"Assertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... equilibrium miraculously, when his perpendicular had been lost long ago: he never fell upon me but once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions when the mal-de-mer proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth, composing his little limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was invincible ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... which they occasionally sent messengers. In the course of our conversation I said that I knew there were some Anzeyrys in the East Indies; they were greatly amazed at this, and enquired how I had obtained my information: and their countenances seemed to indicate that there was some truth in my assertion. They are divided into different sects, of which nothing is known except the names, viz. Kelbye, Shamsye, and Mokladjye. Some are said to adore the sun and the stars, and others the pudendum muliebre. The Mokledjye wear in their girdle a small ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Peter Pegg proved the truth of his assertion by the utterance of a very regular snore, which kept time with his breath till broad ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... and structure, and the various aspects of beauty which one may find in studying natural objects. This argument from design in nature has been overruled by a study of the evolutionary processes. Paley based his argument on the assertion of a mind behind phenomena, the workings of which could be seen in the forms of animal life. The theists no longer use Paley's original arguments, but a great deal of the theistic arguments are still based on his assumptions. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... comforts were allowed him. This treatment, his recollection of the past, his separation from the world, and the effects of a strange climate, accelerated his death, which took place a few months after his arrival in France. The reports which spread concerning his death, the assertion that it was not a natural one, and that it had been caused by poison, obtained no credit. I should add that Toussaint wrote a letter to Bonaparte; but I never saw in it the expression attributed to him, "The first man of the blacks to the first man of the whites" ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... he said, with a sweeping assertion, "has ever been killed by the bayonet unless he had his hands up first." And, broadly speaking, I think he was right, in spite of the Director of Training, who was extremely annoyed with me when I ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... open. He was father of the children, and, sensible of their critical situation, the sting was goading him to their rescue. The question was-would he interpose and declare them as such? Ah, he forgot it was not the father's assertion,—it was the law. The crime of being property was inherited from the mother. Acknowledging them his children would neither satisfy law nor the creditors. What honourable-we except the modernly chivalrous-man would see his children jostled by the ruffian trader? What man, with feelings ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the Hon. A.D. White, President of Cornell University, as to the relative merits of money and promises to pay money; and he begins with the assertion that the President's "object is to depreciate American credit, stability, and honor." Further perusal, to ascertain the meaning of this attack on a patriotic and useful member of society, shows us what Mr. Dillaye ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... little to be envied—how much to be pitied—are they who consider it a weakness and a sin to laugh, and in the plenitude of their wisdom, tell us that the Saviour of mankind never laughed. When I hear this last assertion, I am always ready to ask, whether the individual who makes it has read a new revelation or a new gospel; for certainly none of the sacred books which I have seen ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... approaches the Lord of heaven and earth, our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier: employing too the very words of her most solemn form of belief in the ever-blessed Trinity, and substituting Mary's name for the God of Christians. On the words, "By thy right of mother command thy Son," beyond the assertion of the fact that there they are to this day, I wish to add nothing, because the very denial of their existence often repeated shows, that many Roman Catholics themselves ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... fingers through his curls, he took his place on the stage, and commenced. He was very fluent by nature, and in animation, in fanatical zeal for the cause, he far surpassed Mr. Strong: any other cause, by-the-bye, had it been popular, would have suited him just as well. In assertion, in denunciation, he distinguished himself particularly; he called upon every individual present to come forward and sign the pledge, under penalty of public disgrace; it was the will of the community that the pledge should ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... I fancy. He is a legacy, like other evils, from the old General, and seems a sort of necessity to my uncle's existence. Gregorio they call him. He was plainly used to absolute government, and viewed the coming down amongst us as an assertion of liberty much against his will. We could see that he was awfully jealous of my father and me, and would do anything to keep us out; but providentially he can't write English decently, though he can speak any language you please. Well, the man and I came into collision about a ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... untrue is meant as that this is an account of Macaulay's own quality. What is empty pretension in the leading article, was often a warranted self-assertion in Macaulay; what in it is little more than testiness, is in him often a generous indignation. What became and still remain in those who have made him their model, substantive and organic vices, the foundation of literary character and intellectual ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... the political thinking of a young American, of lively disposition, candid