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Live up to   /laɪv əp tu/   Listen
Live up to

verb
1.
Meet the requirements or expectations of.  Synonyms: fulfil, fulfill, satisfy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Live up to" Quotes from Famous Books



... with confidence he was far from feeling, and was dimly aware that Araminta had the faith he lacked. "She thinks I'm a wonder-worker," he said to himself, grimly, "and I've got to live up to it." ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... few outlines of this truly interesting story be founded on fact or not, we cannot forbear to say that God will assuredly, sooner or later, fully reward all those who live up to the holy principles and precepts of his own blessed truth, and he is no less faithful in punishing every proud ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... he had been unable to leave his bed. The rest of the time he had dragged himself around, trying to live up to his resolve, to get at the meaning of the present, to turn his sister Lorna from the path of dalliance. And he had ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... Aunt Isabel, kissing her niece in the exuberance of her delight. "We will all call you Patricia. It is a beautiful name and suits you extremely well. You must stand very straight, and acquire dignified manners in order to live up to it." ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... won't vanish, because it's a most courteous little castle, which has been well brought up, and even though its greatness is gone, tries to live up to its traditions," said Jack. "It always appears to everyone it thinks likely to appreciate it; and I was certain it would be here in its ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... indeed. I didn't think you had it in you, kid. What's worrying me is that I can never live up to such a sure ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... twice your length of service possess. Now, I am not telling you this because I want to make you conceited—far from it; it is simply because I want you to understand that I have formed a very high opinion of you, and that I expect you to live up to it. D'ye ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... left by a grandfather; two brothers have the same, one of whom is likely to die before he is of age, which would produce 5,000l. more. The father in business, supposed to live up to his income. A rich, single aunt, but not on terms, on account of No. 14's love of waltzing. A prudent husband might easily ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... isn't it? And all our lives and all our happiness depend upon how we meet it. I am all different now. I am not the woman I was a half-hour ago. You must be brave for me now, and you must be strong for me and help me to do my duty. We must live up to the best that is in us and do what we think is right, no matter what risks we run, no matter what the consequences are. I would not have asked you to help me before—before what has happened—but now I need your help. You have said I helped you to be brave; help me to be brave ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... rented very cheaply with the understanding that various sums of money should be "passed across the bar," and it was considered a mean host or guest who failed to live up to this implied bargain. The consequence was that many a reputable party ended with a certain amount of disorder, due solely to the fact that the social instinct was traded upon and used as a basis for money making by an adroit host. From the beginning the young ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... of the life itself and by the hatred of all civilization arrayed against it. They had grown to value their marriage system by what it had cost them. They had been driven by the contempt of the world to argue for its sanctity, to live up to their declarations, and to raise it in their esteem to what it professed to be, the celestial order that prevailed in the Heavens! I knew, as well as President Woodruff did, the wrench it would give their hearts to have ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... man upon this planet, at this moment, on how he decides these questions. If he says Yes, he will live one kind of life, he will live up to his world. If he says No, he will have a mean world, smaller-minded than he is himself, and he will live ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... live up to similar views, Hamlet 'lost all his mirth.' This is the cause of his heavy disposition; of his having 'foregone all custom of exercise'—so 'that this goodly frame, the earth,' seems to him 'a sterile promontory,' a mere place ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... make her profession of faith to her husband in a mood which touched the high altitudes. She had gone without any conscious expectation of anything from him in the way of response. She had vaguely but confidingly expected him to live up to the moment. