"Assert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our removal. It is therefore quite possible that the two who have injured each other as described, may find themselves members of the same family. Then, whether they remember the past grudge or not, the old enmity will assert itself and cause them to hate anew until the consequent discomfort forces them to tolerate each other, and perhaps later they may learn to love ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... received 'with a storm of unfounded obloquy' (i. 292). I myself criticised the Hibbert Lectures, in Mind; {116} on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm. I find, however, that I deny, what our author says that I assert, the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... preserved their union in rare beauty to the end. But to say that it thus maintained itself as if by magic, without effort of self-sacrifice on his part or of resignation on hers, would be as unjust to the noble qualities of both, as it would be false to assert that its compensating ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... have degraded the Venetians into her bankers, and the Genoese into her mercenaries; not enough to have incorporated into herself, with the kingdom of Portugal, the whole East Indian trade of Portugal, while these fierce islanders remained to assert, with cunning policy and texts of Scripture, and, if they failed, with sharp shot and cold steel, free seas and free trade for all the nations upon earth. He saw it, and his countrymen saw it too: and therefore the Spanish Armada came: but of that ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... fair countrywomen are not competent judges of—at least we appeal to every man in England not beyond his grand climacteric, and with two eyes in his head, for the correctness of our views in what we are going to assert:—a lady's shoe, worn with crossing sandals, gently curving over the instep and round the ankle, is immeasurably superior to the plain, quaker-like, old-maid affair, worn with the old-fashioned tie or button. Did women but know how much these slender lines of riband ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... on Powder River. The result of this fight, which lasted five hours, was the destruction of Crazy Horse's village of one hundred and five lodges; or that is the way the despatch read, though many assert that the battle resulted in little else than a series of remarkable blunders which suffered the Indians to make good their escape, losing only a small quantity ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... for example I were suffering from general debility and milk were the food best suited to my needs, and if I should discover a tramp in my apartments drinking of my already too limited supply, would it be reasonable to assert that the exhibition of strength which I made in forcing him to desist is an indication that the entrance of the vagrant bettered my enfeebled condition? The greater activity of the heart is not due to the added strength resulting from recruits of friends but to a desperate struggle ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Landor of having sacrificed all things to style: it were as wise to assert that Beethoven sacrificed harmony to time. If his accusers would but read Landor before criticising, a proper regard for their own reputations would prevent them from hazarding such an opinion. "Style," writes Landor, "I consider as nothing, if what it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... lady Feng, as she smiled, "we haven't seen much of each other, so that our relations have been quite distant. But those who know how matters stand will assert that you all despise us, and won't often come to look us up; while those mean people, who don't know the truth, will imagine that we have no eyes to look at ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fame in a nation's marrow, and teaches unborn generations to call him glorious, to the boy who carves his initials upon his desk at school. Few women have it. Perhaps the wish to be remembered is what fills that one ounce or so of matter by which modern statisticians assert that the average man's brain is heavier than the average woman's. The wish in ourselves makes us respect the satisfaction of it which the few obtain. Probably few men have not secretly longed to see ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... at Naxos, given for the first time in Stuttgart. Here, with only thirty-six in the orchestra, a grand pianoforte and a harmonium included, he produces the most ear-ravishing tones, thus giving a negative to those who assert that without a gigantic orchestral apparatus he is ineffectual. Strauss received a sound musical education; he could handle the old symphonic form, absolute music, before he began writing in the vein modern; his evolution has been orderly and consistent. He looked before he leaped. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... assert the right I reserved—the right of breaking with you when I please. Advanced views, Julia, involve advanced duties: you cannot be an advanced woman when you want to bring a man to your feet, and a conventional woman when you want ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... success, there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to the contrary, true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firm guidance. It is one of the facts which the experience of thirty years enables me to assert without qualification, that a really good picture is ultimately always approved and bought, unless it is wilfully rendered offensive to the public by faults which the artist has been either too proud to abandon or too ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... manner of the minute-men catching a red-coat at Lexington; if we observe in their writing old world expressions that woo us subtly, like the odor of lavender from a long-closed linen chest, we may attribute it to the fact that aristocratic old Charleston, though the first to assert her independence of the political yoke, yet clung tenaciously to the literary ideals ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Mrs. Rosscott answered that as long as Aunt Mary desired Janice at her side, at her side Janice should stay. Jack knew his lady well enough to know that she would keep her word, and although he longed to assert his authority he was man enough to feel that he had better wait now and settle the debt ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... and Dorothy was almost as famous as the reputation of the "King of the Peak" himself, and the old knight, owner as he was of immense wealth, was often heard to assert that his two daughters were the greatest ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews; I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god; I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception; I