mind, and rash confidence. It could not help being a reflection of other literature and thought; but its best character is in its sturdy and resolute assertion of English freedom as requiring a central authority in which to rest. It is curious, in the opening pages, to see how, in his theories of government, he is led away by the popular and alluring philosophy of Rousseau ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... should not be a voter here who will cast a ballot to put in power men who seek in public office only their personal ends. The Plutocratic ticket has not a man on it who is not an agent of the Trusts. Do not take this assertion on my authority. Investigate the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... death. If this is true, who would doubt that Christ took Moses and the prophets with him to those who were fettered in prison, in order to change the unbelieving world into a new and believing one? This seems to be intimated by Peter's words, though I should not like to make this assertion authoritatively. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... 197: Koolau-wahine. The sea-breeze at Mana. There is truth as well as poetry in the assertion made in this verse. The warm moist air, rising from the heated sands of Mana, did undoubtedly draw in the cool breeze from the ocean—a ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the Torre Pignattara has all the appearance of a royal mausoleum, and although the ground on which it stands is known to have belonged to the crown, Eusebius and Socrates deny that Helena was buried in Rome. Their assertion is contradicted by the "Liber Pontificalis" and by Bede, and above all by the similarity between this porphyry coffin and the one discovered in the second mausoleum of which I have spoken,—that of S. Constantia, on ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he." This was the point to which all his discourse was directed, this the revelation he intended from the first to disclose; but how wisely was it delayed! Such an assertion at the commencement of the conversation would have kindled animosity or excited ridicule; but that mind which was originally so prejudiced and so resentful, is brought to receive the most glorious and spiritual discovery. If we wonder at her ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... will not be followed by any attempt on your part to break the peace either by action or demonstration. I know that you would never compromise me in any such manner, but it will give me the power to make an emphatic assertion to that effect and that ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... exalted sentiments and lofty aspirations, even though she—or he—may not feel them. As a matter of fact, I entertain the precise sentiments and have the same aspirations with which you credit Bimbane; but I suppose you will require something more than my bare assertion before you will believe me. Yet why should you doubt me, and believe her? I will tell you. It is because she has thrown the spell of her magic over you! You tell me that yesterday she cast you into a trance wherein you saw the way ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... scruple may be removed, we may now answer the inquiry, whether our former assertion that everyone who has not the practice of reason, may, in the state of nature, live by sovereign natural right, according to the laws of his desires, is not in direct opposition to the law and right of God as revealed. (90) For as all men absolutely (whether they be ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... hang it, Durkin, even Dreer wouldn't do as mean a thing as that!" But even as he said it Clint somehow knew that Penny's suspicions were correct, and, at variance with his assertion, added wrathfully: "By Jove, he ought ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... absolutely ignorant of the matter and that it did not exist for them." This was the only answer to be got; in a despatch sent on the 11th to the Prussian agents in Germany, Bismarck repeated the assertion. "The matter has nothing to do with Prussia. The Prussian Government has always considered and treated this affair as one in which Spain and the selected candidate are alone concerned." This was literally true, for it had never been brought before the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... awake and dressed, however early they may rise. She has prayed Mr. Dempster to come back into residence at Castlewood. She is not severe or haughty (as her wont certainly was) with any of the party, but quiet in her talk with them, and gentle in assertion and reply. She is for ever talking of her father and his campaigns, who came out of them all with no very severe wounds to hurt him; and so she hopes and trusts will ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... devoid of difficulties. Numerous protests were raised against this assertion of papal power. But events concurred to justify Gregory's bold action. At the beginning of his pontificate the Normans were quarrelling among themselves; but in Tuscany the Countess Matilda had just become complete mistress of the great inheritance which included a large ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... it from them as a thing abhorred. But Davie Haggart set another example on this occasion, and no one had the courage to refuse to follow it. We sat late round the dying fire, and it was only Willie Todd's scandalous assertion (he was but a boy) about his being able to dance that induced us to think of moving. In the community, I understand, this marriage is still memorable as the occasion on which Bell Whamond laughed in ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... heard what she says about you, you'd never be seen in Noonoon again;" but this assertion was made with such a roguish smile on eye and lip that Ernest took up a closer position by stepping into the gutter and placing one foot on the step of the sulky and a corresponding hand on the dashboard railing; and in that position I left them, with yellow-haired ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... can be any life quite so demonstrative of character as that which we had on these expeditions. One