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... and to have such conundrums volleyed at you in a strange tongue is apt to be rather exhausting. However I have a reputation to live up to and must be as frightful as possible. I find the best thing to do is to refer them to the nearest notice-board, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... competitors, have no respect for their publicly pledged word, I would be willing to be equally indulgent. Mr. O'Connor, you have served a long time under me, and I am surprised at you! When James Wintermuth gets to the point where he is unable to live up to his promises, it will be time for him to quit. We are not in that ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... think I could help coming?" he ejaculated. "I can not tell you—words are inadequate to express what I feel," he went on,—"the deep gratitude, the humility, the wonder, the triumph, the determination, with God's aid, to live up to the high ideal you have set forth in your wonderful story. You have seen the latent qualities, the nobler potentialities; you have shown me to myself. Melinda! Do not think that I do not appreciate the difficulties of this hour for you. I know how your heart is shrinking, how your delicate ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... perspiring (he had been drinking no less than the clerk during the last quarter of an hour), jumped up from his seat and, waving both his arms above his head, shouted brokenly, "Sacrifice! Sacrifice! What pollution of such a holy word! Sacrifice! No one dares live up to thee, no one can fulfill thy commands, certainly not one of us here—and this fool, this miserable money-bag opens its belly, lets forth a few of its miserable roubles, and shouts 'Sacrifice!' And wants to be thanked, expects a wreath of ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... us into the Bentleys; and this my wife said she hated most of all; for we should have to live up to the notion of us imparted by a young man from the impressions of the moment when he saw us purple in the light of his dawning love. In justice to Glendenning, however, I must say that he did nothing, by a show of his ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... sphere into which you enter. You are of those who do not need training or experience: you are a genius, whose chief characteristic is adaptability. Some people, to whom nature and Providence have not been generous live up to things; to you it is given to live down to them; and no one can do it so well. We have had good times together—happy conversations and some cheerful and entertaining dreams and purposes. We have made ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... asked Tarzan. "And what assurance have I that you will live up to your end of the agreement? I have little reason to trust two such scoundrels as you and Rokoff, ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... arrived. She would no longer be the compliant little sister who would run Eileen's errands, wait upon her guests and wear disreputable clothing. When Linda reached a point where she was capable of the performance of the previous night, Marian knew that she would proceed to live up to her blue china in every ramification of life. She did not know exactly how Linda would follow up the assertion of her rights that she had made, but she did know that in some way she would follow it up, because Linda was a very close ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... apportioned for the riparian owners and their friends to the very end of the season. If, therefore, you have had kindly leave to fish any of these celebrated waters, and have been unable through bad weather to live up to the opportunities, I could almost weep with or for you; or, if you think strong language more manly, I would make an effort for once to meet you on that ground. I speak, alas, from the book. The wounds inflicted by jade Fortune ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... didn't talk about. You used to disappoint me because you said so little; but, all the same, your character influenced me without my knowing it; and whatever good there is in me, comes from my having known you and seen you live up to your own ideals. People wonder that worldly things attract me so little, and that my successes haven't turned my head; so they would have done, probably, if I had never met you; but having once ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... forty dollars, in place of the old scale of twenty dollars, for a working-week of one hundred and sixty-eight hours, because it don't make no difference if the Senate confirms the League of Nations or not, Abe, married business men will never live up to the clause which provides for an international working-day of eight hours—anyhow, so far as their wives ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... us of the appalling fate of the church of Laodicea. He said that it was not enough to have made a satisfactory confession of faith, nor even to have sealed that confession in baptism, if we did not live up to our protestations. Salvation, he told us, must indeed precede holiness of life, yet both are essential. It was a dark and rainy winter morning when he made this terrible address, which frightened ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... expressing. Their views may be right, may be more civilized, more 'advanced' than mine. No matter. They are not mine. I hold by the old standards—and you are my wife—mine. Do you understand?" All this as tranquilly as if we were discussing fair weather. "And you will live up to the obligation which the marriage service has ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... Victor Hugo, Milton or Abraham Lincoln, we must gravely doubt. "I am not bound to win," says Lincoln, whom we may take as the spokesman of the trio, "but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right; stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong." In view of the wilful trespass committed by Italians on the property ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... worse books than Delphine. It is excellently written; there is no bad blood in it; there is no intentional licentiousness; on the contrary, there are the most desperate attempts to live up to a New Morality by no means entirely of the Wiggins kind. But there is an absence of humour which is perfectly devastating: and there is a presence of the most disastrous atmosphere of sham sentiment, sham morality, sham almost everything, that can be imagined. It was hinted ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... women affect when they want to be cynical about the marriage tie. Well, Laura is doing her best to persuade me to be the instrument of Mr. Ingram's reform. She thinks it such a pity his life has not been so wholesome in tone as his novels. Her admiration of him is so great that she wants him to live up to her conception of the author of his novels, and I am to be sacrificed for the purpose. She is ten years my senior, and you will observe her interest in me is quite maternal. But I must tell you more about it another time. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... between codes and conduct has always existed—few religious persons live up to the standards that they regard as authoritative. This failure concerns not the sincerity of the religious society in setting up its standard, but the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... spiders begin to dig nests of their own when they are about half-grown. As to where they stay, or how they live up to that time, I have no clue. The young we found in several nests were very small, not more than an eighth of an inch long. Of the size and appearance of the male spider, and where he keeps himself, I ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... are: that is, if you intend to live up to your contract, and let me live up to mine. You have no idea how much more interesting this ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... is not a bad young fellow," the priest said. "He means well. He lives uprightly according to his dull, narrow ideas of right. And none of us can do any better than to live up to our own ideals. It's a good deal more than most of us do. I am afraid he is selfish," with the hesitation which he always felt in pronouncing judgment upon any one; "but then most of us men are, and maybe he ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... to the student body—Noblesse Oblige! Freely have you received, freely must you give. Tho the state does not, nor ever can, adequately pay you for your best services, still you must not falter. You must continue to live up to your own high ideals of your noble profession. The very acceptance of such positions in such an institution carries with it ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... the prophet Isaiah, "Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved" (Rom. ix. 27), so, we know by experience, that it is still the "remnant" only, which really live up to "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," and "press toward the mark for the prize" (Phil. iii. 14). "Many are called, but few ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge

... the first thought of Prescott. But swiftly his view changed. He realized about him, were hundreds of the flower of the young manhood of the United States. These young men were being trained in the ways of justice and honor, and were trying to live up to their ideals. ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... pressed to display his accomplishments. He chose during many months to hold himself in reserve, and to live up to the reputation of being quite a scholar, as far as scholarship goes among blacks. But in accordance with expectations, his pride and enthusiasm got the better of him. He produced two scraps of paper, on each of which were a number of sinuous lines ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... live up to it all," sighed Patty, as she looked at the enormous collection of iron, tin, wood, ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... People live up to every cent of their incomes, and often beyond them. It is no uncommon occurrence for a fine mansion, its furniture, pictures, and even the jewels and clothes of its occupants, to be pledged to some usurer for the means with which to carry on this life of luxury. Each ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... Daly, then with a sudden change of humor, "and now I'll do a little talking. I've listened to you just as long as I'm going to. I have Radway's contract in that safe and I live up to it. I'll thank you to go plumb ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... and to unite the people in resistance to every form of oppression. The Chinese have always believed in the divine right of kings; on the other hand, their kings must bear themselves as kings, and live up to their responsibilities as well as to the rights they claim. Otherwise, the obligation is at an end, and their subjects will have none of them. Good government exists in Chinese eyes only when the country is prosperous, free from war, pestilence and famine. Misgovernment is a sure sign ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... give them their due, it is better than merely beautiful women and luscious wine. There is a reality about them, and a desire to live up to their principles which is very grand. Their principles are no doubt bad, utterly antagonistic to all progress, unconscious altogether of the demand for progressive equality which is made by the united voices of suffering mankind. The man who is born a lord and who sees a dozen serfs around him ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... St. Patrick's Hall, too, with its elaborate painted ceiling, is an exceedingly handsome room, as is the Long Gallery. At my father's first Drawing-Room, when I officiated as page, the perpetual kissing tickled my fancy so, that, forgetting that to live up to my new white-satin