assert that all past days were what they should have been; And that they could nohow have been better than they were, And that to-day is what it should be—and that America is, And that to-day and America could nohow be better ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Spaniard, too, the Chinese doctors would not venture to assert, as the medical faculty of Madrid in the middle of last century assured the inhabitants, that "if human excrement was no longer to be suffered to accumulate as usual in the streets, where it might attract the putrescent particles floating ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... bewildered amazement, that struck the mother and daughter as so comical that the one hid her face in her hands with a sort of hysterical heaving, and the other burst into that painful laughter by which strained spirits assert ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... haughty girl to assert her womanly right of free action, and she passed from her home, flying with swift steps. A little, only a little absence, to show her indignant pride, and she would be back again, to heal all strife. Nevertheless, ere she was aware, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... we stay here?" said Brace, sadly, as he repeated my question. "Who can tell? Perhaps for a year—perhaps for a month. Till we are wanted to crush out some mad attempt on the part of a chief to assert his independence, or to put down a quarrel between a couple of rajahs hungry ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... looked at them when they spoke, as if in astonishment that men whom he had deprived of all freedom of choice ventured still to assert it by intimating their acceptance of terms which they dared not decline. The mocking spirit revived within him while he thus gazed on the helpless and humiliated embassy; and he laughed once more as he resumed, partly addressing ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... not an eye-witness of Martian actions) to which I have already alluded, and which, so far, has been the chief source of information concerning them. Now no surviving human being saw so much of the Martians in action as I did. I take no credit to myself for an accident, but the fact is so. And I assert that I watched them closely time after time, and that I have seen four, five, and (once) six of them sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations together without either sound or gesture. Their peculiar hooting invariably ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... leave Rome as a declared enemy of the Papacy, for even so late as 1516 he defended warmly the supremacy of the Pope as the one safeguard for the unity of the Church.[6] Many of his biographers, indeed, assert that, as he stood by the /Scala Sancta/ and witnessed the pilgrims ascending on their bare knees, he turned aside disgusted with the sight and repeated the words of St. Paul, "the just man lives by his faith"; but such a statement, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... pretend to assert that, on some rare occasions, personal suffering did not give rise to irritation and anger. He belonged to humanity; and if, despite the harsh trials to which his sensibility was exposed, he had escaped entirely from nature's ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... to assert that the question of Home Rule for Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one that must be faced in the new Parliament. All ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... I believe the smell from the buck is most powerful at the period when its horns are perfect, or free from the hairy skin. When in this state the meat is, of course, quite uneatable; but the Gauchos assert, that if buried for some time in fresh earth, the taint is removed. I have somewhere read that the islanders in the north of Scotland treat the rank carcasses of the fish-eating birds in the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... frontier wars with the Hsiung-nu without any decisive result. But in the years around A.D. 45 the Hsiung-nu had suffered several severe droughts and also great plagues of locusts, so that they had lost a large part of their cattle. They were no longer able to assert themselves in Turkestan and at the same time to fight the Chinese in the south and the Hsien-pi and the Wu-huan in the east. These two peoples, apparently largely of Mongol origin, had been subject in the past to Hsiung-nu overlordship. They had spread steadily in the territories ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... chiefs, with a few of the principal officers, advance into the middle between them. Then the Alban commences thus: [31]"That injuries and the non-restitution of property according to treaty, when demanded, were the cause of this war, methinks I both heard our King Cluilius (assert), and I doubt not, Tullus, but that you state the same thing. But if the truth is to be told, rather than that which is plausible, the desire of dominion stimulates two kindred and neighbouring states to arms. Nor do I take upon myself to determine whether rightly or wrongly: be that ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... puts us at enmity with God, and deprives us of all claim on His justice. These are days when men talk much of their own rights. Little do they think to assert and uphold the rights of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. And so it escapes them that having violated their obligations to their Creator, their Redeemer, their Sanctifier, by grievous sin, they have no claim for pardon on the ground of justice; they can ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... challenged to give an account of his faith. He was charged with denying transubstantiation, with questioning the value of the confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief. He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,"[102]—a conception of Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to whisper even at the present day. The proceedings ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... "Some moralists have ranked with the cases in which convention supersedes the general rule of truth, an advocate asserting the justice, or his belief in the justice, of his client's cause." But as to an advocate's right in this matter, Whewell says explicitly: "If, in pleading, he assert his belief that his cause is just, when he believes it unjust, he offends against truth; as any other man would do who, in like ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... set off in high glee. The ride along the pleasant road was lovely; early birds sung sweetly; the dew, yet undisturbed, glistened everywhere, the morning breeze blew freshly in my face. As the sun began to assert his power, I became eager to penetrate into the shady woods, and at last, spying a grand aisle in "Nature's temple," bade the driver