sees a remarkable reassortment of values. Under ordinary conditions it is so easy to carry a point with a little bounce; self-assertion is a mask which covers many a weakness. As a rule we have neither the time nor the desire to look beneath it, and so it is that commonly we accept people on their own valuation. Here the outward show is nothing, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... only of coming to the rescue of an unfortunate lecturer, prostrated on the very threshold of his career; and a friendly hallucination made him for the moment really believe what he said. His unpremeditated assertion must have been set down by the recording angel on the same page with Uncle Toby's oath, and then obliterated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... private opinion that these mystic words contain some prodigiously recondite meaning; or, perhaps, arise from one of those awful incidents, of which Hoffman encountered so many among the ghost-seeing, all-believing Germans. But don't take it on my simple assertion, but judge for yourself. I shall tell you, word for word, the story as it was told to me, and as it is believed by multitudes of people, who believe nothing else, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... root in matter is undoubtedly that airy one of friendship; and hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and instrument of friendship. It is in talk alone that the friends can measure strength, and enjoy that amicable counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge of relations and ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried Dr. Clawbonny. "These reports do not contradict any scientific assertion, the captain will allow ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... summer of 1861 the dissolution of Parliament took place, the elections resulted in the return not only of a Progressist majority, but of a majority little inclined to submit to measures of compromise, or to shrink from the assertion of its ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... as identical), without qualities. Brahman is not intelligent but is intelligence itself. The human soul (jiva) is identical with the Highest Self, not merely as a part of it, but as being itself the whole universal indivisible Brahman. This must not be misunderstood as a blasphemous assertion that man is equal to God. The soul is identical with Brahman only in so far as it forgets its separate human existence, and all that we call self and individuality. A man who has any pride in himself is ipso facto differentiated from Brahman ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... table. I do not believe there is one person here living in the house in which he or she was born." This assertion raised a murmur of dissent around the table; on a census being taken it proved, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... as the thing was over, mounted in not quite the best humor and rode away to join his wagons. He had not ridden to the Double-Crank to hear Flora talk incessantly of Mr. Walland, and repeat many times the assertion that she did not see how, under the circumstances, he could avoid killing the man. Nor had he gone to watch Mama Joy dimple and frown by turns and give him sidelong glances which made him turn his head ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... that which gives its inexpressible charm to mountaineering is the incessant series of exquisite natural scenes, which are for the most part enjoyed by the mountaineer alone. This is, I am aware, a round assertion; but I will try to support it by a few of the visions which are recalled to me by these Oberland cliffs, and which I have seen profoundly enjoyed by men who perhaps never mentioned them again, and probably in describing their ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... a mulberry-tree, which Shakspeare had planted with his own hands; and in 1742, when Garrick and Macklin visited Stratford, they were regaled beneath its venerable branches by Sir Hugh Clopton, who, instead of pulling down New Place according to Malone's assertion, repaired it, and did every thing in his power for its preservation. The Rev. Francis Gastrell purchased the building from Sir Hugh Clopton's heir, and being disgusted with the trouble of showing the mulberry-tree to so many visitors, he caused this interesting and beautiful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... man lingered on the porch, considering Braceway's confident assertion that he did not "propose to disregard one scintilla of evidence, one smallest clue." But, he reflected, that was exactly what Braceway was doing: not only disregarding one scintilla, but keeping himself blind to a great many clues, the evidence against George Withers and that ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... joined the train at Ardlui. He probably had his own reasons. Possibly Dennis was right, and the man was a detective. But I had seen him at King's Cross and again at Edinburgh before we reached Ardlui, so I thought it might embarrass him if I walked in on the top of his assertion that he had just come from the Clyde. However, Myra was with me, which was much more important, and I dismissed Hilderman and his little fib from ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... it is strange there should be any—among which is his mention of the "St. Christopher" of the doges' palace as "the only known fresco of Titian," forgetting the celebrated one in the Scuola del Santo at Padua, of which he has spoken in a previous volume. He occasionally makes an assertion to which many will demur; as, for instance, that "The real glory of the Italian towns consists not in their churches, but in their palaces." The best refutation of this paradox is in his own pages. Most people will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... with the King, he began with the assertion, 'It is utterly impossible, Sir;' and James smiled to see his poison working. Not that he viewed it as poison. Monasticism was at a discount, and the ranks of the religious orders were chiefly filled, the old Benedictine and Augustinian foundations by gentlemen of good family who wanted the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... full swing of the intellectual renaissance.