breeches and lace ruffles I ought to wear an impassive countenance, I absolutely shook, spluttered and wriggled with laughter. The ceremony appeared to me interminable, for ten-year-old legs soon get tired, and ten-year-old eyelids grow ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... not as a present Father and constant Friend, but as One to whom they can turn in time of need. They have a vague feeling of unworthiness, although no clear sense of sin. Yet they also have an inarticulate belief or intuition that they have tried, however brokenly or unsuccessfully, to live up to such light as they had or to some standard of their own. They feel that somehow, though they have often failed, at bottom they are not so very bad, and that God is very, very good. Their vague feeling would probably ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... healing the cut had drawn the skin so that the lids of the eye were pulled awry in a perpetual, villainous squint. It was said that before this wound Flint had been merely an ordinary sailor, but that afterward he was inspired to live up to the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... endless, exacting labor; and for those reasons he was austere, withdrawn from the community of more fragile and sympathetic natures. At times his inflexible integrity oppressed John Woolfolk. Halvard, he thought, was a difficult man to live up to. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... more than once insisted upon that a man may accept Christ as his Saviour and His religion as his firm belief and still remain a Hindu if he only submit to the demands of caste. Not a few Hindus are trying to live up to this strange dual system today! And I fear some native Christians have not got rid of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... had, to some extent, failed in the upbringing of her brothers, but she had always looked forward hopefully to the time when they should be old enough to be sent to school. There they should learn, among much other lore, to live up to the names she had selected for them out of the book of love and of adventure which she had been reading at the time of their baptism. During all the years of her enslavement she had been a patron of the nearest public library, and it had been a source of great disappointment ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... of the qualities, and demanding that your mind develop the quality. Breathe rhythmically, holding the mental picture firmly. Carry the mental picture with you as much as possible, and endeavor to live up to the ideal you have set up in your mind. You will find yourself gradually growing up to your ideal. The rhythm of the breathing assists the mind in forming new combinations, and the student who has followed the Western system will find ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... with temper. "I have a prior claim. Colonel Harley has tried to use me, an unoffending third party, as the instrument of his private revenge, and that is a deadly offense. I have the reputation of being a hot-blooded man and I intend to live up to ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... if Wilfred the Gazelle would live up to its name this run, but Stark received the pleasantry coldly, having no use ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... this organization," the man in the long black coat said. "Whoever gave me that alias must have chosen it because I am here in an effort to live up to it. Although I am ordained by no church, I fight for all of them. The plain fact is that this man we call The Guide ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... "those whiskers which you have just seen fluttering in the breeze have been for more than forty years my curse. For more than forty years I have had to live up to those whiskers, behaving, not as my temperament, which is a kindly, indeed a genial one, bade me to behave, but as those whiskers insisted I should behave. Arrogant, hasty-tempered, over-bearing—these are the qualities which have been demanded of the owner of ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... God, it is not for us to say that any wrong-doing is incompatible with it; and therefore, for ourselves there is hope, and for our estimate of one another there ought to be charity, and for all Christian people there is the lesson—live up to your name. Noblesse oblige! Fulfil your ideal. Be what God calls you, and 'press toward the mark for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... uttered these words made me laugh—they were so calm an implication that the gentleman in question didn't live up to his principles. But I checked myself, asking her if she expected to remain in Europe long—to what ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... well of his good intentions it is apparent that he did not live up to this profession. In the first place, the work is not scientific, facts are not "observed and noted with scrupulous care," and conclusions are drawn without warranted data to support them. On the whole then, one must say that this work fails to unravel some "knots in this tangled ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... through the social structure to the lowest strata. The result is that the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bend their energies to live up to that ideal. On pain of forfeiting their good name and their self-respect in case of failure, they must conform to the accepted code, at least in appearance. The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... everywhere, not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are, keeping yourselves fit and straight in everything, and pure