enter it. For a while the result was most enjoyable. The spicy aroma of the pines, the brilliant vines ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... indigenous wild ox in this country, and the source of all our domesticated breeds as well as of the few wild ones that remain, such as the Chillingham breed, which is small, white, with the inside of the ear red, and a brownish muzzle. Some, however, assert they are merely the descendants of a domesticated breed run wild, which have reverted somewhat to ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... ineffectual. The horror of the unknown danger would paralyse the war, batteries would be deserted and the trenches would quickly be internationalized. The sense of our common humanity, outraged at the sight and the smell of the monsters, would assert itself. Generals and statesmen of the belligerent peoples—if any were left to direct the defensive—would hold subterranean meetings, and, forgetting the cause for which they sent men to die nobly but a few days ago, would discuss how they could save the united ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Sinclair than at the elders," said Mrs. Abner Keech, fanning herself vigorously. "Elders are subject to queer spells periodically. They think they assert their authority that way. But Mr. Sinclair has always seemed so liberal ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who, so many assert, had no idea of the dignity of Woman, or of marriage. Such love Xenophon could paint as subsisting between those who after death "would see one another never more." Thousands of years have passed since, and with the reception of the Cross, the nations assume the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "mid-wicket on" had just quitted. Still, Steel motioned to them to remain in their new posts. He knew well enough that if a man has a habit of hitting in any one direction, however studiously he tries to avoid the place. Nature will sooner or later assert herself, and the ball will fly where it has been wont to fly. So it was in this case. He could not resist an impulse to lift one specially tempting ball in the direction of his old haunt, and sure enough in so doing he sent it clean into "long on's" hands, and with his own innings ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... resistance to the might of his master. Appear to me under whatever form thou wilt, and I will grapple with thee. For freedom, for independence, I once drew thee out of hell; on its verge I will yet assert my right to both; on the verge of the frightful gulf I will use my strength, and remember that I once saw thee tremble before my magic circle, when I threatened to scourge thee with my rod. The tears which thou seest in my eyes ore tears of indignation, of hate, and of disgust. ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... superstition takes the place of reason, dull gazing at something incomprehensible is regarded as the highest goal of the spirit's efforts, and every conscious activity of the spirit is subordinated to visionary conditions artificially brought about. But that every conceit may not be allowed to assert itself, the gradual exploration of every region of knowledge according to every method of acquiring it, is demanded as a preliminary—the Neoplatonists did not make matters easy for themselves,—and a new and mighty principle is set up which is to bridle fancy, viz., the authority ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... homeward way; If Paris be by Menelaus slain, Troy shall surrender Helen and the spoil, With compensation due to Greece, that so A record may to future days remain. But, Paris slain, if Priam and his sons The promis'd compensation shall withhold, Then here, my rights in battle to assert, Will I remain, till I the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... his intention of assuming personally and untrammelled the government of the State. Cardinal Cibo and Francesco de' Guicciardini, who had been the first to recognise not only his claim but his fitness to rule, were very tactfully set aside, and others, who might be expected to assert powers of direction and supervision, were quietly assigned to positions where they could not interfere with his ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... knew what he wanted—to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... stationed there, and had altogether a perfect visit. I have made many visits and have been the guest of many hostesses, most of them charming ones, hence it is no discourtesy to them and but a higher compliment to the Marquise when I assert that she is one of the most perfect hostesses I ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... are punctuated, in my mind, by the striking of a distant clock. It is singular how trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension. I will proceed, then, by these punctuations, to the coming of the horror that it was written ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... in proving deadly to ideals. This was true. But men forgot for the moment how glorious an ideal it had once been to be rational and to assert the rationality of the universe. Still the time had come when, in Germany at all events, the great cry was, 'back to the ideal.' It is curious that men always cry 'back' when they mean 'forward.' For it was not the old ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... instance is it possible to establish with certainty that a given reaction is of this type, for in no instance can a remote, or an imagined, or a merely symbolic relationship between stimulus and reaction be positively excluded. Some, indeed, would assert that some such relationship must necessarily exist in every instance, at least in the domain of the subconscious. This circumstance necessitates the placing of this type of reactions ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... having this book hurled into corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor, no prodigy "cub" reporter just off the farm, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... same, ever since she had left him at the doors of the Hotel Metropole, a certain constraint had crept into their intercourse. Wyndham was not easily deceived, and he rightly interpreted her abrupt dismissal of him as a final effort to assert herself before the onset of the inevitable. Even if he at times suspected her of playing a part, she had chosen the right part to play, and he respected her for it. He himself was leading a curious double life. He was working hard at his novel, which promised to surpass ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... subaltern, but already an earnest soldier; and in after times, when he came to study for himself the campaigns of Washington and Napoleon, we may be certain that the teaching he found there was made doubly impressive when read by the light of what he had seen himself. Nor is it mere conjecture to assert that in his first campaign his experience was of peculiar value to a future general of the Southern Confederacy. Some of the regiments who fought under Scott and Taylor were volunteers, civilians, like their successors in the great Civil War, in all but name, enlisted ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... what most men teach most women. The only woman a man thinks he has no real claim to, is the woman he loves; he believes he has a proprietary right to nearly every other blessed one he meets, and has only got to assert it." ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... hardly like to commit ourselves irrecoverably to the sentiments they express; but we will say this much for certain, namely, that the rich man is the true hundred-handed Gyges of the poets. He alone possesses the full complement of limbs who stands at the summit of opulence, and we may assert with strictly scientific accuracy that the Rothschilds are the most astonishing organisms that the world has ever yet seen. For to the nerves or tissues, or whatever it be that answers to the helm of a rich man's desires, there is a whole army of limbs seen and unseen attachable: ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Hawkins has preserved very few Memorabilia of Johnson. There is, however, to be found, in his bulky tome [p. 87], a very excellent one upon this subject:—'In contradiction to those, who, having a wife and children, prefer domestick enjoyments to those which a tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity.—"As soon," said he, "as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude: when I am seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obsequious to my call; anxious to know and ready ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... it breaks out often, perhaps oftenest, in violent illusions on the subject of love. They assert, declare, shout, sing, scream that they love, have loved, are loved, do and for ever will love, after methods and in manners which no decent love ever thought of mentioning. And yet, so does their weak violence ape the bearing of strength, so much does their cheat look like truth, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the Methodists were less extreme than those of the Dogmatists and Empirics. Celsus wrote of the Methodists: "They assert that the knowledge of no cause whatever bears the least relation to the method of cure; and that it is sufficient to observe some general symptoms of distempers; and that there are three kinds of diseases, one bound, another loose, and the third ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... symptomatic of a corresponding change in the national temper. It was the mission of the eighteenth century to assert the universality of law and, at the same time, the sufficiency of the reason to discover the laws, which govern in every province: a service which we now, perhaps, undervalue in our impatience with the formalism which was its outward sign. Hence its dislike of irregularity ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... many excellent people in this bright world who, like Mrs. Lawrence, are prone to assert that all they've got to say on a given subject is so and so, and then to stultify themselves by proceeding to talk a whole torrent. Mrs. Lawrence said a great deal in the course of this initial interview, and followed it up with a very great deal more. She considered Mr. Forrest's conduct worse ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... body and blood, because nothing ought to be asserted of either Christ's doings or sayings, which is not handed down by the authority of Sacred Scripture. But it is not narrated in the gospels that He ate His own body or drank His own blood. Therefore we must not assert this ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... traditional predilection for drugs causes its members to resolutely set their faces against any remedial process that runs counter to the theories they imbibed at college. They look askance at all such things and regard them as dangerous experiments, and assert that their dignity will not permit them to recognize any irregular practice, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... Did I ever assert that the chat is shy? Then am I properly punished for not appreciating his individuality, by having to admit that this pair possessed not a trace of the quality. The singer seemed to be always on exhibition; and as for his spouse, though ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... an old man; some assert that he fell overboard. However, be that as it may, when he came to the surface, he had his arm around Kathryn Blair, and she had his long coat draped around her slender figure.... And, as they lifted her ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... which the title refers to. The mother-parish was St. Madron, about 2 1/2 miles to the north-west; and it is by no means clear who Madron was. Some think he was an Irish Medhran, some a Welsh Madrun; some even assert that he was none other than the great Padarn of Wales. But in 1835 St. Mary's was built at Penzance, on the site of an old chapel to Our Lady, of which some relics are preserved. The town was granted ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... overstrained paradoxes. He has explicitly declared that Boswell wrote one of the most charming of books because he was one of the greatest of fools. And his remarks suggest, if they do not implicitly assert, that Johnson wrote some of the most unreadable of books, although, if not because, he possessed one of the most vigorous intellects of the time. Carlyle has given a sufficient explanation of the first paradox; but the second may justify a little further inquiry. As a general ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... had not been a single word of unkindness in the correspondence of the two governments. But our embarrassments had been steadily deepening, and according to many precedents in the career of that illustrious statesman, Lord John seems to have considered the period of our distress a fitting time to assert that "British forbearance springs from the consciousness of strength and not ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... summing up the advantages and disadvantages of other situations, would, most respectfully answer in the affirmative. At least they are willing to assert that the advantage is much in favor of those who are obliged to leave their present homes. For your more particular information on that subject we would, most respectfully, refer you to the interesting ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... nevertheless laid it down as a rule, inviolable at least on paper, "never to press any man from protections," since it brought "great trouble and clamour upon them." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 3. 