the transports. It's an official secret, of course. No one is supposed to know that they are going to sail ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... that it has not what you are pleased to call an organisation. Organisations are only a means for intriguers and rogues to climb to power on the shoulders of their fellow-men; and at best only serve to trammel initiative and enterprise. With us every individual enjoys complete liberty of action. This of course does not mean to say that several individuals may not unite to attain some common object, as is shown by our groups which are scattered all over the globe. But each group is autonomous, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... without making known what could only cause hostility and distress between the two families, unless the young man himself on his return should make the confession. This the Bishop evidently considered the sounder, though the harder course, but he held that Anne had no right to take the initiative. She could only wait, and bear her load alone; but the extreme kindness and compassion with which he talked to her soothed and comforted her so much that she felt infinitely relieved and strengthened when he dismissed her with his blessing, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... untold advantage that she had to take the initiative in excuses. Sophy was so meek with weariness, that she took pretty well all the kind fidgeting that could not be averted from her, and Miss Meadows's discourse chiefly tended to assurances that Mrs. Kendal was right, and grandmamma was nervous—and poor Mr. Bowles—it ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... economy in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual life had by the nineteenth century superseded the pioneer period, in which individual action and independent personal initiative were the prevailing mode. ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... there is out there. No reason for everyone to live in the suburban centers any more. With millions of empty apartments in them, high time we built something else, eh? Trouble with people today, no initiative in ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... Internet and Unix communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet mail-format standard). The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... gunboats. Now we had been reinforced by a fleet of six naval vessels, a large division of troops under General L. Wallace and 2,500 men brought over from Fort Henry belonging to the division of C. F. Smith. The enemy, however, had taken the initiative. Just as I landed I met Captain Hillyer of my staff, white with fear, not for his personal safety, but for the safety of the National troops. He said the enemy had come out of his lines in full force and attacked and scattered McClernand's division, which was in full retreat. The roads, as I have ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... wars between France and Germany becomes mere imposture when it seeks to dictate dogma to wars in which the British Empire is involved. The particular dogma about concentration had three defects: it left the initiative to the enemy, thus surrendering the advantage, secured by the command of the sea, of being able to strike in other directions; it assumed that the enemy could be beaten on that front without disturbance on his flanks or in his ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... and self-contained; and Carpenter carried Hicks away to bestow him, together with Dunne, in a hole in the malt-house under a heap of sacking. Nelthorp had already vanished completely on his own initiative. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... humanitarian and civilizing work? Venice was by no means in a disarming state of decrepitude. On her own lands she had brought her stock-raising, her agriculture and her industries to such a pitch of development that she had the experience, as well as the initiative and the means, to do something for the Dalmatians who, and especially in the interior, knew no other trade than that of arms. Terrible was the desolation of those days; over large areas there was no drinking-water; the land was merely used to pasture ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... colonel, with a sigh, "I must hasten to my conclusion. I wish to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to your faithful teacher, Miss Grey, by reason of whose patriotic initiative the opportunity was presented to me to make this gift. I wish also to commend the vigilance and effort of the young gentleman who brought the matter to my immediate and personal attention, and who, I am informed, will fittingly and eloquently respond to this brief and somewhat unsatisfactory ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... the county moulded and sustained local feeling during the generations when local government and local initiative were dying elsewhere; it has preserved a sort of aristocratic independence, the survival of custom, and the differentiation ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... Bombay and Persia were not confined to this single benevolent initiative of the Bombay Committee. [62] We should also notice the establishing of schools in the towns of Yezd and Kirman (1857) due to the munificence of the Parsee notabilities, and the pecuniary gifts given for the purpose of settling in life young girls exposed on account of their ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... speak to fall in love with me? Not mine: I hate it: it bores me to distraction. At first it flattered me—delighted me—that was how Julia got me, because she was the first woman who had the pluck to make me a declaration. But I soon had enough of it; and at no time have I taken the initiative and persecuted women with my advances as women have persecuted me. Never. Except, of course, in ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... vides; seulement a chercher dans sa poche on y eut trouve les cles de la Tunisie"—as one of his friends defined the situation some years ago. He was almost disavowed by his Government. The ministers were timid and unwilling that France should take any initiative—even his friend, Leon Say, then Minister of Finances, a very clever man and brilliant politician, said: "Notre collegue Waddington, contre son habitude, s'est emballe cette fois pour la question de la Tunisie." (Our colleague ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... haunted me, rather—I thought about him a good deal while I was closing up my affairs in other directions before taking over the Consolidated Resumption. Meanwhile the company's cashier, Joshua Dean, a man of trust but small initiative, was filling ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... is a careful and rapid ritual. Now it is the function of all ritual (as we see in games, social arrangements and so forth) to relieve the mind by so much of responsibility and initiative and to catch you up (as it were) into itself, leading your life for you during the time it lasts. In this way you experience a singular repose, after which fallowness I am sure one is ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... offer themselves to noted warriors in the hope of thus calling attention to their personal attractions. As we shall see later, one of the ways in which an Australian wins a wife is by means of magic. In this game, as Spencer and Gillen tell us (556), the women sometimes take the initiative, thus inducing a man to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the idea of a sort of Brotherhood of Defense (in lieu of a better title) among the boys who used the reading-room whose existence Janice Day's initiative had established. Whoever got the papers from the mail and spread them on the file in the reading-room, first examined the columns carefully for any mention of the execution of prisoners by either belligerent party in Mexico; especially was the news searched for any mention ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... BEVERIDGE.—For conspicuous gallantry and initiative. He repeatedly carried messages back from the firing line under heavy fire and, at a critical moment, rallied his comrades after a counter-attack and led them to the final capture of the position. His courage and dash ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... munificence. Under the ninth Ramesses the order was reversed—"now it is the king who testifies his gratitude to the High-Priest of Ammon for the care bestowed on his temple by the erection of new buildings and the improvement and maintenance of the older ones." The initiative has passed out of the king's hands into those of his subject; he is active, the king is passive; all the glory is Amenhotep's; the king merely comes in at the close of all, as an ornamental person, whose presence adds a certain dignity to the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism. Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and yet we should remember that, as society develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can, under the changed conditions, be performed with better results by common ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... was going on a fortnight's leave to England; and no Tommy in the trenches could have been more excited over the prospect. Her own hospital, which occupies the rest of the lot, is one of those marvels which individual initiative and a strong social sense such as hers has produced in this war. Special enterprise was required to save such desperate cases as are made a specialty of here, and all that medical and surgical science can do has been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the act, was empowered; and that all laws or ordinances so made, subject to the provisions thereinafter contained for disallowance thereof by her majesty, should have the like force and effect as laws passed by the legislative bodies. The governor was further to have the initiative of all measures proposed in the council, five of whom were required for a quorum. Certain restrictive provisoes followed these provisions; and it was directed that a copy of every such law or ordinance "be transmitted to the home government;" and her majesty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... power on their own initiative to lease the card for a term of years? Or should the approval of the transaction by the Court, under the Settled Estates Act, be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... had its origin in the initiative of a few pilots who recognised a chance, took it, and thus opened yet another branch in the huge departmental store of aerial tactics. The exploits of these pioneers were sealed with the stamp of official approval, and airmen on contact patrol have since ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... face, waiting for the confidently expected greeting; later, she eyed them with a distinctly grieved expression—the greeting had never been given; but at last, her hunger to talk with some one not of her own family led her to take the initiative herself. Meeting a tall, slender woman, whom she had already seen ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... him a berth, and a chance to lie back and look on. And while that helped to ripen his wisdom, it sapped his initiative. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... Initiative in war is no less valuable than in business life. Become at once imbued with the desire to put "the other fellow" on the defensive. That makes him somewhat dependent upon your own actions. That gives you opportunities to fool him that ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... weavers; so, of course, there is such a division of labor. It would be well enough to speak thus if the colony of weavers had arisen by the free will of its member's; but we know that it is not thus formed of their initiative, but that we make it. Hence it is necessary to find out whether we have made these weavers in accordance with an organic law, or ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... himself is a historical specialist, and his historical syntheses deserve the most careful consideration. But there is much in the process of development which on such assumptions is not explained, especially the initiative of individuals. Historical development does not proceed in a right line, without the choice of diverging. Again and again, several roads are open to it, of which it chooses one—why? On Lamprecht's method, we may be able to assign the conditions which limit the psychical ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... of national sentiment brings another evil, moreover, which is the absence of all opposition to measures prejudicial to the people and the absence of any initiative in whatever may redound to its good. A man in the Philippines is only an individual, he is not a member of a nation. He is forbidden and denied the right of association, and is therefore weak and sluggish. The Philippines are an organism whose cells ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... to Miss Foster again, and Mr. Widden, with a despairing gesture, abandoned himself to gloom. He made no further interruptions, but at the conclusion of the walk hesitated so long on the door-step that Mr. Letts had to take the initiative. ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... well," the Kaiser pronounced, "that my counsellors were unanimous in advising your withdrawal to what will shortly become the great centre of interest. From the moment of receiving our commands you appear to have displayed initiative. I gather that your personation of this English baronet has been ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and good in you, you need not be afraid they will fail of it, and they will not be so long about finding it out as some travellers say. When it comes to the grace of the imaginative in your pleasantry, they will be even beforehand with you. But in their extreme of impersonality they will leave the initiative to you in the matter of humor as in others. They will no more seek out your peculiar humor than they will name you in speaking ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... this book, he remarks, "The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager. The Poem Game idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs, its further development to be on their own initiative. Informal parties might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters. The whole might be worked out in the spirit in which children play King William was King James's Son, London Bridge.... The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers, who would ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... all entertaining." The author adds: "I believed it useless to persist, and I trampled under foot, laughing at myself, my awkward attempt at a childish construction."[45] "I had already read it in many a book, but this time I had learned from experience that the free initiative of children is always superior to the imitations we pretend to make for them. In addition, this experience and others like it have taught me that their creative force is much weaker than ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... assume the initiative here. They make no advances; they wait until a girl pays them attentions so ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... faculties. He concluded that our educators, overwhelmed by the size and vigor of American industry, were too timid to seize upon the industrial situation, and to extract its enormous educational value. He lamented that this lack of courage and initiative failed not only to fit the child for an intelligent and conscious participation in industrial life, but that it was reflected in the industrial development itself; that industry had fallen back into old habits, ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... "I think you are right, Maxime, in the main. Our people are in the awkward position of fighting the Constitution, and the old flag is a dead weight against us. We must take the initiative in an unnecessary war. This Abe Lincoln is no mere mad fool. I will send a messenger East, and urge that ten thousand Texan cavalry be pushed right over to Arizona. We must seize the coast. You are right! There is one obstacle, Valois, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... said. "There is the difference. A Russian captain would have done it, if he had been ordered, and he and his men would, without a question, have sacrificed themselves to cover the retreat of the rest, but he would never have done it on his own initiative. The idea would never have struck him. He would have plodded along until the enemy's cavalry came up and annihilated them all. By the way, why did you not ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... officer separately and in writing, and to relate only to the duties of their respective offices.[114] The Cabinet, as we know it today, that is to say, the Cabinet meeting, was brought about solely on the initiative of the first President, and may be dispensed with on Presidential initiative at any time, being totally unknown to the Constitution. Several Presidents have in fact reduced the Cabinet meeting to little more than a ceremony with ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... world-civilizations of history; but, understanding neither, he remains only a muddy place in the road along which Greek and Hebrew passed to world-conquest. Haman, a blend of vanity and cruelty and cowardice but not without some power of initiative, was a fit minister for his king. He lives in history as one who, better than in Hamlet's illustration, was "hoist with his own petard," the petard in his case being a gallows. He typifies also the just fate of the man who, spurred by the hate of one, includes in his scheme of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Greenbrier under Colonel Albert Rust, of Arkansas, was given the initiative, and on its success the plan detailed pivoted, but the several columns were expected to act at the same time and in concert. Colonel Rust's command, about 2000 strong, by a blind road to the Union right reached its designated position ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... immediately assigned to the command of a corps of two infantry divisions. Three days later (June 14), detached, with Boudet's division, at Rivalta, he heard the cannon of Marengo on his right. Taking the initiative he marched at once towards the sound, meeting Bonaparte's staff officer, who had come to recall him, half way on the route. He arrived with Boudet's division at the moment when the Austrians were victorious all ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... contrasted with English railroad practice is reviewed, and the differences which exist, with the necessities for such differences ably discussed. Mr. Colburn shows these differences to be external rather than fundamental, and traces many of the peculiarities of American construction to the "initiative of English engineers." The cause for the adoption and retention of these peculiarities he attributes to "the necessities of a new country and the comparative scarcity of capital," and thinks that but for these causes" American railways and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... we entered, was like her children. None of them has the initiative or the energy of the man. They are subdued by the changeless conditions of their environment; his one adventure of the week keeps him alert ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... he was alone with his cousin, he never recurred to the subject of Rieseneck or his return, though the baroness constantly expected him to do so, and watched his inscrutable face to detect some signs of a wish to discuss the matter. For two reasons, she would not take the initiative in bringing up the topic. In the first place, as he was the person most nearly concerned, her tact told her that it was for him to decide whether he would talk of his brother or not. Secondly she was silent, because she ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... excuse to separate from him once the ranges of mountains were crossed. Why did she not drop off then on the excuse, say, of the wonderful new hunting grounds? That would be simple. Kingozi concluded that she wished the initiative to come from him. And the more convinced he was that she wanted to get rid of him, the more firmly he ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Spirit starts the condensation of the primary substance into concrete aggregation, and also does this in certain areas to the exclusion of others, we cannot avoid attributing to Spirit the power of Selection and of taking an Initiative on its ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... chief and his prime minister came in. They were evil-looking savages. To them we paid not the slightest attention, but went about our usual business as though they did not exist. At the end of an hour they of their own initiative greeted us. We did not hear them. Half an hour later they disappeared, to return after an interval, followed by a string of young men bearing firewood. Evidently our bearing had impressed them, as we had intended. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... method of putting their mutual relationship on a basis richer in future potentialities Derek still felt himself unable to adopt of his own initiative act. The vow which bound him to his dead wife was one from which circumstances—and not merely his own fiat—must absolve him; but as winter advanced it seemed to him that life had begun to speak on the subject with a ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... many as he crouched there. He wanted to feel decisive; but the weary walk, heavily-laden as he was, had dulled his brain a little, and he could not come to a conclusion as to whether it would not be best to take the initiative and attack at once, trusting to their sudden appearance and the shots they could be creating a panic; for it was not likely that the enemy would imagine such an attack would be made unless by a force at least equal ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... too often forgotten that from the first Hugo was associated with men of pretensions and capacities not greatly inferior to his own, and that in no direction was victory the work of his single arm. In painting the initiative had been taken years before the publication of the Cromwell manifesto by Gericault with the famous Radeau de la Meduse, and by Delacroix with the Dante et Virgile (1822) and the Massacre de Scio (1823). ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... initiative, Lil Artha now also picked up his gun, and started to keep a sharp watch. As Toby had truly said, they could not really continue on their way without passing under the wide-stretching branches of the tree where he claimed to have seen "something ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... arrived, Andrea employed in riding, paying visits,—designed to induce those of whom he had spoken to appear at the banker's in their gayest equipages,—dazzling them by promises of shares in schemes which have since turned every brain, and in which Danglars was just taking the initiative. In fact, at half-past eight in the evening the grand salon, the gallery adjoining, and the three other drawing-rooms on the same floor, were filled with a perfumed crowd, who sympathized but little in the event, but who all participated in that love of being present wherever there ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said she. 'I felt that, considering my shortcomings at our parting so many years ago, I owed you the initiative now.' ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... destruction and defense. The individual, save as he gives himself up to the great machine, everywhere is inconspicuous, and while no less courage is demanded than in the days of the short-range weapons and personal combat, yet the heroic note of personal valor and initiative in most cases is unheard, and the individual is sunk in the mass. One is almost tempted to believe that chivalry and individual heroism no longer bulk large in the profession of arms, and that in the place of the knightly soldier there is the grim ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... have heard; it is enough to say they reach many, many thousands of pounds; that the difference between the highest and the lowest represents a handsome fortune. And this great sum has been earned by brains alone, without increase of expenditure, by boldness of initiative, thought, care, and patience; without special knowledge also, at the beginning, for ten years ago Mr. Cookson had no more acquaintance with orchids than is possessed by every gentleman who takes an interest in them, while his gardener the early time was both ignorant and prejudiced. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... does not wait for them to take the initiative, as they ought to have done to declare their joy and their gratitude to him. In his first utterance he pours out the joy of his heart, fervently thanking God for them, etc. Well might they have blushed, and reproached themselves, when they received ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... "that he is somewhat inclined to vacillate. That, after making up his mind to do a thing, and even after initiative steps are taken, he is apt to pause, look back, and reconsider. This, of course, will not suit us. The best way to manage him will be to get his money in our boat, and then we are sure of him. He is very wealthy, and can be of great use in the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... the military situation, has attributed the success of the Germans to their possessing the initiative and to the weather. Members have found it a little difficult to understand why, if even at the beginning of March the Allies were equal in numbers to the enemy on the West and if, thanks to the foresight of the Versailles Council, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Persian monarch, after the high tone which he had taken, would have maintained an aggressive attitude, have crossed the Euphrates, and spread the hordes at his disposal over Syria, Cappadocia, and Asia Minor. But it seems to be certain that he did not do so, and that the initiative was taken by the other side. Probably the Persian arms, as inefficient in sieges as the Parthian, were unable to overcome the resistance offered by the Roman forts upon the great river; and Artaxerxes was too good a general to throw his forces into the heart of an enemy's country without having ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... anxious to do so to re-convoke the council. He would not so much as consider the idea of selecting Trent or any German city as a fit place for such an assembly, while the Austro-Spanish rulers were equally strong against Rome or any other place in Italy. But of his own initiative Paul IV. took strong measures to reform the Roman Curia, established a special commission in Rome to assist him in this work, stamped out by vigorous action heretical opinions that began to manifest themselves in Italy, and presided frequently ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... paradox, but it is a truism, that, in matters of love, it is the weaker and the defenseless sex that takes the initiative. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... he who, as we have already remarked, had taken the initiative several times, and whose voice, even in its most familiar intonations, denoted the habit of command, was about thirty years of age. His black hair was parted in the middle, falling straight from his temples to his shoulders. He ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... persons, both named William Shakespeare, should on two successive days not only be arranging with the Bishop of Worcester's official to marry, but should be involving themselves, whether on their own initiative or on that of their friends, in more elaborate and expensive forms of procedure than were habitual to the humbler ranks of contemporary society. But the Worcester diocese covered a very wide area, and was honeycombed with Shakespeare families of all degrees of gentility. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... as scanty as those of the patriarchs, straight from the classic, the antique; grandchildren of the courts of law and temples of Pagan Rome, children of the Byzantine basilicas of early Christian days; strange survivals from distant antiquity, testifying to the lack of artistic initiative in the barbarous centuries between Constantine to Barbarossa. No period in the world's history could have produced anything so organic without the work of previous periods; and when the Middle Ages did in their turn produce an architecture original ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... tale suited to the first grade, delights with its strong sense of adventure and of the heroic. Puss is a Master-Cat, a hero clever and quick, and with fine imagination to see what would happen and prepare for it. He is successful, combining initiative and motivation delightfully. His devotion to his master seems like disinterested loyalty, love, and sacrifice. While it is true the plot is based on a lie, the moral effect is not bad because we recognize Puss as a match-making character similar to the ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... hoary-bearded elderly son, and, erewhile, an official, were he to express a wish to have her as an inmate of his household! I sent for you for no other purpose than to deliberate with you, and here you take the initiative and enumerate a whole array of shortcomings. But is there any reason why I should commission you to go? Of course I'll go and speak to her! You make a bold statement that I don't give him any good counsel; but don't you yet know that with a disposition, such as his, he rushes, before I can very ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... undoubted ability and consecration, are backward to inaugurate such a movement. That many are in hearty sympathy with such a reformation, I know well. Only let the men in the Missionary Movement take a constitutional initiative in the matter, and they will be surprised how many ministers will be with them. I know for a fact that many are longing for just ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say that you are especially ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Church schools and in the struggle between our modern proprietary classes and the proletariat, but in the part played by Christian missionaries in reconciling the black races of Africa to their subjugation by European Capitalism, we can judge for ourselves whether the initiative came from above or below. My object here is not to argue the historical point, but simply to make our theatre critics ashamed of their habit of treating Britain as an intellectual void, and assuming that every philosophical ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... attaches special importance to the play activities, or natural activities of childhood, on which the Kindergarten is founded. This is probably accounted for in that her first observations were made on deficient children who are notably wanting in initiative. ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... and confidential position in my business—to represent us at one of the foreign ports where we have considerable interests." He smiled. "It's the sort of place where he will perhaps find himself less trammelled by—er—legalism, and with more opportunities for his undoubted gift of initiative." ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Association" to create public sentiment were vigorously seconded by the efforts of high official personages to set on foot concerted official action in aid of disunion. In this also, with becoming expressions of modesty, South Carolina took the initiative. On the 5th of October, Governor Gist wrote the following confidential letter, which he dispatched by a secret agent to his colleagues, the several Governors of the Cotton States, whom the bearer, General S.R. Gist, visited in turn during ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... offer unusual opportunity to the Artist, at the same time imposing handicaps - the briefness of time, the poverty of material. It affords chances for experiment, invention, and originality only limited by the necessary formal settings of the architecture, out of proportion to the initiative of the artists, a majority of whom prefer, either from inclination or necessity, to take the safe course, the beaten path of precedent. Artists are of two kinds - the Imitators and the Innovators. The public also is of two corresponding kinds - those who accept only what they have learned to regard ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... fortunate that the Bryants were there to take the initiative, for Mr. and Mrs. Maynard seemed incapable of action. Usually alert and energetic, they were so stunned at the thought of real disaster to Marjorie that ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... investigating committee should display initiative I broke the silence by questioning the little sergeant, and I began on a line which I felt would please the Commandant, "You were at Labiau during the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... that in the performance and carrying out of great deeds (and nearly all of his were terrific) it is men aflame with courage and enthusiasm that carry the day, and take them as a whole, conscripts are never wholehearted. The two great characteristics of the British race—initiative and endurance—are due to this burning ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... disease which had practically disabled her. It might confine her to a chair and render her dependent upon the service of others, but over it, also, was she spiritual victor. She could sit in her kitchen and issue orders; and her daughter, with no initiative genius of her own, had all aunt Ann's love of "springin' to it." She cherished, besides, a worshipful admiration for her mother; so that she asked no more than to act as the humble hand under that directing head. It was Amos who tacitly rebelled. When a boy in school, he virtually gave up ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... disturbing cause, which is not likely to occur to the English mind. In England, individuals and companies habitually act according to their private interests, and the State interferes as little as possible; private initiative acts as it pleases, unless the authorities can prove that important bad consequences will necessarily result. In Russia, the onus probandi lies on the other side; private initiative is allowed to do nothing until it gives ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... soldier, he succeeded in bringing his command to a high state of efficiency, and the battalion owed much to his careful preparation. It was due largely to his teaching that the men knew how to advance from cover to cover and displayed such ready 'initiative' in the various battles of the Natal Campaign. The opportunity of putting into practice this teaching soon presented itself, for on October 12th news was received that the South African Republics had declared war on ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... shortly to unfurl their banner beneath the shadow of St. Canice's; and the crowds who hung on their words vowed their determination to do so. But in Kilkenny, as in every town they visited, the patriot leaders found the greatest disinclination to take the initiative in the holy war. There as elsewhere the people felt no unwillingness to fight; but they knew they were ill prepared for such an emergency, and fancied the first blow might be struck more effectively elsewhere. "Who will draw the first ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... better say "Not at home." The call counts as a visit whether the lady is at home or not, and must be returned. It is not customary to invite a visitor to be seated, to come again, or urge a longer stay. It is supposed she will take the initiative in these particulars; and too, that the fact that the two exchange visits warrants a certain wontedness of habit. Still, among intimates it is by no means unusual for the hostess to say "Do come again soon; I always enjoy you ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Gazette, Daily Mail, and Herald. The subject had long been felt to be a sore grievance and rock of offence among the working classes, and periodical agitations had taken place without leading to any decided action. From the very first Glasgow took the initiative in seeking to modify or get rid altogether of a law which pressed with greater severity on the lower orders than, perhaps, any other enactment that ever found its way into the Statute Books of Scotland. The late Neale Thomson, ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... of intensive sleeplessness broken only by dreams of seeing Oliver being married to somebody else in the lobby of the Hotel Rosario can only wonder rather dully when it could ever have been that poor father was allowed enough initiative of his own to take even the passive part in a quarrel over a trifle and why mother thinks the prospect implied in her speech of her daughter's marriage being like unto hers can be so comforting. Nancy made one New Year's resolution the second ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... other good and loyal burgher; bearing in mind, too, the labour he has undergone and the diligence he has displayed, gratis and of his free will, in the said work (of fortification) up to this day; and wishing to employ his industry and energies to the like effect in future; we, of our motion and initiative, do appoint him to be governor and procurator-general over the construction and fortification of the city walls, as well as every other sort of defensive operation and munition for the town of Florence, for one year certain, beginning with the present date; adding thereto full authority over ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... gray squirrel as our subject in this chapter, as this little rodent has a tough skin that is easily manipulated. A cottontail rabbit might be more easy to procure, but is not so satisfactory for the purpose of initiative steps in this work, as his skin is extremely delicate and requires especially careful handling in ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... supplement income. The war with Eritrea in 1998-2000 and recurrent drought have buffeted the economy, in particular coffee production. In November 2001 Ethiopia qualified for debt relief from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Under Ethiopia's land tenure system, the government owns all land and provides long-term leases to the tenants; the system continues to hamper growth in the industrial sector as entrepreneurs are unable to use land as collateral for loans. Drought struck again late in 2002, leading ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and most important political subdivisions in Santo Domingo are the communal governments, and whatever progress has been made in the Republic has been due largely to their initiative. They correspond to the Spanish "municipios" and the French "communes." In Santo Domingo the French name was introduced during Haitian occupation. The various towns constitute the centers of government, their ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... and began to speak. He said that the Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his passports a sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his own initiative and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor Alexander did not desire war, and had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the danger. But the imbecile commander-in-chief was enjoying himself and shirking care in the mountains; and Lord Canning and his advisers at Calcutta seem to have preferred to allow to take the initiative in their own way. Generally throughout Northern India the common routine of affairs went on at the different stations, and the ill-feeling and insubordination among the Sepoys scarcely disturbed the established quiet and monotony ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... from annihilation by the quick wit and daring courage of a single Brigadier General who had moved his five regiments on his own initiative in the nick of time and saved the Confederates from ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Nugent; "I can no longer contradict your imperial highness, I cannot deny that many a wrong has been inflicted on you and us; that you have have always been prevented from taking the initiative in a vigorous manner; that you and your army have constantly been kept in a secondary and dependent position; that your plans have incessantly been frustrated, and that your superiors have often done the reverse of what you wished and deemed prudent ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... particular, will have no difficulty in entering into his meaning; namely, that no investigation in the non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be called philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental initiative, or, what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with an intuition of the ultimate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of facts to be explained or interpreted. The analysis of the Platonic and Baconian methods in "The Friend," to which I have before referred, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Control of Marriage Choices.—Social wisdom obliges more deliberation in the case of young people seeking a marriage license on their own initiative and perhaps after a very brief acquaintance. There is a strong demand that a certain period shall elapse between the request for the license and its granting and that sufficient publicity be secured to make it easy for interested parties to ascertain any facts concerning both the man and the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... no longer necessary because no one longer dares to resist. All liberty, all self-government, all self-initiative have been crushed in the iron vise of dictated policy. This is the case, as Eyre says, "twenty-seven months after the social revolution gripped the nation in a clutch of steel that never has been relaxed since." Is not such mental, moral and spiritual ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... the Marshall children heard no forebodings about the future, but only heated statements of what seemed to their father the right of a teacher to say what he believed. Professor Marshall had gone of his own initiative to face the legislative committee which was "investigating" him, had quite lost his temper (never very securely held in leash), had told them his highly spiced opinion of their strictures on his teaching and of the worth of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... aware that anything had taken place. The whole case was so insignificant that some of the people who were alleged to have been illtreated declared, under oath, at a later period before a court of investigation that they would never have made any complaint on their own initiative. What happened, however? ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... love right and left, and to end, after many years of triumph, in the possession of the best and wisest and fairest of her sex. I know the breed, my dear sir; I have been a young man myself. We men have liberty, we have initiative; we are not chaperoned; we can go to this one and that one freely and fearlessly. But women must sit still, and be come to or shied off from. They cannot cast the bold eye of interest; they can at most bridle under it, and furtively respond from the corner of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... operations with a Farm Colony, and there seems some prospect that the Scheme will get itself into active shape at the other end of the world before it is set agoing in London. The eager welcome which has thus forced the initiative upon our Officers in Melbourne tends to encourage the expectation that the Scheme will be regarded as no quack application, but will be generally taken up and quickly set in operation all round ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... that infinity {7} as a basal axiom should have been comparatively blind to its logical implications. For if God is infinite, then He is all; and if He is all, what becomes of human individuality, or how are human initiative and responsibility so much as thinkable? Benjamin Jowett, in his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in passing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if somewhat tentative, are well worth ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... this passage the frequent and emphatic application of the principle is justified that we should neither design nor do anything, especially in respect to God's service and worship, without the initiative and command of the Word. As above narrated, Noah enters the ark upon God's command; and he leaves the ark upon God's command to leave it. He does not follow superstitious notions, as we see the Jews do, who, when they establish ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... "the boy with a hobby." Stamp collections, butterfly and moth collections (over 70 different varieties), seashore collections, and wireless apparatus all show that the appellation is fully merited. He chooses his hobbies and "rides" them entirely on his own initiative. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... in some form or other. The preliminary step is federation among the colonies. This is at present much hindered by their mutual jealousies. "The proper way," said to me a prominent statesman here who has been twice a Minister of the Crown, "is for England to take the initiative. Let her send out some leading man who would not be regarded as the representative of a party—such as Lord Dufferin—and let him make proposals to the various colonies in which they might acquiesce, without one seeming to ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... without sufficient food and clothing to comfort them until they could reach free soil, lacking the small fund with which the pioneer usually provided himself in going to establish a home in the wilderness, and lacking, above all, initiative of which slavery had deprived them. Furthermore, these refugees with few exceptions had to go to places where they were not wanted and in some cases to points from which they were driven as undesirables, although preparation for their coming ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... our style. Cross out 'some toothless old people' and write 'certain edentulous persons.' Put 'masticate' instead of 'eat.' Then you must not say, 'What shall I do about it?' That sounds too helpless. You, or rather Higgins, must appear as a man of unbounded initiative and resource. You must write, 'I suggest that a special ration of soft food be issued to such persons.' That will help the Government of India to solve a very difficult problem, and Higgins will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... divided in two, and deprived of all means of deliberating with each other. It is plain that the Boer Delegates in Europe can do nothing because they are not acquainted with the condition of affairs in Africa, and that the Boers, who are under arms, must refrain from taking the initiative because they are not informed on the ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... had composed the majority of the Council only a few years since, they had been cast out of office, partly through a strong reaction which had taken place against them, partly in consequence of a quarrel among themselves. And so the existing Town Council took the initiative in memorializing the Directors in favour of the recent resolution not to run Sunday trains. Of all the voters of the burgh, only five stood aloof; all the others made common cause with the Town Council in attaching their ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of twenty-five had the wants and the sense of power inherited from a line of men eager of initiative, the product of an environment where only such could survive. Doubtless in him was the soul and body hunger of his grandfather, cramping and denying through hardship year after year, yet sustained by dreaming in the hardest times of the soft material ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... hero had halted for a moment at Brown's Point, only to learn that Cameron's Toronto company of volunteers had already started, on their own initiative, up the river. Riding hard, he overtook the excited militiamen. Speaking a word to the officer in charge, he wheeled his horse in the direction of the Heights, calling upon the detachment in his well-known voice, and in a way that ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... pleasant. The experiences were annoying, but only his own action seems blameworthy. In some way he was responsible for the circumstances leading to arrest of that feeble old man, yet made no explanation or protest. What an initiative in a new world was such selfish, unfeeling discretion! Why hope for exalted aid in his own troubles, while shirking ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Eleanor took the initiative of going toward the door. "I never saw such a darling bungalow! I just love everything spread out on the ground floor. No stairs and no elevators—Oh, ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the country are indebted for the magnificent architectural creations which adorned the exposition grounds. Their relations to the work of construction and to the affairs of the company enabled them to act with a necessary degree of self-reliance and independence on their own initiative. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Nehemiah is gracious almost to the point of romance. Seldom did the Hebrew people produce so attractive and versatile a figure—at once a man of prayer and of action, of clear swift purpose, daring initiative, and resistless energy, and endowed with a singular power of inspiring others with his own enthusiasm. He forms an admirable foil to Ezra the ecclesiastic; and it is a matter of supreme satisfaction that we have the epoch-making events in his career told in his ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... taken, from the very initiative of that step, I have announced my ground and my determination. When a bill was up here before, proposing to enlarge and widen the franchise in this District, I stated that if negroes were to vote I would persist in opening the door to females. I said that if the thing were ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... terrific din and gathering that something out of the ordinary was happening, though he did not know what, slung a maxim tripod over his shoulders, picked up a gun under each arm, and went straightaway to the centre of activity—a feat not only of wonderful physical strength, but considerable initiative and courage. We did not suffer heavy casualties, but 2nd Lieut. Mould's platoon had their parapet destroyed in one or two places, and had to re-build it under heavy fire, in which Pte. J.H. Cramp, the Battalion ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... he done this he would have been voted a boor, while the girl's action was condoned by hostess and guests. One thing must always be considered—namely, that a woman's part is, in many points of etiquette, passive. It is the man who takes the initiative, and who is made such a prominent figure that all eyes are drawn to him. Have you ever noticed it? Man proposes, woman accepts. Man stands, woman remains seated. Man lifts his hat, woman merely bows. Man acts as escort, woman as the escorted. So, when a man is careless or thoughtless, it is ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... that they understood he was in the best of health. "If any wrong impression does exist regarding myself and my position at the Court," continued the Emperor, "it is owing to the very conservative customs of the Chinese Court. I am not expected to either say or do anything on my own initiative, consequently outsiders never hear much about me and I am regarded as being nothing more than a figure-head. I know this is so. Whenever they ask you about me in the future just explain to them exactly what my position here ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... the Honorable Milton Waring had told Nickleby and Alderson he would have nothing to do with their proposed campaign fund contribution. Nickleby must have a pretty strong connection even to dare such an approach; evidently he had felt pretty sure of himself to go ahead with the plan on his own initiative. ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... country his home. He was even then a man of powerful frame, with broad brow, keen blue eyes, and a dash of red in his hair from a Scottish ancestress—a man, too, of ardent patriotism, strong common sense, and exceptional powers of initiative and leadership. Small wonder that in the rapidly developing commonwealth beyond the mountains he quickly ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... was probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed the impulse of his life during its brief initiative period. Having once received this Idea of discovery and like all other great ideas, it was in the air at the time and was bound to take shape in some human brain—he had all his native and personal qualities ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... alone in the usual fashion, but in various primaries, including one for presidential preference, in local option elections, and they have been compelled to pass on laws and governmental policies presented to the electorate by the initiative ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... which Cato was here writing is the modern Lombardy, one of the most densely populated and richest agricultural districts in the world. Here are found today those truly marvellous "marchite" or irrigated meadows which owe the initiative for their existence to the Cistercian monks of the Chiaravalle Abbey, who began their fruitful agricultural labours in the country near Milan in the twelfth century. There is a recorded instance of one of these meadows ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Twelve miles will bring us to Little Creek, as it is called, where we can begin to take initiative lessons in gold-washing. In fact, the ground we stand on, I have not a doubt, has much gold in it. But we have not the means of ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... class furnish food for thought and are excellent tools for the man of initiative. To read means keeping in touch with the big visions. We cherish these dreams and make them real in plans of our own. Aspiration is behind the pages of every worth-while volume. It was the motive power which drove the author to produce it and it should become a part of the forces which drive ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... democracy, which has always had a magnetic attraction for Socialists. The doctrine that the people itself governs directly through obedient agents—the doctrine of mandate and plebiscite, of referendum and initiative—is not the doctrine of the best English Socialism." Mr. Barker next explains that behind these ideas lies "an organic theory of society," that society is regarded as "an organic unity with a real 'general will' of its own," and ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... of note assume that the initiative in this direction was taken by Constantine himself, the first step seems to have been taken upon the death of Constantine, when a coin or medal was issued on which the deceased monarch is called a ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... Abbott of Lexington, as warmly as Mrs. Blythe could have done. Finally the whole dinner party took it up, and Mrs. Abbott said that her club had been interested in the subject for some time, and all they need is for some one to take the initiative. The Abbotts were staying several days with Lloyd and Rob, so next night I had them over here. After dinner I took them up into my 'Place of the Tryst.' Of course, I don't call it that to anybody but Phil, and he has dubbed it ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and went quietly into the kitchen. There was nothing to say. She did not speak of the Drydens again for a long while. Her own condition engrossed her; and she was not eager to take the initiative in ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... first evidence of that initiative which was such a conspicuous trait in the young man. He had come back to see the performances of his company, and had watched them with swelling pride. Several times he said, and with ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... importance to the play activities, or natural activities of childhood, on which the Kindergarten is founded. This is probably accounted for in that her first observations were made on deficient children who are notably wanting in initiative. ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... himself had felt some concern as to the condition of affairs in the Ordnance department and it was on his initiative that Sir Henry Brackenbury was selected to set matters right. On taking up the duties of Director-General of Ordnance, the new chief commenced an enquiry into the condition of the armament and the state of reserves of all ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized him under the arms, caught him around the waist. All of them were equally drawn to the women, but none, save Lichonin, had enough courage to take the initiative upon himself. But now all this complicated, unpleasant and hypocritical business was happily resolved into a simple, easy joke upon the older comrade. Yarchenko resisted, and was angry, and laughing, trying to break away. But at this moment ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... to have left his business below stairs to take care of itself even for the half hour to which he mentally resolved to limit his interview with the stranger. However, he dismissed the waiter with some extra charges, and then placed himself at the service of his guest, and even took the initiative of the tete-a-tete ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... reached the hill pastures, they not only found the shepherd boys prepared for them, but they found them arrayed in force. Before the town boys could rush to the attack, the shepherd boys, eager for the fray, "took the initiative," as the war records say, and making a dash upon the town boys, drove them ignominiously ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... when you stop to consider, Mr. Sheriff, that the man took the initiative in that very particular," said Mrs. Wrandall in such a self-contained way that the three men looked at her in wonder. Then she came abruptly to her feet. "It is very late, gentlemen. I am ready to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... definitely as one of our Allies, and that I thought the effect would be the shortening of the war. America's decision could not have come at a better time. The year was opening out before us, and the initiative was coming into our hands The prospect was bright and our men were keen ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... whose Governments for inscrutable reasons of state show disfavor and lack of sympathy, Germany is prominent; although by the active initiative of the London Committee some important contributions have been secured from private individuals; among them, we are happy to say, is Mr. Max von dem Borne, who will send his celebrated incubators, which the English Committee have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... corpora doctrinae] might be reduced to one corpus which we all could adopt, and that this book or corpus doctrinae be printed anew and the ministers in the lands of each ruler be required to be guided thereby." Before this Elector August had requested Count George Ernest of Henneberg to take the initiative in the matter. Accordingly, in November, 1575 Henneberg, Duke Ludwig of Wuerttemberg and Margrave Carl of Baden agreed to ask a number of theologians to give their opinion concerning the question as to how a document ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the captain of the militia to look after the work, and see that each parishioner did his full share. It was only in church matters, in fact, that the people of a parish had a voice, and even in these, as we see, they did not take the initiative. The Quebec authorities must in all such ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... being festive, however, Axel's latest birthday was quite the most solitary he had yet spent. The cheerful garlands had been put up by an officious gardener on his own initiative. No one, except Axel's own dependents, had passed beneath them to wish him luck. Trudi had telegraphed her blessings, administering them thus in their easiest form. His Stralsund friends had apparently forgotten ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... acted coolly and systematically, their self- equanimity is never disturbed, they continue unshaken in the calm conviction that they have always been in the right, whatever may have been the consequences of the initiative movement and its ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... "'We'll make our initiative beginnin' first off at Gallops Junction,' he says, 'where we ain't known, an' where pa ain't known, an' where the book ain't known. I've a premonition,' he says, 'that 'twould be better so. If we was to start in here we would get discouraged, for ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... impression of progress. In his new field Richter had great freedom to develop his ideas of education as distinct from inculcation. Rousseau was in the main his guide, and his success in stimulating childish initiative through varied and ingenious pedagogical experiments seems to have been ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Somehow, the keenness had been taken out of him by that hour's conversation in the darkened bureau of the Chief. The weeks passed slowly, but Mercier never regained his enthusiasm. The physical atmosphere took all initiative away. His comrades were listless beings, always tired, dragging slowly to their daily rounds, and finishing their work early in the morning before the heat became intolerable. Then for hours they rested—retired to their bungalows or that of a comrade, and ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... Earl's desire for the match with his granddaughter seem to have arisen in Burghley's mind in March 1592, at which time Southampton was with the English forces in France. From this we may judge that Southampton's departure for the wars was undertaken at his own initiative and not at Burghley's suggestion. It appears likely that a lack of marital ardour inspired his martial ardour at this time, and that Burghley was conscious of his disinclination to the proposed marriage. In a letter dated ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... indefinite period in the future, but their abundant use has thus far been confined mainly to the countries bordering the North Atlantic,—the United States, Germany, and England,—which, possessing ample coal supplies, have had the initiative to develop great iron and steel industries. China has abundant coal, moderate quantities of iron ore, and a large population, but a low per capita consumption of iron and steel products. Development of its iron and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... he was helped, to an extent which will never be appreciated, by Wilson: in the last expedition by Bowers. I believe that there has never been a finer sledge party than these three men, who combined in themselves initiative, endurance and high ideals to an extraordinary degree. And they could organize: they did organize the Polar Journey and their organization seemed to have failed. Did it fail? Scott said No. "The ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... second chance, after the possibility of a broad handling of the settlement by the Czar, and as a very much bigger probability, is the insistence by America upon her right to a voice in the ultimate settlement and an initiative from the Western Hemisphere that will lead to a world congress. There are the two most hopeful sources of that great proposal. It is the tradition of British national conduct to be commonplace to the pitch of dullness, and all the stifled intelligence of Great Britain will beat in vain ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... far as to draw up a plan of action, which he submitted to his chief. Lincoln soon showed, however, that he was not a follower, but a leader of men, beneath whose good nature and kindly spirit was a power of initiative that has rarely been equalled among the statesmen of the world. Even the dictatorial Secretary of War found it necessary to yield to the President on all points that the latter regarded as being fundamental. Few other presidents have been so bitterly attacked and so cruelly misrepresented ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... lack of initiative, or even ordinary interest, in making the most of the opportunities lying at hand, struck him again and again as he went from place to place and was entertained hospitably by hosts of various nationalities; until at times the impression is conveyed that apart from his initial interest ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... on —— creek, forty miles from all railroads, shut in by laurel-covered hills and pine mountains; its people, of fine pioneer ancestry and deeply religious, thrown back upon themselves through segregation and isolation, had lost much of the initiative and force that characterized their ancestors, and had crystallized along the lines of their peculiarities, as any people will under ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... your majesty intends to wait until the Russians fire the first gun, there will be no war, and may it be so! The Emperor Alexander has made up his mind not to take the initiative. Only when the armies of your majesty have crossed the frontier of Russia, when you have forcibly entered his states, will Alexander look upon the war as begun, but he will not carry it beyond the boundaries of his country: he will not meet the enemy, whom he would still like so much ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... it under a fire of jocose criticism. It was plain, however, that morally 'Bert held the upper hand. Whilst they had been playing silly games around the Quay, he had walked to St Martin's and done the real thing. No amount of chaff could hide that his had been the glory of the initiative. Indeed, he showed less of annoyance with his critics than of boredom with 'Biades, who, whichever way his big brother turned, revolved punctually as a satellite, never relaxing his rapt, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... is relatively rare; a hundred men marry "beneath" them to every woman who perpetrates the same folly. And what is meant by this so-called falling in love? What is meant by it is a procedure whereby a man accounts for the fact of his marriage, after feminine initiative and generalship have made it inevitable, by enshrouding it in a purple maze of romance—in brief, by setting up the doctrine that an obviously self-possessed and mammalian woman, engaged deliberately in the most important adventure ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... now embraces all the civilized world and whose delegates will represent 1,000,000,000 people, will hold its fifth congress in the city of Washington in May, 1897. The United States may be said to have taken the initiative which led to the first meeting of this congress, at Berne in 1874, and the formation of the Universal Postal Union, which brings the postal service of all countries to every man's neighborhood and has wrought marvels in ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... what he did, reverting for the instant back to the old volunteer life-saving work, when every man went on his own initiative, Eric tore off coat, trousers, and shoes, snatched a life-belt, and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... did not love him enough to go with him as his wife into the new conditions. Then she could not be suffering as he was suffering. Wounded pride—she was feeling that, no doubt of it—wounded pride is not a pleasant thing to feel. She loved him somewhat, loved him enough to take the initiative in this scene to-night. But real love—she could not know what that was, or she would follow him to the ends of the earth. It was the woman's part to follow, not the man's. Hers to give up her preference for his duty. Since she could not do this, she did not really love him. This ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... practically in the position of a Cabinet holding office as representing not the parliamentary majority but the King's personal views. The Parliament might discuss and accept or reject, but had not as yet acquired a practical initiative itself. At the same time that this law was passed, a declaratory Act abolished the theory which had grown up at an early stage of the conflict between the White and Red Roses, of regarding Ireland as a country where a rebel in England was a free man: a notion which had greatly facilitated the intrigues ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... teachers of both sexes, and a model agricultural farm: The public roads and other works of the province are excellent, and, like those of the rest of the Basque provinces, entirely kept up by local initiative and taxes. Railways from Madrid to the French frontier, and from Saragossa to Bilbao, cross the province. The capital is Vitoria (pop. 1900, 30,701), which is the only town with more ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... speak, strangers as yet, but there's one thing I will say for you, and that is that you're a good listener. You've heard all that we've got to say and you've scarcely made a remark. You won't object to my saying that we're expecting something from you in the way of initiative, not ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to find actual means to accomplish this end. It is much easier to say what one shall not do than what one must do to change self-will into strength of character, slyness into prudence, the desire to please into amiability, restlessness into personal initiative. It can only be brought about by recognising that evil, in so far as it is not atavistic or perverse, is as natural and indispensable as the good, and that it becomes a permanent evil only ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... away for a time from the "wearing world," from all clatter, chatter, and "strife of tongues," in the unsophisticated society of apes and elephants. Dullness is out of the question. The apes are always doing something new, and are far more initiative than imitative. Eblis has just now taken a letter of yours from an elastic band, and is holding it wide open as if he were reading it; an untamed siamang, which lives on the roof, but has mustered up courage to-day to ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... investigation or experiment, though that method is at their disposal and is more in keeping with their calling. They gladly become ward-surgeons, assistants, demonstrators, external teachers, and are ready to fill such posts until they are forty, though independence, a sense of freedom and personal initiative, are no less necessary in science than, for instance, in art or commerce. I have pupils and listeners, but no successors and helpers, and so I love them and am touched by them, but am not proud of them. And so on, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Prussian fire-deluge, stands to his arms; makes, in front, vigorous defence; and even takes, in some sort, the initiative,—that is, dashes out his Cavalry on Ziethen, before Ziethen has charged. Ziethen's Horse, who are rightmost of the Prussians: and are bare to the right,—ground offering no bush, no brook there (though Ziethen, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... to legislative power, but within those bounds they have imposed in most instances the check of an executive veto. They have also complained of their legislatures far more loudly than they have of their courts, and latterly have subjected them to the initiative and referendum and in some instances to ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... is beaten, destroyed, he will find himself not merely fortified with the necessary pluck and initiative for importing a new interest into his existence. His instincts of their own accord will be asking for that interest, for they will have ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... Miss Nightingale was neither an Aspasia nor an Egeria. In her case it is almost true to say that the roles were reversed; the qualities of pliancy and sympathy fell to the man, those of command and initiative ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... underwriters and outside companies have blaced matters in my hands and will not bay until I take der initiative. We must hear from one John Rowland, who, with a little child, was rescued from der berg and taken to Christiansand. He has been too sick to leave der ship which found him and is coming up der Thames in her this morning. I have a carriage ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... defended himself in the Reichstag against the charge. The substance of the relations between the emperor and himself, he declared, rested on mutual good-will, and added: "I must lay it down most emphatically that the prerogative of the emperor's personal initiative must not be curtailed, and will not be curtailed, by any chancellor.... As regards the chancellor, however, I say that no imperial chancellor worthy of the name ... would take up any position which in his conscience he did not regard as justifiable." It is clear that the position ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hesitation and mix-up in the general handling, the Regimental folk atoned and there were many incidents of initiative and daring on the part of battalions ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... The initiative for the passage to the Monotheistic period came from Judaea, and Comte attempts to show that this could not have been otherwise. His analysis of this period is the most interesting part of his survey. The chief feature of the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... if not too much of it. There was danger of the army losing its Canadianism by being shunted about. One of Currie's first objectives that he wanted above all things to achieve as a Canadian commander of initiative, was the capture of Lens. He had a plan for this. He was never allowed to carry it out. Says the author ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... to the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant, as are the decisions of Parliament to the veto of the Crown. But the Bill proposed not merely to give to the Viceroy the power of vetoing proposed action but of instituting other action on his own initiative. Secondly, the Council was to exercise its control through Committees, each of which was to have a paid chairman, nominated ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... reasonably certain that Palestine will need material help for some time, for Turkish maladministration, and the iniquitously heavy taxes imposed upon the people, have almost killed initiative. So far as real development is concerned, it is almost a virgin land, and although the efforts of those responsible for the work of reconstruction are both vigorous and successful, it will be many years before Palestine is producing up to her full capacity. At present the grain crop ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... 1901, which had stipulated that the canal should be open to the vessels of all nations "on terms of entire equality." Other nations than England had an interest in this question, and there was a suspicion that some of them were even more keenly if not more heavily interested; but England took the initiative and the struggle to save the exemption was turned, in the United States, into a demonstration by the Irish, Germans and other anti-British elements. Innate hostility to England, the coastwise shipping interests, formed the backbone ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... of course, exceedingly lucky in the weather and in the lack of initiative on the part of the Turks. The Higher Command counted on 50 per cent, casualties but actually, on the last night, only two men were wounded on the way down to the beach—8 old guns, rendered useless, were left behind at Anzac, 250 cases of Sunlight soap, ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... don't really think much of the Germans myself. I mean to say, they got no initiative. That's what's the matter with 'em. Do you know what a German does when he wants to go across the street? He goes up to a policeman and asks him. And what does the policeman do? Shoves him off the pavement!... I'd break his jaw for him if ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... forced engagement of the beautiful heroine to the wicked Russian Prince, when the door opened and the supper tray entered, followed by Mrs. Henshaw. Left to honour and her own initiative she had produced a huge lobster, followed by cheese, and three little dull looking jam tarts on ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... down the raiders stood as though turned to stone. The Arabs eyed their Manyuema slaves; the slaves looked first at one of their fellows, and then at another—they were but waiting for some one to take the initiative. There were some thirty Arabs left, and about one hundred and fifty blacks. All were armed—even those who were acting as porters had their rifles ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... there was quite a discussion of the probabilities, and I was listening to the younger people. Criticism and "my own opinion" are the main sicknesses. Perhaps the private initiative used to be so hardly oppressed, that it comes out at present ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... enterprise,[3148] Danton, is of another species, and of another stature, a veritable leader of men: Through his past career and actual position, through his popular cynicism, ways and language, through his capacity for taking the initiative and for command, through his excessive corporeal and intellectual vigor, through his physical ascendancy due to his ardent, absorbing will, he is well calculated for his terrible office.—He alone of the Commune has become Minister, and there is no one but him ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... still for some time; not hurt but apparently lacking the initiative to get up again. He had at that period the alternating lucidity and mental torpor of the half drunken man. But struggling up through layers of blackness at last there came again the instinct for flight, and he got on the horse ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Hindu family privileges. The Hindu joint family system, while it has been a source of some blessing to the land, has also been a serious curse in that it has fostered laziness, dissension and improvidence, and has put a ban upon individual initiative ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... by fits, From Vulcan's forge a hovering Jove Evolved. The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove. Her awe of him his dread of her invoked: His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked. What wisdom counselled, Policy declined; All perils dared he save the step behind. Ahead his grand initiative becked: One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked. Stripped to the despot upstart, for success He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness. He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught, While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught He held ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not wait until madame Wang could open her mouth, but took the initiative to reply. "Our venerable lady," she urged, "had, even so late as yesterday, said that she meant to come; but, in the evening, upon seeing brother Pao eating peaches, the mouth of the old lady once again ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... sources of information they possessed. At all events, isolated as I was at Washington, I could not confine myself merely to the task of furnishing my Government with information; but was compelled on occasion to act on my own initiative, in order to prevent any premature development in the diplomatic situation from becoming ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... be granted as a matter of course. It is also a logical necessity of such a system that, when the population began to press against the means of subsistence, (expansion being impossible), the birth rate of the lower classes would be lessened. Whether by their own initiative, or by the interference of the rulers, it would have to be done, and it would be done. In other words, the oligarchy would mean the capitalization of labor and the enslavement of the whole population. But it ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom of ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... Danton both had commended Bibot for his zeal and Bibot was proud of the fact that he on his own initiative had sent at least fifty aristos to ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Italy the initiative of progress has always belonged to the people, to the democratic element. It is through her communes that she has acquired all she has ever had of liberty: through her workmen in wool or silk, through her merchants ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... call the son of Aiakos to the voyage he found the whole company at the feast. And as he stood there in his lion's skin, then did Telamon their chief challenge Amphitryon's son of the mighty spear to make initiative libation of nectar, and handed on unto him the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... had been so unresponsive to the advances of his fellow passengers, for some reason—unknown, probably, to himself—now took the initiative. "You have a fine dog here, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... had much reason for thought and action. He thought a great deal, he worked energetically, he came and went, he read and studied, he obeyed orders and always stood ready for new ones. Her pride in his vigorous initiative and practical determination was a glowing flame in her heart. He meant to be no ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... authorities capitulate one after the other; they are also founding labour unions, which in spite of all economic laws tend to regulate the conditions of labour and wages. They return to assemblies in which the Government is vested, representatives utterly lacking initiative and independence, and reduced most often to nothing else than the spokesmen of the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... the first step taken, from the very initiative of that step, I have announced my ground and my determination. When a bill was up here before, proposing to enlarge and widen the franchise in this District, I stated that if negroes were to vote I would persist in opening the door to females. I ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... had followed him in the friendships he had made, and in the men with whom his life, at its most formative period, had come into close contact. If we are inclined to credit young Bok with an ever-willingness to work and a certain quality of initiative, the influences which played upon him must also be ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... to his cigar, from which the ashen wraith dropped into his lap. "I guess you'll have to be a little clearer." But as Bushwick continued silently looking at him, the thing could not be left at this point, and he was obliged to ask of his own initiative, "How ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Fakredeen, 'what can the French do? After having let the Egyptians be driven out, fortunately for me, for their expulsion ruined my uncle, the French will never take the initiative in Syria. All that I wanted of them was, that they should not oppose Riza Pasha in his nomination of me. But to secure his success a finer move was necessary. So I instructed Archbishop Murad, whom they received very well at Paris, to open secret communications over the water with the English. He ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... come to warn you to be more than ever careful." It was, I confess, a pang to me, who thought only of love, to hear that anything else should have been the initiative power of her coming, even though it had been her concern for my own safety. I could not but notice the bitter note of chagrin in my voice ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and the girl's father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley almost shed tears of gratification. Here was something like woman's rights; here was a flash ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... secure a journey to the East from the British Museum Trustees, and then gave up the struggle. Further wanderings, which were many, were to be confined to Europe and indeed to England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. His first journey, however, was not at his own initiative. Mrs. Borrow's health was unequal to the severe winters at Oulton, and so the Borrows made their home at Yarmouth from 1853 to 1860. During these years he gave his vagabond propensities full play. No year passed without its record of wandering. His first expedition ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the Ravens and Serpents—that sounds so awful and we won't be at all. And a crawly snake is such a dreadful symbol and it's easy to draw." Gyp's brain worked at lightning pace in its initiative. ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... addressed to his father, alone relieved the tediousness of the hours; but these welcome messengers were infrequent, brief, and somewhat cold. They left Bertha so unsatisfied that before the close of the first year of her cousin's absence she opened a correspondence with him herself. The initiative letter was suggested by pleasant tidings, which she hastened to send. It was written immediately after the eighteenth anniversary of her birthday, and communicated the agreeable intelligence that upon that day she had again received a token of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... idea into your head?" John Wingfield, Sr. snapped. Often of late he had thought that it was time he got a younger man in Peter's place. But he did not like the initiative to come from Peter; ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... moments' chat, and shake hands if she wishes. If he stands before her with uncovered head, she should promptly ask him to replace his hat. She should not block the thoroughfare, and should take the initiative if he does not step to one side. If agreeable, an invitation may be extended to him ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... common welfare of the individuals that form a social organism. Therefore, it is criminal, it is punishable, because it is offensive to the high principle of authority, to attempt any action contrary to its initiative, even supposing it to be better than the governmental proposition, because such action would injure its prestige, which is the elementary basis upon which ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... individual, we are not referring—at least, not directly—to the struggle between Individualism and Socialism. We know that individualists express the fear that under a socialist regime there would be an end to individual initiative, while socialists retort that the chief sin of the competitive system is {65} that it crushes and destroys individuality; but between the contentions of these rival schools of economics we are not attempting to adjudicate. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... stimulator and firer, because he lacks the independence and faculty for initiative. It was so with the modern proletarian movement; it is so also in the struggle for the emancipation of woman, which is intimately connected with that of the proletariat. Even in the instance of the comparatively ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... energy, of skill, the men of industry, of fore-sight, of calculation, of daring. In the ranks of the debtors will be found a large preponderance of the constructive energy of every country. The debtors are the upbuilders of the national wealth and prosperity; they are the men of initiative, the men who conceive plans and set on foot enterprises. They are those who by borrowing money enrich the community. They are the dynamic force among the people. They are the busy, restless, moving throng whom you find in all walks of life ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... the midst of these warring intentions, had sunk into his customary impassive calm. The light had died from his eyes, the expression from his face, the energy from his body. He sat, an inert mass, void of initiative, his intelligence open to what might be brought to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... [Initiative and individuality missing.] The want of originality, which among the mestizos, appears to arise from their equivocal position, is also to be found among the natives. Distinctly marked national customs, which ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... every society is the practical one: how to secure the maximum values of competition, that is, personal freedom, initiative, and originality, and at the same time to control the energies which competition has released in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 57: General Canrobert was deficient in dash and initiative; he knew his defects, and was relieved of his command at his own request, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Private initiative was also liberally encouraged. An Imperial rescript promised that any farmer harvesting three thousand koku (fifteen thousand bushels) of cereals from land reclaimed by himself should receive the sixth class order of merit (kun roku-to), while a crop ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the motions of the child, as though the educator might never need to take the initiative; in all probability that might be true in an ideal state. As things are it would be unsafe to rely absolutely upon questions; the parent and on occasion other educators must take the initiative in some cases. In doing so, however, the most scrupulous care should be taken ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... could do it, Owen might be assured of his readiness to oblige him. A second application at the end of a fortnight found this readiness much cooled. It was true that on inquiry he found he might do it; but the times were critical, and he had many enemies. It would be safer for him not to take the initiative. Let them apply to the Lord Chancellor, and get him to issue an order for him to release Bunyan on the customary bond. Then he would do what Owen asked. It was vain to tell Barlow that the way he suggested was chargeable, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... to fight against are, of course, enormous, but much of what the old regime failed to do, for want of initiative or for other reasons, we have done and are doing. Some of the difficulties are of a most unexpected kind. The local inhabitants, partly, no doubt, under the influence of our political opponents, were extremely hostile with regard to the building of the power station, simply because they did not ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... Court would act upon their own initiative, I resolved to declare war against them and attack Mazarin in person, because otherwise we could not escape being first ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... wood. After I left the Place it appears that there was a counter manifestation of bourgeois National Guards, who arrived in military order with their arms. Jules Favre addressed them. Now as far as I can make out, these battalions went to the Hotel de Ville on their own initiative. No one, however, seems to see any incongruity in the friends of the Government making an armed demonstration as a protest against armed and unarmed demonstrations in general. The question of the municipal elections will lie dormant for a few days, but I see no evidence that those who ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... return of the Kaiser to Berlin from his annual holiday in Norway, which his own Foreign Office regretted as a step taken on his Majesty's own initiative and which they feared might cause speculation and excitement, and his personal intervention from that time until his troops invaded Luxemburg and he made his abrupt demand upon the Belgian Government for permission to cross its territory are reviewed with great force and effect by Mr. Beck, with ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... devote to this work, and realised the importance of vernacular literature, is one of the chief signs of his greatness. What he did had a lasting influence upon our literature. He tapped the wellspring of English prose. Mainly owing to his initiative, from his day till the Conquest all the literature of importance was in the vernacular, and the impulse so given to the language as a literary vehicle was strong enough to preserve it from extinction during the Norman domination, when it was superseded as the court and official ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... saw plainly that he was depressed, knew well that he had suffered. As the Bishop had perceived, it was written on his aspect. But her timidity as yet prevented her from taking the initiative with him, as later she would learn to do. She felt for him at this stage partly the woman's love, partly the deep and passionate loyalty of the disciple. And it was possibly this very loyalty in her from which Meynell shrank. He felt toward himself and his role, in the struggle to which he ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... way to such unrestrained passion; for never before had his hopes and aspirations been so entirely thrown over. He had set his heart upon establishing his darling in a position in life as far above his own as might be possible; now, by her own initiative, she had paved the way to an evident descent in the social scale. Not content with choosing one far beneath her, she had even chosen a Protestant! Yet Stephen had too strong a will to be easily contravened. He was determined to prevent, ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... however, they blossomed forth in tawdry finery, in the dancing-space behind the gambling-tables. Some of them were fixtures. They had drifted there from New Orleans, perhaps, or southern California, and they lacked the initiative or the money to get away. But most of them came in, stayed a month or two, found the place a nightmare, with its shootings and stabbings, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... constraint imposed upon civilized man in the expression of his feelings, confers upon him already a certain degree of authority over them, or at least develops in him a certain aptitude to rise above the purely passive state of the soul, to interrupt this state by an initiative act, and to stop by reflection the petulance of the feelings, ever ready to pass from affections to acts. Therefore everything that interrupts the blind impetuosity of these movements of the affections does not as yet, however, produce, I own, a virtue ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unsuccessful engagement in Barbadoes, the other—"a near thing"—which had enlivened the voyage to England; and she had extracted a promise from Diana to ask the young solicitor she had met with in the train—Mr. Fred Birch—to lunch, without delay. Meanwhile she had not—of her own initiative—said one word of those educational objects, in pursuit of which she was supposed to have come to England. Diana had proposed to her the names of certain teachers both of music and languages—names which she had obtained with much trouble. Miss Fanny had replied, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... excuses. If she had been living of late in a little fool's paradise, why, she had made it for herself. She could not accuse him of having any other part in it than that of merely being there. If she went back a month, or three months, or almost a year, she saw herself either taking the initiative or, what was just as bad, passively submitting. Of course, her motive had been merely to help him in an impersonal sort of way. She had seen that he needed help, but she had not dreamed the reason for it. ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Law, in such an aspect, is clearly a means to the realization of freedom in the same way that the rule of the road will, by its common acceptance, save its observers from accident. It promotes the initiative of men by defining in terms which by their very statement obtain acknowledgment the conditions upon which individual caprice may have its play. Property Locke derives from a primitive communism which becomes transmuted into individual ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... prescribed by law in the burial of the king, then Caoses, confident by reason of the law, tried to lay claim to the office, but Mebodes stood in his way, asserting that no one ought to assume the royal power by his own initiative but by vote of the Persian notables. So Caoses committed the decision in the matter to the magistrates, supposing that there would be no opposition to him from there. But when all the Persian notables had been gathered together for this purpose and were in session, Mebodes read the ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... premature offensive, doomed to exhaustion before it had achieved its end, was met by the iron resolve of both the French and British Governments, advised by the French and British Commanders in the field, to begin that offensive only at their own time and place, when the initiative was ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fundamentals, but purely as to incidental details. This rendered concerted action as impossible as it would have been had the differences related not to means, but to ends; and nobody united in himself sufficient technical knowledge with sufficient moral initiative to harmonize these conflicting elements, and thus to render concerted action practicable. The enterprise, in consequence, soon came to an end, certain of the directors bearing most of the loss. But I, at all events, got something for my money in the way of an instructive experience. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... with the well-being of the University, including the election of Chancellor, members of Parliament, and many of the officers of the University, the conferring of extraordinary degrees, and the disposal of the University ecclesiastical patronage. It has no initiative power, this resting solely with the hebdomadal board, but it can debate, and accept or refuse, the measures which originate in that board.—Oxford Guide. Literary World, Vol. XII. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... attraction had been sufficiently strong; and in 1839, when Prince Albert, with his elder brother Ernest, was again visiting England, the impression already produced became ineffaceably deep. The Queen, whom her great rank compelled to take the initiative, was not very long in making up her mind when and how to act. Her favoured suitor himself, writing to a dear relative, relates how she performed the trying task, inviting him to render her intensely happy by making ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... men of all ranks and grades are given a certain independence in the execution of the tasks to which they are assigned and are expected to show initiative in meeting the different situations as they arise. Every individual, from the highest commander to the lowest private, must always remember that inaction and neglect of opportunities will warrant ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... movement of the masses of the Negro population and not one composed of its leading elements. This fact has been marveled at, because in this migration the rank and file of Negroes, accustomed to being led, showed some initiative by acting of their own accord, and thereby abandoned the old policy of seeking and awaiting the advice of their leaders.[175] While this is true, and is, indeed, a very commendable performance, yet a careful view of the situation will show that it is hardly a phenomenon to be considered ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... discover Sir Walter Scott's poetic contribution touching on Young Lochinvar—Young Lochinvar who came out of the West, the same as the Plumb plan subsequently came, and the Hiram Johnson presidential boom and the initiative and the referendum and the I. W. W. Even in those ancient times the West appears to have been a favorite place for upsetting things to come from; so I can't take issue with Sir Walter there. But I do take issue with ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... Bill? How's old Initiative and Referendum? When you coming back to Manhattan? You wouldn't know the old town now. Main Street is building up, and there is talk of an English firm putting up a new hotel. I saw Duffy a few days ago. He looks kind of thoughtful as if he were trying to calculate how much he'd ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... was face to face with a disguised man, Juve was about to hurl himself on this masquerader, when that individual, forestalling the detective's movement, seized the initiative with lightning rapidity. He tore his hand from Juve's tenacious grip, bounded to the mantelpiece, threw down the lamp with a jerk of his elbow, thrust Juve violently aside, and rushed ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... authority was lost. The initiative in law and moral power passed from the monarch to the Assembly. Those who, by their counsels, had provoked this resistance did not dare to punish it Necker, whose dismissal had been decided on that morning, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... impossible as general international disarmament. Germany takes up no hostile position toward arbitration. In all the new German treaties of commerce there are arbitration clauses. In the main it was due to Germany's initiative that an agreement was arrived at at the second Hague conference for the establishment of an ...
— 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
... wait until madame Wang could open her mouth, but took the initiative to reply. "Our venerable lady," she urged, "had, even so late as yesterday, said that she meant to come; but, in the evening, upon seeing brother Pao eating peaches, the mouth of the old lady once again began to water, and after partaking of a little more than the half of one, she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... behaviour. The main line represents the general life of the creature. On the upper side are activities implying initiative; on the lower side ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... over becomes expert at his particular job; but does he not in time, because of his very expertness, lapse into a machine whose hands move automatically and whose mind is idle? Such a result is fatal both to his intellect and his will. He becomes passive until at length all initiative is destroyed. For many years the colored people of the South reaped precisely this harvest of mental inertia. Now, thank heaven, they are rousing out of the lethargy that has been their inheritance and ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... evangelist, was born at Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1837, and died in 1899. As a business man he brought to his evangelistic work exceptional tact, initiative, and executive ability, but the main source of his power lay in his knowledge of the Bible, his constant companion. In preaching he largely disregarded form, and thought little of the sermon as such. His one overwhelming and undeviating purpose was to lead men to Christ. His speaking ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... the benefit of them, and the decision is often in favor of the judge. Party feeling is apt to have its influence in such matters. Whether it does or does not, it is an unpleasant task to assume the initiative. Those who best know the facts are the lawyers, and if some of them are the ones to move, it is at the risk, should they fail, of having afterwards to conduct causes in a court presided over by one who is not likely to regard ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... consecrated to the vacancy by Thomas, Archbishop of York. Meanwhile the king enjoyed the temporalities of the see. In his person we meet a figure of much importance to the history of the fabric and see, for to his energy and initiative we owe the greater part of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... alongside the reinforcing batteries already in line, while the heavies were thickly aligned close in the rear. The preliminary bombardment broke out about the middle of July, and at first it was keenly resented by the enemy, who perceived that we were gradually wrestling the initiative from him, but when, day after day, our fire continued unabated, he apparently resigned himself to his fate. Hurricane shoots by field batteries soon began to make a difference in the appearance of his trenches, and the heavies, by means of aerial registration, demolished his strongholds far ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... components. Sec. 209. Intelligence training development for State and local government officials. Sec. 210. Information sharing incentives. Sec. 210A. Department of Homeland Security State, Local, and Regional Information Fusion Center Initiative. Sec. 210B. Homeland Security Information Sharing Fellows Program. Sec. 210C. Rural Policing Institute. Sec. 210D. Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group. ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... be preferred, if she can be afforded, for the reason that she has been trained to obey absolutely the orders of a physician, and because she has the requisite knowledge to detect emergencies, and the necessary skill and experience to enable her to act intelligently of her own initiative in any emergency. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... wave of reform in every branch of the military service. The men who were conscripted to form the main strength of the army were young and possessed more initiative than had the recruits of years before. Every effort was made to encourage this initiative under the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the wheel that he had the mastery of her and had shown that he possessed sea-legs, a fair amount of seacraft and, what the sailors did not possess, initiative, Captain Simms appointed ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... they continued behind the hedge, and coolly reloaded their guns. Yet they, as well as their opponents, understood that time was fighting against them, and as soon as it became obvious that those in the barn intended no sortie they assumed the initiative. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... dog was within a few paces of him. He called gently, and the animal responded with a whimper, but remained where it was. Its canine mind was evidently dubious, and the man was forced to take the initiative. Whatever may have been his intention in the first place, he now exhibited a curious display of feeling for one who could plan and perpetrate so dastardly a crime as that which he had committed at the dugout. Human nature is a strange blending of ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... two, he who, as we have already remarked, had taken the initiative several times, and whose voice, even in its most familiar intonations, denoted the habit of command, was about thirty years of age. His black hair was parted in the middle, falling straight from his temples to his shoulders. He had the swarthy skin of a man who has travelled long in southern ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... missing of the prize. That was all very well, very well, at present, though undeniably it would have been better if Lucia could have had Lady Adeliza's advantages. Ah! that was the next step. There was Lady Adeliza to be got rid of—if she did not herself, take the initiative—and that was not a pleasant affair. He had only been extremely attentive to her, that was the utmost anybody could say; but then there was his father—the two fathers, indeed, for he had good reason to believe ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... that they have all passed through that terrible, skillful education, elaborated through centuries, which kills all initiative in a man, and that they are so trained to mechanical obedience that at the word of command: "Fire!—All the line!— Fire!" and so on, their guns will rise of themselves and the habitual movements will be performed. But "Fire!" now does not mean shooting into the sand for amusement, it means ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... set itself to become a body of working men of science; to exclude for the future all mere dilettanti, and to admit a limited number of men whose work was such as to deserve recognition. Thanks to the initiative of Forbes, he now found this recognition accorded to him on the strength of his "Medusa" paper. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the monstrous concentration of his amiability, in keeping separate books for the criminal and poverty-stricken gentlemen of his establishment, must be duly appreciated. Marston, particularly, is requested to take the initiative, he being the most aristocratic fish the gaoler has caught in a long time. But the man has made his pen, and now he registers Marston's name among the state's forlorn gentlemen, commonly called poor debtors. They always confess themselves ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... government did not come in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and their immediate successors, and the growing inefficiency of the councils was long overcome by the resolution of the monarchs. Nevertheless the system was part of the price paid for centralized government, acting independently of local initiative or independence. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... wish him many years of increased utility in wider and loftier spheres of action, and, with successful work, the laurels and the prizes that should follow it, may we be tempted to follow his noble initiative, and to learn that the very war against difficulties, and their conquest, is one of the richest prizes of labor and effort, and that toil and battle, even of themselves, have the faculty of ennobling ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... that it would buy me a good, respectable interest out here, assure me of a position I had every capacity to sustain honourably and efficiently, and give me the leisure and climate that I wanted. I shall never be a rich man—by your standards. I don't care. I thought my brains and initiative were worth what I asked, and you agreed with me. I promised utter silence and have kept my word. You promised the same and have broken yours. I can do nothing for you, even if I wished to. I'd rather not ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Piety is the spirit's acknowledgment of its incarnation. So, in filial and parental affection, which is piety in an elementary form, there is a moulding of will and emotion, a check to irresponsible initiative, in obedience to the facts of animal reproduction. Every living creature has an intrinsic and ideal worth; he is the centre of actual and yet more of potential interests. But this moral value, which ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on their own initiative to lease the card for a term of years? Or should the approval of the transaction by the Court, under the Settled Estates Act, be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... everything offered him, and then took the initiative. And he talked—Oh, heaven! How he talked! Everything that had happened to him and to Sengoun from the moment they left the rue Soleil d'Or the night before, this garrulous young man detailed with a relish for humorous circumstance and a disregard ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... disposal and is more in keeping with their calling. They gladly become ward-surgeons, assistants, demonstrators, external teachers, and are ready to fill such posts until they are forty, though independence, a sense of freedom and personal initiative, are no less necessary in science than, for instance, in art or commerce. I have pupils and listeners, but no successors and helpers, and so I love them and am touched by them, but am not proud of them. And ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... divided up equally among the people every little while. That is either a fool's notion or the wilful misrepresentation of a liar. Socialism does not mean that there is to be a great bureaucratic government owning everything and controlling everybody. It does not mean doing away with private initiative and making of humanity a great herd, everybody wearing the same kind of clothes, eating the same kind and quantities of food, and having no personal liberties. It simply means that all men and women should have equal opportunities; to make it impossible for ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... ready to make the long-talked-of forward movement into Kentucky. In fact, General Kirby Smith had already set out from Knoxville to invade Eastern Kentucky, and General Bragg was nearly ready to take the initiative from Chattanooga. ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... hurling excommunication at unbelievers as in the days of the Inquisition, seemed to be abandoned to the violent theories of revolutionaries, whilst Italy, immobilised in the traditional courses, remained without possibility of initiative, reduced to silence and respect by the presence of the Holy See. In France, however, the struggle remained keen, but it was more particularly a struggle of ideas. On the whole, the war was there being waged against the revolution, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... shipbuilders, in order that they might acquire American methods and catch the American spirit. Within six months the Russians had become almost the equals of the American artisans among whom they worked. They had developed ambition, individuality, personal initiative, and a marked degree of excellence in their work. A year after their return to their own country, the deadening, non-progressive atmosphere about them had done its work. The men had lost the desire to improve; they were again plodders, with no goal ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the President and the Senate are, under the Constitution, the treaty-making power. The initiative lies with the President. He can negotiate such treaties as may seem to him wise, and propose them to the Senate for the advice and consent of that body. The power of the President and the Senate is derived from the Constitution. There is under our Constitution no other source of treaty-making ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her words; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read clearer, her whole story—what at least he then took for such—reached out to him from it. With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it all made a sense, and this sense—a light, a lead, was what had abruptly risen before him. He wanted, once more, to get off with these things; which was at last made easy, a servant having, for ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... attained the object of devolving the initiative of Civil War on his opponents. He had, while himself keeping on legal ground, compelled Pompeius to declare war, and to declare it not as the representative of the legitimate authority, but as general of a revolutionary minority of the Senate, which overawed the majority. —Adapted from ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... inwardness of that Inspection Party can now be seen, also.) The signs of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company and its aliases squatted here and there all through the Torso coal region. As the Senator would say, it was a very successful business, "thanks to the initiative of Mr. Freke." And that poor Simonds, who had amply demonstrated his inability to survive, his utter lack of adaptation to his environment, by not being able to be friendly with the great A. and P., went—where all the inefficient, non-adaptable ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Googe. She would have spoken to you herself long before this, but, you know, Aileen, how she would feel in the circumstances—she would not think of suggesting your coming to her from Mrs. Champney. I feel sure she is waiting for you to take the initiative." ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... who had the advantage of having taken the initiative, and who had presumably chosen their own time for the opening of hostilities, did not immediately take full advantage of their favorable situation has caused much surprise among impartial military critics. On the same day ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... paradise" about officialism than we have in our present corrupt, inconstant, and servile system of political Bossism, even if the individual could only "count one." But Mr. Savage does know, or ought to know, that the very first step of Nationalism is to nationalize our "politics," so as to restore the initiative of political action to the people, and render the abuses to which he refers impossible. He seems to suppose that Nationalism is to be executed by Tammany Hall! Indeed, his capital as an opponent of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... and was rendering for her the task of government more and more difficult, Philip was obdurate and closed his ears. The long distance between Madrid and Brussels and the procrastinating habits of the Spanish king added immensely to the regent's perplexities. She could not act on her own initiative, and her appeals to Philip were either disregarded or after long delay met by ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... have been mutually satisfactory, for it was repeated two or three times, and they found her simple, "without a shade of affectation or consciousness." Another pleasure they had was in meeting Lamartine, who took the initiative in asking to be allowed to call on them. After their arrival in Paris Carlyle passed several evenings with them, and Mrs. Browning felt, with her husband, that he was one of the most interesting of men, "highly picturesque" in conversation. Her sympathetic insight gave her always the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... and I must be allowed to assert that the initiative which pushed it forward was mine. It made a jump when he spent a week-end in the Thames Estuary on my yacht. If any reader has a curiosity to know what my yacht is not like, he should read the striking yacht chapter in Nocturne. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... thoughtful face misled him. He regarded her as deeper than she was; he considered that she would soon discover how he no longer was a guest at the Harley table, and thought to save himself from an inference by a proclamation. He would take the initiative and seem to cast the Harleys into the outer darkness of his disregard. It would make for his standing with the San Reve; more, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... my father been cashiered—for cowardice"—he stumbled a little over the words—"the knowledge of it would have knocked all the initiative out of me. I should have been afraid of showing the white feather. . . . The fear of being afraid would have been always at the back of me." He paused, then went on quickly: "And I think it would have been the same with Dad. It—it would have ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... At the initiative of George Boult a subscription was opened for "the widow and children of the late William Day, who had left them ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... to form their conclusions, not from one source, but from all the sources of information they possessed. At all events, isolated as I was at Washington, I could not confine myself merely to the task of furnishing my Government with information; but was compelled on occasion to act on my own initiative, in order to prevent any premature development in the diplomatic situation ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... chance, after the possibility of a broad handling of the settlement by the Czar, and as a very much bigger probability, is the insistence by America upon her right to a voice in the ultimate settlement and an initiative from the Western Hemisphere that will lead to a world congress. There are the two most hopeful sources of that great proposal. It is the tradition of British national conduct to be commonplace to the pitch of dullness, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... seemed more hare-brained than ever, and he suspected that Enriquez had acquiesced in it only because of a natural inability to refuse anything to a pretty woman—that was typically Cuban. But his respect for Miss Evans's energy and initiative deepened when, on arriving at 56 New Street, he discovered that she had forestalled him and was even then closeted with the man he had come to see. Johnnie waited uneasily; he was dismayed when the girl finally appeared, with Enriquez in tow, for ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... seriously and had not tried to apply too strictly to an empty continent the paternal administration of an older country; we might have been privileged to witness the development and operation of as complete and benign a system of colonial government as has been devised in modern times. The public initiative of the Spanish government, and the care with which it selected its colonists, compare very favourably with the opportunism of the English and the French, who colonized by chance private activity and sent the worst elements of their population, criminals and ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... his thoughts. Either brought on a nervous tension which left him shaken and drained. The right woman would have adored Captain Carreras, and doubtless would have called forth from his breast a love of heroic dimension; but she would have been forced to do the winning; to speak and take the initiative in all but the giving of happiness. Temperate for a bachelor, clean throughout, charmingly innocent of the world, and a splendid seaman. To one of fine sensibilities, there was something about the person of Captain Carreras of softly glowing warmth, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... been hatching this idea of a fire because it suits the national and popular taste; but I was keeping it for a critical moment, for that precious time when we should all rise up and... And they suddenly took it into their heads to do it, on their own initiative, without orders, now at the very moment when we ought to be lying low and keeping quiet! Such presumption!... The fact is, I've not got to the bottom of it yet, they talk about two Shpigulin men, but if there are any of our fellows in it, if any one of them has had a hand in it—so much the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the Russian proposals, relating to the non-augmentation of land and sea forces, is so inapplicable to the United States at present that it is deemed advisable to leave the initiative, upon this subject, to the representatives of those powers to ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... David took the initiative, and sent his army under command of Joab against Rabbath-Ammon. The Syrians advanced to the relief of the besieged city; but Joab divided his forces, and, leaving his brother Abishai to hold the Ammonites in the town in check, proceeded himself against the Syrians ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Still she looked white and thin, and needed a scarf for her arm, when she caused herself to be arrayed as splendidly as her sister had been, and descended to the hall, where, like Eleanor, she took the initiative by an appeal against the wrong and injustice that held two free-born royal ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were not trained fighting men; they were deeply laden, and their decks were heavily cumbered. Moreover, they were not protected by a naval squadron; and had Rear-Admiral Linois been a commander of daring, initiative, and resource, the greater part, or the whole, of this enormous mass of floating treasure might have fallen like a ripe peach ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... and talked, often fatuously, for and about their sons and, in lesser degree, daughters. They were, in short, wholly absorbed, no more than parents; at the advent of a family they lost individuality, ambition, initiative; nature trapped them, blotted them out; it used them for its great purpose and then cast them aside, just as corporations used men for a single task and dropped them when their productiveness ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief, or rather disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the brutality by Christians towards those suspected of witchcraft, the hindrance to scientific initiative or experiment was incalculably great so long as belief in magic obtained. The inventions of the past two centuries, and especially those of the 18th century, might have benefitted mankind much earlier and much more largely, but for the foolish belief in witchcraft and the shocking ...
— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh
... line Territorial unit of 1914-1915 was the despair of the more crusted Regular martinet. Its joyous amateurism freed it from every trace of the mental servitude which is the curse of militarism, and stimulated initiative and individuality. Long before the War, most Territorials believed in universal training, not so much on account of the German peril, which to too many Englishmen seemed a mere delusion, as on account of its social value. It is pleasant to remember how solidly ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... rather a precocious little boy—he learnt to talk at an abnormally early age, and he was so sane and "old-fashioned," as people say, that he was permitted an amount of initiative that most children scarcely attain by seven or eight. His mother died when he was two, and he was under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess. His father was a stern, preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little attention, and expected great ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Homeric legends, with the tragedians, inspired the sculptors, and even the artisans who decorated vases. When a new order of subjects became fashionable, and when every rich Alexandrian had pictures or frescoes on his walls, it appears that the painters took the lead, that the initiative in art was theirs. The Alexandrian pictures perished long ago, but the relics of Alexandrian style which remain in the buried cities of Campania, in Pompeii especially, bear testimony to the taste of ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... now come when he must make some further step in establishing himself in some means of livelihood. He never showed much power of initiative, and at every stage was materially aided by his friends in obtaining employment and position. In this instance it was Goodrich again who gave him opportunity. It was not a great chance, but it was doubtless all Goodrich had to offer. He procured for him the editorship of a small publication which ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... perplexing initiative of my intelligence would not, for some reason, permit me to concentrate my thoughts on her at that moment. My mind was bewilderingly full of Anne, but I could not think of her. When I fell into the pose of gazing up at her window, the association suggested not the memory I desired, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... the Mass is a careful and rapid ritual. Now it is the function of all ritual (as we see in games, social arrangements and so forth) to relieve the mind by so much of responsibility and initiative and to catch you up (as it were) into itself, leading your life for you during the time it lasts. In this way you experience a singular repose, after which fallowness I am sure one is fitter for action ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... not know what she knew, how the purest love and truth were seated in the young man's eyes; but Heaven, in its time, might appoint a way of bringing him to such knowledge. Catherine expected a good deal of Heaven, and referred to the skies the initiative, as the French say, in dealing with her dilemma. She could not imagine herself imparting any kind of knowledge to her father, there was something superior even in his injustice and absolute in his mistakes. But she could at least be good, and if she ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... bare instant; but manifestly his assistance was no more needed here. In a breath he who had been so recently outmatched recollected his wits and took the initiative with admirable address. Duchemin saw him fly furiously at his late opponent, trip and lay him on his back; then turned and gave chase ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... sadly how the tribute from such a pen would have rejoiced the two moving spirits of that famous relief committee—Sir John Robinson and Mr. Bullock Hall, both long since passed, away. To the whilom editor of the Daily News both initiative and realization were mainly owing, the latter being the laborious ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... genuine as to be beyond question. Whatever Billie had done, it was through no connivance with the father, but upon her own initiative. Yet she was fully capable of the effort; convinced the cause of the South was in her hands, she was one to go through fire and water in service. Neither her life nor mine would weigh in the decision—her only thought the Confederacy. Still it was not a pleasant reflection ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... criticism of this work, of the genuineness of which I was unable to judge, particular stress was laid upon the 'patriotic and noble German atmosphere' of this new creation. I did my best to make the Dresden theatre take the initiative, and to urge Luttichau to secure this opera before it was produced elsewhere. Marschner, who did not seem to have been treated with particular consideration by the Hanoverian opera authorities, accepted the invitation with great joy, sent his score, and declared himself willing to come ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... preparing a salable product upon the pupil. Too much assistance on the part of the teacher in directing the pupils' work and in deciding when a food is sufficiently cooked or baked, may interfere in developing initiative in pupils,—one of the aims to be accomplished in education. The plan of having each pupil prepare a food for the first time in individual quantity and then later in family quantity for the lunch room has proved satisfactory ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... possession of the St. Lawrence and its posts before they were strengthened and garrisoned. At this outset of hostilities, the American insurgents, knowing clearly their own minds, possessed the advantage of the initiative over the British government, which still hesitated to use against those whom it styled rebels the preventive measures it would have taken at once ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... inspecting, had declared the national honour sold to foreigners. The Dictator, by his weak compliance with the demands of the European powers—for the settlement of long outstanding money claims—had showed himself unfit to rule. A letter from Moraga explained afterwards that the initiative, and even the very text, of the incendiary allocution came, in reality, from the other Montero, the ex-guerillero, the Commandante de Plaza. The energetic treatment of Dr. Monygham, sent for in haste "to the mountain," ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... took the initiative. "I am afraid I wasn't too hospitable just now," he said. "It's this fellow's fault. Dick, it's up to you to ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... sat in the garden too and worked. And his work Neville felt that she too could have done; it was work needing initiative and creative thought, work suitable to his forty-five years, not cramming in knowledge from books. Neville at times thought that she too would stand for parliament one day. A foolish, childish game it was, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... these sciences shows that none of them is political or royal. For the truly royal ought not itself to act, but to rule over those who are able to act; the king ought to know what is and what is not a fitting opportunity for taking the initiative in matters of the greatest importance, whilst ...
— Statesman • Plato
... they made representations of an opposite character. When they had received their appointments, they very naturally allied themselves with the President's policy, inasmuch as they could not be easily removed except upon an initiative taken by him. This deficiency occurred in the states and districts in which the money should have been collected and through the agents employed there. It other words, no part of the deficiency ever passed into the Treasury ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... who had been so unresponsive to the advances of his fellow passengers, for some reason—unknown, probably, to himself—now took the initiative. "You have a fine dog here, sir," he ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... new convention,—which, undoubtedly, had it been called, would have reconstructed, from top to bottom, the work done by the convention of 1787. Yet it should be noticed that the ten amendments, thus obtained under the initiative of Congress, embodied "nearly every material change suggested by Virginia;"[415] and that it was distinctly due, in no small degree, to the bitter and implacable urgency of the popular feeling in Virginia, under the stimulus of Patrick Henry's ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... that they may be able to fight the battle of life. He does not see that by using authority he is doing the very opposite of what he intends; he is making the child dependent on him, and for ever afterwards the child will lack initiative, ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... miles from all railroads, shut in by laurel-covered hills and pine mountains; its people, of fine pioneer ancestry and deeply religious, thrown back upon themselves through segregation and isolation, had lost much of the initiative and force that characterized their ancestors, and had crystallized along the lines of their peculiarities, as any people ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... the women are gathered together. In the conduct of their love intrigues, men and women alike take a very active part, for the ladies of the Peninsula are as often as not the wooers of the men, and a Malay girl does not hesitate to make the necessary advances if the swain is slow to take the initiative, or fails to perceive the desire which she has conceived for him. In the matter of fighting, however, the women—who are as often as not the cause—act usually as mere spectators, taking no active part themselves, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... good intentions, but that insists upon carrying them out. Any other character is wishy-washy; it is goody, not good. The individual must have the power to stand up and count for something in the actual conflicts of life. He must have initiative, insistence, persistence, courage, and industry. He must, in a word, have all that goes under the name "force of character." Undoubtedly, individuals differ greatly in their native endowment in this respect. None the less, each has a certain primary equipment of impulse, ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... armistice to last during six months, covering all Colombia, and designating the lines where the contending armies should stay. It was also agreed that a treaty would be drafted providing for the continuance of war in accordance with international law and the usages of civilized countries. The initiative for these improvements was due to Bolvar, who was also the author of the basis of the treaty proposed by the Colombian delegates. Among the clauses of this agreement were some providing for the safety, good-treatment and exchange of prisoners; the abolition of capital punishment ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... distrust of power as such. There was much in the history of the time to justify his attitude. It was difficult at that time to believe in an honest officialdom putting the commonwealth above every personal or corporate interest, and reformers naturally looked to individual initiative as the source of progress. Secondly, and this was a more philosophic argument, the individual was supposed to understand his own interest best, and as the common good was the sum of individual interests, ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... to tend towards the love of the "Vita Nuova" is to tend towards this. Say what you will of the irresistible force of original constitution, it remains certain, and all history is there as witness, that mankind—that is to say, the only mankind in whom lies the initiative of good, mankind which can judge and select—possesses the faculty of feeling and acting in accordance with its standard of feeling and action; the faculty in great measure of becoming that which it thinks desirable to become. Now to have perceived the even imaginary ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... time he gets to this part of his story we have, at my initiative, left the bridge and are walking towards the Utopian guest house. The Utopian guest house! His voice rises and falls, and sometimes he holds my arm. My attention comes and goes. "Good-night," two sweet-voiced Utopians ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... give fuller and quicker effect to the will of the people in law making, recent provisions in the constitutions of some States provide for the initiative and referendum. By the initiative a certain number of voters may petition for the enactment of a law set forth in the petition. If the legislature does not pass the act petitioned for, it may be enacted by the ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... He could sell the goods which the companies sold to him but could not undertake to set up manufacturing. And after the companies had passed away, the landed aristocracy used its power to suppress all undue initiative on his part. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... {7} as a basal axiom should have been comparatively blind to its logical implications. For if God is infinite, then He is all; and if He is all, what becomes of human individuality, or how are human initiative and responsibility so much as thinkable? Benjamin Jowett, in his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in passing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if somewhat tentative, are ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... oppressions—keep them from her sight if you can. She would flare up at them and make trouble, in her small but quite decided and resolute way; for she has a character of her own, and lacks neither promptness nor initiative. Sometimes her judgment is at fault, but I think her intentions are always right. Once when she was a little creature of three or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot down upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of indignation, then fetched it a backward wipe, and stooped down to examine ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... benignant touch of fortune still upon his head, and thanked her heartily that Leo had taken the initiative; that no overt act of disloyalty blurred his escutcheon, and above all, that he had been spared the humiliation of acknowledging his inability to resist the strange fascination that dragged him from his allegiance, as Auroras swing the needle from the pole. He ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... her pitcher, swung it lightly to her shoulder—and as the woman sometimes takes the initiative in an affair of this kind—smiled upon the willing and ready-looking fellow; not exactly at him, but as it were in his direction, you know; and he caught the faint glint of sunshine on her lips, and then—but in the witching hour when the twilight and sunlight kiss and part, after ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... Persia were not confined to this single benevolent initiative of the Bombay Committee. [62] We should also notice the establishing of schools in the towns of Yezd and Kirman (1857) due to the munificence of the Parsee notabilities, and the pecuniary gifts given for the purpose of settling in life ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... insult, some overt act which would have permitted him to say that Germany in his person had been provoked, insulted by France. But there had been no violence, the insult had not been offered, the overt act had not occurred. Then, tired of this method, de Schoen took the initiative and presented a declaration of war from ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... did not work out correctly. It was a raw and bitter day; during the morning there were occasional snow flurries, and at midday a heavy downfall. Bennigsen seized the initiative, and opened the battle by a cannonade. Napoleon, divining his plan, sent a messenger for Ney to come and strengthen Soult. At nine the Russian right advanced and drove in the French left, which was weak, to the town. At that moment ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... what so gifted a people might become. After a while, however, if questioned, he would confess himself disappointed—that after the first extraordinary show of intelligence no progress was made—that they seemed marvellous in the initiative, but did nothing after. They speedily grew weary of whatever they could do or say, no matter in what fashion, and impatiently desired to try something new. The John Bull contentedness to attain perfection in some one branch, and never ask to go beyond it, was a sentiment they ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... through the autumn and on into his second winter. Growing ever stronger with the passing seasons, he came to reveal still further his wonderful vitality, and to reveal it in many ways. Often he would take the initiative against the Mexican, kicking at him without due cause, refusing always to get out of his way, once nipping him sharply as he hurried past under pressing orders from the house. Also, having grown to a size equal to the brown saddler, he began to ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... training, and you would be so ordered about, and arranged for, that you would have less independence of character than you could gain from them. You would have had fewer temptations; but you would have had less chance to develop the qualities which overcome temptations and show that a man has individual initiative. Supposing you entered at seventeen, with the intention of following this course. The result would be that at twenty-five you would leave the Army or Navy without having gone through any law school or any special technical school of any kind, and would start your life work ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... opportunity. He was brought face to face with the two greatest world-civilizations of history; but, understanding neither, he remains only a muddy place in the road along which Greek and Hebrew passed to world-conquest. Haman, a blend of vanity and cruelty and cowardice but not without some power of initiative, was a fit minister for his king. He lives in history as one who, better than in Hamlet's illustration, was "hoist with his own petard," the petard in his case being a gallows. He typifies also the just fate of the man who, spurred by the hate ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... opportunity to help. It was not selfish; it was noble. And that spirit if carried out will make this country a new land in which these boys who come back will find they have been cared for; that helpfulness has come to take the place of indifference and cooperation to supplement individual initiative. ...