and clean through and through. Let us set for ourselves a standard so high that it will be a glory to live up to it and add a new laurel to the crown of America. My affectionate confidence goes with you in every battle and every test. God keep and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... volunteers in camp to watch the pool, for the boys are extravagantly fond of hippo meat. Then it is necessary to manoeuvre a rope on the carcass, often a matter of great difficulty, for the other hippos bellow and snort and try to live up to the circus posters of the Blood-sweating Behemoth of Holy Writ, and the crocodiles like dark meat very much. Usually one offers especial reward to volunteers, and shoots into the water to frighten the beasts. The volunteer dashes rapidly across the shallows, makes a swift plunge, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... Frenchwoman—save a few harmless and perhaps nervous theorizers—who has wavered about the military policy of the country; but there have naturally been some who have found it less easy than they could have foreseen to live up to the sacrifices it has necessitated. Of course there have been such people: one would have had to postulate them if they had not come within one's experience. There have been some to whom it was harder than they imagined to give up a certain way of living, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... she is doing or the essential character of the means she is employing, she runs wild and soon earns an unenviable reputation, which she either cannot live down or which she feels obliged to live up to in order to satisfy her craving for attention. Many a girl has gone wrong simply because she felt that it was up to her to make good her reputation for ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... of better stuff, and if not well bred enough to live up to the obligations she had assumed by becoming Mrs. Sampson's guest, she was at least conscious of them; and she said good-by with an air of apologetic cordiality, quieting her conscience by the secret determination ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... was a bit of satisfaction in that. There was an odd thumping at his heart. He had faith in Cassidy, a belief that the Irishman would call their affair a draw, and tell him to take another chance in the big open. He was the sort of man to live up to the letter of a wager, when it was honestly made. But, if ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... title was plain "Mr." His ancestors were tradesmen, merchants, lawyers, politicians, and Presidents. He, too, was proud of his honored ancestry, and I have endeavored in this book to have him live up to an ideal personification of gentlemanly qualities for which the New England standard should be fully as high as that of Old England; in fact, I see no reason why the heroes of American novels, barring the single matter of hereditary titles, should not compare favorably as regards gentlemanly ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... confiding in debtor and in creditor, had suffered twelve months to glide by without much heed of either, and more than live up to an income amply sufficient indeed for the wants of an ordinary bachelor, but needing more careful thrift than could well be expected from the head of one of the most illustrious houses in France, cast so young into ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... man, without means, the situation was hopeless. Once married you must live up to the standard of the society you frequent; you can't be entertained without entertaining in return. Now if his wife had brought him only a couple of thousand pounds all might have been well. I should have advised him, in sober seriousness, to live for two years at the rate of a thousand a year. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... continued to cut capers; Beauty's conduct was not beautiful; while as for Naughty (all yellow bows and black curls) he seemed endeavoring to live up to the fullest realization ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... weak old man in presence of a strong woman, but from fear of denunciation. He, too, believed her creed, though he was made miserable by her constant adherence to it. He believed, and would fain have let that suffice. She believed, and endeavoured to live up to her belief. And so it came to pass that when she spoke to him of his own soul, of the souls of those who were dear to him, or even of souls in general, he was frightened and paralysed. He had more than once attempted to reply with worldly arguments, but had suffered so much in the encounter ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... another minute or so t his jaw fallen and a strange helplessness upon him. The world was such a grim thing to have antagonistic to you. Its opinions and good favor were so essential. How hard he had tried to live up to its rules! Why should it not be satisfied and let ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... amongst the millions of the English proletariat. "Inferiority" has come into their lives; it is expected of them to treat almost everybody else as a superior person. But the cruellest indignity of all is that, although we regard them as inferiors, we still look to them to admire and live up to our standards; and they are to conform to our civilization, yet without the income it requires or the social recognition it should secure. And if they will not do this willingly, then shall they be coerced, or at least kept in order, by "temperance" ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... there were two men on my side, but I saw at the start that I couldn't depend