50—Admiralty Minutes, 26 Feb. 1744-5.] To assert that the rule was generally obeyed would be to turn the truth into a lie. On the contrary, it was almost universally disregarded. Both officers and gangs traversed it on every possible occasion, leaving the justice or injustice of the act to the arbitrament ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... rise; the waves of Tiber from the hills "Of Appenine descending, bathe her walls: "Plac'd on a huge foundation shall she fix "Her empire's base. By increase shall she change; "And shall hereafter of the mighty world "Be head. This prophets, they assert, have said, "And fate-predicting oracles. Myself "Remember Helenus, old Priam's son, "Address'd AEneas, when the Trojan towers "Were tottering, weeping,—and of future fate "Doubtful, in words like these—O goddess born! "If the prognostics of my soul I read ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Coppermine to the Great Fish River, the Esquimaux traces are less numerous than on the north shore of Barrow's Strait. To assert that the Esquimaux have travelled from the American continent to the bleak shores of Bathurst Island, is to suppose a savage capable of voluntarily quitting a land of plenty for one of gaunt famine: on the other hand, it seems unreasonable to attribute these signs of a by-gone people's ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... If you assert that your reverence for our Celestial Dynasty fills you with a desire to acquire our civilization, our ceremonies and code of laws differ so completely from your own that, even if your Envoy were able to acquire the rudiments of our civilization, you could not possibly ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... to hear ringing "the prelude of a deeper, mightier, perchance a more evil and mysterious music; a super-German music which does not fade, wither and die away beside the blue and wanton sea and the clear Mediterranean sky; a music super-European, which would assert itself even amid the tawny sunsets of the desert; a music whose soul is akin to the palm-trees; a music that can consort and prowl with great, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey; a music whose supreme charm is its ignorance of Good and Evil." For he came with some of the light ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... pronounce, announce, state, declare, affirm, aver, asseverate, allege, assert, avouch, avow, maintain, claim, depose, predicate, swear, suggest, insinuate, testify>. (With this group compare the Speak and ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... so, however, that our house was raised, nor is it so that it can be fortified and augmented. The Lord Keeper's dignity is yet new; it must be borne as if we were used to its weight, worthy of it, and prompt to assert and maintain it. Before ancient authorities men bend from customary and hereditary deference; in our presence they will stand erect, unless they are compelled to prostrate themselves. A daughter fit for ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... one day have cause to bless their friendly union; that the Count of Hapsburg should be deprived of none of his lands, vassals, or prerogatives; that the freedom which they had inherited from their fathers they were determined to assert, and to hand down to their children untainted and undiminished. Then Stauffacher, Fuerst, and Melcthal, and the other conspirators, stepped forward, and, raising their hands, swore that they would die in ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... has been cut this spring (viz., 1784) in the Holt forest: one fifth of which, it is said, belongs to the grantee, Lord Stawell. He lays claim also to the lop and top; but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and Frinsham, Bentley and Kingsley, assert that it belongs to them, and assembling in a riotous manner, have actually taken it all away. One man, who keeps a team, has carried home for his share forty stacks of wood. Forty-five of these people his lordship has served ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... otherwise have done, and thus aids in preventing the stem from being blown away during windy weather, as I have many times observed. In Lonicera brachypoda the hook only straightens itself periodically, and never becomes reversed. I will not assert that the tips of all twining plants when hooked, either reverse themselves or become periodically straight, in the manner just described; for the hooked form may in some cases be permanent, and be due to the manner of growth of the species, as with the tips of the ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... always dangerous to assert anything as a rule in matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in a general way, a shadow is darker than the dark side of the thing that casts it, supposing the colours otherwise the same; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the special magistrates as the friends of the planters. They loved the dinners which they got at the planters' houses. The apprentices had no sumptuous dinners to give them. The magistrates felt under very little obligation of any kind to assert the cause of the apprentice and secure him justice, while they were under very strong temptations to favor ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... this time the death of the young Scottish queen, the Maid of Norway, whom Edward had caused to be betrothed to his eldest surviving son, Edward of Caernarvon, opened up a fatal contest for the Scottish crown, which gave Edward his opportunity to assert anew the old but somewhat shadowy claim of the English crown to the over-lordship of Scotland. The southern half of that composite kingdom was inhabited by people of English blood and English institutions; its southeastern part, the Lothians, had undoubtedly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... From all sides, and undoubtedly from considerable distances. During my prolonged searches every bush and thicket and heap of stones in my neighbourhood had become familiar to me, and I can assert that the Oak Eggar was not to be found there. For such a swarm to collect as I found in my laboratory the moths must have come from all directions, from the whole district, and within a radius that I dare ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... our curiosity. He repels many of his countrymen without arousing the pity which adds to their romantic interest in Poe. Whatever our literary students may feel, and whatever foreign critics may assert, it must be acknowledged that to the vast majority of American men and women "good old Walt" ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... showers sometimes fall, July being the least subject to them, and the fiery sun, when it can disperse the clouds, turns the soil to dust. At the end of September appear the "latter rains," which are the more copious, as they seldom last more