[8] In 1341 Petrarch, recognized by all his contemporary countrymen as their leading scholar and poet, was crowned with a laurel wreath on the steps of the Capitol in Rome. This was the formal assertion by the age of its admiration for intellectual worth. To Petrarch is ascribed the earliest recognition of the beauty of nature. He has been called the first modern man. In reading his works we feel at last that we speak with one of our own, with a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... duty to leave the property away from his cousin Reginald, nor to allege as a reason for his doing so that in all probability Reginald Morton was not the legitimate heir of his great-grandfather, Sir Reginald. For such an assertion John Morton knew there was not a shadow of ground. No one but this old woman had ever suspected that the Canadian girl whom Reginald's father had brought with him to Bragton had been other than his honest wife;—and her suspicions ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... enquiries as to his condition, he replied that the food of himself and family all the year round was potatoes and buttermilk. 'Were the potatoes good?' 'Troth they were not—bad as could be,' (and he proved the assertion by cutting open a number of them taken at random from a heap, and showing us the extent of the disease.) 'Had he plenty of potatoes?' 'Indeed he had not.' 'Of milk?' 'Never—nor half enough—never had enough for either dinner or breakfast.' All his children were as badly off as himself—not half ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... over to Satan." On both sides of the Atlantic the press groaned with "answers," some of these being especially injurious to the cause they were intended to serve, and none more so than sundry efforts by the bishops themselves. One of the points upon which they attacked him was his assertion that the reference in Leviticus to the hare chewing its cud contains an error. Upon this Prof. Hitzig, of Leipsic, one of the best Hebrew scholars of his time, remarked: "Your bishops are making themselves ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Alden and with herself. Why couldn't the man go to sleep? It must be past midnight, now, and she would walk, if she wanted to. Defiantly and in a triumph of self-assertion, she went to the open window and peered out into the stillness, illumined by neither moon nor stars. The night had the suffocating quality of hangings ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... then eight, are formed, and so on. And the cells thus germinated divide themselves into two or three tiny folds of "primitive folioles" from which all the organs are evolved, beginning with the alimentary canal. "This assertion," says Wolff "is not a fanciful theory; it is a description of facts collected by means of the most ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... there are no bees in Siberia, but the assertion is incorrect. I saw native honey enough to convince me on this point, and learned that bees are successfully raised in the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Dr. Felix Adler, leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. In an address on "Anti-Democratic Tendencies in American Life" delivered some years ago, Dr. Adler asserted: "Before the Civil War there were three millionaires; now there are 4,000." The error of this assertion is evident. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... thing to be blamed, deisidaimonia, both in public and private life, was really what was holding together the Roman state.[515] Even in the wild century that followed, Posidonius could repeat the assertion of Polybius, and in the age of Augustus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, then resident at Rome, looking back on the early history of Rome, stated his conviction that one needed to know the pietas of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... would not listen to any explanations, but only repeated his assertion that he would report me at the Globe office. There was nothing for me ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... intended to include Chinamen, or Sandwich Islanders, or the Norwegian, Russian, or Italian in its benefits? Yet they do all share in it as soon as they become citizens. How absurd we should think the assertion that it was not the Lord's intention to hold the people of the United States under the law of the Ten Commandments, as they were given to the Jews alone, some four thousand years before the United States existed as a nation. Massachusetts never ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... answered the young daughter of Mar, "cannot be transgressed with innocence. Nor would it be any relinquishing of duty to you, should my father leave you to take up arms in the assertion of his country's rights. Her rights are your safety; and therefore, in defending them, a husband or a son best shows his sense of domestic, as ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... one word for this denial of all law, this insurrection against all custom and tradition, this assertion of individual license without discipline and without restraint; and that word is "anarchy." And, as we know, theoretic anarchy, though it may not always lead to actual violence, is a doctrine of destruction. It is so in art, and these artistic anarchists are found proclaiming ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... of friendship to the man I deem my enemy, and whose system of conduct forbids it. At the same time, truth authorizes me to say, that he was received and treated with proper respect to his official character, and that he has had no cause to justify the assertion, that he could not expect any support for fulfilling the duties ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... as nothing when compared with the injury which Dalton himself did to his own cause by the course which he chose to adopt. Contenting himself with the simple assertion of his innocence, he refused to give the name of the guilty man, or to say any thing that might lead to his discovery. Actuated by a lofty sense of honor, a chivalrous sentiment of loyalty and