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volition
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  • Time stands still as the horse stops of its own volition in front of the young woman.†   (source)
  • Langdon needed to return of his own volition.†   (source)
  • "Here, madam," squeaked the house-elf, and Harry saw two leather boxes, one on top of the other, moving across the room as if of their own volition, though he knew the tiny elf was holding them over her head as she wended her way between tables, pouffes, and footstools.†   (source)
  • She is frightening me now, because what I hear in her voice is indifference, a lack of volition.†   (source)
  • Its crew of four were ill at ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics—as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules.†   (source)
  • Bernie Kosar jumps up and in of his own volition and I slide in beside him.†   (source)
  • The obsessive cleanliness of the room was the only positive sign of volition from Estha.†   (source)
  • The next words tumbled out of her mouth without any volition on her part.†   (source)
  • But when he saw her stumble at the door of the movie theater, by his own volition he took another step toward the abyss with the sudden realization that he, and not she, might be the one to die first.†   (source)
  • He fought down an aching shiver, stared at the lightless void where his hand seemed to remain of its own volition.†   (source)
  • Also under hypnosis, people can say and do things 'not of their own volition.'†   (source)
  • Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.†   (source)
  • Afew days before we left Manzanar Papa decided that since we had to go, we might as well leave in style, and by our own volition.†   (source)
  • If that should happen-not that I believe it shall-then I will, of my own volition, lend my support to one of the other candidates, for I have no more desire than you to see a grimstnzborith elected who is hostile to the Varden.†   (source)
  • She had-of her own volition-done something nice for her son-her ridiculously spoiled son-and this was how he acted in return?†   (source)
  • While I was not prepared to hurl the white man into the sea, I would have been perfectly happy if he climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent of his own volition.†   (source)
  • Without volition he began to move through the familiar patterns.†   (source)
  • I had already been running through how I could get most of the boys to leave of their own volition.†   (source)
  • I sloshed the lamp from side to side as my feet began moving of their own volition toward the door of the maze.†   (source)
  • Volition at its lowest ebb.†   (source)
  • Srey Neth at the entrance to her home, right after we took her back to her family from the brothel (Nicholas D. Kristof) For the first five minutes, Neth claimed that she was selling her body of her own volition.†   (source)
  • Seabiscuit turned and walked back to the barn ofhis own volition.†   (source)
  • He wept weakly and without volition, and left without looking back.†   (source)
  • He realized that Clara did not belong to him and that if she continued living in a world of apparitions, three-legged tables that moved of their own volition, and cards that spelled out the future, she probably never would.†   (source)
  • But it was too late, because Hemlatha felt her limbs move as if by their own volition, fueled by anger and indignation.†   (source)
  • And then, not having planned it, the words seeming to come out of my mouth of their own volition, "Lieutenant, it's me, I'm Justice of Toren One Esk."†   (source)
  • For it was as though I were looking at my own legs for the first time-independent objects that could of their own volition lead me to safety or danger.†   (source)
  • Only the human spirit can act with volition and consciously change itself; it is the only thing in all creation that is not entirely at the mercy of forces outside itself, and it is, therefore, the most powerful and valuable form of energy in the universe.†   (source)
  • There's always the slim possibility that Rolf Luger was working with the Atropos of his own volition.†   (source)
  • Maybe taking Deo in hadn't been entirely an act of volition.†   (source)
  • She felt her power of volition knocked out by some single, dull blow that made her unable to move.†   (source)
  • Her head was pillowed in the curve of Hunter's shoulder, her body turned toward his of its own volition and by the weight of the arm held firmly around her.†   (source)
  • It lacked volition after all, and did not descend with a kind and quick stroke that would take him where the heart could not be broken.†   (source)
  • But on thinking I realized a phone could be switched on by central switching system without human intervention—if switching system had volition.†   (source)
  • Therefore he had to draw the man from Macao out — of his own volition.†   (source)
  • The machine-gun fires of its own volition--he ducks, spins, turns as the gods reach down to duck him, spin him, turn him.†   (source)
  • Eugene, who had once nearly drowned, remembered his discovery of the death of volition to stay up in the water.†   (source)
  • Nothing, of her own volition.†   (source)
  • "Everybody has to touch it," was what Oscar Johnson had said. "He'll listen to you. Go talk to him." So, sure, he'd gone down to the crater to talk sense to the kid. ... So he'd pressed the grenade against Cacciato's limp hand. Was it touching? Was it volition? Maybe so, maybe not.   (source)
    volition = of his own free will (done consciously and voluntarily)
  • "Wish me luck," she said, and then her feet were carrying her toward the dais steps, almost without her volition, and then she was standing on the dais and turning to face the crowd.   (source)
    volition = will (conscious choice)
  • Without volition I leaned toward her, as a tree is swayed by the wind.   (source)
  • But now the children said that they had gone of their own volition.†   (source)
  • Or was that something of my own volition?†   (source)
  • I flip my lights on to see the blue mat being moved away as though of its own volition.†   (source)