than six hours at a time. It is erroneous to assert that "the tract nearest the equator on both sides has the longest rainy season;" the measure chiefly depends upon altitude ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... which he had been born rather than the confederacy nefariously entered into with his colleagues; that he besought this much more on Appius's own account, than for the sake of the commonwealth. For that the commonwealth would assert its rights in spite of them, if it could not obtain them with their consent. But that from great contests great animosities arise; the result of the latter he dreads." Though the decemvirs forbad them to speak on ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... juste milieu which maintained the balance of society in France. When the dregs of the bas peuple rose to the surface of the revolution, commenced by the sound middle classes, we regarded the scum of aristocracy as the smaller of the two evils. As soon as the true element had ceased to assert itself in France, I fled forever from a land of bloodshed and misrule, and took shelter under the broad wing of your boasted ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... great people whose servants we are,—not our own. We are trustees and responsible stewards in the spending. The only thing debatable and upon which we should be careful to make our thought and purpose clear is the kind of economy demanded of us. I assert with the greatest confidence that the people of the United States are not jealous of the amount their Government costs if they are sure that they get what they need and desire for the outlay, that the money is being spent for ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... them as they may be supposed to understand themselves, one would not necessarily be in a position to give an opinion about the mafia, for, besides those who speak of the growing confidence in the police, there are others who assert that the improvement, if any, is slight and only on the surface, and that the spirit of the mafia is not confined to the mala vita, but extends to the upper classes and influences even the administration of justice and the elections. When the natives differ ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... to enable us to assert that whenever the lawyer ate fish he promptly had to go to bed. He was forced to say that if they chased him from the house with boiling water he could not venture to put his ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... in the tone of this that arrested Elfrida's feeling of half-penitence, and armed her instantly. Whatever desire she had felt to assert and indulge her individuality at any expense, in her own attitude there had been the consciousness of what they owed one another. She had defied it, perhaps, but it had been there. In this it was ignored; Janet had gone a step further—her tone expressed ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... the throne mal a propos, but it is every sphere of bourgeois society which experiences its defeat before it celebrates its victory, develops its own handicaps before it overcomes the handicaps which confront it, asserts its own narrow-minded nature before it can assert its generous nature, so that even the opportunity of playing a great part is always past before it actually existed, and each class, so soon as it embarks on a struggle with the class above it, becomes involved in a struggle with the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... humbly, "I cannot tell;" but, further, I assert confidently, "Neither can anybody else." The fact is known, and we see its result; but the reason why magnetised steel or iron should have this tendency, this polarity, is one of the mysteries which man has not yet been able to penetrate, and ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... of "The Destroyers'" Administration who sought reelection, found it well to assert the claims of his youth by making a public recantation of all his previously expressed views and policy, and seeking to outdo every one else in the direction of patriotic reform. Though he gulled nobody, he was listened to good-humouredly, and defeated with great ease by Abel Winchester, the Australian, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic with those who did not venture to assert themselves, but with the self-assertive he was very modest. He was impressed by Philip's assurance, and accepted meekly Philip's implied suggestion that the painter's arrogant claim to be the sole possible judge of painting has anything but its ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... troubled deep; I clouded the heavens with vapours dark, And rolled the tide o'er the foundering bark, Then mocked in hoarse murmurs the hollow cry Of the drowning wretch in his agony: I have leagued with the North to assert thy right On the land and the wave both ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... strict injunctions to prevent all hostile incursions, as they might lead to extremities before his plans were matured. The prophet, however, wanted either the inclination or the authority to follow these injunctions; and the Americans assert, that murder and rapine occurred now so frequently, that they were compelled, in their own defence, to punish the delinquents. Accordingly, General Harrison proceeded with nearly 1,000 men to Tippecanoe, and on his approach, in November, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... controlled, from 1789 to the present day, the political action of the state, his devotion to our blessed mother was as pure and as ardent as was ever felt by any son who drew nurture from her bosom; and he was as prompt to avenge her wrongs as to assert her rights—at once a D'Aguessau in the forum and a Bayard in the field. Nor was that affection unreturned. When the clouds of war were gathering round her, Virginia entrusted her safety and her honor to his sword; and when the returning light of peace shone upon her hills and valleys ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... art nothing, save the jest of Fame, Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert A god unto thyself; nor less the same To the astounded kingdoms all inert, Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... I assert it with increased conviction of its truth, that there exists, among the great majority of my countrymen, a favourable feeling toward England. I repeat this assertion, because I think it a truth that cannot too often be reiterated, and because it has met with ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Dominic and St. Francis at Manila, and the cabildo of the metropolitan church of that city, ask that this matter be adjusted. The religious assert an opinion contrary to the above, saying that a mortal sin is involved. They beg that his Majesty declare his royal will, and provide a person who shall enforce obedience to the