friendship, he kept the secret with obstinate fidelity; and the almost frantic appeals ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Bill, in which they say: "To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an act which will surely bring evil consequences." Yet how can the recognition of God be more effectually "effaced" than by the unqualified assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one legitimate source ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... first established, it has during that time acquired a strength and a political significance elevating it to a position far above that previously occupied by any publication of the kind in America. In proof of which assertion we call attention ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... any fair way of disposing of the current of assertion, and the still deeper undercurrent of implication, on this subject, without one which loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure naturalism? But of one thing I am sure,—probation does not end with this life, and the number of the redeemed may therefore be ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... dear grandfather manfully stood his ground, saying that it was not an idle boast, his uncle called him a vain braggart, which so offended your grandfather that he told his uncle that he would prove the truth of his assertion. And so, upon the following morning, he rose early and was at Vine Ridge gun in hand, ready to make his first shot, as soon as the sun should appear. The squirrels were very numerous at first, and he made great havoc among them. Many a mile he tramped that day, scanning with eager eyes ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... means of a steam-pumping arrangement that it ended by yielding over 300,000 litres of water per diem. The critics of the camp have said that the spot was very damp and muddy, and therefore necessarily unhealthy, and there is truth in that assertion; but the same might be remarked of all the camps of the period, notably that of D'Aurelle de Paladines in front of Orleans. Moreover, when a week's snow was followed by a fortnight's thaw, matters could scarcely be different. ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... soul is a motive force, self-assertion and self-preservation are heaven's first law. Self-assertion, however, is nothing but the operation of communicated and committed animation, and self-preservation nothing but the postponement of the day of surrender. Self-preservation is impossible; self-assertion is a challenge to the assertiveness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... turned her back to the Lay Reader, and lifted the bandage just far enough to prove the Lay Reader's assertion. ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Chateaubriand. With the sole exception of the author of Paul and Virginia and of the writer of Atala, he seemed to be one without predecessor and without a master. It may be well here to inquire how much reason there is for this assertion, and what novel features ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... like a monkey," said Pauline. "I never could have done it in the world," a most superfluous assertion, as no one in the world would ever have suspected her ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a day when he did care, sitting up to demand food with a great deal of his old self-assertion. The doctor looked him over, permitting him to get out of bed and try out his legs. They were exceedingly uncooperative at first, and Ross was glad he had tried to move only from his bunk to a ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... impossible!" he said, but his voice trembled, and there was more interrogativeness than assertion ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Theatrum Poetarum, 1800, p. 272.; Sir Harris Nicolas's edition of Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, vol. i. p. cii., &c. And Headley, in his Select Beauties of Poetry, ed. 1787, vol. i. p. xli., adds, "he was a man of low extraction!" Wood's assertion concerning Davies's parentage, was made, I believe, upon the authority of Fuller; but it is undoubtedly an error, as the books which record the admission of the younger Davies into the Society of the Middle Temple, say the father was "late ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... Friend[990];' No. 43, 'Flight of Time;' No. 51, 'Domestick greatness unattainable;' No. 52, 'Self-denial;' No. 58, 'Actual, how short of fancied, excellence[991];' No. 89, 'Physical evil moral goode[992];' and his concluding paper on 'The horrour of the last[993];' will prove this assertion. I know not why a motto, the usual trapping of periodical papers, is prefixed to very few of the Idlers, as I have heard Johnson commend the custom: and he never could be at a loss for one, his memory being stored with innumerable ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... projections and quiet recesses, brown old surfaces weathered to silver and mottled roofs that testified not to seasons but to centuries. Two broad terraces commanded the wooded horizon. Our appeal was answered by a butler who condescended to our weakness. He renewed the assertion that Mr. Searle was away from home, but he would himself lay our case before the housekeeper. We would be so good, however, as to give him our cards. This request, following so directly on the assertion that Mr. Searle was absent, was rather resented ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... ruin; she had never been able to get away from self, no, not for a single moment of her life. All her love stories had been ruined and disfigured by self-assertion, not a great unconscious self, in other words an instinct, but an extremely conscious, irritable, mean, and unworthy self. She knew it all, she was not deceived. She could no more cheat herself than she could change herself; that wretched self ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... you are not obliged to me," she said when they had gone some distance. "But your divinity is talking commonplaces, or listening to them, which amounts to the same thing; so I fancied you might spare me ten minutes. I want to know if that was