on them. They were weak-kneed—afraid of our premise. They didn't believe Jesus meant it, anyway. I did the best I could. I not only think He meant it, but I am sure the day will come when the whole world will live up to the rule. Christ wouldn't be for all time, as He is, if His best ideas were acceptable to such a grossly material age as ours. Neither side won in that debate—the judges couldn't agree. I wish you had been here last month. We had up a subject that ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... I tell you!" McWade cried. "We're a legitimate firm,' solid as Gibraltar and safe as a church.' That's our motto, and we've got to live up to it. I came into Wichita on the roof of a Pullman; I'm going out in a drawing-room. Me and ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... said, one of the "sights of the world." He had never seen it himself, but he knew all about it, and even Mrs. James knew a little. It is a great advantage to a simple woman to have had a clever husband, and feel obliged, to live up to him. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... more personal turn in the hands of those who pointed out that Morris himself occupied the position of a capitalist employer, and who asked him to live up to his creed by divesting himself of his property and taking his place in the ranks of the proletariat. This argument is dealt with by Mr. Mackail,[54] who describes the steps which Morris took to admit his foremen to ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... all—if you except Mahommed Gunga. That chap's a wonder. 'Pon my soul, it seems he knew this was coming and picked me from the start to take charge over here. Seems, owing to my dad's reputation, these Rangars think me a sort of reincarnation of efficiency. I've got to try and live up to it, you know—same old game of reaping what you didn't sow and hoping it'll all be over before you wake up! Won't you try and get some sleep before morning? No? Come and sit over by ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... of the Monastery of St. Damian, now asked Francis to give them a written rule, and a form of life similar to that of the Friars Minor, in order that, in his absence and after his death, they and those who should succeed them, might live up to it. These Religious of St. Damian, did not wish to receive the rule of St. Benedict, nor the constitutions prepared by Cardinal Ugolino, which the other monasteries, established on the plan of St. Damian, had willingly accepted, and which ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... through which many countries of Spanish America have passed, we may believe that Bolvar's ideas were based on a knowledge of all the weaknesses characteristic of the Spanish American people of his time. He wanted to live up to the lofty words of Henry Clay, who, in the House of Representatives of the United States, proposed that Colombia should be recognized as a free country, "worthy for many reasons to stand side by side with the most illustrious ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... Bob's mind a memory of certain times when these words of the captain would not have been true. He resolved, if his life was spared, to be a more manly boy in the future—to live up to the captain's ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... once. But that is not possible, as a state law prohibits any child under sixteen from appearing before a paid audience to sing or dance, while permitting them to go on for dialogue parts only, if they are past ten years. Producers demand birth certificates and live up to the law. There is in New York City a Gerry Society, which controls the situation and is sharply ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... Longstreth," concluded Duane, "it was either to kill him or offer him freedom on conditions. So I chose the latter for his daughter's sake. He has already disposed of all his property. I believe he'll live up to the conditions. He's to leave Texas never to return. The name Cheseldine has been a mystery, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... gayly. "You mean my hat that I call a hat." He reached for the one behind his head, and spun it lightly upward, where it settled on a projecting branch. "I respect that hat myself,—my other hat, I mean; I'm trying to live up to it. Now, let me guess your State, Miss Newell: is ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... wish my grandmother had not brought up her sons to such a very high pitch, and sometimes I wish my mother had let that unlucky name become extinct in the family, or that I might adopt my nickname. One could live up to Backyard easily enough. It seems to suit being grumpy and tyrannical, and seeing no further than one's own ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... tried to whip her self-confidence, of which she was so proud, into a condition of constant pregnancy. But the plain fact was that Maggie, the misguided child of a stolen birthright, whose soaring spirit was striving so hard to live up to the traditions and conventions of cynicism, whose young ambition it was to outshine and surpass all possible competitors in this world in which she had been placed, who in her pride believed she knew so much ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... thing to do," said Anne, smiling a little, "is to tell Mrs. Gray all about it. We might as well live up to the reputation Eleanor has thrust upon us. It isn't pleasant to admit that we have failed with Eleanor, but it isn't our fault, at any rate. I am going there ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... distinctive elements in the honest man's make-up is that of