royal decrees and punish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... only say that the disappearance of the jewel gave this reclaimed thief who was in love with you, an opportunity of setting you and Rachel at variance for the rest of your lives. She had not decided on destroying herself, THEN, remember; and, having the opportunity, I distinctly assert that it was in her character, and in her position at the time, to take it. What ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of the province of Pennsylvania, many days' march from here. At least, we claim that it's in Pennsylvania province, although the French assert it's on their soil, and they have possession. But it's in the Ohio country, because the waters there flow westward, the Alleghany and Monongahela joining at the fort and forming the ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... dreadful terror of Elizabeth Ann as the train carried her along toward Vermont and the horrible Putney Farm! It had happened so quickly—her satchel packed, the telegram sent, the train caught—that she had not had time to get her wits together, assert herself, and say that she would NOT go there! Besides, she had a sinking notion that perhaps they wouldn't pay any attention to her if she did. The world had come to an end now that Aunt Frances wasn't there to take care of her! Even in the most familiar air she could ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... partly to make him disclose the strength of the attacking force, which the guerillas averred he must certainly know, since there was no doubt that he had been in communication with it. It was useless, said the Indian, for him to assert his innocence and his inability to supply the information required; he was simply not believed, or perhaps it was that the Bolivians were glad of an excuse for exercising their cruel instincts. The latter, thought Jim, was the more ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... occasionally. The bearing of the provost, while it completely admitted the intimate connexion which mutual interests had created betwixt himself, the burgh, and the magistracy, was at the same time calculated to assert the superiority which, in virtue of gentle blood and chivalrous rank, the opinions of the age assigned to him over the members of the assembly in which he presided. Two squires stood behind him, one of them holding ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... which I shall eminently need the direction of a higher power to guide me in every step of my conduct. I see my duty to discard all consideration of their treatment of me; to adhere, in everything that I shall say or write, to the truth; to assert nothing positively of which I am not absolutely certain; to deny nothing upon which there remains a scruple of doubt upon my memory; to conceal nothing which it may be lawful to divulge, and which may promote truth and justice between the parties. With these principles, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... preparations of Pennyroyal are in considerable demand, and a great number of women ascribe emmenagogue properties to it, that is, the power of inducing the periodical monthly flux. Many married women of intelligence and close observation, assert as a positive fact, that Pennyroyal will bring on the periodical flow when suppressed; and yet the eminent jurisprudist, Dr. Taylor, was explicit in declaring that Pennyroyal has no such properties. He stated that it has no more effect on the womb ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... they could scarcely even speak to assert their own innocence of such a wicked job. They submitted to be bound, and cast down into their boat, imploring only that it might be there—that they might not be taken to the other boat and laid ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... would have worked quite smoothly if Seymour had lived, and if Dickens' story had not so soon assumed the proportions of a colossal success, it is idle to speculate. Seymour died by his own hand before the second number was published, and so ceased to be in a position to assert himself. It was, however, in deference to the peculiar bent of his art that Mr. Winkle, with his disastrous sporting proclivities, made part of the first conception of the book; and it is also very significant of the book's origin, that the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Babble Machine might be. "And you are certain this Ostrog—you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself—because he was not elected to ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... that chanticleer proclaims the day. But as far as I know no one has had the insolence to deny the street-organ as the proper herald of the spring. Without it the seasons would halt. Though science lay me by the heels, I'll assert that the crocus, which is a pioneer on the windy borderland of March, would not show its head except on the sounding of the hurdy-gurdy. I'll not deny that flowers pop up their heads afield without such call, that the jack-in-the-pulpit speaks its maiden sermon on some ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... This dazzling carpet was a real mirror, throwing back the sun's rays with startling intensity. The outcome: an immense vista of reflections that penetrated every liquid molecule. Will anyone believe me if I assert that at this thirty-foot depth, I could see as if it ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Aphorisms, curt and dry formularies, showing the Brahmans in secure possession of all their claims. Such privileges as they then enjoyed are never enjoyed for any length of time. It was impossible for anybody to move or to assert his freedom of thought and action without finding himself impeded on all sides by the web of the Brahmanic law; nor was there anything in their religion to satisfy the natural yearnings of the human heart after spiritual comfort. What was felt by Buddha, had been ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... shuffled; others prefer the mind to be as far as possible free from any definite thought or desire, simply allowing it to dwell on such abstract subjects as flowers or the weather. Personally, I advocate this for both systems of divination; it enables the subconscious mind to assert itself unhindered, whilst the normal mind is ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... an officer, a most useful and inestimable man to the state. His respect for his sovereign, and his zeal in her service, were unbounded; whenever her glory was at stake, he devoted himself her victim. This I assert to be truth: I knew him well. Of little consequence is it to me, whether the historians of Maria Theresa have, or have not, misrepresented his talents and the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... described the effect of Halifax's oratory in words which I will quote, because, though they have been