— Address by Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government
... think the older worker stodgy and in a rut. Perhaps both may be right. Happy the fellow workers who can learn to discuss their pet ideas without heat! Happy the fellow workers who can develop just the right combination of initiative and co-operation! ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... thanks for the broad moral foundation upon which you have, so to speak, reared the edifice of our community. On this occasion we offer our homage especially to the clear-sighted, indefatigable, unselfish—nay, self-sacrificing citizen who has taken the initiative in an undertaking which, we are assured on all sides, will give a powerful impetus to the temporal prosperity ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... Michelet to M. Aulard, have represented the revolutionary crowd as having acted on its own initiative, without leaders, do ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... and her lost interest in the Dry Lands always looming large in the foreground of her thoughts, she was already supplying her quota of grist to the great invisible mills. She bought, upon her own initiative, a small farm just on the edge of Hume's land, investing ten thousand dollars in it, and came there to live. She bought conservatively at twenty dollars an acre. If the project, now involved in uncertainty, were perfected her land would be worth from two to five times what she had paid ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... all work the hardest to accomplish. At once, let us acknowledge the impossibility of outlining a method that will be effective in every case. At once, too, let us say that in no branch of Christian service is so much left to the inventive and initiative faculties of the worker as in preaching. Still some principles there are which may well be named as worthy of remembrance in the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... to raise money for the Scottish commissioners alderman Pennington rose in the House and declared that, in consequence of Goodman's reprieve and other suspicious circumstances, the City had resolved to lend nothing.(435) The Lords as well as the Commons followed the initiative of the alderman and made a joint demand for the execution of the condemned priest. As he had often done before, Charles again threw over the Catholics. He announced his intention not to allow the increase ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... arranged to marry me, you have assumed that I would fail you at every turn. Ours is a crooked road, monsieur, and there are many turns ahead. If you burden your mind so heavily with me you cannot attend to what is your real concern. Trust me more. Think less about me. I will show no irritation, no initiative, and I will follow where you point. I should like to think that you would rest to-night,—rest care free. I wish ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... "Try to keep yourself calm. It does no good to defy these men—they are not really acting on their own initiative, but they are merely carrying out their duty ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... unexpected and to master it. Hans Nelson, immigrant, Swede by birth and carpenter by occupation, had in him that Teutonic unrest that drives the race ever westward on its great adventure. He was a large-muscled, stolid sort of a man, in whom little imagination was coupled with immense initiative, and who possessed, withal, loyalty and affection as ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... settled, and our privilege given up—and I believe we are all, even the Government itself, entirely satisfied with the arrangement." I heard the same opinion afterwards expressed in Copenhagen, and felt gratified, as an American, to hear the result attributed to the initiative taken by our Government; but I also remembered the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company, and could not help wishing that the same principle might be applied at home. We have a Denmark, lying between New-York ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... enjoys the privilege of granting pardons to individual criminals; suspending the National Guards; of removing with the consent of the Council of State the general, cantonal and municipal Councilmen, elected by the citizens themselves. The initiative and direction of all negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to him. While the Assembly itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and is exposed to the critically vulgar light of day, he leads ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... Royalists of Toulon had declared for Louis XVII, and a majority of them throughout France opposed the claim of "Monsieur" to the Regency. The constitution of 1791 gave him no such right on his own initiative; and, as Toulon stood for that constitution, not for the "pure" royalism which he now championed, his arrival would place the garrison "at the discretion of wild and hot-headed emigrants and expose them to the reproaches and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... straight from the classic, the antique; grandchildren of the courts of law and temples of Pagan Rome, children of the Byzantine basilicas of early Christian days; strange survivals from distant antiquity, testifying to the lack of artistic initiative in the barbarous centuries between Constantine to Barbarossa. No period in the world's history could have produced anything so organic without the work of previous periods; and when the Middle Ages did ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... him as the wisest and kindest of monitors. His manners had undergone no spasmodic change. They became intolerable when, for other reasons, she resented his possible interference, and wanted a very different guardian and confidant; and, therefore, she wished to part, and yet wished that the initiative should come ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Californians proves this in one way, the high average of his citizenship in another. Physically he is a big, strong, high-geared, high-powered racing machine; and he has an inexhaustible supply of energy for motive fluid and an extraordinary degree of initiative and enterprise for driving forces. That initiative and enterprise spring part from his inalienable pep, his vivid interest in life; and part from that constructive looseness of the social structure, which gives them both full play. If the Native Son sees anything he wants to do, he instantly ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... make Zero the right kind of a man," said the Idiot. "He isn't built that way. He wears men's clothes and he has sweet manners, and a dulcet voice, and the learning of the serpent; but when it comes to manhood he has the initiative of the turtle, lacking the cash value of the terrapin, or the turtle's mock brother; he wears a beard, but it is the beard of the bearded lady who up-to-date appears to be a useless appanage of the strenuous life; and when you try ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... clean-faced and very much alive Americans arrived at the Polo Club for late breakfast. Indeed they were good to look at, being in the finest kind of health and full of initiative. That breakfast was royal in every flavour; they felt like young spendthrifts squandering their patrimony. Just as they were finishing, a distinguished looking Englishman came across the room ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... certain lack of faith, Lady Bassett? Since the young man has been led to see that the poor girl has been so sadly compromised, surely we may trust that he will be enabled to carry out his engagement. I consider it doubly praiseworthy that he has taken this action on his own initiative. I may tell you in confidence that I was seriously debating with myself as to whether it were not my duty to approach him on the subject. But the news of his engagement relieved me of all responsibility. It is no doubt ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... attention to the Delta, and began the task of reorganising this part of her kingdom, which had been much neglected by her predecessors. The wars between the Theban princes and the lords of Avaris had lasted over a century, and during that time no one had had either sufficient initiative or leisure to superintend the public works, which were more needed here than in any other part of Egypt. The canals were silted up with mud, the marshes and the desert had encroached on the cultivated lands, the towns had become impoverished, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with no income, the problem of feeding themselves was the main issue with the whites, so it was out of the question to try to fill other mouths, and ex-slaves often had to shift for themselves, a hopeless task for a race that had never been called upon to exert initiative. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the condensation of the primary substance into concrete aggregation, and also does this in certain areas to the exclusion of others, we cannot avoid attributing to Spirit the power of Selection and of taking an Initiative on ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... picked up one and tried to read, but the slim types ran together and conveyed no meaning to him. It was becoming plain that he was to have no communication with the Denhams that night unless he assumed the initiative. He pencilled a line on the reverse of a visiting card and sent it up to Mrs. Denham's parlor. The servant returned with the card on his waiter. The ladies had retired. Then Lynde took himself off to ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with it. Jove! I'd give all the pay I ever expect to get to see him a rejected suitor of my plucky little American girl;" and he regarded his host with an ill-disposed eye. At last he resolved to take the initiative boldly. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... reversed—"now it is the king who testifies his gratitude to the High-Priest of Ammon for the care bestowed on his temple by the erection of new buildings and the improvement and maintenance of the older ones." The initiative has passed out of the king's hands into those of his subject; he is active, the king is passive; all the glory is Amenhotep's; the king merely comes in at the close of all, as an ornamental person, whose presence adds a certain dignity to the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... start plunging on that capital your wife threw your way yesterday?... Well, well, you've got more initiative than I thought... But, one piece of advice, my friend—the easiest way to walk into a trap is to suddenly try to change your habits ... to rush headlong in an opposite direction. You'd better stay here awhile and bluff it out. They'd ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... we assembled for dinner, I received orders to sit next to the Empress. This was still more embarrassing. It is true, one does not speak to a sovereign unless one is spoken to; but still one is permitted to make the initiative easy. I found that I was expected to take my share of the task; and by a happy inspiration, introduced the subject of the Prince Imperial, then a child of eight years old. The MONDAINE Empress was at once merged in the adoring mother; her whole ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... confidently boasted, to drive the rebels before him. Prince Charles, leaving a few hundred men to continue the siege, matched out to Bannockburn. The English did not move out from Falkirk, and the prince, after waiting for a day, determined to take the initiative. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... the hospital, a blind desire seized him to dance? At the mere thought his heart gained a beat—that unruly heart, which had caused so much trouble. It had never been right since that August day in the Sevzevais sector, when, to quote his citation, he "had shown great initiative in assuming command when his officer was disabled, and, with total disregard for his personal safety, had held his machine-gun against almost impossible odds." In the accomplishment of this feat he had been so badly gassed and wounded that his career as a soldier was definitely, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... develop self-reliance and initiative in these children, two sturdy qualities in which they are conspicuously lacking (with the exception of Sadie Kate and a few other bad ones). Children who have spirit enough to be bad I consider very hopeful. It's those who are good just from ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... sigh might be taken as expressing grief over the sin of the erring brother whose conduct they were then to discuss, and was not amiss. But when the sigh with its attendant murmurs had passed away it was necessary that some initiative step should be taken. "Dr Tempest," said the bishop, "what are we to do about this poor stiff-necked gentleman?" Still Dr Tempest did not speak. "There is no clergyman in the diocese," continued the bishop, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... desperation, approached the authorities for a word of suggestion to improve this or that, officialdom merely shrugged its shoulders and candidly admitted impotence to recommend a remedy. So we had to depend essentially upon our own exertions and initiative. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... things was bad enough when he was separated from her by the entire length of the room; but their work required a certain collaboration, and there were occasions when he was established near her, when deliberately, in cold blood and of his own initiative, he was compelled to speak to her. No language could describe the anguish and difficulty of these approaches. His way was beset by obstacles and perils, by traps and snares; and at every turn there waited for him the shameful pitfall of the aitch. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... hinted delicately that all of these new reforms were due to the wisdom and initiative of our ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... at hand; and I went so far as to judge that their protracted stay, with their hostess visibly in a fidget, was a sign of a want of breeding. Miss Grace after all then was not such an improvement on her mother, for she easily might have taken the initiative of departure, in spite of Mrs. Mavis's imbibing her glass of syrup in little interspaced sips, as if to make it last as long as possible. I watched the girl with an increasing curiosity; I could not help asking myself a question or two about ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... was development before that year, it was completely eclipsed by the amazing progress made during the latter part of the century. An abundance of unoccupied land, of rich and varied natural resources, favorable climatic conditions, a complete absence of checks on individual initiative and enterprise and of restrictions on internal communication and trade, and the encouragement afforded to industry by the liberal policies of the federal government all combined to create economic opportunities of boundless scope. Labor, capital and transportation facilities ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... these mining-camps upon the United States was great. It was no new thing for Congress to solve its national problems on the initiative of the West. Since the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 this had been a frequent occurrence, and the history of the public lands had always been directed by Western demands. In 1862 the agricultural West, whose capacity to cultivate land had been magnified ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... be heard in the din; it was necessary to watch the front of the square, and move on or halt as it did, unless a particular rush at a certain point compelled those at it to take the initiative, and then others ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... remote hemisphere. They swarmed in the desert. Nothing daunted them. Spain's best blood poured into the New World, a fact which doubtless accounts, in part, for the devitalized energies and genius of this mother country of their birth and hopes and initiative. "Florida" is a Spanish tide-mark. "St. Augustine" is a gravestone of history, marking the mound where lies the dust of the first permanent colony planted in America. The Spaniard headed toward the southern provinces of America, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... He was the son of a French father and a Virginia mother. He was thirty-two years old, and was married to the daughter of Thomas H. Benton, United States Senator from Missouri and a man of great influence in the country. Possessed of an adventurous spirit, considerable initiative, and great persistence Fremont had already performed the feat of crossing the Sierra Nevadas by way of Carson River and Johnson Pass, and had also explored the Columbia River and various parts of the Northwest. Fremont now entered California by way of Walker Lake and the Truckee, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... not approached employers at first, but had left it to them entirely to take the initiative in this great replacement. This they had to a considerable extent done, using the Labour Exchanges and the other agencies and women were more and more ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... Conversation constrained both by the grating and the presence of the warder, and Aubrey, more tenderly sensitive than his brother, and devoid of his father's experienced tact, was too much embarrassed to take the initiative, was afraid of giving pain by dwelling on his present occupations and future hopes, and confused Leonard by his embarrassment. Hector Ernescliffe discoursed about Charleston Harbour and New Orleans; and Aubrey stood with downcast eyes, afraid to seem to be scanning the convict garb, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... suspected him, the silly idiots! They might have known he hasn't the initiative to do a thing like that. And the girl can't prove her relationship to Uncle Douglas, just as I expected. I thought there might be some difficulty about that. But I wish I could find the will he made in her favour. I should feel safer then, for she told me he said ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... in a New England college we knew two fellows from the Southwest whose fathers were in official circles at Washington. One was Felix Narveo, thoroughbred Mexican, thoroughbred gentleman, a bit lacking in initiative sometimes, for he came from the warmer, lazier lands, but as true as the compass in his character. The other fellow was Dick Verra, French father, English mother; I think he had a strain of Indian blood farther back somewhere, but he would have been a prince in ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... the Fort, even Allan Mowbray, himself, when he returned, dismissed the matter without further consideration. He laughed at the panic which had arisen in his absence, while yet he commended Murray's initiative and courage. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... choose his own line of action. He has to try to find out what is in the mind of others. A young German, inured to skilled slavery, does not shine in such a position. Man for man, in all that asks for initiative and self-dependence, Englishmen are the better men, and some Germans know it. There is an old jest that if you settle an Englishman and a German together in a new country, at the end of a year you will find the Englishman governor, and the German his ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... not until late in the afternoon that Blucher Peabody, the druggist, awoke from his lethargy and moved as though he intended to take the initiative. "Blootch" was Rosalie's most persistent admirer. He had fallen heir to his father's apothecary shop and notion store, and he was regarded as one of the best catches in town. He approached the half-frozen crowd that huddled near old Mrs. Luce's front gate. In this crowd were some ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... be a candidate for the Legislature, but would not declare himself until just before the election, and assigned as a reason that it was so very hard to be clever for a long time at once." Before the caucus had eliminated the individual initiative, there was much more of personal feeling in elections. A vote against a man had something of offense in it, and sometimes stirred up a defeated candidate to heroic vengeance. In 1827 the Legislature elected a State treasurer after an exciting contest, and before the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... was marked by an unusual display of initiative on the part of the Emperor, who now ordered the introduction of railways; but in 1897 complications with foreign powers rather gave a check to these aspirations. Two German Catholic priests were murdered, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... constructive kind, and it was probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed the impulse of his life during its brief initiative period. Having once received this Idea of discovery and like all other great ideas, it was in the air at the time and was bound to take shape in some human brain—he had all his native and personal qualities to bring ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... camp, whence he kept a look-out. There was some skirmishing, but no fighting on a large scale. This did not suit Spartacus, who had become confident in himself and his men. He desired battle, but wished the Romans should take the initiative, and was convinced that the near approach of winter would compel them soon to fight or to retreat. To encourage them, he feigned fear, and commenced a retrograde movement; but no sooner had the elated Romans advanced in pursuit than he turned upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... They see little, but they see it straight. And though, being men, with the long animal inheritance of men behind them, their passions may be roused by any cry of battle, though they are the fore-ordained dupes of those who direct the policy of nations, yet it is not their initiative that originates wars. They do not desire conquest, they do not trouble about "race" or chatter about the "survival of the fittest." It is their own needs, which are also the vital needs of society, ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... observer of politics, know that nothing is more unnatural. For "institutions make men." And when amid a people used to institutions of one kind, we see suddenly arise institutions of an opposite kind, we know that behind them must be that active, that initiative force—the "men who in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... He was not, however, destined to compass the downfall of the Sullan regime; the crisis of the Slave War placed the Senate at the mercy of Pompey and Crassus, who in 70 B.C. swept away the safeguards of senatorial ascendancy, restored the initiative in legislation to the tribunes, and replaced the Equestrian order, i.e. the capitalists, in partial possession of the jury-courts. This judicial reform (or rather compromise) was the work of Caesar's uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta. Caesar himself, however, gained no accession of influence. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the street. I had always been accustomed to going in my closed cart with outriders and servants. I shrank from staring eyes, and thought every glance was suspicious. My slave was more timid than I and so I must take the initiative. I had been accustomed to seeing street beggars from behind the screened windows of my cart ever since I was a child and so I knew how I ought to act, but at first it was difficult indeed. Soon, however, we learned to play our part, though it seems now like a hideous dream. We kept ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... sincere in his worried investigation of her state of mind. He knew that both Ruth and he had the instability as well as the initiative of the vagabond. As quickly as they had claimed each other, so quickly could either of them break love's alliance, if bored. Carl himself, being anything but bored, was as faithfully devoted as the least enterprising of moral young men, He forgot ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... had not been found on his enemy; they had not been found in the Gregor apartment; the two men assigned to the task of securing them would not have risked certain death by trying to do a little bargaining on their own initiative. In the first instance they had come forth empty-handed. In the second instance—that of intimidating the girl to disclose his whereabouts—neither Vladimir nor Stemmler had returned. Sinister. The man in ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... were quite taken aback. They had expected, at least, to have been allowed the initiative in any conflict that might occur; but they now saw that, instead of being the assailing party, they were likely to ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... future purpose, or of what he wishes immediately to note in the character of the object. Most of them are irregular memoranda, not systematic elementary work: of those which are systematized, the greater part are carried far beyond the initiative stage; and Holbein's are nearly all washed with color: the exact degree in which he depends upon the softening and extending his touch of ink by subsequent solution of it, being indeterminable, though exquisitely successful. His stupendous drawings ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... switching to qat to supplement income. The war with Eritrea in 1998-2000 and recurrent drought have buffeted the economy, in particular coffee production. In November 2001 Ethiopia qualified for debt relief from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Under Ethiopia's land tenure system, the government owns all land and provides long-term leases to the tenants; the system continues to hamper growth in the industrial sector as entrepreneurs are unable to use land as collateral for loans. Drought struck again late ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... him, with a mixture of some truth, that the object of the Hertilande journey is to gather strength against Lacy, capture his castle of Ewyas, and kill himself—intelligence which he falsely attributes to Marion. He has, of course, little difficulty in persuading Lacy to take the initiative. Sir Ernault is entrusted with a considerable mixed force, and comes by night to the castle.] The night was very dark, so that no sentinel saw them. Sir Ernault took a squire to carry the ladder of hide, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... from attaining any eminence as a lawyer. A distant relative of Mr. Cotterell's and Godmother to Kate, departed this life, leaving her Godchild the very comfortable sum of six hundred per annum, secured in the four per cents., and after wearing mourning for a suitable period, Kate took the initiative by announcing to Tom, very much to his surprise and delight, that she was both ready and willing to become his wife on the following conditions, which were, that he should give up practising law, take a snug cottage in Devonshire, and turn his attention ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... as to the lady's side taking the initiative: and, in effect, the wealth and power of Wildschloss so much exceeded those of the elder branch that it would have been presumptuous on Eberhard's part to have made the proposal. It was more a treaty ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any identification of Prussia and Germany was maintained when the Prussian Government itself took the initiative and proposed its own solution. During the summer of 1849, the Prussian programme was published. The Government invited the other States of Germany to enter into a fresh union; the basis of the new Constitution was to be that of Frankfort, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... mournful. The mention of his mother always, it seemed to Sally, made him miserable. Silly Gaga! He then did something which had an imperceptible effect upon Sally's thought of him. It was a mistake, because it illustrated his lack of initiative and his powerlessness to strike out a fresh path. He made straight for the Rezzonico again. He ought to have taken Sally to another restaurant; but he instinctively took her to the place where they had dined happily ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... security the citizens of all great countries. That is undoubtedly the reason why he met with so much success.... It was a very comfortable theory for those nations which have grown rich and whose ideals and initiative have been sapped by over much prosperity. But the great delusion of Norman Angell, which led to the writing of "The Great Illusion," has been dispelled for ever by the Balkan League. In this connection it is of value to quote the words ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... sensitive to the popular will as expressed through the Soviets, allowing local forces full play. At present the Provisional Government obstructs the action of the local democratic will, just as the Tsar's Government did. The initiative of the new society shall come from below.... The form of the Government will be modelled on the Constitution of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The new Tsay-ee-kah, responsible to frequent meetings of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, will be ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... him in his vision as a beautiful female, "over whose divine neck her long thick hair hung in graceful ringlets." Addressing him, she says, "The parent of Universal nature attends thy call. The mistress of the Elements, initiative germ of generations, Supreme of Deities, Queen of departed spirits, first inhabitant of Heaven, and uniform type of all the Gods and Goddesses, propitiated by thy prayers, is with thee. She governs with her nod the luminous ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... legislative bodies, or even one, in the government of a city.... Now and then a question arises which the will of the whole people properly expressed may best settle; but for the prompt and conclusive expression of that will the initiative and referendum are ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... sure you will, but let me give you a bit of confidential advice. Don't take the initiative, let her do that; and the game will be far more successful than ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... if the monstrous concentration of his amiability, in keeping separate books for the criminal and poverty-stricken gentlemen of his establishment, must be duly appreciated. Marston, particularly, is requested to take the initiative, he being the most aristocratic fish the gaoler has caught in a long time. But the man has made his pen, and now he registers Marston's name among the state's forlorn gentlemen, commonly called poor debtors. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... unpleasant duty to perform. The brigade is founded and based on honor. We, the members, cannot allow that honor to be impugned by one who would otherwise be fitted to be a member of the brigade. As Mr. Jetson refuses to retract his words, and as some one must take the initiative, it is my disagreeable duty to move you, sir, that the second class decide that Mr. Jetson is no longer worthy to be of our number, and that he accordingly ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... "Imagination," Ribot says: "The free initiative of children is always superior to the imitations we ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... stop there. George Silver was a financier in the great style, and a superlatively honest one. He had the initiative, the knowledge, and above all the judgment that made some men call him the Napoleon of Threadneedle Street. At forty-five he launched the Union Bank of Brazil and Uruguay; and to that colossal undertaking he devoted the last twenty-five years of his ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... slight, confusion apparent in these expressions is manifest, and is ludicrously easy of correction. 'Aye, aye,' quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, 'Aye, aye! This lantern was carried by my forefather'—not fourth son, which is preposterous—'on the fifth of November. And HE was Guy Fawkes.' Here we have a remark at once consistent, clear, natural, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... they buried him, Francisco performing the service. Three more days passed before Leonard had any conversation with Juanna, who moved about the place, pale, self-contained, and silent. Nor would he have spoken to her then had she not taken the initiative. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... make difficult work even for the most ingenious apologists of Socialism. He was persuaded that no theory of Socialism could be put into successful practice without involving the loss of personal freedom, and that without Individualism there would be no initiative, no audacity, and no creative energy in the development of an industry. Whenever he was in conflict with Socialists he would say to them, "Why don't you buy me out and run the mines yourselves? You have plenty of money in your unions, and I am quite ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... realizing this, determined to supply the kinds of stimulus I lacked. This she did by repeating to me as far as possible, verbatim, what she heard, and by showing me how I could take part in the conversation. But it was a long time before I ventured to take the initiative, and still longer before I could find something appropriate to say at ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... justify his attitude. It was difficult at that time to believe in an honest officialdom putting the commonwealth above every personal or corporate interest, and reformers naturally looked to individual initiative as the source of progress. Secondly, and this was a more philosophic argument, the individual was supposed to understand his own interest best, and as the common good was the sum of individual interests, it followed that so far as every man was free to seek his own good, the good of ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... exceedingly lucky in the weather and in the lack of initiative on the part of the Turks. The Higher Command counted on 50 per cent, casualties but actually, on the last night, only two men were wounded on the way down to the beach—8 old guns, rendered useless, were left behind at Anzac, 250 cases of Sunlight soap, a few Indian carts minus their ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... seen a log, caught in an eddy in a flooded stream, apparently make such struggles to escape that the thing became almost uncanny in its semblance to life. Man himself often obeys just such unseen currents of race or history when he thinks he is acting upon his own initiative. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... life that she never required to be the central figure. When she had to play the part of a mere spectator it didn't depress her; she could delight in society and in character as if at a theatre. On the other hand, as she had a good deal of initiative and a strong personality, she could also revel in action, in playing a principal part. Under a quiet manner her courage was daring and her spirit high. Unless someone or something was actively tormenting her, to an extent quite insupportable, ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... calm exterior hid an inexhaustible fund of pride; whose inflexible purposes, nursed in secret, the confessional and the "manifestation of conscience" could hardly drag to the light; whose strong personality would not yield to the shaping hand; and who, by a necessity of his nature, could obey no initiative but his own,—was not after the model that Loyola had ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... and impracticable. The younger worker may think the older worker stodgy and in a rut. Perhaps both may be right. Happy the fellow workers who can learn to discuss their pet ideas without heat! Happy the fellow workers who can develop just the right combination of initiative and co-operation! ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... necessary now to turn from the actual visual facts and to study the statements of others. While doing so however, we must bear in mind the main outlines of the history of the Congo Free State. The opening up of the Congo was entirely due to the initiative of King Leopold of Belgium aided by the explorations of the late Sir H.M. Stanley. In 1878, after Stanley's first descent of the Congo, a society of philanthropists was formed called the Comite ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... will, this it is that accounts for the vast number of earnest, thoughtful, forward looking men and women who are passing over, and in many cases are passing from, traditional Christianity, and who either of their own initiative, or under other leadership, are going back to those simple, direct, God-impelling teachings of the Great Master. They are finding salvation in his teachings and his example, where they never could find it in various phases of the ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... though there were to be a reception in the house. Her ideas of what could take place in the Palazzo Montevarchi did not go beyond that staid form of diversion. She was ashamed, however, and reflected, besides, that she was only the youngest of the family and had no right to take the initiative in the matter of improvements. The time hung very heavily upon her hands. She tried to teach herself something about painting by looking at the pictures on the walls, spending a quarter of an hour before each with conscientious assiduity. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Wentworth, Miss Leonora Wentworth, Miss Dora Wentworth. "Sisters of his, I suppose, William," she said in an undertone; "now do be civil, dear." There was no time for anything more before the three ladies sailed in. Miss Leonora took the initiative, as ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... application to this case. Supply must precede demand. Furnish the Pacific Railroad to the continent, and the continent in ten years will give it all the business it can do. Wait fifty years for the continent to take the initiative, and there will not yet be enough business to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... has been recently decided to change this structure into an oratory, and to build another library, and we presume that in this also Mr. Lenox takes the initiative. We have referred to the fact that Mr. Lenox only considers written applications, but lest this statement should lead to their increase, we would add a word of explanation. Their number has already become so large as to create a great burden, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... what he has told you? I mean, of course, as regards myself," said Lucy. Lady Lufton, before she answered this question, began to reflect that the young lady was taking too much of the initiative in this conversation, and was, in fact, playing the game in her own fashion, which was not at all in accordance with those motives which had induced Lady Lufton to send for her. "He has told me that he ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... true, is of some interest as reporting a curious exception to a world-wide custom commonly regarded as directly determined by the difference of nature between the sexes, the report, namely, that among the Kalabits the initiative in all love-making is taken by the women. We have no detailed information in regard to their courtship and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... loved to work; but, unless the stimulus were maintained the natural indolence of my disposition asserted itself, and I wasted my powers in dreams and trifles. My memory was very quick and retentive, in the main, but curiously capricious. I always lacked initiative and decision. At college my successes were continued. I gained medals and prizes, passed my examinations easily, and graduated 'with first-class honors.' In my professional lifework I have been successful rather beyond ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... word." Jesus' study of the parchment rolls in Nazareth was standing Him in good stead now. Through many a prayerful hour over that Word had come the trained ear, the waiting spirit, the doing of things only at the Father's initiative. He could make bread, but He wouldn't, unless the Father gave the word. It was not simply that He would not act at the tempter's suggestion, but He would not act at all except at the Father's word. And to this Jesus remained true, ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... the whole, however, my attempt was vain. To have had a chance of succeeding in it, required a different position from mine. It was a task only for one who, being himself in Parliament, could have mixed with the Radical members in daily consultation, could himself have taken the initiative, and instead of urging others to lead, could have ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... to the good simple Pope with the New Testament in his hand. An outbreak, or at least a radical change and even inversion of affairs hardly to be achieved without an outbreak, everybody felt was inevitable in France: but it had been universally expected that France would as usual take the initiative in that matter; and had there been no reforming Pope, no insurrectionary Sicily, France had certainly not broken out then and so, but only afterwards and otherwise. The French explosion, not anticipated by the cunningest ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Alicia, as if expecting some suggestion from her, but her companion was too much overwhelmed to take any initiative. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... many a bank official express himself to the effect that a poor man with a vision and integrity was a better chance any day than a millionaire lacking a goal or scruples. But in the end he was swung from any initiative by a passive desire to even his score with Brauer. After all, it was diverting to wait for his ex-partner's next move. Brauer had had no compunctions in tricking him. Why, then, should he worry? No, it would be fun just ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Office, knowing little and caring less about that noble jewel in the British Crown, sent out as successor to so brilliant and successful an administrator—whom? One Sir James Robert Longden, a gentleman without initiative, without courage, and, above all, with a slavish adherence to red-tape and a clerk-like dread of compromising his berth. Having served for a long series of years in subordinate posts in [63] minor dependencies, the habit of being impressed and influenced by colonial magnates grew and gathered ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... morning-room. Mrs. Egremont was by far the most shy and shrinking of the party, but it was an occasion that showed her husband's complete tact and savoir favre. He knew perfectly well that the Kirkaldys knew all about it, and he therefore took the initiative. 'You are surprised to see us,' he said, as he gave his hand, 'but we could not leave the country without coming to thank Lady Kirkaldy for her kindness in assisting in following up the clue ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ran, "under very heavy shell fire on August 26th, 1916. Seeing that his men were becoming demoralised by the bombardment, Captain Dymond, on his own initiative, led a surprise attack against the enemy trenches. He found the Germans unprepared, and at the head of his men captured two lines of trenches along a front of two hundred and fifty yards. Captain ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... male," they too could "do it again." They do not expect to be confronted with the necessity, but both the Boys and the Orangemen of Derry, with all their co-religionists, are deeply pledged to resist a Dublin Parliament. "We would not take the initiative, but would merely stand on our own defence, and offer a dogged resistance. We have a tolerable store of arms, although this place was long a proclaimed district, and we have fifteen modern cannon, two of which are six-pounders, the rest mostly four-pounders, and one or two two-pounders, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the garden too and worked. And his work Neville felt that she too could have done; it was work needing initiative and creative thought, work suitable to his forty-five years, not cramming in knowledge from books. Neville at times thought that she too would stand for parliament one day. A foolish, childish game it was, and probably ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... field of astronomy is so vast, and the quantity of work urgently required to be done so far beyond the power of any one nation, that a combination to avoid all such waste was extremely desirable. When, in 1895, my preliminary results were published, he took the initiative in a project for putting the idea into effect, by proposing an international conference of the directors of the four leading ephemerides, to agree upon a uniform system of data for all computations pertaining to the fixed stars. This conference was held in Paris in May, 1896. After ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... a second chance, after the possibility of a broad handling of the settlement by the Czar, and as a very much bigger probability, is the insistence by America upon her right to a voice in the ultimate settlement and an initiative from the Western Hemisphere that will lead to a world congress. There are the two most hopeful sources of that great proposal. It is the tradition of British national conduct to be commonplace to the pitch of dullness, and all the stifled intelligence of Great Britain will beat in ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... when once set up this new personality can occasionally assume the initiative, and can say what it wants to say without any prompting. This is curiously illustrated by what may be termed a conjoint epistle addressed to Professor Janet by Madame B. and her secondary self, Leonie II. "She had," ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... towards Fredericksburg was not a sudden idea of Hooker's, but the result of a carefully studied plan. In his order of April 3, to Sedgwick, he says that he proposes to assume the initiative, advance along the plank road, and uncover Banks's Ford, and at once throw bridges across. Gen. Butterfield, in a communication to Sedgwick of April 30, says, "He (Hooker) expected when he left here, if he met with no serious opposition, to be on the heights ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... bring my reflections on the preceding legends to an end. Polygamy apparently was unknown in the distant times we are considering. But the marriage bond was not indissoluble, and the initiative in the separation ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... Chicago in 1912, through the initiative of Mrs. McCulloch, a "preferential" ballot on the question of suffrage for women was taken. This was merely an expression of opinion by the voters as to whether they favored it, which the Democratic Judge of Elections, John E. Owens, allowed to be taken, but it had no legal standing. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... have all passed through that terrible, skillful education, elaborated through centuries, which kills all initiative in a man, and that they are so trained to mechanical obedience that at the word of command: "Fire!—All the line!— Fire!" and so on, their guns will rise of themselves and the habitual movements will be performed. But "Fire!" now does not mean ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... of that initiative which was such a conspicuous trait in the young man. He had come back to see the performances of his company, and had watched them with swelling pride. Several times he said, and with ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... automatic employee can develop high efficiency. She does not want to become efficient; she wants merely to receive a pay envelope at the end of the week. In order to develop responsibility and initiative in their employees the Filenes have put them on a self-governing basis. The workers do not literally make their own rules, but the vote of the majority can change any rule made by the firm. The firm furnishes its employees with a printed book of rules, in which the policy of the store ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... flattering account of us from Eiulo, was not satisfied until he had bestowed upon each one of us, Johnny included, similar tokens of his regard, Max rushing forward, with an air of "empressement," and taking the initiative, as he had promised. The "surgeon," who seemed to think that some friendly notice might also be expected from him, in virtue of his official character, now advanced with a patronising air, and in his turn paid us the same civilities, not omitting ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... with her fears. Lady Purcell was not wont to take the initiative, still less one of her husband's horses, without his approval; but the thought of the saturated side-saddle lent her decision, and as soon as a horse and trap could be got ready she set forth ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... American spirit of initiative had entered deep into the soul of Edward Bok. The brother had left school a year before, and found a place as messenger in a lawyer's office; and when one evening Edward heard his father say that the office boy in his department ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... had, in fact, faced the world together. Now she was gone, and for ever behind him was the gap in life, the tear in the veil, through which his life seemed to drift slowly, as if he were drawn towards death. He wanted someone of their own free initiative to help him. The lesser things he began to let go from him, for fear of this big thing, the lapse towards death, following in the wake of his beloved. Clara could not stand for him to hold on to. She wanted him, but not to understand him. He felt she wanted the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... made up his mind to accost them, but he was reserved by nature and it cost him an effort to take the initiative. In his case silence was always golden; in his own cynical language, he refused to tout for a cheap popularity by saying ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Macpherson had suggested, but the captain assumed the responsibility of carrying us to Newfoundland, saying that we should go as his guests. He is a former member of the Newfoundland parliament, and a man of influence as well as initiative, and it was lucky for us that he commanded the Aurora, else we, in all probability, should have had to push farther down the coast with dogs, or waited at Battle Harbour for the first appearance of ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... important political subdivisions in Santo Domingo are the communal governments, and whatever progress has been made in the Republic has been due largely to their initiative. They correspond to the Spanish "municipios" and the French "communes." In Santo Domingo the French name was introduced during Haitian occupation. The various towns constitute the centers of government, their jurisdiction extends over the surrounding rural ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... the purest love and truth were seated in the young man's eyes; but Heaven, in its time, might appoint a way of bringing him to such knowledge. Catherine expected a good deal of Heaven, and referred to the skies the initiative, as the French say, in dealing with her dilemma. She could not imagine herself imparting any kind of knowledge to her father, there was something superior even in his injustice and absolute in his mistakes. But she could at least be good, and if she were only good enough, ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... with Clarke as one of the most active members of the Newport church, and as the date of the organization is uncertain, there is some reason to suspect that he was a constituent member, and that as a baptized man he took the initiative in baptizing and organizing. At any rate we have in Lucar an interesting connecting link between early ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... calling. Ever since his aunt had adopted him in far-away Scotland, where he was born of obscure parentage in 1833, he had led a life of complete dependence, not altogether cheerless but deadening to initiative and handicapping him terribly for the task of making his way in the world. His health was broken, his pockets were empty, he was without friends. Cast upon his own resources under such conditions, it seemed but too probable that failure and an early death ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... could not generally be mixed, for the obvious reasons that such women as did not have young children would be pregnant a good deal of the time, or likely to become so. Moreover, a hunter and fighter must not have his courage, ferocity and physical initiative undermined ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... seldom inflicted, except on those condemned to death, as almost no one ever survived it, the sufferer's legs being crushed to a pulp before he left the torturer's bands. In this case M. de Laubardemont on his own initiative, for it had never been done before, added two wedges to those of the extraordinary torture, so that instead of eight, ten were to be ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... inclined to procrastinate in a matter which did not concern them personally, had put off bringing the suit until they returned to Tours. Consequently the friends of Mademoiselle Gamard had taken the initiative, and told the affair wherever they could to the injury of Birotteau. The lawyer, whose practice was exclusively among the most devout church people, amazed Madame de Listomere by advising her not to embark on such a suit; he ended the consultation by saying that "he himself ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the active recognition of things and people and of all the ominous or pliable forces of nature. For essences, being eternal and non-existent in themselves, cannot come to consciousness by their own initiative, but only as occasion and the subtle movements of the soul may evoke their forms; so that the fact that they are given to consciousness has a natural status and setting in the material world, and is part of the same natural ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... had left no directions with regard to his funeral, and it was fitting that it should receive the highest honour Sovereign and people could pay. But the Queen refrained from issuing an order, preferring that the country should take the initiative. It was necessary to wait till the 11th of November, when Parliament must meet. In the meantime the body of the Duke was placed under a Guard of Honour at Walmer. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... saw that the Court would act upon their own initiative, I resolved to declare war against them and attack Mazarin in person, because otherwise we could not escape being first attacked ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... says no to all initiative and he considers that he has accomplished his whole duty toward society and toward himself when he says: "What's the use of undertaking this or that? I haven't a chance of succeeding and it is therefore ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... in it, were justified in rendering decisions upon new points arising out of circumstances as they occurred. Thus, measures are cited passed by Rashi upon the payment of taxes, Christian wine, the Mezuzah, phylacteries, etc. These measures resulted not so much from his own initiative as from the requests preferred to him by his disciples, or by other rabbis, or ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... our individual "intimations," listening, attent, for ourselves to her oracles, and making, to use the phrase of one of the profoundest of modern Nature-seers, our own "reading of earth." Such was Wordsworth's initiative, and, as some one has said, "we are all Wordsworthians today." That pagan creed, in which Wordsworth passionately wished himself suckled, is not "outworn." He himself, in his own austere way, has, more than any one man, verified ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... this golden key to the avenues of opportunity. She would not take him to school, but she would teach him each day all that she herself had learned. He was not difficult to teach, but learned, indeed, with what seemed to Cicely marvelous ease,—always, however, by her lead, and never of his own initiative. For while he could do a man's work, he was in most things but a child, without a child's curiosity. His love for Cicely appeared the only thing for which he needed no suggestion; and even that possessed an element of childish dependence that would have seemed, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... might well be called the cavalry of the sea. It calls for dashing initiative, aggressiveness and courage and daring to the point of rashness. Where an officer would be justified —even duty bound — by navy standards to run away with a bigger and more valuable vessel, the commander of a destroyer often must close ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... who, in their turn, decide whether the courtship may go on or not. That's not the worst of it, even yet! In some cases—where we haven't the slightest intention of falling in love with each other—the governing body takes the initiative. 'You two will do well to marry; we see it, if you don't. Just think of it, will you?' You may laugh; some of our happiest marriages have been made in that way. Our governors in council act on an established principle: here it is ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... THROUGH the initiative of a prominent citizen, Edinburgh has been in possession, for some autumn weeks, of a gallery of paintings of singular merit and interest. They were exposed in the apartments of the Scotch Academy; and filled those who are accustomed ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I can no longer contradict your imperial highness, I cannot deny that many a wrong has been inflicted on you and us; that you have have always been prevented from taking the initiative in a vigorous manner; that you and your army have constantly been kept in a secondary and dependent position; that your plans have incessantly been frustrated, and that your superiors have often done the reverse of what you wished ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... conclusions, not from one source, but from all the sources of information they possessed. At all events, isolated as I was at Washington, I could not confine myself merely to the task of furnishing my Government with information; but was compelled on occasion to act on my own initiative, in order to prevent any premature development in the diplomatic situation ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... conscious of itself as Socialism. But when the conscious Socialists of England discover their position they also will probably fall into two parties: a Collectivist party supporting a strong central administration, and a counterbalancing Anarchist party defending individual initiative against that administration. In some such fashion progress and stability will probably be secured under Socialism by the conflict of the uneradicable Tory and Whig instincts ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... and province of Languedoc. He was, therefore, a man of the south. On the registers he was inscribed as a son of Bernard-Thomas Balssa, laboureur, or peasant farmer; but he subsequently changed his name to Balzac. Recent investigations have disclosed the fact that—whether by his own initiative or that of his son—he was the first to employ the "de" before the family name, prefixing it in the announcements made of the marriage of ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... of one general plan directed, and most properly, to overwhelm and destroy the detachments—Dundee and Ladysmith—in detail; they together being rightly considered one fraction of the enemy's whole force, present or hurrying over sea. So regarded, the vigour with which the British took the initiative, assumed the offensive, themselves in turn attacking in detail, and severely punishing, the separate factors of the enemy's {p.057} combination, is worthy of great praise. Sir Penn Symons is perhaps entitled ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... of a savage of the savages, but Robert, startled at first by the unexpected appearance of such an enemy, called to his aid the forest stoicism that he had learned and sat down, calm, outwardly at least. The initiative was not his now, nor that of his comrades, and he glanced anxiously at de Courcelles to see how he would take this rude invasion of his camp. The French colonel looked at Tandakora, then at Jumonville, and Jumonville looked at him. The two shrugged their shoulders, and ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... and manuals. This is one of the most deadening devices that we have instituted to economize gray matter and increase the quantity of laboratory records at the expense of real initiative and thinking. It is easy for the reader to analyze for himself the mental reaction, or lack of it, of the student in following the usual detailed laboratory outline. Every laboratory exercise should be an educative situation calling for ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... social order will impose minute and unwelcome regulations upon individual life and effort, and that a degree of coercive control will be established which will end by making individuals mere cogs in the machine, diminishing their importance, curtailing their usefulness and initiative far more than is done by the great industrial corporations against which the working classes already are ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... he crouched there. He wanted to feel decisive; but the weary walk, heavily-laden as he was, had dulled his brain a little, and he could not come to a conclusion as to whether it would not be best to take the initiative and attack at once, trusting to their sudden appearance and the shots they could be creating a panic; for it was not likely that the enemy would imagine such an attack would be made unless by a force at least equal ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... anticipations of what so gifted a people might become. After a while, however, if questioned, he would confess himself disappointed—that after the first extraordinary show of intelligence no progress was made—that they seemed marvellous in the initiative, but did nothing after. They speedily grew weary of whatever they could do or say, no matter in what fashion, and impatiently desired to try something new. The John Bull contentedness to attain perfection in some one ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Stirling, and, as he confidently boasted, to drive the rebels before him. Prince Charles, leaving a few hundred men to continue the siege, matched out to Bannockburn. The English did not move out from Falkirk, and the prince, after waiting for a day, determined to take the initiative. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... that the word is hard to pronounce;—I had, I say, the protection of my cousin the stadtholder of Holland; but without the intervention, or at least without the authorization of France, the stadtholder would not take the initiative. I came, then, to ask this authorization of the king of France, who has ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... appeared wholly unpromising, turned out to be of cardinal value. We should be warned that what we gain in a thousand cases through time-clock and card-catalogue methods, might be lost ten times over through the shackling of the initiative of a single man of unrecognized genius. And all this would be very much to the purpose; but it is not upon any such special pleading that the case ought to be made to rest. The loss that would be suffered transcends ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... through the objectionable 'discursive philosophies' before mentioned,—come to consider himself somewhat of a stuffed Dummy or figure-head; and to wonder what would be the result, if with caution and prudence, he were to act more on his own initiative, and speak as he often thought it would be wise and well to speak? He was but forty-five years old,—in the prime of life, in the plenitude of health and mental vigour,—was he to pass the rest of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... year at college Hal had listened to lectures upon political economy, filled with the praises of a thing called "Private Ownership." This Private Ownership developed initiative and economy; it kept the wheels of industry a-roll, it kept fat the pay-rolls of college faculties; it accorded itself with the sacred laws of supply and demand, it was the basis of the progress and prosperity wherewith America ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... informed that in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and the girl's father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley almost shed tears of gratification. Here was something like woman's rights; here was a flash of the glorious dawn of equality between the sexes; for when ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... he has not had a glimpse of one of them. He has not even found at the Elysee any old remains of the socialist meditations of Ham. He has added several new crimes to his first one, and in this he has been logical. With the exception of these crimes he has produced nothing. Absolute power, no initiative! He has taken France and does not know what to do with it. In truth, we are tempted to pity this ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... then, according to the Thracian custom, pledged themselves in bowls of wine. There was further present at the elbow of Seuthes, Medosades, who on all occasions acted as his ambassador-in-chief. Xenophon took the initiative and spoke as follows: "You have sent to me, Seuthes, once and again. On the first occasion you sent Medosades yonder, to Chalcedon, and you begged me to use my influence in favour of the army crossing ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... things, that his love for her was, after his ambition, the strongest force in his character. Between him and his father there had existed ever since his babyhood a curious, silent, yet ineradicable hostility. Whether the fault was Oliver's or Harry's, whether the father resented the energy and the initiative of his son, or the son resented the indifference and the self-absorption of his father, Virginia had never discovered. For years she fought against admitting the discord between them. Then, at last, on the occasion of a quarrel, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... to one's mind immediately as the incessant round of exercises is mentioned, was rendered remote; for he gave his instructions, and especially used the chapter of faults, in a way to infuse into the souls of the novices the ever-recurring freshness of individual initiative. His model (after St. Alphonsus) was St. Francis de Sales. He followed him constantly in his doctrine and methods, and often spoke of him and quoted him. Of other methods and their advocates he spoke ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... be seen, also.) The signs of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company and its aliases squatted here and there all through the Torso coal region. As the Senator would say, it was a very successful business, "thanks to the initiative of Mr. Freke." And that poor Simonds, who had amply demonstrated his inability to survive, his utter lack of adaptation to his environment, by not being able to be friendly with the great A. and P., went—where all the inefficient, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... until expressly sanctioned by Parliament; and Parliament, or either house, would have the power not only of rejecting but of sending back a bill to the commission for reconsideration or improvement. Either house might also exercise its initiative by referring any subject to the commission, with directions to prepare a law. The commission, of course, would have no power of refusing its instrumentality to any legislation which the country desired. Instructions, concurred in by both houses, to draw up a bill which ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... to enlarge the canon till it includes so great and startling a genius, rather than to draw it close and exclude him. His work is practically certain to stand as archetypal for many future poetic efforts—so great is his power as an originator, so fervid his initiative. It forms incomparably the largest performance of our period in poetry. Victor Hugo's Legende des Siecles alone might be named with it for largeness, and even that with much less of a new starting-point in ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... with romance, but she had never thirsted so keenly to go on with her University work in her life as she did that day. She had never felt so acutely the desire for free initiative, for a life unhampered by others. At any cost! Her brothers had it practically—at least they had it far more than it seemed likely she would unless she exerted herself with quite exceptional vigor. Between her and the fair, far prospect of freedom and self-development ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Field Marshal in his dispatch speaks of the "brilliant and predominating part" played by the two Dominion Corps—the "skill and determination of the infantry," the "fine performance" of the cavalry. By this victory the British Army recovered the initiative it had temporarily lost. All was changed. And even more striking than the actual gains in ground, prisoners, and guns, was the effect upon the morale of both German and British troops. The Germans could hardly believe their defeat; the British exultantly knew that ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... appears that there was a counter manifestation of bourgeois National Guards, who arrived in military order with their arms. Jules Favre addressed them. Now as far as I can make out, these battalions went to the Hotel de Ville on their own initiative. No one, however, seems to see any incongruity in the friends of the Government making an armed demonstration as a protest against armed and unarmed demonstrations in general. The question of the municipal elections will lie dormant for a few days, but I see no evidence ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... and write 'certain edentulous persons.' Put 'masticate' instead of 'eat.' Then you must not say, 'What shall I do about it?' That sounds too helpless. You, or rather Higgins, must appear as a man of unbounded initiative and resource. You must write, 'I suggest that a special ration of soft food be issued to such persons.' That will help the Government of India to solve a very difficult problem, and Higgins ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... machine which operates our criminal system. Our costly courts must have occupation, our expensive jails must be kept full. We have succumbed to the disease which has been called legalism—the persuasion that the craving for individual initiative born of the unsettling of old faiths and the opening of new horizons, as well as the consequences of poverty, misery, ignorance, and hereditary incompetence—that this vast turning of the human tide, manifesting itself ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... of labor. There are weavers; so, of course, there is such a division of labor. It would be well enough to speak thus if the colony of weavers had arisen by the free will of its member's; but we know that it is not thus formed of their initiative, but that we make it. Hence it is necessary to find out whether we have made these weavers in accordance with an organic law, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... creek and found good colors. They harnessed their dogs, and with light outfits sledded to the place. Here, and possibly for the first time in the history of the Yukon, wood-burning, in sinking a shaft, was tried. It was Daylight's initiative. After clearing away the moss and grass, a fire of dry spruce was built. Six hours of burning thawed eight inches of muck. Their picks drove full depth into it, and, when they had shoveled out, another fire was started. They worked early and late, excited over ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... lonely initiative weeks Lewis's mind sought out Nadir and dwelt on it. He counted the months he had been away, and was astounded by their number. Never had time seemed so long and so short. He longed to talk to Natalie, to tell her the dream that had seized upon him and gradually become ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... before. This was very gratifying to Mr. Elkins, who drew largely upon hearsay, his own vivid imagination, and a healthy logic. He was very glad to talk to men who had the welfare of the range at heart, and he hoped soon to meet the man who had taken the initiative in giving barb wire its first serious setback on that rich and magnificent ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... the slavery agitation, and the conversion of it into an organized movement was an achievement of the first importance. To Garrison, more than to any man, or to all others put together, belongs the authorship of this immense initiative. He it was, who, having "announced the principle, arranged the method" of the Abolition movement. The marshaling of the anti-slavery sentiment of New England under a common standard, in a common cause, was ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... report has been given. She had declared herself to be afraid of Bios. She did not in the least doubt that great things might be ultimately done with Bios, but she did not quite see the way with her small capital,—thus humbly did she speak of her wealth,—to be one of those who should take the initiative in the matter. Bios evidently required a great deal of advertisement, and Lizzie Eustace had a short-sighted objection to expend what money she had saved on the hoardings of London. Then he opened to her the glories of Guatemala, not contenting ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... all who have any knowledge of the subject that the economic decadence of Ireland is not due to any lack of natural resources; neither is it due to insufficiency of capital or absence of workers. It is due to want of initiative, want of enterprise, want of business method, want of confidence, and want of education on the right lines. The education which should have been fashioned to fit the youth of Ireland for a life of work and industry and usefulness in their own land was invented with the express object of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... stop at home. It tightened the heart- strings—and the strings of the big purse that kept everything going. The established trades began to work shorter hours, and the less stable trades entirely ceased. Initiative drew in its horns; people began nothing new, and did no work for the warehouses; fear had entered into them. All who had put out their feelers drew them back; they were frostbitten, so to speak. The earth had withdrawn its sap into itself and had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... nail on the head when, in commenting on the existing abuses of kicking and dirty ball playing in the League arena, he says: "If the club owners would take the initiative in enforcing decorum upon their players, upon pain of fine or suspension, instead of shifting the burden and onus upon the umpire, the problem of order at ball games would be solved at once. But the majority of magnates and managers, ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... Prince Tsunehito, and then to inform the Bakufu of the accomplished fact. But, in consideration of the very friendly relations existing between the two Courts, the sovereign seems to have been unwilling to act on his own initiative in a matter ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... admiral, the commander of the Itsuku—I have completely forgotten his name—turned a deaf ear. October wore away, and any termination of my captivity seemed as distant as ever. I was obliged to put an end to it on my own initiative. One evening—the fourth or fifth of November it would be—we were outside Port Arthur. At dusk the gunboat anchored, and a boat was despatched on some errand of reconnaissance. A point of the coast was less than a mile distant, and ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... whose wife mothered him until he completely lost his initiative. He was sweet to her, but he really felt that life was made by her and he had to make no effort. Suddenly he met a woman who was weaker and more clinging than he was, and she awakened in him all his dormant chivalrous instincts. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... we will continue to call Jimmu,(47) had an elder brother, Prince Itsu-se, who seems, however, to have been less active and energetic than the younger. At least, even from the first it is Prince Jimmu who is represented as taking the initiative in the movements which were now begun. The two brothers consulted together and resolved to conduct an expedition towards the east. It will be remembered that their grandfather had established his palace on Mount ...
— Japan • David Murray
... real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention and with freedom. Now, in the animal, invention is never anything but a variation on the theme of routine. Shut up in the habits of the species, it succeeds, no doubt, in enlarging them by its individual initiative; but it escapes automatism only for an instant, for just the time to create a new automatism. The gates of its prison close as soon as they are opened; by pulling at its chain it succeeds only in stretching it. With man, consciousness breaks the chain. In man, and in man alone, it sets itself free. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a pity they were so inactive. Could not one or two of the more favoured sex manage to inspire them with a little initiative? ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the buttercups and the little wayside vetches. Naturally enough. That part of my father's prime to which he oftenest referred had fallen on the days when the great wave of political enthusiasm and belief in a speedy regeneration of all things had ebbed, and the supposed millennial initiative of France was turning into a Napoleonic empire, the sway of an Attila with a mouth speaking proud things in a jargon half revolutionary, half Roman. Men were beginning to shrink timidly from the memory of their own words and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... and scientific nature of the telephone art, an unusually high-grade personnel is required in all departments, and the amount of unskilled labor employed is relatively very small. No other art calls forth in a higher degree those qualities of initiative, judgment, skill, enterprise, and high character which have in all times distinguished the great achievements ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
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