a mere assertion for effect a minute ago, or if you are in earnest in thinking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Sea. The greater, then, was the need to retain the stronghold which dominated the sea-route to the East Indies. The resolve of Pitt to assure the communication with India by one or other of the two routes will concern us later. But we may risk the assertion that he would certainly have avoided the blunder of the Addington Ministry in 1802 in giving up the Cape and neglecting to secure Malta against recapture by Napoleon. Early in the course of the Napoleonic War, Pitt resolved at all costs to retain Malta and to re-conquer ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Brazil and at the mouth of the La Plata, from Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, around the eastern and western coasts of South America, and northward to the Gulf of California, all was Spanish—main-land and islands alike. The subject of this volume is the bold assertion of England to a rivalry in European waters and ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... Great Republic." Perhaps this volume might have been left to the obscurity which has befallen it, were it not that Mr. Matthew Arnold lent it a fictitious importance by taking as the text for some of his own remarks on America Sir Lepel's assertion that he knew of no civilised country, Russia possibly excepted, where he should less like to live than the United States. To me it seems a book most admirably adapted to infuriate even a less sensitive folk than the Americans. I do not in ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... side danger threatens not only in the south of Luxemburg, it threatens us on our entire joint frontier. We are not reduced to conjectures for this assertion. We have positive evidence ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... not know. It is the sort of subject on which chroniclers have no manner of conscience. The Hartmann Schedel Chronicle, for instance, gives Nuremberg 365 towers in all. The fact that there are 365 days in the year is of course sufficient proof of this assertion! The towers, which rise two or even three stories above the wall, communicated on both sides with the covered way. They are now used as dwelling-houses. On some of them there can still be seen, projecting ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... such an obligation as the one of which you speak," said Lance in a low and meaning tone which somehow caused Blanche's cheek to flush and her heart to flutter a little. "You are right in supposing," he continued, "that I would not make such an assertion without due consideration. I have thought much upon the story you confided to me; and, comparing it with another which I have also heard, I am of opinion that I have discovered a clue which is worth following up, if only ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... sharp-witted scamp appeared in one of the European countries, and offered for sale a pill, which he declared to be a sure protection against earthquakes. Absurd as was the assertion, he sold large quantities of his nostrum, and grew rich on the proceeds. The credulity which enriched this man, is still a marked characteristic of the human race, and often strikingly exhibits itself in this country. The quack doctors, or medical impostors, to whom we shall devote this ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... everyone knows, time flies quickly. One often hears it asked, How is it possible to make the time pass on such a trip? My good friends, I would answer, if anything caused us worry, it was the thought of how we should find time enough for all we had to do. Perhaps to many this assertion will bear the stamp of improbability; it is, nevertheless, absolutely true. Those who have read this narrative through will, in any case, have received the impression that unemployment was an evil that was utterly unknown in ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... transacting business. This habit is one of those few which are not contingent upon the mutable fancies of fashion, and at this day we see Cabinet Dinners and Vestry Dinners alike proving the correctness of our assertion. Whether the custom really expedites the completion or the general progress of the business which gives rise to it, is a grave question, which we do not feel qualified to decide. Certain it is that very often, after the dinner, an appointment is made for the transaction of the business on the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... men as they heard this bold assertion, which the squire supplemented by saying between his teeth, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... occasions appealed to, and his advice asked in everything relating to games, and all matters of dispute referred to him. Frank, on the other hand, although he at all times gave way to Johnstone in house matters, was constantly annoyed by his continual self-assertion and his irritation at trifles. They were the only two Sixth town boys at Richards', but there were three Upper 'Shells,' Harris, Travers, and James, and these ranked almost with the Sixth, for the great demarcation of the School was between the Upper and Under 'Shells,' ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... which I have bestowed on this investigation, I have been unable to discover any evidence of its utility in this respect, except what arose from the prejudices of the ignorant, or the obstinacy of those who are slaves to the practice of it. The bare assertion of Deimerbroek, "that it kept off the plague," without a single corroborative fact, would hardly be sufficient authority on which to establish a conclusion so important; especially when we have the united experience of Rivernus, Chemot, and Cullen, to prove the opposite of this position. ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... who in the Accademia of Florence suggested that we had stood long enough in front of the 'Primavera.' 