long in print, they are probably known to few even of the most curious and diligent readers of history. "Of powerful eloquence and great parts were the Duke's enemies who did assert the Bill; but a noble Lord appeared against it who, that day, in all the force of speech, in reason, in arguments of what could concern the public or the private interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo himself and every other man; and in fine his conduct ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... heart, to save his soul is the only real, lasting method of doing him any good. In many modern schemes of social regeneration it is forgotten that "it takes a soul to move a body, e'en to a cleaner sty," and at the risk of being misunderstood and misrepresented, I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... like these still upon the mind and ear, and likewise having in view many others in the "Princess" and elsewhere, we may confidently assert it as one of Mr. Tennyson's brightest distinctions that he is now what from the very first he strove to be, and what when he wrote "Godiva" he gave ample promise of becoming—the poet of woman. We do not mean, nor do we know, that his hold over women as his readers ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... his bodily vigor unimpaired. I am not speaking now, understand me, of those unfortunates with whom obesity is a disease, but of those who owe their grossness of outline to gluttony. Lacking vital statistics on the subject, I nevertheless dare assert that these latter constitute fully 90 per cent of those among the American people who are distinctly and ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... nearer home to us than the letter of Pliny, and deepen the tragedy by their trifling contrast, like the grave-diggers' unseemly gabble in Hamlet. Perhaps our judgment of history is made sounder, and our view of it more lifelike, when we are so constantly reminded how the little things of life assert their place alongside the great ones, and how healthy the constitution of the race is, how sound its digestion, how gay its humor, that can take the world so easily while our continent is racked with fever and struggling for life ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... collecting all the parts of the human body from the grave at the last day, they say, 'This is a work of omnipotence;' and when they name omnipotence and faith, reason is banished; and I am free to assert, that in such case sound reason is not appreciated, and by some is regarded as a spectre; yea, they can say to sound reason, 'Thou art unsound.'" On hearing these things, the Grecian sages said, "Surely such paradoxes vanish ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... profitable field. Like most raiders, she planned to operate in one locality not more than three or four days, and then, avoiding all vessels on her course, strike suddenly elsewhere. During this period, British, Japanese, French, and Russian cruisers—the Germans assert there were 19 at ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... It owes its sanctity to its being the reputed confluence of three sacred streams—the Ganges, the Jumna and the Saraswati. This last stream, however, actually loses itself in the sands of Sirhind, 400 m. north-west of Allahabad. The Hindus assert that the stream joins the other two rivers underground, and in a subterraneous temple below the fort a little moisture trickling from the rocky walls is pointed out as the waters of the Saraswati. An annual fair is held at Allahabad at the confluence of the streams on the occasion of the great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... awake after a while. Now I wish to remark one thing. Some people may assert that the widow Lagors had a child born after her husband's death. This objection has been destroyed by the age of your friend. Raoul is twenty-four, and M. de Lagors has not been ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... That, however, is not likely. How, then, is it with you? You have, in point of fact, at the present time virtually but one guardian. He is here on the spot. He is exerting his authority, and you assert, I think, that he subjects you to a sort of imprisonment. Miss Dalton, he has ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... with its continental neighbors, and it developed a sense of separateness. As part of a loosely administered empire its people were content in prosperity and self-government. But in a consolidated nation of diverse and conflicting interests it would be likely on occasion to assert its own will and resist unitedly anything savoring of coercion. In a double sense it was ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... at all the same thing as the real religion of those who subscribe to it. The rules of metre are not the same thing as poetry; the rules of cricket, if the analogy may be excused, are not the same thing as good play. Nay, more. A man states in his creed only the articles which he thinks it right to assert positively against those who think otherwise. His deepest and most practical beliefs are those on which he acts without question, which have never occurred to him as being open to doubt. If you take on the one hand a number ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... quenched the faith of the ordinary man and led him to despair, with the poet mystic sought expression in those six triumphant verses found among his papers when he died,[82] verses charged with mystic passion, which assert the solid reality of spiritual things, and tell us that to the outcast and the wanderer every place was holy ground, Charing Cross was the gate of ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... different, and seemingly contradictory grounds. Some of them have maintained that the varieties of mankind are so distinct, that it is impossible they can all be descended from a single human pair, while others assert that not only all the varieties of mankind, but all the varieties of living beings are descended from a single progenitor. Between the advocates of these two systems there must be such an enormous difference as to the extent to which variation is ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... long and uninterrupted usage, and from the false belief of the ignorant. Hence the ignorant assert that a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... middle tints than in the lights: the main difference was, we believe, between the careful preparation of the gradations of drawing in the one, and the daring assumption of massy light in the other. There are theorists who would assert that their system was the same—but they forget the primal work, with the point underneath, and all that it implied of transparency above. Van Eyck secured his drawing in dark, then threw a pale transparent middle tint over the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