  • I believe he is not there entirely of his own volition, Your Majesty.†   (source)
  • Down they fell, onto the men who were lying unseen, jagged and dark and without volition, far below.†   (source)
  • It wasn't something I'd have seen of my own volition.†   (source)
  • This they did of their own volition, and they did it again and again.†   (source)
  • Without his volition, absolutely against his will, Jace's hands began to rise.†   (source)
  • These words came without his volition.†   (source)
  • In the very first degree, Masons celebrated "the most august gift ever offered to God …. the submission of Abraham to the volitions of the supreme being by proffering Isaac, his firstborn …."†   (source)
  • After that, they left the forest behind entirely, and the Talita glided on the river, across the plains, seemingly of its own volition.†   (source)
  • She heard Simon cry out in pain; her own feet moved without volition and she ran forward, only to be hurled back as if she had struck an invisible wall.†   (source)
  • My knee bounces of its own volition.†   (source)
  • He had done what he had done without volition of his own, but Simon doubted Jace would be able to forgive himself, regardless.†   (source)
  • Caroline felt herself rising then, almost beyond her own volition, her purse in front of her like a shield.†   (source)
  • The day when he grasps that matter has no volition is the day when he grasps that he has-and this is his birth as a human being.†   (source)
  • To be unable to move of your own volition, to be unable to sense the world around you except through the minds of others, and to only be able to influence the course of events with your thoughts and with rare and unpredictable flashes of magic; it would be a difficult existence to embrace for most any creature, but especially dragons, who are the freest of all beings.†   (source)
  • Mike had bolshoyeh volition.†   (source)
  • The pain was like a slap; he moved forward, almost without volition, and grabbed the cup out of the Inquisitor's hand.†   (source)
  • Pain jarred up his spine, and he realized with surprise that somehow, without any volition of his own, his legs had moved him forward that last crucial step.†   (source)
  • And your victims should discover that it is their own volition-which you cannot force-that makes you possible.†   (source)
  • He believes that physical objects are endowed with a mysterious volition, moved by causeless, unpredictable whims, while he is a helpless pawn at the mercy of forces beyond his control.†   (source)
  • They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you-just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition.†   (source)
  • The water tower cracked and its shreds hit the ground white its wheel was still describing a long curve through the air, as if of its own leisurely volition.†   (source)
  • "The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin, "A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality.†   (source)
  • …but only with the material of knowledge, which his mind must learn to integrate-the day when he grasps that his senses cannot deceive him, that physical objects cannot act without causes, that his organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or to distort, that the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must identify…†   (source)
  • A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost-yet such is their image of man's nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable exists.†   (source)
  • A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior.†   (source)
  • His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice.†   (source)
  • As a being of volitional consciousness, he knows that he must know his own value in order to maintain his own life.†   (source)
  • You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner's terms, by trade and by volitional consent.†   (source)
  • The key to what you so recklessly call 'human nature,' the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness.†   (source)
  • Fear and guilt are your chronic emotions, they are real and you do deserve them, but they don't come from the superficial reasons you invent to disguise their cause, not from your 'selfishness,' weakness or ignorance, but from a real and basic threat to your existence: fear, because you have abandoned your weapon of survival, guilt, because you know you have done it volitionally.†   (source)
  • Admit that the whole of your struggle, your doubts, your fakes, your evasions, was a desperate quest for escape from the responsibility of a volitional consciousness-a quest for automatic knowledge, for instinctive action, for intuitive certainty-and while you called it a longing for the state of an angel, what you were seeking was the state of an animal.†   (source)
  • It was almost as if he had willed the word and she had spoken it without her own volition.†   (source)
  • …and blood and home to become a follower and dependant of the rejected suitor for four years before killing him apparently for the very identical reason which four years ago he quitted home to champion; and this lover who apparently without volition or desire became involved in an engagement which he seems neither to have sought nor avoided, who took his dismissal in the same passive and sardonic spirit, yet four years later was apparently so bent upon the marriage to which up to that…†   (source)
  • The hero can go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father's city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent, as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god Poseidon.†   (source)
  • He did it without plan or design, almost without volition, as if his feet ordered his action and not his head.†   (source)
  • It is as though out of his subconscious he produces without volition the few crystallizations of stated instances by which his dead life in the actual world had been governed and ordered once.†   (source)