'No!' was his simple, straightforward, quite unanswerable answer. But I have never heard a man assert that he had no sense of humour. And I take it that no such assertion ever was made. Moreover, were it made, it would be a lie. Every man laughs. Frequently or infrequently, the corners of his mouth are drawn up into his cheeks, and through his parted lips comes his own particular variety, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... and listening to a great deal of this sort of assertion I find that the question forms itself with more and more distinctness in my mind: Who are those who assume to put hard questions to other people and to demand a solution of them? How did they acquire the right to demand that others should solve their world-problems ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... the war between the two nations; but he will be still more surprised to hear it declared from the throne, that the operations, both by sea and in America, had derived the most evident advantage from the war in Germany. An assertion the more extraordinary, as the British ministry, in their answer to the Parallel, which we have already mentioned, had expressly affirmed, that "none but such as are unacquainted with the maritime force of England can believe, that without a diversion on the continent, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... The story of Romeo is involved in some uncertainty. The French writers assert the continuance of his ministerial office even after the decease of his soverign Raymond Berenger, count of Provence: and they rest this assertion chiefly on the fact of a certain Romieu de Villeneuve, who was the contemporary of that prince, having left large possessions behind him, as appears by his will, preserved in the archives of the bishopric of Venice. There might however have been more than one person of the name of Romieu, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... account is partly extracted from Le Voyageur Francois, Vol. XVI.; but the assertion that they are all so abandoned, as that author says, is too general. I have lodged many times in their houses, and never missed the most trifling things, though I have left my knives, forks, candlesticks, spoons, and ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... Lang," Saunderson was saying to Langdon of the Diplomatic Corps,—"I tell you that there'll be war. It isn't going to be any police-clubbed riot this time. It'll be the real thing." Carter felt a personal affront in Langdon's sceptical laugh at this assertion. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... for the assertion of this fact, in the defense of her own race, that the writer hereof became an exile; her property destroyed and her return to her home forbidden under penalty of death, for writing the following editorial ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... religious scepticism. It was not long in attracting much of the public attention, and in provoking the resentment of the colonial Government and clergy. The Rev. Increase Mather having been claimed in the Courant as one of its supporters, came out with a long and wrathful contradiction of the assertion. 'I can well remember,' says that eminent and excellent divine, 'when the civil Government would have taken an effectual course to suppress such a cursed libel! which, if it be not done, I am afraid ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the principle established here, we may account in some measure for Voltaire's apparently paradoxical assertion, with regard to the comparative merit of Homer and Tasso. The Italian (says that spirited writer) has more conduct, variety and justness than the Greek. Admitting the truth of this reflection, we might still reply, that the principal merit of the Iliad, considered as the production of Genius, ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... to test any assertion that might clear his sister of the suspicion most odious, Tom hallooed for us. When we re-entered the glade, Margaret spoke ere any one else had time for ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of his assertion to himself, his conscience, and to Hank Graves, he straightway got out a thick pad of paper and sharpened three lead pencils to an exceeding fine point. Then he sat him down by the window—where he could see the kitchen door, which was the ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... I have sold off my horses, and I have not touched dice nor card these six months: I would not even put into the raffle for the last Derby." This last was said with the air of a man who doubted the possibility of obtaining belief to some assertion of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... floating like wrecks about it. A meagre winged animal, which my host called a delicate chicken, was too delicate for his stomach, for it had evidently died of a consumption. The macaroni was smoked. The beefsteak was tough buffalo's flesh, and the countenance of mine host confirmed the assertion. Nothing seemed to hit his palate but a dish of stewed eels, of which he ate with great relish, but had nearly refunded them when told that they were vipers, caught among the rocks of Terracina, and esteemed a ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... in the trite but, nevertheless, all-powerfully true assertion that the Press is the Archimidean lever which moves the world, cannot but regret the unblushing statement of the editor of our esteemed contemporary, the Planters' Friend, that he has been the victim ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... on wheels if possible—but here I mention grandeur never even dreamed of up at remote Lisconnel—in unwonted state, certain to draw the gaze of every passer-by. But as if with a fine touch of courtesy, he so times his assertion of dignity that none of his fellows shall thereby be abashed nor envy-bitten. No ragged wayfarer shall wish to change places with him as he passes solemnly along, nor grudge him the unshared splendour of his sombre equipage; not even if it display the crowning glory ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... drew a murmur of applause; the proposition of Peterchen having most of the properties of a popular theory, being deficient in neither a bold assertion, a brief exposition, nor a practical illustration. The latter in particular was long afterwards spoken of in Vaud, as an exposition little short of the well-known judgment of Solomon, who