laughter. The ones who live up to their ideals, do not feel that life is such a dark place, after all. It may mean hard work, little play and often delayed rewards but the fact that there is a world, and that it is filled with other honest souls is reward enough to give us courage to laugh as we go ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... Miss Van Buren, form the upper circles of the cow-world in Holland. Not only do they live up to their traditions by being cleaner and sleeker than the cows of other countries, but they know themselves to be better connected than the mere red-and-white creatures with whom they are occasionally forced to share a meadow. To show that they ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... here now if you had not had the inclination and the determination to live up to those ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... for instance," continued the Bishop, "it would be rather a difficult matter, I fear, to find very many people who would take a pledge like that and live up to it. Martyrdom is a lost art with us. Our Christianity loves its ease and comfort too well to take up anything so rough and heavy as a cross. And yet what does following Jesus mean? What is it to walk ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... natural beauty than Connecticut. It is, as we say, one of the show places of the earth. So Niagara Falls, the Grand Canon, the Rockies, and California generally lord it over America. Italy has such a reputation for beauty that it is almost unfair to expect her to live up to it. I once ventured to say that the Alps must be greasy with being climbed, and it says much for such stock pieces in nature's repertoire, that, in spite of all the wear and tear of sentimental travellers, the mock-admiration of generations, the batteries of amateur cameras, the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... moreover, did his best to live up to his position. He never, for instance, had his clothes made in Paris. His very gloves came from a little shop in Newmarket, where only the seamiest and clumsiest of hand-coverings are provided, and horn buttons are a sine ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... question. Could Ann keep within hailing distance of one's imagination? Did Ann have it in her to live up to the things one wished to believe about her? Was she capable of taking unto herself the past and temperament with which one would graciously endow her? Katie's sense of justice forced from her the admission that it was expecting a good deal of Ann. She ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... the abstract we are all prepared to admire; but while we do this, how often we are tempted to declare it an impossible thing to live up to a high standard. God, recognising the weakness of human nature, sent His only-begotten Son to reveal the Father, and show us a life of goodness in human form. He has further descended to our weakness by permitting ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... don't want any," Chuck replied. "You always were rather particular, but I am only Chuck anyhow, and as some people call me a hog—a ground-hog, you know—I might as well live up to my name." ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous

... awful reputation to live up to," said Patty, smiling at the debonair Philip, who quite looked the part his ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells

... that your sartorial education has been neglected," returned John, "and I pity you. You are not living up to your privileges, and, worse still, you are unaware of the privileges you might live up to. But, I say, this is a sneezer!" and he looked about him into the fog, which was becoming denser every minute. "They're lessening the pace. I suppose it wouldn't do to drive along through this thick stuff. We might reach ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... the eye no less than the palate. But ribbon on sandwiches is an anachronism—so is all the flummery of silk and laces, doilies and doo-dads that so often bewilder us. They are unfair to the food—as hard to live up to as anybody's blue china. I smile even yet, remembering my husband's chuckles, after we had come home from eating delicatessen chicken off ten-dollar plates, by help of antique silver. Somehow the viands and the service seemed ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... been devising ways in which it may be brought to the consumer in a condition that will permit it to be used without causing ill results. Their efforts have been rewarded to such an extent that nowadays consumers have little to fear from the milk they purchase, provided they get it from dealers who live up to the laws. Chief among the different grades of clean milk is certified milk, and next in order comes pasteurized milk, followed ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... myself, and I do not lie even to a woman. That's the trouble. I have not lied to you. Come now, let us understand. I suppose it's because I've been alone so much. Civilization does not trouble us much back there. These are my people—they love me—I hold them in my hand so long as I live up to their standards. Maybe I've thrown them ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... is really to break up monopoly. Our proposal is to put in the law—to lay down certain requirements and then require the commerce commission—the industrial commission to see that the trusts live up to those requirements. Our opponents have spoken as if we were going to let the commission declare what the requirements should be. Not at all. We are going to put the requirements in the law and then see that the commission makes the trust. (Interruption.) You see they don't ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey

... heart. It was a glorious thing for a girl, she said, wasn't it, to be associated with such a life as that? She felt it so strongly, sometimes, that it oppressed her, made her shy and stupid. She was so afraid people would expect her to live up to him. But that was absurd, of course; brilliant men so seldom had clever children. Still—did I know?—she would have been happier, much happier, if he hadn't been in public life; if he and she could have hidden themselves ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... been trying to live up to her name, of late. That was why she was haggard. She smiled ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... it happen that my father, who from his early boyhood had been pointed out as a scholar in embryo, failed to live up to the expectations of his world? It happened as it happened that his hair curled over his high forehead: he was made that way. If people were disappointed, it was because they had based their expectations on a misconception of his character, for my father had never had any aspirations ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... here you still have the dago—or, as my sister's husband says, he still has you. I am redy to live up to my bargen ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... he said with dignity. "Are you aware, my dear fellow, that you are in a place of business—a venerable institution sacred to the Muses—and that I have to live up to my reputation?" ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Maida, I should probably have been too polite to put questions about the thing's behaviour, for fear Mr. Barrymore might think I hadn't proper confidence in him; but being Beechy, with no convictions to live up to, I promptly asked ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... if that compliment is intended for me. It seems higher than my merits, but it shall be the aspiration of my life to live up to it," said the colonel, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... uprising of the nobles which ended with the signing of the Magna Carta. These good burghers said "Between a king and his subjects there is a silent understanding that both sides shall perform certain services and shall recognise certain definite duties. If either party fails to live up to this contract, the other has the right to consider it terminated." The American subjects of King George III in the year 1776 came to a similar conclusion. But they had three thousand miles of ocean between themselves and their ruler and the Estates General took their decision (which meant ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... that a respectful and appreciative public could do, in order to live up to the occasion, would be to have Exposition suits built of pongee silk, or some other harmonious material. So far, on all of my visits, I observed a shocking preponderance of black, which I hope will eventually yield to ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... from his pockets a lot of samples. "Thought I must order a new suit, to live up to my wife," he said. "See which you ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... give you a penny, but I will be generous and live up to my part of the bargain. Five cents a box, was it? And there are two boxes and ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... beautiful" if you put your faith in God and practice positive thinking. It is certainly better than the cynical philosophy of its detractors or the grim religions which stress punishment. Think of the guilt feelings involved in the latter. No one can live up to such ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... "You couldn't live up to vampiring, nohow, Mrs. Harrington, nor you shouldn't want to, not with that goldy hair of yours," said ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... into the spirit of it, and Miss Talbert christened me Young Lochinvar, Junior," Goward went on, "and I did my best to live up to the title. Then at the end of the week I was suddenly called home, and I didn't have any chance to see Miss Talbert alone before leaving, and—well, the engagement wasn't broken off. That's all. I never saw her again until I came here to meet the family. I didn't ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... hadn't a suspicion of what I felt, and I never let him know—I couldn't; it wouldn't have been fair. I felt I must do something to justify myself as his wife, sharing his position and fortune; and the only thing I could do was to try, and try, to live up to his idea about my social qualities.... I did try. I acted my best. And it became harder year by year.... I never was what they call a popular hostess—how could I be? I was a failure; but I went on trying.... I used to steal holidays now and then. I used to feel as ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... adoration of woman as a superior being—which she really is, as the distinctively feminine virtues are more truly Christian and have a higher ethical value than the masculine virtues—creates an ideal which has improved women by making them ambitious to live up to it. No one, again, who has read the preceding pages relating to the treatment of women before romantic love existed, and compares it with their treatment at present, can fail to recognize the wonderful transformation brought about by ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck



Words linked to "Live up to" :   suffice, answer, serve, do, fall short of, cover, fit, fulfill, satisfy, conform to, meet



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