  • …which might have existed just as well upon a lighthouse rock, which had not even taught me how to cultivate a bed of flowers, let alone a kitchen garden, which had taught me to look upon fuel and meat as something appearing by its own volition in a woodbox or on a pantry shelf Judith created by circumstance (circumstance? a hundred years of careful nurturing, perhaps not by blood, not even Coldfield blood, but certainly by the tradition in which Thomas Sutpen's ruthless will had…†   (source)
  • Tell me one thing of thy own volition.†   (source)
  • Perhaps he was conscious of somewhere within him the two severed wireends of volition and sentience lying, not touching now, waiting to touch, to knit anew so that he could move.†   (source)
  • …as the object of that complete and abnegant devotion which only a youth, never a woman, gives to another youth or a man; who for exactly a year now had seen the sister succumb to that same spell which the brother had already succumbed to, and this with no volition on the seducer's part, without so much as the lifting of a finger, as though it actually were the brother who had put the spell on the sister, seduced her to his own vicarious image which walked and breathed with Bon's body.†   (source)
  • Now and of thy own volition.†   (source)
  • His men anyway assumed and accepted this; after the sleepless night, the tenseness, the holiday, the suttee of volition's surrender, they were almost at the pitch where they might die for him, if occasion rose.†   (source)
  • It moved them: the temporary and abject helplessness of that which tantalised and frustrated desire; the smooth and superior shape in which volition dwelled doomed to be at stated and inescapable intervals victims of periodical filth.†   (source)
  • It was as if out of her knowledge that it was just a flow that must presently react was born a wilder fury, a fierce denial that could flag itself and him into physical experimentation that transcended imagining, carried them as though by momentum alone, bearing them without volition or plan.†   (source)
  • By no conscious volition of his own, the thing had drifted into his hands.†   (source)
  • Without volition I leaned toward her, as a tree is swayed by the wind.†   (source)
  • But once in the stream he seemed to lose volition, to become a part of that dusty rout.†   (source)
  • At such times you go by my volition and not by his.†   (source)
  • Without volition, like a drunken man, he stormed to Wickett's room, protesting, "I suppose you're right.†   (source)
  • Of this maritime Chief of Police the ship's-corporals, so called, were the immediate subordinates, and compliant ones; and this, as is to be noted in some business departments ashore, almost to a degree inconsistent with entire moral volition.†   (source)
  • But as she sat there amid her guests, she felt the old ennui overtaking her; the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition.†   (source)
  • She lay in a state of percipience without volition, and the rustle of the straw and the cutting of the ears by the others had the weight of bodily touches.†   (source)
  • In the horrid pain and surprise of the moment—I scarce can say it was by my own volition, and I am sure it was without a conscious aim—both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my hands.†   (source)
  • As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward died down, he continued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift, bow-legged run.†   (source)
  • The Count, even if he takes the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition, and so cannot leave the ship.†   (source)
  • It was an act of intelligent volition.†   (source)
  • He had discovered that it was different from the other walls long before he had any thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions.†   (source)
  • Without volition as it were, as if indeed the ship's populace were but the vehicles of some vocal current electric, with one voice from alow and aloft came a resonant sympathetic echo—"God bless Captain Vere!†   (source)
  • We are to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought.†   (source)
  • It seemed as though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life.†   (source)
  • In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty—so impracticable by her few and rigid faculties—of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition.†   (source)
  • He seized her hand, and then volition seemed to leave her, and she went off into a state of passivity.†   (source)
  • Tell me that any man living wants to work all his days, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant eye of a master, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition, on the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food and shelter to keep him in working order!†   (source)
  • The moment the weight of Hetty was felt in the light craft the canoe withdrew, stern foremost, as if possessed of life and volition, until it was a hundred yards from the shore.†   (source)
  • …art—one of those masterly productions of grace, method, and elegance in which the whole corps de ballet, from the principal dancers to the humblest supernumerary, are all engaged on the stage at the same time; and a hundred and fifty persons may be seen exhibiting the same attitude, or elevating the same arm or leg with a simultaneous movement, that would lead you to suppose that but one mind, one act of volition, influenced the moving mass—the ballet was called "Poliska."†   (source)
  • In this state, the waiter's dismal intelligence about the ships immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my uneasiness about Ham.†   (source)
  • These fearful precursors of a coming struggle produced no change in the countenances and movements of his three guides, so far as Duncan could discover, except that the strokes of their paddles were longer and more in unison, and caused the little bark to spring forward like a creature possessing life and volition.†   (source)
  • The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of Borodino not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition.†   (source)
  • But even when the general fact which governs the private volition of all individuals is supposed to be discovered upon the earth, the principle of human free-will is not secure.†   (source)
  • An intensity in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence.†   (source)
  • Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering sea.†   (source)
  • As it becomes extremely difficult to discern and to analyze the reasons which, acting separately on the volition of each member of the community, concur in the end to produce movement in the old mass, men are led to believe that this movement is involuntary, and that societies unconsciously obey some superior force ruling over them.†   (source)
  • A man is only conscious of himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is conscious of his volition.†   (source)
  • In every other respect, the captive seemed at liberty; still he was excluded from all participation in the discourse, and possessed much more of the air of some finely molded statue than a man having life and volition.†   (source)
  • …an immense beetle, and I assure you it was never without emotion that I gazed on it, for I could not help thinking how wonderful it was that these various signs should be made to cleave the air with such precision as to convey to the distance of three hundred leagues the ideas and wishes of a man sitting at a table at one end of the line to another man similarly placed at the opposite extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of volition on the part of the sender of the message.†   (source)
  • Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is—by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect.†   (source)
  • Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples *—as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him—he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive life—that is to say, for history—whatever had to be performed.†   (source)
  • It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.†   (source)
  • …it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not…†   (source)
  • Then it was dawn, or almost, and it was cold a chill which struck through the worn patched thin clothing, through the something of weariness and undernourishment; the passive ability, not the volitional will, to endure, there was light somewhere, enough of it for him to distinguish Bon's sleeping face from among the others where he lay wrapped in his blankets, beneath his spread cloak; enough light for him to wake Bon by and for Bon to distinguish his face (or perhaps something…†   (source)
  • …house where even yet, after four years, the aunt still seemed to be just beyond any door with her hand already on the knob and which Ellen would fill with ten or fifteen minutes of shrill uproar and then depart, taking with her the dreamy and volitionless daughter who had not spoken one word; and Miss Rosa who in actual fact was the girl's aunt and who by actual years should have been her sister and who in actual experience and hope and opportunity should have been the niece, ignoring…†   (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-less" in volitionless means without and reverses the meaning of volition. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
  • I remember bow as we stood there joined by that volitionless (yes: it too sentient victim just as she and I were) hand, I cried—perhaps not aloud, not with words (and not to Judith, mind: perhaps I knew already, on the instant I entered the house and saw that face which was at once both more and less than Sutpen, perhaps I knew even then what I could not, would not, must not believe)—I cried And you too?†   (source)
  • …the next Christmas, and that summer passed, the last summer, the last summer of peace and content, with Henry, doubtless without deliberate intent, pleading Bon's suit far better than Bon, than that indolent fatalist had ever bothered to plead it himself, and Judith listening with that serenity, that impenetrable tranquillity which a year or so before had been the young girl's vague and pointless and dreamy unvolition but was now already a mature woman's—a mature woman in love—repose.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unvolition means not and reverses the meaning of volition. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
  • And as he sat in the shadows of the ruined garden on that August night three months later and heard the clock in the courthouse two miles away strike ten and then eleven, he believed with calm paradox that he was the volitionless servant of the fatality in which he believed that he did not believe.†   (source)
  • Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition, Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs, And wonders within there yet.†   (source)
  • I'll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy, Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete, With the banner and pennant a-flapping.†   (source)
  • …from My Ribb'd Breast Only Not heaving from my ribb'd breast only, Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself, Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs, Not in many an oath and promise broken, Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition, Not in the subtle nourishment of the air, Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists, Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease, Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only, Not in cries,…†   (source)
  • You occult deep volitions, You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself, giving not taking law, You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and love and aught that comes from life and love, You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America, age upon age working in death the same as life,) You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space, You hidden national will lying in…†   (source)
  • Sense, perception, judgment, desire, volition, memory, imagination, are found to be separated by such delicate shades and minute gradations that their boundaries have eluded the most subtle investigations, and remain a pregnant source of ingenious disquisition and controversy.†   (source)
  • His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.†   (source)
  • What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities?†   (source)
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