had resorted to the same keen-edged weapon in order to solve a point almost as knotty as ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... biographers have affirmed that he quitted his trade; but there is nothing to authorize that assertion in what he says himself upon ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... the early state of the Ovulum in any case, but rather that they had merely advanced from the observation of Grew, and the conjecture founded on it by Morland, whose hypothesis they adopt without acknowledgment, to the unqualified assertion of its existence, in all cases. For it is to be remarked, that they take no notice of what had previously been observed or asserted on the more important parts of their subject, while several passages are evidently copied, and the whole account of the original ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... reconcilers of the story of the Deluge with fact is worse than the first. All that they have done is to transfer the contradictions to established truth from the region of science proper to that of common information and common sense. For, really, the assertion that the surface of a body of deep water, to which no addition was made, and which there was nothing to stop from running into the sea, sank at the rate of only a few inches or even feet a day, simply outrages the most ordinary and familiar teachings of every man's ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... position should not be misunderstood. It does not mean any diminution of our national spirit. It rather means that it should be intensified. The most outstanding feature of the war has been the assertion of the national spirit. Each nationality is contending for the right to have its own government, and in that is meeting with the sanction of the free peoples of the earth. We are discussing a league of nations. Such a league, ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... answered, and followed up my assertion with a full account of her life at court, the king's infatuation, at which she laughed, his offer of a pension, which at first she refused, the respect in which every one held her, and the wisdom with which she carried ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... are a ventriloquist, sir?" remarked Percy Landreth, in a tone between assertion and enquiry, and giving the old gentleman a look of ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you; this is children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.' The Jews who were present understood those words of Jesus as an assertion of his divinity and took up ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... that Sir Isaac Newton excelled them all. The gentleman's assertion was very just; for if true greatness consists in having received from heaven a mighty genius, and in having employed it to enlighten our own mind and that of others, a man like Sir Isaac Newton, whose equal is hardly found in a thousand years, is the truly great man. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... may mean that more responsibility and more force will have to be lodged in the Federal Government. Within recent years the dignity of the United States has been seriously impaired. The time seems now to have come when the Government must make a new assertion of its integrity and its authority. No power in the country can be stronger than that of the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... happy to say, seems to have spurned the offer. Meanwhile William, incredulous of his brother's report, proceeded to N——, learned nothing from Mr. Morton, met his brother again—and the brother (confessing that he had deceived him in the assertion that you and Mr. Sidney were dead) told him that he had known you in earlier life, and set out to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... be accepted as it stood, consistently with male dignity. The superior judicial powers of that estimable sex called for assertion. First, suspension of opinion—no hasty judgments! "A most extraordinary story! A most extraordinary story! But scarcely to be accepted.... You'll ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... can have no weight with me, considering that I can oppose to it the testimony of the man with whom I am willing to share my future fortunes. You acknowledge the question is but doubtful, and should not the assertion of him of whom I think so highly decide my belief in a doubtful matter? What, indeed, must he be, should this Madame Montreville be other than he ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... as final, and rose with a regret, not an insistence. The two women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea of his camping out, as it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of masculine government here, notwithstanding Roxby's assertion that Eve was made of Adam's backbone, was very apparent in their mute acquiescence and the alacrity with which they began to collect various articles, according to his directions, to make the ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was unhesitatingly recognized to be that of Charles, by his doctor, by his chaplain, by Oliver de la Marche, his chamberlain, and by several grooms of the chamber; and certain marks, such as the scar of the wound he had received at Montlhery, and the loss of two teeth, put their assertion beyond a doubt. As soon as Duke Rend knew that they had at last found the body of the Duke of Burgundy, he had it removed to the town, and laid on a bed of state of black velvet, under a canopy of black satin. It was dressed in a garment of white satin; a ducal crown, set ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... if one were to judge without looking for the best object, it might be thought that they are trying by this improper method and means to pass more speedily to better employments. I do not know whether there is more than to add the assertion that, when I called a council and asked their opinions, in order that an entrance might be effected into the province of the Igolotes Indians [26] (which is situated almost in the middle of these islands), and that it might be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair |
